Changes

Change:  The process of becoming different.

It's important for me to be jolted out of my routine.   Travel jolts me out of my routine.  My routine becomes a lot more enjoyable once I've been forced out of my routine.  I'm so much of a control freak that being made to step out and try new things is very important to my mental health.  I'm always amazed at how surprised I am at my experiences when compared to expectations of my experiences.  Things that I look forward to often fall flat while stuff that seems ordinary often amazes. 

I hate change and I love change. 

I'll say this: I am usually dissatisfied in a vague way at the end of the day.  I feel this way about Hawaii, too, a sense of things undone, not accomplished overwhelming at times the satisfaction of all that we did.  It's never enough with me.  I'm never satisfied with what I've done.

Happy Bitching

Analogy:  A relationship of resemblance or equivalence between two situations . . . especially when used as a basis for explanation or extrapolation.

I think that today I'm going to bitch in a thoughtful, reflective way; not the venomous bitching, bitching with evil intent that I prefer.  Happy bitching.  Pleasant, low key, positive, optimistic bitching.  Yeah.  All right now.

I hold tight to the analogy of a country music fan attending a heavy metal concert.  It can be a good metal show and hats off to the hick for trying to expand his or her horizons > we all need to try new things from time to time < but opinions are not likely to be swayed.  Country music is not heavy metal music and never shall the twain meet.  I've been listening to heavy metal music for almost fifty years.  There is precedence for me liking heavy metal music while simultaneously holding on to the "country music sucks" attitude.  I've been at hybrid music festivals that had country music stars performing on auxiliary stages and I recognize the talent and the appeal of the music, it just doesn't tickle my music funny bone.

If you like baseball don't go to a football game.  The problem isn't with the football part, it's with the you going to the football game part.

By now you've probably gotten the point.  SuperK sticks her fingers in her ears when I try to offer up an analogy on any subject.  You don't have this luxury.  You'd have to stick your fingers in your eyes although I guess you could turn off your computer, too.

Anyway, re: Hawaii . . .  The issue wasn't with Hawaii, which is a very fine and lovely place, it was with the Seaweed family visiting Hawaii.  It really is for people who like beaches and pools, untucked T Shirts and flip flops, long afternoons sitting at bars drinking beer.  I personally hate sand.  I try to never touch sand.  It is impossible to get sand off of you once it is on you.  I don't mind dirt or mud, just sand.  Gritty, sticky, lodged in your shoes sand.

At home I have been careful to keep my responses noncommittal about Hawaii.  No one wants to hear bitching about a vacation in Hawaii unless the bitcher has been assaulted or nearly drowned.   

  

Complaining For The Sheer Joy Of Complaining

Bitch:  To criticize spitefully, often for the sake of complaining rather than in order to have the problem corrected.  (Ed. Note:  This is an outstanding definition.  I love the concept that to bitch is to complain only for the sheer joy of complaining and for no other reason.  The bitching person doesn't even want to solve the problem.  Brilliant.)

And because Bitching Is My Life . . . . 

And because I can't come up with a form of bitching more joyous than bitching about an experience in Hawaii . . . 

The condo/time share complex we stayed out had a presentation every morning where five or six vendors would come in and give a brief presentation of their tours and services.  It was actually helpful to get an overview of the kinds of activities available.  There was this one dude whose company offered a combo tour that included a plane ride and a boat trip, with stops at a couple of landmarks, all in a chauffeured van that held eight or ten people.  The price was pretty reasonable and it seemed to be a convenient way to include a few different experiences in a hassle free fashion.

The one niggling concern I had was that the guy giving the presentation (and running the tour) was kind of schmucky.  He was sort of a cross between Henny Youngman and Rodney Dangerfield, and you young people can look those references up.  He would say things like: "Sir, where are you and your wife from?  If that lady sitting next to you is actually your wife wink wink yuck yuck yuck."  It seemed to me that about a third of the old people in the room thought this was hilarious while the rest of us were rolling our eyes.  I signed up for the tour because I didn't think that he could keep up that stale and inane banter for seven and one half hours, and boy, was I wrong about that.  By the end of the day I was pondering jabbing sharp objects into my earholes, hoping that I could damage my eardrums enough to drown out the sound of his voice (his electronically amplified voice) once and for all.

"Where's Seaweed?"

"Oh, he threw himself out the door a couple of hours ago, right at the crest of that mountain precipice.  The last we saw of him he was still plummeting, with a big smile on his face."

