Skip to main content

Wind and rain in paradise

It was a dark and stormy night. Really. It was. Then there was another. Then another. Those nights were accompanied by some dark and stormy days, too. Last week was pretty wild, with buckets of rain, power outages, toppled trees, washed out roads and downright weather craziness. On Wednesday at the winery, I was the hero for figuring out how to turn the incessant beep of the alarm system off when the power went kaput. Visitors and fellow employees alike applauded when the loud, high-pitched whine finally stopped. I also got to ring up transactions by hand and count back change for the first time since my early 20s. That's a very long time, folks. Whew! Luckily, those things you learn when you're young are the things that stay with you for life. It was like riding a bike. I handled the finances while my cohorts poured tastings and helped tourists with merchandise. Amazingly, all the credit card and cash receipts balanced perfectly at day's end. Not so perfect was the impact my quick receipt writing had on inventory. Who knew that the mango butter had a different skew number than the coconut butter and that each of the various flavors of mints had their own as well. The line at checkout was long and ringing up transactions by hand is slow, so rather than writing an individual number for each item, I just wrote "five butters" or "15 mints." The bean counters earning the big bucks can sort it all out at the end of the month. Still, I was given accolades for a job well done under duress. No raise, mind you. Just accolades. Right about the time the crowd died down, the power came back on. Go figure.
When I got home that evening, the power was out here, too. So we did what has become a tradition for us sans electricity; we fired up candles, lanterns and flashlights and played Scrabble. I won by a measly 6 points. Still, I was stoked. I have always been easily amused. The lights were dim for several hours, so in addition to Scrabble, we had time for a game of Skip Bo and some giggles with 80s trivial pursuit questions.
The stormy weather continued through the week, lessening by the weekend.
Poor Hoppsy hates thunder, so we had a few sleepless nights mixed in there. Of course, I can't really blame her for all of the sleeplessness. The thunder was so loud one night, and the lightning so bright, we were all kept wide awake even without Hoppsy climbing on the bed and quaking in fear. It shook the house so much that even Crawford, hard of hearing as she is, had her nerves wracked by the rumbling.
All in all, however, we faired well. Maui wasn't so lucky, with mudslides everywhere. The Kona coffee farmers on the west side of this island lost trees. Storm surge sent waves crashing over Ali'i Drive along the main drag in Kailua-Kona. Shops closed. Roads closed. Windows definitely closed.
Still, I always kind of enjoy big storms, so long as nobody's really hurt by them. They're exciting. It's an excuse to hunker down, burn candles, play games and eat junk food. Not that I really need an excuse to do those things, but there's a lot less guilt if you have one.
Mauna Kea is living up to it's name these days, with a bright, white frosting on top. Mauna Kea means "white mountain" in Hawaiian.
There was only one person ahead of me in my checkout line at Safeway today. Shoots. What's the world coming to?

A hui hou. Aloha!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mom

This is my beautiful mom. She died last Sunday. For those who knew her, my heart breaks with you. For those who did not, here's an introduction to the best confidante, role model and mother a girl could hope for in life. This is the obituary I'd planned to submit to the local paper, but have opted instead to publish here. Obituary: Beverly Todd Bev -- my mom -- was a longtime caregiver, advocate, and dear friend to countless elderly in South Salem. Hers was a kind and generous spirit. She devoted much of her life to the welfare of others, giving wholly of herself and doing so always with great affection and humor. She was born Beverly Marie Steinberger in Silverton, July 23, 1938, the first child and only daughter of Art and Marie Steinberger. Her brothers called her Bevvy Buns, a nickname she grew fond of and wore proudly within the family circle as an adult. Bev attended St. Paul’s Elementary School in Silverton, Silverton High School and Marylhurst Co...

Back at it

It's been some time since I've written. My mom died in February, and I haven't had the gumption to write much, other than a couple of feature stories for the paper and the occasional pithy email to a friend. Tonight, sitting in my favorite burger joint with a pile of fries in front of me, I dunk them into a deep pool of ketchup mixed with a hot sauce. That's how Mom liked 'em. My burger? The Spicy Hawaiian, a nod to my 808 connections. It's a brilliant combination of peppers and pineapple, a favorite on the Power Stop menu. I'm sure she'd have loved it, too. There's a bubbly beer with a lime in it. That's not a homage to anything. I just like beer. These past months, I've done little but work, search and apply for jobs. Two rejection letters have landed in my email this week. Search-and-apply has become a futile obsession. It's time for a break, at least until I hear back from all those applications still floating around out there. I am...

Goodbye Dan Fogelberg

Saturday started out as just another day to clean the house. Within a short time, however, I found myself on a mission; a mission of arachnid eradication. The spiders, for all their great bug-eating prowess, have a tendency to get a bit out of control in a place where there's no real winter. They're not only everywhere outside, but inside, too. I found webs with giant eight-leggers in corners, on the ceiling, hiding under window shades....everywhere! They were in places I vacuumed just two days before. Since the invasion of the beetles, the spiders have grown enormously fat and happy. So I sucked 'em all up. EEEEEEEEWWWWWW! I was none too keen on removing the vacuum bag. In addition to spider sucking, there was fun with fungi. What did the girl mushroom say to the boy mushroom? Gee your a fun-gi! Unfortunately, the prevailing fungus amongus was not shitakes or portabellos, but mold and mildew. Again.... eeeeeeeeewwwwww! I cleaned the top of the fridge, which was home to a n...