slam!

Spring has slammed me with allergies, spring fever and a general unwillingness to work hard on anything except for, wonder of wonders, housecleaning. I dunno, there's been something satisfying about scrubbing and vacuuming and picking up and putting away, recently. It can't last. I'm not really that domestic. Nevertheless, it is nice to wake up to a clean house, these days. I've been getting up early, 5:00 am, and journaling, knitting, reading tarot and just puttering around the house. I don't get to work any earlier, but things seem to work better for me when I get out of bed at the crack of dawn. It does require some machination to get INTO the bed at a decent hour, though.

Lady Eleanor is growing, tier by tier. I am enjoying this knit, even though the repetitive zone of 8 stitches back and forth is wrecking my wrists and hands in a way that they haven't been wrecked since I first learned to knit. I'm almost willing to believe the aches are a product of my ongoing general malaise, rather than any repetitive stress injury triggered by the knitting. The malaise of sore throats and drag-ass and itenerant aches and pains is undiagnosed by my doctor, who prescribed exercise and decongestants. I'm thinking massage and a detox diet as soon as school's out. Til then, it's tons of sleep, which IS helping, and exercise, which at least feels great when I'm doing it.

Anyway, here's Eleanor:

Isn't she lovely?

I spent some $ at the annual Webs sale on some DK yarns: Jo Sharp Silkroad DK in the color "Cedar". I love this color, which is pretty true here in the shot. This is slated for Marilyn's Not-So-Shrunken Cardigan eventually.



Here's some Elsebeth Lavold Silky Tweed, in a remarkable rust color that closely matches my cherry wood dining room table! This yarn, with its small percentage of wool, and mostly cotton and silk, will be the Lotus Blossom Tank when it grows up.


The employment situation is still nebulous. That said, work is pretty enjoyable right now, given that I'm making lemons out of lemonade. I think it's proof positive that I've made the break from work obsession, that I'm not eating myself alive over not having a job for next year, yet. Perhaps another taste of the rainbow is in order.

soy silk struggle

Isn't this pretty? It's something whose name eludes me, but is doing well, in spite of my current policy of benign neglect.

Little peek in here. I have some soy silk, Southwest Trading Company's Karaoke, that I got in a yarn swap months ago, at Aloha Knitters. I was sitting on it, unsure of what to do with it. I thought it was so pretty, and soft, and the yummiest warmest French Vanilla color. I contemplated mixing it up with some Rowan Calmer, in Annie Modesitt's corset top, but after a swatch, realize they aren't quite the same gauge and look funky together, and not funky in a good way, either, but mismatched, like something I'd wear to walk the dogs on a Sunday morning. I thought about a washcloth, because, really, I just wanted to rub that soy silk all over myself. But the pattern I was trying to knit wasn't working for me, and I was mighty damn tired of ripping and re-knitting and getting the wrong number of stitches after that silly bobble row (oh accursed Mason-Dixon seductive washrags...)and suddenly I realized that I am done, finished, completely over that soy silk. It's going to Knittybird on Thursday, because it seems it's haunting her from a distance, too! She asked about it the other night at knit night, and I gave her an iffy answer, and then went home and tried to make something out of it, just to see if it would work for me. Since it's obviously not working for me, it's time for it to fly the coop. Adieu, soy silk! Blessings to you in the creative hands of Ms. Bird!

The weather has been all over the map here. Windy as all get-out, and rainy at nights, hard, warm rains, with huge drops that fall horizontally and end just at dawn, leaving a nice cool sunrise. The wind has provoked my usual case of spring-driven brainfog, and I'm fighting it with Claritin and giving myself extra time and caffeine to accomplish just about anything.

Little knitting (see the aforementioned soy silk struggle) has been done that hasn't been ripped. I'm taking a knitting break this week, as I concentrate on other things, namely, my backlog of ungraded student work, dog grooming and cooking. I made dolmas, oatmeal cookies and lentil soup the past couple of days, in a domestic frenzy. Somehow that's a balanced diet, I guess. The cookies had chocolate chips in them, too, making them more complete.

turn of the moon

Such a sad week. The shootings at Virginia Tech were so shocking and horrific. I consider myself a Virginian, despite not having been born there, and despite the fact that I live thousands of miles away, now. My father's family is from there, long rooted in the Shennandoah Valley, and it's the seasonal change, the trees, flowers and animals of the Blueridge that inspire me most in this world. I did not go to VA Tech, but have a very dear friend whose husband is a professor there, and have spent my share of days in Blacksburg, and surrounding Montgomery County.

It has taken awhile to digest the news of the shootings, and the shooter's sad history, and all these events coming so close to the anniversary of the Columbine event, which of course, changed school security and our (misguided?) perception of school as a safe place. The news, later this week, that a parent of a kindergartener walked into her child's classroom, brandished a toy gun and started saying "bang-bang" to the students, in a copycat event, was the apalling icing on the cake. What is it about our culture that breeds such a disconnectedness and lack of empathy?

That's a rhetorical question, and does not require an answer, by the way. I've just been pondering all week.

Mercifully, the moon has changed, which always gives me the strength to crawl out of my funk and count my blessings, to try new things and to put on the witch hat again. Funny thing, after Leah departed, at the end of March, I was seized with a profound loneliness for the company of other pagans. It was so nice to casually talk about ritual, energy, tarot, and our spirituality, without having to consider putting anything into context, or edit myself in any way. I live and work in a very tolerant community, right now, but for the first time in 17 years, am not a member of a working pagan circle that meets in realtime. The one group I visited here on Oahu meets too far away, and were philosophically different enough from my own orientation to have me driving off to meet with them on a regular basis. I've been enjoying the solitary practice since I moved here, for the most part, but Leah's visit made me realize anew, how much I missed those folk and all the facetime we used to enjoy.

So it's been a troubled few weeks, in large ways and small.
But time moseys on, and the kolea - golden plovers, are getting ready to migrate for their summer in Alaska. These birds are pretty nondescript in the fall and winter months, but in the spring, they put on their jaunty black bibs and turn a nice golden color for breeding plumage, and then disappear for 3-4 months. A nice life, splitting your time between Alaska and Hawai'i, if you can get it. I took this picture at school, but we have a resident kolea in our back yard, too, who eats well, picking bugs and slugs out of dog poop. I think he also makes the occasional snack out of the lizard, as well. He is Ella and Cricket's would-be prey, they always launch off the deck steps in hot pursuit of him when they go outside.


I had occasion to join the ladies of the NRN at Pauoa Chop Suey, the other night. This was a delightful, unknown-to-me Chinese restaurant that isn't too far from home. I continue to be thrilled by the hidden, hole-in-the-wall local restaurants in Honolulu. We totally tasted the rainbow, in both company and food.

Of course no taste of the rainbow can compare with this one:


2 chocolate and 2 vanilla cream puffs from the Beard Papa, that crazy Japanese purveyor of ecstasy. I love the yellow carrying case they come in.



Ella is hoping that one will fall off the counter and into her waiting mouth.



Funny thing...Ella is the most energetic beggar that ever lived. She firmly believes that effort, in the form of soulful looks, sotto voce moans, and repeated sitting, downing, and offering up all of her scanty repetoire of tricks, will get her a handout. She would never dream of taking anything off the counter or stealing food - that's much more Cricket's game. He's a do it yourself kind of guy, and as such, rarely puts much energy into a beg. I don't know which dog is more annoying in the presence of food, really.

Knitting. No new pix to show. Eleanor slugs along, beautiful, soft and easy to knit. The Child's First Sock creeps along on its tiny #1 needles, too. Both are satisfying, but I'm kind of itching for a short project that will crank out fast. I have a couple of things in mind, and may dedicate some Battlestar Galactica time to the quick fix...

...will they ever stop barking?

My neighbor has 2 mean little chihuahuas, one of whom actually CHASED MY CAR down the driveway last week. And they are barking, incessantly; have been for the past half hour. They are barking so incessantly that I put my own dogs in their crates to stop their ongoing commentary on the up-the-hill bowwowwow...perhaps not entirely fair, except that I paid them off with kong toys stuffed with salmon jerky and biscuits to enjoy in their crates, so I don't feel too guilty. Still, I wonder why they're barking so urgently and constantly. They usually don't bark unless someone's walking past their enclosure.

