Blather

So Christmas is over and I'm still trying to square with that. I have this problem every year when I unplug my lights for the last time. Really, it's better to ignore me between the months of October and January. And then I get really bored in February and March. Then in April...well now, that depends, doesn't it? Depends very much on whether or not I have somewhere to go. I think I've nearly made up my mind on that.

Last night--or rather early this morning, say 2 AM--I was lying in bed, thinking. I forget what I was thinking about, but it was probably sex, because when you're not getting it, you're thinking about it, so let's just assume that I was thinking about sex and move on. So there I was, just about falling asleep and most likely thinking about sex, when out of absolutely nowhere I found myself walking up to the Royal Kona hotel in Kona-Kailua, and I have no idea why. For just that second, you couldn't convince me that I was lying in my bed. I was just in Kona, coming back from a walk down Kalakaua Ave, which I only saw once. And I hadn't yet been to Hilo. You know, they say Hawai'i calls--goodness, there's even a song for it--and that seems to be true. Though I don't know why! Most people, I guess, go there for the beauty and the relaxation, or the adventure. Beauty and relaxation I have here. Adventure I can make on my own (though to be honest, surfing and going to Halema'uma'u on Kilauea would be difficult to accomplish here.) I went there originally for the Hula, to see some of the places I was dancing or chanting about and try to understand them a little better. But now I just feel like I have to go back, I don't know, just because. I feel like I want to go stay in Hilo for a while, close to Kilauea, before going on to Kona, and then Honolulu. (Honolulu, not for the nightlife or the shopping or gambling, but for that water: the Pacific of Waikiki Beach, under the stars, just like in the hapa-haole songs.) But this time I want to be in Hilo first, and to stay close to Kilauea. To see the lava this time, which I missed two years ago.

Besides, I have some unfinished business up there, and something I need to rectify.

Well, that was a bit tangential, I guess, as I really only started writing today to sum up the whole cheesy New Years thing. Honestly, I don't much like New Years. I think it's kind of pointless in a way, because it's just another day; nothing's going to change to make me able or unable to do things I couldn't or could do the day before just for the fact of the new year. On the other side of that coin, though, New Years often depresses me, usually because I can so clearly remember the one before it, and I guess it's human nature to take inventory at markers like that, and so I take inventory, and I find that very little has noticably changed, and then I get bored and frustrated.

But this year it was sort of nice. Spencer and Meghan were with my parents, and I went there with my X Men DVD, (rterra, you are not the only one with a thing for Logan. ;D ) I made some chocolate covered strawberries, and Spencer and I ate ice cream while Meghan, bless her, ate vegetables, and we watched the film till around ten. Then we just sort of hung around chatting, then watched the ball drop. (I watched it drop last year, too, but by then I was just grateful that I wasn't dry-heaving anymore. Whee!) Right after the ball dropped, Meghan and I went outside and screamed about happy new years or some such, probably waking some of the neighbors, I guess. And then I went to bed, because I had to get up at 6:30 the next morning for work.

Work was uneventful aside from taking longer than I expected, and that pissed me off, because I'd planned to take the kids to see the 12:30 showing of Peter Pan. By the time I got home, we were only able to see the 3:30 one, but that gave us some time to talk about the original book for a while, which neither of them has read. (Another tangent: I didn't read the original either till I was in college, but I remember that when I was about 3, I had one of these little movie viewer thingies that only someone born in the 70's might remember having. It was like a small, plastic television, and you'd load these little film strips into the top. I remember what the film looked and felt like, too: white-bordered, with a little tab on the top. If you held them upside down, they looked like pudgy capital L's with windows of film in them. I had two strips that I remember: The Alphabet Man [and yes, I can still remember and sing the song to that; he was a mailman, you see. He delivered letters,] and Peter Pan. I also had a little Peter Pan picture book, which I'm sure is still somewhere in my parents' attic. Anyway, I would read the Peter Pan book and convince myself and my cousins that we really could fly, and we'd better learn how fast, because we only had a few more years of it. Then we'd go outside with umbrellas and try jumping off the railing of the first story landing: a good eight feet high. Never let it be said that I didn't constantly put myself and others in danger for a good fantasy. But god, how we really believed.) So, yeah. So we talked all about the book, and how the movie would differ, and why that pissed me off so much. ;) I can't be expected to leave that out, can I?!

