Just regular folks.

On Thursday, (after the Limahuli gardens tour (the best one!)) we moved south from Princeville to Poipu. We couldn’t check into our Airbnb until 4, so it was a long-ish day involving my mom’s favorite chicken lunch (unexpected find after my original option was closed), a drive to a plant nursery where I bought some cuttings cleared to go to the mainland, some donuts and then to our place near Poipu beach.

The next day, I ventured out in the morning on my own for a swim at the beach, and walked around town past all the resorts and shopping.

I watched some turtles swim in the water, this one happily saying hello to me.

For lunch, we went to Koala Fish Market. I want to say – I think i knocked it out of the park food wise on this trip. Save for an overhyped beach Hawaiian hot dog, all the meals were lovely – a mix of restaurant, simple meals at home and a bunch of small, local hole-in-the-walls. Lots of fish for my mom, some local delicacies, relatively high on fruits and vegetables, though still lower than what I usually love – but low on the number of hamburgers and pizza. We also were really good at not over ordering (usually by ordering two meals or even one meal and one big salad) and then also packing up extras to bring home for the next meal.

This was my favorite meal of the week, the lau lau, and piece of pork wrapped in a plant leaf. So tender and delicious!

That evening, we went to the Smith family luau. Pretty cute!

My parents enjoyed looking at an imu (buried oven) where they roast three pigs each evening for the luau.

This was my father’s favorite meal. It was also super cute because soooo many people were here getting married, on their honeymoon or anniversary! A few couples had gotten married that day! I was kind of like…ok? It would not have been how I would celebrate my wedding day, but to each their own.

Finally, the piece-de-resistance! We went to the Allerton/McBryde gardens – my mom has tried to go there twice before, once closed because of a typhoon, the second time, she arrived 20 minutes after it closed. So on Saturday, we went extra early to be sure that we did not miss anything. And we didn’t! We got to see it all!

This was my mom on all the plant tours. Lots of photos of plants.

On the south side of the island, the guides were much more savvy with offering to take photos. They were all much, much better at adding flair to the photos. Kauai is known for being the background for many movies, including Jurassic Park and so this guide added a dinosaur into our photo! On the one on the phone, the dinosaur actually moves and kind of opens its mouth more. My parents were like – how did he do that?, and I’m like – I have absolutely no idea.

After all these botanical gardens, I’ve learned that all my houseplants – if I shipped them to Hawaii and planted them into the ground, would completely grow into an enormous tree, like 4 stories tall and as wide as a half a city block. My fiddle leaf fig, my monstera, my dracena, my ficus trees (2), my pothos, all in my house, just miniature versions of their true selves.

Gorgeous spots all up day long.

I really wanted to find a fruit stand in Hawaii for my mom. They are hard to pin down, the weekly ones are held all over the island only one day a week and usually not corresponding to where we were going that day. I had an entire list that I went through trying to match up our iteneray with the opportunities for fruit. I was not optimistic and I warned my mother about that, but in the end, we did find the perfect fruit stand and we were able to go twice and to get a coconut. Success!

Saturday night, we went to “fancy” dinner – at a restaurant with a view.

Again, the waiter was so kind, taking us out to the edge of the property and setting up this long exposure photo with the moon and the beautiful waves in the background.

Last day, Sunday, boat day! We went on a boat to see the Na Pali coast – not accessible by car – only by boat and/or helicopter. This was really fun until it was not, my mom got seasick while we were bobbing for an hour at our snorkel spot. I will count the dolphin sightings as the highlight of the trip because it was on the boat before my mom got sick. Again, the crew of the boat got a good video of the dolphins, I’ll upload when I get back home as I’m on slightly slow airplane wifi right now. I loved this boat ride – calm and sightseeing-ly on the way out, a bit of snorkling in the middle, and a nice choppy (but not scary!) ride on the way home where I sat in the front hammock so I could barely see anyone and only the front of the boat getting splashed and wet and imagining that I was a dolphin swimming in the waves. So much fun. I do enjoy and miss kayaking of which this boat feeling was adjacent, it is exhilarating. There was also food! Breakfast and lunch.