In lieu of any actual updated content, I offer images from a Friday evening.
Cricket, looking regal on our back steps, surveying the backyard.


My dinner of roast veggies and red wine.


The lastest object of my fascination; the halting beginnings of the Lady Eleanor Entrelac Stole, from"Scarf Style". The yarn is Noro Silk Garden, in color #226, a mix of greys, blues, and browns. I love this yarn, color and texture. I read complaints out there in Blogland about the amount of vegetable matter, sticks and straw in Silk Garden, but I don't find it excessive or offensive. Knitting so recently with Noro's Kureyon, though, and now Silk Garden, I find myself wishing for a single-color project, and contemplate what's next in the pipeline for me. Not to be shared just yet, mostly because I'm trying to wrap up some WIPs before committing to something else new. Eleanor was just something I couldn't put off anymore. It is an easy, amusing project.

In other news, as of this June, both my co-teacher and I are out of our jobs. The district has transferred 2 teachers from another school that's downsizing into our positions, because we didn't have tenure. So we are back on the "to-be-hired" list, and while chances are good that we'll be employed, come August, it's not a sure thing. Fuckety-fuck. I am a bit over crying and angsting about my employment situation here in Hawaii. In my 13 years of teaching prior to my move here, I had excellent evaluations, and had no problem finding and keeping work. This system, with its combination of rigid, bureaucratic structure, and old-boy cronyism is not one I support, nor one that I want to give one whit of emotional energy to. I am determined to breathe deeply, ride the winds of chance and see where they drop me. If the work situation is impossible, come the new school year, I will sub, paint faces and walk dogs again for a living. Sigh. I like my paycheck. I like my benefits. I like my students and their families. But this system is corrupt and ineffective, and I am giving it no more than is absolutely necessary of my emotional investment.

Detaching is tiresome, though, and it seems like I am having my share of motivational problems.I think a personal day is in order.

The rain has begun. The chihuahuas have stopped barking. Silence is golden.

run ragged but happy

I've been silent, but frenzied, the past days, as my spring break wound down. My friend Leah came to visit, and while it was great to see her, she ran me a bit ragged. Leah's an ardent tourist, who travels a lot, and doesn't take easily to sitting around doing little while I knit and do housework. So we ran around Oahu, tasting the rainbow in great big bites, with helicopter rides and hikes and drives to the far reaches of the rock, and funny umbrella drinks and lots of shopping, and the sighting of sea turtles up close and personal. Nice, but I was so pleased with my weeks of silence and solitude prior to her visit that it was a bit of a shock to me to have all that followed with nonstop action. It's feast or famine around here at the Knitted Brow, and who's to say what's what? We also devoted inordinate amounts of time watching season 1 of Battlestar Galactica, thanks to my recent Netflix join. I got Leah hooked, and her parting shot to me at the airport was "I'm updating my queue..." to feed her own need for the cylon vs human struggle. Yum.

Such geeks we are. After Leah departed, I devoted some time to making a container herb garden. I planted basils, sage and cherry tomatoes in pots to live along our rock walls. Our actual soil is very thin and rocky here, and we have so many plant-eating creepy crawlies around that I am trying a container approach to growing things I actually want to eat. I'm trying not to get carried away with visions of my summery pesto just yet, but so far, everything's doing fine. I repotted the euphorbia, too, as it had nearly died away in its sad little rootbound pot. I'm feeling very much the gardener these days, though with spring break's end, my time is not my own again.

Spring break did result in the completed blue socks; not entirely matching, due to Trekking's rambling rippling colorways. I was calling them fraternal twins, but now decided that sock #2, the left one, is the Brother from Another Mother to sock #1. Thanks to Blogless Michelle (Ms Frogstreet? hint?) for that phrase, which I've taken every opportunity to use since I heard it a week ago.

Thanks to Cricket, for being the tolerant model for the perfect sock contrast. The colors are pretty true, and I'm happy with my work. I'll be making more socks from Sensational Knitted Socks, after a digression into Knitting Vintage Socks for a KAL of the Child's First Sock.


In other news, on Saturday, I went out thrifting at the Salvation Army. I don't particularly care for the thrift stores in Hawaii, but I tend to only shop at Salvation Army and Goodwill, so there may be better, smaller ones out there that I don't know about? Still, I had a good day, and $7.69 got me quite a haul of groovy booty. (I shudder to think of how the use of the phrase 'groovy booty' is going to repercuss on google and site hits)


The Haul:


A swanky green sarong for the beach and my hippie moods:



An incredible buy of some of my favorite soaps, including the much-loved olive oil and chamomile flavor that is so hard to find:


Not shown very well was a stunning white t-shirt, suitable for work and showing off my tan, should I ever acquire one.

Now, I'm back at work again, feeling tired and put-upon already. I need a spring tonic, I think.

frog street and other miracles

* Just a note about my last post...if you click on the photo of the circus tent, you'll see that there's a tightrope walker at the neighborhood circus. I didn't really realize it when I posted the shot, but found it by accident, playing around in iPhoto the other day. It's convincing me that life is full of strange and wonderful surprises, that we might just pass by.

Happy Ostara to one and all! I am off to celebrate in a solitary ritual in a wee bit, though I've already planted the 3 baby rosemary plants outside in the sun. It's funny how very SPRING it feels here in the land of balmy breezes and overgrown green. Rains feel softer. The sun is warming up nicely.

Stephanie asked in my last entry comments "what the heck is frogging?" and to answer that question, I provide here the remnants of poor mohair Kiri, mid-frog. I think the term "frog" came from the phrase "rip it".


So a half-knitted shawl becomes this messy pile of re-usable yarn:



I fell in love with that Jo Sharp mohair all over again, ripping out the Kiri shawl. Gotta find a good use for it. The colors enchant me.

Last week I was driving in the Liliha area, and I crossed a street entitled Frog Street. I wanted to turn up it, but was late for a school function. I've gotta go back and snap a pic of the sign. What a great name for a knit blog; Frog Street. Any takers? Michelle?

And now, in the category of Thrilling Me To No End, we have this award winner:


Each night, a tiny square, a wee glass of cabernet, and I'm in heaven. It takes so little, I'm telling you. That, and the new Netflix account, promising me "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Art School Confidential" within the week. That and my friend Leah's visit, coming up tomorrow, which should ignite a firestorm of tarot reading, hiking and general tasting of the rainbow anew. Yum.

Maybe I'll even get my knitting mojo back...

barbecue dreams and a lost mojo

In attempt to hunt down my knitting mojo, I took advantage of my 4:30am awakening to grind away on my second blue sock. No inspiration, but it was cozy in the bed, the coffee was cheering and I got a bit done. I am about 1/2 an inch from starting on the heel flap. I'm thinking my Friday night dose of tivo'd tv, and Boston's pizza (aren't I an exciting woman?) should render this puppy well on its way to being a pair of socks. The mojo's been MIA for a couple of weeks now, as I fret and pout and want to start new projects, but have so much stuff on the needles that I won't allow it til some things get finished. I am going to frog Kiri. I want that Jo Sharp mohair for something else and Kiri was never meant to be done in such a fat sheddy yarn. Mostly I just want the feeling of obligation to finish it off my back.

I was slated to join P in Portland, Oregon this weekend, for four fun-filled days, a kickoff to my 2 week spring break. But an airfare which raised itself $300 over its already splurgy price nixxed that conjugal visit. Sigh...I am alone for another week, but having no school frees me up to follow my bliss, so I am looking forward to THAT. Still, time off the island, bonding with the man, plus the general joys of Portland, and the promise of brewpubs, multiple swanky yarn stores, plus Target and Trader Joe's was something I was excited about. Last night I had a dream of being in a restaurant with my West Virginia cousins, and I was trying to decide what to order. It was a barbecue place and I was struggling to decide between sauces and styles. Texas style? Memphis style? Carolina style? Of course it was only a dream, because in Real Life I would always go for Carolina barbecue, with its vinegary mustardy bite betraying my southern roots. Funny thing about the West Virginians...we ran all over the Ohio/Kentucky border a few years back, trying to track down this very famous barbecue pit, as part of my family's rare and wonderful mother-daughter road trip.

