It's Thursday...That Means That Tomorrow is Friday

It's Thursday August 13th, 2009 and that means that we only have six full days left here on O'ahu. It also means that there are Week 2 NFL Pre-Season games on TV today...too bad I'll be outside soaking up all the awesomeness I can. I can't believe how fast this time has slipped past, but we're both eager to get home to a lot of things. Although, had we actually moved here and had a life every bit our own we'd likely never leave.

We miss a lot of random things about home...

Cooking our own food...

Buying groceries that don't cost the equivalent of a small mortgage...

Having more than just one room to live in...

Getting to do whatever we want once Zoey goes to bed, not turning the lights down low and chilling out by 8pm...

Swimming in freshwater...

Seeing our families and our friends...

Hearing the waves from Lake Huron right outside our window...

Keeping money in your wallet for more than a few hours at a time...

No more city busses...

No more city busses is right. Although it seems that Zoey loves them we lean the opposite direction. Spoiled by years of owning our own vehicles the bus can be tortuous at times...Hour long city bus rides aren't meant for normal human beings. It's made me realize how someone experiencing relative poverty must feel at the end of the day...a million little annoyances bordering on the occasional inhumanity. A couple of days ago we rode all the way out to Pearlridge with what had to be a transvestite lioness prostitute...she/he had what looked like a sheep woven onto her head...you think I'm kidding, I'm not. It was the grossest thing ever. She was just this vile, mean, bitchy transvestite too...not even remotely nice to anyone...all annoyed that people were staring. Well, no shit Ethel! You look like a man in a mini-skirt giving a lion a piggyback! Brutal...it was mildly amusing but at the end of that ride I thought, "what do you tell your four year old when they see that...or worse, if they have to sit next to that, which one young fella did." It's no big thing, at least not on the scale of hunger and crime, but it's something you'd rather not have to deal with.

Multiply such aggravations by forty to get what someone living in poverty must feel every day...it's the little things that add up to frustration and bitterness, an explosion maybe. The big things are just what they are...a lost job, another bill, etc...but ride the bus everywhere...put that good tasting food back on the shelf and buy the bad tasting no-name stuff...don't have the correct change at the bus stop and watch the meter steal the same 75 cents that would have allowed you to buy the real Kraft Dinner and not the no name stuff. It all adds up. In the end you have a really bitter, used up and tired person with a really skewed sense of justice and equity and normalcy. It's easy to see the gap between us and them widen.

Sorry to get off on such a social rant but there's been a lot that's fallen into better light being here all this time. I have new perspectives just when you thought I sure as hell didn't need anything else to ramble on about. Life is neither good or bad, it just is...just for some people the is part is a whole lot different.

I'm going to go play in the ocean now. Time's slipping away with each key I punch.

Mahalo