Fear the Crab

I joined Maile in her exercise routine, and afterward I immediately felt my head lighten. Maile said it was because I was doing it too fast, but the exercise routine that I was trying to follow was already going fast. I’m not saying Maile is wrong, however, because really I was pushing it. The problem I have is that when I’m learning something for the first time I tend to go at the pace of the instructor, then adjust the standard to my own level. Regardless of whether it’s a physical activity or mental, I can’t just go my own pace from the very beginning.

I think it started from sports, playing little league and attending the dojo. These were activities that I couldn’t go my own pace from the get-go, because there wasn’t any room for it. In a team sport, you have to keep up, otherwise you’re a detriment to the team and to the game. In the dojo, you had to keep up because you’d get yelled at if you didn’t. Of course, normally one goes through days of practice before game time, so there is the opportunity to bring yourself up to speed. Still, I remember from the first day, I’d try to keep up, run fast, throw hard, swing for the fences… maybe it was to prove myself, or perhaps prove to the coaches that I’m capable.

Granted, when you’re a little kid, you’ve got a lot of energy for such things. I’m older and far less coordinated, now.

On Saturday Maile and I went to Sea Life Park. The last time I went there I was a little kid in elementary school. I honestly can’t tell if it’s changed much, since I don’t remember anything of my last trip (except for the big three-story reef tank near the entrance). For starters, I don’t recall sea lions being so noisy. I think it’s because they have public feedings, where the crowd can pay $2 for a tray of fish to feed the sea lions. So my guess is that whenever there are people by the fence, the sea lions all make their feed-me noises.

We watched the dolphins practice for their show, doing minor jumps and poking their heads out to see when they were supposed to perform. At least, that’s what it looked like.

There wasn’t much else of interest, though we ate shave ice until our mouths were numb and our brains were non-functional. I fell asleep on the drive back.

We’re taking walkies more often now, and using places like my neighborhood and the elementary school near Maile’s house. They’re quiet places, but not so quiet that we couldn’t call for help if need be.

Maile made me a beaded necklace. Well, it’s only got 7 beads, but it’s on a hemp braid topped off with one of those.. crap, I forgot the name of the clasp. It’s basically a hoop and a stick-type thing. Anyway, I think it’s über cool. It was Maile’s first attempt at beadwork, and the success of it is inspiration for more. When I get my camera back from Richard, I plan to take a picture and post it.

Today I’m going to eat at Red Lobster. It’s a far cry from the new diet (oh, sorry, alternate food lifestyle), but we’re going to meet up with James and Mary, so it’s for a good cause.

Happy Birthday to Me!Maile took me out to dinner at the Prince Court. We had some Inniskilin, which was only our second sampling of that label. The first time we drank, it had a lychee taste to it. This time it had an apple juice taste. Both were good.

The buffet was pretty good. We both took from the salad bar, and “oysters in luau sauce.” Maile had some “crispy baked chicken with white sauce,” potatoes au gratin, some bbq meat that looked like something you’d find on a grill. I had some prime rib in addition to the bbq meat. It doesn’t seem like much, but past experience with buffets teaches us that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs. This way, we had room for dessert, which consisted of bread pudding, chocolate cream pie, and some strawberry cake.

Then we walked it off by cruising the DFS, and saying hi to old friends. Needless to say, nobody recognized me at first. Granted, the weight gain, long hair, and general scruffiness probably led them to think I was a criminal. A well-dressed, but scruffy, criminal. Too bad the Georges and Irene weren’t there. I haven’t spoken to them in ages.

I think tomorrow after work I’m going to wash the car. And if time permits, I’m going to wash Maile’s car, too.

After a decent night’s rest, and a vivid dream that I’ve already forgotten, I feel better about last night. I’m still going to support Maile, I just won’t impose it. And if she needs her “private time” then I will let her have it.

I still wish I could spend more time with her, but it’s a compromise towards a better goal.

I love Maile. I always will.

Yet I think I lost a part of her today, or perhaps I lost a part of myself that I thought I could give to her.

Maile has always been independent, from the elementary school days. She learned to be self-sufficient, to not have to rely on someone and be pigeon-holed into a role she did not want. I came to this realization recently, although I think I’ve always known, just never really thought about it. This also makes me realize that I cannot be the person that supports her, that gives her a shoulder to cry on or an ear that listens, because she will not accept it. She feels that if she has a problem, she will take care of it herself.

That is a commendable spirit, and I hold a lot of respect for her, and her ability to take care of matters. However, it makes me feel.. useless. Like nothing more than a meat-puppet she can parade to her friends. I know she loves me, she’s said as much and done way more to show it. I just wish I could be her complement, that part of her she can rely on that just so happens to be a man who thinks of her as his complement.

