Not a landscape

In St. John's, Newfoundland, there is a statue of Peter Pan in Bowring Park.

I never liked the story of Peter Pan as a kid (I was a Hobbit and Narnia girl), but I loved this statue. I'd try to climb up to him and touch his feet without stepping on the rabbits and fairies. The bronze was cold, and hard to get a grip on in mittens. It has been years since I thought about the Peter Pan statue, until I turned a corner in the Wardlaw Museum in St Andrews and there he was. I was so surprised. There are a few reproductions of the original around the world, and it was just luck that I walked right up to one of them. I took a picture.

Last weekend, I pulled out the big canvas I had put aside for a Scottish landscape painting. I can do this. I can paint a landscape. I looked at all the travel photos of hillsides, rocky shorelines, city views, cathedral ruins - and then I drew the statue, instead. I TRIED, OKAY? Well, I thought about trying.

I've been painting this in pieces. Yesterday I finished his shirt, and now he's floating without his legs on. I'll give it another layer of paint after he's got all his parts.

 

Still no word about anything.

2023 Artists of Hawaii juried show

These are the paintings I submitted for the show, with $10,000 for Best in Show, $5,000 for First Place, and numerous smaller awards. Results in a month. Fingers crossed. (The bunny was Zenny’s insistence because it’s her favorite, it doesn’t really match, but I love her.)

Lunch at 7-11

Easter

Liberty House (the dress is from an iconic old shop that doesn’t exist anymore)

Past and Present (the revolver and the Skinwalker knife)

Maybe maybe

I applied for a job. It’s a long shot, and it probably won’t happen. But it could. I’ve been thinking a lot about it.

Submitted 4 paintings to the art contest. If I win the 10k I’m taking it as a sign. 

Edit: It’s the dream job, an academic librarian position in a place I’d love to live, for better pay. Since the pandemic, my current job has turned into standing at a desk all day and getting yelled at about masks/vaccines/gay children’s books/government conspiracies/how to print, and I feel like my life is being wasted. It makes me feel vastly under-qualified - even though I do have all the education and experience to do the job. I have been summoning all my confidence. It’s worth a shot. I don’t have extra degrees or a lot of academic experience, but I have boots-on-the-ground experience in every area of library operations, from scrubbing toilets to payroll. I’ve fixed air conditioner units and climbed on the roof to find leaks and filed work orders and worked through massive construction projects with portable toilets. I know about copyright and environmental and government regulations. I could definitely help open new libraries on campus.

But of course reality came down on me as soon as I clicked “submit”, and I’m suddenly facing a huge mechanic’s bill (transmission and tires and brakes all decided to give up at the same time) and my kid started orthodontics, so I’ll be paying them off for the next 2 years unless I bag that prize money. 

Which could happen. It could all happen.

Or I could be making payments and handling complaints about purple unicorns being part of the trans agenda for the next few years. (I had another book challenge yesterday and it was so stupid I’m still mad about it.)

I don’t know. Been walking off alone in the evenings with my earbuds in, thinking about it all.

Brush fire in Wahiawa

I’ll tell you what I do not like: the fields next to my town catching on fire a week after Lahaina.

Sat in creeping traffic for an hour, watching the smoke, and then drove by the fire line right by the bridge. 

Woke up at 2 am to the smell of smoke, and stood outside watching the glow in the sky. Slept in my jogging clothes and dreamed of fire.

No thank you

Woke up at 5:30am to firetruck sirens and smoky air. 

Not digging this.

Update: they got it under control after 2 days. Then this morning the homeless encampment by the bridge caught on fire. Seems okay now, but I’d like it if everyone knocked it off with the fires.

Worse than imagined

UPDATE: staff is all safe and accounted for.

 

The Lahaina library is gone. So is the museum, with all its artifacts. The theater I saw Schindler’s List in when I was 13. The galleries, restaurants, school, harbor, everything. My coworker knew an elderly woman who couldn’t get out in time and shot herself in the fire, according to her relatives. Local videos are circulating of  bodies floating in the water, burned in the streets, charred inside cars, the smoking remains of animals. All my people are safe in Hana or upcountry, but some of their families lost homes. Library staff is still unaccounted for, but cell service is down and they have other things to be worried about, so calling work probably isn’t top priority. The fire went through at night, so they would have been in their homes.  Correction: the worst of the fire went through at 4:55pm..

Lahaina was once the seat of the Hawaiian Kingdom, before Kamehameha moved to Oahu. It is of great historic significance. Its loss is unthinkable.

Very upsetting.

Maui fires

Okay, so evidently Maui was in the process of burning down while I was making crumpets and writing down blog recipes, and nobody knew how bad it was until this morning. As of right now Lahaina Public Library is unaccounted for, the entire historic town appears to have burned down. The sky is hazy on Oahu, but the winds that whipped up the fires don't seem to be hitting us. 

