At the urging of my public relations manager (aka: my daughter Chelsea :-), I have moved my blog to my website. I had to finally agree that putting everything in the same place made sense, even if it was a lot of work on my part.
I have to admit, I do love the way the new one looks. My daughter as she reads this is rolling her eyes, saying ‘duh’ and ‘I told you so’ in the same expression.
So you will be receiving notifications of my future blogs in a different email.
At the risk of anthropomorphizing, I look over at MacKenzie, sitting next to me in the backseat of Bronwen and Micky’s car, and think she looks uncannily human. Her ears are perked and she’s looking forward through the windshield, occasionally tracking something through the side window. I reach over to pet her and she becomes a dog again, ears softening and eyes looking adoringly at me. Then she licks my hand and returns to her vigil as if we will get lost without her assistance. I love you Mom, but I have a job to do here.
We’re headed to a suburban neighborhood in Waimea, a one-hour drive from Kona, to meet the two women owners of Habitats Hawaii. Johanna, a licensed builder, emanates a no-nonsense earthiness, while Barrie, who will help with design, floats towards us in a silky dress, reeking of Goddess.
I’m doing my best to pay attention as we go through introductions, but my toes are tapping, all ten of them. I’m on a mission, I’ll get-to-know-you later. We walk around the side of the house to the backyard and there she is!
I am star-struck as soon as I lay eyes upon her. Geometrically-clever paving stones inlaid in the grass, lead to an adorable, gingerbread house. The steeply sloped, A-frame roof sits atop a perfectly proportioned little home, complete with a bay window lined with flower boxes filled with a colorful assortment of geraniums. I can’t help but think that those flowers would probably be limp and surrounded by curling, yellow leaves if they were left to my care.
There is even a little fenced enclosure off to the side, with an equally adorable chicken coop, home to four big, fluffy, yellow hens pecking at the ground contentedly. Every detail has been attended to. Sunlight sparkles off the windows and I could swear I hear a heavenly host of angels singing quietly.
I suddenly realize that Johanna is talking – I have missed everything she has been saying. I was absorbed with the crystal clarity that comes from being completely in the Now, where everything else falls away for a moment in time. In this stillness, I am soaking up the ‘rightness’ of this place.
Johanna opens the door and Micky and Bronwen enter first making appropriately agreeable sounds. I stay outside for a long moment looking dreamily at the chickens. They make happy little clucking, chirping noises as they look for insects in the grass. Huh, I hadn’t thought of chickens. An idea is born – I’ll tuck that away for later. I take in the flower beds surrounding the home in front of the white lattice that cleverly hides the wheels – again I sigh, only plants that thrive on benign neglect survive at my house. I slowly climb the two steps leading to the front door.
I enter and look to the right. A large seating area has been built into the bay window with a beautiful octagonal table in front. To the left, a kitchen takes up half of the interior space. There is a two-burner stove but no oven, a dorm-size fridge, and a double sink all laid out in beautiful wood cabinets with an L-shaped countertop. In the far corner is a small door leading to a bathroom complete with a shower, a sink, and a composting toilet, that looks remarkably like a real toilet. One can always pretend.
One detail I take in, but will need to chew on, is that the bathroom is so tiny, that the shower when operating will drench the entire room with water. This design I find out later, is common in RVs also. While it is built for this express purpose, I can’t help but wonder at the potential pitfalls and having to wipe everything down after a shower.
The queen-size bed is in a sleeping loft, accessed by a ladder that can be put away when not in use. Between the bathroom and the ladder, there is even a little desk nook. With a few adjustments, I could totally see myself living here. How is MacKenzie going to climb that ladder though?
I pull up in the driveway of my current place of residence that I loosely call home, when in reality it is far from the cozy picture that name implies. I slide the glass door to the side and step in, riding the high of a tantalizing new possibility. I have just returned from having coffee with two friends who invited me to go with them next weekend to see a Tiny Home.
Two years previously I had discovered the Tiny House movement and begun to dream. As I gathered information, my excitement grew. After decades of raising children, starting small businesses, and all the energy that entails, I dreamed of someday living a simple life, off the grid. Looking back, I’m not sure why I thought that living off the grid would be simple, but such is the beauty of the Pollyanna naiveté I was born with.