Headed home to Portland right now! I’m so happy I got to do this with my parents. I’ve not done this before, planned a vacation from head to toe – so I’m super please on how it turned out. Hawaii does make it easy, it’s basically 24/7 vacation, i’m not sure I could plan a trip to Europe or South America as well, so good training grounds for me. I did spend a lot of time thinking about the rhythms of the days and how the activities/restaurants all flowed together. All plants all the time for my mom, a pig roast for my dad (and he also enjoyed very much the nice photos people took for us), and for me, a chance to do something nice for/with my parents. This was not a cheap trip, and normally I’d hesitate to spend this much money on this stuff and many times in the past (or all the times in the past, I’ve tried budget more carefully – but it is true, you pay for convenience; the better flight times, the closer in parking, etc.), but I’m not sure how many more trips of this caliber that can happen, so I tried to spend-out. But not crazy spend-out. I mean, I did not book any private tours or personal guides or luxury resorts, but I tried to not agonize over an extra $150 here or there. I know, so lucky to be able to do this. So lucky to be able to afford it, have the time to go and be in good health. Blessings all around, things I do not take for granted. And Hawaii presented its best self to us, gorgeous weather all week, good food, nice accomodations, great hospitality everywhere we went. And I personally thank the traffic gods who helped me navigate the island smoothly and would present parking spaces when I needed them without too much trouble – thank you for looking out for me – sincerely, a nervous driver – me.

While we were at Vince’s graduation in June, my mother turned to me and said – I really want to go to Hawaii – and then I said – so what do you want to see in Hawaii? – and then she said – I want to see plants. So in an act of filial piety, I arranged a week-long trip to Hawaii for my parents – all.plants.all.the.time. I wanted to go to only one island, so we are on the plant island – Kauai. They are footing the bill; I’m the travel agent and chauffeur. We are about 75% of the way through the trip and it’s been both fun and, as vacations always are, full of not-good sleep nights, little spats, lots of talk about pooping (both too much and not enough).

Here we go – Hawaii, it turns out, is a long way from DC – my parents are based in Portland right now. So I took one day to get to Portland, stayed over at my parent’s house and then the next day, we flew to Lihue Airport in Kauai (stopover in Honolulu). Flying to Hawaii is interesting – everyone on the plane is on vacation, so it makes for a kind of festive kind of flight. (though the person next to me was working on an excel spreadsheet? )

We split the week into two parts, one on the north shore (a little more rustic, rainy with lots of dangerous but beautiful surf and lots of plants) and one on the south shore (more resorts, better beaches, more tourist amenities).

I chose well for our first airbnb (not so much for the 2nd one, we’ll get to that later). Sunning view this is from the lanai (balcony). Unbelievably gorgeous and breezy.

First day, I knew we were going to get up early so we went to Ha’ena Beach Park and watched the sunset – my most favorite beach of this trip, the entire strip of sand to ourselves, the gorgeous sun coming up over the clouds.

This is my favorite photo of the trip. I’m leaning up against my father who is making a funny face and my mom is kind of littering in the way that she does throwing a banana peel into the bushes. Can you see the flying banana? Classic Rena – honestly.

Then we went to Princeville Botanic Gardens, a private garden which was lovely. There were plants, there was a chocolate tasting. All good things. There were little bridges and steps to connect everything. I thought it was nicely done. Because we are doing all plants all the time, we are going on 4 botanical garden tours, this is the first we would hear of many of the same stories about famous plants in Hawaii. Excellent – 5 stars.

The cacao tree – super interesting. Those pods grow from the trunk from the flowers on the trunk. And if you leave the pods on the tree and they overripe and die, they get sucked back into the tree for nourishment.

The next day we went to Na ‘Aina Kai Botanical Gardens which is also a private garden (by a couple named the Dotys) and this was super weird. Like really weird. This person loved these kind of kitschy sculptures – like hundreds of these all around the property and random themed planting all around. She also decided to like build an entire Alaskan village complete with enormous fake glaciers. The tour guide was a personal friend of the Doty’s, and kind of refused to answer where all the money came from, but some internet snooping afterward led me to the fact that the woman was the ex-wife of Charles Shultz of Peanuts fame. So all this is Snoopy money.

Besides the weirdness, they did have some absolutely gorgeous things – I really liked the plantations of teak and other hardwoods, those are really lovely areas – almost cathedral like – and this particular point was unbelievable gorgeous. Off in the distance, you can see Mark Zuckerberg’s 800 acre plot of land that he’s building a “house” on – I read that it was more of a compound than a single dwelling. Well, it’s a lovely spot for sure. The guide was sure the island spirits are going to kick him off soon enough. Hawaiians are big into their island energy here.

