Sam’s last day was yesterday, and we were all pretty excited about summer starting! I was even wound up when I was tucking them in – I couldn’t stop tickling them, and gulping down their giggles. When I closed the door, instead of battling them over the sillies with constant reminders to quiet down, I decided to tell them they could chat for 3 minutes. Turns out they were too tired to chat, but they seemed to like the opportunity! It was quiet within seconds. Today we went on a big hike – Sam’s preference – up a trail that offers so many trail conditions along the way with a tremendous view reward at the top. I was a bit tense because they were running wild and in several places there are ledges and edges to be concerned about. Nothing crazy but I am very very cautious on the trail. With boys this size, things happen quickly. In the picture below, we were all having fun on a part of the trail that seems to wipe your feet right out from under you with “ball bearing” tiny pine cones! Gramma didn’t go down this time, but we were waiting for her to reward us with another funny episode! Click on picture for more from the trail.

So happy to be out on the trail with my guys - both of them!

Sometimes (all of the time) Dave doesn’t like to talk about work. He just doesn’t come home chatty. That’s probably why he passed the submarine nuke psych profile. It’s all classified anyway so there’s really no reason for me to be all inquiring. But there are times when extenuating circumstances merit a bit more sharing, I think. Like going to Japan after the earthquake/tsunami for three weeks. He did a little Q&A before he left, so that was nice. Got more detail on radiation control and different kinds of radioactivity. Yesterday afternoon he went into work for what he thought would be a couple hours. He didn’t get home until after 3am. Sooo, nice wife, I take care of the kids this morning, keeping two boys quiet in a small house is no small feat. Then took them to mass, then to snacks at Starbucks (and coffee for me!) then to get Dave some nice scones for breakfast, then to a craft store for clay and watercolors. The boys and I always have fun together, which I know is a little nuts to enjoy being alone with them, but somehow their insanity seems funnier to me if I’m by myself.

But tonight I was still a little curious. So I asked him what had taken so long. This had happened another time recently – some kind of very involved “evolution” had been going on. He doesn’t want to waste scarce seconds of quiet time communicating anything about work so I came up with a solution – I invented objects and he told me a little bit about them. So I said something like “Ok, so there is a bird feeder that you need to move?” Yes. “But a bird feeder that requires a crane to move it?” Yes. Apparently the bird feeder was housed like Russian dolls in other very big boxes to contain the bad stuff. So it required a crane. Well, that worked once. I could at least picture a bird feeder needing to be moved. So tonight I’m standing in the hallway trying to figure out what took 10 hours more than planned. So after an earlier false start I gathered up courage and asked “So, you were in a barn waiting for a skunk to come to a meeting?” Uh, yeah. But the skunk never showed. “The skunk never showed?” Yeah. (silence for a second or two) Then I said, “That stinks!”  And I started just CRACKING up, realizing the pun. See – I still have no idea what was going on, but at least  I can visualize Dave standing in a red barn at night waiting for a skunk to arrive. It’s something at least, right?

May pictures are now in the album!!!

One of our longtime Kailua friends - Harrison - picking up recyclables the day before the City/County pickup so he gets the good stuff on max volume day. He works so hard, riding around Kailua on his bike in this same "uniform" which he wears every day.

It has been a full court press to get the house ready for showing on Friday. I know you can imagine if you’ve ever seen our garage (mom – no laughing!). So as we cleaned stuff out I would put a post on Craigslist saying “free shelves, 7 folding chairs, etc.” and literally within minutes a pickup truck would pull up asking about the items, saying “you the ad on Craigslist?” I met the nicest people. Herb, a former shipyard worker who is now retired, grabbed 7 wooden folding chairs and hung out to talk story for a bit. I asked what kind of life the chairs would be having with him and he said they were to host family and friends around his imu, which he had going that day. I said “Oh great! Can I come?” and he replied “Sure!” What a nice guy. Dave had his doubts about how much I’d help him because every few minutes I’d run in to go to the bathroom, or talk story to someone else. I had my reasons though… One of the funniest memories of the day was when a girl came flying by on her bike, eyeballed the stuff and was like “Ah! Cool! You getting rid of this stuff?” She had a dog in her backpack and wheeled around to take a look. Turns out she was very interested in all the flea control stuff I was giving away because she lives in an apartment where the owner has a cat with fleas and she’s getting bitten all the time. So I boxed up the stuff and took it to her today. The next day (yesterday) I bumped into her on the beach, too. Such a small town really. So funny. She’s from southern Russia and has the same mentality as I do about things – no need to dress nicely, friendly to everyone, easy laugh. She was great. So happy she now has tons of flea control stuff! Hopefully she is resting easier tonight. We went to dinner and on our way back we saw the silhoutted forms of people walking down the street, one with a huge set of shelves for a head and the other with a wheelbarrow and shelves on top. We had about 7 huge black pressboard shelves find new homes literally within 50 yards of us. Dave thought I was nuts putting all this stuff out for giveaway but it was gone in 2 hours. I don’t believe in garage sales here – I just put stuff out and talk story with all the nice people I meet. Great way to get to know your neighbors.

