Commandment #4

Looking over the schedule of events for today, I find that I just have time for a shower before heading over to the Tiger Scouts Day Camp. I'll have to watch the time because at 10:30 there is a walk-a-thon fundraiser/groundbreaking for the new gym at my son's school. At 1:00pm my 13 year old daughter has a facial, about which she is as excited as a bride.

Hmmm. It looks like from 3:00pm on I will have some time all to myself! Except for a little run to the supermarket, some weekend laundry, returning videos and library books and phone calls. Oh yeah, I will definitely have to get out into the yard and pick up the dog poop before it gets dark, and maybe get some seedlings planted into one of the beds. OK, That probably won't happen.

My brother is in the mainland from Hawaii. He'll be driving into town tomorrow and staying for a couple of days. Yaay! Looking forward to that.

Is it possible that my life is this boring? Or is it just that it's early? Time to check in with my fantasy future husband, Alec Baldwin!

He's in the news again today. AOL front page, negative press. I don't usually have enough interest to bother with the load time for celebrity "news," but as an obsessive fan, I need to know everything there is to know about A.B.

So, evidently his 6th grade daughter didn't feel like hanging around to take a phone call from boring old Dad at the appointed time. Sounds like it was about 10:00am on a Saturday. My guess, based on experience with girls that age, is her 12 yr old behind was still in bed, and that she didn't feel like rousting herself up just to for, "How are you doing, what's going on in school, what did you get on your math test," etc.

So,she let the machine pick up, a la "Please leave a message..." -- He left one, alright! I listened for the whole thing, which was kind of funny in the following sense: 1) Girl, you are so busted! 2) It's NOT just me! 3) Finally, a real parent, instead of the ones on TV. He may be 3000 miles away, but he is not going to tolerate bad behaviour.

I could hear the frustration and hurt feelings in his voice, along with the anger, of course. Why not? Not only was his morning wasted, because he probably scheduled his work around this call, which she couldn't be bothered with, but the whole rest of the week, instead of being able to look forward to a visit with her on the 20th, he had to grit his teeth and know that there will be confrontation and tears, and pouting and drama. But I'm pretty sure Alec is not going to back down, he is going to take his stand for his kid to meet her commitments, not to mention treat her father with consideration. It is not too much to ask, by God, and she will not be allowed to become a bratty little princess, like so many other rotten kids, who's parents can't be bothered to do the hard thing.

As a further bonus, the tape is being played all over the world on the internet, so he has to put up with commentary from Matt Lauer like "...disturbing...vitriolic...anger management...," (Oh shut yer pie hole, Matt! Like you know anything.)

OMG!!! I so hope Alec Baldwin has friends around him, support and all that. And I hope he doesn't lose heart, and he can keep going, and he will be strong enough to take all these slings and arrows, and that he will fight this thing down to the ground. As the primary male in her daughter's life, he is the template for how she should treat men, and how she should be treated by men. He needs to keep her from becoming Paris Hilton.

And as for his daughter, if her father tells her he is going to call at 10:00, she'd better be up and standing by the phone at 9:55!

Me Ke Aloha, ku'u homeo O'ahu

There are a couple of areas in my life where my behaviour is completely irrational, and over which I don't seem to have any control. These are 1) losing weight and 2) Hui Hawaii.

There is nothing I can say about 1) that hasn't already been blogged to death by a million others, so I will proceed directly to 2). Hui Hawaii is a Hawaiian club started about a year ago by some local people in the town who have lived here for the last several decades. The oldest of them, people in their 70's, grew up in Hawaii, still have family there, but have lived here in the mainland for many decades. The younger members, most of them younger than I, were born and raised here, have family ties back in Hawaii, -- and ties just as strong here locally, I might add, most of them have Spanish last names.
Last Fall I got a call asking if my daughters could join a Keiki (kids) Hula Halau (troupe) they were forming for a Christmas Program. Evidently they had quite a few boys, but only a few little girls, who had never danced. Of course I was delighted to hear about the whole thing and couldn't wait to meet everyone and get involved.