The third place we went to was the Limihuli Garden and Preserve – (I, for whatever reason, have no pictures of us at this garden). This was a 5-star place, really enjoyable and probably the most botanically knowledgeable guide – all these places, I booked the morning tours which lasted about 2.5 to 3 hours. Also, I believe the most stunningly gorgeous of all the gardens we went to, but alas, somehow no photos. (Looks exactly like Moana. Sersly.).

I got a photo of a plant.

Next we’ll head south.

A big day here as a parent…Vince is launched! I mean, he was launched before, but last night he was talking to me about the first few days of grad school and mentioned that he did get his first paycheck direct deposited into his bank account. And then I said – ok, I’ll let your allowance go through tomorrow (Tuesday) and then I’ll stop the automatic transfers. And just like that, the last of the money went through today and I cancelled the transfers. He’s still on our phone plan, he’s still on my health insurance, he’s still on my Spotify account, but other than that, he’s on his own. I kind of can’t believe it. Of course, he’s never really on his own, I have his back, but still, a very momentous occasion for all of us.

Classes started for him last week and he’s been meeting with potential advisors to fill two rotation spots this quarter and next quarter before committing to an advisor. This has been going well, he’s found three different potential advisors who he thinks would be a good fit and vice versa (hopefully there is funding, it’s always about the funding) and the classes he’s taking sound manageable and good. I had such a bad experience myself in grad school which took so long for me to recover from that terrible and humiliating experience (where at every turn I felt stupid and like – wtf am I doing here?) that hearing such a nice start to his grad school years has made me relax a bit and be thrilled for him. Fingers crossed for a good grad school experience.

It’s also been nice seeing him out and about at concerts with friends. New friends and old friends blended all together. love you! xoxo, mom.

Loves, we are back from Vegas. OMG, I think I’ll never need to go back there again unless it is for some very compelling reason. So, our friend Tom, who was Vince’s scout leader for over a decade and tirelessly dragged him and his friends across the Eagle Scout finish line and mentored them all, had a stroke about three years ago and lost so much physical ability, but overall maintained his mental capacities, really wanted to celebrate his 70th birthday in Vegas. And they really wanted us to come and we really wanted to go. The birthday party was to be on Saturday and we were going to just fly in/out and stay a two nights, but Maryam (his wife) seemed disappointed that we weren’t going to fly in on Wed like they were (I actually wasn’t sure how much hanging out we were going to do together as this was going to be a semi-large family/friends thing), but she insisted that we were going to hang out together all the time, so we flew on Wed (literally craziness). Edda skipped school to play the slots.

We stayed at what we thought was the Paris hotel – we checked in at the Paris hotel lobby, but really, we stayed next door where we had to walk past the Paris hotel amenities for about 3 minutes. Do you see this line? This is not my favorite – people – but Jeremy managed the self service kiosk and we were in/out quickly.

Wed afternoon, we regrouped and found our friend Tom.

And I bought him a beer.

Tom et al are late risers. We are early risers made earlier by the time change. We tried to walk to Denny’s on the strip and we failed because it was so early that they hadn’t turned on the elevators to the overhead walkways. But we window shopped at the Gucci.

So, I didn’t know this about Vegas, but they’ve re created lots of European landmarks. It’s the craziest thing, really, but here’s the Eiffel tower.

Standing before the Arc de Triomphe. This is our party. Three wheelchairs! All flown in, so much travelling effort.

The three wheelchairs crossing the strip to get to the Bellagio.

Tom, a serious and orderly graduate from West Point (hence the dedication to scouts), married Maryam, a Persian who likes to party. They are completely and utterly devoted to each other. Maryam was completely in her element. I liked to call this weekend – partying with the Persians.

We had sweets at a bakery. Literally there is no place to sit down unless you want to pay – at a cafe, a bar, or a gambling table/slots.

And we did (except that I went to bed at 8 pm every night). We shopped at at least 4 Louis Vuitton boutiques looking for the perfect navy blue purse (not this season’s color, unfortunately).

We had the most expensive cocktail I’ve ever had at a Vanderpump restaurant.

We rode in a gondola at the Venetian (where I’m literally sitting next to Santa (Tom’s brother Dexter who does play Santa all over Texas)).

Went to see an aquarium.

Saw the Statue of Liberty (literally, wtf.)

Checked out the pool.

Saw the Eiffel Tower from the pool.

Finally, the party on Saturday am, where I struck a pose with maryam who is much better at it than I am.

Elvis came by and actually was so kind and funny.

And then we stayed the last night on Saturday night and then left super early on Sunday morning. Both very happy to have gone and spent all this time with their families and very happy to go home! So out of the ordinary for us and maybe a day too long, but at least we weren’t stuck (for two extra days!) there like some people due to the hurricane in the southeast of the US. Back at work/school for all us here.