In 2011 the Tiny House movement was still in its infancy, mainly for granola-eating, I-want-to-make-an-environmental-statement types, or dead broke, I-don’t-have-anywhere-else-to-live folks. I knew that many people chose to build their own Tiny Homes, saving a significant amount of money doing that. I however am not that clever and don’t have the time or the inclination to do it myself. So, it seemed my dream of owning one was a long shot. I used to say of the shopping choices in Hawai’i; “If you can’t find it in K-Mart, you don’t need it.”
Whatever my true motivation, the romantic notion of living in a tiny space had taken hold of me. For some reason I didn’t see it as a glorified studio apartment, on wheels no less, but more as a way to walk my talk. Perhaps, after all, I did fit into that first category and wanted to put to the test my ideals and beliefs of living a simpler lifestyle.
So when I heard about these two women, on my island, building Tiny Homes, I wanted to know more.
Something wriggling on the floor catches my eye and I stop mid-step. A centipede is curled around a mass of moving, translucent objects. She undulates a little and curls in tighter – protectively – as she appears to perceive my presence. I bend over and look closer. Those tiny, squirming beings are centipede babies. For crying out loud, sometimes I feel like I live in an episode of National Geographic in this dismal, temporary, studio apartment. I grab a dustpan and a large piece of cardboard and carefully transport the family outside to a more suitable home.
In 2010 I had a bumper crop of grandchildren. All three of my daughters decided to have a baby within four months of each other, bringing the grand total to six, two each. Michelle and Alicia, my oldest daughters, live in Rochester, New York. My youngest, Chelsea, who had moved to Hawai’i with me in 1994 as an eight-year-old, had recently moved to Rochester with her husband and two children to give the mainland a try. With my whole family now living in Upstate New York, the solid roots I’d put down in Hawai’i were shaken to their core.
Last week, I had narrowly missed another, National Geographic spectacle, with a four-inch cane spider carrying a large white sac. Fortunately, with the aid of a broom, I was able to gently encourage her to give birth in the great outdoors. I’d heard the nightmare story of a friend scaring one, and subsequently, the momma spider abandoned her sac, filled with hundreds of tiny babies, that then scurried to safety – theirs, not hers.
Shortly after Chelsea left for the mainland, I sold my three-bedroom house and moved into this dreary rental with my boxes unpacked. I’m not sure what I was thinking. The naked rafters and beams in the walls attest to this hastily thrown-together abode. It is situated under the home of the pervey landlord. The way he looks me up and down and the inappropriate comments he murmurs under his breath, make me want to take a shower. When I discover he’s a substitute teacher at the high school, I shudder. I just hope they have protocols in place to protect the students.
And the resident cockroach population (I’ll spare you the picture of the cockroaches that we call B52’s), which has migrated down from the landlord’s home above me, is out of control. Amongst other things, they have made their home in my boxes – to be dealt with later. I spend as little time as possible here. Even my terrier MacKenzie is so horrified to be left alone in this place, she yipes and barks non-stop when I’m gone, compelling the landlord to tell me I can’t leave her here by herself. I have to keep telling myself; this is temporary. Let’s just say I am highly motivated to move…somewhere, anywhere by here.
As soon as I sell my business, I will join my family in Rochester – at least this is what I have been telling myself, and them. This is, less of a plan, more of a knee-jerk reaction. With my whole family now on the mainland, it seems like the thing to do. Perhaps my time here is up. The only problem is, I have no idea how to go about selling a massage school – it is not your average business. And so I have done nothing, living for months in a strange limbo, in a crummy studio apartment, surrounded by boxes stacked to the ceiling. My house is sold, my business is not – one foot in, one foot out.
The majority of people who want more than a conventional life, often start out by experimenting with different lifestyle choices shortly after leaving school. They run off to join the army, join a commune, join the circus, or do some woofing in faraway, off-the-grid, places. If they can afford it, they hike and backpack across Europe for a year.
When I was 18, my best friend Lorelie, who was supposed to be the maid of honor in my upcoming wedding, called one day to say she was running off with her new boyfriend to Washington state, on the other side of the country. He was so new I’d barely heard of him. They were going to get married in a couple of weeks, then go to live on his Arabian horse farm. What? I was the one who loved horses, to my knowledge she’d never even thrown her leg over one. Not fair! And besides, I had already picked out the brightly colored, shiny dresses for my attendants. My other bridesmaids were busy justifying the cost of these. Convincing themselves they’d be able to wear them again in some imaginary future, filled with events you could wear ugly satin dresses to. How dare Lorelie run off and live my dream, leaving me drowning in invitations and flower arrangements.
