Plastic

If you think about the winter without considering the cold, it's actually vey pleasant. Consider, no bugs, consider, being comfortable in jeans. Cloth snaps when you walk, coffee animates with steam. Skin doesn't itch. You don't perspire. A body in the winter is almost free of the coil. You might as well be made of plastic. Hair stays in place with out humidity to foil it. The folds of skin make no odor without sweat. Clothing can be layered like a preschool doll with no discomfort no redness, no oil, no itching. Aside from cold, winter is a festidious paradise.


I noticed something last week. In the tropics it wouldn't have really meant anything. There was a bug out of place. Yes, a bug. Why is this strange? It was a big huge stink bug, about the size of the last digit of my thumb. Also, the bug was kicking on it's back, right in my path. Furthermore, the bug had the distinct look of being, fat, happy, and dying all at the same time. This bug had survived something, it was so proud of surviving, that it didn't even mind dying while I watched. It probably wanted me to step on it just so that its accomplishments could end at the pinacle of accomplishment. Glorious, profitable, radiant and kicking.


Oddly, the bug wasn't my first clue that my world was about to change. It was all starting to add up, like the scene in a movie where the protagonist is being hurled by a rocket sled on rails into an iconic brick wall, flipping through prequel memories. In my case, I flashed back to leaving the house. I put on a sweat shirt this morning. It felt TACKY!


Tackiness.


Tackiness, bugs, clouds in puffs not wisps, ground that sinks when you walk on it. I know what this means, what does it mean? Think back. Think! before Hawaii. This happens every year. This phenomenon, I think I remember. I know it's name, "Spring". My days of perfect skin are over.


Ha ha, but maybe, so is the cold.

James V. Brown

Why is it, that it seems that our most creative ideas seem to spring forth, Athenian fashion, moments before sitting down to something "productive"? I  think today the tonic of inspiration was contrived from equal parts of household freedom, a solid exercise session, and cold air hitting me in the face while drinking a warm cup of coffee.

I knew I would be visited by the spirit of creativity when I pulled up in front of the James V. Brown library still sipping my coffee. I began to notice the details of the former 'Millionaire's City'. A city that around the turn of last century had more coal Barron's than you could make a Los Angeles subdivision out of. Each one besting the other with beautiful ornate houses. These were monstrous, stain glass, three-story, main street houses with natural rock foundations, round rooms, gold trim, turret windows, spires, domes, trellis work, wrought iron, stain glass and on and on. Houses with large front decks meant for drinking summertime mint juleps in picket fence white adirondack chairs, and laughing through green teeth at the smell of sausage sized cigars.

The engine off, looking again, tendrils of steam massaging my face inside a 21st century Honda steel and glass bubble, I'm looking at the still-life show of civil architecture. They aren't grand homesteads anymore, they are a patchwork of houses that have became parcelled up into the fractions of themselves. The main streets of Williamsport Pennsylvania use the residence of the long deceased Lords of Suet to host colonies of shops, bars, apartments, coffee houses, thrift stores, barbers shops, and all merchants of goods and services for the warm-hearted cold people of the modern city. Each tenant in the house trying so hard to set itself aside from all the other partitions of the house that the house itself falls into schizophrenia. Porches laugh now only to dispel their mania.

So...

I'm headed into the library of my wife's home town, initially inspired by some code I wanted to write for work. No hurry really, it's not a work day, and we'll be heading South to Maryland soon enough. I suppose I'll get around to it after I purge these prose from my hands.


It's the day after Thanksgiving. For me,  there is a lot to think about. It's quite a different thing to have Thanksgiving in a place where you wouldn't expect you'd want to be, versus one, say, like a tropical island.

In the tropics, the heat hitting your face, sand on the floor boards of your car, shuffling your family to the neighborhood Turkey dinner, it requires almost no deep introspection to be thankful. Anyone living in Hawaii, even those that are broke beyond health-care will tell you they are "living the dream". This year, at Thanksgiving, I'm not living it. I'm feeling it.

Mom and dad hosted a feast yesterday. My young in-laws, and an aunt and uncle were there as well. There was turkey, ham, oysters cooked two different ways, creamed corn, stuffing, lima beans, enough mashed potatoes to sculpt. Pies, cakes, rolls, bars and coffee. Was I grateful for the food? Maybe, though it certainly was delicious. I was grateful for the smile Sue had, home again for Thanksgiving for the first time in 5 years. I was grateful for the way the other cousins played with my kids. I was grateful for the love, support and forgiveness of the family I married into, especially because of the way I play cards!

This year, Thanksgiving was more than beer, sun on my face, and a full belly. This year Thanksgiving was about people and laughing, and caring enough about the people talking to me that I didn't really care what we were talking about.

Jigsaw

Immediately after the five of us re-entered the atmosphere on the East coast, the twenty-second of October, we hajjed the kids up to Williamsport Pennsylvania to stay with Sue's generous parents until we could establish some order at our new Maryland outpost. Until now, the kids have been there while I've worked, and Sue has researched schools and living arrangements. We missed Halloween as a family, but I'm sure that the kids enjoyed a long stay at Grammy and Grandpas.

