Anyway, back to the cleaning. No matter how hard I try or how hard I sweat, my cleaning jobs never measure up to other people’s. My brother in law took over the San Diego house, and he came over to put some stuff in the garage. He cleaned it. He didn’t just sweep, or move boxes around. He mother effin cleaned that thing UP. The thing had never, ever been so clean. The tops of the washer and dryer sparkled. The shelves shone. The floor had been vacuumed and looked pearly grey, not oily grey. It was like Christmas morning in that garage. It didn’t exactly make me crush on my brother in law, ’cause that would be icky, but it did make me wonder why he hadn’t forced his younger brother to clean like him. Why his family didn’t have cleaning tourneys in which my husband had to prove his manhood. Of course, said brother in law is deathly afraid of June bugs and chicken on the bone (it’s the tendons) so I probably benefited in other ways instead.

Also, I am a bad cleaner because I’m allergic to dust and mold and even cleansers. It’s proven. I have the medical records. I wonder if this means I can tax-write off a maid.

I can’t even clean pans correctly. I soak them, I wash them with a brush and then a cloth, I rinse. I dry. I take them out later and see big gunked on food that my 95 year old grandmother in law would have seen. For heaven’s sake. I re-wash.

I am writing this because I spent the afternoon unpacking 19 boxes that the lovely Hawaii Kai post office man kindly delivered to me. My legs had black gunk on them. I have no idea from what. I then went to the beach and swam– all the way beyond the cones, even– swam for over an hour. Then I came home and had a shower.

And what did I see when I got out of the shower? Black gunk on my legs.

It’s a blindness.

I should have been born a royal who has servants washing them, dressing them (I’ve been known to always button sweaters wrong), cooking, cleaning, the whole nine yards as I sit and play the harpsichord.

I had seat 23C, the same seat as Jack in LOST. I figured this meant I would survive a plane crash and a trip back in time. Or whatever; I’ve only seen a few episodes of LOST because I tuned in far too late. But this seat is the middle by the bathrooms and where the airline stewards prepare food, meaning that you are either jammed in by a huge cart or have someone’s butt in your face.

The kids were pretty good, save for the seat-kicking Kaiya, whose legs are too small to bend so she can’t put her feet on the seat. And lady, if you hadn’t reclined fully for the entire flight, she wouldn’t have kicked your seat; she was fidgeting more than kicking. And the woman in front of Ethan took exception to him leaning over the front whenever he stood up, no matter how many times I told him to cut it out. I brought plenty of supplies: snacks, activity books (each of which Ethan did for 5 minutes) and 3 brand-new Barbies (out of the wrappers). We even sprang $15 for the Digi player, which played movies the kids weren’t interested in. Also, if you fly Hawaiian, be forewarned that they provide a meal, but it’s a deal with the devil. It’s a Breakfast Burrito, consisting of Eggbeaters, garbanzo beans, a couple of black beans, a few sprigs of anemic cilantro, all covered in a quasi-enchilada sauce and cheese. A bit spicy, a lot rubbery. The other options were salads for $10, one of which was sold out by the time they arrived. Since Kaiya’s allergic to eggs and wouldn’t eat Greek salad, I picked off the cheese and fed it to her, and that, along with turkey jerky and drinks, kept her alive.

The kids, of course, asked every 10 minutes if we were here. I replied, “If we were there, we’d be on the ground,” and no matter how many times my son heard this, he couldn’t stop asking. Sigh. He was loath to play the new Indiana Jones game I got him for his DS, fearing it would send the plane into the Pacific, even as I pointed out we were using the DigiPlayers.

We arrived at the gate furthest away from baggage claim and waited for 20 minutes for our stroller, then had to walk over to the shuttle. The stroller imploded as I rushed to re-fold it, sending drink holders all over the pavement; the driver rescued me and put it onboard. At the stop I asked Ethan to help Kaiya down the steps as I hefted the 40 lb stroller off the bus; he did not and she stumbled, so I threw all our stuff unceremoniously into the lobby and ran to help her, glaring at the two airport employee ladies who sat and watched with interest and uselessness.xe

To get to baggage claim, we got in the elevator and pressed G for the ground floor. Nothing. I retreated and asked the ladies where to go. “Oh, G won’t work. You have to go to 1, then go through security to another wing, then go to another elevator and press G,” she said.

