Month: August 2004

Jane!!!

* * * Like the new logo? This one was made by reader April. Very “me”, no? Thanks, April! * * * So, the travelogue is at an end. I’ll have more pictures to share once the three disposable underwater cameras are done being developed and I get the pictures back. I have no idea what’s on those cameras – I gave them to my father and Brian when they were snorkeling at Hanauma Bay and told them to take whatever pictures they wanted to. Should be interesting! * * * Last week (Wednesday, I think), the spud and I went to the high school to pick up her schedule for the 2004 – 2005 school year. Sophomores could pick up their schedules between 10 and 2, so we left the house at about 10 minutes before 10. In the past, picking up her schedule at the middle school has taken maybe twenty minutes at the most. We pulled up to the high school to see a line coming out the front door. It was maybe 30 people long, and I mentally bitched and moaned about having to wait, but I figured we’d be out of there in half an hour or so. A few minutes after we joined the line, a high school boy came along, handing out numbers, apparently so that no one would try to cut in line. My number? 135. I eyed the line of people in front of me and wondered how on earth that could add up to 134, decided they hadn’t started at number 1, and continued patiently waiting. Another few minutes later a woman walked along the line. “It’s going to take about an hour and a half,” she said. “Things should clear up after lunch, if you’d like to leave and come back then.” I briefly considered doing so, but didn’t really want to, so I stayed where I was. Besides, really. How on earth could it take an hour and half to pick up a schedule and pay course fees? Really, she had to be exaggerating. With incredible slowness, the line moved toward the door. I amused myself by watching the kids in line, listening to the mother in front of me tell her daughter “If you don’t keep your grades up, that phone is going!”, while the daughter text-messaged with her friends during the entire lecture, and half-listened to the spud OmiGAWD-ing with a friend. After about half an hour, we reached the door, and I sighed with relief. Show proof of residency, pick up schedule, pay course fees, I’d be out of here in no time! And then I stepped through the front door and found that the FUCKING LINE stretched the entire length of the hallway, and there were no tables with people handing out schedules anywhere in sight. Ten minutes later, when we’d inched forward a tiny bit, a teenager walked from the direction of the front of the line, and said to a friend “Oh my GAWD, I can’t believe you’re way back HERE! I was number 17, and I’m just NOW getting done!” WONDERFUL. But I stuck it out, and almost exactly two hours after we arrived at the high school, I had the spud’s schedule in hand and had paid $153 in course fees. If I’d had any idea this was going to happen, I would have dropped the spud off with my cell phone and told her to call me at home when she was about 10 people from the front of the line. Next year, god willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll give her a blank check and she’ll be able to drive herself to the high school and pick up her own damn schedule! She signed up for driver’s ed, but won’t be taking it until after Christmas. Which doesn’t bother her in the SLIGHTEST. She’s such an odd child – I couldn’t WAIT to get my driver’s license, but she doesn’t seem to care at all. She must take after her father, who didn’t get his license until he was 25, and only then because I told him he needed to get his license so I wouldn’t have to drive my own ass to the hospital when I went into labor. * * * The last day the spud and I were in Hawaii, we went to the beach, as you may recall. While we were there, I wore my beach shoes, and got them wet. When we got back to my parents’ hotel room, I put them in a plastic bag and then packed them. Once we were home, I tossed the shoes – bag and all – into the garage. Where they stayed for a week. Last week when we got ready to go to the quarry, I took the shoes out of the bag, and HOLY CRAP they stink. I rinsed them off, and wore them in the quarry and then left them in the sun for a few days, but nothing’s helped yet. I think it may be time for new beach shoes… * * * Spanky lurves a good head scratch.]]>

Written July 21. So I guess we’re going to Hanauma Bay to go snorkeling today, once my father gets off work. I feel like I’ve been here for a year – I can’t believe it’s almost time to go home! Whoo! 8:15 am.