Keeping an eye on the news today.

Crumpets

I honestly do not understand how it came to be that we have bags and bags of tough, crusty English muffins at every grocery store across the nation, but zero crumpets. Crumpets are the superior jam vessel. They are soft and chewy and toasty and delicious, and they are one of the things I had the hardest time saying goodbye to. So I made some, and you can, too, because they're not even hard.

Firstly, buy some crumpet rings. 

Then find a recipe. I looked at lots, and decided to start with Paul Hollywood's recipe, because, you know. He's the British baking expert guy. Also if I fuck it up I want it to be his fault. I SAW WHAT YOU DID TO S'MORES, PAUL.

I made a half batch and used butter instead of sunflower oil for greasing the griddle, because I don't have that. We also don't have strong flour (bread flour) in these parts, so I just used regular all-purpose. They were still good, don't @ me.

This will take about 1.5 hours; I made them after dinner for the next morning.

Half batch of crumpets for the uncultured American kitchen (makes 6)

6 oz all purpose flour (it's like 1 1/2 cups)

1 tsp yeast

1/2 tsp sugar

6 fl oz warm milk (about 3/4 cup)

6 fl oz warm water (same, come on)

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

butter for greasing

Whisk together flour and yeast. Dissolve sugar in warm milk, pour over flour. Beat with a wooden spoon for 2 min, until smooth. This is hard, do it anyway. Cover and leave it for about 20 minutes, until it rises and then starts to fall a bit. It took closer to 30 min for me, my yeast was frisky. Mix the salt and baking soda into the warm water, pour most of it over the bubbly batter, and stir it until it's creamy, adding more as necessary, until it's like a nice gooey pancake batter. Leave it alone for another 20 min to rise again.

Heat a griddle to med-low and grease your rings. When the griddle is hot enough to make butter bubble up nicely but not sizzle and burn, put the rings on the griddle. Plorp enough batter into each ring to cover the bottom completely. Leave it alone to cook, until the top is set and bubbles have popped, about 10 minutes. Gently get a spatula under them and flip the whole ring to lightly brown the tops for a minute or two. Remove to cool, and slip them out of the rings. 

They're best the next day - pop them in the toaster for 2 min and then load them up with butter, jam, nutella, fruit, whatever. I had mine with greek yogurt and honey. Perfect.

If I find a better recipe, I will report. This one was pretty good, though. Some recipes don't brown the tops, some use fats in the batter. I will TRY THEM ALL. Get ready, family.

Ok, the arch enemy story

 But I'm deleting this later. It’s not a fun story.

Ever since he was little, Mike's family would spend their summers up at Lake George with friends. The friends had two daughters, and the kids all became very close. Mike had a big crush on one of the girls, Amy (not her real name). Amy knew this and liked the attention, but wasn't really interested. In high school, he finally asked her out, and she laughed in his face. The families still hung out. Amy became a cheerleader and got a football boyfriend. Their senior year, just before prom, Amy and her boyfriend broke up, and Mike saw his chance. He asked her to prom, and she accepted! He changed his work schedule at the local grocery store and rented a tuxedo. On the night of the prom he got dressed up and arrived at her door with a corsage. Her mom answered, and told him that no, Amy wasn’t there - she made up with her boyfriend and had gone with him, instead. Mike went to the grocery store, put on an apron, and worked his regular shift, still in his tuxedo.

A few months later, he went to college. While exploring campus with some of the guys from his dorm, they spotted someone they didn't want to talk to and shoved their way into the nearest room to hide. It was my room. We all sat on the floor and chatted until the coast was clear. Mike laid down, and from where I was sitting I could only see his legs and feet, crossed at the ankles. Looking at those feet, I suddenly had the thought, "Oh, that's my husband," in the way you might look at a mountain and think, "Oh, I have to hike up that thing." But we clicked, and did everything together from then on. A couple weeks into school, while walking to the cafeteria, I narrowed my eyes at him and said, "Oh no, I like you." He shrugged and said, "I love you." And that was how easy it was.

A few weeks after that, I was riffling through some of the old notebooks on his desk and found terrible teenage love poetry. He told me about his childhood crush and eventual humiliation and heartbreak. "Well, I hate her," I said loyally.

The next year, we got engaged. We drove up to New York that summer, where I would borrow a spare car to drive to Indiana while he worked as a lifeguard. We had only been at his parent's house a day or two, though, when I heard the door bang open downstairs. A girl said, "Is she here? WHERE IS SHE? I WANT TO LOOK AT HER." And then someone ran up the stairs. I sat up on the bed with the book I was reading and the bedroom door flew open. A skinny girl with curly blond hair stood there, looking like someone who should work at a drive-in and wear roller skates and hot pants. She looked at me - chubby, no makeup, baggy jeans and a tie-dye Led Zeppelin t-shirt - and her face slowly performed an actual, genuine Grinch smile. 