Someone in my neighborhood is tenting their house for termites! It looks like the circus has come to town.

2 little rants

Bad menstrual migraine this morning, requiring excedrin, total darkness, ice pack and ginger and complete stillness to treat. Plus reiki, as best as I could give it, and the comfort of dogs. Hours later, and I am somewhat better. My health is giving me fits these days, with one damn thing after another, seems to point to an imbalance of sorts. I think I need to go see an acupuncturist, for some sort of major chi unblocking or something. Yick. Always headachy, I didn't used to get these headaches tied to my period in the past. Is this a part of growing older? Is it a perimenopause thing? I am normally philosophical about my changing body but this predictable monthly migraine thing is a pain in the ass, not to mention the head. Arrrgh. What's more, it's a time waster. I had a long hike planned this morning, and now it's off. Happily, I am feeling more like myself, my 2 days of complete silence are doing me worlds of good, and the house is clean, more or less, allowing me to enjoy today's diet of grading papers, dog bathing and knitting, not to mention the Sunday night cable fare of "Rome" and "The L Word".

And now for something comletely different...a "Pride and Prejudice" rant. Does anyone out there besides me think that the part in the story where Lydia runs off with Wickham is just a big useless distraction? Yeah, we know Wickham's a cad, and Lydia is a shameless flirt, but really, Lizzie and Darcy have already more or less made up, and this silly elopement on Lydia's part is bothersome. We don't need it as a plot device, Wickham's misuse of Darcy's sister has already convinced us that he's no good, and Darcy has redeemed himself by getting all wet in the pond and such...okay, it's clear that Jane Austen's efforts are pearls before swine, in my case, but I'm just saying...

So we all know what I did yesterday. Knitted, ripped (I made a big mistake on the intarsia of Rosedale and had to correct it)and watched the BBC's version of "Pride and Prejudice" in its entirety. I also made some most excellent split pea with ham soup, and brushed the dogs. In complete silence.

Now, I'm going quietly about my business.

voiceless

Still sick. No voice now. Doctor was encouraging, saying that I needed to live through it, but that she could prescribe me things to help me do that. So now I have a powerful arsenal of decongestants, codeine and painkillers to ease my way. I'm okay with antibiotics not being prescribed for something viral. I'm also fine with just laying around the house in a morphine-induced fog, though it does hamper my knitting somewhat. My co-teacher is fretting at my absence, though. I have to keep reminding her of her own various absences and spells of the vapors when she gets riled up. Gah! Besides, since I continue to do most of the actual teaching, while she does most of the recordkeeping/grading/admin stuff, my voice is crucial. I know it's the burden of teaching on top of that that bums her out, as my sub is not a great teacher. But she's gotta suck it up til I can speak again without sounding like an unhappy frog.

It's a nice sunny day for once here in Nuuanu. Makes me wish I felt like getting out in it for some more active pursuit beyond sitting on the deck drinking orange juice.

In honor of all this sunshine, I bring you my long-neglected, now recently picked-up Rosedale. Progress is slow, but enjoyable. Blogless Michelle likened this colorway to tropical fruits, and I can see that. Note the mango-colored intarsia block. I'm a little tired of the intarsia, and to be quite honest, am not sure it really adds anything to the sweater. I am happy to have tried the technique, but it isn't anything I feel strongly about. Maybe it's just the codeine that's making me feel like anything beyond straight stockinette is too much trouble. pleh....gonna go drink some more tea now.

still life with breakfast

morningtea.JPG, originally uploaded by ellapoodle.

I usually drink coffee in the mornings, but the past couple of days, I've switched over to tea. This happens every 6 months or so, lasts for a few weeks, and then devolves to coffee again. The teapot is a gift from my old neighbor, Tina, in Arlington. It began its life in the toney Washington DC restaurant, Obelisk, but when they switched to white teapots, she passed it on to me. I have a fair number of teapots; one from my grandmother's house, a cheery orange Fiestaware one, and a beautifully hand-painted one from Delft - an expensive gift to myself when P and I went to Holland a few Christmases ago. But the yellow teapot warms my heart. I don't use it without remembering sitting in Tina's kitchen, with her cat, dog and baby daughter all milling around the floor together.

The tea itself is Lob Nor, a combination of black and green teas, scented with bergamot, like an Earl Grey. It is the perfect morning cuppa, and compliments my current craze of wheat toast with raspberry jam. I bought the tea sheerly because of its name, which was subtitled "The Phantom Lake". How can you resist that name?

whingeing mostly

Ugh. I am getting sick. Raging sore throat, and a stomachy thing. I ignored it upon waking this morning, and went to dog training with Crick, who did splendidly. I think I had a breakthrough this morning, a way to handle his anxiety-prey drive-hyperfocus issue; on our walk to class (I go to Mililani early and walk him a mile or so before class to get him in a working zone) I gave him a toy to distract himself, a squishy green ball. He carried it for a mile, mouthing it gently. Voila! No barking, no crying and jumping through the entire walk and through the class. For this, I have Cesar Millan to thank. Not because Cesar has used this trick, to my knowledge, but because I've been watching him try novel ways of moving dogs through their fears and obsessions, and I think it's increasing my repetoire a little.

After class, I tried the Jamba Juice (Coldbuster with a protein boost) cure, to no avail. I came back home and slept. Up to the ringing of my cel phone; a delicious conversation with Hawkheart, and various homemade concoctions involving ginger, lemons, honey and cayenne. She listened to my lamenting, prescribed the use of a neti pot to avoid such infections altogether, and we caught up on each others' lives. Now it's dark, rainy, Saturday has trickled away in the dusk, and I'm still ill, and filled with the crazy need to clean my house, because, well, who wants to be home in all this filth? I think I'll settle for the kitchen and the bathroom.

I am such a baby, particularly when there's no other human around to ply me with chicken soup and gingerale. I wish the Oscars were on tonight...but I do have some tivo'd episodes of "House", "Lost" and "Survivor" that I haven't watched, so I may live. There's always that Firefly complete season dvd for the real self-medication.

Non-sequitur; it is raining REALLY hard right now. Yikes. Part of the dirt in the house is mud, tracked in by my canine friends.

In honor of Project Spectrum (too lazy to link, here) I am trying to see this month's featured colors, blue, gray in a new way. It ocurred to me that those mudtrackers are perfect Project Spectrum dogs. Ella is a color known as "silver", born black and graying at a very early age. She is the darkest of her siblings, others are a very pale, platinum gray. Cricket, who looks quite black, is actually "blue", a brownish black that will gray out over time. His undercoat is a dusty gray, and his face and paws are turning brown.




Going to wash dishes now. G'night everyone.

aloha friday

Our lava rock wall is all that keeps the mountain out of the living room, or so it sometimes seems, these windy days.

Lest I forget it's still winter, Nuuanu reminds me with a daily dose of hard gray rain, each morning as I leave for work, and again, with a rainbow-washed sunshower, each afternoon, as I think I'm ready to walk the dogs. Neither one is unpleasant; I'm just tired of getting rained on. And so I go horizontal...just because it's Friday and I can.

P is in Washington, DC for nearly 2 weeks, and I am free to eat whatever Thai foods I want, without having to negotiate with him what we have for takeout.. I am free to watch "Firefly" re-reruns without shame, and I don't have to jockey for the computer to play Snood. I am free to burn Nag Champa incense in the house without fear of triggering an athsma attack, and I can make the Pomegranate Mudpot cocktail with twice as much lime juice as I'd make it for him. Marriage is so many compromises, and it comes down to all those little things that one doesn't REALLY mind, but suddenly, oh damn, it's ten days of total self-indulgence! Of course I also have to recycle often enough to be able to carry the recycling boxes up the 31 steps, I have to remember to get the mail and prime the coffee pot each night, too. And my Snood victories aren't really that sweet, if I can't hoot and crow over them with my biggest Snood rival. So it's a mixed bag, this living alone thingy. But I generally enjoy my solitary time, once I get my rhythm going, and it keeps my marriage sane, I think.

