The Average Blogger

We Reap What We Sow

At the table, eating steak:

Me: Nonono, don't give me that much. Just half that amount.
NYAB: Why?
Me: I'm too tubby. Pants don't fit.
NYAB: Whatever.
Me: YP, eat your dinner. And you should try that stuff on the edge. Some people like how it tastes.
YP: What is it?
NYAB: It's called fat.
YP: OK. This is good. I'll eat fat to be fat.
Me: Eh?
YP: It is good, because I want to be fat.
Me: Why?
YP: Because I want to be just like you! 

After which, NYAB offered the YP some sage advice about dealing with women who lament they are fat, while I collapsed on the floor in laughter.

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A few days later, in the car, after an altercation:

YP: I don't like being 7. It is hard.
Me: What is hard about being 7?
YP: I don't know what it means to be 7.
Me: What did it mean to be 6?
YP: Well, I was happy, I was excited ... I liked you...

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Last night, before going to sleep:

YP: You might have heard I didn't finish my schoolwork.
NYAB: Yeah, we'll talk about that tomorrow. I only get to see you for a couple minutes now before you go to bed, and I missed you today. I got used to seeing more of you when I was home.
YP: Aw, it'll be OK, Dad. 

And then, when I came in a few minutes later:

YP: You might have heard I didn't finish my schoolwork.
Me: Yes. Daddy said we'd talk about that tomorrow. Pretty nice of him, huh?
YP: He is. Mom? Would you like to stay and visit with me for a little while?
Me:I'd be delighted! (Move to sit on the bed next to him)
YP: Thanks, mom! I'd be delighted too! But don't sit on that side. I'll move over.
Me:Why not? (Flip back blankets, find a hidden iPod.) Ohhh, trickery. Were you afraid I'd be mad if I caught you listening to this?
YP: Yeah. Are you?
Me: No.
YP: You're not? Yay! And, well, you found it and won't smash it, so you can sit over there now if you still want to.

Discipline Your Image

"We use the buddy system. No more flying solo. You need somebody watching your back at all times. Second off, you're gonna learn to discipline your image. You think I got where I am today because I dressed like Peter Pan over here?"

So, the weekend started with a plan -- an ambition, a reasonably attainable goal, if you will.  And with a cohort.

I was lamenting to a friend that I need more competition to get myself motivated to do stuff. Get off my ass and go to the gym, run faster or longer if I do manage to get to the gym, eat better, whatever.  Commiseration ensued.

And a plan was hatched for gradual substitution of bad habits with good ones. Or at least, better ones.  In my case, this means weaning myself off the sugarbomb soda and eventually dialing it back to iced tea or water or what have you.

(I'm guessing tea.  I don't know why, but I can't get onto the Water is Awesome! Drink It All Day! wagon.  And I don't do hot beverages, so coffee is a non-starter.) 

For sundry reasons, my friend backed out before anything got off the ground. Which I guess makes the competitive part of me glad (I win!), but is sort of disappointing in that the goad is gone. (I lose.)

So, I'm still going to move forward with my plan -- drink a regular amount and chart it, then drink one less a day, and one less and one less and so on until I'm completely converted. I have no idea if it will work better than the "just drop it all at once and get the hell over yourself" method. I would imagine the blood sugar headaches will be held at bay a bit better.

All this noise led to some woolgathering on this morning's commute.  I remember dieting when I lived alone -- and it was much, much easier than now, when I live with two males blessed with metabolisms that could eat Manhattan and not gain an ounce. (Or if they do gain, they don't care.)  It was definitely easier to get up and move around when I was single and had dogs to walk, plus I was a flunkie whose job consisted of 8 hours and out. (And I was already thinner and more energetic, cough cough.)

But it was also harder to justify a lot of those changes, as I didn't really have anyone to make them for besides myself. I was dieting to wear cute clothes, not to stay alive for family, so I'd skip meals one week and then I'd go to the other extreme and binge at Burger King the next.  I drank a fair amount. I don't now, primarily because Not Your Average Blogger abstains, but also because I'm responsible for more than just two dogs who could pretty much fend for themselves.

