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Wednesday:

 “I need something to take my mind off the interview so my brain stops replaying all the things I said and telling me I’m stupid.”

On cue, the chicken started screaming.

Sister flew up onto the garden wall, shrieking and panicking. I ran outside and saw the neighbor from up the road chasing her away, flapping his arms. When he saw me he turned and walked casually back toward his house. 

“Where are her babies!?” I called after him. 

“Huh?”

“Her chicks, have you seen her chicks?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

Fucking liar. I walked up the road, Sister still screaming, and heard a woman in their yard saying, “…the dog got one.” The family owns a towing company, and their house is surrounded by abandoned vehicles, with pit bulls and pigs fenced into their yard. I don’t think we’re allowed to have hogs in the suburbs, but nobody wants to be the neighbor to complain about them.

I couldn’t hear any chicks around the junked cars, and my heart was not up to seeing a massacre in their yard, so I went back home and sent Mike up to investigate. He’s less likely to start a fight with assholes who ransom people’s cars for a living. 

Sister followed him up the road, still honking like an alarm, and they came back a bit later with one little brown chick running at their heels. Sister quieted down and took it into the coop, then stood at the door of it, panting. Everything was quiet. I put out some fresh food and water for them, and felt so sad for her, imagining those big dogs snaffling up all eight of the chicks like hungry hippos—but then, from two yards away, a faint peep. Sister stood at alert, listening, hesitated to leave the one baby she had, then made a decision and launched up into the air, flying over the wall so the chick couldn’t follow her. We heard her calling, and little peeps responding, and a minute later she came chuckling back into the yard, followed by a stampede of chicks. Ten of them. She only had nine to start with. What did the dog eat? Where did the extra chick come from? We will never know. Sister herded them all into the coop, which she doesn’t use except as a nursery after hatching eggs, and made happy purring noises until everyone calmed down.

And I forgot clean about the interview.

(I should clarify that there are wild chickens everywhere in Hawaii, and Sister is a rescue. She mostly lives with us, we feed her and try to gather eggs to prevent chick explosions, but she roams. She’s usually cautious about the neighbors, but the chicks must have wandered under the chain link fence and then scattered while she tried to save them from the dogs.)

In the afternoon I went a bit ham at the Thai food restaurant and came home with a load of spring rolls, stuffed chicken wings, sticky rice, curry, and soup for lunch. Last chance to eat all our favorite foods before returning to the land of boiled fish and turnips. I love Newfoundland with all my heart, but I follow the local restaurant’s instagram page because the pictures of their weekly specials make me laugh.

By night we were at the airport. By morning we were going through customs in Vancouver. For supper we ate a sad donut in Toronto. At midnight we stepped out into St John’s and breathed in the smell of pine trees and Atlantic breeze, relief spreading through us all the way down to our toes. The shuttle picked us up and scooted us across the road to the hotel, Zenny beat me to the shower for the first time in her life (teenagers are part hamster), we put on clean pajamas, and collapsed into the most delicious hotel bed I’ve ever slept on. The St John’s Holiday Inn Express knows what they’re doing.

In the morning, Zenny and I went down to the breakfast bar and she loaded up her plate with sausages. We sat in the lounge by the window, drinking tea and watching the crows. Back in the room, Zenny bounced onto the bed and turned on PBS Kids to watch cartoons until checkout time (teenagers are also part preschooler). 

It was after 6pm when we finally got home on the Boot bus. We ran through the house like little kids. Everything is just as I left it, and the car started without a hiccup. The garden is monstrous. Our tree is covered with little green plums. My little kitchen mint plant tried to escape the pot and take over the yard. The hostas sprouted arms and turned into triffids. I’m going to have to figure out how to fill the gasoline weed whacker before the grass is up to my eyes, but that is a problem for weekend me. It’s time to sleep in our own beds and relax for the first time in weeks. 

We are back!

And let me tell you, after three days without real food, Mary Browns fried chicken is the most delicious thing in all the world. We split a couple pieces and brought the rest home to woo back the crows, who have given us up for dead. Just give me time.