Minor knitting progress on Rosedale yesterday, as I attached her sleeves, and am now working on the yoke. My hope is to use my solo evenings (when I'm not drinking pink drinks, thrilling over Firefly and playing silly computer games) to finish this sweater, along with the ever-languishing Kiri shawl. I am only able to knit lace when I'm completely alone, in a silent room, so even though I have a complete fascination for lace knitting, I don't get much done.

Things are so crazy at my school, these days, due to recent scandal and outlandishness that my job satisfaction/outsider feeling has really taken a back seat. Funny how disaster causes people to pull together sometimes. I am enjoying the students and even my quirky co-teacher doesn't affect my moods much, anymore. I am still just hoping to survive the year, and am not particularly proud of my work, this go-round, but it's not making me wretched at the moment, and for that, I am grateful.

The sun is out. The rain has stopped.

gung hey fat choy

I'm barbecuing pork chops to celebrate the Chinese New Year, year of the boar. Yum.

Ms Acornbud and I went to Chinatown today to browse around and see the sights. We found assorted bits and bobs, and ate roast duck with noodles and creamy mapo tofu with veggies. We tried to go to Aloha Yarns in Kaneohe, but they were closed for the long weekend, and so we ended up visiting Hoomaluhia Botanical Gardens; a place I've never been before. We saw wild pigs, a mother and some good-sized babies, surely a good omen for the new year!

I finished a sock yesterday, in the blue-grey-white Trekking colorway. Being a good pretend sock knitter, I immediately cast on for sock #2.
Pix below. Pay no attention to my scaly hairy legs, and merely admire the beauty of the one sock. I used a recipe from "Sensational Knitted Socks" and employed the Purl Lattice stitch pattern, which was easily memorizable, and forgiving of mistakes, as well. I really like this book, it is merely a bunch of generic formulae for knitting well-fitted socks in any gauge.






In other news, Spring is coming to Oahu! Our once barren plumeria is enjoying the strengthening sun, and buds and leaves are starting to peek out!

farewell old friend

Our 16-year old cockatiel Rainbo passed peacefully, this afternoon. He'd been increasingly geriatric, and we'd seen the end coming about a month ago, as he visited the vet, and the vet diagnosed good health but inevitable aging, and advised us to "keep him warm" and "make him comfortable; he's just an old man." We'd had him all the years of his life, well from the time he was about 10 weeks old, anyway. Acquired as a companion for our other bird Gemini, he went on to become my husband's beloved buddy, to father 3 clutches of babies with Gem, and to cross the country twice and the Pacific once. In the words of a friend, he was a bird with a profound lust for life. He outlived 2 other cockatiels, Gemini and the above-pictured whitefaced Buffy, and had no caution or fear of dogs. Cricket's arrival into the household last year meant a curtailment of his freedom, which considerably affected the quality of his life, I think.

I buried him in our garden, under the Surinam Cherry tree, by our outside altar. Sad, I am, but at peace, too, as he lived a long, rich, full life.

Where have I been? Nursing a cold, burying myself in Martin Cruz Smith's latest Arkady Renko novel, working ferociously, dog training, providing bird hospice, knitting a blue sock for Project Spectrum,seeing movies and generally living pretty well. With the new year, and the new moon, and Imbolc, I experienced a little shift in how I feel about being here. It's hard to explain, but I'll try. For months, really since last winter, I had been operating with this feeling just below the surface (and often not disguised at all) of just marking time here, until we moved back to the mainland. Now I moved here 18 months ago, knowing (as I knew about my Virginia life) that this would probably not be a permanent residence for me, but rather, a place we'd live for 5-6 years. In VA, I hurled myself into that place and life, and became rooted, absorbed, enthralled. Many factors contributed to that situation, and how it worked for me there. Hawaii has been a difficult adjustment for me, and part of me has fought it, stubbornly seeing it as my temporary way station til I got back to someplace with 4 distinct seasons, better yarn stores, a friendlier dog culture, yadayadayada. But with my sister's departure in early January, I started to see things a little differently. I made a resolution to more consciously live "in my life" here, rather than to be always wishing and pining for somewhere else. It IS where I live, now, after all, and while I may miss and love other places, Oahu has to be home for me now. No sooner than I had made this decision to commit to my life here, than it was tested a few weeks ago. At Mocha Java, as I sat with the Aloha Knitters, a drunken, irate touristy-kine guy came in, looking for a club called Rumors. When informed that it wasn't at Ward Center, he griped loudly that he'd just wasted a $15 taxi fare, and called Hawaii a "fuckin' third-world country." Immediately, I felt a rush of defensiveness, how dare he call OUR island a third-world country?! HA! How many times have I uttered that same phrase? Now truth be told, I have lived and traveled in the third world, and I don't like to loosely use that phrase, really, it's usually used in a pejorative, sweepingly dismissive and generalistic way, but I'm afraid that sometimes, in dealing with certain arcanely bureaucratic and colonial holdover institutions here, the slipper fits a little too well to be called much else.

It was the momentary sense of protectiveness, the offended pride, that made me feel weirdly as if, for a moment, I belonged.

So I've tried to taste the rainbow a little more deliberately. To go to the beach more often. To enjoy our low-sixties nights and call them "cold". To admire the stars I never saw in too-urban Arlington and count myself lucky to live here. Paradise? Absolutely not. But a nice place to be, nevertheless.

poetry

In honor of St. Brigid, a poem!


Valentine for Ernest Mann

You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he reinvented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of the skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we reinvent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

spinning out

I am in deep denial that my winter vacation's almost petered out. One thing about having 10 days of guest, is that you don't get much done, and it was a vacation that I was supposed to use to get my life back in order. Is that a fondly harbored fantasy or what? Hehhhh....

But this morning I did deep clean my bathroom, and re-organize my altar/shrine in the bedroom. I did a tarot reading for myself, and without going into too much detail, the cards look good, optimistic, in the clarity-creativity-fun realm. Always good news. I seldom do full-on readings for myself, as I think too much of a good thing can lead to analysis paralysis. I try to draw a card a day, though, if only to keep me reading the cards.

I am reading an outstanding book, Stephen King's latest novel, "Lisey's Story", which is kind of a departure for him; the story of a widow, a marriage, the way one spouse carries another in their consciousness. Of course it's a little scary, supernatural, of course there's King's inventiveness with language and funky way of weaving a story in and around and through itself until you have to put the book down and do some digesting, some recapping to understand what's going on there. But he breaks the novel down into little vignettes within chapters, within books, so it lends itself to re-reading and that digestive process. I'm thoroughly enjoying it, it's delicious in the way that "The Dead Zone" and "Salem's Lot" were, rather than the toil of "The Stand" and that whole "Dark Tower" series. Which I liked, by the way, it just was more work, whereas the two former books just grabbed me by the hand and dragged me down their totally weird paths. I go for years without reading King, but then occasionally I feel the need to re-visit Castle Rock. P boastfully claims to never have read even one page of one book of his. I find that hard to believe, and wonder how one gets through high school, college, the Peace Corps, field work in the jungle and dozens of overseas youth hostels, bush taxi rides, and gritty backpacker hotels without succumbing to his creepy charms?

I have been doing a wee bit of spinning, thanks to Opal's assistance and tutelage. Here is a shot of my first spun and plied yarn, about 35 yards of Corriedale (the white) and gorgeous blue roving, spun up into this thick and thin yarn. No plans for it, but it pleases me, nevertheless.

Buddha and the beast

Taking a wee break from my catch up work of cleaning house, doing laundry, banking and getting myself back on keel, after my sister's riotous 10 days here. I had fully intended to document the hanging out, running around and general frolic, but it fell by the wayside. So here are a few pix to hold you over...