(I had a similar thing with psychotropic drugs, way back in the day. At a certain juncture in my narrative, I couldn't really see any point in not partaking every weekend. Why not? It was cheap, it was easy, it didn't make me sick, and I knew about how much time was going to be burned on the experience. Then I graduated and got my own place and it occurred to me that if my house burned down it would be a problem if I wasn't sure whether the walls were really melting or not. So much for that.)

I don't miss drugs at all, strange to say.  I never smoked, so I can't speak to that.  As for alcohol ... I don't miss the hangovers. I only occasionally miss the numbness and euphoria. And every so often I will drink socially up to the point where I realize I'm about to embarrass myself. These days, I tend to stop and excuse myself before that happens, rather than after. At least, I think.

But I do sort of wonder if I'm a different person than I was and I am fooling myself thinking I'm pretty much the same, just a bit more boring.  And I wonder if forgoing my other vices will make me even more boring.  Being a fat sugar-holic isn't a very interesting vice to begin with, so I am thinking not.  Still. I know smokers who quit and then turn into sanctimonious blowhards who disdainfully sniff about how annoying smokers are. And people who go into therapy and then insist everyone should try it. Will that happen to me? Will I become a tea hound who rails against the sins of corn syrup?

Maybe I should cut back by one every other day.

The Average Racer

Here is why I do not post:

1: During the work week, I wake up and work or drive from about 4 a.m. until about 6 or 7 p.m.

2: When I get home, I banter with the family until 8:30. Then I watch TV until 10. Then I go to bed.

3: On the weekend, I run around doing really boring errands (water softener salt! groceries! a new rug for the kitchen!), or I sit like a slug on the couch watching TV and crocheting.  The crocheting is only partly to make myself useful. Mostly, it is to keep me warm, because I hate-hate-hate February and I hate-hate-hate being cold.  So every winter brings another blanket project.

Greater minds than mine can turn this into blog fodder, but I bet they live where it is warmer.

This weekend, however, we had a bit of fun.  The kid's Scout troop did the pinewood derby/blue and gold dinner thing, and much noise was made by all.

I am sorry to report the kid's car (as made entirely by our mucho more macho neighbor) did not win anything. However, it did not lose any heats, either.  It was a solidly average outing, coming in 26th of 38, and we learned stuff to apply to next year's effort. Assuming there is a next year's effort.

Another thing I learned: Pot-lucks are still fraught with peril for picky eaters such as myself.  Someone made a perfectly gorgeous lasagna, which I unhappily discovered upon my first mouthful had been augmented with cucumbers.  I suppose it might have been zucchini, as I am not particularly up on the baked manifestations of fleshy pulpy squashy veggies, but I don't think the seeds were zucchini-esque.  It was quite yuck for a vegetable rights advocate such as myself.  Another offering quite yuck to my texturally sensitive sensibilities was some kind of enchilada casserole that was 75 percent slimy onions and 20 percent chicken, with a little bit of sauce and peppers and cheese added as afterthought. Sigh.

I was tasked with bringing an appetizer/salad.  I freely confess that I cheated. As you might guess from the above, salads ain't really my thing, and I wasn't all that fired up to make an appetizer that would feed 20 people.  So we bought a mess of "mesquite chicken" bits from Costco, nuked them for 15 minutes right before getting in the car, and tossed them in the buffet line with the other stuff. I am pleased to report that the plate was empty when I headed back to the tables to clean up.  Corporate is clearly the way to go when trying to appeal to a broad spectrum.

Anyway, the kid seemed to have a great time, though he was scowly at not winning anything and a bit bewildered at getting a medal for participation ("I didn't win anything, but I got a medal. Weird.") We know how to fix that next year, too -- though he will have to forgo his slavish devotion to movies and create a car that focuses on the novelty award categories.

Blizzard, Birthday, Bailout

You can be a child of God, or a child of rage, but this child of mine is apparently a child of snow.
I've mentioned before the snowstorm the night he was born -- and the worse snowstorm the day he was going to be inducted if he didn't make deadline. 

There was snow for his first birthday, but not a big deal.

