Feeling the Infinite

We spent most of the day getting to an urgent care an hour away from the resort. Nick was up most of the night. His cough sounds scary, but it didn't quite reach into my gut and twist. It's getting worse though. The hardest part was that we waited for a hours in the back of a drug store to get to see a doctor. The good part was that the doctor seemed to know what he was about when it came to viral-induced asthma.

Oh, this isn't what we had in mind when we came here, but we didn't really have a plan for the day, so nothing was seriously spoiled. We found things to do while we waited in the chairs at the back of the drug store. Mike and I took turns shopping for little things while the other kept Nick company. Mike bought a bag of Combos, some Hawaiian chips, and two cans of Pringles. I bought a bottle of nail polish, proud that I'd held out from buying the twenty dollar bottle of a color I didn't like from the spa earlier. I was tempted to paint my nails while Nick played with my iPhone. I knew that the minute I got polish on a nail, Nick's turn would come up and I'd smudge it. I'd nearly forgotten about what a pain it was to set aside a time to paint my nails only to have the phone ring and smear a nail trying to answer it or to have to pee and wrangle with a zipper.

While Mike went to get something to eat and stop at the Starbucks for me, Nick got bored with the games on my iPhone, so I asked him if he could make the Vulcan sign for 'Live long and prosper.' Piece of cake. Then, I told him to put his ring and middle finger together and separate his pinkie and index fingers to make a 'W.' Still not too hard. I told him to go back and forth between them. Not as easy. Nick could do it, but his hand was shaking with the effort. About that time, Mike got back with a mocha. Nice. Mike got it down after a couple of tries. Good eye-hand coordination from all those video games.

Next was to see the hot dog in space. I told them to look at me steadily and to point their index fingers at each other in front of their eyes, then to bring them together slowly until they could see the hot dog floating out in space. That made them laugh.  Good one.

I asked Nick if he could bend the last joint on one of his fingers without bending any of the rest. I'm not sure either of them could manage that one. These are the things I learned to keep myself occupied while I waited for a doctor's appointment. Invaluable, aren't they?

When it was finally our turn, we'd reached that Zen level of waiting for an appointment that could have gotten us through an entire day of waiting. We could feel infinity.

In the evening, Mike and I walked out onto the rocks by the beach while Nick watched a movie. Actually, they weren't rocks. It was a single rock, lava rock that looked as though it could impale you if you slipped where it met with the water. There was motion written into it, swirls, spikes, bubbles that had burst and frozen that way. It was hard to walk on and I felt as though it cut up the soles of my shoes. How old was this rock? Not that old, in rock time, I would guess. It wasn't worn down all that much. How long before this rock was worn down to look like an ordinary rock? Infinity.

Thank you for listening, jb

 

Listening for Adventure

Tonight, the tropical storm is supposed to hit. It's been downgraded. The wind is only going to blow 25 to 30 miles per hour, much less than the gusts to 50 mikes per hour that they originally predicted. 

I'm sitting on the lanai, or terrace. I wish you could see the round blue pool below me and feel the drops of rain that constitute the worst of the storm so far. The rain is only on my feet since half of the lanai is covered. I wish you could hear the roar of the surf, louder than it was yesterday when we arrived. 

It's warm out, warm and damp. Given half a chance, I could fall asleep here, the surf sounds lulling me and drowning out the voices of other people doing what I'm doing, only louder. 

I had a glass of wine tonight. We bought it from the little grocery store in the hotel along with other snacks and subdries. The cashier said he was going to play in the mud tomorrow. He was excited about the storm, happy to be off from work on a warm rainy day. It's a good idea, I thought, to find some muddy hills and slide down them. There's that problem with decorum again, but I figure if a cashier at a fancy hotel could admit to wanting to slide down muddy hills, so could I. 

I can feel the effects of the tiny glass of wine. Oh, I could gave had more, but I didn't. 

It was enough, just enough for a downgraded adventure. 

Thank you for listening, jb

Hunkered Down for Tropical Storm, Flossie

Well, we were upgraded to a villa. We're guessing that there were cancellations because of tropical storm, Flossie. 

I'm hunkered down 

on the terrace. It's raining. There are people on the beach and in the pool. I like these people. Why worry when you're wet anyway?

Can you think of a more beautiful place to get stuck in a storm?

I'd be out there now, but its only 8:30 am and Nick is still asleep. The poor boy has a cold, but it didn't stop him from snorkeling in the dark last night. That was a good one for his list of experiences, wasn't it? Snorkeling in the dark. I only made him come in because Mike was probably back from the store and I was hungry. 

