it's still raining

we're in our SIXTH week of "one in a hundred years" rainfall (in terms of intensity, duration, & consistency).

running to cover the daybed on the deck with a tarp everytime it turns into torrential sideways-blowing rain is getting old.

They say we might get a break in the rain in the middle of next week. Or not.

Real bummer for the tourists, for people whose houses are flooded, Jasper whose walks are fewer and shorter, my walls that are molding, parents whose kids are going stir crazy from cabin fever.........

and my tan is fading.

laurel ulrich and harry lewis are my heros

Last week's issue of the Chronicle for Higher Education had an article about Laurel Ulrich and another one by Harry Lewis. Laurel first, Harry in another post.

I have always admired Laurel, from the first time I heard her speak - I think it was one of those "dinner and a Harvard professor talks" at Dudley House. She was insightful and thorough and not the slightest bit pretentious (how un-Harvard). Subsequent encounters I had with her, either in person, in print, in the news added to my positive impressions.

Most recently I was impressed with her calm reasoned reactions during the Summers bruhaha. But you can't imagine how impressed I was to discover that SHE is the author of the statement,

"Well-behaved women seldom make history".

Wow.

diamond head beach, malasadas, and bach

Pretty much self-explanatry. Made coffee, drove Zach to school, walked Jasper at Diamond Head beach, found a few good pieces of sea glass, wondered if its unwise to be down the hill there alone (save for the dog). Up the hill, to Leonard's for a malasada (they have a March only banana custard-filled special....maybe next time). Ate on the wooden bench outside with the last of my coffee. On the way was listening to classical music, something that seems Cambridgesque, out of place in Honolulu. I generally can't listen to classical music unless something else is also happening - a ballet or whatever. I could never awake at classical music concerts. But classical music while driving seems an excellent match, especially on curvy roads like Sierra Drive - though maybe even better on a highway. And Bach didn't even have a car. He probably wouldn't have appreciated it. But wouldn't Mozart have loved one?

you can't google imaginary friends

I had a long tiring but satisfying day, lectures, labs, torrential rains, grocery stop on the way home so I could make rainy day chicken soup. Thought I'd do tortilla soup and got an avocado but once home felt more chicken noodlish. So I made it with carrots and celery and noodles (actually fettuccini), and made the rest of the chocolate chip cookies from the dough I made the other day. We ate inside because of the rain. They watched some of the recorded 24 and then we watched My Name is Earl. I thought I could do some work but I've earned a little down time, and haven't done beads for ages.

I got out the green mix I'd been thinking of making something with - Vaseline African trade beads, and some complimentary lampwork - to play with while watching tv. Was mixing and matching looking for the best bead cap combos from my stash. Have a lot of 3.5mm daisy spacers but realized I need bigger ones, the 4mm. Went on eBay to see what they're running now price-wise, thinking I might order some. Then suddenly remembered there was supposed to be another bead show around now, and wondered if I missed it. So I googled "bead show Honolulu March" and up came:

"March 10-12, Honolulu, HI - Second Annual Hawaii Spring Best Bead Show, Ward Warehouse" on the justbeads web site.

Great. I can go and look at silver findings.

Then I noticed the third show listed was:

March 11-12, (Syracuse) Liverpool, NY, 13088, The Innovative Beads Expo, 441 Electronics Parkway

I was born in Syracuse and lived in Liverpool until I was 7 ½. Once ages ago I'd tried to locate Liverpool but without much luck. I even remember the name Electronics Parkway. I wonder if that's where the big GE plant was where we'd go to those big company family parties. Though that must have been with friends families cause my dad didn't work for GE.

I google mapped the parkway and right near it was Buckley Road. I remember Buckley Road! I rode the bus down it every day. We went to Buckley Road Elementary School (just me and Barry, Joe and David were too little). Could I remember the names of the streets we lived on? Concentrate - yes, Sunrise Terrace (Age 0-5), Melvin Drive (5-7). And they seem not to have changed that much. I remember the huge back yard (or it seemed huge then) at the house on Sunrise Terrace, swinging on the swing set by myself, lying in the grass and purple clover in not very warm Upstate New York summers looking up at the clouds just daydreaming. Hmmm...so I always loved to day dream. Oooh...remebering the moment Mom told me my imaginary friends weren't real and I realized she was right and they disappeared - right there on the sidewalk where I'd been playing with them while waiting to be picked up after First Communian practice. How sad. Though its neat realizing I'm remembering being 5 and 6 and 7. Mrs. Wedman from across the street babysitting. And the "nightmare" when I was 3 1/2 and white monsters came in the night and took Mom away (Turns out that was her being taken to the hospital in an ambulance). The day Dad came home - walking down the street (did that mean he took a bus or something? With a fake arrow through his head, picking plums? Cherries? From the kazillion fruit trees in the yard. Lot sof rose bushes.

