"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! ;)

The whole time I lived in Charleston I really wanted to LOVE the place. And I liked it a lot. There were even parts of it I loved. But it just wasn't the one. I've always loved California and it's warm but not too hot weather and laid back style and thought that's maybe where I belonged. God only knows I've never been happy living in Maryland and can't stand cold weather.

Now when I walk out of the house to take the dog for a walk in the morning every day, the words, "God, I love this place" echo through my mind like waves lapping over each other.

It's just incredible. The weather is amazing to say the least. The beaches...well, I don't know that there's any going to back to Ocean City, Maryland and being close to satisfied at this point. Even the people are really great. Not all of them. But most.

I've met pretty much all of our close neighbors at this point. My next door neighbor to the left even said he would see if his company was hiring for me. As I was walking the dog last night I had a nice conversation with an older couple who have lived here for 30 years and promised to email me information on their veterinarian. 

I just feel so...this sounds cheesy but blessed to be here. Nick isn't always around and that's the downside to his job but I've already met some amazing friends through him. And I'll continue to push myself to meet more people. The nice couple directly across from us are awesome. The guy is a West Point grad from the year before Nick graduated from the Naval Academy. They're engaged too and getting married next month. They already invited us to dinner at some point in the near future.

There are of course negative sides to living on the island but I feel like they're worth putting up with to be able to live in such paradise. Traffic is the biggest. It's hideous. I hear it's worse than LA and I believe it.  I've been trying to find a local job, which is actually harder than it seems. The area I live in is developing quite a bit but it's not really there in a business aspect yet. The major places to work are in downtown Honolulu or Waikiki. Which are over an hour commute each way...with a decent day of traffic. It's horrible. And I won't get started on parking.

I did interview at a restaurant at a golf course one street over from out house so I'm hoping to hear back soon.

Also of course natural disasters are something to be aware of here. The tsunami scare was a big warning to us. Nick and I have since developed a list of disaster preparedness food and water and miscellaneous that we're working on assembling. It was good to have the scare and be warned because now I feel like we'll be a lot more prepared next time.

Being a homeowner has been interesting. About three weeks ago we decided to work on our yard and plant grass patches/plugs. That was tsunami day. We couldn't get out to rent a tiller to till the compost in with the dirt/clay base of our backyard. The following day, a Sunday Nick went out to rent the tiller...but when he got back and dropped it off with me he told me he'd been called into work. We only had the tiller for a day and I didn't want to spend our evenings that week working on the yard. I had no idea how long he'd be gone so I got to work. It was quite a job ahead of me. We had gotten the compost laid down the day prior but using the actual tiller was really hard. Once I got the entire yard tilled I broke apart trays of grass into approximately 5" by 5" "plugs" of grass to plant. The plugs are expected to grow together in 3-6 months. I got almost half the yard planted by the time Nick came home. I got him to cut the rest of the grass into plugs for me and I got the rest planted.
It's been about three weeks now and there are tiny sprouts of grass poking up next to the plugs so it must be working.

I finally got the house pretty organized as of last week and even cleaned everything really well for the first time. Of course it's all just in time for our third and final shipment to come tomorrow. Then I'll have more cleaning to do and more things to put in their places. Then I have to get around to filing our insurance claims for all of our things that got broken in the move over- our dining room table, our dryer, a bedside table, shelves, and more than one lamp.

This weekend was really nice because, since I got pretty much everything done that I could get done on the house at the time, I was able to take it easy. I went to Ko Olina beach with my friend Megan. Ko Olina has man made lagoons which separate the waves from the beach. They provide a nice little outlet of calm where you don't have to be concerned about being dashed into rocks or taken out to sea. The sun was so hot we kept thinking we were burning but we were sunblock suited up. The sun is just really hot here. The water was perfect though- it seemed chilly at first but it was satiating in the heat. In Charleston what bugged me about the water is that at some point in late summer, the water became so warm that it wasn't satisfying to go in it to cool off. Here I think it's perfect.

I've been working on a lot of stuff lately- little projects other than just job hunting. It's definitely been keeping me busy. But it was nice to finally let myself relax at the beach. This is a really exciting month now that we've both gotten to know the area a bit more. I'm sure this is just the beginning. Some more exciting things to come very soon...

Well, as most of you have watched the reports, you know that the tsunami barely reared its ugly head here in Hawaii. We had some cloudy water, some unusual activity in the water near all the islands, etc.

I don't think Hawaii overreacted. I think today really illustrated how prepared the islands are for something that could become a severe disaster in the future. Today my thoughts kept going back to this horrific what-if youtube video I saw a while ago before even moving here.

This is the clip I saw a while back that freaked me out today:

It's scary to imagine something like that can occur. It's unlikely of course, but as we were shown today, a tsunami is NOT out of the realm of possibilities. Definitely shows you how lucky we are to have every moment in a clean, dry house. It also really makes your heart go out to the people in Chile, and of course Haiti who didn't have any warning for their natural disasters.

