Baabette writes

4/??/14

Baabette writes:

I have really enjoyed Hawaii.  Everyone is so smiley and friendly everywhere we go.  But people keep mistaking me for a bunny.  I guess it’s my elegant ears that confuses them.   Linda adopted a chicken from Kauai and we had a blind date but it didn’t go very well.  We just didn’t have much in common. I was raised on the herb farm, and he was raised in the jungle.  He was very nice and quite handsome for a chicken, but we just couldn’t get a conversation going.  I do have to admire his spirit of adventure, though, getting up and going to a whole different country to live.  His Hawaiian name means “Great protector of Kauai.”  It’s a lovely long name, but rather hard to remember, so Linda is trying to think of an everyday sort of name for him.  Maybe FreeRange, or Brewster the rooster.

Everything in Hawaii seems different. Even the grass is different. The sparrows look just the same as at home but they seem meeker.  Even the doves bully them.  And the heat and humidity is a whole new experience for me.  When Roxie went to the Twisted Turtles yarn store in Kauai, I got to see some wool spun from Hawaiian sheep.  It was mostly guard hairs.  They don’t need to grow a downy warm undercoat because it never gets all that cold here.  The dyer who colored the yarn was really good, but Roxie decided she needed other fibers for her stash.

Roxie keeps eating ice with syrup on it.  She calls it “shave ice” and she thinks it’s funny the way it numbs her mouth and tongue when she eats a lot of it fast.  I think it’s a way for her to get extra water into her system.  Boy, she sweats a lot! She ties a bandanna around her forehead before she puts on her hat, and within an hour it’s soaked clear through.  After two hours, it’s dripping down her back and she needs to take it off and wring it out.  Eeew, gross!  I’m lucky to be far too ladylike to sweat.

Yesterday was our last day on the islands.  Roxie has an Uncle there, so we visited with him and his new wife.  Older humans sure drive funny., and they get lost a lot.  Traffic in Honolulu is scary enough without riding in a car where the driver decides to change lanes without looking.  It was very sweet of them to pick us up and take us out for lunch, and Roxie was so happy to see her uncle again.  She really loves him, but she said later, “It’s like that joke about how I want to die quietly in my sleep like my grandpa, not screaming in terror like the passengers in his car.”

Kyle started the day with a brisk 4 mile hike to a nearby store to buy bottled water for the trip home..  Kyle is a hero!  The ship has bottled water available, but it’s expensive.  And the tap water tastes sort of boiled.  It’s desalinized seawater that has been purified to within an inch of its life.  Perfectly safe to drink, but you just don’t WANT to.

Now we have five days at sea, then docking in Vancouver, BC and a long bus and train ride home.  I’m sort of starting to miss the green, green grass.