Category: Practical Life Issues

When all other lights go out.

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We’ve had two power outages in the past 2 weeks. Our neighbor Corey said that it happens regularly on stormy/windy days and that it takes the electric company forever to fix it. I told K that I was terrified that the power would go out on a night that he was working late. This last Monday it happened. It was about 6PM and it was getting darker and darker. Our place is somewhat remote. It’s hard to find our front door. Even with all the power on it feels very isolated.

I shut down my computer to conserve the battery and fetched our hand-crank flashlight from the kitchen drawer. I turned it on even though the sun was mostly still up. I felt like Frodo.

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I wanted to conserve every last drop of power on my iPhone in case I needed to entertain myself or talk to someone until K came home.  But I decided that texting him about the blackout was worth the battery juice.  Two seconds later he replied he was on his way home.  Joy!

So I sat down and played Supermarket Mania until he got home 20 minutes later.  Because our oven is electric we went out to Lucy’s Grill for dinnr.  I had a glass of Reisling and Opah Crab Dynamite with sweet potato mash. Disaster averted.

Coro the Car

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We took Coro into Midas for the works: tire rotation, engine flush, brake realignment.  They did a pretty good job.  They were really fast and they called us a couple of times to give us updates.  In my opinion it seemed to cost alot.  But they did things like terra-mist for the ‘cabin’–which sprays a mist into the car through the vent system that kills bacteria and odor.

We walked to Boots and Kimos for breakfast while we waited.  We noticed on the way that a new crepe place opened a couple of doors down.  I want to go there for breakfast next time.  This is what the line outside of Boots and Kimos looks like before 9AM on a weekday:

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We had Macadamia Nut Pancakes and a Portuguese sausage omelette.  After wards we walked to Macy’s so that I could find some workout clothes for yoga.  There was nothing there (as usual). It was drizzling on and off when we came out so we sat under the overhang and waited.  K answered emails on my phone and I took pictures of people in the parking lot.

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Coro is our first car.  When we got him I didn’t really think too much of him.  I thought he was  a car like any other car.  But now, I find myself thinking that he’s a pretty good looking car. Particularly since we put the snazzy Hawaii stickers on him.  BTW I call Coro ‘him’ and K refers to him as ‘her’.

A Clue. Achoo.

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K got me a beautiful Clu dress for my birthday.  I joked with Curtis that maybe he also got me a ghost best friend because I’m feeling lonesome.  I’ve been cryptic in my writing here about a few recent events.  Mostly because I have no idea who reads this.  And I vacillate between wanting to share everything and nothing.  My best friend died of pancreatic cancer a month and a couple of weeks ago.  I miss her alot.  She was a huge influence on me in pretty much every aspect of my life.  She was my mom’s age but she was younger than me in soul and joy for the universe.  I know that I’m mourning and it’s really my first time to do so for someone so close to me.  Perhaps everyone feels this bad.  I feel like big chunks of me are missing.  Like in my stomach and my heart and mind.  Sometimes I cry alot and sometimes I don’t feel anything at all.

On my birthday, as I’ve said, K left me a birthday ‘installation’ in the guest bedroom.  He’s done it before.  He likes to take my tchotkes and stuffed animals and arrange them in a little chorus then add streamers, confetti, signs etc along with a funny version of the Happy Birthday song.  This year he had less to work with because we don’t have a lot of belongings here.

When he left for work in the morning he text messaged me and said to check the guest room for a surprise.  I sprinted up the stairs and found he’d set it up in the guest bathroom.  I got my camera and taped myself finding it again.  When I played it back I was a little distracted and not really paying attention.  All of a sudden I heard something that I hadn’t heard when I was taping it and I know I didn’t make the noise.

Thats what I was referring to in my previous posts.  It scared the bejesus out of me.  And even though K has convinced me that there’s a 50/50 chance that I made the sound myself while moving around. I’m not entirely convinced.  And the thing is I haven’t been able to decide if telling people or showing people would help me feel better about it.  In fact I haven’t really told anyone how much it scares me because then it might scare them and that’ll scare me even more.

My friend Curtis watched it and heard what I described to him.  He’s being very lawyerly about it and insists that it is what it is and what is a ghost anyway.  He said there are many unexplained things in the world and that he feels it happened because I’m sad about my friend and being alone on my birthday might have created some kind of energy or circumstances that resulted in my ‘ghost tape’.

Bottom line is that I’ve spent two days alone here in the house since then and 70% of the time I’m scared.  Keeping it to myself  isn’t helping because we have to live here for three more months. I decided I’ll just put it out there and be open about it.  Maybe something that makes me feel better will emerge.   I don’t want to embed it here because I don’t like watching it.  But I uploaded it to youtube:  see my ghost tape.