We have been finding giant centipedes in our house off and on, this winter. Ugh. I'm told their bite is quite painful, but have not experienced it personally. It's made me much more cautious about emptying my shoes out, and where I throw the dirty laundry. This one is nearly dead, and was found in the koa room, (note the beautiful, though rather scratched floor) and I pitched it outside. They are not aggressive, I just don't want them in the house.



The sibling rival and I went to the Valley of the Temples, which is this cemetary and monument on the windward side of the island. It is beautiful, with a huge replica of the Byodo-in temple in Kyoto. The day we went, it was cloudy and quiet, very peaceful and beautiful.






We went here on New Year's Day, and it inspired me to get out and visit more sacred sites, in the coming year.

Happy New Year, 4 days in

Can I say "Happy New Year" after January 1?
I'm doing Acornbud's suggested New Year's meme here:

Things you learned this year
What island fever feels like.
That in your mid-forties, your body starts to store fat differently.
Cabling without a needle.

People you met
Technically, I met everyone I know here in 2005. No. I met the Akamai Knitter. I "met" Reya of Grace's Poppies, in blogland. See both in my links section. I met a whole slew of teachers, kids and parents. I met Cricket, with whom I've fallen irretrievably in love.

Things you don't want to take with you into 2007
Depression and paralysis.
That sable colored Lamb's Pride yarn I just gifted to my sister.

Things you want to hold close as you pass into 2007
Family and friends.
The habits and little things that make me inexplicably happy; the burning of incense, the cup of tea, the feel of my hands in the earth.

Things you're looking forward to in 2007
Reducing my yarn stash.
Leah's visit in Spring.
More spinning and fibery pursuits.

Things that were life changing in 2006
Acquiring a 2nd dog.
The joy of Thursdays with the Aloha Knitters.
Re-entry into the employed world.

Things you hope to accomplish by the end of 2007
Uh, world peace?
More peace for me.
A job I actually enjoy again.
Agility title for Ms Ella.
Completed UFO's.

In other news, my sister's visiting, which has provoked a whole lot of hanging out, talking, hilarity and running around enjoying the island. "Tasting the rainbow" as she puts it.

just a peek in

My sister flies in at 8:30 tonight, and up until that moment, I've served up a huge order of domestic chores, errands and last-minute business for myself. Seems my blissful holiday of peace and mellow has been temporarily derailed. Ahh, well, her visit will force me into my continued quest for fun, instead of stewing in the busyness of my own mind.

Little gone on this week. Christmas was a pleasurable day of gifting and a visit with Patrice, who made the most delicious brunchy foods for us; latkes, frittata, heavenly mimosas and fresh berries. Christmas eve, a party at one of my more tolerable co-workers' house. P was sick, so I went alone, and thoroughly enjoyed the company of her geeky friends, all of whom seem to be involved in one LAN game or another; World of Warcrack, Dark Age of Camelot, etc. Backing up farther, on the 23rd, the NRN had its December gathering, with delicious food, much laughter, little knitting and some tarot reading. Funny how tarot finds me, no matter how I neglect it. So nice to read for such intuitive people as the clever ladies of the NRN, like reading for the other people I loved doing divination for; Magus and Clary. But I digress...I've got dogs to bathe, a vacuum to run and groceries to get.

More on knitting and on some knitting resolutions later this week. Pictures will be back, too, as I found my digital camera, hidden under a flurry of papers at my desk.

equilibrium

So the moon and the sun have turned. Huge relief, though my dislike of the season remains. I even went shopping, at the mall, no less. I had a fairly good time, eating sushi, buying things I liked for people I liked and for myself. I ran into Diane from work, and overall, my final blow towards the holiday gift giving was successful. Now I'm looking forward to the new year, with its austerity and cleanliness, with some optimism.

I didn't do much for Yule. Lit some candles. Hoped to pull out of this not-so-happy space I'm in, pretty soon. Burdock and Nan called me, from Dave's Yule party, back East, which cheered me immensely.

Today, I am calm, and rather pleased with myself, having muddled through a bit of de-cluttering the house,(there's much, much more to do)and have been spinning some, too. Spinning. Last night, at Mocha Java, Opal, the Akamai Knitter gave me some beautiful blue and some cafe au lait roving, and I've been playing around with that, and the white corriedale roving, too. Making funky thick and thin yarns, because let's face it, that's all I know how to spin. It is enjoyable, and meditative and a bit calming and the perfect thing for a cool damp evening. I think I'm ready to read a handspinning tutorial, now, as I'm able to sort of isolate what's really hard for me. I'm not even sure I'm doing it right, that self-taught thing rearing its head again.

I haven't blogged in awhile, mostly because so much has gone by, fast and furious. I chose sleep over writing time. I let pass the U2 concert, which was fabulous, the elementary school winter program, equally (okay, I exaggerate) fabulous, and my discovery of an open field with a view of the ocean in which to run my dogs after 5pm. Imagine, an open field in Honolulu, uncluttered by soccer players and other dogs?!

Work has been somewhat enjoyable. My mentor released me, a huge perk, since now I no longer have to fret about her observation dates. I liked her, though, and felt she was sympathetic to my plight. The OCD Maternity Leave co-teacher returns in January. Not a good thing, not a bad thing; again, it's just something to get through.

I am not sleepy in the least. Not that I should be, at 7pm, but usually I'm fatigued. Ahhhhh, vacation! Ahhhh, the turning of the sun!

just a soldier

Ugh. The holiday season has just grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and given me a good shake, and I am laying limp and useless here under the covers, wishing for a fast forward of just a few days. I know we shouldn't wish our lives away in such a manner, but this season always finds me not in the mood for it.

Am I a soldier in the war on Christmas?

More likely, the war on consumerism, trumped-up expectations and short, short time, combined with my own seasonal affective disorder, which seems to be a factor, even here in sunny Hawaii, or maybe it's just the lack of quality beach time in my life. Relief is coming, but not nearly soon enough.

I heard one of the most hostile conversations today, between a teacher and a custodian, that I've ever heard. Our principal was sitting in the room when it took place, and I'm not sure what surprised me more; that the teacher was talking to the custodian this way, or that the administrator didn't intervene. Maybe, and I hope this is the case, she had a private word with the two concerned, at a later time.

Meanwhile, I am plagued by little knitting, vivid dreams at night, and the sense that I can only be cured by hot baths, long drives and longer naps in the sun.

I go sleep now.

the battle continues

I came home this afternoon and found a wee mouse sitting in the middle of the living room. He seemed lifeless, and thinking maybe Cricket had gotten hold of him, I gave him a poke with my toe. He ran behind the hutch. So I set the mousetrap and put it by the hutch. Later I saw him creeping out by the baseboard and I tried to catch him, but he scampered back in. He's not very fast, it's like he's not 100% or something. Hmmmmm. If I can get him in the clear, I might try and scoop him up in the dustpan and toss him in a bag and release him up the hill. Again, not my favorite thing to do, but if I can get to him before he traps himself, I'll just send him packing. I hadn't seen rat bastard (mouse bastard?) in a while and was considering myself lucky, but now, maybe not. But I am maybe winning the cockroach war, as I killed one this morning in the pantry and found a dead one on the deck this afternoon. Okay, maybe not winning; as for every roach you see, there are like 200 you don't see.

Telling Patrice I had roaches, she roared with laughter and reminded me that everyone in Hawaii has roaches. Funny, it used to be such a mark of shame in my family, growing up, having any kind of vermin in the house...

Patrice is so sassy. She called me at 8am this morning to inform me that she'd heard this story and was suggesting that maybe my problem of dissatisfaction with my job could be improved chemically. Oh my...before school, too.

Cricket has an ear infection. Rather, change that to say that Cricket keeps an ear infection. He's getting Zymox and shaking his head, but the Zymox is supposed to be a miracle drug for such a problem. After that runs out, we're switching to a cleaning solution that's some unholy mix of gentian violet, boric acid and rubbing alcohol that is supposed to be the magic bullet. I'm sure, had he been feeling up to par, he'd have finished Slow Mousie off.