All that said, I am continuing to have a really hard time leaving here. It is an understatement to say that being Hawaiian is a state of mind, a state of being. I realized today that although I am a haole (white) girl, I am Hawaiian under this fair skin. There is an openness, goodwill, kindness of spirit, generosity that is just how people are here for the most part. Many of the mainland imports bring their mainland selves, but it is easy to find kindred spirits among those who embody the aloha spirit in their everyday lives (i.e., not when they’re trying or on stage, but truly in how they go about living). Above pictured is Harrison. He has been a fixture in our lives for 5 years and gave me one of the biggest bear hugs today. He will miss us as we will miss him. He has been a model for our boys about hard work.

Dave wants to know if I’m telling an embarrassing story about myself. Well, I guess if I don’t he will do his first guest blog post. He seems to want you to know what ridiculousness brought me an urgent trip to the dentist last week. I saw a tooth turning grey. Then my dear friend who shall remain nameless (T!) researched it for me and concluded it is possibly a root canal waiting to happen. Great. That’s what I need to schedule right now. I am so slammed with moving stuff, listing house, searching for new home, work (yes work continues through all this as if I had nothing else going on)…so anyway off to the dentist I go. It was a crazy day anyway with going to May Day at Sam’s school, running home to meet up with an electrician, then racing back to dentist. After tapping and probing, my dentist (who knows me well and what a nut I can be) said “well, I am not sure what to tell you, I don’t think you’ll believe me…” and toyed with me for a bit. Finally he said it was a filling that you could see from the side! I had a filling there and didn’t know it! After tearing up from laughing so hard I told him that I guess for all the good work he does filling my teeth, I try not to pay any attention to what is going on in my mouth. Like taking the truck to the mechanic – just fix it, pay for it, and hope for the best. Try to forget what you just paid $1200 for. Try to pretend it never happened. I’m that way in the dentist chair – mouth agape, numb, trying not to feel anything or think about what is going on. When he’s done, I close up my mouth and move on. Some people I guess spend more time looking in the mirror. But I don’t much like what I see because I’m funny looking from head on. I look like humuhumunukunukuapua’a (the trigger fish that is Hawaii’s state fish). I have a long narrow face, and increasingly bucky teeth. He is a super cute fish, but not so cute close up or head on. I hope Dave keeps an eye on me from the 3/4 angle because that one is not half bad. But only from the right side – that left side has the slightly visible filling.

Thanks for reading and sharing the zaniness of the last week with me tonight. I’ve enjoyed writing to you and connecting with you. Love and aloha to all family and friends near and far. Know that we are thinking of you.

Thanks to Sam and his huge Biology book, tonight we learned about this protein which signals tissue differentiation at the zone of polarizing activity (ZPA). It tells the cells in a limb bud which side will develop into posterior and which will develop into anterior (like little finger and thumb, respectively). I just thought the name was hilarious. Apparently hedgehog is a drosophila protein (fly) and Sonic is a video game character. The scientist must have liked playing the game I guess!

Ben and Camden cuddling THE BABIES on their hike today. They are so funny!

Ben and Camden had such fun on their hike at Koko Crater Botanical Garden today. They picked many plumeria for their mommies and Gramma, climbed trees, fought the terrible “cactopus” – a cactus that looked like an octopus – and had slow-mo sword fights. Then they found these huge sausage fruit things and took them to a bench and started rolling them like pizza dough, or making cookies. But in just seconds the “dough” transformed into babies and the boys were holding these 2 or 3 lb sausage things like little babies, cuddling and rocking them. They carried them like this all the way out the rest of the loop – over a mile! Camden named his “Fifi” and Ben named his “HE!” then changed it to “Jessica”. They were so funny. The “babies” rode in the truck on the way home.

So Tamara looked up the sausage tree this afternoon. Very interesting tree. Among her findings:

Cultivation and uses

In African herbal medicine, the fruit is believed to be a cure for a wide range of ailments, from rheumatism, snakebites, evil spirits, syphilis, and even tornadoes (Watkins 1975). An alcoholic beverage similar to beer is also made from it. The fresh fruit is poisonous and strongly purgative; fruit are prepared for consumption by drying, roasting or fermentation (Joffe 2003; McBurney 2004). In Botswana the timber is used for makoros, yokes and oars (Roodt 1992). Kigelia is also used in a number of skin care products.