Autumn on the North Shore

Folks, I remembered that I can go to the beach. The beach is not one of my favorite places, and I don't even know why. I like sitting. I like swimming. I like the mountains and the heat and the wind and the crashing waves. I like eating snacks and drinking out of sweating water bottles. What I don't like is having to keep the kids from dying or getting sunburned or being creeped up on by creeps. But that is life anywhere you go with small children. More parking my ass on the beach and relaxing is in order. 

Pumpkin Spiced Heatstroke

If Hawaii is maybe a bit overcrowded, it is only in very small and compactly contained areas. The rest is sprawling mountain and misty jungle and sweltering fields of farmland. Among these fields is Aloun (a-loon) Farms, home of pumpkins and corn and sunflowers and Mount Doom.

They called it Pumpkin Mauna Kea.

Every year we visit the pumpkin patch, imagining scenes of autumn breezes and caramel apples, and every year we step out of the car into the blistering cushion of heat that sits in the valley and join the groaning hordes shuffling bleakly through the fields, shedding water bottles and articles of clothes and the occasional old person.

In the festival compound, families cram into every puddle of shade cast by bouncy houses and food tents, pouring water straight over their children's heads and watching it steam on contact.

We bunched under the hay ride tent and waited for the tractor to pull up, surveying the miles of pumpkin vines punctuated by the brief flare of human combustion.

Parents were overtaken by a sort of desperate cheer. They hollered along with the live country music and thumbed out stacks of five-dollar bills for carnival food. "We are having FUN!" yelled the dad next to us, "Good old fashioned fun that we will NEVER FORGET!" 

And for all that, it really was memorable fun. We rumbled through the fields on bales of hay, ran through the vines to grab pumpkins before we could blister with sunburn, hobbled under their weight through the dust and heat mirage to pay whatever the guy at the door arbitrarily decided to charge us ($15) and hauled ass back through the rows of cars to the safety of air conditioning. 

Seasonal childhood memory ACHIEVED.

It's all candy and pie from here out.

Question du jour

Old man walks up the desk. "Can you break a five for me?"
"Sure."
"Thanks. Say, you're pretty good at that for a girl."
"Oh reaaaally."
"I don't tend to endear myself to folks when I say that."
"Yes, I was going to say, 'And you have a lot of teeth for a man who talks like that.'"
"You know, where I come from, men really love their football. I had a friend who's wife said, 'You love football more than me!' and he said, 'That's true - but I love you more than basketball!'"
"And now he's buried in the yard."
"Har har, see ya, sweetheart!"

It's secular autumn festival decoration time!

In the interests of keeping our library witchcraft-complaining-parent-free, I drew a Hawaiian Hoary Bat for my storytime kids. Just open it in a new window, print on cardstock, color & cut, and use as very cheap decorations, if you want.

Why you should want:

1. It's a bat, so SEASONAL.
2. The name has "hoar" in it.

Let's acknowledge that happened and then pretend it didn't.

Sorry about posting and deleting, RSS feeders. I looked at a thing that hurt my feelings even though it was none of my business and I knew it was a bad idea. So the next morning I went ahead and impulsively put in a big knitpicks order- which will either comfort and console me or reward me for being a passive internet creep. Distracting me from self-inflicted injury was the whole reason I started knitting furiously in the first place. At least people get hats out of it.

Anyway, I want to report that I like the truck. It has me feeling like The Me I Was Back When I Was Me. Which is not really a great thing, since that Me made some really shitty life decisions. My mother says, "A truck brings out the man in a woman," so maybe what I'm feeling is whatever that means, but I think it just has more to do with having spent my formative years in a Ford Ranger. Maybe she meant that I'll be more confident about vehicle maintenance - probably because it will require more of it.

