Morning Sunrise Walks

I finished unloading three boxes… so, break time! Almost every morning I leave for a sunrise walk sometime around 5:15/5:30. Sunrises at ~5:50 for now, although that doesn’t change much over the course of the year. I have these walks down to a science. It takes me about 6 minutes to get to the beach. I take off my flip flops and place my water bottle with them at the beach entrance. Then walk down the length of the beach and look for sea glass along the wave line. Usually it’s still dark at this point, so no really great pictures yet. Then, on my walk back I watch the sunrise and walk in the water, ending where I started which is where the best picture framing is.

This morning’s score

The sea glass colors vary by day it seems. Some days it’s clear, some days it’s a brown day, sometimes it’s mostly green. On the rare occasion I’ll pick up a blue. This was today’s haul… must’ve been a green day. I’m trying to figure out the science behind it… is it my mood? The moon changing the tides? I’m filling up my favorite wine bottle in the shape of a lighthouse from Truro Vineyards with the pieces. I knew there was a reason I packed that… Sometimes they are too big to fit the stem so I’m putting them in a different container. When I first started picking up glass I thought it was going to take no time to fill the bottle, but that’s because I have poor spatial evaluation capabilities…. I’ve barely covered the bottom. Hopefully I’ll fill it in three years.

I have to be careful in the morning of the holes the crabs make, I almost face planted once. Footprint for scale. My friend assures me they are more scared of me than I am of them. She hasn’t been wrong yet.

This guy was hiding in the rocks this morning.

I am getting to “know” the regulars… there’s the old couple with a new white puppy they’re trying to train. The guy who walks his big Beethoven dog and small pug pair. The power walker. The fishermen. The gay guy with his coffee (I’m making an educated guess here.) I am friendly and say hi, but no huge conversations yet.

Not that the sunrise gets boring… but how many sunrise pictures can one have? So I try to do something different with some shots. I caught this guy throwing a cast, and the other day I snapped a couple who was here on vacation sitting on the blanket looking at the sunrise. I approached them and took down their email so I could send them the pictures later.

Here’s the one from a couple days ago. The sky was on fire.

In Connecticut I was feeling totally unmotivated. It felt like a lead weight was tied to me making everything feel really hard. I promised myself I’d be more active in Hawaii, but I was worried that I was just using environment as a crutch and I would still have a hard time getting out. That is definitely not the case and although I am a bit tired in the morning, I can find the gumption to get my butt out the door.

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Utter Chaos

Our stuff is here and I am wishing we lived a minimalist life.

They pack EVERYTHING. Even sometimes trash. I had a hard time letting go of my dried wedding flowers…so I avoided throwing them away and left it to Brian to take care of or the movers. Well… they were packed and shedded everywhere. Brain made me toss them.

Sometimes things break, but this is the only thing so far. I have a ton of boxes to go though.

On the whole, everything looks in good shape. No bugs, which I heard could happen, and we had all four crates show up.

Don’t mind me while I continue to procrastinate by writing instead of unpacking… But in all seriousness I don’t have the stamina I used to and Brian’s not here, so I just have to come to terms it’s going to take longer than normal and I’ll take blogging breaks.

I am off to go get a safety inspection for the Venza. I have to bring the inspection to the registration appointment. However, it will fail inspection because I am not registered in Hawaii. Then I go register in Hawaii, then I go back for another inspection to pass. Yes, sounds efficient.

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Moving in the Military

We shipped our household goods, (HHGs), on April 25th from Mystic, CT. We were told they can take anywhere from six weeks to six months to get to the Island. To hold you over, the Navy allows you to rent “Aloha Furniture”, which are bare bones pieces (bed frame, exactly 2 dining room chairs, dining room table, couch, coffee table, two living room chairs and two side tables) to get by. So my current desk has been in the dining room. We bought a new office chair because the one coming from Mystic isn’t comfortable and I was going to replace it anyway.

As you can see, my view is facing out the front of our condo. I get to watch the retirees and stay at home parents make their walks to and from the beach.

I tell Brian weekly that if someone offered me a job giving kayaking tours I wouldn’t say no.

I am writing this post while we wait for our HHGs to be delivered. We got a call a week ago that they arrived on island, and I called right away to schedule a time for them to be dropped off. Today is the day.

Usually the movers show up early on drop off day, 8am or so, and unload until there’s nothing to unload. Expecting this, Brian and I took today off work.

Yesterday(!!) I received a text saying the movers would be here between 1400-1500 (Everything is in military time). So I didn’t really need to take off work today, and knowing they won’t get this done in two hours, I am sure we will be continuing this into tomorrow. Now I need to take tomorrow off of work… and hopefully Brian will be able to too.

Yes, deployments are hard, but this type of thing no one warns you about. I mean they kinda do, when they told me I need to be really flexible as a military spouse. But I feel like I was unprepared for just the amount of insanity that goes on with Navy logistics.

They were booking a week out from when we called to schedule drop offs. My friend called a couple days after me to schedule hers, and they were booking 6 weeks out. It could be worse.

It’s 15:22 and the movers still aren’t here. Brian called and they are “on their way”. Wish us luck and tons of patience.

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Hello world!

My grandmother passed two days ago (yes, we’ll start with the morbid), and there was a really beautiful slideshow of pictures from her through the years (almost 90 of them!)


I only wish I was able to walk through those pictures with her and hear her tell the stories that accompanied them. So here are my best efforts to document my pictures and my stories.

Since my life has been engulfed trying to move to a tropical island, I’ll start with a picture of the first time I visited the beach near us during the day. It’s pretty incredible, and pictures don’t do it justice, but a girl can try.

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