So then we went out to see the movie, and of course the people behind us were annoying as hell, and the adults more than the children. (WTF is that about?) I did make some lady laugh out loud, though. I'm not one to go talking in the movie theater, but it just hit me like that. When the movie opens, I turned to Meghan and Spencer and said, "I remember. This was why it was so good to be a child." And then during the scene of Hook's introduction, (which, if you like, you can see here, if you click on "downloads" and all) there is Jas. Hook like I never imagined, and shirtless as well, ("...licking its lips for the rest of me..." *snick!*) and I couldn't help but say, "And this is why it's great to be an adult."

So! Yah. We watch the movie and the kids liked it. Then on the way home, I turned to Spencer (who turned fifteen last month) and asked him, "As someone who's no longer a child, but still not an adult, how did you feel about that movie?" And Spencer thought about it for a minute and said, "It sort of made me miss the days when I wasn't so self-aware." I had expected him to say something like, "It made me miss being a kid," but I didn't expect something so specific, though from Spencer, I should have. Then Meghan comes up with, "Well, I'm afraid of growing up because I'll have to stop pretending. But not really, because there are other ways to still pretend, like becoming a writer or an actress."

^_^

So I'm still somewhere between "I want to have a kid!" and "I want to be a kid, and have adventures!"

Bah. So as it appears that having a kid is, at least for this moment, out of the question (see above,) I make the best of it, you see, and have adventures. Or at least try to, when I can afford them. That's telling.

The other thing is that, obviously, one can't go back and be a kid again, at least not until next life, and there, I'm convinced I'll do things a little differently. The other thing I talked about with Spencer and Meghan was being an adolescent. Spencer was mad because his teachers had given them the "these are the best years of your life so far" BS, and he didn't feel that was true. Not that he's miserable, but just that it was better to be younger. I agreed with him, I'm sorry to say. I told him the truth: it's hard to be an adolescent, and, save for a few good moments here and there, it mostly sucks. For all wishing that I could be five or six or seven again, there's no way I'd want to relive 14-16, because those were miserable years. At least Spencer's almost done with them, even if it doesn't seem like it (and as much as that idea disturbs me.) Meghan, at eleven, is just getting up to them. *Shudder* But, I said, it does get so much better later on. Like Wendy understood, growing up is not all sacrifice, and there were joys from which Peter would be forever barred.

And I promise, I'll try to keep all Peter Pan related things out of LJ from now on. I know it's eaten my lj, and I'm sorry for that. I'm so easily obsessed that it's just sad.

And then after the movie, Uncle Don and Betsy came over for New Years dinner, and, well, a swell time was had by all.

Odd that during all of these thoughts of mine, two high school friends of mine pop up in LJ. rterra and I go way back, back to 11th grade, really. We even went on to the same college, and were traveling buddies, too. Roomates in Seattle, no less! Welcome to LJ, RT. And then, from a comment in her new lj, I find sachertorte! Not having any clue that she is who she is, I see "Sacher Torte" and I think, "Sorcerer Hunters! Whee!" And I comment to her, something along the lines of, "I have no idea who you are, but Zaha Torte! Woohoo!" When later RT writes to me and says, "Oh, duh, that's Sasha from high school!" Hello, Sasha! And let me tell all of you people, this lady was my first friend in public school. I'd just come from private school, all of nine kids in my graduating class, and I was terrified. No uniforms, pick out my own clothes?! School lunches?! People! They all hate me! AAAHH! And until Jeremy came along (months before RT,) she was my only real friend. She was the only girl who was consistently nice to me, sincere, smart, and entirely uncommon.

Welcome to lj, Sasha. :D

Well, now I should go and feed my beastly little wards. They bite my fingers and twist their evil little beaks these days, but they're only playing, and I swear they're still adorable. I'm going to miss them after Tuesday, and will have to wait till the end of April before I get more baby birds, and then I'll be inundated. That's always fine, though, because I love them. They're angels in a weird way, and I sort of always hope that they'll do some magic or something that will surprise me.

And then after that, my Dad's side of the family is coming for a Christmas visit. I've already got most of my lights down, because I can't stand having them up after New Year--even after Christmas, for that matter, but that's just tradition. But this is, to me, the last real day of the Christmas holiday, and I'm grateful that I get to see as many family members as I do this time of year. THe whole family thing--the gathering and the looking after your own kinda thing--that makes me feel way more Cherokee than any name on any Dawes roll, and any number indicating a blood quantum, as if I could quantify what I feel.

Well, usually. ;) It's odd, though: my Dad's side of the family is Native American, but it's my Mom's side that strikes me as being way more clannish, what with sharing the raising of children and all of this.