Here's a peek at my particular drug of choice, for late afternoon revival.

gathering my strength

Today is a day, according to my pagan-flavored dayplanner, for strengthening one's intuition. Only my intuition is working fine. I've been getting HUGE vibes from my friend Tan, all weekend long. I got in touch with her, finally, to hear that her mother has had a crisis, she'd had a hell week, and her lover's high maintenance-ness was about to push her over the edge. We had a nice long talk, she vented, I listened and lamented that we weren't able to do this in person, but we were both impressed, anew, at how when one of us needs to talk to the other, we just throw it out there, and ZIP! the other calls. It works that way with my friend Yolanda, too; I'll be thinking of her and she'll call me up. It happens too often to call it coincidence. Both Tan and Yolanda are women I'd say are operating along the same witchly lines as me; not good at a daily disciplined practice, nevertheless, we are users (and abusers?) of practical magic.

No, I'm thinking more of anchoring energy tonight, into something more solid and able to sustain me through this darkening season, and through the insane holiday madness that is ripping through my school, as we get ready for the Winter Program, which I'm told, is the biggest fete of the year. Le sigh. Yolanda used to tell me it was madness to do night performances with Kindergarteners, yet here I am, making little red noses and reindeer antlers and taping lines on the stage for them to stand on. Performance anxiety, much?

Brief interlude, while I tended my chicken soup, and had a nice chat with Patrice. Our respective spouses (spice?) are flung about the Pacific right now, so we had the usual laundry list conversation about dogs, our man Cesar Millan, irritating co-workers, the impending U2 concert, and cocktail recipes.

In an unrelated digression, I must say that I am enjoying my new habit of drinking an espresso right after work each day. Driving home over the Pali, feeling utterly spent and defeated by work, I find myself envisioning 2 options. One involves my bed, "All Things Considered" on NPR and reading "Entertainment Weekly" til I doze off, and the other involves firing up the Barista and dripping myself 2oz of the Elixir of Life, which can bring me up to speed for a few more hours to walk the dogs, figure dinner and have an evening. As much as I long for the first option, the second is probably the wiser. It works well, too.

Off to run a bath, and work on this sustaining energy project.

gadgets and toys

We have a new computer, a modern iMac. An overloaded, expiring old one, combined with a 1-day sale served to tip my gimmick-happy spouse over the edge to bring new tech joy to my life. Since it's new, I'll have to share it with him for a few weeks, til he grows tired of the desktop enslavement, and returns to his laptop. I do not share well, but since I have the only respectably sized desk in the house, I get to house it, and since I'm trading my poor ailing machine in, this one is functionally mine. A marvellously big monitor screen makes me wish I did something more creative with my computer time than play Snood and surf the web, but it's pearls before swine here, all the way.

Speaking of pearls, my Pony Pearl dpn's are housing Rosedale's first sleeve now. I love these needles, they are sharp, smooth, shiny and feel like they knit faster than my bamboo ones. They are a little bit heavy, which lends a feeling of stability to the work. I'm pleased with how the sleeves are coming. My plan is to try and make both sleeves match, as best I can, because the sweater is circus-y enough without having two different sleeves. I'm loving this blue-into-green part of the colorway.

slippaz

Should I brazenly just write in here as though I didn't completely crash and burn during NaBloPoMo? It feels as though I owe an explanation, especially as so many of those whom I read did really well in this endeavor. I just ran out of steam, of things to say, of time to write. I'm back, and who can say where this is all going? I just got kind of sick of writing and reading myself, reading about how work sucks and how I knit 2 more rows and drank a glass of wine and ate some chocolate, and on and on and on.

This pix doesn't show it, but my poor feet are taking a beating, recently. Two weeks ago, I was walking Cricket on Kailua beach, and I became aware that every few steps, he was placing his big forepaw on the outer edge of my left foot. I'd been encouraging him to walk close in heel position, and he was exacting his revenge at such strictures by giving me a little stomp. It didn't bother me, until it started to bother me. A toe, the second from the pinky toe, to be exact, developed a horrendous bruise, and I had to wear closed shoes for a few days.

A few days later, I was barefoot in the classroom and caught my pinkie toe on a loose carpet thread and wrenched it back. Sickeningly painful when it happened, it still hurts, though only a dull ache, now.

The stubbed toe, the glass cut in the ball of the foot, the stone bruise on the heel from jumping off the wall onto my patio...all hazardous by-products of a life dedicated to wearing the slippah, if shoes at all.



These Surfahs I bought my 2nd day on Oahu, last September. They are my favorites, and I fear their demise. I've gone through others, but I've nursed these along, as they are the perfect silky smooth, flexible rubber, soft, worn thin comfort shoe. I think they cost $3.00 or something at Long's.

But the nails, they need augmentation.

just peeking in

You may have noticed I've been missing for a couple o' days. Yeah, life again. Those Big Island visitors are such a distraction. Concerts, dinner out, running around, long evenings of amusing conversation, dog walking, knitting, and The Lord of the Rings have served to render me incapable of blogging. Meh. I'll catch up someday.

So much to be thankful for. It's all good, or mostly good, in spite of my own incessant ups and downs.

I'm off to find food and fold laundry.

ice cream, opiate of the people

LA closed her diary. Here's hoping she finds the strength she needs to go through the next phase in her life. I do hope she stays in touch. (hint! LA, drop a comment now and then! )

Today was somewhat improved, by changing the seating arrangement of some of the rugrats, and by just plain telling the sub that "hey, you need to wake up and do something besides grade papers around here!" I realize that I am doing ALL the teaching these days. It's normally okay, I prefer the teaching aspect to the grading aspect of the job, but if there are 2 adults in the room, shouldn't there be some give and take of "on" time? Methinks so.

The big boost was the afternoon's fly-by of Coldstone Creamery. Incredible how ice cream can trigger childish delight and wash the pain away. Downtown Kailua was pretty and walkable and just peaceful today at 3pm, as I bolted from work in a way that surely set a new record. Cheesecake icecream, mixed with fresh raspberries and graham crackers was heavenly for the drive home, and the ensuing trip to get my haircut and catch up my hairdresser's life. This stylist breeds and shows Persian cats and is always, always entertaining. Today she was wearing a stunning outfit of sage green henley shirt and glittery gold sequined vest, which sounds hideous, but somehow, a 60 year old platinum blonde with a deep tan and Jersey accent can pull this off without a hitch. I think she's stylin'. She tipped me off about a new employee in their salon who does reasonably priced brow waxes, and I am down with that!

Looking down at my feet, I realize that I am desperately in need of a pedicure, a real, professional, salon pedicure, in which I pay someone to de-scale my nasty callousy feet. I don't go to the beach often enough, or the sand and salt are contributing to the transformation of my feet to hooves.

I'm no less tired, no less seasonally affected, no less unenthused about my job, but somehow, I've been distracted by the bright promise of a 4 day weekend.

Question of the Day, asked by a co-worker, when I stated that I was not a Christian: "How do you know to do what's right, then?"

blah

I wish I could afford to quit this job. Because I feel no enthusiasm for teaching at this school at all. Little camaraderie, a program I don't really support, a sub teacher coworker whom I have to think for, a green, hypochondriac ocd teacher coming back in a few weeks with a brand new baby, 27 wild kindergarteners, and a messy bureaucracy above it all. It just feels like way too much trouble for me. I don't enjoy it, and it feels too much like I'm just putting in hours here. I try to figure out what it was that helped me to love and relish my job, all those years ago. I'm thinking it was the freedom to be creative, and the opportunity to work with supportive, friendly people.

Right now, I don't really have those things in any generous amount, and I feel my work situation sucking the life right out of me.

That, and the shortening days are causing me to want to go right to bed.

I hate it when I go depressive...I feel like this weekend, with its tryptophan overdose and out-of-town guests isn't going to provide the rejuvenation I crave, either.

So it's back to sleep for me.

the most fun you can have with your clothes on

Once again we find our intrepid heroine in bed, laptop on knees, barely able to keep her eyes open. Exhausted dogs at her side, slight breeze peeking through, licking at our toes.