The real problem was that it was raining that day.  Nonetheless, Henny loaded us all into his van, drove a couple of minutes down the road, then started calling the air and boat tour operators to find out if their portion of the day was still viable.  Which they were not.  I thought this was a sneaky rip off; we were prisoners in the van at that point with no way to escape. Henny filled a good chunk of time driving us around to easily accessible and fairly obvious overlooks, droning on and on like an evil clown sadist.  As we were to learn at the end of the day Henny must have made much of his income on tips because he began to shamelessly harangue us (amplified, electronic) about the size of his tip by drawing an analogy about how much you should tip a hotel valet to park your car, and comparing this to how much work he did, what with all of the driving us around to see things that we had already seen, in the rain.

Well, at that point I had smoke coming out of my ears, and I have pretty big ears.  We disembarked from the van and I kept walking.  The thought of giving this man any more money strained all credulity.

As I got about twenty feet from the van, moving purposefully away, Henny actually shouted after me: "Seaweed.  What's the matter?  Didn't you have a good time?"

"No, not really," I replied, over my shoulder.  

I had to give him his props.  He harangued me for a tip and then he harangued me when I didn't tip him, in front of everyone else, and I'm really seriously good about tipping.  I tipped everyone else on the trip and no one else asked me to do it.

I will never, ever forget Henny.  He was a highlight, of sorts.  In Hawaii.

Seaweed, Unwise

Relax:  To calm down; to become less severe or tense.

A friend of ours from The Program drove us to the airport for our Hawaii flight.  We were discussing what SuperK and I were going to do once we arrived on the island.  I was throwing out ideas about hiking and biking and snorkeling and kayaking and taking helicopter rides and digging for gold and wrestling wild boars, shit like that, when he said: "You know, you could just relax."

I paused for a couple of beats, pondering whether or not I should say what I really wanted to say, mindful of the concept of "restraint of pen and tongue," not that this ever stops me.

"Fuck relaxed," I offered.  "I don't do relaxed."

I said this in good spirits but without a trace of irony.  I wasn't being silly.  I was being honest.  My friend laughed.  He knows me and my sense of humor so he wasn't too surprised at the comment.  Lack of relax means I get a lot done.  It also means that I'm not . . . well . . . very relaxed.  Being calm is a strenuous exercise for me.  I have to work very, very hard at relaxing.  It's actually easier for me to dig ditches in sun baked Georgia clay than to sit in a chair and relax.

Type A, baby.  I'm at war with everything, all the time.  24/7 as the young people say.

The island of Kauai actually contains a pretty severe ecosystem.  There's a lot of rain which means a lot of mud and it's warm and humid which means, in conjunction with the rain, that the vegetation does not fuck around.  A wiser man might ponder all of the beautiful sand beaches and decide that heading their way was the better option.

Wise: Showing good judgment or the benefit of experience.

We have opted for several pretty tough hikes in this pretty tough ecosystem.  "Apocalyptic" is a word that I throw around too much but it sort of holds some water here.  I can hike when it's hot and when it's cold and when it's raining.  I can climb steep hills and come back down.  But slogging through slick mud lathered on sharp lava rocks has been quite the challenge.

Yesterday we opted for the Kayak ("2 miles down a gentle river") / Hike ("1 mile to a beautiful waterfall with a pool for cooling off") Experience.  A wiser man would have handed over the fifty five dollars per person, let the beefy guide punch him in the nose, then gotten brunch.  

The leisurely start to the tour featured a slog upriver (for those who aren't nautically inclined this is against the current which is not the way you want to go, generally speaking) with the flipping the kayak experience about halfway.  I had no idea it was so easy to flip a kayak.  It was a remarkably fast experience, sort of like slipping on ice.  One second you're upright and the next you're under the kayak, watching your Wet Sack float back down river.  There is nothing quite so amusing as a gangly middle aged man watching his wife paddle after the Wet Sack while simultaneously trying to reflip the kayak and then get back into the kayak.

Fair enough.  No one drowned and no shit was lost.

The trail was not muddy.  The trail was mud in standing water, slick mud in deep water that frequently reached mid calf, with tree roots and rocks obscured in the mud.  About 10 minutes into this part of the tour I heard SuperK mutter something about "just getting through this or just getting out of here alive or just gutting my husband with a fish boning knife."  Something along those lines.  I didn't quite catch what she said but the tone was venomous.  There was so much mud that we weren't able to wear our expensive, engineered hiking boots but rather water shoes that were designed for walking on sand.

We made it to the pool alive and I took a dip in the icy water after I stumbled and pitched over the rocks to get out to the middle.

It was fucking refreshing.

Anyway, we made it back alive with a great story to tell about an experience that sucked, frankly, while we were doing it.  I think this was a case of a tour company that had a full tour booked not wanting to cancel the tour.  I think they should have been more forthcoming about the conditions.  There was a nice Korean couple with two mildly overweight boys along, and they were not prepared for this experience.  The boys were the highlight of the tour as they slipped and slid in the mud in their completely inappropriate footwear, unspooling a continuous stream of Korean dialogue as they went along.

What to do today . . . 