We're not sure, but we don't think there's room service in a villa. Yesterday, when we were discussing that, Nick said, "We are so spoiled." 

We are, aren't we?

And this storm? It's an adventure. 

Thank you for listening, jb

Prepared

Okay, so you know how I've described my life as a comedy? As always, it continues. 

On Monday, we're going to live through a cyclone, Flossie. Yup, a cyclone. 

Mike is upset. He was also disappointed the hotel wasn't closer to the beach. It's one block away. No matter. We're headed out of the city to a more remote resort this afternoon after we see Pearl Harbor anyway. But Mike wanted it to be closer. 

Oh, I get it.  he was planning the perfect vacation and stuff started to interfere. Flossie. Plus, Nick has a cold, though that didn't stop the boy from lying face down in the water for two and a half hours with a snorkel on his face yesterday, finding bits of broken sea shells, pebbles, and coral for me. 

I'm only worried that we might not be able to go kayaking. Can you imagine? Glass-bottom kayaks in a cyclone? 

To tell you the truth, I'm happy just being here. It's not my plan, see. It's Mike's. 

I remember that I was aggravated that my plan was messed up when we were in Ireland, sleeping in a castle, and Mike caught a cold and missed out on the best chocolate croissants of his life. That was not fair. Not fair at all. 

So I can understand Mike's disappointment that Flossie has insinuated herself into our trip. 

I'm back out on my terrace. The surfers are out. It's only 6:10 am. They didn't finish last night until it was full-on dark. I wonder if they'll surf the cyclone? A dedicated bunch, those surfers. 

I have a visitor, a white dove or a pigeon. 

I wonder if she'll surf the cyclone. She'll probably hunker down like we will. Being white, she looks like a pet. I want to feed her and talk to her, but I saw signs yesterday that feeding the birds was illegal. I wonder if she was ever part of a wedding. 

Maybe I should name her Flossie. 

The irony of this weather is that, as we were packing, I asked Mike if he was bringing his rain jacket. 

"Probably not," he said. "Do you really think you're doing to need it?" My suitcase weighed 47 pounds, three pounds away from the airline limit. Any more and I could pay a steep penalty. 

"What about Nick's jacket?"

"He packed it. Leave it."

"He only packed it because I made him."

"Still, he packed it."

"So are you going to bring yours?"

"I don't know yet, but I still have room in my suitcase for stuff. How are you going to get extra stuff home if your suitcase is already full?"

We're buying stuff too? Now, this really is a vacation!

So I went through my stuff. I'd need most of the tank tops, though not as many. I could skip the nebulizer because Mike said if Nick got that sick, we'd get him a new one. 

And my raincoat. Why bother? I'm going to be wet, in my bathing suit the whole time anyway. 

So when Mike told me Flossie was coming along, I said, "We'll hike Diamond Head that day. It won't be so hot. But I don't have my rain jacket."

"I've got mine," Mike said cheerfully. 

"I've got mine too!" Nick piped in. 

Go figure. 

Thank you for listening, jb

Heaven

Mike has given me my 49th state. Can you believe that Hawaii and Louisiana were the last ones i've visited? Id have expected the last to be Iowa or something. (I liked Iowa. It felt like home.) So now, I only have one left. After that I'll have to round out Nick's totals and go to Europe and Canada again. I won't get Mike to go anywhere more exotic than that, but maybe I'll take a tour some time when he's at Boy Scout camp.

I love my little balcony here. The air is balmy. It's city 21 floors below me, but this is a good way for me, an outdoor girl, to experience it, like this. 

Earlier, it looked like this. The water was turquoise, blue, and purple.

The view is a little dizzying. I'm dizzy right now. 

In the meantime, we went to a beach. I took no pictures there because I was busy swimming and playing in the sand. The coral that Nick and I found looked an awful lot like the fossils we found on Crinoid beach in Indiana. Isn't that amazing?

You know, it's 7:51 pm and its already dark out. 

The last time I stayed at a hotel this high was in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve, a hotel that was unfinished. We popped a cork out over an atrium with an unfinished roof. Our room had never been used and the sad part is that the hotel doesn't even exist any more, except in my mind. 

The sea has darkened in front of me and blended into sky. It's as if the world ends at the edge of the palm trees lit by lamp light beyond the line of hotels. 

Tomorrow, we're going to see the ships in Pearl Harbor. History. 