Indeed.

At last, we arrived at baggage claim, where my husband had a SmartCarte and was already loading our 6 50-lb boxes. Thankfully, none had imploded. He hugged Ethan and touched Kaiya’s head as she sat in the stroller. She covered her face with her hands, weeping a bit, overwhelmed after missing Daddy for 4 weeks. Then he kissed me and got the last piece of luggage.

I waited curbside for him to retrieve the car from its far-off parking space– the minivan had been shipped the week before– and was approached by a portly porter/traffic guy. “You been here long time. Sure somebody’s coming?” he asked in a soft voice.

“My husband is getting the car.”

“You can go sit down, I’ll watch your stuff,” he offered.

I declined, as I’d been sitting for six hours.

“I shouldn’t have bothered you, I shouldn’t have said anything, you’re tired,” he said. I shrugged, not understanding why he was apologizing.

He asked if we were moving there and I said yes. Then he asked, “Military?” as everyone does; I said no, husband got a job in Honolulu; he asked which industry and I told him.

Then Cadillac pulled up and the porter backed away. I thought perhaps he would offer to help him load the boxes, which were 18X18X24. Nope. He stood back, two other traffic men came to join him, and they watched silently as my husband arranged, rearranged, and arranged some more the back of the minivan to accommodate the large load, probably betting he wouldn’t be able to. I felt proud, oddly, when I heard his triumphant, “Ha! Done!” and the back of the car close.

We went on search of food, starving and thirsty. “We’ll go by my work, it’s the only place I know,” Cadillac decided. But Memorial Day meant that downtown was closed, as least as far as businesses; so he took us to the mall by Waikiki. It was a fancy mall, replete with Neiman-Marcus and other designer stores, as well as a huge Sears; bursting with Japanese tourists loaded with shopping bags, unaffected by the economy. Aimlessly we wandered through, searching for the food court, when we saw a sign for Islands and went there for our first Hawaii meal. Prices were about the same, which pleased me; plus sales tax is lower. I guess it’s not really a sales tax but an excise tax or somesuch. In San Diego, it’s about 9% now; in Hawaii, it’s under 5%.

At last, nourished and refreshed, Cadillac took us on the highway to Kailua. Through green mountains, past museums, near spooky banyan trees the highway went.

on the freeway to Kailua

We went through two tunnels, emerging above a valley of green and driving down a hill into Kailua. On the right, signs advertising Kailua High’s reunions were posted on a fence; on the left I spotted the Windward YMCA.

The main road was spotted with stores: a Coldstone Creamery, Pier One, Macy’s, and other new-looking chain stores on the right; on the left were independent stores, like a small bookstore called BookEnds that I immediately vowed to patronize.

A quarter mile down, we came to a vacant lot, surrounded by wire fence and green privacy fabric. “Here’s the street,” my husband announced, turning right. Across from this vacant lot was another vacant lot; behind this is our complex.

“Oh,” I said.

My husband noted this and said nothing.

We pulled into the complex parking. It is built on stilts; first there is parking lot; then single story units; then 2-story units. We’re in one of the two-story ones. We took the elevator up and walked on a covered bridge among identical-looking shingled units, me following hopeless and blind, wondering if I could find my way back out if left alone.

Then we went into the unit. The carpet looked clean, thanks to the tradition of taking off shoes; but the tile floors were very dirty though my husband had just moved in. I went upstairs, noting the sloping floors, the decrepit peeling doors, the missing panes of glass. I went into the room that was to be for our daughters and was hit with a dank smell– like mildew, but worse, because I immediately had an asthma attack. The smell was familiar, because we’d had the same problem two houses ago– mold. I looked for leak, a tell-tale black spot, and found nothing. “I think there’s mold in here,” I called.

After some discussion and some more discussion, and the next day having another asthma attack (and I had not used my inhaler in 6 months, my doctor had just taken me off asthma medication except for the rescue inhaler) and experiencing no symptoms outside of the kids’ room, we talked to the property manager. I would not allow my daughter to sleep in this room, so we bunked her with my son.

The property management company promptly sent over the building manager, whom the contract specifically states is unqualified to make any assessments. He made one, though. I explained the asthma and he agreed. “You need to get out,” he said.