I have noticed though, that when these risk-takers have exhausted their spirit of adventure, they often settle down; that dreaded phrase. Their parents nagging about taking responsibility, finally finds fertile ground after their adventures start to lose their bloom. The initial excitement of a life completely different from the one they’ve known, can become fraught with its own set of problems. They eagerly turn away from their misadventures and settle into a safer-feeling life. They get married, have kids, get a nine-to-five job and buy a house with a picket fence, then hope to live happily ever after.
Lorelie, went through two husbands before she settled down. Her horse rancher turned out to be a womanizer, as did her second husband, the guru of a New Age spiritual organization. She had well and truly sown her wild oats. The guru left her so traumatized that she chose more traditionally for her third husband and went with a lawyer, with whom she finally had her daughter. She went back to school and got her bachelor’s degree, then got a good job with a big company. She finally left the lawyer, but she still works at the big company – not wanting to leave now because of all the benefits she’d lose and a big mortgage she’s still beholden to. Her bold moves early on had stripped her of her adventurous spirit and left her playing it safe.
I did all of this backwards. I got married at 19, then proceeded to settle down before the tan from my honeymoon faded. By the time I was 27, I had the whole American Dream all sewn up. A husband, two kids, a house with a chain link fence – white picket had gone out of style in the 70’s – and a nine-to-five job.
Then, it all started to unravel – in a big way. I began to have the unsettling thought that there had to be more to life.
I hear the birds singing and look out the window at the visual cacophony of green. Trees, shrubs, grass, and weeds in an untamed, park-like setting. As the sun begins its journey over the mountain, the pale blue sky is populated with small white clouds whose undersides are the color of strawberry cotton candy. I grab my coffee cup and walk outside onto the lanai again to welcome the sunrise. The morning colors will not last long and are worth a few minutes of reverence. The absence of all but natural sounds is my morning symphony. While I may be getting tired of 12 years without a flushing toilet, I can’t imagine living somewhere with close neighbors. I often walk outside, naked, onto my lanai, such is the privacy I find myself surrounded by.
I pour a second cup of coffee and resume the reverie of my backwards life. I moved to Hawai’i shortly after turning 40 and changed careers drastically when I became a massage therapist. When I was 63 I walked 500 miles across Spain with a backpack. And now, here I am, living in a Tiny Home, off the grid. And there it is; living a life backwards.
I feel like I’m living my life backwards. This is my first conscious thought as I slowly ascend from the depths of sleep. My dog sensing my return from the dream state, stirs beside me and I stroke his soft head. The faint rosy hue of a sunrise that hasn’t happened yet, begins to light up the room. I stretch and wonder curiously where that backwards thought came from. The cat meows outside my window, asking to be fed. I sit up, hang my feet over the bed, and put them through a quick series of stretches to ward off a re-occurrence of plantar fasciitis. Then I arch my back so that I can slowly lower myself off the four-foot platform that holds my bed. As I go into free-fall for the last 12 inches before the floor I use the bottom rung of a step ladder to soften my landing.
I walk out onto my lanai, face the mountain, raise my hands above my head, stretch a little more enthusiastically, and give a wide yawn. If I had been paying attention in the yoga classes I’ve taken sporadically over the years, now would be a perfect time for a sun salutation. But I’ve always thought that yoga is a good idea, just not a good idea for me.
The cat stands on the grooming table that holds his empty food dish and meows again, just in case I forgot why I came out here. As the dry cat food rattles in his dish, the chickens make some low, moaning noises to remind me that they are next – everyone knows their place in line. I slip into my chicken boots and walk slowly through their midst. It’s up to me to make sure I don’t step on one of them, as they are not the sharpest crayons in the box. A faint whiff of chicken manure mixes with the fresh, cool morning air.
The thought I woke up with is temporarily forgotten as I become immersed in my morning routine. To have drinking water that meets with my satisfaction, I begin my belt-and-suspenders approach to structuring triple-filtered rain water. It turns out that there’s a whole science behind that tasteless drink that most of us consume without thinking. And the quality of it could well be critical to our survival. That’s my story anyway, and other people have written entire books on the subject, so I’m sticking with it. From the kitchen counter I grab my special, glass carafe. The shape of it and the sacred geometry etched on the bottom will structure the water energetically. I take that and a portable copper tube from Greenfield Water Solutions out to the lanai where my Berkey Water Filter sits. The copper tube structures the water in a more concrete fashion, mimicking the way that water would travel in a stream over rocks. Nothing is easy in my house – it seems that there are always several steps to every task – even something as simple as drinking water. But we all derive satisfaction from our routines, and I make the time in my life to pay attention to these types of details. Now I’m ready to make my warm, lemon water and coffee.