I have been working an agility trial all day, building courses, putting up and taking down jump heights, and all of it out in the sun. Ooof. I am barely conscious.

I ran Ella in 2 classes: Novice Jumpers with Weaves (JWW) and Novice Standard (the one with all the obstacles in it)We ran clean and fast and had a great time.

Once again, I am reminded that dog agility is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

saturday

This enchants me. Aside from the name of the site; Ellwand, which, Tolkien geek that I am, I can't ignore as a twist on my favorite elf. Half-elf, that is. But I want some of these little clothes of leaves and flower petals for my own.



It is just about time for my annual watching of the Lord of the Rings movies, the extended edition filmfest, which usually takes place on Thanksgiving weekend, but which I'm halfway tempted to save for my sister's visit, sometime after Christmas. She was always an enthused participant in these marathons of high adventure and romance. But P is lobbying for it early, and I think my sis will have better things to do in Hawaii than lay around watching the elves and orcs and swords and arrows.

I'm just back from a 4 mile walk on the beach with Cricket. He was so-so, after some ball fetching, he obsessed a bit over harrassing a rather timid golden retriever, chasing her into the water and just being a jackass, so I leashed him up and walked him smartly down the beach, just at the waterline. We had a good pace going on, and my left leg/achilles tendon is in pain now, as a result. He is acting as though he's had no exercise whatsoever, returning home to dash madly through the house (no doubt bragging to Ella that HE got to go to the beach, and all she'll get this weekend is this dumb agility trial) and is now barking heartily at the mailman on our street. I need to find food, and a shower.

I'm heading over to Kailua again, to watch today's agility trial, and then on to a craft fair with Patrice, who rescued a baby shearwater that was floating in the ocean today, and didn't have the strength to fly off. They are fledging right now, and going off to sea, but need a good wind to get going, and this guy was floating in the shallows on a rather dog-filled beach. She's going to take it to a local bird rescuer, who'll oversee its release in a couple of days, when it's been fed up and checked for injuries.

Time for some substantial food and a shower.

thinking

As I march through November, this series of posts, found through a link on someone else's blog, have given me much food for thought.

I think it's always something to weigh and consider. Writing about your life (and reading incessantly about others' lives) or living your life? Can you do them both? It's something I've been wondering, and she puts it more articulately than I ever could, getting at thoughts that have danced around on the edge of my own consciousness for months.It's not about NaBloPoMo, which I've begun see as mere homework, but about the whole gestalt of the thing, which for me has been a big focus shift; concern for comments, reading others' pages, following links, making comments, etc. Brings me joy, but causes concern as well, as to where all my time goes.

Still no rat/mouse. Grrrrrr.

soysilk seduction

Another day, another dollar. Another 4 rows on Rosedale. I went to Aloha Knitters tonight, and scored a ball of soy silk, whose soft buttery color and lucious hand managed to enchant me. Loooooove! I'm wondering if such a sweet yarn wouldn't make a nice knitted washcloth? Is it a decadent thing to wash the body with something that drapes so nicely?

I also found that the rat bastard had been out, and had licked the peanut butter off the bait tray of the rat trap. I think he's too small to trigger the heavy rat trap, so I've set a mousetrap tonight. I am gonna catch this guy...

In the "gee, am I an adult now?" department, I finally got around to making reservations for our Thanksgiving dinner out. See our friends from the Big Island are coming in for the weekend, and they want to eat out. I thought they were making reservations, they thought P was making them, and today, P called me up and asked me to make them. He's on a work-related junket. People, you have no idea how hard it is to get dinner reservations one week before Thanksgiving. Well, duhhh, you say. Hey, in my world (oh no, here she goes with that again) people stay home and cook turkeys. I did well, though, getting the reservations at 3660 on the Rise, a rather fancyish restaurant with what seems like a pretty reasonably priced buffet, given that it is a big eating holiday. So yum! And hooray! Just in the nick of time, for a rather early dinner, but hey, if I were cooking, I'd be sitting down at 4 to eat that turkey.

Camera batteries are dead. Otherwise, I'd show you a pic of the heartbreakingly beautiful color combination of Kai's soysilk swatch; a pink and delicate beige. As it is, I'm headed for the horizontal land of Nod myself.

hot night

It's been so hot, I've had the house closed up and the ac on. So my own little world has become littler. But at least it's cooler. I feel very spoiled in HI with AC, as it doesn't exist in everyone's house. Weird, as coming from the South, from the 1980's on, EVERYONE had AC. Still, when the trades are blowing here, we don't need it. But when it's still and hot and muggy, we use it.

I'm struggling with this 'post every day' thing. Last minute, about trite things, because I'm just showing up at the page. Still, Julia Cameron in her book "The Artist's Way" suggests that showing up is a good start. So I'm showing up.

Still no rat. I'm thinking he's moved on to greener pastures. I'm hoping those pastures aren't under my house, where mayhaps I should be setting all the traps.

I went for a dog walk on the Judd trail this afternoon, after a typically irritating day at work. It was nice to just blow off steam in the deep woods. But man, oh man, the humidity is fierce now! I was bathed in sweat, and the dogs were rather damp just from walking in this miasma of green airborne soup up there. I came home, did not shower (ugh) and drove down Punchbowl to Hiroshi, to meet my friend Patrice for a drink and dinner. I hardly ever see Patrice since I started working full time, and mourn our Wednesday ritual of martini and dinner at our favorite bar. Our bartender of choice is gone, now, too. But his replacement was doing well, and the crispy-skin moi, with local tofu, tatsoi greens and yummy broth with rice was fine, fine, fine. Hiroshi is like an Asian fusion restaurant, and has superb fresh fish and great cheap drinks.

Patrice and I always work each other up into a lather of whining and dissatisfaction about our lives, when we get together. I feel delightfully purged. I'm going in to feed my dogs, eat some chocolate ice cream and off to bed.

my world

There are days when there are no words. When work is provocative of such a scary ambivalence that I truly wonder if I wouldn't rather be painting faces and walking dogs again for a living. When I come home to find a gorgeous coffee table book shredded by the beast. When there's no rat in the trap.

At times like these, I like to make the Pomegranate Mudpot, my husband's invented drink. He's shivering away in the Midwest right now, but this drink will cool me right down and give me the strength to sweep up the mess, re-set the trap with better bait and go to my latest drug of choice, the Noro Kureyon crack.

2oz vodka
juice of 2 limes
1 oz ginger syrup (you could grate ginger and infuse into a simple sugar syrup if you're lacking)
2oz Pomegranate juice.

Shake over ice. Strain into a chilled glass. Makes 2 generous martinis.

Viva evenings at home!

peace

A quiet evening at home. I walked the dogs, and am making a salad and then curling up and knitting on Rosedale the rest of the evening. I decided to go with snap traps for the rats. Initially, I didn't want to deal with dead or maimed rats, but when I was talking with Lia, she stressed to me that the rats dehydrate easily and it was important to relocate them quickly once caught, and I realized that I didn't want to set them free in the forest, because of their link to leptosporosis, which I'm neurotic about my dogs picking up anyway, and I didn't want to release them in an urban area. Hawaii is overpopulated with rats, not the rats' fault, but mine are being battled with the same cold resolve I use for fleas and cockroaches.

City Mill, the local-style hardware store I went to had all the answers. An airtight pet food bin, orchid bark, diatomaceous earth for my roach n' flea war, little baskets for the classroom and a juice bar for my wait in line. I love it when it all works out.

Today, I didn't teach. I had a kindergarten teacher meeting in Waikiki. The best lunch I have ever had at a training was served there. It wasn't anything unusual, local style food, but everything was so very fresh. The best poke, (that's raw fish marinated in shoyu and sesame w/ seaweed for you mainlanders) macaroni salad, rice, tofu, incredible steamed green beans, lomi salmon, and amazingly sweet, thin-sliced pineapple. It was just really good, clean-tasting food, and the dessert afterwards just paled in comparison. Sometimes, a meal can be so satisfying that dessert is just overkill.

