Things on Thursday: Sunny Dog

"I love a dog. He does nothing for political reasons."  Will Rogers


“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring–it was peace.” Milan Kundera

“In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn’t merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.” Edward Hoagland

“I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me they are the role model for being alive.” Gilda Radner

“Happiness is a hound dog in the sun." Hannah Schneider

Daisy daily moves around the house to where the sunbeams are.

"Happiness is a warm puppy."  Charles M. Schulz

Under the Sea

Please note: you may click on the pictures in this post to see them larger.


I expected to see natural wonders when we went to Kaua'i. Natural wonders, in fact, are everywhere if you choose to look closely enough, and there's no real need to go to the middle of the Pacific to find them. Nick, for instance, recently found the most adorable salamander in our yard, and George and I have seen coyotes out our front window. Deer wander freely here, as does a giant snapping turtle. Cranes visit our pond. The neighborhood has played host to a black bear and an escaped rodeo bull.

While we live in suburban Ohio, Kaua'i, an island paradise, offers a somewhat different take on natural wonders. For one thing, it has the Pacific Ocean, which is noticeably absent in Ohio.

So my feeling was that something as big and naturally wonderful as the Pacific Ocean couldn't possibly disappoint. In one very small way, it did.

I expected to see dolphins in the waters off Kaua'i, partly because the Blue Dolphin cruise we took guarantees dolphins. But the dolphins had other plans that Monday morning.

Which reminds me of a funny story. Years ago, mom and I went to the Mystic Seaport aquarium and saw a beluga whale show. The whales responded to touch commands...the trainers would touch their heads in particular ways, and the whales would do tricks. The ledge the trainers stood on gave the whales a place to hide their heads when they didn't want to perform. Mom and I missed the show because the whales were, ahem, noncompliant. Our respect of their right to figuratively flip off their oppressors outweighed our disappointment.

So while I was disappointed not to see dolphins in Kaua'i, I understood.


Swim free, dolphins. Swim free.

I did not expect to see endangered monk seals on Kaua'i, mainly because they are seriously, deeply, frighteningly endangered. Only about 1,100 survive, and their numbers are decreasing. Yet we saw two of them on the beach at our resort.

George snapped this thoughful fella.

I snapped this lovely lady.

I also snapped the informational sign posted about her. If you can't read the side note, it says that she gave birth to a pup on April 23, which was already weaned. K13 definitely needed her rest!

The Kaua'i Monk Seal Watch program does an excellent job of protecting resting seals and educating the public about them. It's much harder to ignore the warning signs and to be disrespectful of the seals' privacy when the seals have individual stories posted on the barricades. The more people know about them, individually and collectively, the easier it is to accept that they have a right to the beaches and waters of Hawaii, too. 

Of course, a man was recently convicted for harassing a seal on Rabbit Island, which is a wildlife sanctuary.

Bad man.

We also expected to see sea turtles, although we thought our encounter with them would look more like this:

than this:

George even snapped this picture of me floating above the turtle. Don't I look like I want to give it a hug? Not really, because touching them is wrong and I knew it. What the picture can't show is my yelling into the snorkel: "That's a sea turtle!!! I'm two feet away from a SEA TURTLE!!!!"

These pictures were taken as we snorkeled at 'Anini Beach. The water was roughly six feet deep, so just barely over my head as I stood on the tips of my flippers trying desperately to clear my foggy mask to see the sea turtle better.

What amazed me the most was how the turtles completely disregarded us. They could not have cared less that we were so close. They just went about their business of being sea turtles, doh-dee-doh, grazing on bottom plants, surfacing for air, diving again. The smaller of the two turtles kept angling toward me as I scrambled gracelessly to get out of its way and not touch it. My frantic flailing two feet away would have sent fish darting for cover in the coral. A shark might have thought, "Oh, lunch!"

The turtle, however, seemed tolerant and pitying of my poor water skills as it effortlessly navigated the current. Its benign tolerance was the greatest gift I carried away from Kaua'i.

Fish are rather wonderful (not to mention occasionally tasty), and George was able to snap many pictures of them with his little Pentax. These are assorted pictures from 'Anini, our Blue Dolphin cruise, and Lydgate Beach.

This skinny fish makes the other fish feel fat.

He's sort of prehistoric looking, isn't he? Or is it a she?

Pretty Colors

Lydgate Beach wasn't quite as clear as the open reef we snorkeled
on the cruise or 'Anini bay.

This fish was my favorite...the yellow-masked
plaid bluefin. I brought it home with me.

The scorpionfish at 'Anini...don't mess with this fish!

I think this is a Hawaiian Spotted Toby.

A sea cucumber

Pretty lavender coral

A school

Moorish Idols...showing off

Is that enough? Do you want more fish pictures? 'Cause I have plenty. Really? You've seen enough? Oh good. I'm getting tired.