Check ignition

A few weeks ago, my phone dinged with a message from my coworker back in Newfoundland; the new collections librarian position had been posted. I shot off an application and crossed my fingers. If I get this position, I could stay at my own campus and my pay would double. If I do not get it, I'll continue to have summers free for travel, and time in my schedule for writing a book and working as an editor/illustrator. It will be ok either way, but this role is kind of my dream job, and I'm sick to my stomach with nerves. My interview was at 6am, on the same day we fly back. I was up at 4:45am trying on outfits to find one that said "competent and professional with just enough personality to be friendly". I ended up in a black blouse with a scoop neck and Anne of Green Gables sleeves. 

I think it went ok. Fingers crossed. 

Bags are packed. All the cheap flights to the West Coast leave in the middle of the night, so we have all day to spin our wheels and agonize about how slow the hours are passing. West coast to East coast. East coast to the rock. Overnight at an airport hotel. Bus to the peninsula the next day. Home by Friday. 

Countdown

There was angry shirtless hobo bullshit at the library. Our chicken showed up with 9 chicks because Mike locked her out of the basement and lost track of where she was laying eggs. Another storm is headed for us.

I ran away to my mother’s house after Mike shared the bed with me (his back hurt on the other bed—he didn’t try anything) and I woke up at 3am from a nightmare with my arm raised to punch him. She took me out to our favorite Chinese restaurant and I slept like a rock on her spare bed. Zenny was dropped off with us the next day while Mike went to work and then declined to go back, so we went shopping for school clothes and laid around watching the puppet episode of Strange New Worlds. My mother took me to aqua aerobics and I paddled around on a foam noodle with a bunch of laughing old ladies in the heated outdoor pool at the YWCA, which hasn’t changed at all since I attended camp there in the summer of 1992. It was goddamn delightful, the single happiest hour of this entire trip. We went to the Manoa Chocolate Factory and ate about 30 free samples of all their flavors, and that was a close second.

We are back up at the house now, getting Zenny’s doctor appointments out of the way (she still gets yearly checkups with her kidney surgeon). Leif was excited when we brought him a Raising Cane’s chicken plate, and he showed me pictures of the shirt he hand-bleached in a custom design for his girlfriend’s birthday (it was really good). Now that the end of this trip is in sight and the library work is done, the stress is loosening. Leif is ready to go to university, he’s going to be fine. The cats aren’t bothered by my absence, they’re going to be fine, too. We can go back home and enjoy the seasons and know everything is okay.

In 4 more days.

grace and beauty

Cute, but we’re not allowed to have this many chickens. That is Mike’s problem now.

NOT RELATED TO PREVIOUS IMAGE

Hurricane Lala

Oh yay, a hurricane has formed on top of the islands. It’s projected to go just south of us, but so far it’s headed north, straight at us. Winds are picking up, in slow waves. Rain has started. Our windows don’t shut all the way, which is maybe not great if it starts blowing sideways. The chickens have already hidden under the house.

Worst part of the storm should arrive around midnight. It’s evening right now, and the sky has that slow, green, holding-its-breath kind of feeling. Hoping to sleep through this thing.

And then the sky turned purple, which didn't seem good. The neighbors all came out to look.

Update:

The room was breathing all night, with the curtains billowing out and then sucking onto the windows, the rain roaring. The cats were all on the bed with me. Nobody slept, listening for the sound of a tree coming down on the house. (None did.)

The power throughout town went out at 6am. Our solar panels held out for two more hours before the house went down. The worst of the rain and wind seems to have passed, and it’s pretty quiet on our street. No traffic, no neighbor chatter. We sopped up the water from the windowsills and floor, and I took a shower while the tank was still warm, which didn’t feel refreshing at all because the humidity is so high my hair won’t dry and our clothes are damp. There are branches down all over the yard, but nothing big enough to concuss a person.

The Big Island got absolutely wrecked, though. People died. A historic cemetery was gouged out by rivers of mud, sending the occupants of the coffins on some wild rides.