Trucks bring out the man in a man, too, I am rapidly discovering; there is a particular type of truck-driving man who becomes a complete dickhole when he sees another truck coming. This morning a truck up ahead was coming out of the gas station, saw me signaling, and decided to gun it and straddle two lanes to block the turn lane. I was banging the wheel and going, "RAWR RAWR I FEEL ANGER," because labeling emotions is healthy, and Gavin said, "GRATITUDE, mom. Quick, BE GRATEFUL." This is a neuroscience exercise, which we have been trying to do whenever we feel bad about things, because the act of searching for something to be grateful about (whether or not you find anything) releases happy brain chemicals. "I AM GRATEFUL I HAVE A TRUCK TO RAM HIM WITH."

And you know? I did feel better. Science, people.

knights, trucks, and figs

I will be knitting for survival soon, if the A/C at work continues to drop into the teeth-chattering digits. Today I ran outside to warm myself like a lizard against the warm brick building. There are clouds and a bit of a breeze as another hurricane tries to form itself right on top of us, and the weak tropical heat had a hard time penetrating the layers of leather and blouse and undershirt to warm up the meat of me. Mittens, I need. Arm warmers. A balaclava. I'm going to start wearing my hair in two flaps of braid to cover my ears.

 

In other news

The farmer's market next to the library sells figs. Figs are nostalgic for me; my great-grandmother had a stubborn old fig tree behind her little house in Kingman, Arizona, and I felt really pleased with myself any time I found a living fig on the thing. I can survive the savage heat of the desert! Behold my foraging skills! And I'd sit on the rock wall and eat the figs and read Dean Koontz novels.

So I took some figs home to draw. I was feeling pretty good, driving my truck and listening to loud music and wearing giant sunglasses, and then I got home and realized I hadn't put house keys on my new ring and I was locked the fuck out. But hey, the basement is open, and the kegerator is in the basement, and I set up the figs. 

Then I drank a mason jar full of beer, realized too late that it was really kind of too strong, ate the figs, and laid on the rug listening to Flight of the Conchords.

So that didn't work out. 

And that was Saturday. Well, is Saturday. I'm still locked in the basement.

MINE

I have a truuuuuuck. Brb, buying all the bandannas and torn jeans.

Then a small thing happened. While I was giddy about the truck and clearing dinner dishes, the boys sat down to paint their first D&D figures. These are tiny white plastic things with lots of detail molded into them, and I was pretty sure leif, being 7, would drown the thing in paint and get a lot of it on his face. An hour later he presented this: 

Holy shit, folks, that is shading and mixing and a controlled palette. Good thing these things don't cost much, because we are going to be getting LOTS more for this kid. 

I can't with the evens, as they say.

car chase!

We have a police officer who comes to the library to see if we have coffee and use the bathroom in air conditioning, and today he trudged in looking particularly sweaty. It turns out that all the sirens flying past the library this morning were in pursuit of a stolen car. Which crashed into my kid's school and caused a lock-down. Our coffee-cop chased the car thieves on foot across the campus and into the sugar cane, tackling two of them. Everyone is SUPER EXCITED to have gotten on the news ahead of the high surf advisory and that tree that fell down in Kalihi.

Pau

I have finished the Bloomsthingy, and coaxed the child into it, and now it's done. Except for the ends to be woven in, but meeeeh. 

Folks, I might be down at the thrift store picking out mangy old sweaters to salvage after all. The yarn I want in the quantity I want is $70, and I JUST CAN'T. But the new Brooklyn Tweed collection is up, and I'm all over that Cascade pattern, so a bit of grubbing through sweaters that people have maaaaybe rubbed on their junk is in order, perhaps.

Oh, and there's a tsunami coming. But we live way up high in the middle of the island, instead of down by the ocean where we used to, so I am yawning and stretching elaborately. Which probably means a water spout will drop sharks on my house, but WHATEVER. I have a machete and a bbq. 

sandwiches

Last night I finished the knitting, held it up triumphantly, and yelled, "Hey, kid! Let's try this on! I made you a sweater!" She looked hard at it and said, "Um - no, thanks." Ingrate.

Over the weekend, my mother had the boys and was employing her "gee, it just got so late, I'll have to keep them overnight" grandmother privilege, so we had an evening with just the one kid. Mike shoved us into the car for Vietnamese sandwiches. Zenny patted her legs and chanted, "SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT" all the way there. It was nice.