Bite Update 2010: Buy Stock in Benedryl

So remember when I said something bit me a few mornings ago, while I was on the computer? Yeah? Well take a looksee 2 days later.

I just applied some topical benedryl gel, since the antihistamines are not on the agenda right now. Maybe before bedtime.

So ask me again why I'm not really into camping and being "outdoorsy" go ahead, ask.

Bird food and fish food and yarn for me

After The Kid fed the birds in the backyard this morning, we went for a nice walk down by the water for breakfast. The Kid is like Snow White, the birds follow him everywhere.

But when my mother pulled a loaf of bread out of her bag after breakfast to feed the fish and the birds at the park ... it was crazy! The kid pointed out the bird apartment building. However when I tried to take a picture, only a few residents remained.


We gathered up our beach belongings and drove back to the old side of the island. Winward. We had to go to the Marine Corps Exchange first ... for more bird food for the backyard. The Kid got a toy out of it, natch spoiling granny ... and granny got a floatation device. hmm.

Then we drove to Kailua and we got knitting needles for Mom so I can reteach her the basics, and I got some *cough* yarn. But Mom got more stuff than me!! She claims the novelty yarn is for her handmade leis. I say ... she's just hoarding. hahaha. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree!

After that we went fishing at their old favorite spot, and this time we had success!


I had success as well at backing out my latest lace fiasco and making tracks to make up for lost time (or rows in this case). I don't fish. I can, I mean, I just ... well, sitting there waiting is not really a good sport for me. I can't even watch t.v. without something in my hands... But I didn't want to be off-site either, seeing how neither one of those two can sufficiently swim. Did I mention they are both accident prone?

Clock watching (because that is what I do apparently this is what I do in leisure or in occupation) I told them to pack it up so we could get some Kailua beach time. (fishing spot is across the st.)

After Lo's trip I was very excited about returning. She reminded me just how beautiful that place is, what a beach town beach it is. I have such great memories of this place, and it is so gorgeous and mellow. I have a picture of the Kid in essentially the same spot for our past 3 trips. So I had him take 1 more ...

an AMAZE-ING time in progress

Yesterday the weather was iffy. I guess that is how it is in the tropics, are we going to get any sun, a lot of rain, will it be too windy to fish?

The Kid said we should go do the Pineapple Maze and see if we could find all the clues this time. (Since last time we went, we go 6/8, due to rain.) Mom and I thought it was a perfect plan since it was Central and maybe the wind would be a little more forgiving.


It was a fun activity. We rode the "Dole" train and the Kid danced in his seat to the Hawaiin music. We let him take pictures of the different varieties of pineapple and bought some random Pineappleish-overpricey snacks at the gift shop. We mastered the maze getting 8/8 in 58 minutes. Mom and The Kid were so fast we were often separated because I couldn't keep up. Damn, outpaced by the old lady and The Kid.

Enough sunshine and time after lunch at home, we went back out to the local beach and the 3 of us swam. Mom even chatted up the lifeguard.




The Kid and I talked about the power of the ocean when we were doing evening sticker book. He said it gave him energy.

I have to say he's right.

Vitamin D and Salt Water prescribed.

When you tell people you're going to Hawaii, the immediate image is of bright blue watered snorkeling trips to the beach. Mai tais at sunsets and floral wraps and flip flops.

Usually this is near the truth, though I prefer wine to maitais. However weather.com predicted cloudy windy weather, and SFGate (aka sfhate) was predicting 10 days of rain.

Well, we've had something in between, but thankfully the tropics are forgiving, and even with wind and rain, it's lovely.

Every day at 7:30 am and pre-dinner post work The Kid and The Colonel feed the birds in the backyard. The colonel has been in training downtown so he has made the Kid in charge of morning feedings to his great delight.

Yesterday Mom drove us to a little beach on base where we were determined to hang out till it got too cold. Between sandcastles, and sprinkles, The Kid and I ventured into the water. "warm" but not as warm as we've had it here before. There were destroyers passing through the estuary to the harbor there were planes from the airport landing and jets practicing take off.

The kid practiced swimming for me and we sat together in the water watching it all as the sun broke through, every now and again.

I felt refreshed. It wasn't postcard weather, but I felt literally lighter, happier from being in the sun and the water. We were both browner in a short amount of time and laughing a lot easier.

Wind and no sun it won't matter, I think that convinced us we'll find another day down at the beach.

Knitting Thwarted

Knitting can be challenging on any holiday, when you're not say, just locked in a logcabin alone. But there is always some downtime and I figured well, 5 hours on a plane, I had some knitting time.