 

"Hi. I'm Amy," she said through her fangs.

"I know," I said.

A few days later I drove off to Indiana.

When I returned a month later, something was wrong. Mike wouldn't look at me directly. As we packed up the car to go to Lake George with some friends, I asked about their trip to Woodstock '99, and one of his friends said, "Yeah, we had fun, but Mike went off with Amy a lot." My world did that tunnel-zoom thing and my entire body went cold. 

I should have left then. I should have figured out how to get back to college on my own. I should have transferred colleges and left the state. But instead I took him aside and asked him directly. After a very long silence, which I should have taken as an answer, he lied. His friends poked their heads into the room and said sorry, they didn’t know that he hadn’t mentioned she was there, and probably he just didn’t want to worry me. So we went to Lake George, and we drove back to college, and I tried to ignore the gnawing in my stomach. Things were never the same between us.

It took him 7 years to admit to the affair - panicking because I had grown so distant, fell for someone else (unrequited), and was preparing to leave him. He confessed to that and a few other things, hoping to make a clean start. I divorced him anyway. I moved to California. He followed. We reconciled eventually, because he just wouldn’t give up and go away, and he’s so damn nice. We moved to Maui, and Leif was born.

While Leif was a baby in arms, we were sitting on the couch and Mike had his laptop open to Facebook. A friend request popped up, followed by a message bubble. It was Amy. She was married and pregnant now, and thinking about him. He froze. “Shut that shit down right now,” I said. He didn’t move, but his hands were shaking. I took the laptop away from him and blocked her.

The next year, I checked to see that she was still blocked on his account (she was), and then curiosity got the better of me and I check her profile. She had the baby, a girl, and had given her the middle name 'MICHAEL'. I almost threw up. I almost left him again, but he hadn’t done anything this time, and now we had two kids.

I did finally leave him again, for reasons not related to her. 6 months later we reconciled again (I KNOW), and remarried when I was hugely pregnant with Zenny. When Zenny was 8 or 9, she became interested in horseback riding. Mike’s sister had just enrolled her own daughter in riding lessons, and encouraged us to get her into it. Zenny had been riding for a few months, Mike had been sharing pictures with his sister, and then suddenly she posted on Facebook, wow! Great to have another mom friend at the stables! because what do you know? Amy signed HER daughter up, too! What a COINCIDENCE.

Now my Facebook feed is full of tagged pictures of the woman.

And then I got to spend the last two days of my trip to Scotland with her mother, who made sure to post pictures of me blinking and eating. 

I found a job I can apply for in Scotland. I can still leave again, maybe.

 

Edited to address the comments:

Yes, I know, and I agree. We don't have a dreadful marriage, though. We're friends who have been together since we were 17. He's a happy person, a good father, he reads interesting books and has productive hobbies, and he grew out of most of his bullshit a long time ago (but if/when it happens again, I'm out like a thief in the night, and he knows it - FOR REAL THIS TIME). Also, I know what it's like to carry a torch for someone (see: unrequited). I would have been rooting for them to finally get together, if he hadn't been, you know, ENGAGED TO ME.

I told him I was thinking of leaving and fucking off to Elgin without him, byeeee, and he smiled and said, "Okay, or we could go back and look at Inverness seriously, maybe try to make it happen?" I don't know. I'd rather not lose my house in Hawaii, if I can help it. I grew up here, my kids were all born here. It's just that when you decide you want to do something, you want to do it right now.

When Holly met Scotland

 

Also, my editor emailed me and I remembered that I'm working on a book that's due in 6 months, so maybe I should finish that.

But this is not over! It has just begun! And I'll do it myself if it comes down to it. Just as soon as I figure out how.

found deficient

I am back. Back to our screaming neighbors, $7 milk, streets crowded with parked cars, tents lining the sidewalks and parks, reports about needles and drug addicts and dog maulings, and a brand new NO GUNS sign on the library doors. 

 

My sister-in-law did a great job keeping the house in order and the cats alive, but her solution to pesky odors is to drown them out with dozens of clashing and very strongly-scented products, so she did not notice the rotting can of maggoty wet cat food that was in the microwave for two weeks. Who even put that in there? Why did she not open the microwave even once in 2 weeks? I do not know, but the cats and chickens are all accounted for, so I accept a bit of detective sniff-work as a trade-off.

Also, I'm sleeping on the couch, because Mike is locked in the bedroom with airplane Covid. The rest of us escaped it because I was booked separately from the group and traded seats with him so I could sit by the kids. HA. And now I have to go to work. Damn.