Maile does not ask for help in matters that are “important” to her. Homework? Important, yes, but nothing compared to real-life issues. Sometimes she tells me about them, the problems, and sometimes, though rarely, she will ask me what she should do. I offer my advice, my parables, my logic, my wisdom, my experience, to help her assess the situation and make a decision or take a course of action that will turn that problem into a beneficial convenience, or at least a life lesson. Unfortunately, my words are met with I can’t, I won’t, or I don’t want to. All this does is make me feel like my words don’t matter, which brings back images of dangling meat puppets on strings.

Today, I came to the somber realization that she does not want, nor does she need, my help. This realization was after an uncomfortable moment of figuring out why emotions were running high. So we had a talk. And I have to face the fact that I can only offer my support if she truly desires it. This I said to her, and it broke my heart. Perhaps that’s a little strong, but it felt like it. I can’t give her my support if she doesn’t need it, or maybe she doesn’t want it. If she feels that she needs her own private time, her own personal space, then the best thing for me to do is let her have it. Even if it means that I will not see her for five or six weeks.

Given our current work, and upcoming school, schedules, we rarely have time to see each other, much less spend some time together. At the Lab I only see her for about an hour, or half an hour. Then she gets home at around 1700 and exercises. Once that is done, I could visit and see her, but by that time it’s around 1930 and that means I can only spend about two hours with her. Basically and hi-and-bye sort of deal, to me. And since she doesn’t want me around when she exercises, it means that at a certain point in the morning and late afternoon, I shouldn’t be there. So to me, it seems that I will not see her, at all.

The thing is, she’s fine with that. It’s testament to her independence that she can do that. I, on the other hand, am almost opposite, where I need to have that “safety net” behind me that I can use if things get dicey.

I shared this bit of my life experience with her, that while I have lived independently for a time, it was only during college, and it was “sanitized.” By that I mean that I always had some place or someone to fall back on if things got rough. I was living in the dorms or in university-owned houses. If something required repair, the U would take care of it. Rent was part of the tuition. I had a meal plan, and if I cooked it was only for that day, and I would grocery shop only for those ingredients (or to buy alcohol). And during the summer and winter breaks, I came back to Hawai’i where my family was. So I have never been at a point in my life where the only person I could rely on was myself, and I don’t hide that, either. I had family, I had friends, and I had a roof over my head if things got rough.

Given that experience, I want to be a person that other people could rely on. I want to be a person that someone could know was available anytime to turn to for aid. I don’t do it because I want something in return; I do it because I think, I feel, it is the RIGHT thing to do. There’s a sense of security knowing that in a time of need, there is someone you can trust to help.

I want to be that security for Maile. I want to be that person she can rely on, to be that person that she knows would be available at any time. And I want her to know that no matter what she thinks of my advice, whether or not she will accept it, or whether or not she feels it’s important.. No matter what, I want her to know that I will be there.

I tried to tell her this once, but I got the impression that I was making a funny, so I didn’t push the matter. Actually, I think she was busy with something at the time, like cooking dinner, and couldn’t grant me her full attention. I’ll have to work on my timing for my next attempt.

Last week my friend’s father passed away. I’ve only met him once, at my friend’s wedding. While I didn’t know him very well, it’s still sad to see someone with so much experience move on to the next phase in life. He was 58.

On a lighter note, my cousin also phased life, celebrating his graduation from high school. He plans on staying here, and attending a community college. I believe he intends to attend the U of Hawai`i later, so this is a smart move. Many of the credits can be transfered and apply towards those core requirements. And it’s cheaper by about $600, I think, maybe more.

Maile phased her life into a new direction, with a healthier diet and the abstinence of smoking. It’s a good change, and I’m trying to keep up. Unfortunately, I’m not actually following her footsteps, as I only eat healthy when I’m eating with her, and I’m only “cutting down” on the smoking, rather than quitting. She’s using one of those nicotine patches, bought at a tremendous discount because she went through this stop-smoking program at the hospital. Ordinarily a 1-month supply of patches would cost around $100, but after attending that program, the cost went down to $5. As for my cutbacks, I’ve taken steps to limit the number of cigs I take in a day. I never went more than a pack a day to begin with, but I’ve established rules to go by, such as not bringing cigs to work and not smoking indoors. The denial of cigs at work goes a long way towards cutting back.