The Medical Corner at Kailua

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When I got home from NY the first time, I developed a really bad ear infection in both ears.  I think it migh thave been related to staying overnight at the hospital with my friend several nights.  The days leading up to us flying back to NY slowly became torture.  It turned out that my health insurance didn’t cver me on the island of Oahu.  I told K that I would suck it up and wait until we arrived back in NY.  I decided that I would sleep as much as I could and give my body a chance to heal.  This turned out not only to be stupid but I could do little else.  A couple of days before our flight I woke up from a nap and didn’t even have the energy to sit up for very long.  I called K who was at work and he came home not long after and took me to the The Medical Corner in Kailua.  His coworker who has lived in Kailua for a long time recommended it.

I mention all this because I was so scared about going to an emergency room in a place I wasn’t so familiar with.  And I’m a little bit of a neurotic when it comes to choosing almost anything.  I have this motivation to find the ‘best’ or at least know the back story for whatever person place or thing I’m getting involved with–especially doctors.  The people at The Medical Corner were so nice and very fastidious.  They gave me antibiotics and pain meds and asked me to come back the day we were flying to make sure I could fly.  My ear was so swollen that they couldn’t see one of my ear drums.  We came back on Saturday and the doctor on duty gave me more antibiotics, more pain killers, and gave me some advice about flying.  She suggested I take Zyrtech to cut down on the production of mucus thus cutting down the pain and pressure of altitude change.  It all worked.  I got home in one piece and with very little pain.  I even slept soundly because of the good drugs.  I would definitely go back there for help if I needed it.

Our First Halloween in Kailua

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We bought alot of candy.  Not alot alot but a decent amount.  Not one dang kid rang our bell. But I can’t say as I blame them given this story, we are after all strangers in this neighborhood.  Cory and Carrie, our neighbors, rang our bell to show us their pugs dressed as a prince and princess.  It was cute but, you know, we were like expecting kids.

I met Sarah for brunch and I got to try a new place: Mokes Bread and Breakfast.  It’s a very cute place.  I like the food at Boots and Kimo’s better but this place is really nice to sit and talk.  I got lost driving there because I forgot my glasses and I didn’t bring the GPS. It was fine I was only ten minutes late.

Finally we made steak salad for dinner from this easy recipe.

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K and I just got back from watching one of the last screening of HIFF 08:  Noho Hewa.  I was deeply moved by this film and feel that any American that has the opportunity to see this should.  I first heard about the Hawaiian ‘sovereignty’ ‘movement’ from my friend over dinner when I first arrived.  He was explaining to me the politics of the island because I had said that I didn’t understand why Asian American issues had no traction here. I was surprised to hear that such an issue exists. I was apt to believe Hawaii was just a happy place with lots of tan relaxed happy people.  The loose strands of politics and culture that I’ve picked up since arriving make more sense after seeing the film.  For example the stalled plans for a badly needed public transportation solution:  rail or no rail ?  The incongruous heavy military presence in stunningly lush sacred land.  Or the perception that Hawaiians don’t like change.

I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to see this film.  I feel rather complicit living in an area that is dominantly haole and that we’re paying rent that most local people wouldn’t be able to afford.  I feel this film has given me the tools to live here more respectfully.  It does what most very good films do:  they leave you feeling like a better person for having seen it.  Visit the website:  nohohewa.com.

We also saw Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story yesterday.  I think everyone should see this film too!  It was so illuminating.  The similarities between this 2008 election and the Bush/Dukakis race in 1988 are astounding.  It’s amazing how easily and quickly we forget our mistakes.  See the movie: boogiemanfilm.com

Afterwards we went into Chinatown in search of sang chau sauce which K uses in almost every cantonese dish he makes.  We were under the impression that it would be very hard to find but there it was in the first grocery we walked into:

For lunch we decided to pay a visit to Pho One, one of our favorite regular places to eat in Ala Moana.  Good pho and an added bonus they serve soybean milk drinks.  Yuuuuum.  Reminds me of home.

Unfortunately at the mall afterwards in the parking lot we scratched our car on a a concrete beam.  It’s really bad.  It sounded awful.  Like the car was being crunched.  blech.

recommended : timmerman paint and body shop

Hawaii Beach Safety!

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I downloaded the AP news app for iPhone. It’s location aware and can pull up local news.  Very cool. What wasn’t really cool was the first local story about  4 people that died in 2 days walking along a beach in Kauai.  I believe there were strenuous beach warnings about high surf but it’s still shocking.  So I searched online and found this:

 

I read on the site that you shouldn’t go out further than you can swim.  Unfortunately I can’t really swim so does that mean I should basically stay where the water meets the sand?  Or is that still not safe enough? Beaches are weird.