Chapter 25: It's 9:05 AM

We are in Phoenix Sky Harbor (which sucks because it doesn't have any McDonalds. O McDonald's! How callously we rejected you in Hawaii! How right it is that you should reject us now!) We have been thus since 5:15 AM Arizona time. We are recklessly tired and our flight leaves here in about an hour. We attempted to sleep on the plane. Sarah had a tall man behind her window seat who did not take kindly to her seat being back and kept kneeing it up. She had a bleary-old-contact-eyed staredown with him. I slept and was awake intermittently with the Twilight Audiobook playing in my ears.

We attempted to find a McDonald's after a Starbucks stop and found none. We settled for Burger King, which has disgusting "croissants", and then slept on a row of seats each. We have another three hour and change plan ride ahead of us with a handsome man in a Ford Escape at the end of it.

The moral of this story, kids, is that Hawaii is worth it. Go to college there and always fly first class on flights five hours or longer.

PS- haha. It looks like this flight gets in an hour earlier than projected... Cool. Because my ears are going nuts.

Mahalo. Aloha.

Chapter 24: Waiting and Stuff

We are sitting at our gate in the 'port. Sarah's snacking on her new love- Marilyn Harper's "granola", which is not granola a'tall but trail mix. (Apparently crazy is catching.) We both had to walk through the security rectangle of doom several times, but I was the one who was patted down by a large Hawaiian woman on account of my wire-infused unmentionables. We had the amazing luck to be in the "expert traveler" line and I felt like I abused the privilege by not realizing underwire would set it off.

In any case, we are already on the verge of slaphappy. Mom and Dad left the hotel at 7 am, which meant the necessity of Sarah and I awakening at 6:20 because we wished to say goodbye. It was a new experience for Sarah to watch Mom's last minute packing ritual and Dad's impatience dance. We listened to her instructions about the remaining food in the condo (eat breakfast and take the oatmeal) and his instructions about checking out (I already did it so just leave the keys in the room and be out by noon) and shuffled back to bed. Thus began our long and obnoxious series of wake-ups which seemed to occur every five minutes or every time we finally fell asleep again: a wrong number to our hotel bedroom for Cason Jennings from some community college, kids running around outside our window and screaming, Sarah's phone going off, a car alarm freaking out, housekeeping (who couldn't understand English, so when they cleaned my parent's room took all the food) and finally Reba McEntire singing "Why Haven't I Heard from You?" because my mom was calling to tell me they'd made it to their gate.

We spent the remainder of our time after noon in the hotel lobby reading and playing Nancy Drew. (After we'd had breakfast at a Mexican food place across the street.)

Chapter 23: Late Night Reflections

I wish that I could truly describe how I feel in this moment. Sarah and I are packing. It's 11:30 on this beautiful Friday night. I'm sitting on the floor of our hotel room in front of the double glass doors to our balcony, looking out into the dark and windy night, watching the palm trees, silhouetted, sway against the sky. It's peace itself, incarnate, as I try to create the best cradle for my sparkling wine to bring home to Michigan and Sarah, doing the same in another suitcase, talks about Lucy Ricard and her salami coming back from Europe. My ipod is playing me a gentle Genius mix in one ear of Joshua Radin, Colbie Calliat, The Fray and the like and I'm looking forward to creating my playlist for this trip, which is almost over.

Today was another calm day. We hung out at the hotel, went to a mall to procure another suitcase, and eventually ended up at a beach near mile marker 16 with a beautiful dark sandy beach. Sarah and I found its coral reef after swimming around for a while (it was amazing how shallow it stayed for so long!) and had a scare trying to come back in when we realized how far way we had ended up from shore and down the beach from our entry point. The reef where we were extended almost all the way to the shore and kicked up so much sand that we couldn't see more than a foot in front of our faces. I headed back out to deeper waters when I saw those horrible black spiny things I've feared for years chillin' in the shallow water so near me. I made it back to shore and purposed to lay out in the sun, so I traded Dad my snorkel gear dn he and Sarah stayed out for a while longer. He ended up seeing a turtle friend of his own emerging from the sand.