* * * Today was absolutely the best day of our vacation. The spud and I checked out of our hotel around 8:30, ran to the post office to mail a few last-minute things home, and then headed for my parents’ hotel. (Side note: At the post office was a beautiful young Japanese girl mailing about ten huge packages to Japan. She was dressed perfectly in a silk suit with a mini skirt that appeared to have been tailored to fit her, every hair was in place, her makeup was impeccable… and she wore nylon knee-highs and sandals. Which might not have looked quite so bad except that she was wearing a MINI SKIRT and the knee-highs only came to right below her knees. What’s that about?) My father got home from work a little after 10, everyone got into their bathing suits, and we piled into the car (4 people in the back seat, while uncomfortable, isn’t quite so bad when you’re not hot and sweaty) and we headed out to Hanauma Bay. We were disappointed to find that the Hanauma Bay parking lot was closed (they only allow a certain number of cars in the parking lot, in an attempt to cut down on the number of visitors, and to protect the bay. For many years, people were snorkeling there, tromping all over the coral, feeding the fish, and basically destroying the reef. The state of Hawaii took over the bay and enacted measures to cut down on traffic to allow the reef to rebuild itself). So we decided to keep driving up the road in hopes that we’d see a beach where we could stop and swim and do a little snorkeling. We passed up a couple of beaches because the surf looked too rough or the water too rocky, and then we saw THE most gorgeous beach, and stopped to check it out. I later found that we were at Waimanalo Beach. The water was gorgeous, the sand was so smooth that we didn’t need beach shoes, and the view was AMAZING. We stayed there for nearly two hours, floating in the waves and relaxing. Once we’d had enough of that (and we only had enough of that because we’d brought no food or drinks with us – otherwise, I think we could have stayed all day), we piled back in the car and headed back to Hanauma Bay to see if the parking lot had opened back up. It had, so while my father stood in line to buy tickets, we bought lunch at the snack bar, then sat through the 9 minute “look, don’t touch!” movie, then took the tram down to the beach. We took turns with the snorkels and masks and snapped two disposable underwater cameras’ worth of pictures. We only stayed for about an hour and a half, then we piled back into the car (me: “Brian, I sure do love you, but I’m glad we’ll never have to sit this close to each other ever again.” Brian: “I feel the same.”) and went back to my parents’ hotel. While my mother hopped into the shower, I checked my cell phone to find that I had EIGHTEEN missed calls, and when I scrolled through the numbers, I found they were all from my home phone number. With visions of dead cats, a house on fire, or any number of disasters dancing through my head, I dialed home. Busy signal. I tried Fred’s cell phone. No answer. I tried home again and Fred answered on the second ring. “What’s going on?” I demanded. “Oh,” he said with a little laugh. “I was just bored.” Bastard. We talked for a few minutes, then I took my shower, and we all headed out to dinner at Cha Cha Cha’s, a Carribean-Mexican restaurant. I had the Jamaican-Me-Crazy Enchiladas and they were really good. After dinner, my mother, the spud and I went with Debbie while she looked at luggage and ended up buying an adorable, HUGE suitcase for $40. In retrospect, some five hours later, I’m wishing like hell that I’d bought a suitcase too. I like my duffel bag, but it’s more than a tad unwieldy sometimes and I’ve been thinking that we need a second big suitcase. And a price like that, ya just can’t beat. Now we’re on the airplane, halfway through a 4 1/2 hour flight, and the spud is dead to the world. I think I’m going to slather my sunburned lips with Blistex, guzzle some water, and see if I can’t snooze for a while, too. 12:10 am, Hawaii Time * * * I managed to sleep for a while – maybe 30 minutes altogether. Our flight landed in San Francisco somewhat on time, give or take 15 minutes. We hit the bathroom and then hit the only store in the terminal to find that they didn’t sell drinks – water, soda – of any kind. What the fuck?! So we stood in line at Jamba Juice to get drinks and some kind of muffin thing. Now we’re 3 1/2 hours into a 4 1/2 hour flight, I can barely keep my eyes open, I befouled the rest room twice (Mexican for dinner right before 12 hours of traveling? Yes, please. Can I get extra beans with that?), the in-flight movie was the craptastic “Laws of Attraction”, which I didn’t bother to watch (if it’s not an almost exact replica of “Intolerable Cruelty” I’ll sit in an uncomfortable position for hours on end and annoy the ever-loving hell out of the woman sitting in the seat ahead of me by constantly fidgeting and accidentally kicking the seat 148,963.5 times. Oh, wait! Did that!) and now we’ve hit turbulence. Time seems to be moving backwards. I think I’ve died and gone to hell (saving a seat for you, Nance!). 1:00 pm Cincinnati time 7 am Hawaii time Noon Alabama time * * * Jesus fucking Christ, is there such a thing as a flight that ISN’T stuffed to the gills? Once upon a time, I swear to god, I was on a plane where every seat was NOT taken, but every flight I’ve been on this time around was packed. What the fuck?! THE SPUD DOES NOT RESPECT THE BUBBLE. If she elbows me one more time, I’m going to beat her. 2:45 pm Alabama time ]]>

here. Written July 20th Okay, in retrospect, now that I’m not sitting on a hot bus sweltering, the tour of the island was really pretty cool. We saw the Dole Plantation, a macadamia ranch, Hanauma Bay, and a number of other things. We got a ton of beautiful pictures and learned that Dole doesn’t actually do canning on the island anymore, that outsiders coming to the island have driven up property prices so that native Hawaiians can’t afford homes, that I REALLY want a monkeypod tree in my backyard, and that the manmade rivers carrying rain water down from the mountains make the ocean murky where the rivers run into the sea. Cousin Dave told us that last at LEAST twelve times. Around the fifth time, we started snickering, and somewhere around the tenth time I looked at Debbie. “Debbie,” I said with a perfectly straight face, “What makes the water so murky?”, and she gave me a considering look and then said “I believe the ABC Stores make the water so murky, Robyn.” Heh. There was a large family of rednecks from Georgia on the tour with us, who obviously weren’t listening, because Cousin Dave told us there are no active volcanoes on Oahu, and ten minutes later Daddy Redneck drawled “Now, where’s the active volcano? We gonna see that today?” Like I said, though, it was neat. We made plenty of stops for pictures and bathroom breaks. It would have been better if the tour had been, say, in a stretch limo with a bar and the driver stopping to let us take pictures whenever we wanted, but I guess I’ll just have to wait ’til I’m a multi-millionaire rock stah. I have no idea what we’re doing today. The spud and I have to haul a box to the post office for mailing, and after that who knows?

* * * I realized this morning why exactly it is that I’ve woken at 6 every morning. It’s because that’s apparently when they start up the street construction that involves lots of big-ass trucks backing up and making that ear-piercing BeepBeepBeep sound. Ah well – I sure am glad I’m not on a lower floor! I guess if you get a hotel in the middle of a city, you have to expect lots of loud traffic noises. The spud is having an awfully good time hanging out with Brian. He’s definitely like a brother to her. Too bad we don’t live closer to them! 10:14 pm ]]>