Night on the town

Our hotel stay was complicated by our car winding up at the mechanic's overnight. Mike picked me up from work in my mother's car, looking like he was in a good mood. He took every wrong turn possible down to the hotel, and I was so hungry that I started laughing a bit hysterically at every intersection. 

Although the Pagoda restaurant is elegantly built over a fish pond filled with koi fish and little waterfall, they were asking $20 a plate just to sit on ancient tropical-themed furniture and chew salad. We headed out on foot to explore the food scene around Ala Moana. It was humanity soup: shabby and hollow-eyed people sat around outside Walmart and the row of karaoke bars; manicured and wide-eyed people waited in line at Starbucks and overpriced Japanese restaurants. After walking too far into the pleasure district, we decided that we looked like plump white tourists with pockets full of cash (oh, to have cash), so we hurried back into the relative safety of the crowds at the chain restaurants at the mall. Ruby Tuesdays was very disappointing, but only $10 a plate. Walking back to the Pagoda, Gavin bounced limply on Mike's shoulder, his eyes red and bleary, and fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow of our stiff queen-sized bed. I'm sure Mike thought this would be a romantic night in a luxury hotel, but the Pagoda is the Motel 8 of the pacific, and I was exhausted from a day at work. I pulled on my jammies and we all watched American Chopper until I started nodding off, then went to our bedrooms and crawled under the flimsy blankets with every spare pillow in the room piled on our heads and the fan on full blast while the traffic roared and beeped and flashed outside the window.

At 5am my mother and I ate cereal before the sun came up. We left the boys sleeping in their room and drove through the industrial district so she could drop me off at work. Wakeful tourists with backpacks headed for the beach, dock loaders on bicycles waited at the corner, mechanics drank coffee outside their shops. I was the one in the fishbowl as we drove by, but I liked seeing the city's early risers.

So I am at work early, drinking tea and writing about my night while the sky lightens up outside my library windows. The kids will hit the beanbags in 3 minutes for their half hour of reading before homeroom. I am amazed to see the same kids checking out new books in a series every day. Where do they find the time to read a whole book in a day? I should try to keep up.
 

I don't know, I feel kind of sad and lonely this morning. Maybe it's just the early hour, but I have a bad feeling.