I don’t like Mondays anymore than the Boomtown Rats do.

A modern listener may find some of the lyrics in this song disturbing, more so in context with the beady-eyed school children in the video, serving to further tighten collective nerves around school violence. To wit:

The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody’s gonna go to school today
She’s gonna make them stay at home
And daddy doesn’t understand it
He always said she was good as gold
And he can see no reasons
‘Cos there are no reasons

And further into the song:

And all the playing’s stopped in the playground now
She wants to play with the toys a while
And school’s out early and soon we’ll be learning
And the lesson today is how to die
And then the bullhorn crackles
And the captain tackles
(With the problems of the how’s and why’s)
And he can see no reasons
‘Cos there are no reasons
What reason do you need to die, die?
Oh Oh Oh

And yet the song was first released in 1979 — in an age of relative innocence, at least on school playgrounds — by a UK band. I was an impressionable nineteen year old then, fresh out of high school, clueless of my future path, and I remember driving aimlessly through the suburbs of Milwaukee in a thoroughly used car listening to that song blare over two speakers connected to an AM/FM cassette player that together likely cost me more than the car did. Regular gas was south of a buck a gallon. Were some kids victims of bullying at school? Absolutely. Did any fear getting beat up? If you crossed the wrong person(s), yes. Being murdered? Never.

Today, I half expect that song would earn the album it appears on a Parental Advisory sticker, warning of explicit content, not for sex or profanity but rather over the concern the song could ignite the wickedness in an irrational listener, and stir them to commit an unspeakable act of school violence. I am dubious of any role suggestive music or violent video games have in causing modern spasms of murder, and even more dubious that a sticker on the label would do anything to curb said violence, but I never underestimate the need some people feel — “nanny staters” being the worst among them — to do something about it.

Anyhoo, turning to more frivolous matters of dubious interest — we have a house guest for the remainder of this month. Mel cared for Lucy while we were on Maui and she’s decided to accept our invitation to stay with us until her current term at work ends. Unlike the infamous house guests from the lower 48 that invade our state each summer, sporting jejune questions like “Where’s mount McKinley?” or, “How do you sleep when it’s always light out?” or, “Do you have salmon in your bathtub?”, Mel by  contrast is a seasoned Alaskan, a real Sourdough, and I must say a pleasure to share dinner, wine, and conversation with at the end of a long workday.

Even Mondays.

Home sweet home without issue, yet Home seemed ungrateful to have us back. The airport, the luggage belt, the cabbie, all conveyances seemed coolly indifferent. I can’t say for sure what I expected really, a scatter of appreciative applause at the arrival gate? All I know is everything and everyone seemed locked in the same state as when we left three weeks ago. Inanimate trees were leafless and frozen, crusted snow berms — slightly higher maybe — still car exhaust gray, outside air was odorless and stagnant, even the cloud bank roiling over the Chugach mountains appeared unchanged, and the road from the airport home was the same old hard, weather-checked ribbon of gray streaking through a world of white. And then it struck me, this is Home. Enthusiasm of welcome isn’t measured in change, but stasis — life forces in motionless balance.

Speaking of quietude, arrived home to an alarm-less lift station controller. We were beginning to think something personal had gone between us and septic lift stations everywhere, as the septic for the condo complex in Maui where we stayed was located near our unit, and one bright, sunny afternoon the alarm on its lift station controller went off, prompting another call of concern from us to the front desk, to which we received the same curt response as when we had complained about the loud generator laboring all night long: “Stan is looking into it.”

Anyhoo, it feels good to be home. Lucy was well cared for and would you look at that, a tall stack of monthly bills on the counter top awaits our attention. More evidence that nothing has changed.

Penultimate day on Maui.

Sad in a way, sure, but ambivalent too, knowing we’ll be returning home soon; indeed, pleased to be possessed of a longing for a place called Home. Don’t ever want to take that for granted.

Here’s a Utube video (30 secs) I took at the Nakalele Blowhole yesterday, annotated free of charge with exclamations by Yours Truly!

Unimpressed? Well then, please note “free of charge.”

Don’t know why this video was not embeddable in the old style html format, to make it backward compatible with browsers as old as the Permian and thus viewable within this post instead of having to redirect you elsewhere, most videos I upload to Utube are, this one was not and I am left to assume it had something to do with the vicissitudes of Internet transmission this morning. Hmm.