At the appointed day and time came, I herded all the kids into the van and headed over to the address I had been given. It turned out one of the neighbor kids got caught up in the sweep, but since I was running late, I figured it would be easier to just include her, call her mom from the road and give her an afternoon activity she hadn't expected. She, like my kids, has been taking dance classes since she was 4 or 5 anyway, so it shouldn't have been any kind of problem. They were looking for girls anyway, right?

So, we got there. I met them. Right away there was stand offishness. I could see they were surprised by my whiteness. Out of that particular group, I was the only one who had lived in Hawaii, as opposed to visited, had gone to school there, grown up there. Out of all the little girls there, mine were the only ones who had ever danced before, and who were even familiar with a couple of the songs. I had brought some Hawaiian quilting stuff, to see if there might be any interest in getting something along those lines going. None of the women there had actually ever seen one made, or even many actual quilts. In spite of all that, it was like all they could see about me was my skin. I went to two of the meetings, and the whole time I kept hearing things like "We thought your girls were younger, we really wanted this to be all little kids," "I don't know yet if it's OK to open this up to the rest of the community (re: my little neighbor showing up). We might decide to charge..." "We decided we WOULD include the military people, not just 'Locals' (non-whites)" And on and on. I finally withdrew. I mean I paid the dues, and I check the email updates, but I took my too-old kids out of the Halau, and told them to let me know if they ever got an adult group going. They did, but I didn't find out until the first performance was publicized. I haven't attended any of the functions. I don't feel welcome.

The question is, why is this so hurtful? It is bad enough to live with all these Haoule people around me, but I can't tolerate being excluded by even pseudo-Hawaiians.

I hadn't really consciously thought much about any of this until last week when I was sitting in a doctors office. As a patient, I mean. I decided to address 1) and went to a Bariatric specialist in Sad Diego to see about getting some professional help with losing weight. The MD turned out to be from Waipahu, a little town near where I grew up. They were our big High School football rivals, actually! Anyway, he noticed my bracelet, I guess and started asking me about Hawaii. Like a real Hawaiian. I briefly mentionedthe above situation, and was just overcome with sadness and weariness about the whole thing. As he was charting the treatment plan he said kind of under his breath "You need to lose this Haoule husband, go home and marry a Local Boy."

OMG!! I think tears came into my eyes. What is that all about?

Magickal Arts

What? Wait a minute... Yes! I am alone in the house with the computer, I have time and space and energy to enter the Dreamtree. What are my thoughts?

Uhmm,

Well, homeopathic medicine is on my mind.

My sister just had a baby, and in the genetic tradition of my family, he evidently suffers from a wicked case of infantile eczema. They live on the other side of the continent, so I haven't actually seen him yet, but I hear from everyone how bad he looks.

"His skin is all dry and cracked, like leather."
"He cries a lot, and he won't go to sleep, it probably hurts."
"His face is all red and rough and scaley."
"His feet and hands blanch when you pass your hands over them, then they get really red."

And so on. We all have some kind of skin thing. In fact, if I look up my maiden name in the encyclopedia, I find an entry for Baldwin, last christian king of Jerusalem, died during the battle of A----, suffered from leprosy.
Well, they called everything leprosy back then, but it sounds like a relative.

Anyway, my sister took the baby to the doctor, who told her to put Vaseline on him. Whoa! That sounds like exactly what they told me NOT to do for my kids. No petroleum, no oils. So, anyway, I stopped into a health food store yesterday to look for the Jason lotion I used to use. They used to sell that stuff in bulk at the place in Phoenix I used to frequent. I'd buy a liter at a time. Yesterday, there were only a few small tubes on the shelf. So I asked the helpful Ageing Hippie Health Food Store Lady what she could recommend for a baby with eczema. She ran over to look something up in a big dusty, dog-eared book as I groaned inwardly. Then she came back brimming with enthusiasm and information. She led me to a huge, aisle-long display rack for homeopathic remedies. She went on and on. As she looked up at me with her large, myopic blue eyes, brimming with sincerity and fanaticism, I could only nod attentively, my heart sinking.