As I open my computer and take a long drink of warm water, I remember that I woke up with an important thought today. What was that again?… oh yeah, I feel like I’m living my life backwards. Now I reach for my coffee. I’m aware that I’m supposed to finish the lemon water first, but I know I will need coffee to unpack that interesting statement. I open a new chapter on Scrivener and start typing…
A doctor enters the cubicle. He’s a short, middle-aged Japanese man and he has a big smile on his face like we’ve just been introduced at a party.
“We’re waiting on the results from X-ray,” he says. “What happened? Do you know?” “Well, she was brought in by ambulance. A one car accident on Kaloko drive, it was raining, and it appears that she missed a curve.” I will discover later that I’m being fed the details of what happened tonight in bite-sized pieces. Had I discovered them all at once, I’m not sure what I would have done with the overload.
Oh Chelsea, Chelsea… The doctor leaves me with this new information and excuses himself to go check on the X-rays. I return to my bedside vigil, still not much the wiser to the nightmare my daughter has experienced tonight.
He returns and beckons me out of the cubicle and wordlessly holds up an X-ray of her back. My brain can’t compute what I’m look at. I didn’t realize Chelsea had a scoliosis, and a bad one at that. I take in the unmistakeable S-curve of her thoracic spine with a quizzical look. Then I realize the Doctor’s talking to me.
“…along with the compression fractures of T3 and 4, she has six rib fractures, a slight fracture at the base of her skull and a fracture at C6. She’s also suffered a concussion.” “She broke her neck?” He had saved the worst for last and I zeroed in on it. I think I’m going to throw up. “Which part of the vertebrae did she fracture?” Some perverse survival mechanism kicks in for me. My profession as a massage therapist and instructor accords me enough knowledge of anatomy to make me dangerous. If I can picture exactly how her neck is broken it feels like I will have some control of this situation. I’m grasping at straws. When the doctor looks at me quizzically, I continue impatiently, “you know, the lamina, the pedicle, which part?” Who really cares which part? I’m babbling. Oh my god, my beautiful youngest daughter – so full of life, loves to dance, ride horses, has her whole life ahead of her – has broken her neck. “Haw, what do you do for a living? You know more than I do,” the doctor says with a little laugh. He’s trying hard to soften this devastating news. For once in my life, I can’t dredge up my sense of humor, my go-to coping mechanism. “Massage therapist,” I say. I can’t even fake a smile. Can we get her medevaced to Oahu now please? I know there is a trauma center there, Chelsea’s injuries are way above Kona Hospital’s pay grade.
Over the next ten days I would become well acquainted with the compartmentalization of medicine. Many doctors have become an expert in one area. But ER doctors have to be knowledgeable of the whole body and their expertise is in stabilizing critical patients no matter what they present with. I wish I could have been more gracious to this kind man, doing his best to bear such heart-breaking news. As it was, I was barely keeping my head above water.
“Excuse me, but where’s the ladies room?” I ask. All of a sudden, I’m doubled over with sharp pains in my lower abdomen. I shuffle quickly along the hall, push open the door to the Ladies, and am so grateful that it’s the middle of the night and I’m alone in here. Under normal circumstances I would be thrilled to evacuate so much waste. Healthy bowels, healthy body. My brain feels sharp and lucid, focused completely on the next step. My body however is registering the trauma and is preparing for battle.
I return quickly to Chelsea’s side. I hear the doctor at the nurse’s station giving instructions to have Chelsea medevaced to Queens hospital on Oahu. The nurse comes in to tell me they will be taking her in a couple of hours, but there isn’t room in the plane for me, they will need personnel to keep her stable. Keep her stable. Those words speak volumes. This isn’t about me, it’s about Chelsea, I need to keep my shit together.
I push down the rising panic and go into organization mode. I know how to do that. “Okay, I will go and get on the first available flight to Oahu. Thank you for everything.” I try to smile but I have to abort mission as it feels like it will turn into tears, and there’s no time for that yet.
