An esoteric bake sale? Really?

There is no way my town can be considered normal. While other people spend their summers having nice neighborhood yard sales, Paia throws esoteric book & bake sales. An esoteric bake sale? Really?

I don't know the last time anyone else felt like looking up "esoteric" in the dictionary, but last i checked it meant "mystical or secret knowledge, meant to be understood only by the select initiates". I mean, how difficult can it be to grasp the meaning of a brownie? Then again, these people don't eat brownies. Things on offer are more likely to be more along the lines of gluten-free carob & flax bars. Which is more difficult to understand- but still! If these books and baked goods are esoteric, meant only for the select enlightened few, it seems rather paradoxical to me that they are offered via cardboard sign to the general public and casual passerby. I think it would have been a little more rational to just call it a book and bake sale. That, of course would be far less...exotic?

This exciting event of course is held at the friendly neighborhood dharma center- better known (to those not familiar with the eastern religions) as a buddhist teaching center. Seriously, does your town have one? It probably does, actually- but does yours have an eyesore of a stupa (spirit house thingie) out front on the town's main thoroughfare? Paia is a small town- it has exactly one stoplight- and yet we have this garish stupa: bedecked in gaudy Christmas lights by night, blinding as a whitewashed tomb by day.

I do love this town, my home, and am so accustomed to its craziness that navigating it is second nature. Still, i have days when i find Paia's not being in touch with reality a frustrating and grievous thing. Its random, varied, cultural and quirky- but I am reminded almost daily that there is a point where the color is a mere trendy ethnic veneer over delusions that lead men away from Truth.

An esoteric bake sale just sort of highlights the irony of it all, ya know?

I mean really, an esoteric bake sale??

Choose your poison(-ous creature)

So recently I posted a story about my housemate and i slaying a centipede in the bathroom, the account replete with an array of gory pede pics. I will spare you the pictures this time (in fact, I neglected to take any because this is just everyday life here) but this week has been ridiculous. There has literally been at least one large arachnid or exoskeleton bearer per day here in the downstairs of the house. If its not in my room, its somewhere else. Night before last there was a centipede in Jasmine's room, then last night she had a cane spider... then i walked into my room and a fat centipede was roaring across my floor - I lunged and pegged him down with the closest implement at hand: an infrequently used curling iron. What a way to go. Jasmine came to my aid and fetched the trusty leatherman... which ended that ordeal. Then as i was sitting on the couch outside my room, I saw a cane spider go running across the floor, apparently hellbent on entering my bedroom. I ran to fend him off- but he outran me. To the best of my knowledge, he is still beneath my bed even as I am writing this from atop it. You win some, you lose some. But there is some you'd rather lose than others! I'd rather lose a cane spider under my bed than any of the other critters, thats for sure.

Tonight was the icing on the cake, when as i was talking to a friend outside my room, i noticed a familiar and nefarious shape above the baseboard... a scorpion. As if we haven't had our quota of distressing arachnids this week! I smashed him with Jasmine's new shoe from American Eagle:) Another great way to go. Guess she can consider those broken in now. I think that in Hawaii, a slipper (our term for flip-flops) isn't a good slipper till you've used it to kill something!

So yeah, anyway- its been a great summer...

loving the 'Aina

This past Saturday we had an opportunity to serve our community and be stewards of the earth God gave us dominion over... Paia Clean-up Day! A few of us spent our morning taking care of the 'aina (the Hawaiian term for land) by picking up trash along a mile of Baldwin Avenue, nearby my house. Our assignment from the community clean-up organizers was to rally our group of volunteers and trash pick our way from a little private Christian school just above Paia town, down to the old abandoned Sugar Mill at the edge of town. After a couple hours (and thirteen trash bags of bottles, cans, bags, cups, hub caps, warped cds, shoes and cigarette butts later...we reached our endpoint. And the 'aina was a tidier place. I am so grateful to live in this beautiful place- a day to help care a little for the land, our God-given 'aina, is a privilege.

if it has an exoskeleton i am against it

So i am drifting off to sleep late last night when i hear my housemate Jasmine calling quietly for help. Good thing our walls are so thin that we call this place the paper house. I turned on my light and went looking for Jasmine- I found her in the bathroom holding my decorative shabby-chic wooden pelican against the wall- his base wedged against the window sill. " Get me a knife or a pliers or..." she started listing an arsenal of implements that come into play when dealing with oversized household pests. "Or my leatherman from right here in the shower?" I asked. "Yes!" came the relieved reply. Good thing my leatherman multipurpose tool is always in the shower. (Its there because our lever is perpetually broken and we have to turn on three different valves to start our shower water- and one of the valves' handle broke off... thus the leatherman.) Anyhow, I came to Jasmine's aid to have a look at whatever she has pinched between the pelican and the wall- a fat and nasty centipede. It took some maneuvering but we finally got him incapacitated (he is missing his head and a couple body segments in the pics, due to the aforementioned incapacitating process) and I got back to bed. And that, my friend, is why i wear slippers to the bathroom at night.