Just some mana'o. Happy New Year, everyone. :D

Blather

So Christmas is over and I'm still trying to square with that. I have this problem every year when I unplug my lights for the last time. Really, it's better to ignore me between the months of October and January. And then I get really bored in February and March. Then in April...well now, that depends, doesn't it? Depends very much on whether or not I have somewhere to go. I think I've nearly made up my mind on that.

Last night--or rather early this morning, say 2 AM--I was lying in bed, thinking. I forget what I was thinking about, but it was probably sex, because when you're not getting it, you're thinking about it, so let's just assume that I was thinking about sex and move on. So there I was, just about falling asleep and most likely thinking about sex, when out of absolutely nowhere I found myself walking up to the Royal Kona hotel in Kona-Kailua, and I have no idea why. For just that second, you couldn't convince me that I was lying in my bed. I was just in Kona, coming back from a walk down Kalakaua Ave, which I only saw once. And I hadn't yet been to Hilo. You know, they say Hawai'i calls--goodness, there's even a song for it--and that seems to be true. Though I don't know why! Most people, I guess, go there for the beauty and the relaxation, or the adventure. Beauty and relaxation I have here. Adventure I can make on my own (though to be honest, surfing and going to Halema'uma'u on Kilauea would be difficult to accomplish here.) I went there originally for the Hula, to see some of the places I was dancing or chanting about and try to understand them a little better. But now I just feel like I have to go back, I don't know, just because. I feel like I want to go stay in Hilo for a while, close to Kilauea, before going on to Kona, and then Honolulu. (Honolulu, not for the nightlife or the shopping or gambling, but for that water: the Pacific of Waikiki Beach, under the stars, just like in the hapa-haole songs.) But this time I want to be in Hilo first, and to stay close to Kilauea. To see the lava this time, which I missed two years ago.

Besides, I have some unfinished business up there, and something I need to rectify.

Well, that was a bit tangential, I guess, as I really only started writing today to sum up the whole cheesy New Years thing. Honestly, I don't much like New Years. I think it's kind of pointless in a way, because it's just another day; nothing's going to change to make me able or unable to do things I couldn't or could do the day before just for the fact of the new year. On the other side of that coin, though, New Years often depresses me, usually because I can so clearly remember the one before it, and I guess it's human nature to take inventory at markers like that, and so I take inventory, and I find that very little has noticably changed, and then I get bored and frustrated.

But this year it was sort of nice. Spencer and Meghan were with my parents, and I went there with my X Men DVD, (rterra, you are not the only one with a thing for Logan. ;D ) I made some chocolate covered strawberries, and Spencer and I ate ice cream while Meghan, bless her, ate vegetables, and we watched the film till around ten. Then we just sort of hung around chatting, then watched the ball drop. (I watched it drop last year, too, but by then I was just grateful that I wasn't dry-heaving anymore. Whee!) Right after the ball dropped, Meghan and I went outside and screamed about happy new years or some such, probably waking some of the neighbors, I guess. And then I went to bed, because I had to get up at 6:30 the next morning for work.

Work was uneventful aside from taking longer than I expected, and that pissed me off, because I'd planned to take the kids to see the 12:30 showing of Peter Pan. By the time I got home, we were only able to see the 3:30 one, but that gave us some time to talk about the original book for a while, which neither of them has read. (Another tangent: I didn't read the original either till I was in college, but I remember that when I was about 3, I had one of these little movie viewer thingies that only someone born in the 70's might remember having. It was like a small, plastic television, and you'd load these little film strips into the top. I remember what the film looked and felt like, too: white-bordered, with a little tab on the top. If you held them upside down, they looked like pudgy capital L's with windows of film in them. I had two strips that I remember: The Alphabet Man [and yes, I can still remember and sing the song to that; he was a mailman, you see. He delivered letters,] and Peter Pan. I also had a little Peter Pan picture book, which I'm sure is still somewhere in my parents' attic. Anyway, I would read the Peter Pan book and convince myself and my cousins that we really could fly, and we'd better learn how fast, because we only had a few more years of it. Then we'd go outside with umbrellas and try jumping off the railing of the first story landing: a good eight feet high. Never let it be said that I didn't constantly put myself and others in danger for a good fantasy. But god, how we really believed.) So, yeah. So we talked all about the book, and how the movie would differ, and why that pissed me off so much. ;) I can't be expected to leave that out, can I?!

