Home sweet home

We’re finally home. The girls and I have been away for almost seven weeks. BG didn’t go; he hates to travel and claimed that someone had to stay home to feed the cats. His loss. He missed 12 plane trips, 17 train trips in the UK and lots of sightseeing. Now he has to look at our 6000 pictures. Still, it feels good to sleep in my own bed. Yesterday BG started filling me in on all the home and local news.

Cats and chickens: Felix is now monitoring the perimeter – on the house roof! That’s actually good news. There’s always the chance that vermin will climb up a nearby tree and leap over to the house. But he seems to be most interested in the geckos that bask in the sun on the hot metal. I’ve seen a few with missing tails. Now if only he and the rest of our cats weren’t afraid of the chickens. BG has taken to feeding the cats on the front lanai again and the chickens are once again bullying the cats away from their food. We may have to switch back to feeding them in the screened-in back lanai.

More chickens: For several months the neighborhood chicken problem went away because a young man came around regularly to capture the roosters. But BG reports that we again have many baby chicks following their mamas. I saw a black hen in our yard with 11 black tennis balls in tow, so cute at that age. So noisy, not too much later! We even have a gutsy hen nesting under our avocado tree. She doesn’t move off those eggs for anything short of being beaned by a falling avo. But I’m too softhearted (or maybe too squeamish) to do anything about this easy target.

Food: BG showed me a Ramen Noodle cookbook that he bought while we were gone. (I can’t understand why he does this. He knows I’ll certainly never use it. I’ve given up trying to figure out my guy.) But the cookbook did correct a misperception I had. Have you heard of Ramen Burgers? Their creator brought them to Honolulu in January and made a big splash. People waited in line for hours to pay $10 for one. They’re now on the menu at L&L Hawaiian Barbeque. Originally I thought that the burger was made of Ramen noodles to make it vegetarian. No, based on a picture in this cookbook, and verified by a search of “ramen burgers” on Google images, it’s the bun that’s made of Ramen noodles. I can’t say it appeals to me and I couldn’t eat it anyway. I’ve been wheat-free for 18 months to eliminate migraines. But I’m not sure I’d try it even if I could – a case of too many ramen noodles in college.

Home: I decided to have my handymen, Kim and Thomas, paint the living-dining-kitchen ceiling while we were gone. It looks beautiful. On the bad side, BG reported that it rained most of that time. The excessively humid weather combined with BG shoving our living room furniture into Jade’s and my bedroom with no air flow resulted in mold on much of our furniture and everything else (CDs, lamps, picture frames). So we are cleaning each piece as we move it back into place. BG keeps suggesting we buy an air conditioner. “This is the tropics, Love! Yah gotta protect your equipment.” I don’t want AC; I love seeing the reaction from people when I tell them we have neither heat nor air-conditioning. But I’m beginning to rethink my position. In fact, we have Hurricane Iselle, currently category 4, barreling toward Hawaii, with Tropical Storm Julio close on Iselle’s heels. At a minimum that will bring more rain for a few days. I wonder if I will have to bring the cats inside if we get high winds. But there was a silver lining to all this rain. After 8 years of drought, the island’s water levels are back to normal.

Quirky Hawaii: Finally, some not-normal news. We now have an officially blessed UFO landing pad on the Big Island. I kid you not. This was front page news in West Hawaii Today. The landing pad and “star visitor sanctuary” were dedicated last month. The naturally formed 80 foot diameter landing pad is part of the 500 acres of new land created by the lava that flowed to the sea in 1983 in the Puna area of the island, south of Hilo. I’m not happy about this development because I’m afraid of space aliens. (I hope they aren’t reading this – they always go after the people who fear them.) I think I’ll keep my suitcase packed.

 

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