Today we made the decision to stay at home and spend the day by the pool. It was tough, but someone has to do it and it may as well be me.
Unfortunately, the bug that had been giving Zoe grief over the past couple days with vomiting and general unpleasantness, made an appearance at 3:26am in the form of an extreme earache. I dosed her up with Tylenol and we were able to get back to sleep. She seemed better in the morning but Mean Mum told her she couldn’t get her head wet for 24hours. This made for an interesting day poolside. All in all it went fairly well and I only had to bark at Jacob 65 times to not splash his sister’s head, and he listened about 39 of those times. Not a bad average if you know Jacob.
Top 5 great things about New Year’s Day:
1. Jacob picked fresh coconuts and hacked away at them with his machete (which he carries everywhere these days) until we all had glasses of fresh coconut water and chunks of fresh coconut. Nicely done!
2. Watching Silas become more and more confident in the water to the point where he would just randomly jump in which would send all the grown-ups running from wherever to rescue him. Then we would breathlessly tell him that next time he needed to tell a grown up BEFORE he jumped in. He would just dance off and say something like “no I don’t” or “I’m not going to do that”. Good thing he’s so cute…
3. After a day by the pool, we have discovered that it is much too much work to actually make dinner and that the thing to do is to go out. So we jumped in the van and headed out to find some yummy takeout which we planned to take to the beach. Well, nothing with yummy takeout was open, it being after 6 on New Year’s Day, which if we had thought about our smug little plan for more than 30 seconds, we probably would have figured out. So we ended up at the Hawaiian equivalent of a touristy strip mall replete with tiki torches and the requisite smell of BBQd meat wafting through the air. We found something to eat and settled ourselves in front of a small outdoor stage where some Hawaiian men wearing sarongs (hello!)were setting up their drums. They entertained us for a few minutes and then abruptly left. We all hung around waiting to see what would happen and were soon rewarded with the arrival of a Hawaiian dance troupe. Now I don’t know about you but my exposure to Hawaiian Hula dancers has been limited to a lunch hour concert outside city hall featuring the local Polynesian Dancers, which usually consists of 5 or 6 middle-aged woman who mean well and I’ll stop there.
I have seen the odd Hula show here in Hawaii but I can only recall school groups with ukuleles with a few authentic Hawaiians swaying along.
This show at the strip mall, however, was not the local Polynesian Dance club. These girls were great. They came out bedecked in feathers and flowers and pretty much nothing else. The drums started up and they started doing something outrageous with their hips. I cannot explain what exactly they were doing except to say that I think many of the world’s problems could be solved if these girls were involved. We all of us sat slack-jawed as the gyrations gained momentum, finally reaching a fever-pitch of lower body mobility and coordination. When they finally left the stage, I felt like I had aged about 50 years. If the human body was capable of such flexibility, then I had two choices: to realize there is no hope for me and to quit now and just go straight to a walker, preferably one with a fold-down chair, or to get seriously busy and try and save my body before it is too late. Don’t be surprised if you see me up on stage with the Polynesian Dancers at the next Beacon Hill Band Shell lunch time concert. Just sayin’.
2. Zoe’s Freckle Farm :)
1. Falling asleep with just a sheet on the bed, and the sound of the trade winds blowing gently through the house. Ahhhh. Hawaii.
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