My mother lost power for 2 days, and we drove over with hot food and cold drinks for her. When the power came back on, I emptied the spoiled food out of her fridge and used the excuse to toss all the expired cans out of her cupboards, too. She hasn't let me move a thing from her house, even through that was half the reason I came for this length of time. She's just not ready to face a move, post-retirement, even though she hates her neighbors and wants to have a fresh start. It probably feels like the last part of her life will have started once she does, and that's a terrible thing. Retirement is hard for a lot of people.

public library-ing

The RFID gate beeped when a pair of men with a bunch of bags came in, and a book title popped up in red on our security screen. It could have just been a tag that hadn't been deactivated. Or it could have been a book stolen from another branch. Either way, not worth chasing after, and at that moment someone else dumped about 200 children's books on the desk, so I got busy checking them in.

A few minutes later one of the men came up, asking to borrow the bathroom key in a loud whisper. He said he was using his 'library voice' because he'd been thrown out of two other libraries, then complained about the “chronics” at the downtown library sleeping on the floor like they lived there (there is classism within the homeless community - people who camp in tents vs. addicts who day-sleep in public spaces), and then he went into the bathroom. 

A second later the gate went off again, and I looked up to see the other guy leaving, with the same book title popping up on the alert screen. My coworker shrugged and decided to go outside to ask him about it. She came back a moment later with a funny look on her face. The first guy came out of the bathroom and introduced himself, then said he had to run to the post office to buy some stamps and offered to pick me up a beer on his way back. I said nah.

When he left I said to my coworker, "Dude just offered to bring me a beer. Looks like I’m still popular with men of a certain demographic [unemployed white guys over 60]. So what did the other guy say about the book?" 

 "Oh yeah, he said he took it from another library and he doesn’t have a card, but he knows someone who has one who can check it out for him later. Then he says, 'is that what that beep was? I thought it was a gun detector!' Haha, so funny."

“Girl. He set it off twice and he heard it, but didn’t stop. He’s got a gun in his bag."

"IS THAT WHAT HE MEANT?”

“Don’t worry, they like us, they don’t want to get thrown out of the library for shooting the librarians.”

Just then our student helper walked up. “Hey, so there’s someone fully sleeping on the ground in the Hawaiiana section. Like, with a mat rolled out and everything.” Goddamn it.

We rousted the sleeping lady and gave her 5 minutes to pack her stuff and head outside to nap. Student helper came back about 3 minutes later. “Now she’s sitting on the floor and eating ramen.” By the time we got sleepy ramen lady out with all her bags and bedrolls and food, beer guy had spread his shit out over three tables and wandered off again, leaving cords and laptops and handwritten legal documents everywhere. 

15 minutes to closing, I heard voices at the back door, and climbed up onto the counter to look out the window. Two guys with bicycles were crouched on the staff stairs, doing who-knows-what with something I couldn’t quite see. Packing a crack pipe, probably. “We’re leaving out the front tonight,” I told my coworker and student helper.

10 minutes to closing, beer guy shows back up and started making copies, his shit still spread out all over the tables. I told him to start packing up. 

5 minutes to closing, he started slowly gathering his stuff onto one table. I told him I was shutting the lights off.

2 minutes to closing, sleepy ramen lady comes back in and says she’s there to help him carry stuff. Yes, after all that complaining about homeless people sleeping in public, he was there with the very same. 

In the end we were 5 minutes late locking up for the day. As we walked to our cars, beer guy asked, “You open at 9am, right?” Oh yay. It’s an obstacle course of fuckery at the library this week.

(The book was Trump: Think like a Billionaire. He can keep it.)

 

Dept of bitching and moaning

These are things I was used to that I no longer have to deal with, so each annoyance is like a poke in the eye. I am missing the northern lights and solar eclipse for this shit.

Complaints:

30 years of telling this man about bacteria and how we do not wash smelly kitchen rags and floor-cleaning towels with our daily laundry because bacteria in our underwear is fucking gross, and yesterday he threw the wet floor towel (an old grungy beige towel I use after scrubbing/mopping the cat shit off the bathroom floor) into a load of laundry WITH MY WORK CLOTHES. And then left it wet in the washer overnight. I opened the machine up, looking for my pants, and burst into flames.

He ate all the yogurt. And the cottage cheese.

He ate the piece of chocolate I was saving.

He makes himself smoothies twice a day but doesn’t have lunch or breakfast foods for the kids.

