Hawaii, part 1

Day One Hawaii

Started off ridiculously early. We woke up at 3:30 AM and threw a very sleepy girl into the car with our stuff at 4... neither Tegan nor I getting more than a couple hours of sleep. Our flight to Arizona was at 6 – so we thought with all the rules and regulations we needed to get to the Oakland airport by 4:30. At around 4:45 we were waiting for our plane by the gate. So much for that. I waited with Isla running around for the coffee to steep into my bloodstream until 6 – so far, so good... as long as we wrangle the child, she seems content to run around looking at people. As an aside that will come into play later, I will mention one of said people – a woman in front of us in line at the airport Starbucks. I noticed her because in her basketball shorts, jordans, and fauxhauk, she looked astonishingly fashionable. It was weird to notice this, but I did. Anyway, the plane came – we got on FIRST (I guess there are a couple of perks to traveling with a toddler), sat down – ready to go! Plane took off – no whimpers or cries, excellent. About 15 minutes into the flight, she's asleep on Tegan and we look golden... then over the intercom on the plane: “Good morning, if there is a doctor or a nurse aboard the plane, please press your call light.” Shit. Wait 15 seconds, no call lights – Tegan I know is silently hoping a doctor, some senior nurse, maybe a vetrinarian will step up... no such luck. The call light is pressed, and the steward comes over to collect Tegan and bring her to the front, for what, I have no idea – I just get Isla transferred to me, who instantly wakes up and is offended that I am holding her and not her mama, and proceeds to let me know by wailing and forcing bubbles of snot out of her nose in protest. Rad. After about 40 minutes or so, a man saunters back toward my seat in the rear of the plane. He is well dressed, urban style, and has a brown hat with a tilted brim along with two noticeable diamond earrings. He sits down next to me and says that he was with the girl that Tegan is helping (remember the fashionable one from before? She turns out to be a dancer for The Dream on tour) had low blood pressure and possibly a seizure, and that Tegan is wonderful and helping her as we spoke. I replied: “cool. Now help me make her stop crying.” This, I believe, he took to mean “proceed to tell me about how you have the coolest job in the world and stuff.” I believe this because he began a monologue lasting a good 15 minutes about his job as a sound engineer and backlight expert for various R&B divas in the business on tour. He described in detail, and with accompanying cellphone pictures as evidence, the lavish tour busses with two living rooms and bunks in them, the trips to Jamiaca – where one would stay, paid, for two weeks while there was only one night to perform, the Keisha Cole incident where she gifted him an eleven thousand dollar low-rider bicycle because she had forgotten that she had it, and how R. Kelly is the worst diva of all of the divas. After being thoroughly bested by his stories – I made a feeble attempt at entertaining him by describing being a junior high teacher in East Oakland when Too Short and Keak da Sneak came to school for a talk – and he gave me the “that's nice” look and pursed-lipped “mmm hmmm.” But I think inside, he was dying of boredom.
At any rate, the man who now I wish I was kept Isla entertained with pictures of his own kids, and basically with animated speech for the rest of the flight. We arrived in Phoenix to a host of paramedics, and I finally got to see Tegan again, who upped me on the dancer's condition, which was scared, and uninsured, but she thought basically OK. The layover was two and a half horrendous hours of waiting where we realized that with the new independence and new cold Isla got before we left, that she had turned into a really loud toddler who screams when things aren't exactly her way... which in itself wouldn't be so bad, if we knew what her way meant.
I will refrain from going into details about the flight from Phoenix to Lehui, but I will just say that apparently we went backwards, because going to Phoenix added an hour to a normally five hour flight. And even though Isla slept for three of the six, the other three made the flight one that I would rather not repeat – oh wait, we have to go back.
So – we arrived in Lehui around 2 PM, Hawaii time – by now both of us are exhausted from no sleep and constant baby wrangling. The first thing Isla does on her own in Hawaii is sprint from my grasp at the car rental place – spin a nice pirhouette into the glass door, fall down and get bruise number 3 on her forehead. Awesome. We drive post-haste in our rented silver PT cruiser to the hotel and hot-foot it to a barbecue place because we are both starving. By the way – did anybody else know that they stopped giving out even snacks on flights? Ridiculous. OK. Now, food in stomach, headache receding, shave ice with macadamia nut icecream number one consumed, we feel halfway decent. Isla is of course, her usual outgoing self, and has made friends with a number of locals and tourists alike – one of whom, a tattooed grungy looking man with missing teeth, stopped to serenade her with a surprisingly well-intoned version of a Jack Johnson song, which she listened to with great interest.
Now refreshed, but still tired, we slung bathing suits on and hit the pool, while Hawaii tried its best to be the bay area for us with grey skies and wind – but we would not be dissuaded. Isla loved the pool, as is to be expected now – and with her blow up starfish floatee thingy. She was a swimming fool.
After the pool – bedtime the first night. I fell asleep at 8 – the girls had been asleep for two hours already.