The dream I can’t remember is interrupted by beeping. The noise is trying to superimpose itself into the dream unsuccessfully, my brain can’t figure out where to put it, so I start to rise up into consciousness. I hear one more series of beeps then silence. That sounded like my phone. Was it a dream? Or were those last beeps real? I shake my head and look at the bedside clock. Why would my phone be ringing at one in the morning? I feel a little clutch in my stomach, the first hint of premonition, phone calls at one a.m. are seldom good. I wonder if Chelsea’s home?
I slowly get to my feet and pad barefoot to the front door. I look down, the shoes Chelsea wore out tonight when she left with her friends are ominously absent. Still wanting to believe my life hasn’t just changed in an instant, I calmly walk over to the phone and check the last incoming call. Not familiar. The clutch in my stomach twists a little, bringing me to full consciousness. I hit redial and wait.
“Kona Community Hospital, how may I help you.” Shit, shit, shit! “Um, I just missed a call from this number?” “Okay ma’am, who might you be calling about?” “My daughter’s name is Chelsea Haworth.” For once I am not interested in giving a long story. I just need to know the answer. “Okay, let me seeeeeee…” I hear her tapping quietly on her computer. “Yes, she’s here in the emergency department. Would you like me to put you through?” “Yes, yes, of course.”I register that my feet are cold on the tile floor, I must remember to bring a sweater, hospitals are always cold. “Emergency department, how may I help you.” “Yes, I just found out that my daughter was brought in there, Chelsea Haworth?” “Yes ma’am, you can come on in. She has some abrasions and she’s conscious.” I will look back on this monumental oversimplification later and shake my head. Way to minimize the situation so that mom doesn’t get herself in an accident on the way in. “I’ll be right there.”
Thank god the hospital is only a 10-minute drive from the house, I make it in seven. As I push through the double doors into the waiting room, I see four of Chelsea’s friends sitting silently on my left, their heads are all hanging and they look glum.
“We tried to stop her getting in the car…” says one of the boys. “But she got angry with me and grabbed her keys.” He can’t look me in the eye. “It’s okay,” I tell him. I know how determined Chelsea can be when she wants something. I fight a wave of nausea. Her friends all look wretched, there’s no time to cross-examine them, I turn without a word and press the large square button on the wall to gain access to the ER.
I’m ushered to a bed with privacy curtains pulled on either side, but the end curtain is open, I assume so they can keep an eye on her. My daughter’s beautiful 19-year-old body is lying on a narrow gurney, she has a large, bright yellow support strapped around her neck. She moves her left leg, then her right and groans, “my fucking back hurts.” Now is not the time to ask her to watch her language, I just register my relief that she’s moving her legs. I will discover later that often with serious concussions, it’s not uncommon for patients to lapse into incoherent profanities.
I lean down close to her ear, “I’m here sweetie, mom is here.” She continues with a string of obscenities, mainly complaining about her back. As she tries to move, I touch her shoulder, “Just stay still sweetie, let’s see what the X-rays say before you try to move.” She doesn’t acknowledge me but settles down and goes back to groaning.
A friend from high school messaged me this week to make sure she was on the list for my blog as she hadn’t seen a new entry for a while. And there was my sign! Stop playing with the cover of my new book for a few hours and create another blog entry.
In 2011 the Tiny House movement is still in its infancy, mainly for granola eating I-want-to-make-an-environmental-statement type of person, or dead broke I-don’t-have-anywhere-else-to-live folks. The romantic notion of living in a tiny space had taken a hold of me two years earlier. For some reason I didn’t see it as a glorified studio apartment, on wheels no less, but more as a way to walk my talk. Perhaps after all I do fit into that first category and want to put my ideals and beliefs of living a simpler life to the test.
Meanwhile, I own a thriving massage school on the Big Island of Hawai’i. I teach and manage as many as 20 students at a time. Plus, I run the student clinic that provides the community with affordable massages. It’s fulfilling and sometimes exhausting work. It keeps me fully engaged in life and society. Maybe a little too engaged. When I’m not working, I need serious downtime away from everyone and everything. What better place than a tiny, easy to maintain house surrounded by nature?
The complex environmental movement feels overwhelming at times, with all its overarching tendrils reaching into every aspect of our society. I care deeply about what we are doing to our planet, so I do my best to keep myself informed. And once you know, you can’t not know anymore. With that in mind, I have to do something.