Busy weekend. We are essentially down to one car – a few months ago, we loaned the minivan to Tom, our friend down the street who had a stroke three years ago because it has the transfer seat that we got for Edda. We love our van, but because Edda has grown taller since we bought the van, it’s actually easier to get her to sit in our regular sedan than to wait patiently for the seat to lift/lower on the van for everyday outings. So we loaned the van to Tom and after an initial hesitation for using it, I think they are using it almost everyday to get him to doctor’s appointments and outings – this became more clear to us when we asked for the van back for a week to go to New Hampshire in August. Soo….Jeremy and I are reluctant to ask for the van back permanently because they are using it much more than we were. Honestly, we use the van probably once a week to go to Home Depot and then for our summer road trips. But the van is very old now (2011) and the A/C seems to be flaky and honestly, we like the modern computer integration and safety features of a new car/van when we go on the road – so we thought maybe we’d go down to one car, sell them our minivan, and see if we can manage getting around with only one car. This…should theoretically be possible – we’d rent a minivan for our long vacations (though getting Edda in/out is more of a challenge in this situation) and use UBER and/or zip cars and/or an electric bike to get around town and also figuring out how to go to Home Depot to pick up a sheet of plywood. I think this one-car model is possible – I mean, neither of us drives to work, it should be possible and possibly be cheaper. But, I do not bear the brunt of this change – I usually have the car and abandon Jeremy at home, so he’s usually the one who has to do the secondary arrangement. Anyways, we haven’t sold the van yet, we are just practicing having only one car.

Like this weekend – I took the car to guitar lessons, an alone-time lunch, church to sing at choir and then to see a friend. So Jeremy was home without a car for long stretches.

Anyways, Sunday was lovely and busy. I went to church to sing – I enjoy this way of participating in church. I sing loudly and often off-key, but it’s ok. I came back to find my youthful landscape contractor, Noah, done trimming/weeding and mulching a patch of my yard next to the driveway. He did such a great job and then wanted to play trains with me. But we had to all dash. Next time!

I drove to Woodbine to see my friend Soojung who is helping me native plant my backyard. She gave me a bunch of plants, and we talked about plants and weeds and trees.

And then finally dinner with family where Edda fully enjoyed her chocolate cookie dessert and chocolate ice cream.

I’m enjoying the guitar/sining combination. It keeps me busy and happy and I like going to lessons as I don’t have to organize any socialization. Does that make any sense? I just show up and people are there.

Jeremy went to the restore yesterday to see if they wanted our old stove top. They don’t take anything older than 7 years and this one is probably 18 years old. So this is going to go to the metal scrap heap at the dump, which makes me a little sad.

Given that this is essentially trash, I took the pretty parts, the iron grates that we cooked thousands of meals on and made them into plant stands. Do I like them? I’m not sure. They actually have a slight coating of impenetrable food grease that probably needs to be blasted off in an oven-cleaning cycle, but I like that they’ll keep the wood dry. I really, really want to start what’s called a planted tank, which is a self contained aquarium focused mostly on plants instead of animals, but I don’t have time for that right now. I got other things to do.

Loves, my front foyer is becoming a jungle. I moved all the plants from the porch back into the house and had to get some grow lights for them all. The fiddle leaf fig and this pineapple plant both need a lot of light to pretend we are in the tropics all year round. I’m hoping to have a pineapple in like 2-3 years. I only get one per this plant, so I’m hoping that I get to eat it and not a squirrel. We’ll have to see.

We’ve been so, so busy this past week – Jeremy was out of town again to PA this time, we had take out twice this week – we usually don’t do takeout, but what can you do? This is the cute lucky cat display at our favorite Chinese place.

On Friday, Jeremy and Edda were all well enough to get their covid and flu shots and to celebrate (or compensate – oh yes, Jeremy just threw in an extra shingles shot, because, really, why not? we hate the shingles.), we went to Pike and Rose and ate out (!) and went to the dog park (Elka was thrilled!) and had ice cream. Jeremy, Edda and I are trying a new thing – to order modestly and take nothing home. Usually, we try to order a main dish for all of us and take the extra home, but this involves some willpower on our end to not eat all the fries and the food that you deemed “extra” and honestly, the fries are no good when you take them home. So for the three of us, we ordered two main dishes (chicken and veggie platter) and two sides (mac and cheese and fries) and we split them three ways. This way, we all got like 10 fries and Edda got a small-ish portion of mac and cheese and half of my chicken. And then we went to get ice cream. Edda and I usually get one mini ice cream each, but this time, we ordered one small cone (the next size up from mini) and I sheared the top ice cream off in a bowl for Edda and ate the rest of the ice cream with the cone myself. I think this saves on both money and calories, but none of the fun! Because you want the fun – it was such a nice night. I’m so happy Edda is well and enjoying fries and ice cream.