We went to lunch in Ma'alea at the Beach Bum something or another and were fascinated by the inappropriate sign-age, the least of which being "Eat, Drink and Remarry." We girls fell asleep on the way back to the hotel as it was so nice and warm in the Kia. When we landed back at the Shores, Sarah and I headed beach-side to bake again for a few more hours- and bake we did. Sarah got some interesting lines, one of which appears to be her headphone cord and my thighs look like Neapolitan ice cream, which I suppose is encouraging because at least they aren't still completely translucent. (Apparently it's all good though, because I'd be pretty to Patrick if my skin was tie-dyed. His words, not mine.)

Eventually we headed back in when the sun had disappeared behind the cloud bank, the bonnet on the Cabana was not keeping any rain off of us and the wind was blowing so hard that we imagined, or more accurately I imagined, that it was going to carry us off somewhere. We showered, compared ridiculous tan lines and went over and ate dinner, watch TV with the 'rents until was time to check in and pack up. (By the way, the wedding cake show we were watching is nuts- they do some crazy stuff on there and are super intense about it all.)

Chapter 22: Hunger

We were hungry and the tyrannous majority did not approve of Dad's McDonald's suggestion. So we started to drive... and ended up out of town. Dad stopped at a roadside stand bought cut sugar cane, which was tasty, and Sarah and I bought overpriced lime and mango smoothies respectively. We then turned back to town to find the Cool Cat Cafe, because Mom had a coupon. There was no parking when we did finally find it (within the Hustler's mall). So we dropped Mom off and us other three parked the car and made the trek back.

The food was good and while we ate we watched a hippie preacher across the street talking to himself. The Cafe had a fun gift ship with vintage merchandise and a giant rainbow sandal. We went downstairs again, the CCC being on level 3, and talked to a guy carving tiki posts and a lady selling sparkly wind things. Mom declared her intention of buying a shaved ice, so we stopped on the way back to the car. Sarah and I shared one- local style: vanilla ice cream on bottom followed by gummy bears and candied pineapple (?) then the shaved ice (with the flavorings tiger blood, shark's blood and sliver fox) and topped with Kahlua cream. Excellent.

The following is the conversation my mother had with the lady who was selling it when the lady asked her if she wanted the vanilla ice cream on bottom:

"What's the point of the ice cream?"

"It just tastes good."

We started eating them on the sidewalk in front of the shop and after finishing them in various shady places, went back to the hotel. The declared intention from the rents was to swim but I'm pretty sure they just watched TV. Sarah and I sunscreened up and went to lie out and read and write on the cabanas in the sun. She had a fun conversation with Joe about some hideous teddy-bears-acting-like-zombies video game and I provided horrified facial expressions. Eventually the sun disappeared behind a cloud bank and we scurried indoors to hang out, shower, eat dinner, get distracted by a merman movie, and make our way over to see Jerry again.

But Jerry was not there.

Justin was however, so a drink was had by each of us, Pau Hana Punch and a Lolo Lehua. While we were having our drinks we were apparently being stared at by two men at the end of the bar. Not surprise with Sarah in her stunning wrap pants and small top and maybe my cleavage-oriented dress helped, but I wasn't sure if they were gay or not so they may have been commenting on our fashion, not oogling.

In any case, we paid and left and explored the garden, alone, pretending to be drunk at times, purely for the freedom to speak however we wanted without the necessity of explanations and without the impressment of society's taboos of conversation topics. We ended up deciding that we wanted to stay at that hotel next time (even though we don't even know which hotel Duke's is on) and held hands as we walked home because, hey, we were in a dark alley. Came home, put in a load of laundry and slept! (We thought it was crazy that every night we slept through the wrinkle guard on the dryer going off. We were tuckered out!)