Zenny cried as we left Saint Andrews. I walked with her to the playground by the museum one last time, where we said goodbye to the wild bunnies and listened to a distant tune of bagpipes while playing on the see-saw. On the bus to the train station, we waved to all the good dogs on leashes and dads with baby strollers and sheep with black faces in the fields, and headed down to Edinburgh. 

Edinburgh is not as charming, except that at 8pm the streets roll up and the entire city sleeps in silence until daybreak. Our room was on the Royal Mile, an area full of gorgeous old medieval buildings and hideous shops full of identical tourist garbage and street performers literally yelling "LOOK AT ME!" and then just doing cartwheels. It was chaotic and loud and crowded with visitors. The worst thing about Edinburgh, though, was that my mother-in-law decided to go on her own vacation to Scotland and meet us there for dinner and a tour of the castle, bringing along her travel companion; the mother of my arch enemy. I did not push the Ghost of Enemy Future off a castle turret, despite her taking unflattering pictures of me and posting them on Facebook for her daughter to smirk at, so... you know. Disappointing.

At the Edinburgh airport, we became separated from each other by quick-moving lines through TSA, and I waited on a bench with Zenny for everyone to reconvene. Gavin was taking the longest. Two airport police officers walked by with machine guns, which surprised us. Not a lot of guns in Scotland, and those things were huge. Folks, THEY WERE THERE FOR US. Earlier in the week, we went to a toy store in Dundee and the boys thought it was interesting that you could buy realistic die-cast cap guns in the UK, so they bought one. And then forgot to put it in the checked baggage. So Gavin went through the TSA scanner with a very realistic metal revolver in his backpack. 

They kept the toy gun and did not shoot my son, which seemed fair.

 

And now we are home. Saint Andrews was wholesome in a way I'd forgotten was possible. Maybe I can figure out how to make more peace in the place I live now. Maybe I can escape.

 

Leif was so happy

 

The flock of ducks and moor hens at the dorms, Leif's best buddies

 

Sticky toffee pudding, the best

 

One of the classroom buildings at Saint Andrews University

 

The see-saw of happiness in the bunny park behind the museum

 

I got a clover!

 

Our hotel was actually a locked gate leading to a whiskey-smelling dungeon that led to a winding staircase - it was scary in a good way

 

Edinburgh

 

One of the underground vaults, where people made shoes in the dark

 

Solid mass of humans just up that road, toward the castle

 

Edinburgh 

 

From the battlements at Edinburgh castle

 

This guy found an entire meat pie and ate it whole

 

The Mitre pub, next to our room

 

Last pint

 

View from the bus on the way to Edinburgh airport

 

LAX, after 10 hours of flying

 

Across the planet, chasing the sun

She's so happy to be home /s

Don’t know what day it is

Navigating a group of 5 through activities and meals is not a relaxing vacation. The youngest and the oldest of the group keep needing to rest and have refreshments, they don’t want to climb anything, and they keep veering off into thrift stores or playgrounds. KEEP UP, WE HAVE AN AGENDA.

I have given up with the agendas, now I just get everyone to a single destination and follow them around with a water bottle and snacks. Historic site. Downtown. Deer Centre. Today we are going to find the art museum in Dundee. Hold me in your thoughts.

It is beautiful, though. The raptor demonstration at the Scottish Deer Centre was amazing, the birds flew free and brushed their wings on your head as they passed. The wind is cold, and we are zipped up in warm jackets. We ate the best cheese we’ve ever had at the cheesemonger’s shop. We met with friends and had lunch at the famous old golf course like fancy people. The groceries are affordable, the food is fresh, the parks are full of children, and the transit is safe. I’ve seen two beggars and some shabby shuffling people in the outer towns, but none of the bags and tents that come with homelessness. Our friends say the NHS scoops them up and helps them, though it’s not perfect. It’s miles closer to perfect than what I’m used to, though.

I know things wouldn’t look so sweet while hiking through ice and sleet to get to the grocery store, but today I have an art museum with a cafe full of scones to keep me happy. If I can get everyone out the door. Some aero bars on the end of a stick should get them going.

Just riding a bus through a landscape painting with hay bales

This lady showed off her wings for me

Found a coo 

Lovely deer at the Scottish Deer Centre, full of food pellets offered from the grubby hands of hundreds of children 

CHEESEMONGER

The line to this place was out the door every day, so we got in early for breakfast gelato and beat the crowd 

One of the active churches, with organs playing 

This year’s crop of golfers is ready for harvest 

Hot chocolate with fresh cream and fudge

St Andrews Museum, with meditation labyrinth for adults to walk while the kids play on the seesaws and climbing structures 

This guy was pretty old and kept the trainer on his toes because he knew all his tricks