Edda is back at school! Yesterday was her first day back, but today she went without her NG tube. Jeremy’s at a work retreat about an hour away from the house – he’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. Fingers crossed we will be A-OK.

We’ve been working hard and spending money hard. Now that the college bills are done, we are trying to work on keeping the house from falling down. (I’m still giving Vince an allowance for food, but I’m eagerly waiting for his first meager grad school paycheck to clear so that I can stop giving him this $). This is new territory for both of us because the house was new build when we moved in and we paid zero attention to the house because we aren’t really very interested in it, but it is very much not new anymore. We are trying to make one of the secondary bedrooms with a fully accessible shower for Edda – she’s been showering all these years in the primary bathroom, which is fine, but we have little temporary ramps in there and it means that every single caregiver we’ve ever had has been in our bedroom all the time. So we’ve had contractors come and look – I have decor dreams like – I wanted penny tile in the floor bathroom, the contractor was like – there is a lot of grout for penny tiles, it’ll be hard to clean and maintain and they are prone to having problems. And then I thought- I don’t want penny tile in the bathroom. What I want is strong, easy to maintain and clean – which apparently means, no penny tile. (You know the old fashioned white hexagonal tile with the black hexagons that make a flower?, so lovely). The drainage around the house needs to be fixed as the driveway is tilted towards the house and the water is not effectively removed from where the driveway meets the house. Lots of texting with friends and family to ballpark what a reasonable estimate is and to get their invoices and all I can say it that it is EXPENSIVE.

I spent Monday morning volunteering for Main Street at their annual big fundraiser – a golf tournament. I felt pretty lousy from the vaccines, but I popped a few Motrin and headed out.

The golf event was held at Woodmont Country Club which is located less than 10 minutes from our house. I’ve never been to this country club, but I’ve driven by it weekly through my childhood and adulthood. It’s located on the Rockville Pike which is a huge road artery through town which has things like: the Container Store, REI, LL Bean, Hooters, the Party Store, etc. In the midst of all this, there is an enormous lawn (probably 2-3 football field size) that has a loooonngg driveway that disappears behind some trees.

I don’t know what happened because this is a $80,000 initiation fee country club, maybe I’m jaded by Instagram, but I wanted the Country Club to be fancier as I walked through the property. In what way, I can’t really put into words? Because, it was super fancy already. I just wanted a little photo filtering on what I was seeing.

This was a tremendous amount of work to coordinate – food, entertainment, prizes, 230 golfers (they sold out), volunteers, so much to put together and I was happy to volunteer and will continue to do so.

Have I ever been on a fancy golf course? I’m not quite sure. There are like 7 types of grass, the finest grass nearest the hole. I learned many things about golf and country clubs, the most interesting one is that for a couple, the CC membership is only under one name because if the couple splits, they do not want to be in any argument of who the owns the membership.

So, my general observations on Country Club life: it is nice and fun in a particular way. I could see how it would be fun. And I had fun – lots of jokes, lots of food, beautiful grounds, lovely company and conversation, etc. But man, it’s like a throwback to the 1950s. Almost all the golfers were white men, almost all the volunteers were white women and our role was basically to provide light and fun conversation. All the staff were people of color. Sooo…not my favorite scene. Cigars! Really?! Yes, there were cigars. I also was not dressed properly. I mean, I did not stick out, but I had obviously not understood “country club casual” which I was instructed to be – no denim. So I wore black flats, a black summer strappy cotton dress with a fitted bodice and large skirt and a white linen button down unbuttoned. But everyone else wore sneakers, shorts, a golf shirt and a fleece jacket. I thought all these items (save the golf shirt, as…you know, it’s for golf – but only for the players and not the volunteers), would not be appropriate. And I see how the flats were not the right shoes because I ended up tromping over hill and dale after my shift was over to avoid riding golf carts and to go for a walk. Golf – a good walk spoiled.

Edda was home on Monday, but is at school today! She’s almost back to her old self. We are trying to pull an earlier appointment for her to see Eric up at CHOP.