Kids

Watching my son's sweetie's kids lately. What I had almost forgotten about kids:

• the amount of energy they can pack into teeny bodies. Jumping up to throw basketballs, racing around chasing other kids, climbing up giant slides, bouncing on furniture. And the physical and mental energy I need to keep up with them!
• the way they notice everything -- the different colors and shapes of ducks, the multitudinous activities of ground squirrels (the biggest attraction for kids of all ages the other day was a dead squirrel), the mini-world of bugs. I have been recapturing some of this "noticing" when I go for camera walks, but they're so much better at it!
• their non-stop imaginations. A running dialog speaking from the ducks' points of view, imaginary weapons and aliens, "the floor is lava, we can't touch it." Shoots me right back to my own grade school summers of cloud-shadow fairies and living in the worlds of children's literature.
• the speed with which they can duck out of sight, behind a rock, a bush, another kid. That instant parental panic until they're spotted again. I'd relaxed since my boys got big and lived independently. It all comes back in the blink of an eye. No blinking allowed!
• the seemingly limitless capacity for mastering the details of games. For me, any game (any thing!) that has a set of instructions more than a page long seems hopelessly complex, but for them, particularly with some experience under their belts, it all makes perfect sense and they can nudge me along.

My pixelated life

So my iMac has an option for the screen saver to display my photos as pixelated images -- you know the kind where a photo is graded by its dominant color and then those colors are used to pixelate another image, in this case other photos. They cycle around, and pixelation resolving into a single image, then that image shrinking and becoming a pixel in another image, on and on.  Every time I load new photos onto my computer they enter into the rota. 

It's fascinating and a bit freaky. I could sit and watch it for hours.  The picture I took of a department store window in Honolulu last month becomes part of a Santa hat. The purple eggplants at the Farmer's market fuse into the Easter flowers at Tesco in Leicester two years ago. The blue Pacific becomes the blue of Jeffrey's shirt when he was little. Sometimes I forget it's there, and I am surprised to look up and see Greg smiling from his 60th birthday party, or Cauchy napping next to the Christmas creche, or students from my old afternoon class. The randomness seems to parallel the randomness of my memories ambushing me -- provoking sudden giggles or tears.

I'm planning to do a major scanning of old photos (when I get a scanner that works and figure out how to use it) and I wonder what it will be like to have all those images from before the digital age enter into the pattern: Black and whites and old polaroids and some of those really old sepia tones.
It's my life, pixelated:  all the little bits focusing and unfocusing, blending to make a pattern; the meaning is all in my head.

Volcanoes

I've always been fascinated by volcanoes: I remember a Life magazine spread on Pompeii from when I was in grade school. There was a story about Yellowstone Park in my second or third grade reader -- the only time I actually went there was while moving to CA with my leg in a cast, so didn't do too much exploring. I remember reading about the way the Krakatoa eruption changed the world's weather for years. Mt. St. Helens happened shortly after I moved to California -- we went to see it 20 years later. Loved camping at Lassen.

I really wanted to see Kilauea in eruption, so we scheduled a trip to the Big Island. Expensive! Saw (and smelled) steam vents, looked out over craters, walked through lava tubes, climbed around on old lava fields, admired lava tree molds, went swimming where a thermal vent under the sea had formed a hot pond. Nothing spectacular, but then these things can't be planned for, really. I guess I'll have to watch National Geographic Specials until I get another chance.

Through the Lava Tube

Lava Tree mold

1970's lava field

Steam coming out of Kilauea Crater

Free Lunch?

We hadn't heard from our car rental company before we left for Hawaii, but when we only had two days left, we found out all the major companies' cars were reserved. What to do? 

We'd seen hucksters on the street corners touting $10 day car rentals, and we figured so what if we have to rent a wreck? Worth a try. That's how we met Kevin, who spent the next 20 minutes persuading us to sign up for a 90 minute "presentation" about a travel website in return for said $10 rental car. Yes there are new cars available today, he said, and from Thrifty, no less. Plus++++we were eligible for a $50.00 gift certificate to Top of Waikiki revolving restaurant (which we'd snuck into the day before and knew $50 would get us one meal, at least). Plus++++we could take home a CASE of chocolate macademia nuts (he'd evidently figured us for chocoholics, or nut nuts). Smelled like a time-share salesjob to me. Oh no, it was absolutely not a time-share, and the 90 minutes would start the minute we got there. Absolutely no commitment to buy anything or join anything. Nobody would check to see that we did have the qualifying income. Oh, Marylin wasn't a US citizen, then it would have to be under my name.

We figured the car alone was worth 90 minutes of our time, so signed up. Well, of course it was a time-share by some other name (Look, I've forgotten already!). I'd made Marylin promise to stop me if I squeezed her hand and seemed to be giving in to the sales pitch, which I did several times. The presentation was very entertaining, the sales reps were charming and friendly, but who wants to stay in 4 star resorts all the time? (I know, lots of people, but not us) and the deals kept getting sweeter and sweeter and more and more "affordable". Squeeze that hand! Of the dozen or so other people who were there at the same time, three or four couples purportedly signed on the dotted line. 

We finally escaped with our credit cards un-maxed, and went to the "prize desk" to claim our car. That's where we found out out that there were no compact cars left, but we could upgrade to a Jeep for $50 more and by the way said Jeep was waiting for us at the airport! We chose to trade our case of macademia nuts for the upgrade and persuaded them to give us a free 40 minute ride to the airport.

So 90minutes +++++ 3 hours later we were off to explore the non-Honolulu part of Oahu! p.s. We got pupus and happy hour drinks on the revolving restaurant gift certificate +++++ $20.

