Maui, my island home (for 9 days!)

(I HATE it when people post their boastful deluxe vacation photos for the sole purpose of making everyone else jealous and depressed at the shabbiness of their own uneventful lives. I do this only as an act of vengeance. Not that they'll notice.) 

 

Maui kitchen: view from the window

Up to now I haven't even posted any pictures from our vacation in Maui. We got back shortly before  Christmas, and it was the biggest bummer. . . I mean, to have to suddenly get myself in some kind of mood for holly-jollity, when all I'd been doing was soaking my brains in guava and turning them into a quivering green jelly. I'd gotten into "oh, I'll do it after Hawaii" mode, leaving stuff undone, which is not my usual compulsive way. And we were hosting this year, doing the turkey, etc. etc. So things had piled up nastily, making for a rough homecoming. It's not that I didn't want to be home. I just wanted QUIET, and that's not what you get at Christmas. I wasn't ready for something I didn't want to be ready for to begin with. It was not dread so much as total disorientation, the bends I usually get after going away, only worse. I did not even have time to look at any of the hundred or so videos I took, or the photos Bill took, which I still haven't seen.

So today. . . still feeling fried, but having survived Christmas and Boxing Day and a few more days after that, I started looking at my trove. I published this one mainly because of the incredible bird song on it, along with audible yelling and arguing among the staff working for the condo. I stood in the kitchen and shot it out the window when the birds were at their noisy peak. I make an appearance in this, looking just dreadful, with no makeup on and bedroom hair. Oh well. Does it matter, in sweet Hawaii? No, it does not. It's a no-bra zone, as a friend of mine once said. This was a sentimental journey for us, the fifth time we've gone to the same part of Maui (Kihei), and we were amazed at how little it had changed, even down to the restaurants and menus (Aloha Lunch Plate: coconut prawns by the ocean!). But it was bittersweet, because we know we'll never be back. Between health issues (for both of us) and money issues (check), we just can't do holidays like that any more. And the cat was so heavily traumatized by being boarded (even in a luxury cat hotel) that we can't imagine putting him through that again. 

I am likely to post at least a few of the slew of videos, once I get them figured out. I hate people posting their expensive holiday videos, wagging their asses at me, so this is my revenge.