Trapped like a rat.

I realized that there was no way I was going to get away without buying this stuff, and also that my sister would never in a million years give some dodgy pills to her 6 month old. --And she would never in three million years make sure it didn't touch any metal, or her hands, "so the energy doesn't get messed up." Aaarrghh!

So, I bought the little (very little) vial of pill. "I have some eczema," I thought to myself, " I'll try it and see what happens."

This morning I woke up and Whoa! Big difference.

So I spent today looking things up, ordering books. I'm tired now, though. All these pseudo-sciences wear me out. Astrology, Tarot, all that. My brain can't hold on to the info. One of the websites I found had a big long checklist, with things like "chest, skin, dry, heat, better." Then it gives you a diagnosis with info like "You have headaches that are better when you hold your temples." Wha..? Also, the dosing: "Take one dose, and see if there is a change. When you feel that it is no longer helping, take another dose." OMG! This is harder than nursing school. Thank God we didn't have to learn it to practice!

Tranquillity

My house is full of teenagers. Chatty, giggly, restless teenagers, piling dirty dishes up in my living room. When did I become the coolest Mom?
Sunday, one of my daughter's friends, an exchange student from Germany, asked me if she could spend the night, and if I would make her an apfelkuchen. "Uhh...sure," I said. The next day she asked if she could stay the rest of the week. I guess my daughter said something to her, because the plans seem to have changed. She did come back today and had three big slices of kuchen, though. Something tells me that when she gets back to the Fatherland, the menu will be heavy on the saurkraut for a while.
That kid has packed on quite a few lb.s since she's been here.
Anyway.
A couple of Sundays ago, I drove 6 hours to visit a friend. She is a professional make up artist, who works on crews for television, movies, photographic shoots. My younger daughter expressed an interest in that career, so we took the drive and spent the day. This is the thing; the whole time we were there, this lovely woman, who is about my age, was jumping up and down, fussing with her kids, a 6 year old boy, and a 4 year old girl. She pulled out every toy, she chased them around trying to get them to eat, she asked every 15 minutes if they wanted something. Meanwhile, the little boy was like the Demon Seed, just the most obnoxious tyrant you can imagine.
Meanwhile, my friend is asking my advice about how do I get my kids to observe a bedtime, how do I get them to eat, etc. She tells me she has arrythymias. Her heart is actually damaged from all the nervous exhaustion. What the heck?
My question is this; why doesn't her husband put some pants on and take charge of that family? Nobody in that house wants to have a confrontation, or deal with complaints, so as a result, the kids are bullies of the first degree. I mean, I get that the mother is overwhelmed and desperately trying to meet her children's every potential need, but as a result she is punishing her husband, her mother and in particular her guests. Surely this is a little crazy. I get that her husband doesn't want a screaming child AND a screaming wife on his hands, but at some point, like maybe the point where actual heart damage is being done, I think you have to just enter the dragon. I mean, put the kid to bed, eventually all the weeping and wailing will die down, and everyone will get some sleep.
Anyway, I feel sorry for all of them. And I know it's hard.
During the long drive back I reflected and wondered about the role in the family of so many of my male friends. The best of them are the ones who haven't quit, who are still married to the mother of their children. Yet, in the family they seem to have a sort of shadowy, background position. All the engagement and drama is between the mother and children, the father is just some kind of mother's helper. And his needs are last on the list. I remember my own father saying things like "Leave your mother alone," "Don't talk to your mother in that tone," etc. Coming to the rescue, as it were. He didn't change diapers, but he wouldn't stand by and let her be tormented, or treated like a servant. He was like, oh, I don't know, another adult in the house, with authority and position, and maybe a more objective perspective on the dynamics. He was the relief pitcher, the coach and umpire all rolled into one.