Lets just say somewhere in Row 5, on the second pattern repeat, my Knitting powers failed. I was off count, I couldn't back out without making more mistakes and, I couldn't recognize a row since the same row is used over and over again. I spent the rest of the trip trying to back it out and compensate and detangle. I decided to watch half of New Moon. (Wow that's a lot of teenage angst. Underclothed teenage werewolves make me uncomfortable.)

I love when Knitting is relaxing like this. .

Well, fine I'll work on it later that night. We take the kid to feed bread to the big fish down the road, and then we take him to a pier to go fishing. After cleaning up we go downtown and my parents take The Kid to the Lego Store.

By the time we finish dinner The Kid and I are both sleeping in our dishes. Determined that I am, after tucking him in, I stay up with my Mom and have a glass of wine to work out the knitting.

By 11pm, I've managed to recover, AND to make a similar mistake on a different row. So really, I didn't progress more than a few rows.

I wanted to cry.

I opted to sleep.

Why didn't I bring a mindless knitting project incase of moments like this? Why didn't I pack a pair of size 6 needles since the project isn't really opening up like it should anyhow? Because I didn't want to pack too much. (though I bought a pair of unnecessary jeans yesterday ...)

So at midnight, I channeled my anxiety and went to sleep to wake up every hour, with random "where am I? what happened to my knitting? did henry just fall out of the bed?" dreams and dealings.

Then The Kid woke up at 5am. and pet my hair till 5:30am and ran out into the livingroom to play and read.

In the back of my mind, I just want to sit with my sparkly, somewhat scratchy, skinny, annoying ass yarn. But it will have to be after some Beach time with The Kid. Cleaning with Mom and prepping and cooking for 10. Mom and Dad had an unexpected dinner party. But it will work out, nice people, simple dinner that Dad requested anyways and The Kid would have his beach in the a.m.

Ta Da!

Aloha, now let me sleep ...

I would like to say that once The Man got us to the security line at the airport I stopped my whining. Alas, I would be lying. But a SME is always perfecting their craft.

Once I let go of the dirty that was the unfound camera battery charger and the bad iPod loading experience, The Kid and I embraced the airport. We got our water, some extra gum and looked at the sad sandwiches in our section.

We didn't push our way onto the plane w/the other cattle we didn't have much so settling in was easy.

The Kid was initially happy with snacks, a new Diary of a Wimpy Kid book and lego minifigures.




But alas we had problems with the ipod, though all the things appeared on the menu if we tried to play/select wouldn't play. The Kid was frustrated and sad, but a good sport in general. I'll try to take it to the Apple store in Honolulu to see if they have any recommendations. I'll try to research how to create a secondary profile for an already registered User. Seems simple, but that takes time ...

My parents greeted us and unfortunately we couldn't go to the Thai Temple for our traditional post flight lunch. They were closed for the winter. However we got a fantastic traditional Mom lunch, with lots of my favorite stir-fried peasant vegetables and crispy meats.

Ahh. Now I just need to practice napping.

Last Minute Me

The Kid and I are leaving for Hawaii tomorrow morning to see Khun Yai and Grampa. I checked with the boss to see if timing would be okay months in advance, double-checked with The Man Friend and bought tickets before the Spring Breakers drove the prices up any higher.

My plans always start off alright.

Packing list in excel was started two weeks ago, with minor adjustments daily. The orange duffle was pre-packed 2 days ago, and I just had a few things to add and a few things to take away.

Friends of ours took The Kid for the day after soccer, and I pulled out all his favorite things and was feeling pretty good.

Now all I needed to do was copy the audio books to the computer and upload them to my ipod, which was now going to become The Kid's and move files from the man's ipod and put them on there and maybe download a few "cool things", like Batman episodes and Michael Jackson's greatest hits.

Well, Harry Potter is going to make me scream, since just trying to get the discs loaded using windows media player (this is where The Man just shakes his head, when I say I can move the files around easier.) is recognizing more than 2 discs as disc 1 and we are now having overwriting issues. And I am very crazy, because how much would it burn to have 2 chunks of the same part of the book and miss one? It would burn like a wildfire it would.

Well I think I circumvented things with renaming folders the first book, but the second book is quite uncooperative.

Man friend waits impatiently for me to finish this task (which must be finished tonight, simply because it's war now.) So he can see how he can work around iTunes to use my old Ipod as The Kids.

Gosh this is boring, but I think my friends sans Mlouis are grateful that I have not called them all to bore them to tears with this misadventure.

Now I could've done this all last week, or this week, but I had important things to do like knit, drink wine and eat and sometimes all three at once (with clean hands.)

I have a headache now, and I'm definitely going to forget something. Let you know later.

Calgon take me away.