I have never been an activist. It’s not my dharma in this lifetime, although I have several friends who are. But perhaps this is my own form of quiet activism. A need to prove to myself and those around me that less is more and that it’s possible to have an amazing life with as few modern conveniences as possible. Did I mention this project includes living off the grid – aka, not hooked up to any easily available utilities (emphasis on the word ‘easy’)? Another romantic notion I’ve had for years. We’re talking seriously few modern conveniences, not even a flushing toilet – more on that later. Do I smell a learning here (no pun intended)? My enthusiastic, bring-it-on attitude has been known to get me in deep water over the years – this one might constitute a raging river. But I do love a challenge.
“You’re not gonna throw that away are you?” I say somewhat baffled to the young checkout boy in Wegmans. Insert eye-roll and judgement here followed by a dramatic sigh. He looks at me bewildered as he shoves the unused plastic bag into the garbage.
“We’re not allowed to re-use them ma’am.” He says uncomfortably as he resumes scanning items. He could not be less interested in me and my opinions.
“But you wouldn’t be re-using it really,” I wheedle, attempting to appeal to his sense of reason. “The box of kleenex barely made contact with it.” I can’t let this go. It’s too ridiculous. Does no one use common sense anymore? Besides, everything moves so damn fast here. The boy started putting my first item in a plastic bag as I was reaching towards the end of the counter to purchase a re-usable one. I turned to him with it in my hand, but I was too late. He is immovable, just doing what he’s told.
“Mooooom!” My daughter hisses from behind me. I am here in Rochester, New York for my yearly visit. Her look tells me: stop harassing the poor cashiers who are 15 years old and just doing their job. I love it that I can still embarrass my children even though they are now grown with children of their own. I mutter about this latest indignation to Alicia, all the way back to the car. She smiles at me indulgently, she knows I’m a little outside-the-box for Rochester.
Just this morning I’d had a similar conversation with her. “Where does this go sweetie?” I asked, holding out the peels and cores of the fruit and veggies I’d cut up for my smoothie.
“In the garbage mom,” she says with a warning look, already sensing where this is going.
“But this is compost sweetie, you can use it in Cooper’s garden.”
“Don’t worry, we get organic compost at the Farm and Garden store here in Brockport.”
“Well, you could throw it around your shrubs or blueberry bush or your apple tree. It will give back to the soil in your yard. It seems a waste to throw it in the garbage.”
“Jesus mom, I’m not going to throw banana peels under the shrubs in my front yard, it will start to look and smell like a garbage dump.” We both giggle at the visual of piles of rotting vegetation around her neat shrubs in her suburban home. Ok, I realize I’m taking this too far now. I may have been living in Hawai’i for over 20 years, but I do remember how things are done here.
I changed my lifestyle significantly by moving to Hawai’i in 1994. Then I took it to the next level when I purchased a Tiny Home and began living off the grid in 2011. My life now is like one long, deep breath, and I have to switch hats when I return to Rochester on vacation.
I had a similar altercation on the plane on the way home. I knew enough not to take this one too far, they hold all the cards these days.
I had made a commitment to stop buying and using plastic water bottles several months previously. I had purchased a Berkey travel bottle that would filter tap water and allow me not to have to buy water when I traveled. But in the short layover time, I had forgotten to fill it up at the last airport. So when they came around with drinks, I got a glass of water then squirreled the plastic cup away to re-use it. When they returned later offering more water, I held out my cup. The flight attendant said, “we’re not allowed to re-use the cups ma’am.” Oh god, this again!
“But I don’t want to waste the plastic, it’s my cup, I promise you.” I said with a hopeful smile thrusting the cup towards her.
She took my cup and threw it in her garbage, then asked, “would you like some water ma’am.”
I sighed, “sure, yes please.” I didn’t need to be escorted off the plane in handcuffs over a plastic cup.
She handed me my water, and I noticed that it was in two cups, stuck together. I opened my mouth to say something but then looked at her, she was smiling at me triumphantly, one eyebrow raised. There are so many ways to say: Fuck you I’m just doing my job. I closed my mouth, smiled and nodded. Touché, I thought, she had won that round. After she left I laughed in reluctant admiration.
Perhaps you’re wondering why I started my blog with this particular thread. Like: ‘what does that have to do with Hawai’i, Tiny Living and living off the grid?’ When you live on an island with limited resources then combine that with living in a 146 square foot home, you become acutely aware of waste. Including usage and waste of natural resources. I try not to be obnoxious. I try to keep my sense of humor. After all, hopefully we’re all just doing the best we can. And then maybe, just maybe, we can all try to do a little better. One small step at a time.
Stay tuned for weekly stories about my life in Hawai’i, Tiny Living and living off the grid.
angelaleslee 