I told Maile that I believe the battle to quit smoking involves not only the withdrawal of nicotine, but also the willpower to actively change habits. Nicotine is a powerful addictive stimulant, and I don’t doubt its potency. I’ve noticed, too, that we sometimes want to smoke after we eat, or when we drink, or when we want to take a break at work. That part is mental, where we’ve developed a habit (or more appropriately, an excuse) to smoke. My self-imposed rules of not bringing cigarettes to work and not smoking indoors goes a bit of ways towards that goal of breaking the mental addiction.

I was playing left field for some baseball team, and I think I was back in little league. But it was a strange little league because we were using a ball that was about half the size of a regular softball, yet still larger than a regular baseball. I was wearing a white uniform with blue trim, and after our warm-ups on the field we had some kind of pre-game ceremony where they play the national anthem. They unfurled this huge fan-shaped flag and all of us on the field were required to hold our portion of it. So since the flag was shaped like a baseball field, I had to hold the left corner. I kept thinking this was probably the stupidest thing I had ever done on a baseball field.

When it (the pre-game show) was over, we all retired to the dugout, which was some kind of wooden shack, almost like a tool shed. Only now we weren’t in our uniforms, and everyone sat around in regular clothes. It was almost like we were done playing, the way we hung out, drank soda and juice (as is the wont of little leaguers).

I got bored, so I left the shed and walked around, and I saw my co-workers from The Lab. I was very surprised to see them, because they were probably the last people I expected to see at my baseball game. Then I figured that if they were there, Maile was there, too. So I started looking for her.

I ended up at an extravagant mansion that was actually right next door to the tool shed. And my extravagant I mean it was posh, with wide open spaces and impeccable taste. And it was clean. There were a lot of people there, and I felt that they were all involved in the baseball game somehow, but I couldn’t figure out what their involvement was. Perhaps the parents of one of the players owned the house. Perhaps it was the league. I don’t know.

I began to feel very uncomfortable at that house, so I left and tried to find my way back to the tool shed, to be with people of my own tax bracket. I heard someone call my name, and it was Maile. She was very happy, to the point of tears, and when I asked her why she gave me this small device that looked like a miniature shoe horn, but it was some kind of recording device. She played the message on there, and while I couldn’t make out all the words, she had apparently received a gift in the form of a brand new car. We had to drive out to the place to pick it up, so we hopped into her car and she drove.

The area was very unfamiliar to us, and we kept getting lost. At some point we both realized that we needed to bring along one of those rubbery fishing lures and.. something else. So we had to find a place that sold them. We kept driving, looking around for either the place we had to get to, or a store that sold bait.

What stood out to me was that I was getting very frustrated, because Maile was not following the rules of the road. Not staying in the lane, speeding around corners, stuff like that. We finally decided to park, and walk around. Except now I had to sit in a wheelchair, apparently I had some kind of injury. So Maile would push me around, and I’d try to help by wheeling myself at times, while we looked for fishing lures.

What was odd was that at several points I found myself standing next to her, and thinking that I probably shouldn’t leave my wheelchair out where someone could steal it. We had just been given directions to a store that sold what we needed, but when we left, Maile decided to stop searching and go home. It looked late, nighttime, and it would be a while before we got to the store and to wherever we were supposed to receive the car.

We never did find the car.

Bah, that test was horrid. Despite my one page of notes I don’t think I did very well on that ICS 311 exam. If it’s any consolation, my co-worker said that he thinks everyone else did horrible, too. If that’s the case, then I just need to hope I didn’t do as bad as the others. I just hope my assignment and project scores will be enough to keep me afloat.

I can look forward to one more assignment, one more project, and then the final exam. Three more opportunities to obtain decent scores. Perhaps the upcoming assignment and project can give me what I need to pass. The jury’s still out on that final, which will likely be cumulative.

Spanish seems to be doing okay, but that bit of good news is tempered by my recent performance in ICS 311.

However, I helped Maile review her Religion essay. I think it’s a good essay, so hopefully she’ll get a lot of points for that.

Here at work, I don’t know what to do. I mean, I do have things to do, but I don’t feel like doing them. I wish I could go home.

Actually, I think I could go home, but then everyone would wonder about my work. Did you know that what I’m doing is akin to consultant work, and that consultants get paid around $70 an hour for this? All I’m getting is student wages, white hairs, and the prospect of having a decent resume should I pull it off. Yeah, it’s a pessimistic attitude, but again my mood has been affected by today’s exam.

I want to go home.