He unplugs my devices to charge his own.

He trimmed the tree and left a huge pile of branches on the patio to dry out and be a fire hazard. Again. Right next to the wood chipper.

I’m sure he’s doing good things, too, but I can’t see it. He annoys me even when he isn’t doing anything wrong. It was fine when he visited my place, but over here I want to kick him in the face every time I look at him.

Meanwhile:

The neighbors had a huge party in our shared driveway, with tents and screaming kids and cars parked everywhere. Even when they’re not partying, the noise is constant; traffic, military planes, helicopters, blasting car stereos, roosters crowing, people yelling, balls bouncing in the street. The windows are just screens and louvres, you can’t shut the sound out, there is no escape anywhere.

It is hot and everything is damp. Dust settles and turns to black grime. I washed the crud off the louvres and scraped black clusters of cockroach egg casings out of the rails.

Broke up a fight between two library homeless guys who both wanted me to call the cops because they claimed the other one was threatening to chop their head off. 

Had to shut down my blog because I suddenly got hit with THOUSANDS of bots. Wtf, nobody needs to farm this content. There is no plot resolution here. It’s the tale of a woman who takes three decades to finally get away from her cheating husband and then comes back to visit and scrub the floor anyway. It’s a bad story. I’m rewriting the second half of it.

West Jet has a “no pets on flights out of Hawaii” policy and I can’t take Billy back with me. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to—it’s a long trip with a bad cat—but having the decision made for me makes me feel mutinous.

My anxiety is up in my neck. I want to go home. I deal with stress by cleaning and baking, and hell if I want to reward this man with a clean house and cookies. I’m doing it anyway though, because I love my kids.

Weight lost so far: 10lbs.

Back at the library

Lunch break. Day 1. (Subbing for 2 weeks to make some money and, evidently, FIX EVERYTHING.)

The air conditioning is out. It is 90 degrees in the library, we are sweating through our clothes. The new temporary branch manager is a kid in grad school who has no idea how she got into this position. The new circulation sub doesn’t know how to use the computer. Former boss came in to orient the new people for a couple hours and then skedaddled into retirement, leaving my old coworker and me to figure out what the fuck is happening with all the money report errors and mis-checked items and late fine disasters. I sorted out $600 in fines for one frantic mother whose renewals haven’t been working since I left and half her books were marked missing because they weren’t checked in correctly. There are dozens of people crammed into the hot library, trashing the children’s area, messing up the merch cabinet, asking how to print and where the toilets are, and complaining about the temperature. 

Boss told me I could still apply for the permanent manager position, and that the marketing department is hiring a graphic designer in Honolulu. There is a new regional manager, and my old friend from grad school just got the manager position at another branch. I am annoyed that all these promotions opened up right after I left, and annoyed that I am annoyed because I don’t actually want the jobs. The commute to Honolulu and parking garage fees negate the pay raise, the bureaucracy of branch management is awful, my neighbors are noisy as hell, and every bad memory still lives in the corners of my home. I miss my crows, and the quiet walks around the pond with the seals and otters and ducks. I am broke and lost my career trajectory, but the drop in status has paid for peace and a cute little house on the sea, with summers and Christmas breaks off—which I could never hope to have here. Reality feels warped, and it’s hard to believe I’ll ever be able to go back.

But it’s nice to get everything back in working order here. My poor coworker has been trying to keep the place running like someone scooping water out of a sinking canoe. 

Having a lot of mixed feelings today, ha.

(Total weight lost: 5 lbs)

Show me the way to go home

It does feel like the past 6 months were a dream, except for the jarring irregularities. The house, although obviously cleaned for my arrival, is slightly shabbier. Every small change has been a downgrade; the decorative metal toilet paper stand was replaced with a plastic 3D printed wall holder, the bed had been stripped of the memory foam topper, the side table was moved out of reach for tea cups, and the replacement lamp shade still has the plastic on it. The bathroom floor was swept, but hasn’t been scrubbed since I left.