There was no snow for his second birthday, but there was also no plumbing. And we had 20 people at our house.

There was heavy snow when he was 3, and we watched as the entire town descended on Chuck E Cheese when we did.

There was some snow and bowling when he was 4, a little snow and a party when he was 5, and no snow, but lots of ice at a hockey game when he was 6.

And then there was 7.  Great goshamighty.

All week the forecasters were sounding klaxons and flashing red lights.  Lock down! Get food! DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOMES AFTER FRIDAY MORNING!

Friday morning, I went to work.  It started snowing juuust as I got on the interstate.  I kept an eye out the window all day. 

Eventually I had to go out.  The Young Prince had requested "White frosting! From a can! Not that stuff you make, the whippy kind!" and I had neglected to get any.  There was also a mixup with some birthday gifts, so I had to do some last-minute shopping on that front too.

It was still really warm -- I left my jacket undone. Snow wasn't sticking yet, and it was early afternoon.  I found the gifts, bought some lunch and headed back to the office.

Without the frosting, of course.

So I went back out at 3, and although the ground was still clear, it was getting colder. Plus, the wind was pretty crazy. You could turn any direction and it was still blowing snow smack into your face. I was unhappy to find that the first drug store only had chocolate frosting. I went to the one across a diagonal block, and bought the Last. Can.  -- blinded the whole way by big fat flakes bashing me in the eyeballs. 

I left work at 4:30 or so.  I got home with McDonald's for the family around 5:40.  This is because the interstate was deserted and the road was quite clear -- but once I got off the interstate the roads were terrible and visibility was quickly decreasing.

Error Number One: I call home and tell Not Your Average Blogger that I'm going to park at the top of the driveway. "Oh, don't do that. The plows will just come by and bury you."  So I park at the bottom, in the usual spot.

Error Number Two: Power outages were predicted.  In a display of hubris, I was sure if I baked the cake Friday night for Sunday consumption, we'd have power galore.

Still Friday night was nice. We watched a movie, I frosted the cake, we all went to bed.

8:30 next morning, we heard "Hum, click-click-click" as our cable and Sleep-Number bed informed us the power had gone out. This was quickly followed up by the YP barging into our room and announcing the lights were out.  Error Two deployed. 

The power magically returned at 11:30.  We scrambled to wash dishes, crank up the heat to 75 so the house will be warmer when the power goes out again, and throw some snow-soggy clothes in the dryer.

Error Number Three: NYAB decides to put pork chops in the crockpot instead of flash-frying them. 

Annnd, the power goes out again at 1:30.  

For whatever reason, NYAB decided to pass the time by reading aloud from the book he's currently working on. About the Donner party.  This was not helpful.  All that cold imagery and descriptions of 30-foot snowdrifts did nothing to warm my soul.

We moved up the kid's birthday celebration to alleviate powerless boredom. Fortunately, none of his gifts required electricity.

After another couple hours, we concluded that huge amounts of food would be ruined if we didn't do something, so we dumped the contents of our fridge on the deck and the contents of the crockpot into a cast-iron pot and threw that in the fireplace. 

Dinner was fantastic, though we took no photos. Error Three corrected.

The cake was a success.

Once it started to get dark, we dragged all our bedding down in front of the fire, lit some candles, told stories, and entertaine ourselves til it was the kid's bedtime. 

We brought in buckets of snow to melt for non-drinking water use, watched as the first snowplow of the night took a first pass at our street, and went to bed. 

Next morning we woke up early and started digging our way out. We only have one snow shovel, so we took turns -- not a huge rush, just to get started on the job.  I went to see if the neighbors had a spare, and was told it might be Tuesday before we had power. 

Well.  I had to be online for work at 4:30 Monday morning. That wasn't going to do.

So after that, we shoveled a bit faster.

At about 1 p.m., we were halfway up our driveway.  The kid came out and rolled some snowballs, but he wasn't a lot of help and we sent him back inside to watch the fire and make sure the house didn't burn down.

At 1:30, some guy with a snowblower showed up and did our neighbor's driveway.  As he was trundling it back down our street, I stopped him.