As if we hadn't had enough fun in the bathroom for a single twenty-four hour period, i found this other specimen today. Happily, he seems to have just come out in the open to die- he was expired when i came upon him. We are thinking he is the same scorpion that escaped our other housemate a couple weeks ago when in a panic she sprayed it with cleaning products. Or maybe that one is still alive in some damp corner becoming a windex mutant.

But i rather hope not.

***Note: thanks to Joan Gadbois for the leatherman- its become invaluable in the wilderness that is my house;) Who knew? Most frequent functions: hot water valve replacement handle & centipede slaying apparatus.

reflecting on Sunday

reflecting.

I wanted to share my reflections from this past Sunday. After church I generally join a handful of people in spending the remainder of the afternoon at my friends the Halverson's- enjoying fellowship, cooking/eating, playing games, and watching the kids play in the yard. I love to perpetuate this practice I grew up with- only i remember being the kid playing in the yard while my mom and dad were inside having fellowship! Growing up, I learned that church never ended at the dismissal following the sermon- church was people that love Jesus. And it still is. So being one of the adults now, I am blessed in so many ways by continuing to practice fellowship and hospitality with members of my congregation. This is the fellowship of the Body of Christ... and I marvel at how He makes such a simple thing so rich a means of grace.

all done and said, a promise realized

I just wanted to note that before the holiday weekend, despite a rainy day, i looked at a rainbow and said the weekend looked promising. I had high hopes of a relaxing camp out and time with friends. Then, somewhere between the campfire under the stars and the banana pancakes on the beach, I became aware of that promising outlook having become a clear reality. And another rainbow graced the sky above me.

banana pancakes= happy memories

The morning just got better as Jason and I cooked up breakfast for our fellow campers- I brought everything we'd need to serve up a stack of the traditional camp out banana pancakes. We also had breakfast sausage links, hawaiian style portuguese sausage, and coffee- not a bad way to start your day, if waking up on a quiet stretch of beach along the west coast of Maui wasn't enough!

Getting ready to cook up breakfast for the crew-

-and MacGyver-ing our coffee!

Having our camp stove kitchen inside the back hatch of an old caravan may not seem glamorous, but the output was excellent. The traditional banana pancakes were in fine form.

From there the day took off - there was swimming, exploring, hunting opihi (little sea snails that are clamped down on rocks like barnacles) to fry up for a snack, breaking camp, driving to nearby Honolua bay to snorkel (it was a perfect day for it), losing the front grill of the van (which we retrieved), and finally driving back to the north shore with laughter, twizzlers, and a whole lot of freshly made memories.

dawn breaks

So honestly, i didn't sleep well at all. Its probably closer to say that i didn't sleep at all. But imagine how that memory fades when you unzip your tent flap in the morning to this:

And then go for a walk on an empty beach at first light, with not a soul in sight.

Nearly everyone else slept in, but it was nice to just breathe in the salty morning air and have time alone to think and pray. There was no shortage of things to thank God for. There never is.

fun with tripods and cellphones

What are cellphones good for when you are camping in a place where there is no signal whatsoever? Long exposure photo experiments.

the day passes into night

dinner and a sunset- campsite style:)

But nightfall doesn't mean the day is done.

rest and relaxation

Like me, Emmy's idea of a good time involves capturing moments on film....or digital files, as it goes these days. She had three cameras along: 35mm, digital, and underwater! Always be prepared, i guess!

Lilikoi passion fruit Aloha drink- clearly Jasmine's beverage of choice...

...and the guys', too! We also drank a whole lot of Coke during our 24 hour outing...

...and talked story around our campfire as the day slipped away.

We're going camping now, we're on our way...

We actually went camping after all! Yay! So after church, we packed up a van, a pickup truck and my car and six of us headed off in caravan for the west side of the island, where a friend had referred us to a little known camping spot. A discreet turn off, a steep rutted dirt road, and we arrived at our personal 4th of July coastal haven!

Some of us threw out chairs, soaked up the afternoon sun, and got ready to pitch our tents-

-while others explored the beach and immediate vicinity.

View to the right of our site-

and the view to the left. Total number of complaints: 0.

it looks promising

Tomorrow marks the beginning of a three day weekend for me and my coworkers- and as we make plans for excursions and bbqs, the weekend looks rather promising. If the drizzling cloud that just blew over my house keeps on moving away, that is! Rain brings rainbows, and as nice as those are, i have to be honest: we really are hoping for some sun:)

Hopefully next week i will have some stories and new pictures from our outings. As for right now, life isn't awfully photogenic. Just shuffling through ever arriving applications and bits of paperwork, accepting students for my school. July is going to be past before we know it, and August will mark the base's return to full speed preparations for the Fall courses. I am trying to get ahead on as many things as possible, since some of my school's staff will not be available prior to the course to help prep our logistics. Should help things be less hectic for the couple of us pulling it all together next month:)

So i am ready for a little break. Hoping to go camping on the other side of the island if everything works out...and it looks promising.