I was happy to be back with my boy and my cats. Billy and Lili came to sit on me and make biscuits. Zenny did, too. I had been wondering if 6 months alone with me might have put her off my company for a while, but all of that teenager/parent head-butting brought us closer. She’s been laying on my lap, interlocking our fingers while watching tv, and going out with me to shop for clothes, making jokes and talking up a storm. A few times she’s dropped her voice and whispered, “I can’t wait to go home. It’s nice to visit, but everything is better there.” Same, kid. “Except the food.” Yeah. We’ll be packing a lot of ingredients back with us.

Mike slept on the trundle bed in the boys’ room, and I climbed onto the rickety bed. It wasn’t rickety when I left, but now it feels like the middle support will give out at any moment and dump the bed onto the floor. I laid on the hard mattress and tried not to think about what he might have been doing to ruin the memory foam and loosen the bed frame. I slept at my mother’s house for the next few nights. Zenny came with me.

I’ve been happy to spend time with Leif, and to hear him play piano again. The food is good. We’re all going to see the new Spider-Man movie this weekend. The wild chickens make me happy, and the mountains are beautiful. I’m sweaty and greasy from the sudden immersion into the heat and humidity, but my wrinkles are smoothing out like steam ironing, so that’s ok.

I’ve been less happy to check the kettle and my tea cups for cockroaches every morning, and to shake the toaster for geckos (I love the geckos, I don’t want them toasted). The homeless encampment near our house is bigger. People in the stores will run over you if you don’t jump out of the way, and give you dirty looks when they hit you. Parents tell their kids to shut the fuck up or they’ll kick their fucking asses. Pit bulls in every yard. Screaming neighbors. Traffic jams, cars parked everywhere, abandoned vehicles. 

I’ve lost 3lbs this week, though, so that’s something anyway.

Starting back at the library next week.

Out the door

I filled the bird feeders, shut off the breaker to the hot water heater, unplugged everything, said goodbye to the crows, locked up, and hopped the coach to St. John’s. We stopped about a half hour out of Goobies to check on a mail driver who had hit a moose and smashed in the entire front of the van. He was ok, somehow, and waiting for police to make the hours-long drive out to meet him. We had to leave him there alone with the dead moose.

Dropped off at the airport, I had about 8 hours to kill. I live here now, sitting in the terminal watching people come and go, eating protein bars and Diet Coke. I don’t feel anything. My suitcase was a matryoshka of other suitcases, with one pair of jeans and three tank tops in the middle. Almost everything I own is still in Hawaii, I’m just returning the bags so Leif can move to Scotland.

If this imaginary plane ever boards, it’s 6 hours to the west coast, then 12 hours overnight at the airport, sleeping on chairs because I felt broke and cancelled my hotel reservation. 1 hour to another west coast airport; 5 hours sleeping on different chairs. 6 hours to Hawaii. I’ll get in tomorrow night, wrecked. 

I brought my knitting and sketchbook and downloaded books to listen to, but I’ve just been sitting and staring. Travel exists in its own time, there’s no point trying to get out of it.

Notes from the liminal place:

The seating has shrunk again, and my knees now press the seats in front of me. The men on either side of me were spreading their legs as far apart as they could go, but not because they were assholes. Their femurs just wouldn’t fit any other way. They were tense the whole flight, trying not to tap me with their knees and elbows. I folded like a pocket knife and stayed still for 6 hours to help out.

At the midnight airport, I roamed around the terminals looking for a place to sleep. In a long deserted corridor lined with unused security carts, I found an unoccupied area filled with jumbled lounge chairs and long padded benches. There were rows of airport wheelchairs parked at the back, cordoned off in a dark area. Nobody was sitting there, but there were no signs to warn me off, so I went to the back of the room and laid down on a long cushioned bench. When I opened my eyes at 1:30am, two other women were sleeping on the benches around me. By 4:30am there were six women asleep under sweatshirts and airplane blankets. 10,000 years of instincts kept us all puddled together so we could sleep safely. People are cute.

I have a cup of tea, a breakfast sandwich, and 5 more hours before my next flight. I still don’t feel anything about this trip. 