I typed on Twitter all day. It was really interesting to follow the events on Twitter while watching the news and it makes you be thankful for technology. I got a lot of support from people I have never even met. All of Hawaii had prayers and good vibes coming its way from Twitter users all over the world. It was really interesting to watch and it kept me calm talking about everything going on.

In the end the whole event showed us how to prepare for such an event. I was especially fortunate to have Nick here with me. As he pointed out, if he had been close to a deployment they probably would have just taken off early. That would have been scary.

As it was, after things had officially started to die down, I practicaly passed out on the couch in front of the news. All that adrenaline rushing through me so early in the morning when I thought our area had to evacuate (and we were fortunate- quite a few of our friends here actually did have to evacuate!) just really hit me hard. I ended up napping for three hours.

Now we're up, and oddly enough this is the worst and most ominous I've seen the weather since I've been here....It's been overcast all day long. I know that doesn't sound like bad weather, but the most bad it's been since I've moved here has been a 2-3 hr period of overcast-ness at the most. This has been all day.

It's not going to stop us for making the most of what's left of the day. Nick is about to use his new barbeque with some shark meat he got the other day (we'll see how this goes- never had it before) and we'll probably just stay in and relax. We have a lot of work to do on the yard tomorrow that hopefully we'll still be able to do. We have to rent a tiller in the AM and get gas for it (assuming not ALL the gas stations are out of gas) so we can mix up the compost we laid today in with the pre-existing red clay/dirt stuff. Then we actually have to plant small patches of grass all over so they'll grown in and fill out the yard. Ahh, it'll be a long day.

Once again, thanks everyone for the well wishes through phonecalls, facebook wallposts, twitter, etc. We're glad it wasn't anything serious & hopefully now we know we need to have more stuff on hand in case this pans out in the future with another crazy event.

Today was supposed to be a pretty normal day. We were planning on having a a grass-planting day followed by a housewarming party later tonight. Last night we decided to cancel the housewarming to give ourselves more time to get the grass done.

We had the alarms set to go off this morning around 7/7:30am so we could pick up the tiller from a local rental shop. I got a text at 5:30am from my stepdad. I sleepily scanned the message...something about "this is serious" and the word "tsunami" caught my eye. I had two other missed texts from friends who said the same thing and one mentioned evacuations at 6am. I layed in bed for a minute deciding on if I should go back to sleep....it just didn't seem real.

I guess the adrenaline started and my heart was going too fast to just go back to sleep. I got up and went into the computer room to google the info and went into a panic attack when I read about the possible upcoming tsunami and the evacuations planned for Ewa Beach..where I live.

I glanced at the clock- 5:45am. Fifteen minutes before alarms started sounding to evacuate. I couldn't get on the website to see if ours was definitely an area to evacuate. The site was down.

I ran in and got Nick up in a panic. Brushed my teeth and started grabbing things I needed, all the time worrying about driving to a shelter with the dog. I had the crazy moment that I've thought about before where you decide what is the most important to you that you can grab. The dog was a given. I got her food, cleaned out our canned food and boxes of food, dog food, and started grabbing clean clothes, underwear, toiletries.

A bit after we started loading the car up, Nick was able to get through the the evacuation site and looked up our area. Fortunately we're about 1-2 miles away from the evacuation zone. I've never been so thankful to not live close to the beach.

We watched the news for a bit as we absorbed all the info. I tweeted a bunch (and still am), and fixed breakfast-made blueberry pancakes (hey, we might not be able to use the eggs soon). We started working on what we could on the yard- laid out the compost and started spreading it. We couldn't go anywhere to rent the tiller and a lot of the gas stations are actually out of gas at this point.

We both got showers while we still could- a few minutes ago they announced we're now conserving water because the sewage plants may not be able to be emptied for a while.

Nick went to the liquor store yesterday so we have beer and champagne. We loaded up empty containers with water (and our bathtubs too), put aside food, and have batteries and my laptop charging. We'll have to unplug stuff soon due to possible electric surges.

It's crazy that all this just happened with no warning. It's weird to think that we're not in a place where we can drive away from all disaster. Like Florida when there's a hurricane.

We're sitting tight at the moment, drinking mimosas (why not?) and switching back and forth between the news and Independence Day..ironically.

I'm really happy Nick is here with me now through this. He said if he was close to deployment they would call him in and they would just take off early. So I'm very happy that's not the case. And I'm so happy and consider us so lucky that we're a bit farther away from the beach than I'd originally hoped...

About a half hour to go until something happens on the big Island of Hawaii. Anything else that will happen here will happen about a half hour after that.

Thanks all for your texts and Twitter messages. We're staying safe and dry.

Our thoughts are with all the people in Chile, the big island, and all the evac areas. Hopefully this won't be as bad as they think.