Time is flying (like a G6)

Time has been flying, so fast that I can hardly catch my breath. An awful day is followed by a euphoric morning, which is crushed by an afternoon full of blame and arguing. It's exhausting. I'm juggling a variety of jobs, family tumult and to add to it, people's stress about the current election (current as in: results of our next president are due in 5 hours...)

 But on the bright side, my friends have been here for almost a month (where does the time go!) and we've had some wonderful adventures together.


Halloween came and went. I wore about four different costumes, because I just couldn't decide on one. My disguises covered the scary and the beautiful, and perhaps the borderline cute. I attended and participated in a Haunted "Farm" at Nalolicious, where my friends are staying. It was the first "haunted" attraction that I'd ever really gone to because my parent's never let me go to them as a child. It was so  much fun to hide in the bushes of the abandoned nursery and scare people. I actually had to suppress multiple sinister cackles of mirth as I freaked people out. I decided to go with creepy-quiet scaring, rather than jumping out at people with an obnoxious "Blahhhhharghhh!!!" As folks walked past me I emerged like an apparition from the trees and started singing sweetly in very high-pitched orb-like notes and starting at them from beneath my zombie-gypsy costume. As they passed me I blew onto the backs of their necks and sent them shivering and doing that funny jig that people do when they think there's a spider on their back. Cackle Cackle, it was hilarious. I didn't know one could reap so much joy from terrifying people. Muahahaha.

The second evening of masquerade, I dressed in what I considered my most-planned costume of the year: a secret garden. I picked some plants from the edge of the water by my house, which happened to be native Hawaiian plants (a man dressed up as Lance Armstrong who I met at the Halloween block party in Chinatown identified them as an excellent insect repellent) and adorned myself with them. It wasn't quite the look I was going for, but it worked and it was me. The annoying thing was that Hallowballoo, the block party consisting of 15,000 people was evacuated 30 minutes after I arrived, due to the tsunami that was triggered by an earthquake off the coast of Canada. Let me tell you, cops storming though your halloween party in angry cries of ,"the party is OVER" isn't fun to hear. I actually didn't believe them at first, I thought it was some drunk college-jerks dressed as cops trying to be funny. Nope, at the sound of the sirens people scattered in all directions, clad in their colorful, and for some, extremely riskee costumes to reach their cars and get to higher ground as quickly as possible. I was one of them and sustained a few blisters trying to run in heels to get to my car. It was extremely irritating. I sped home to my exasperated parents and we all drove up the hill to wait out the tsunami–the one that never came.

The day before Halloween I dressed up as a witch and cackled in my garden, and recited the "Double Double Toil and Trouble" scene from Shakespeare's Macbeth while pretending to conjure up spirits from my "cauldron" (BBQ) to no one in particular, just for my own fun. I do strange things sometimes.

On Halloween the Swedes and I went to Waikiki and walked around for a few hours, enjoying the overstimulation from all the costumes and craze. We had a blast.

Now that Halloween has past (fewf!) I feel the calm of the fall setting in. The gentle, beautiful rains have started, and the land is finally regaining it's green, fluffy vegetation. We have gone on three big hikes: Maunawili Falls, a 5-hour hike through Tantalus and Nu'uanu ridge and valley, and through the Pupukea forest reserve on the North shore.

I can't wait for Thanksgiving, but at the same time, I'm relieved that there are a good two weeks of peace to separate the holidays. My birthday is at the end of the month, and I am starting to count the days left of my teenagerdom. My twenties are approaching. Time is fuckin' flying!