Then to Melvin Drive. Was it 319? Not sure. Can't call and ask Mom cause she's dead. Geez, in ten days she'll have been dead 11 years. That seems impossible. Can't call Dad cause he ditched us all years ago after he married Suzie. Haven't seen him since their wedding. Nicholas was two then, and he's now 18. Tried calling him on his birthday a year or two ago but they hung up on me.

Anyway, one big memory at Melvin Drive was all the construction, the bulldozers and caterpillars and the small of the dirt. A memory of them having a big project at the end of the street. And yes - guess that would have been when they built Highway 81. There was only farmland behind our backyard. We could run in the corn. And the open land is amazingly still there - though it seems cause it's the lawn area of some kind of office park or something. Also an indelible winter memory of walking the endless distance down Melvin Drive from Buckley Road after school with snowdrifts 5 and 6 feet high and I stepped in a slush puddle at the curb and my boot filled with frozen icy water. And trick or treating as Cinderella. Being so hot in summer had to keep running inside to get drinks of "ice water" from a big square glass jar in the fridge.

Then I wondered if Daw's Drug still existed and if I could figure out the neighborhood in Syracuse where that was and they would have lived when they first got married.

So I google Daw's Drug Syracuse (this is what started this whole rambling entry) and up came:

"Friends….that once-upon-a-time they lived or visited in Syracuse or central New York. ... Peter Stein--managed the downtown Daws Drug Store in the mid-1950's….How weird is that? I checked out their site and it’s a couple that moved to Mississippi in the early 80s looking for friends they've lost touch with.

Could they not have seen him since the mid 50's? Geez… that’s 50 years ago.

It's still raining. Jasper's antsy. How am I supposed to walk him in the rain? Don't have the handy over hang of Hilles Library anymore to shelter me while he pees.

Time for this imaginary daughter to get some sleep.

rainy thoughts and macadamia pancakes

It rained ALL last week. I intermittently thought about tourists who'd saved and planned to come here and then never had a sunny day. Did they like it anyway because it was warm and exotic, just not sunny and there was snow in Chicago? There's been all sorts of flooding and some landslides on the Windward side and several people have been saying they don't remember a time when its rained so heavily so consistently. Usually if you do have really rainy weather it seems to last a day or two and then change. Are their perceptions accurate or not? Is this a reflection of the mid-Pacific version of more erratic, more extreme weather? Probably not I suppose. Its probably just winter. We never had this kind of rain when I lived here in 1979.

Today there's a mix of sun and clouds. I see planes leaving, flying over Diamond Head on their way back to the mainland and imagine tourists so annoyed that today they could actually have gone to the beavh but instead they're on the plane. Oh, that plane is turning right - must be going to Japan.

I'm typing this on my laptop (for some reason Nicholas calls them labtops) on the deck. I know I should call it a lanai, I'm in Hawaii, therefore its a lanai. But its built out of wood and has a wood railing and rotting wood steps down to the backyard.

Nicholas is sleeping on the daybed. Jaspers sleeping at his feet - oh, now he moved and is under the bed for ultimate cave-coziness.

Gregory's at UH "working out". I made Zachary and me a great breakfast of macadamia nut-banana pancakes, sausages, kiwi fruit. First time I've tried this with the pancakes and they turned out really well - just about as good as the ones at Eggs and Things in Waikiki -and without the long line.

I've become quite enamored of macadamia nuts lately. When we first got here I wasn't appreciating them as much. But a few weeks ago at Cold Stone decided to get banana ice cream with bananas (the first free add-in), which I'd done before - but then decided to break the bank and get a second add-in. Macadamia nuts came out of my mouth before I'd even really thought about it. An inspired choice. Except it now makes me want to think up reasons to be going by a Cold Stone.

Clouds are settling in. Guess we won't be going down to Diamond Head beach after all. I need some sun. Or maybe just some banana banana macadamia nut ice cream.

somehow it's already march 1st

which means an entire month has gone by since I've written on here.

That's almost scary. If I snap my fingers will it be April 1st?

Snap.

Wow......it worked.

not.

haha

April Fools

March Fools?

Apparently, since it's actually March 2nd.

okay, time to go to bed before i get even stupider.