So then we went out to see the movie, and of course the people behind us were annoying as hell, and the adults more than the children. (WTF is that about?) I did make some lady laugh out loud, though. I'm not one to go talking in the movie theater, but it just hit me like that. When the movie opens, I turned to Meghan and Spencer and said, "I remember. This was why it was so good to be a child." And then during the scene of Hook's introduction, (which, if you like, you can see here, if you click on "downloads" and all) there is Jas. Hook like I never imagined, and shirtless as well, ("...licking its lips for the rest of me..." *snick!*) and I couldn't help but say, "And this is why it's great to be an adult."

So! Yah. We watch the movie and the kids liked it. Then on the way home, I turned to Spencer (who turned fifteen last month) and asked him, "As someone who's no longer a child, but still not an adult, how did you feel about that movie?" And Spencer thought about it for a minute and said, "It sort of made me miss the days when I wasn't so self-aware." I had expected him to say something like, "It made me miss being a kid," but I didn't expect something so specific, though from Spencer, I should have. Then Meghan comes up with, "Well, I'm afraid of growing up because I'll have to stop pretending. But not really, because there are other ways to still pretend, like becoming a writer or an actress."

^_^

So I'm still somewhere between "I want to have a kid!" and "I want to be a kid, and have adventures!"

Bah. So as it appears that having a kid is, at least for this moment, out of the question (see above,) I make the best of it, you see, and have adventures. Or at least try to, when I can afford them. That's telling.

The other thing is that, obviously, one can't go back and be a kid again, at least not until next life, and there, I'm convinced I'll do things a little differently. The other thing I talked about with Spencer and Meghan was being an adolescent. Spencer was mad because his teachers had given them the "these are the best years of your life so far" BS, and he didn't feel that was true. Not that he's miserable, but just that it was better to be younger. I agreed with him, I'm sorry to say. I told him the truth: it's hard to be an adolescent, and, save for a few good moments here and there, it mostly sucks. For all wishing that I could be five or six or seven again, there's no way I'd want to relive 14-16, because those were miserable years. At least Spencer's almost done with them, even if it doesn't seem like it (and as much as that idea disturbs me.) Meghan, at eleven, is just getting up to them. *Shudder* But, I said, it does get so much better later on. Like Wendy understood, growing up is not all sacrifice, and there were joys from which Peter would be forever barred.

And I promise, I'll try to keep all Peter Pan related things out of LJ from now on. I know it's eaten my lj, and I'm sorry for that. I'm so easily obsessed that it's just sad.

And then after the movie, Uncle Don and Betsy came over for New Years dinner, and, well, a swell time was had by all.

Odd that during all of these thoughts of mine, two high school friends of mine pop up in LJ. rterra and I go way back, back to 11th grade, really. We even went on to the same college, and were traveling buddies, too. Roomates in Seattle, no less! Welcome to LJ, RT. And then, from a comment in her new lj, I find sachertorte! Not having any clue that she is who she is, I see "Sacher Torte" and I think, "Sorcerer Hunters! Whee!" And I comment to her, something along the lines of, "I have no idea who you are, but Zaha Torte! Woohoo!" When later RT writes to me and says, "Oh, duh, that's Sasha from high school!" Hello, Sasha! And let me tell all of you people, this lady was my first friend in public school. I'd just come from private school, all of nine kids in my graduating class, and I was terrified. No uniforms, pick out my own clothes?! School lunches?! People! They all hate me! AAAHH! And until Jeremy came along (months before RT,) she was my only real friend. She was the only girl who was consistently nice to me, sincere, smart, and entirely uncommon.

Welcome to lj, Sasha. :D

Well, now I should go and feed my beastly little wards. They bite my fingers and twist their evil little beaks these days, but they're only playing, and I swear they're still adorable. I'm going to miss them after Tuesday, and will have to wait till the end of April before I get more baby birds, and then I'll be inundated. That's always fine, though, because I love them. They're angels in a weird way, and I sort of always hope that they'll do some magic or something that will surprise me.

And then after that, my Dad's side of the family is coming for a Christmas visit. I've already got most of my lights down, because I can't stand having them up after New Year--even after Christmas, for that matter, but that's just tradition. But this is, to me, the last real day of the Christmas holiday, and I'm grateful that I get to see as many family members as I do this time of year. THe whole family thing--the gathering and the looking after your own kinda thing--that makes me feel way more Cherokee than any name on any Dawes roll, and any number indicating a blood quantum, as if I could quantify what I feel.

Well, usually. ;) It's odd, though: my Dad's side of the family is Native American, but it's my Mom's side that strikes me as being way more clannish, what with sharing the raising of children and all of this.

Just some mana'o. Happy New Year, everyone. :D