My point is, the wonders of nature under the sea and resting on the beaches of Kaua'i are worth the long flight to the middle of the Pacific, whether you get to see whales and dolphins or not. When you go to nature, you never know what you'll get. Sometimes nature shows up, and sometimes, it has business elsewhere.

If you embrace what does show up (figuratively speaking, of course) and feel gratitude for God's amazing, wonder-filled world and your tiny place in it, an island paradise will deliver the experience of a lifetime.

Beautifully.

Breakthrough

The Scene: Curtains open as Nick and I are loading bags full of back-to-school supplies and laundry detergent and contact lens solution from our cart into the back of my station wagon in the Target parking lot. Jack has high-tailed it into the back seat and opened his bag of Swedish fish.



Nick: I'll help you put these in the car, but I'm not going to help unload at home. That's wouldn't be fair. Jack's not helping now at all.

Me: Well, it's not fair that I have to do both the loading and the unloading.

Nick: Wow. [Pause] You know, Mom. I just thought of something. You DO always have to load and unload, especially when we're not with you. Now I feel bad, like I'm a really horrible person. Here I am worrying about what's fair to me and not thinking about you. How selfish is that? I'll help unload, too.

Me: Thank you, Nick. I appreciate that.

He puts the cart in the return, gets in the car, and we drive home, where both boys help unload the bags. Curtains close...




Bravo, my son. One step closer to maturity. I'm proud of you.

Or you really, really really want that rated M for Mature Xbox game.

Either way, well played.

Weekly Giggle: Cowboys are Deranged

Stumbled upon this Letter of Note and chortled.

Hope you enjoy it, too!

Gratitude Journal #145

Today, I am grateful for Pinterest because I've found so much there to make me smile.

Ms. Mellby, for instance, has an entire board dedicated to gray hair. Whenever I feel like I'm the only 45-year-old woman who's not coloring her hair, I'm going to go to her board and see that gray is beautiful. If you read Questioning in email, you might want to click on the blog link to see my gray-and-proud-of-it picture on my profile. Jack recently took the picture, and it's pretty cool.

Some other Pinterest finds that make me feel grateful....

I am grateful for companions in misery. I can relate, Funny Hare. Only too well.

I am grateful for this room in Florence, Italy, even though I will likely never see it. Its very existence makes life worth living, doesn't it?

I am grateful that books take you places and that some artists know this to be true.

I am grateful for gorgeous calligraphy of an uplifting verse.

I am grateful for absurdity...in math as well as life. (But Everytime should be two words, not one. Grammar Nazi strikes again!)

I am grateful for my mother.

I am grateful for beautiful rooms and the inspiration to create them in my own home.

I am grateful for timely reminders, even if initial capitalization is optional.

I am grateful for goldens. Awwwww.

I am grateful for good advice.

I am grateful for visual representations of my personal philosophy: I can see both sides.

Links to all these photos may be found on my Pinterest boards.

What are you grateful for today?

Tourist Susan Visits Kaua'i

Someone once asked, "If it's tourist season, why can't we kill them?" I imagine whoever said this was Hawaiian, because it must be frustrating for those born to an island paradise to share it with gawking, nosy, rude, loud, curious strangers from all over the world.

Before I left for Kaua'i, and since I've returned, a number of people have told me that Hawaiians are rude and a little dangerous. "They acted like they didn't want me there," one man said, "so now I vacation in the Bahamas, where the locals at least act like they are happy to see me."

Tourists are sight-seers, consumers of alien cultures with no vested interest in the future of those cultures. They are interested in comfort and convenience during their week-long vacations, and they leave with lots of photos, trinkets, and memories. The Hawaiians, however, are searching for their lost culture, trying to resurrect it in the aftermath of messy colonization and in hard economic times. When tourists respect their search and act like the polite guests we should be, the interaction can be rewarding.

At least it was for us.

George and I have discovered the key to a pleasant tourist experience is to stay someplace nice. That way, when you're not out running around sight-seeing, you have a pleasant, relaxing place to chill out. Thanks to my in-laws Barb and Roger, we stayed at a lovely resort on the East Shore of Kaua'i...the Waipouli Beach Resort and Spa. It has an amazing pool, gym, comfortable condos with nice appointments (SubZero fridges, granite countertops, jetted tubs), and lovely landscaping. There's a restaurant on the property, the Oasis, where we spent many happy hours sipping drinks, listening to ukulele music, eating delicious appetizers, listening to the waves and birds, and feeling the caress of a tropical breeze...a delightful way to wind down the day.