Shopping in Hawaii

Shopping in Hawaii: This year we started with the Swap Meet! After an hour-and-fifteen minute bus ride (56 stops!) we spent two hours trying to collect all the souvenirs we wanted to buy. It was hot. There was very little food or drink. Everything tended to look alike after awhile. Careful examination was necessary to find the things made in Hawaii, not China. I bought Red Dirt t-shirts for Matt, Veda and the kids, a sarong for me, a silver ring with sea turtles and a plumeria blossom, a Hawaiian quilt turtle pillow cover. I should have bought Hawaiian print reversible tote bags, because I never saw them anywhere else. Marylin bought silver jewelry for her kids. We took the $5 shuttle back to the hotel instead of The Bus.

Fabric Stores: we went to two -- the variety of Hawaiian prints and Japanese fabrics was incredible. I bought a few bits to use on my cards. I was looking for a miniature version of the sarong prints -- didn't find any. Big Island: Just about everything in the art museum/shop at Hawaiian Volcanoes National Park was out of my price range, but I did get a calendar. I could have dropped a fortune at the Orchid Nursery, but only bought one plumeria stalk thingy, which I hope will grow for me. The airport shop in Hilo was uncharacteristically cheap, so we indulged in more earrings!  Waikiki has every imaginable high-end retailer, from Ferrari to Prada, but only the cookie and candy places offered free samples! Art Gallery near our hotel offered Artists in Residence every evening -- fascinating to meet the people behind the paintings, sculptures, etc. I bought a cheaper but not knock-of version of a jellyfish in glass sculpture, and some note cards, at the hotel store, and a gorgeous locally designed t-shirt.

ABC Stores: the go-to place on Waikiki. They're only allowed there, there is one literally on every block, and they have no real competition. We bought an underwater camera (still haven't developed the pictures from last years underwater film), breakfast goodies on alternative days, liquor and soft drinks to supplement the $12 Moana Terrace cocktails, tote bags, chocolate macademia nuts and coconut M&M's, a few items of jewelry and a t-shirt we should have gotten at the swap meet. 

Next time: Shop for swimsuits, more museum shops, a farmer's market (we saw them advertised, but never caught up with one), more organized visit to the Swap Meet.

Food Adventures

I am not an adventuresome eater. When I was a little kid traveling with my grandparents, all I would eat was hamburgers and chicken. I remember meeting avocados and shrimp and bean sprouts for the first time on a trip to CA with my grandmother when I was ten, not available in Ohio in those days. My mom overcooked everything -- I didn't rediscover fresh vegetables and non-fried fish until I was in graduate school! My grandmother was all all about "new taste thrills" which involved getting chocolate covered ants and canned kangaroo meat as Christmas gifts. I have a great fear of getting sick to my stomach. I remember od'ing on bing cherries once, and after literally seeing them come out my nose, not eating them for a decade.

On my trip to Hawaii I decided to maintain a balance between health, indulgence, and adventure. I wanted to maintain my weight, enjoy my vacation, and try a few new things.  Here's the list of things I tried: Poke (evidently a raw-fish salsa-appetizer thingy), lilikai mango frozen popsicle, Thai chicken curry (curry just means in sauce -- they served the inflammatory spice on the side), Thai iced tea with coconut milk, green papaya (or was it mango?) salad, barbecued shrimp from a shrimp truck, lychee sorbet. OK, not all that adventurous, but I didn't gain an ounce, I never went hungry, and I didn't get sick!

Hula Pie -- after you eat one of these, you don't want to even think about doing the hula!

Prejudice

The Singer: Sitting on the veranda in the evening listening to the singer at the piano in the lobby of the hotel -- her voice was good, a bit unusual, singing standards and the odd Hawaiian tune. Formed a picture of her in my mind: perhaps a tall young Hawaiian girl. When we went in, saw a short rather unattractive person seated at the piano, crew cut and beard. Unisex clothes. We couldn't tell if it was a man or woman. The voice was clearly (?) female. Bearded lady? Someone in transition? Definitely not the picture in my brain. Couldn't get the new picture out of my brain!

The Pirate & the Barkeep: On the Big Island, trying to cram new experiences into the last hour of our visit (more about this later) we went to a kava bar. I'd read about kava, a mild intoxicant favored by Pacific islanders, so decided to venture one glass, er, coconut shell. The Bartender looked like he had long experience of global intoxicants, but was a friend of our host, so more or less trusted him. The story he told us of the ritual of drinking kava, all about bonding with friends, contrasted totally with he story we were later told about kava symbolizing the subservience of women, having to be administered by a virgin, choosing a bride, etc. The drink tasted rather nasty, and turned my mouth numb, and (I'm told) made me slightly giggly, but no other ill effects. The Pirate walked into the bar (This is not the beginning of a joke). I'll try to get the photo of him from our friends. He had quite a snazzy and reputedly home-made leather pirate hat, flowing sleeves, vest, the requisite whiskers, and a friendly flirtacious manner.  Appeared to have all his limbs intact. No parrot! We weren't missing any wallets when we left.

The Ukelele Player on The Bus: We took the bus from the airport after we returned our rental car to save money after being ripped off by Disney (another story). Mostly friendly people on the bus, many tourists, many locals. This guy had a toy uke, wore scrubs,  and displayed the uninhibited manner of a mental patient off his meds. He tried to engage everyone in conversation and entertained (?) us with renditions of popular songs with  the words changed to scurrilous versions, sometimes funny, sometimes embarrassing. He bragged of having done every drug there was, claimed to be a veteran, had opinions on everything that reminded me of an internet webite devoted to  conspiracy theories. Much eye-rolling by fellow riders. Great relief when he finally got off before our stop. The bus driver said he was a regular, one of the harmless ones. Actually we didn't see many homeless on Waikiki -- I wonder why?!