Mountains and Islands

There's a joke here on Hawaii Island that the the primary way locals dispose of their rubbish is to load it all into the back of a pickup truck, then drive around until it's all gone.  On strolls up my narrow, one-lane jungle road,  it seems it's not really a joke at all, but a statement of fact.  Lately, I've noticed an odd assortment of trash strewn along the edge of the roadway.  There's the usual stuff, like McDonald's bags and Kentucky Fried chicken boxes and soda cups and beer bottles.  I even see the occasional Starbucks Frappuchino with whipped cream plastic tumbler, which just goes to show you that a person willing to spend six buck on a cup of coffee isn't necessarily enlightened or evolved.  That said, it's the other stuff that's got me perplexed; yogurt containers, egg cartons, tampon applicators, vaccuum cleaner bags.  These are not items a person just has in their hand and flings out the window.  (I don't even want to think about th...

It was a beautiful day today.  Perfect.  One in a million.  Literally.  So I jumped into the convertible for a joyride.  OK the convertible is a tractor and the joyride is mowing the lawn, but still, it was a fantastic day.  There I was, cutting around the old tangerine tree,  hitting old, moldy fruits that had fallen to the ground, hearing the thud as the blades whacked the dense blobs hiding in the grass.  Fuzzy and nasty as they are, they smell great when you whir over them.  So great, it inspired me to sing, and of course, what else would I croon but that age old masterpiece from the 60s, Hey Mister Tangerine Man.   "Hey mister tangerine man, make some juice for me.  I'm not normal and, there ain't no place I'm going to (except the assylum).... Hey mister tangerine man, splat some fruit for me, in the jingle jangle morning I'll be co-mitted soon."  Yes, it's a classic.   So there I was, mowing away, cutting grass, grinding up sticks and anything in my ...

My abs are becoming rock solid, if I don't say so myself.  Of course, they are covered in a thick, great-if-you're-an-arctic-walrus-but-not-so-attractive-in-Hawaii layer of flab, so you really can't tell.  I would love to attribute this to all the sit-ups and crunches and planks I do in the gym, but that would be misleading.  My core strength can only be fairly credited to the kitties. Yes, it is they who have me clenching my rectus abdominis with great fervor each morning as they jump without warning up from the floor to land square in the middle of my gut.  No clench, and my internal organs are toast.  They do this when I am sound asleep, dead to the world, out like a light, snoozing soundly, so I am forced to wake up, realize what is happening and react, all in a nanosecond.  It's got to be good training for something, though I'm not exactly sure what.   I now rue the day when I learned to sleep on my back.  All I can say is, "Ugh!" But my core thank...

I must have one of those benign faces, an approachable demeanor, an aura that screams friendly.  It's as though the word  sucker is emblazoned on my forehead, or across my back, advertising my niceness.  Being nice is a curse, let me tell you.  I went to the Hilo library yesterday to write.  My plan was to sit there for three productive and uninterrupted hours of quiet, with no barking dogs or, "Can you help me with this" husbands.  I found a spot near the courtyard and got quickly to work, eyeballs trained intently upon my laptop screen, tick, tick ticking the keyboard.  A man arrived to sit in my area at an adjacent table.  I didn't notice him at first.  I was busy.   Engrossed.  But the neon of my niceness must have flashed, "Bug me.  Irritate me. I won't get mad.  I'm NICE!"   "Excuse me," he said.  "Excuse me."  I looked over to see him sitting there with papers strewn about on the table in front of him.  He was a small,...

A few of our trees were bursting with coffee cherry yesterday, so I impulsively began to pick them until the bottom of my t-shirt resembled a kangaroo pouch.  I pulped them by hand, a sticky, messy task, then soaked them over night to ferment them.  The soaking removed what's called the mucilage, the  slimy goo that remains around the seed, otherwise known as the coffee bean.  In a few hours I'll take them out of the water and dry them by spreading them out on a cookie sheet and putting them in Ron's office with the dehumidifier cranked.  I can finish the drying tomorrow morning in the oven, set on a low warm temp.  Eventually we'll get a dehydrator.  We'll need one, since we live in a climate too damp for air or sun drying.  For now, however, it's low tech all the way.  Once dry, I'll rub the parchment off the beans, then roast 'em, also in the oven since I don't have roaster.  I predict I'll have enough for just a pot or two of coffee, but it...

I picked up a few items at the Hilo Farmers' Market this morning.  The place was bustling, but the merchants were complaining to one another about how slow it was.  There were lots of lookers and few buyers.  Everyone, however, was happy to see the sunshine, so despite the heat and mugginess, nobody was complaining.  "At least it's not raining," said one man, a merchant powering down an enormous cheeseburger like he hadn't eaten in a week.  "I hear that," I said. "One think about Hilo though," he said.  "When it rains, it's a warm rain, you know?  So it's really nice for just walking around.  Really comfortable." "True," I said.  "Especially if you have one of those giant, Hilo umbrellas."  He liked that, smiled and nodded. I wanted to add that 72 degrees, dry and sunny are also nice conditions for walking around too and don't require an umbrella, but I didn't want to burst the guy's bubb...

Ah Cinco de Mayo.  Viva la Mexico!  Thinking of that yesterday reminded me of the U2 song Vertigo, which was featured in the planetarium show I saw Friday night with my neighbor, Kathy.  I haven't heard that song in awhile.  There was Bono , shouting, " Uno , dos, tres , catorce !"   Hmmmm ... All I can say is, let that be a lesson to you kids out there.  Stay in school!  If you drop out, you two (U2?) could become a bajillionaire rock star who cannot count to four in Spanish.  One, two, three fourteen?  Hello, hello....  Really, could nobody tell the guy?  Is he that cool? Speaking of the planetarium show, I'm proud to say I didn't get dizzy or queasy 'til the third to last song.  Maybe it was Vertigo .  I don't remember.  I just know it took about an hour after I got home for the fuzziness in my head to clear.   Anyway, back to Cinco de Mayo.  It will be a memorable day for me.  I was laid off.  Got an official letter telling me how great I am and ...

On Wednesday, I schlepped a coffee can full of coins to the bank for deposit. I'm guessing it was worth between $200 and $300.  The first time I did this, I was surprised to learn that the deposit didn't go into my account the same day, but the next.  Rather than dump the coins straight into the counting machine, they transferred them from my can into a bag, put a slip of paper inside with my hand-written account number scratched in ball-point ink and sent me away empty handed.  I was less than comfortable with this procedure, but when the money showed up the next day in my account, I decided I'd trust them again.  It's a system.  A lousy system, but a system none-the-less.  So this week, I did the same thing and again walked away with nothing, forced to trust that money would eventually land in my account.  It's now been two days and I've received no deposit.  So I called, only to be told that it can take up to five business days for coin deposits, because, ...