"For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I was at work today, I realized that I said "ya'll" to my new co-worker just 5 minutes shy of explaining how to pronounce "E Komo Mai" (Welcome in Hawaiian) and talking about my growing up in Baltimore. Then on the ride home today, my iPhone music shuffle picked up a previously abandoned Muse song added to my collection years ago by an ex-boyfriend I haven't talked to in forever. I was never into Muse. At all. And suddenly I liked this song. And the others from its album.

It got me thinking about how I've changed in the almost 7 months since I've moved to Hawaii. I decided my list was long enough to warrant being written down (and laughed at). So here it is:

 Things I’ve Lost since Hawaii:

• One less non-broken bone. (I broke my toe last month when my sister came to visit. I was unsure if I really did at the time but a month later it’s still sore so I think that is a yes. Not a big deal, but I’ve never really broken anything before. There goes that winning point in the  “Never Have I Ever” game.)
• My single status…er, well engaged status. 
• My last name
• My Maryland license (I do miss that little blue crab on it but my huge rainbow is pretty awesome.)
• My tolerance for cold weather (I freeze when I walk in air condition now. I took two sweaters with me to breakfast this morning because I was shaking the second I walked in the door!)
• My stereotype of military life & wives
• My need to wear socks ever again (Long live flipflops.)
• My car (Still heave a little sigh every time a silver Toyota Echo with all 4 missing hubcaps drives by.)
• A few checked off items on my life goals list (Get Married, Drink Champagne on an Airplane, Get a Drivers License from Another State, Visit Hawaii- that was number 2 on my list!
• Contact with a few people I probably wasn’t meant to stay in touch with anyway (…so no real loss there.)
• Any desire EVER to waitress again. (In fact I’m considering gouging my eyes out with forks before doing so again. I still have nightmares from my one evening spent working in Outback where the words “NEVER AGAIN!!” echoed through my mind all night like a crazy person.)
• Any sense of consistent dialect (I still say, “hon” from Baltimore, “ya’ll” from Charleston, and now end every sentence with “yah?” from Hawaiian pidgin. Plus I really like to say “Aloha!” )
• Two bank accounts. (No Bank of America’s or Baltimore County Credit Unions here.)
• My white pasty complexion and dry skin (Don’t miss either ONE bit!)
• My previous favorite necklace (A mother of pearl four leaf clover I paid a quarter for at a flea market when I was 10 and a horse-shoe charm with “Good luck” written in it I bought for myself when I moved out of my mom’s house officially for the first time…come to think of it that’s probably not good luck.)
• 2 Tupperware lids. (No clue where they went. Wonder if you can order that specifically….Hmm.)
  

Things I’ve gained since Hawaii:

• A wedding band
• A husband (!!!)
• A boatload (literally) of friends
• A tan J
• Greta (My “new” car…a ’99 beat-up aqua-colored Toyota Corolla who acts kind of fussy sometimes and likes to tease me by putting on her Check Engine light every 3 weeks or so but still kinda feels like a caring, worried Grandma.)
• One more state added to my roster of states visited (Now at 44!)
• A HOUSE of our own!
• An insatiable desire to bake cupcakes frequently (And an even more house-wifey obsession for cute little aprons. I think I used to watch Girls Next Door to often- you know how Holly always dressed up for doing silly little things? Totally becoming me.)
• An appreciation for always having lived on Eastern Standard Time….and an anger for when companies on EST call me at 2am.
• 14 new bikinis
• A passion for non-profit work & at least for now a job that makes me pretty happy
• A big expensive white dress
• Occasional awesome care packages from Mom (Which ALWAYS contain about 15-25 dog treat coupons which show me where her loyalty really lies.)
• A new pen pal- my sister!
• A new language (Well, not completely, but I do know a LOT of words now. Plus, ever since moving here I made myself say every single street name in Hawaiian out loud to practice and I have a real knack for Hawaiian pronunciation now I think….although I did JUST learn how to pronounce my street name after 6 months of saying it wrong. Oops.)
• An amazing new ability to “man up” and handle tools. (I’ve hung pictures, drilled, and even assembled a TV stand…in only 4 hours….um.)
• A new love for red wine. I currently have 5 opened bottles. (Sorry, Mom.)
• A newfound appreciation for military wives (and kids)
• A longing for Charleston I didn’t know I had.
• An herb garden (Which reminds me…I’m having fresh eggplant for dinner tonight!)
• An underlying fear of tsunamis (following “The Tsunami That Wasn’t” back in February. I still keep meaning to buy a tshirt that says I survived the February 27th Tsunami.)
  