Bitching Seaweed

Cynic:  A person who's outlook is scornfully negative.

I'm in Hawaii, garden spot of the world, and I don't fucking get it.  Don't get me wrong: I get it but I just don't like getting it.  I can see how great a place this would be if you were a water person or you had little kids or you lived someplace where it's very cold so that simply being someplace warm would be reward enough.  Some folks are living busy, stressful lives and need a break.  But for someone who is none of those this place seems slovenly, lazy, a haunt for slackards.  I've never understood why wearing an untucked shirt and baggy exercise pants is shorthand for "relaxed."  What?  If you're shirt is tucked in and has a collar you're stressed out?  

On my first night I stood at the concierge desk behind a woman in a dripping wet bathing suit who had no business being out in public with much skin exposed.  Hey, this is my vacation, too, and seeing all of that corpulent, sagging flesh is not making things better for me.

And it is, as you know, all about me.

I'm at a resort, too, and that means I'm in a community of travelers who like resorts.  Kauai, to its credit, has tried to keep development under control so no high rise hotels.  This means resort life is more or less the selection.  This allows the aforementioned slackards to stagger between the pool and the various buffet meals, mostly unclothed, maybe taking time out for a nap. I'd tip my cap to the outliers who are reading around the pool but I haven't seen a book that falls outside of the genre Shit Literature.

No one but me does it right.

I am keeping my mouth closed.

"Scornfully" negative.  I like that.  I'm looking forward to going home and telling people: "Hawaii . . . meh."

Rich and Famous Seaweed

This is why I have no friends . . . 

I was talking to a "friend" after the meeting this morning about the 4th Step inventory he's currently working on.  He has done the first three columns where you list the people that you currently resent; the cause (or reason) for the particular resentment associated with this person; and what it affects, usually something in the Sex! Power!! Money!!! departments.  Then there is sort of an unofficial 4th column, not really found in The Book but popular with alcoholics, where one tries to figure one's part in the particular resentment, as loath as we are to do this.

"The best part is when you get to the 6th column," I said.  I didn't even pretend to stop at the 5th column.  That's how I am - I get way down the road real fast. 

He sort of half-smiled, looking a little perplexed.

"Yeah, the 6th column," I continued, pressing my advantage.  "That's where you get to blame everyone else.  That's where you find out it really IS them.  It isn't you after all."

He hesitated a minute.  

"Are you serious?" he asked.

I still got it.  I can still lie with the best of them.

I tell the truth today, by and large, because it's the right thing.  I don't believe for a minute that it's the most enjoyable thing to do.  Lying is much more enjoyable.  It gets you out of tight spots and makes you look better in the eyes of other on the occasions where you get away with a whopper; for instance, convincing someone that you're an NFL quarterback.  People look at you with more admiration when they think you're rich and famous.  Plus, I have a long history of lying and a strong natural ability to lie.

I'm telling the truth here.

Pustule Blitzkrieg

Balance:  Mental equilibrium; calmness, a state of remaining clearheaded and unperturbed.

So I get this thing on my lower eyelid, sort of a zit-like pustule, except it's on my lower eyelid and not my face, continuing my unbroken string of high-school-like behavior.  For those of you born without eyelids and unfamiliar with this particular body part, it abuts the eye itself.  It touches the eye.  It is in contact with the eye.  If you can imagine a part of your body that - when swollen - would irritate the eye itself more than the lower eyelid, I urge you to write me personally at: "You Got Fuckin' Nuthin', CA, USA."

Here are some words I enjoy with pustules . . . 
Angry - as in "that's an angry looking wound."
Massage: as in "I don't care how much this stings you need to massage the pustule from time to time."
Express - as in "once the infection causing the angry-looking wound has progressed sufficiently the infection will express its ass out of the wound."  And into the eye itself, I may add, with a lower eyelid infection, infecting the eye itself.

The one thing that I do with a wound is to frequently poke around the general area which is the one thing you're never supposed to do.  This irritates the wound, it makes it look worse, all while not doing anything to improve the situation.  I guess I figure I can make it heal faster.  I don't know why I think this, except that in a general way, I believe that if I furiously push buttons and pull levers and turn knobs that I'll get where I want to go, and right fast.

Anyway, when my body is barking at me I either figure that I have cancer and need to charter a private jet to the Mayo Clinic or I try to ignore the afflicted area, pretending that nothing's wrong.  If I need to do something I wait forever and if I should practice some patience I fly off the handle.  I don't like to wait for an outcome.  While my body seems to gather itself, marshal its defenses, and handle the situation, I want 25 Panzer Divisions storming across the border in a furious Blitzkrieg.

Did you know that Blitzkrieg means "Lightning War?"  

True fact.

I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight is I didn't also provide this definition:
Pustule:  A small accumulation of pus in the dermis or epidermis.