So, sorry disappointed about that.

Incidentally, take a good look at the Blowhole. In 2011 a 40-some year old man was standing very near it when a large wave breached the rocks and knocked him off balance. He fell, and witnesses said they saw him reappear briefly before another wave crashed over him and he disappeared into the hole. He was never seen again.

Here’s another freebie, something you don’t see every day, a sea turtle:

BIGGER.

Shortly after snapping this picture an exceptional wave crashed against the nearby rocks soaking my phone. I quickly wiped it dry best I could, but it instantly began exhibiting weird behavior. Through the fog of damp eyes and no readers I saw the Android icon appear on screen with a warning NOT to turn off the phone while downloading — I didn’t ask to download anything — followed by the phone rebooting itself, however the sd-card was now empty, or faulty, I couldn’t make out what it said before it rebooted again, failed, and eventually went dark.

Foolishly, I shook it, thinking this might help. Nothing. Walked to the condo, shaking it once or twice again (and what is it a symptom of when one repeats over and over again an identical action expecting the outcome will change?), then once inside the condo removed the gel cover, the back plate, the battery and the sd-card, blew on the phone guts now exposed and waved the phone in air expecting — hoping really — this would dry the innards and restore her to operative health.

Reboot successful!

Except… there’s always an exception, the sd-card, she no have data anymore. Nothing — tabula rasa. Crap.

Deployed Happy Wife’s hair dryer!

Turned it on HIGH. More drying… even removed the sd-card and “fiddled” with it. Got superstitious — stood on one foot and twirled in the kitchen with sd-card overhead. Had anyone witnessed this a call to the sanatorium may have been placed.

Repeated this exercise a few times and finally the phone worked AND the sd-data stubbornly re-appeared (clicking on a stored photo eventually rendered the photo to the screen, yes, but this required an inordinate amount of time indicating the phone had to relearn everything all over again).

Off to the cleaning station today to be with the turtles one last time and bid them farewell.

Think I’ll leave the phone home this time, though.

Happy Wife demonstrates the proper way to cut a mango:

Sweet — the cut, the cutter, & the fruit.

Productive day!

Cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed the rug, swept the porch, emptied the dishwasher, loads of laundry and — and! — took the rental to the car wash.

I’m kidding!

In truth the three of us went to the beach, Kapula, where the sun shone and shone and shone all day long. Payback for Thursday & Friday. Lunch at the Sea House, late afternoon cocktail at the condo:

BIGGER.

Dinner at Honu.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we show big sister the Nakalele Blowhole.

We didn’t sleep last night. Night is when we prefer to sleep. There was a loud — like GE Turbofan loud — pump running outside our bedroom window continuously from about, oh, 10:30 pm to 6:00 am this morning. Pumping what you ask? Water, supposedly — “It’s been raining quite a lot you know,” said the woman who picked up when we called security (3 times) late last night. Never before has “DUH” seemed more appropriate.

Anyhoo, this morning, a somnolent Happy Wife was at the front desk at 8:00 am sharp to complain that our complaint went unheeded last night. The woman said our call to security was not forwarded to the maintenance crew as it was supposed to be. Ah, I see, the chain of custody of the problem was broken, thank you for that, but you see ma’am what we really want from you is assurance — nay, an effin’ GUARANTEE — that this will not occur again tonight, or, for that matter, any night before the Sun goes supernova and deletes us all! An equally somnolent Australian man staying in the unit next to us was also at the front desk and amplified this demand.

“Stan is working on it,” the woman grumbled.

Stan The Maintenance Man? No, seriously?

Earlier last night, before the Fun breaker tripped, we — Self, Big Sister & Happy Wife — tootled up the hill into the lower reach of Maui’s high country to a palatial house belonging to an Anchorage MD and his wife for drinks ‘n goodies. Other Anchorites were also present, plus an assortment of island friends of the doctor and his wife. Fun group of people — MDs, scuba divers, an ex-physicist, Telecom Co folks, property managers, spouses thereof, and us. Wine flowed easily and plates of finger foods were enjoyed as people segregated into small groups of aligned interest, all of us held rapt by the breathtaking view of the shrouded isle of Lanai (“Lah-nigh-ee”) resting quietly in the blue Pacific:

BIGGER.

