Don't Hate Me Because I Live in Paradise

Many women would lack the courage to publish a self-portrait wearing paisley pajama pants, a 2XL Harding sweatshirt, giant pink fuzzy slippers, and yesterday's hastily applied make-up. If I could find my camera, I would boldy upload it this minute!

I am in this state at 9:30 in the morning because the Hawaii School System, in their profound wisdom, schedules a week-long Fall Recess. Just when you're getting into the groove, we get a week off. So Dash is downstairs on the futon watching endless Abbot and Costello DVDs. I'm trying to get a lot of small jobs done-they seem to take forever and I feel I've accomplished so little.

My 5-year old Macintosh Computer has finally died. Yes, I laid hands on it and prayed. But I must have doubted, because it just makes a loud clicking noise and no "happy mac" icon ever appeared. Just the spinning clock, spinning... clicking. I am still in the first stage of grief-denial. But I have a brand new PC that I had managed to transfer many files to before my Mac passed away.

I know I can cause a great deal of envy in some of you reading my posts, so I thought I would complain a little so you won't feel so bad. It has been COLD here lately! And WET. It's about 59 degrees in our house at night, and I'm afraid to turn on all the strip heaters because we'll get a $300 utility bill. I just sit up here in my turret dressed in many unattractive layers, drinking first, coffee, then tea, then diet coke if it gets warm enough. The joys of self-employment. It sounds great that while you're downloading a 100mb file you can just scrub that toilet-sweep the floor-do the dishes-throw in a load of laundry-vacuum the living room, but what you really want is to be independently wealthy and hire a maid.

And another thing. This is a small island-even though it's The BIG Island. Everybody knows everybody. Remember Venn Diagrams from math class? All those intersecting circles...

Hey, look, it's raining again.