THEN, oh, and this is rich….then he said that the EXTERIOR SHINGLED WALLS HAVE DRYWALL UNDERNEATH, instead of plywood; and that in the 30 years since it was installed that most likely there was a leak; and that the leak would seep into the drywall and carry into the inside and create a luscious mold environment in the walls. “And in that case, the owner has to talk to the condo association about ripping out all the wallboard– and you couldn’t live here anyway,” he finished. “We’re going to replace the exterior shingles but we’re not getting to that for a long time, so that won’t help you.”

Oh.

This tells me:

1) The building was constructed ILLEGALLY, against housing code; for no housing code allows drywall exteriors
2) The condo owner knows, because the association has plans in the works, surely reported to the owners
3) That mold probably does exist.

The management company told us that the owner wants to send over a mold remediator, who is supposed to be independent. They said we can leave now and be responsible for the rent until it’s re-rented; or wait for the mold tests.

Therefore, we are tracking down the county building inspector, because there is no way for us to know that they are using an independent mold remediation specialist; nor is there a way for us to know what they told the owner. The building property managers have a vested interest in keeping this place rented.

The actual place is sort of functional, except that there’s a hole above the master bedroom patio screen between the frame and wall, allowing bugs inside; the shower door doesn’t work; there is no water pressure in the kitchen sink; and there are the missing windowpanes here and there in the louvered windows.

But at least there’s a great beach nearby,which we’ve visited everyday, sometimes twice; we found the shave ice place; and everyone is super-friendly.

Ethan swimming at Kailua Beach Park

We had been to Yummy Cupcakes before in Santa Monica, and this time I was all set to try out Sprinkles. Actually, I had gotten the two confused and thought I had already been to Sprinkles. Not so.

The call of Sprinkles is that the sprinkles are from France, and everyone knows that French crap is better than ours, eh? I didn’t care. I just like cupcakes.

These cupcakes are supposed to be otherworldly, as though Zeus touched them with a hand and gave them magical powers. They’re not that different than what you could make at home. Except if I made them at home, I would eat them all, so I like to get them on my quarterly trips to visit my friend only.

We drove to Beverly Hills, where tiny parking garages border the streets perpendicular to Rodeo Drive. Plus: Parking is only $1 an hour. Minus: Hard to find parking, and once you exit the one-way one-strip garage, you must go ’round the block.

We drove past a different cupcake store, Crumbs on the way to Sprinkles. “That’s weird,” my friend remarked. It was close to Sprinkles; Crumbs is at 9465 Little Santa Monica while Sprinkles is at 9635. Cupcake stores are like Starbucks in L.A., apparently.

Sprinkles

We passed the brown (chocolate brown?) storefront of Sprinkles and noted no line, not a soul in sight. By the time we parked, of course, there was a vast line 10 people deep. How could this be?

“I think it’s planned,” SmurfyGirl said. She pointed out that FOUR people work in the store with planned incompetence. One person takes the order and carefully writes your name down. She tells you to wait. Then eventually the cashier calls your name, you return and pay. Then someone else gives you the bag that a fourth person in the back has packed. It must be purposeful, to create the line and panick-like atmosphere that THEY WILL RUN OUT before your turn comes. Of course, it’s probably not purposeful, because this is American and there is plenty of incompetence to go around, I’ve noticed.

We waited and the line got longer. A little girl about 3 years old sat in one of the flimsy brown wire chairs, tipping it backwards. Everyone in the line shouted, “Ooooh!” and we all reached out. Her mommy got there first, and the girl was soon soothed.

Then a woman with large, squished down breasts in a bright pink tanktop muscled her way through. “I just want to ask them a question,” she piped up. I watched her suspiciously. “She better not be line jumping,” I said.

SmurfyGirl, ever the optimist, said, “I’m sure she’s just asking a question.”

I planned what to do: leap into the store, yell, “Stop that line-jumper! What do you think you’re doing?” but the woman returned with only a postcard and a fuschia-lipsticked smile.

Finally it was our turn. Peanut butter chocolate, chocolate with marshmallow and chocolate ganache for me; lemon ginger for Cadillac as his post-interview treat; cinnamon for SmurfyGirl’s hubby later; and a black and white for SmurfyGirl. She snagged a spot at the bar while I went through the rigmarole of paying and getting my treats.

“That’s a really pretty necklace,” the girl at the register remarked. “Really pretty. Wherever did you buy it?”