"How much??"
"To go all the way down?!?"
"Nah, just to where the car is. Halfway down."
"Oh. Twenty bucks?"
"SOLD!"

I gave the guy $30.  And he did in 15 minutes what would have taken us another 3 hours.  Talk about having the right tool for the job -- and he cut a path to our mailbox.  Best $30 I ever spent.

After that, we packed up, buried the food in a bit more snow, inhale a bit more smoke from the fireplace -- the whole house reeks -- and decamped for a hotel. With power. And wifi. And a pool.

And a jacuzzi.  My shoulders were shot last night but they feel muuuuch better today. 

The YP has dubbed this, "the birthday of Lights Out."   I call it, "the Donner Birthday Party." 

Of course, upon arriving here, I heard from a neighbor that our power had come back on a couple hours after we left.  We'll go back today to see if we have cable/internet/etc., or if I will be putting in another early morning shift at the hotel.

Regardless, nobody will be picking up our trash for a while.

Plan ahea....d.

Things I want before the next snowstorm (which will be Tuesday, apparently):

-- a snowblower

-- a drying rack for sopping wet snowy clothes.

-- snow boots

-- a snowblower

-- a generator

-- a snowblower

-- Waterproof pants, jackets, gloves, etc.

-- an extra snowshovel. Or a snowblower. 

Full coverage tomorrow.

Been a clusterf*k of a week. Nothing to see here. Move it along. Tune in next week.

Gratitude

Things I love:

I love that my dad e-mails me several times a week just to gab, and tell me what he's working on, and share a virtual eye-roll at all the world's goings-on.

I love that I can call my mom at 10 at night and freak the hell out that our sump pump is busted and holy crap our house is going to float away and it will be $10,000 to fix it -- and that she can laugh, talk me off the ledge, troubleshoot and tell me how to keep the house on its foundation til the repair guy shows up, all inside of 10 minutes. 

(I also love that I can call my works-for-a-plumber neighbor at 7:45 a.m., sick as a dog, explain the situation to her and have her tell me, "Go to bed. The guys will let themselves in.")

I love that my husband is doing exactly what he wants to, and he's doing it better than anyone could have predicted. I love that he is happy. I love that he's letting me slack off and play hooky and go to the gym, and we are all more relaxed and taking deeper breaths.

I love that my kid is doing well in school. After weeks and months of frustration and aggravation and far less than optimal performance, we seem to have hit on a system that motivates the kid without offending us and without eating up all the teacher's time. 

I love that I've got time and inclination now to look around at some of those "someday" projects and start them today. 

I even discovered that being sick is nice when it's all three of us together flaked out in the big bed stoned on cold meds.

We're a blessed and lucky bunch, y'all. 

Brain-Rot, Blindness, BS

Thoughts while watching TV:

I  really don't like the "allied" bank commercials.

WWE scares me. 

I need to go back to watching shows on DVD only. Real-time is just irritating. When are they going to stop making network TV and just release everything straight to video?

I am probably the only person on earth who really doesn't care about NBC's late-night nonsense.

I wouldn't mind living in a hotel. But it would have to be a very nice hotel, and I doubt I could afford to live in such a place very long.

I would not want to work as a TV personality on cable news.  For one thing, I swear way too much. For another, I don't wear enough makeup. And finally, I prefer to know what I'm talking about before I start talking.

What is the next technology leap going to be? Video on the Internet is nice and all, but what does human behavior dictate comes next?  Smaller computers you wear like glasses? Programs that react based on eye motion rather than point/click/scroll? 

Not Your Average Blogger should look at my weekend errands and shopping lists to see what he should invest in -- Panera, Starbucks, Target, Lowe's.

Wow. TV is just really, really bad.  I'm better off going to the office.

Let's Wrap This Up

So, that was our week on the Big Island.  On Saturday morning, we flew back to Oahu, checked into our silly little hotel near the airport, failed to get breakfast by noon, and hit the road.  We drove all the way around Oahu, missing turns left and right for places where they shoot Lost. But we did see a lot of gorgeous scenery and a lot of gorgeous waves.  Big waves.