After two weeks on our own Sue and I drove up to collect our three treasures. Nearly five hours North, Williamsport, is in an area famous mostly for the hillside stadium hosting the end of the little league baseball season. It's a fascinating coincidence that Hawaii tykes have been to the championship twice since we lived on Oahu, in fact winning in 2008. Six time zones away from paradise, it's hard to imagine that such a distant microcosm could be a happenstance Hawaiian hub.

With us all together, this weekend, it was great to be a family again. After all the driving to pick the kids up, we had a lazy Sunday morning. We spent it mostly in pajamas working on a jigsaw puzzle. At lunch time we went for a picnic walk in the woods by the bay. Sue made us roast duck for dinner.

Solomons

Following our time at the Back Creek Inn† bed and breakfast on Solomons, Susan and I have spent the last 4 nights in a run down Days Inn motel closer to the Patuxant River Naval Air Station around the Great Mills area of Maryland*.

The last few days we've been trying to figure out the best area to settle in. Schools are a major factor for us, our middle child has some special needs. So choosing where to live is largely the result of finding the school that can best support his IEP.

We are looking to be in the area long term, so it makes sense to buy a house, especially in this this low interest buyers market. In the near term though, we need a place to rent for a few months while we pull together the equity for a down payment, and research the area.

Yesterday was a busy day, we think we've narrowed in on the school, Dowell Elementary in Southern Calvert. Other good options are Patuxant and Appeal Elementary schools. These schools all have staff historically familiar with the ISLE (Intensive Structured Learning Environment), and as such are familiar with special needs children.

Yesterday we also found a short term rental condominium‡ which feeds into Dowell. This is fortuitous, as it would be excellent to start renting in the same area we plan to buy in. We started with Dan Cannon, the real estate agent helping us with the contract details, and we are hoping to be able to start moving out of the Days Inn (!!!) and into the condo sometime this weekend.

The kids are staying up at my in-laws until we get this detail ironed out. What a treat it would be to get this together in time to run North and Trick or Treat with them tomorrow, and also have them in a new home they can start school from on Monday.

Thanks for your prayers, and happy meditations on this one.

* (not on map)

† (3,P on map above)

‡ (4,N on map above)

Training Day

Sue and I visited my in-laws in Northern Pennsylvania over the weekend. The GPs graciously offered to watch the kids, while we came back down South to get started, and figure out how to get settled. Last night, and tonight we have stayed at a quaint Bed & Breakfast, The Back Creek Inn, near Solomans Island just ten minutes from my new employer.

My first day was today. The company is a small but capable group of about twenty people, about half on site at the Maryland office where I will work. There was a company meeting today, and I was excited to see that my name was already in the project schedule as a resource for existing projects. It's a good feeling to hit the ground running with management that knows just where to apply your talents.

Transporter

Thursday turned ended up as more of a Thriday. It's the artifact of bridging together one super busy day with the next, via a 6 hour timezone transfer.

I think Sue and I were better off not knowing what lay ahead of us when we woke that morning. It wasn't much of a good night's sleep to begin with. Sleeping on a deconstructed cardboard box, packing foam and coats from a forgotten closet, we woke sore and boney. I think the only reason we slept at all was that Wednesday we had spent the entire day getting the 16' PODS trailer loaded, closed, and adieu'd.

Thursday was all about leaving the island, getting the van to leave the island too, and coping with the realization that our house really needed a 20' trailer and so we still had about a thousand pounds of miscellaneous possessions lying around the house to deal with before we left.

Sue and I had our routines down. I was the burly box loader, junk transporter, and Sue was the game-master organizer, packer. We divided our remaining possessions in the ex-home into 3 piles: junk, parcel-post, and give-to-friends.

I spent the better part of the morning turning the family van into a Sanford and Son extra. All the passenger interior seats folded in, I stuffed the vehicle to capacity. Wooden tennis rackets, unmatched athletic equipment, broken tiki torches, gloves without mates, video equipment from the pre-wireless era, world in a blender. Then, all my half cut lumber, particle board, a desk and two sawhorses twined to the roof rack on top, I finally headed off to the dump.

Sweaty, and red dirt glazed, I returned from the Kapolei dump to gather the twenty or so boxes that Susan had labored to assemble for posting. Cumbersome, I leaned into four handcart loads to get the parcels from the van to the counter.

By the time I got back to the house, it was already three o'clock. The timeline had crumbled. Things got messy, and I ended up going straight from the house in my junk clothes to get the van delivered to the pier where it was shipped minutes before they closed. Friends from work shuttled me from the Sand Island Pier back to the airport area.

While that was going on, our friend Ceci Adams chanced by the house, and saw that Sue badly needed help wrapping up and getting to me at the airport. She quickly canceled all her other plans for the evening and made it happen.

Fortunately, it was an evening flight. We had time to rendezvous at the airport and get dinner together before we left. Fifteen hours, two connections, and some cat-naps later we arrived in Baltimore.

Bye Bye Bye

Well, it happened kind of suddenly, but it happened. We are leaving Hawaii at the end of the month and moving to the Patuxant River area of Maryland. I've accepted a position with a company that services and upgrades flight simulators (among other things). I'm looking forward to the change in the job, Sue is excited about returning to the mid-Atlantic, and the kids are stoked that they have a dead-lock on Christmas at Grammies house.