I laughed to myself at the answer I was about to give, here, across the street from fancy-pants Rodeo Drive. Briefly I thought of what I could say. “Paloma Picasso.” “I designed it myself.” But I told the truth. “Target.”

She looked utterly disappointed and embarrassed. I grinned.

The cupcakes came in a lovely cardboard box, looking lovely and with equally lovely bag. They were pretty good, though frosting-heavy. My peanut-butter fudge was great, like a Reese’s cup. The marshmallow-ganache thing was dry, and the ganache not terribly chocolatey; the marshmallow not terribly marshmallow-y. Final verdict: we preferred Yummy Cupcakes. Sorry, Sprinkles.

Our cupcakes. Dots were edible but not good. At least, I ate them.

Afterward, we walked over to Rodeo Drive. One building had statues out front, including a bronze of a decidedly crotchety-looking old couple.

Crochety Old Couple Bronze

Dragonfly necklace at Tiffany's

We passed a designer store in which a very thin woman leaned on a railing just inside the door, wearing gigantic sunglasses and a wistful look. I imagined her to be a poor anorexic rich woman and waved my Sprinkles bag at her.

Then a Nigerian man (cousin to Engineer Robson?) asked if we wouldn’t like to buy us a big box of gummy bears, and we politely declined. He walked along after us, peddling gummy bears, and I wondered if he ever sold any.

“You gotta see this street,” SmurfyGirl said, and pointed. Up on a hill, the Rodeo Drive-ans had attempted to make an Italian-like cobblestone street set into a hill, tony shops on either end. The overall effect was not so much ancient Italian, but Las Vegas-an. Really. If I were rich enough to shop these damn stores, why would I want to schlep my ass up the steep hill to them? I would have to send my lackeys.

Italian-wannabe street

Fountain

Pretty Woman Hotel for Wayward Hookers with Hearts of Gold, I mean, the Four Seasons

And then, as if the day couldn’t get any better, SmurfyGirl gave us countless gifts she had obtained on one of her many wonderfully odd odd jobs: a wooden dollhouse with three or four doll families; dollhouse stackable rooms; a wooden jewelry box; jewelry; an Alien Autopsy kit; a Star Wars Lego Darth Maul fighter thing; mini tea sets; and Ariel the mermaid notepads. It was like Christmas today. My oldest daughter thought at first we had bought all this stuff because stuff was “cheaper in L.A.” as though L.A. were like Tijuana or Hong Kong or something.

My favorite item is still telling the girl where I got the necklace, though.

He went to school and told the tale. When I arrived at 1 pm to do my weekly volunteering, the kids were in high dudgeon.

The teacher told me her class in previous years had never been like this. “They’ve been looking for the leprechaun all day,” she said.

I immediately suspected my son of rallying the troops and confirmed it when no other kid confessed to having a leprechaun visit.
We made St. Pat’s bracelets, in which the words had to spell out “HAPPY ST PATS” or “LUCK O THE IRISH.” It was highly confusing to some kids, despite me setting out the letters in order, despite the piece of paper spelling them out, despite it being written on the board. It was also highly frustrating, as the beads were small and the plastic elastic slippery and several bracelets bit the dust, resulting in tears or, in the case of the more mature of the children, a cheerful shoulder shrug.
Finally another volunteer showed up and announced, “I just got a call from a leprechaun– he said he hid coins in the grass and I’ll take you out three at a time to find them.”

The shrieking was deafening. Every time someone stopped, another began it again.

My son was one of the first to return from the field, a green coin clutched in his hand. “It’s a shamrock,” he said, showing me and the teacher. “But on the other side, it says MADE IN CHINA.”

“Maybe the leprechauns got together with their Chinese friends,” the teacher said.

The other kids chimed in. “Mine says that too. I don’t think there are leprechauns in China.”

One little girl asked, “Can I eat mine? Is it chocolate?”

“No,” the teacher said, “it’s a coin to treasure forever.”

“But can I eat it?”

“No.”

She looked at the coin again. It was discolored blue on one edge, a cheap manufacturing defect. “But mine’s BLUE. What happened?”

“Maybe it got colored by the rainbow,” I said.

The other children gathered around her. “Hers was touched by the RAINBOW!” one screamed.

“Yay!” the girl cried. “I’m the happiest GIRL IN THE WORLD!!”