Chapter 21: Hustled

Back on the road... sidewalk... we called Dad who told us he had left Mom under the HUGE banyan tree and that we needed to find her.

She was no longer under the Banyan tree.

We looked around for a while, then called Dad to report failure and remind him that she could be in any one of the surrounding shops- and that it's difficult to find a short high-energy woman bent over a cane in the shops. He sighed and said that she did somehow lose her pain when she was shopping.

So Sarah and I squared our shoulders and continued the hunt on Dad's suggestion that perhaps she had gone into the Old Courthouse which had been converted into a gift shop and art Gallery for local artists. We crossed under the Banyan tree where tourists climbed next to the Do Not Climb sign and a hippie played his uke enthusiastically. Lo and behold as we approached the doors there was Mom, smiling, with a bag in her hand. She lured us, now careful at least, into the gallery and we enjoyed the pictures. She decided she wanted to go downstairs to the second gallery and "would only be a minute." We headed back to the car and sat in the trunk and talked to each other and Dad for a few minutes before we all, unanimously, declared hunger.

The hunt needed to be reinstated, raptor-like, Sarah and I each took one side of the courthouse- Sarah, seaside, I, mountainside, to meet up on the opposite side of the courthouse where the prison gallery was- so as not to miss her if she was coming out.

She was not. She had met one of the artists down there who was a lady from a town right near our school. As Mom continued to talk to her, Sarah and I looked around at the beautiful pictures and were startled by the sailor on a censor in the prison cell who started talking to us about how he had ended up there. A many lifetimes sentence for disorderly conduct seems a little rough to me as well. Eventually we got Mom out of the basement, but then she had to go upstairs and pay for her pickings down there. So we, not having learned our lesson, returned to the car and waited for a time. Right when we were about to make a third foray, she came into view, promising that it had just taken forever to ring her up.

Chapter 20: Hustled

We wandered through other shops, making a purchase here or there, Sarah studying some fabric and declaring it expensive, me watching this dad lightly spank this daughter out of the corner of my eye while I considered purchasing hand-crafted salt and pepper shakers.

It was then that I made our mistake. With my attention having been caught by Sales and Clearance signs, we moved into the range of the saleslady tractor beam and were instantaneously pulled in. I kept my eyes on the merchandise, muttering about how nice it was while she went on about prices in her thick Asian accent, but poor Sarah- whose habit it is to look at people when they speak to her because she is constantly lip-reading, was taken.

The woman took her to the counter and showed her shiny things which evidently she wanted her to try on because she took it upon herself to remove Sarah's necklace for her; and even tried to take out Sarah's new black pearl earrings, but did not- Sarah's theory is that the freaked-out expression on her face was enough of a barrier to action. We both were released with purchases- each a little unsure about how it all happened and each with the desire to escape the little mall and return to the light. (Although I did stop to buy a beautiful picture- while we waited we noticed wish bead bracelets: gold for money, blue for love, green for hope; pink- your choice!)

Chapter 19: Hana Highway

The first store we went into was a clothing store with fun Hawaiian prints because a pair of wrap pants had caught Sarah's eye and a pretty tie-up dress had caught mine. We hunted and compared and decided and each took out what had attracted her.

The next stop was a fun store called Crazy Shirts which was in a mall with a cinema. (Crazy shirts dyes its tees with all sorts of things- such as Ti leaves, Kona coffee and money. Interesting!) Anyways- my objective for this particular shopxploring trip was to find a t-shirt about the Hana Highway. I had indeed survived it (no puking) and actually had enjoyed it a lot and, in the true spirit of American tourism, I wanted a t-shirt! Crazy Shirts was a little expensive but lots of fun and I found what I wanted! We talked with the man working there for a few minutes about where we'd come from (cold Michigan) and how much fun we were having and he ended up throwing in two free stickers along with my discounted tee.