Bigger than that one. Still, probably not scary for people who actually spend a lot of time at the beach, but intimidating for a fat old woman whose 6-year-old was all, "Let's go! Yeah! I want to get in there!"

So after driving 3/4 of the way around, we found a beach that -- shocker -- had parking, and was in a fairly calm inlet.  And there the kid got his first real taste of actually swimming in the ocean, as opposed to wading out for miles and still only being up to his knees, or trembling with terror at the prospect of being in past his waist.

He did great.

And he got slammed.

After a couple hours we drove the rest of the way around the island, had dinner and crashed. Our last night in Hawaii was spent watching Grease and Grease 2 in the hotel.  Yeah, I know. But it kept the kid still and quiet til he fell asleep, so that's a win.

Next morning we got up and headed off to the Pearl Harbor memorial.  We  toured the museum and then took the boat out to the memorial.

It's an interesting place, and it has an interesting feel of history to it. I might have been projecting, but it did seem like the emotion still runs fairly close to the surface there, unlike that you get at Civil War battlefields and places where the history is a bit dimmer and more distant. There were also a LOT of Japanese tourists there. I can't help but wonder what kind of perspective a Japanese heritage would bring to that tour, as compared with an American Whitey one. 

The memorial is built over the USS Arizona, and you can see much of the boat just below the surface.

And it still leaks oil.

At the same location, there's a retired submarine, the USS Bowfin.  This was our one Lost success; submarine shots on the show are filmed here.

I think this was the kid's favorite part of our trip, actually.  He got to push buttons and spin dials and pretend to his heart's content.

After that, we went on a shave ice expedition.  I don't know why they call it "shave ice" and not "shaved ice," but it seems to be the standard usage. It is also kind of meh.  It's like eating mildly flavored snow not as robustly flavored as a Slurpee, not as crunchy as a Sno-Cone.  But since we failed to ever find poi, this was our nod to local cuisine. I daresay the Young Prince ate a lot more of that than he would of the poi anyway.

After that, it was back to the beach.  The waves were a little bigger here, and we had to watch out for lots of boogie boards, but it was still a lot of fun.  And then the YP demanded he be buried. I was assigned to the task. NYAB recorded the event for posterity.

We wound up getting sand in places we hadn't known we had places.

In a not-entirely-unrelated segue, we also found the spot where they filmed the torrid love scene in From Here to Eternity.

After that, we headed back to the hotel, took long de-sanding baths, and packed. Returned the car, headed to the airport.  We were delighted with the Honolulu airport.  Polite people, who knew how to check you in, who took your suitcase instead of taggging it and handing it back to you to dump with TSA, did it themselves. People who smiled and Got Things Done.  Sooooo much nicer than Dulles.

And then we got on the plane, and after waiting 15 minutes for Big Shot Barack's plane to take off and get out of the way with its Oh-look-at-me-I-need-the-sky-all-to-myself-ness, we were airborne and heading home.

Layover in Salt Lake City. Where there was snow. And then we got home, where it was 32 degrees and dark and so sad. I am ready to move, people. I haven't been on many vacations where I've thought, "you know, I could have stayed there."  And I'm not actually sure I could have stayed in Hawaii without a serious consideration of career change -- which would mean a serious diminishment of income, and thus not living in the style to which I'm accustomed.  I guess we'll just have to go back for another vacation at some point.

But that will be after Davenport, Iowa, in July, and after Alaska, in August.  :)

How do you say Part Three in Hawaiian?

I don't know, but I bet it sounds like coughing up a hairball. I think there will be one more vacation post after this and that'll run the well dry.  I'm sure you're all Over It anyway, but it'll be good archive material for the YP when he goes into therapy.

Thursday we got up early and drove around the southern chunk of the island, stopping at South Point -- the creatively named southernmost point of the United States.

The YP never did quite figure out the difference between "hang loose" and rooting for Texas.

Probably the only time NYAB can honestly say he's got the whole country behind him.

South Point was also interesting because it was so windy. Trees grow sideways. There are wild horses who have taken up residence in abandoned buildings. There's a dead wind farm, replaced by a live one farther down the same hill. It's worth the drive for what you might see. We continued around the island and back on to Hilo, where we had a reservation for ... a doors-off helicopter tour.