Home this evening, I walked both dogs, about 2 miles, on leash. Lots of barking, which I'm trying to approach differently, with Cricket. See, Cricket riles himself up when we meet other dogs on the trail. And I'm thinking about Cesar Millan, and his emphasis that dogs feed on our anxiety and on what we put out. And I think when I see another dog coming, I start to think "oh, here he comes, now Cricket's gonna go off" and I communicate this through the leash to him. And Cricket has his little tantrum, and we go on til we see the next dog. So today, I just tried to breathe through the walk, and yes, Cricket threw a little fit, but I just gave him a leash pop and kept walking, not trying to get him settled down before we moved on. I don't know if it made a difference. It made the walk go a hell of a lot faster. Which was good.

I wrote a long email to my friend, the one with whom I've been having the rather messed up relationship, the past few years. We will see how he responds. Or if he responds. Mostly, I said that if we are to continue to say we are friends, then we need to maintain the friendship, and that takes effort and honesty. Otherwise, maybe we shouldn't keep insisting that we feel so much guilt and conflict at not being friends. So. We'll see.

I direct you now over to Lady Kim's blog, to read the most wonderful gift of a poem today. So even if I'm waging war against vermin, and trying to hash out old friendships, and trying to run the barking dog gauntlet, it's a call to put out a more peaceful vibe, wherever we go.

rat in the kitchen, and I'm not talking about the UB40 song...

Okay, last night, during Boozevember, I thought I saw a mouse in the house. I told myself it was just a lizard. But this afternoon, I saw it again, in the kitchen, undisputably a mouse. Unless it was a rat. Oh this is sad. I am pleased about lizards and geckos in the house. I am waging war on Hawaii's ubiquitous insect, the roach, in all its many forms. I have defeated, for the moment, fleas. I have established a relative harmony with wild pigs, mourning doves, bulbuls and mynah birds. But mice? Rats? Nooooooooooo!

I'm waiting for email from my friend Lia, to tip me off as to where to get a "Have a Heart" trap. Because, y'know, as much as I dislike the beasts, I don't have the heart to kill them. Lia is my Buddhist friend, who used to trap the rats in her Diamond Head apartment, and release them up in the deep woods of Palolo Valley.

Not sure I'll hike that far. But I've gotta send these rats a message!

Another Makapuu pic, to cheer myself up.

the first annual Nuuanu Boozevember report

I kind of consciously blew my straight string of posts last night, when I had friends over and hung out, til 1am, drinking pisco sours and eating insanely delicious food, instead of taking pictures and blogging about it. Meh. Sometimes you gotta live, without the interference of the blogosphere.

I'm back on the horse again.

Still, it WAS fun. There was heavenly tofu salad. There was gao ji and wonton. There was chocolate, and kahlua pig and amazing cake. There were potent and refreshing pisco sours, and chocolate and fig bars. Much jolliness ensued, and there was even a wee bit of knitting going on.

In lieu of photos, which again, we were too busy partying to take, I leave you with another shot of Makapuu, this time looking away from the ocean, back towards the west.

makapuu redux

I went to Makapuu Flat today, to walk in the sunset. I was struck by how much like fall it even feels like there, with a soft golden light, and chilly winds whipping in off the ocean.

The dogs keep me noticing the small details, things I wouldn't see were I not checking out what they were investigating...

Of course, the big picture is always nice, too!

tired Thursday

Tired. Is Thursday always like that? It's those crazy knitters, and my insistence of watching Tivo'd "Survivor" after I leave them each week. Makes for a late night.

Today was a festival of irritation at work, with a co-worker who just plain nags the kids, a couple of inflammatory discussions about my old favorite topic, the Pledge of Allegiance (and how I could care less that my kindergarteners put their hands on their hearts when they pledge allegiance) punctuated by joy at George Allen's concession of the election in VA, and topped off with a headache. Upon my arrival home from work, I was greeted with a living room full of shredded newspaper and a destroyed candleholder, courtesy of that busy, busy Cricket. We had a disastrous trip to the dog park, where there was so much dog chaos and potential for fights that I left hastily and took a very long, strangely sweaty and satisfying leash walk, releasing my pent-up frustration at irresponsible dog owners and zealous, unthinking pseudo-patriots. Dinner of cold ramen and the pleasure of the Aloha Knitters afterwards. Excedrin and cappucino. Yarn and friends. "Survivor" afterwards.

a transit

First things, first. Thank you for your health wishes and thoughts for Ella. Her bloodwork came back today, and the vet says it looks great, which is a really good sign for overall health. We'll schedule the lumpectomy, and if it looks to be anything other than a cyst or the suspected fatty tumor, it'll be sent off for biopsy. Poodles, as a breed, tend to get lumps and bumps as they age, but it's good we're looking closely at this. The urine sample came back showing a few struvite crystals, which has always been Ella's case, and not an unusual one. Crystals in urine can lead to incontinence, though not always. They'll do a bladder ultrasound during the surgery for the lump. Meanwhile, she's lively, playful, very alpha over Cricket and the entire household, and seems to be feeling good. We're on the Chinese herbs now, and I'm hopeful about them working. I didn't realize this vet practiced Chinese medicine; she's only begun to do it, on the side, rather recently, had been taking classes, she said, in herbs and acupuncture. I am very grateful she supports my feelings and wishes about not over-vaccinating my dogs, and is willing to send me to another vet who orders the leptosporosis vaccine in single doses. Lepto is a BIG risk for dogs here, it's a parasite that's found in much of our fresh water in the mountains, and since we hike a lot, and since Ella is impossible to keep out of the water, it's a must-do vaccine. Really, these days, I'm only vaccinating for Lepto and kennel cough. If I move back to the mainland with my dogs (and that's not happening anytime soon, don't worry) I'd have to vaccinate for rabies again, but Hawaii is rabies-free.

So again, thank you, heartfelt, for your thoughts about my beloved sweet friend.

So many things have happened today. I have been on quite the rollercoaster. I heard from a very old friend this morning, one whom I had nearly written off, due to the years w/o any communication, which had been preceded by years of mixed messages and mis-communications. He wrote a lengthy e-mail, one to which I want to respond, but I want to choose my words carefully, because he said some things that would have inflamed me, 2 years ago, but now, with time and distance, I merely want to respond to fairly. I think I've been, on some level, working on observing/changing ongoing patterns in my life, and the negative patterns I have ingrained in this friendship (one that's been going on since I was 18) are some I'd love to address. So I sit and think, and engage in that inner dialogue that I find myself having with friends who are too far away in time and space.

At school this morning, I found out, before I walked into the classroom, that one of my students' fathers had committed suicide yesterday, by hanging himself, and that the children had discovered his body. The child is 5 years old, and told me very matter-of-factly that her daddy was gone and wouldn't be living with them anymore. There are all kinds of wheels being put in motion, for grief counseling, social workers, translators (the family doesn't speak much English) and support, but nothing removes the reeling shock of it all, huge for me, and unimaginably more so for that family. I've always believed that school is a kind of safe harbor for some children, and so it is the case for this bright girl, who threw herself into her schoolwork today, checking her classmates' folders in, and practicing handwriting with a vengeance, in spite of our urgent reminders that "if you need to talk, or play or cry or call home, you can, just tell me". Time later for the realization, the release of grief, the understanding of it all. I cannot even imagine the pain and stress this family is going through right now.

Mercury made its transit across the face of the sun today. A couple of astronomers brought telescopes to school today, and we got to see the incredible view for ourselves. It was beautiful and amazing, the great orange ball of the sun, with the tiny round black dot that is Mercury moving across its face. I felt very small, and unimportant, and the unimportance was a huge relief, in the face of the days earlier events and revelations. They say that transits of Mercury occur at the midpoint of the Mercury retrograde period and because eclipses tend to mark crisis points that instigate change, we may notice a shift in events and focus during that time. Like a shift in the balance of power in Washington? Like the voice of a person from my past that I cannot just write off because we've had misunderstandings? Like a new life, for better or for worse, for a family in crisis?

So I look up at the sky and consider things carefully.