I have to tell you this. I feel as though I'm in a foreign country. There are Hawaiian words I'm learning, a completely different culture, and different food. They even move with a different attitude. I am in heaven. 

Thank you for listening, jb

There Are No Breaks

Is it cruel to travel with a sick boy because you don't want to lose your vacation?

It feels like it, though the traveling hasn't yet begun and said boy went to the lake today and swam as if he were fine. I'm hoping decongestant will be enough.

Can we just catch a break?

Whenever I say that, Mike says, "There are no breaks."

You're not kidding.

I got rear-ended today in my car. Oh, it wasn't too hard a hit, but I'm sore anyway. I'm taking Advil but I don't intend to turn in the woman who hit me.

She was very apologetic, very sweet. I liked her immediately and told her that if I didn't have problems with my neck, I'd skip talking to my insurance company. I drove down the road just a little bit and I called Mike. I needed time to catch my breath and slow my heart rate. I cried on the phone, but felt better as I talked to him. I tested out my neck as we talked, feeling some soreness there. Was that new or just my usual soreness? Mike said I should take some Advil. He also said I needed to call the insurance representative and ask them about the whole thing, whether I needed to file a police report in case my neck began to hurt more tomorrow. He wanted to know if the bumper would need to be repaired even if it looked okay. So, I called my insurance guy. We've been with the same company, Farmers, since we moved here in 1991. I'm always the one who talks to him.

I have to tell you that I really like this guy. We've talked about details like minimums, discounts, new-old cars and stuff like that. He's a nice guy. He's good at what he does. Today, he told me that, as a representative, he needed to tell me to make a claim any time I get hit. Then, he said that as a human being, he agreed with me that I shouldn't file a claim against this nice woman if I didn't have to. Her insurance would go up. She might even get a ticket. By the time I got off the phone with him, my heart rate had settled down and the Advil had taken effect.

Six and a half hours later, I could tell that the Advil had worn off, but I'd gone to the lake, reveled in the peace I can find amid chattering people, and come home to pack.

Yes, this is a big vacation. I want it. I need it. My friends tell me that I'm overdue.

And now Nick is a little bit sick. I'm going to dope him up with decongestant. My neck is sore. I'm taking Advil, and we're going, damn it! Maybe the sunshine will dry up Nick's cold and maybe I'll get a massage. It could still be a good vacation.

Thank you for listening, jb

The Beginning of a Horror Movie

I may be an outdoorsy kind of girl, but I'm not good with bugs, especially parasites. I came back from a trip to visit my family and had four chigger bites. Yuck. I hate chigger bites. The folklore is that they burrow into your skin and lay eggs. Can you think of any horror movies that begin this way? Thankfully, I read that it isn't true. The truth is that they secrete saliva which liquefies the tissue it comes in contact with and that's what causes the 'bites.' It's not much better. I have four large sores on my legs and one of them has a blister and swelling the size of a sand dollar.

As if that weren't bad enough, today I found a deer tick clinging to my ankle. I had to get out the tweezers to pull it off. Scratching at it didn't work. It's little legs were flailing as I squeezed him and blood, my blood, squished everywhere.

I wanted to run screaming.

Instead, I made an appointment to try to convince a local doctor to give me antibiotics in case the little bugger was trying to give me Lyme's disease. WebMD said I should get antibiotics within 72 hours in order to prevent Lyme's.

Okay, I can't get over the idea that this creature has been sucking my blood since Tuesday!

The worst part is looking at enlarged photos of these creatures. Nick wanted to see what a chigger looked like. In life, it's a pinpoint round red bug. I used to get them whenever I gathered wildflowers in the Midwest. Little red bugs that like flowers. That's kind of cute, isn't it? Enlarged, they're scary looking with ugly faces and the red only makes them look more alien. It turns out that a lot of the creatures in our scariest movies have links with insects and parasites.

Then, I needed to see if the bug I tweezed was a deer tick or an ordinary dog tick. Again, I encountered the same feeling. Tiny, in real life, these things aren't so bad looking. When I look at the online photos of a deer tick, it gives me the willies. Can you say horror movie? Plus, there are a lot of nasty pictures of bites online. Lyme's disease sometimes gives you a bulls eye rash with a black spot in the center. Gross.

I was going to tell you about how I reacted to the potential to get leeches in Minnesota and Upstate New York. For more than one trip, I carried salt in a Ziploc bag in my pocket the whole week. The other paddlers thought I was joking. The Internet pictures of leeches ....

I'm not going to tell you about that. I need to stop thinking about all this or I'm going to have nightmares.

Thank you for listening, jb