Ah, first grade.

I was proud of Ethan for inspiring their imaginations. Just last week, the teacher and I had been helping kids with their reading. Some struggle a lot. We talked about how some of them simply lack imaginations, and how I saw it in the private school Ethan was at last year, which had mostly upper-income kids; and how she saw it at her low-income school last year. The commonality, we decided, was the lack of free play time; everything is structured; every game or toy does something FOR them. Call it the Age of the Brain-Quivering Video Game. Besides, free play is the Kid Martini; it’s how they relax. They need it.

It was worth the damaged eardrums.

This is mostly most apparent to me when I try to figure out how to do something on la computadora.

Right now, I’m attempting to put a “FEEDJIT” thingie on here…it says “Paste into sidebar on your blog.”

I don’t see no sidebar. Where’s there a sidebar? Sidebar? Is it on my homepage?

I also suspect that if I set my children up with an old computer, free time, and some basic computer programming skills, they would be hacking into supercomputers in no time. But, I don’t know how programming even works. I remember in 7th grade, we took “Computers” and we made programs that created floating boxes and things like that, but what program do you do that in? It’s a mystery.

Once upon a time, I knew HTML. It’s not hard. It’s like doing taxes– it’s annoying and you have a reference table and if you have a typo you’ll end up owing millions to the IRS. Once upon a time, I wrote BLUETOOTH FOR DUMMIES. But I can’t take credit for that at ALL, because all I did was go around asking the actual engineers how things worked, and they were kind enough to explain it all.

Sigh.

Off on my sidebar search again.

The firm’s main investment product was going to be this one offered by an established firm. The product had been sold before, unregistered, and now they were going to offer it as an approved item.

Then Cadillac got a call.  The product guy was getting investigated by FINRA.  At first, they thought this was good.  Once FINRA approved the product, it would be good to go.  So his boss told Cadillac that he would get paid, but that the office had been delayed.  Cadillac thought it would be all right, as long as the guy fixed the stuff Cadillac pointed out was wrong.

Fast-forward six weeks.  FINRA said no; apparently there were too many problems.  Cadillac got laid off.

This sucks, we thought.  What sucked even more: the NY company said they were gonna pay Cadillac thru the end of February and then did not.  Then unemployment messed up Cadillac’s Social Security number, and being the vast government bureacracy they are, are slow to take action.  Therefore we, family of five, have not had an income since mid-February.

But then, THEN, my friends, I got this emailed to me:

A Sherman Oaks money manager accused of spending millions of his investors’ dollars on a lavish lifestyle and high-profile charitable contributions agreed Tuesday to let a court-appointed receiver manage his companies’ assets.

The man? Bruce Friedman. The company? The same one that was working closely with the one that had hired Cadillac.

Sometimes things really could be worse.

Another benefit of our new poverty: we applied to SDG&E for an Energy Efficiency Makeover. Our utility bill, they said, was unusually high. With no income, we suddenly qualify. Someone’s coming to our home and installing new lamps, sealants, insulation(!), inspecting the heater, and maybe even giving us a new fridge (!!)

The lake is a large natural man-made lake.  By large, I don’t mean Great Lakes large; I mean it’s large for San Diego, which means in other regions it might be more pond-ish.  You can fish and take non-big boats out there to toodle around.  There’s also a large contigent of wildlife, like ducks who live off breadcrumbs; mean geese; and swans that people keep dumping that get promptly eaten by coyotes.

Anyway, we happened by a bush when a flash of pink caught my eye.  My zoom wasn’t good enough to capture it, but there was a hummingbird hanging out.  Its back was astonishingly fuschia, like 80s Day-Glo fuschia.

I love hummingbirds.  They were my mom’s favorite bird, and it’s always amazing to me to watch them, not just when their wings are beating fast, but when they sit and sit, because that’s the last thing you expect them to do.

hummingbird

Anyway, Little Girl fell asleep on the couch this morning and except for a trip to the bathroom (thank goodness), she has been sleeping.  She’s hot, but she always gets hot when she sleeps.  I’m hoping she’s cocooning and she’ll be better tomorrow.

Oh, she just got up in good spirits! Maybe it was just the time change; she’s been operating on like 8 hrs of sleep a night for the past week (used to be 12).

Here is a Katamari Video.