This was booked at the last minute. I was very upset that I hadn't gotten any better shots of flowing lava than I did from 5 miles away around a corner, and I wanted a closer look.

Well, I got my closer look, but the lava had all gone underground.

What do you see when you look into a volcano? Not much besides steam.

The dead lava was pretty cool to see, though. When you are that far above the ground, you get a much better picture of what's happening with lava flow and how the island is growing as the lava runs down into the sea and cools and turns into more land mass. The fun part is watching it get to the water, though.

Apparently someone still lives in this house, above, though his driveway, below, is blocked by lava, his back yard is all black rock -- and apparently his house is only still standing because one lava flow piled up high enough to block all subsequent ones so they flowed around his house instead of over it. I mean, really. How do you insure for that? The guy can't even drive anywhere. He has to hike in and out to get groceries and all his water comes from a rain barrel.Maaaan.

YP absolutely loved this escapade. He sat up next to the pilot and used the walkie talkie like a pro and just sailed right through it like he'd spent his whole life previous in a helicopter.

(Stupid zoom lens. Next time I will take two cameras with two neckstraps. One with a zoom and one with a regular lens for stuff Right In Your Face.)

What I forgot is that NYAB has a little thing about heights. (Bad wife, no jewelry!) A little thing so huge that he refuses to get on Ferris Wheels.  So the idea of puttering around in the airborne equivalent of a Jeep was ... well, he faced a fear.  I, of course, completely forgot about it and couldn't figure out why, when we were about 10 feet off the ground, he was hanging for dear life to the strap you use to pull yourself into your seat with one hand and holding my hand in a death grip with the other. I tried to pull away so I could use my camera, and he gives me this look and tells me, microphone off, teeth clenched, "I. Can't. Let. Go. Of. This. Strap."  Ohhh, damn.

He must have lightened up though, because he managed to ask some questions of the pilot that weren't related to falling out of the machine or whether the diminished atmosphere messes with one's head. Maybe it was the view of the waterfalls that did it.

After the tour, we drove back to the hotel and stopped at several pretty spots to look at the water and take pictures and let NYAB exhale again that THERE WERE NO DOORS.

Home, bed, etc. It was New Year's Eve, and we were all sound asleep by 10 p.m.  We celebrated on East Coast time.

Next morning we got up early, even for our maladjusted selves, and trotted on down to the beach, where I belatedly learned that whale watches in Hawaii are not at all like whale watches in California. For one thing, you are on a catamaran and there's not a whiff of diesel fuel, nor seasickness.  For another, it isn't windy and so cold you need a parka, it's balmy and hot and you need sunscreen.

And, the boat drivers are unlicensed.

AND, you actually get to see more than one fin of one whale.  

Please imagine here that there is another photo, a really great photo of a humpback whale actually breaching. There was a showoff young whale following our boat -- he somehow wound up named Henry and the YP instantly claimed him as a member of our family with our surname -- and he was really putting on a show for us. So I am 96 percent sure I got a shot of at least half of him out of the water, but when we got the waterproof camera offerings back from CVS, there were several shots missing and in their place were several other shots of some old man I'd never seen before in my life. He didn't look too healthy, either, so I hope those weren't some poor soul's last pix of Granddad before he shuffled off the mortal coil.  Yet another reason to go all-digital, all the time, and spring for the gizmos to waterproof your equipment. Sigh.

(Of course, it has occurred to me that my "missing" shots might be included in the negatives, but I never remember that when the negatives are within a 30-mile radius.  Maybe someday.)

After the whale watch, we saw some sea turtles back on the beach.

Then we drove a little more around the island and had a pretty relaxed day.  We thought about attempting snorkeling since the kid seemed to be over his beach woes and at ease in the water, but the lady at the sports stand told us it was too cloudy and windy and "Oh, the visibility is just zero, I'd feel like I was robbing you if I rented you equipment."  So .... yeah. Maybe next time.

Next entry will focus on our last two days, which were spent back in Oahu. Pearl Harbor and body surfing!