My Constants:

• My dog Maggie. (Don’t know how I’d survive deployment without that dog. The neighbors seriously must think I’m nuts. I raced her down my street back to our house the other day, the whole while yelling at her like I would to a person: “I’m going to beat you. I’m almost there. Ha! In your face!” I did beat her but it was close. …Only to see my neighbor across the street outside looking at me and smiling awkwardly. Ooops.)
• My family.
• My hair color.
• My love for beaches….actually that has definitely increased with the overabundance of clear, turquoise waters and white sand beaches, and trade winds that keep the weather perfectly balanced….(Sorry. ;)  )
• My silver palmetto palm tree necklace I got at Rainbow Street Market in downtown Charleston that I pretty much wear all the time.
• My phone number. (I’ve had it since I was 17. 410 forever, baby. Although I am forcing Nick to convert from his 314 St Louis area code. Sorry, Nick.)
• My slight obsession with photography. (Only now it’s developed into an obsession with iPhone photography apps.)
• My appreciation for Maryland crabcakes, cream of crab soup, and Old Bay. (If someone tells you Old Bay does not go with everything they are WRONG!)
• My love for Nick…I take that back. That’s definitely changed. I only miss him and love him more every day.

You have to let go of some things to make room for others…but in the case of my two missing Tupperware lids I’m not entirely sure that’s true. But for the most part change has been good to me.

I couldn’t be a more happily married woman. Unless Nick was home from deployment but I’m taking one day at a time. And twice in the past two weeks I have had comments from two different people that couldn’t believe my age. Not that I’m old by any means but it was nice they thought I was a college kid.

Enough reflections. I need to go race my dog around the block. Aloha! ;)

Day 101 of Deployment....

I have been absolutely awful at writing lately. I’d like to say because I’ve been spending EVERY waking minute at the beach but in actuality, I do work. Albeit a part time job, but still.

I’m three months into deployment. I spent the first month pretty involved with the other boat wives (and ate a LOT of pizza), the second month I completely withdrew and didn’t want to do anything. I feel like I’m definitely coming back up from that. There’s a chart of the emotions that statistically most women go through during a deployment.

I refused to read the article for fear the psychology major in me would try to replicate the emotions needlessly. Instead I’m doing my own thing and enjoying my own therapy: the beach. The beach has been comfort to me. Other than the beach, I have been working. Actually, my position with the non-profit I have been working as a temp with has gone so well that they are going to take me on as a permanent employee! Pretty exciting. And comes with a pretty decent raise. I really enjoy working there though I adore my boss and she is leaving so I’m not sure how that will change things. I just believe everything will work out the way it should.

My sister and niece came out to visit and stayed with me just over a week. I thought it was going to be a relaxing, laid- back trip (her words!) but we ended up getting up early every day (same time I get up for work and earlier some days- though for them it was like sleeping in with the time difference) and we did a TON of stuff. 

It was awesome though. We had such a crazy week that we (and by we I mean mostly her) took over 1100 pictures. And broke two waterproof cameras. Thank God for my iPhone because it became our only camera and actually took great pictures.

Some of the highlights of the week- Paradise Cove luau, and driving around the island from Waikiki to North Shore and back down through the middle of the island to ‘Ewa (the west side isn’t really worth going to since it’s not very pretty and has a lot of homeless camps). We of course went to Matsumoto’s World Famous Shave Ice in North Shore. We snorkeled in Hanauma Bay- one of the best snorkel sites on the island, also a preservation. We snorkeled with sea turtles on a snorkel and sail trip in Waikiki. Amazing! I almost swam into a 3 ½ foot turtle floating on the surface that I thought was an overweight man drifting. Of course that was the day my waterproof camera broke. Just before we saw the turtles. Hmph.

We did a sunset (booze) cruise with the same boat, the Outrigger, the next night. Highly recommend. It rained hard but cleared up in time for the sunset. And we got to observe some military guys hitting on some young Australian tourists. Pretty fascinating, especially after a few more drinks.

We took a train through the Dole Pineapple Plantation. Yup, that Dole. We also did the “World’s Largest Maze” at the Dole Plantation. It’s a huge maze made up of tall bushes. You have to get all the way through but you also have to find stations that are set up throughout the maze that have stencils in them so you can stencil the design onto your score card.