A million hours later

Flew to Vancouver surrounded by kids coming back from summer camp with desperate young counselors who couldn’t figure out why all the kids on the list said “here” and raised their hand when called, but their head count was short by one. The cabin crew did not give a shit if they left a kid behind, they were shutting the doors on time and that was the camp’s problem. There was brief PANIC as the doors closed, but thankfully it was just a problem with the list and nobody was actually missing.

Last layover. My brain is failing. I need a shower. Lost my AirPods in International security, didn’t realize it until I had gone through customs and sat down to eat a $20 sandwich. Backtracked. Jumped up and down waving like an idiot outside the DO NOT ENTER doors at customs. Came in when the airport police officer waved me through to the customs agent, then walked in literal circles when she told me to go back where I came from first. Back to the customs line? Nobody was even in the line, so I stood at the entrance to it. “No, all the way back.” Wtf, ok, I walked all the way to the start of the empty line and walked through the maze to stand back in front of her again, confused. “NO, BACK TO SECURITY, ALL THE WAY DOWN THERE IN THE NEXT ROOM.” I slapped my forehead.

I have my AirPods, and bought a bottle of Wayne Gretzky maple cream bourbon in the Duty Free shop just because I thought it was funny.

10 more hours to go. They’ll have to scrape me out of my seat and pour me into baggage claim when we get there.

The last leg 

I laid down across some empty seats at the gate and napped on my cat-shaped pillow. I felt greasy and unwashed and old and fat, but when I cracked my eyes open there was a good-looking dad in his 40s looking at me like I was the Madonna of the Trash Heap. I checked to make sure a tit hadn’t fallen out of my tank top or something, but he kept throwing me sneaky glances like a teenager, smiling when I accidentally made eye contact, and suddenly I felt dewy-faced and tousle-haired and not-so-old and voluptuous. This was kind of annoying, actually, because it was absolutely unacceptable behavior from a married man with kids on his lap and a wife trying to engage him with travel logistics, but still - visible to someone age-appropriate and conventionally attractive? Maybe it’s not too late for a hoe-phase after all. This is not that day, though. Mind your family, horny man on vacation. 

When we finally boarded the plane to Hawaii, I was glad not to be seated near the family. I tried not to fall asleep, because it’ll be 9pm when we land and I still need to sleep the night, but I failed, and three hours blipped by. We’re making the descent now, and I’m starting to feel something. It feels like… I am going home after any other trip I’ve ever been on, and the past 6 months were a fever dream that wasn’t actually real.

… and a swelling rage.

Take two

I am going back over to the neighbors’ house for supper, this time with a chocolate haupia pie and a self defense bottle of diet ginger ale to ward off mixed drinks.

Hold me in your thoughts.

Will report back.

Edited to update:

Not drunk! And I didn’t say anything stupid or embarrassing. I don’t even think I could—the neighbors tell way more dick jokes and gross stories than I do.

I trotted down the hill with my pie and was met by laughing people and a Bud Light. I nursed the beer and drank my ginger ale, listening to the family share drunken misadventure stories. 

“Jaysus, and he was that drunk, we had to hold him up under both arms to get him to the car, and we’re dragging him along like that and he says ‘ah, hang on, hold my pecker, will yous? I has to pee!’ B’y, you’d better not drink all that, I’m not holding your pecker again!”  

“And they went out poaching, caught a moose, got it out back where they could dress it in the shed without getting caught, and suddenly their friends come popping in and asking, ‘You gots some moose, wha’?’ And they’re like, fucking hell, how did those guys know we had a moose? They says, ‘We just followed the trail of blood from your truck!’” 

I asked, “How did they know they had a moose in there and not a person?” “Oh, nobody would ever notice if you had a person. My friend worked for the funeral home and needed help moving a few bodies, but she didn’t have a hearse, so I was driving all over the peninsula with two dead bodies in the back of an SUV, and nobody pulled me over.” 

We all crowded into the kitchen to load plates with salt beef, cabbage, turkey, and turnips. The pie was demolished. I drank my soda and listened to stories, we laughed at the little dog getting harassed by the crows, and I took an early leave to head home when the sun started going down. These kind of parties might be more drinking and cigarette smoke than I can handle for very long—I’m more of a snacks and card games kind of socializer—but it was nice to be around people.

One more day before I go back.