The pump is off now, ~10:00 am (Go Stan!). If not for the four five cups of dark roast in me I think I should like to enjoy a nap now.

Work day for me. Half day really. Okay, closer to a couple hours.

During which Happy Wife went to snorkel among the sea turtles. She says there’s a cleaning station a few hundred feet down the beach from our condo, a quiet bay where the turtles congregate in order that little fish will preen the detritus from their carapaces. An example of perfect commensalism, isn’t it? No, it is not. Commensalism means an activity where one species benefits and the other is unaffected. Here, both fish and turtle benefit, the former is nourished by the detritus, the latter rid of it. I know of no such symbiotic relationship between a human and another species. Do I stand in the shower whilst little thingies preen my nooks ‘n crannies of a day’s dirt? No, this is why we have soap ‘n water.

Happy Wife’s boo boo knee has not gotten worse, and acutely feels problem free. And the weather? Blustery for sure, but the clouds were sequestered in the high country and we were pleased by this:

You see people on the beach. You got your doughy white Midwesterners who’ve just arrived at the hotel, rush onto the beach in musty beachwear unworn since last year, look at the sun and the sand and the sea and try to absorb it all at once. They are happy, eager,  innocent, and can’t wait to get vacation started.

And then there are the creepy ones.

Yesterday at the beach two dudes of suspicious intention, both chain smoking cigarettes, plopped down near us. One was a doughy-white endomorph wearing a toupee — for the life of me I don’t know how it stayed on his head without a chin strap in that wind. Then two young girls appeared, much younger than the endomorph or his buddy, wearing itsy bitsy bikinis, giggling and carrying on as young girls do, waiting for the endomorph to supply them with a lit cigarette. So supplied they flitted past us down the beach, tittering and waving the cigarettes as if they were their first, all the while the endomoprh eying their every step behind dark sunglasses with disquieting interest.

I don’t know, it might have been nothing, and probably was, but all the same kinda creepy.

Later, we shared a pizza and a bottle of red at Honu, where Happy Wife was lucky to get leid (sic):

No, I haven’t put on weight, it’s the loose-fitting nature of the shirt! Like the Seinfield episode where George is caught naked in front of his girlfriend experiencing “Shrinkage” — The water was cold! The water was cold!

Sister texts to ask:

What does that mean?

Me:

What does what mean?

She:

Unusual weather.

Oh. That. She’d been reading the blog.

Well, if she had asked that question this morning, or last night — especially last night! — I’d have said unusual in the way you’d expect if a very angry God were at the helm fixin’ to clean the slate and start all over again with two of every thing. That kind of unusual. Because since roughly dinner time last night high-speed wind has been cussing through the louvered blinds like the angry breath of He himself. The sky contaminant grey and roiling. Eventually the rain came — All. Night. Long. Happy Wife clutched me beneath the sheets and wouldn’t let go. We half expected to awake staring into the face of two goats or a pair of sheep.

But sister had texted me before the assault when His temper was not so high so I texted back: yeah, it’s a bit wetter than usual today but hopefully by Wednesday it will have gotten it out of its system.

This morning?

Slight change for the better but still there is fury outside. Hasn’t detoured the Gazeboites one bit; the line is twenty deep as I type.

We’re going to head south today to McKenna Beach, in search of gentler breezes.

Twelve to fifteen deep at the Gazebo restaurant yesterday morning:

BIGGER.

Location location, of course, but the food is good, too. And the portions… Leviathan. Let me tell ya, we typically get a half order of the egg fried rice in the morning and share a portion of it with our breakfast, share more of it with our dinner, and there’s enough left over to share for breakfast the following day. I bet a full order could sustain a Humpback between here and Alaska.

Like every day they’re lined up again this morning, only today they’re beneath umbrellas. We’ve given up trying to outsmart the whimsy of west Maui weather. We just roll with it now and accept our sunshine in 1-2 hour doses punctuated by Mauka showers. This is not too unusual for Maui, but it is notably cooler and wetter this year.

No worries; Happy Wife is off to the Maui Ocean Aquarium and I’m going to kick back and finish a book.

The second amendment is not about hunting anymore than the first amendment is about pens and pencils.¹

1. Me