The record to get all designs and get out is 12 minutes. We were in there an hour and a half. At high noon. Whew!

Saturday we visited Pearl Harbor. I didn’t take a ton of picture there and it honestly had me pretty emotional. I hope that’s the last trip I make there though it was really beautiful.

I had an amazing time with my sister and niece. We called it Camp Aloha- girls only. Even my dog is a girl. It was a blast and it was so nice to have my family come out and support me here- plus it gave me a reason to get the house looking pretty.

Back to the beach.

I am a worrier at heart. I take after my mom who STILL mentions every time I talk to her to “Watch your drinking! You know it’s not good for you.” Even though I constantly tell her my sorority days are over and I literally have a glass or two of red wine with dinner every other night or so. So actually, Mom- red wine IS good for you in moderation which I swear I do! Sigh.

Anyway I stress about little things. Missing Nick. Having my boss leave. Work. Etc.

I’ve been trying to make beach trips during the week after work. It’s the perfect time since it’s not too hot about 3 or 3:30 and I can stay for a few hours and relax.

Today I had to go in early for a conference call so I got out at 1pm and got to the beach by 2:30. While I was there I read (Eat Pray Love- so addictive!), and napped, and relaxed. It got me thinking.

What is it that I love about the beach so much? It’s not the water so much. Honestly I have a horrible fear of drowning and of not knowing what’s below me if I can’t see bottom. As clear as the water is here, the lagoon I was at today still gets really deep and I can’t see the bottom and get a teeeeeeeny bit freaked that a shark or something might come up under me (we actually saw one when we were at Pearl Harbor- cliché with it’s fin sticking up out of the water and all) but I relaxed in knowing there were snorkelers closer to the entrance of a lagoon so the shark would go after them first. Morbid I know. I probably could have said they would have seen a shark before it got to me. Ah well.

I didn’t grow up at the beach. I lived in Baltimore a lot of my life and the closest beach is good ol’ Ocean City, Maryland, which is roughly a 3 hour (or less if you decide you like getting speeding tickets) drive from Baltimore.

As I lay there today thinking I finally realized when it was that I grew to love the beach so much.

When I was 21 I lived in Ocean City for the summer with an old flame (which didn’t burn very brightly). I worked a lot and worked some long hours while I was there. But every week the two of us would have a day or two off. Amidst our fighting, I would seek solace at the beach. 

Even if it was only for a few hours I would be content to be at the beach by myself because he didn’t like to go. That was my time of peace and reflection. It was my calm in the middle of a storm of a relationship. I could just sit and meditate on the waves and soak in the glorious sun.

The summer after we finally broke up, I waitressed and had lenient hours. I drove the 3 hours to the beach almost every weekend for weeks. Literally. I racked up so many miles on my car that summer.

Even if it was just for the day (which it usually was) I would drive the three hours there just to spend some time relaxing, drifting off into that uber-relaxed stage where you’re not entirely sure you’re asleep but don’t remember being awake as I listened to the waves. To me it was worth it. (The tan didn’t look too bad either though I’m much more careful about my sunblock usage now.)

As I was at the beach today I was reminded of that. I will never be an amazing swimmer and unfortunately not a mermaid (my six year old self just cried out, “NOOOO!”) but at the beach I can just close my eyes and just be. I don’t need to try to be someone I’m not. I don’t need to impress anyone. I don’t need to talk to anyone. I can just listen to the waves and relax and just breathe and drift off…

On the drive home today I was in a state of bliss. I always seem to accidentally time my leaving the beach (which is only about 15-20 minutes away from my house) so that I’m driving back home at sunset. All around me are the trademark Hawaiian clouds- low and wispy in the sky. Colors of powder purple and dusty pink that make me think of the smoothest, silkiest twirl of cotton candy. 

The sun setting pinkish orange across the mountains in my side view mirrors, and oldies playing on the radio (somehow it just seems perfect to listen to them at these moments).

I’m amazingly fortunate to be living in paradise and to be so close to something that comforts me so much when I’m by myself and don’t have a best friend close enough to talk to. I just know that time will continue to go by but hopefully more quickly now that I’m already at over the 100 day mark. Hopefully before I know it Nick will be home and we’ll be able to see this island- and all the other ones close by!- really soon.

Until then, I have my beach and I have my bliss. So I’m okay.

“You were given life; It is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.” 
-Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love