The resort is across the street from two grocery stores, a Starbucks, McDonald's, Subway, and some tourist-y shopping. This made it convenient to feed Jack, who ate mainly chocolate chip cookies, watermelon, and McDonald's fries for a week. And I certainly wasn't complaining about the Starbucks, which gave me caffeine and chocolate for dealing with the six-hour time difference.

There was also a Whaling Wall by the artist Wyland, visible from our lanai on the land side of the resort. I love his Whaling Walls. George and I visited his gallery in Florida years ago, and it was truly amazing to stumble upon a wall in such a perfect place.

The beach at the resort, though lovely and very much appreciated by monk seals, isn't great for swimming due to riptides and coral. The pool makes up for that. (Besides, there are much better beaches an easy drive away.) The pool is set up like a meandering river, with waterfalls, water slides, and a sandy-bottom kid pool. There are several hot tubs, one of which is open to children.

The landscaping is everything you could want in an island getaway...lots of blooming flowers, a lily pond (complete with koi and at least one huge frog), and beautiful birds flitting about and singing songs that sound so different from the ones we hear at home.

We went to the pool every day to relax and let the kids work off energy.

Tourists go sight-seeing...just to look, to take pictures, maybe walk around, but not really to do much more than experience being someplace really cool. Our sight-seeing destinations included Wailua Falls (of Fantasy Island fame), Kilauea Lighthouse, McBryde Gardens, the Spouting Horn, Waimea Canyon, Hanalei Bay, and of course, the Blue Dolphin cruise of the Na Pali coast (which will probably have its own post of just George's photos).

Wailua Falls

Kilauea Lighthouse

George in a vine cave at McBryde Gardens

View from a lookout in Waimea Canyon

Hanalei Bay...the water wasn't clear due to time of year, but this
looked like my vision of a Hawaiian beach, sand surrounded
by green mountains

Seeing the sights underwater requires special gear, so my in-laws rented snorkel gear at Snorkel Bob's (a short walk from the resort, very polite staff), and because so many of us had never snorkeled, we practiced at Lydgate Beach Park, which offers a very protected, shallow area for novices who want to figure snorkeling out in a safe place before hitting open-water reefs. There were some cool fish there, including a small snowflake moray (spotted by George), tangs, wrasses, and tobies.

The best variety of snorkeling was on the cruise, where we snorkeled over a largish reef about 13 feet under the surface. The variety there was astonishing, and even though I didn't dive down to the coral, I still saw a LOT of different fish.

We also snorkeled at 'Anini Beach, which has a reef that offers somewhat protected snorkeling in water that was mostly just above my head. The current pushes you to shore, as long as you stay away from the reef inlet, which is very easy to do. I did get tired more quickly there than in either of the other snorkeling adventures because of the current, and the number of fish was smaller than on the Na Pali reef. But 'Anini Beach is where we snorkeled with sea turtles, so it ranks as my favorite activity of the whole trip.

This post just scratches the surface of our experience in Kaua'i. The shopping! The food! The seals! The dangerous sea creatures! Oh, so much to write about, and so many pictures to post!

In future posts, I'll share what it meant to me to be in these beautiful places and to see a bit of Hawaiian culture and spend time with family. My own experience as a tourist in Kaua'i reflects the quotation on the sidebar of this blog: "What we see depends mainly on what we look for." I looked for beauty and kindness and amazing experiences.

I found them.

Gratitude Journal #144

Today, I am grateful for electricity. We lost ours Friday evening around 5:00 and didn't regain it until Saturday afternoon around 1:00. The storm that blew through with up to 80 mile per hour winds was huge, and millions of people were affected. My sister in the DC area still doesn't have power. With all this dreadful heat, power loss is deeply opressive. I can't help but think about the days before air conditioning. We're spoiled. And I'm grateful for that.

Today, I am grateful for firefighters and emergency relief workers everywhere. Our un-airconditioned heat was nothing compared to the heat of the fires raging all over the west right now. My prayers go out to all who have evacuated...and especially to those who have returned home to find everything they owned gone.

Today, I am grateful for America's founding fathers. For all our problems and election-year bru-ha-ha and nastiness, what those men did when they signed the Declaration of Independence completely changed history. I highly recommend the book Signing their Lives Away by Denise Kiernan and Joseph D'Agnese*. It's a fascinating and fun look at the individuals who had the courage to put their name on a document that started a war that started a country that honors individual citizens' rights to freedom and the pursuit of happiness. Well, except at the airport, but we can't really blame TSA on the founding fathers, can we?

To all my American readers, Happy Independence Day!

*Disclaimer: I know Denise personally...she's been one of my sister's best friends since high school. I've never met Joe, but I hear he can make up funny songs on the spot, which is pretty cool. They did not ask me to promote their book, and I get nothing in return for recommending it. I paid for my copy of it when it first came out. And now you know.