Saturday, June 4

The day started later than normal as I slept-in to 6AM. It's only the second day after travel days that I've been bed so late. Even though I was up late, I was just awake at 6AM. Nothing is really planned today, but Grace needed her morning change-and-feed, so I did that and started an island day early.

Checking in with work, I found that there was something I could do to help. It's a small amount of busy work, but it's a little detail oriented, and most importantly, doesn't require anything more than Internet access. I need to pull the old news stories from the old site and put them in a format that the new site can use, and will use for future news stories. Easy as pie. I'll get to that later, maybe Monday. Island time is settling in, maybe? Nah, it's just that it's Saturday already.

I started puttering around to get ready for the day. One of the first things I noticed are that the ants are back. The first day we were here there were trails of ants in the bathroom, but the other adopting father had acquired some spray and tending to their room helped keep our room clean. There were still a few ants from time-to-time, but they've been getting a little more present lately. Today they were plentiful.

We try to keep the food secured and the dishes clean and therein reduce any temptations for the bugs. We've seen a few cockroaches, too. One fast one, one slow one, and one dead one. We've been catching them beneath a cup and tossing them off the balcony, even the dead one. We try to be a little zen about the bugs, but the ants are too invasive. I decreed today would be the day we'd get some ant-killing spray.

We decided to have breakfast downstairs. We showered and dressed and went down. We stopped at the other mother's room to see if she wanted to get out for the morning. She had already been down there and ordered breakfast to go, but they take a while, so she said she'd like to go down and eat there with us.

We grabbed a table and sat with our kids and chatted. She hadn't chatted with her hubby or the schoolgirl since they left last night, but we guessed they were in the middle of flying over the U.S. right then. After another round of island special breakfasts, we went for a stroll outside, to wander the beach a little, perhaps finding a few shells along the way. After a while, she took her boy and returned to her room. A little while longer, and we returned to ours.

We did a quick-change of Grace's wet diaper and headed to the Best Hardware across the street for some bug spray. Claire wanted to also look for a cooler. There's a trip we might go on, or maybe the next time to Lora beach, or even just to tuck things away in the room to hide them from the bugs. We wandered the store a little bit, got the spray and cooler (they had a buy-one-get-one sale), and returned to the room.

I did a quick spray around the doors, along the outside floorboards, and around the floorboards in the bathrooms. I also put a bit around the legs of the cabinet we've got the food on. A very short time later, I noticed a great reduction in the number of ants.

Grace settled in for some well-deserved nap time, and Claire dug into her book. I turned to the Mac and caught up on my lapsed blogging. I also got a little start on the work I need to do; I wrote a quick script to spider the site, pulling the old news from the current site. Later I'll write something to parse that HTML and pull out the bits I need.

While that was going on, Gordon called and said if we were still interested, he had a car we could rent while he was in Hawaii for the next couple of weeks. We said we were, and Claire and he worked out some details. She asked if he had time to work out the island plans with his buddy. He hadn't but said he'd try to squeeze it in. A few minutes after disconnecting he called again with details for that, too. They're expecting all of us adopting families tomorrow at around noon. Hanging with the natives and having a day on another island should be a bit of an experience.

A little more time passed watching Grace sleep, Claire reading, me typing, when Gordon's wife's sister and a friend knocked on the door and gave us keys to the car. We chatted with them a few moments, mostly re-reminders about the car-bits Claire'd gotten when talking with Gordon on the phone. They left, and we continued waiting as we were before the visit.

After a little while, Claire wanted to make use of the new wheels and go stock up on some things at the Payless. We grabbed our reusable grocery bag, Grace, and all of the accessories she's starting to require, and piled in. It's a nice little car, 'though it is pretty low to the ground. We own a Jeep and a big cruiser motorcycle, mostly because we like to be sitting upright and high over traffic. Situations what they are, though, we're happy to have the flexibility.

We cruised to the Payless, which took no time compared to the short hike it is. It isn't quite a mile there, and while it's a nice stroll, carrying baby, accessories, an ultimately groceries, there's a little bit of a limit when coming back. We talked about not goinv overboard, because, of course, it is close and easy to fetch what we want kind of when we want it.

We lived a whole summer with just a motorcycle. It doesn't sound like a lot of sacrifice, but given how most Americans live, it was comparatively a big deal. But it compelled us to make frequent and small trips to the grocers and elsewhere, which curbed a lot of spontaneous spending, but also helped us control better what was “necessary” for the moment. I feared for a bit that with the addition of a trunk, we might go bonkers and overload the first relatively uninhibited trip we had.

We were a little shocked walking into the Payless. Not only was it busier than we'd seen before, but the shelves were stocked full. It seems we arrived during the middle of a shipment dry spell. It seems that normally supplies arrive about every two weeks, but there had been a missing ship, so the supplies were dwindling because of it. I was curious about a few things.

Things like, how could an entire ship go missing? Or at least an entire supply shipment on a ship. If something happened to the ship or containers on one, why wasn't another one dispatched at some point in the meantime? There are a lot of people to make wait two weeks for what might otherwise be seen as “essentials.” Especially in the day when planes arrive daily, or it'd be a few hours of effort for someone. Maybe a couple days by boat, right?

Anyway, the ship came in! The ship actually came in on Thursday we learned, but there's all of the delays we don't always get exposure to, like unloading the shop, clearing the unloaded containers, distributing their contents, and then finally shelving everything. The grocery store looked like I'd expect any grocery store in America to look like on any given day; shelves were stocked, stock persons were pulling things from boxes filling barely depleted shelves, and the fruits and veggies flowed over.

As we were marveling at the site, we noticed Andrew, from the embassy, picking some oranges. We gave a quick “hey, how's it going?” and made some small talk. He introduced us to Austin, an intern at the embassy. We chatted about some of the things we'd been doing, asked how they were transitioning, and stuff like that. We chatted about how his wife had set up a casual “maybe we'll see you” lunch plan for Wednesday. It seems they come to the hotel for the sushi buffet at lunchtime every Wednesday.

I was trying to be very conscious of not asking about our visa or the process or anything like that. I'm taking him at his word that it takes time to transport, adjudicate, and return the application, and that he would contact us as soon as he's heard anything. If I recall, he actually brought it up, referring to the other couple from the other hotel, as they're getting close to the end of the estimated timeline for their paperwork.

We grabbed some apples and a mango, and moved away from the guys and the fruit. We rolled through a couple aisles and picked up some more stuff. We ran into them again in the middle of the shop, and he gave us a little info on the fish in front of us. I asked, since he's taking language lessons, if he knew where one might be able to find some kind of lesson book or translation dictionary; he suggested the University of Hawaii... We joked and chattered a little more, he suggested another restaurant, and said “see you in aisle nine,” and rolled around the corner to the next row.

We didn't run into them again, but did wave from afar as we departed ahead of them, with a lot more groceries than we had talked about initially. Of course, we didn't know that the ship had come in, nor did we expect the fruit or cook-out fixings.

We put our things away, and hungry after a long day lounging and shopping, we thought to end our day in what's becoming traditional fashion. We hit the restaurant for a light dinner, and popped in a few more episodes of Modern Family. Claire likes both the content and high-definition clarity of the show, but also the control we have, which makes her feel a little less homesick.