Well it’s been a long long time, and I can thank school and work for that. I’ve been getting a couple of projects from The Office that are giving me hassles, but in ways that I have no control over. For example, I need to manipulate some files, but unbeknownst to me, I don’t have permission to do that. I (and everyone else, apparently) don’t usually realize this until I’ve spent a day whitening my hair. As far as The Lab goes, it goes. I’ve noticed they’re sending me to some dentists that aren’t under my jurisdiction of “town.” It’s only been a couple of times, but since I don’t do “Leeward” I have no idea where these dentists are. I make sure to act dumb when they call, too, just so I can hear them fumble around trying to give me directions.

Speaking of white hairs, Maile noticed I have one growing on my neck, in the beardy area. It’s kinda bright when I let it grow out some. But it’s not in a sexy-sexy place, it’s sorta right under the mandibular angle (for you anatomy freaks), so it just looks weird.

In Animal Crossing news, I’ve been spending some time drawing textures. I made a couple of Mashimaro designs, the University of Hawai`i athletic logo, the Decepticon and Cobra and Star Wars Empire insignias, and my current fave, GIR in a dog suit. The GIR design I especially like, because from far away it actually looks like him. It’s too bad there’s no way to “trade” designs with other people short of having to actually visit their towns; I know a couple of people who might be interested in ’em. Of course, when these designs are put on a shirt or umbrella, the results are very humorous. But I think they look neat on signboards strategically placed in strategic areas.

My summer class is going.. okay. There was a bit of a problem with my most recent homework assignment. I had to get input from the user, and it seems the code would “catch” the carriage return and pass that to the variables, making the whole thing look funny. I had to incorporate a dummy variable to grab those annoying newline characters so that the real variables could get the proper data.
But this opened up another can of worms. I’ve set up the code so that it will only accept a certain amount of characters, truncating the data so that it will always fit. It seems to work fine when I test it, but when two or three distinct variables are processed (one after the other), the previous variables lose their data as the later are assigned. And I have no idea how to fix that.

I just finished off lunch, some suck-ass chicken katsu that came from the cafeteria. Bleah.

Next semester I hope to take ICS 312, which is supposed to be a continuation of the C class I’m taking now. I was planning to go for 311, which involves more theory, but the prof who’s teaching it in the Fall is, while uber-smart, kinda hard to understand. By which I mean that only if the student is also uber-smart will the student learn anything.

So, since I need 6 credits to continue working for ITS, I’m going to take Spanish at Leeward. Oddly enough, Maile is also going to take Spanish because she needs the credits, too. We’re going to be taking the same class at the same time. I think it’ll be fun!

I have an urge to get together with all the old folk that have some connection to DFS. It’s been a while since I’ve been out, and I consider a month as a long time. What with all the schedule changes, though, I imagine it’ll be hard to arrange. And while I’m on the subject, why am I the one who always seems to coordinate these things? Maybe that’s why I’m getting more white hairs than a Maltese.

Just kidding.

Over the weekend I spent some time at a beachhouse in Laie. It was a gathering of almost everyone from The Lab, plus relatives and friends. The house was huge, way bigger than what I imagined, and it was right there on the beach. Which, I suppose, explains why it’s called a beachhouse. Maile and I went on Saturday, but a lot of people were there since Thursday. We weren’t intending to stay over, though, since Maile had a lot of work to finish by Monday. I tried some fishing with Mark’s new and expensive rod and reel (oh yeah, no pressure), but the last time I cast any sort of fishing line was back in the elementary school days. I only had one good cast, while the rest of the time I’d barely make it 10 feet. Needless to say, I didn’t catch anything. The rest of the time I spent playing with the kids, whether it was throwing a ball around, digging holes in the sand, or making sand sculptures. Maile made a really nice turtle, since we saw one in the water.

Today started out smashing. I slept late and woke up late, but still in time to get ready and leave for work before the morning rush hour. On the way, Star 101.9 was having an informal contest, which was basically listening for whenever Mortuary Chris “let one go” and being the 9th caller. I guess he had a lot of burritos the night before. Lucky me, I dialed in and managed to be the 9th caller. So I won passes to the Laugh Factory, which is interesting because I was just thinking of going there. I don’t recall how many passes I got, probably two. I should have tried to ask for more, like tickets to The Vagina Monologues, or something, but when they finally took me off hold I was reversing my truck into a parking stall. It’s very difficult to talk on a cell phone while navigating between two concrete pillars.

Later tonight I’m getting together with a bunch of old friends, and we’re likely going to hang out at Ryan’s Bar and Grill. We were supposed to go to the Laugh Factory (odd that it’s been the subject of the week for me), but due to a booking problem they won’t have a show until Thursday. Normally they have comedy every single day. So it’s a night out at Ryan’s, and hopefully a lot of people show up. It’s been a while since we all got together.