MOVEMENT TOWARDS FINAL DESTINATION
This is the finished lychee wood carving that I completed just before I left for Spokane. For a slide show of the stages it went through see my facebook page.
Since I last wrote here I have made another round trip from Hilo to Spokane. Sometimes it seems like I am spinning my wheels and getting nowhere. When we left Eastern Washington to live here on the Island of Hawaii I didn’t expect to ever go back to “the mainland” even though I knew Myrna would continue to do so as long as her mother was still alive. As it is that lovely piece of the Little Spokane River that was our home has not only proven difficult to sell, it has become a ‘money pit’ as well.
All along the shallow well of surface water at our former home has been a turn off for most prospective buyers. Finally in August we signed a deal with a lady who grew up in the area with the same type of water system. She failed to get bank financing but was willing to pay more if we carried a contract. She had a complicated family situation and I didn’t expect the deal to go through but I flew there to help determine how much to stick out necks out for her and to have a real well drilled for in case she couldn’t close. When the well driller reached 300 feet and had only hit a trickle at 80 feet, we decided to give up at $8,600. So now the lady, who couldn’t come up with the down payment, as had become clear by then, was our only hope again. What we ended up doing was to sign an extension to the purchase agreement till March 1 and to lease it to her in the meantime. There are real reasons to hope that she (they) will have the down payment then but I won’t hold my breath. At least the place will be occupied through the winter without us paying the heat bill
So yesterday I again flew home, this time through San Francisco, 2 hour layover, and Los Angeles, 4 hour layover then the ‘new’ Continental route to Hilo. I read a couple books on our Kindle but still had a lot of time to think. One conclusion is that even though the flights are boring I’d still rather be moving than sitting in an airport even if I’m not really getting any closer to my final destination. So, yes, I continue to experience the feeling of ”the older I get the less I know” . In other words, I have thought I had reached the physical place where I would spend the rest of my life three times in the past but now I no longer think that way. Now I still live nearly as if I was preparing my last stand, but I don’t really believe it. I’m expecting some more surprises down the line. And, of course, we all have the same “final destination” eventually.
But home coming in Hilo was sweet. There were a few light showers, warm rich air moving from the Ocean and a wife and dog very happy to see me. Today at the crack of dawn we walked the dog around Veterans Field and I was delighted that even though we had a shower during the night and the grass was soaked, I was totally comfortable in Crocs, shorts and short sleeves. In the morning I also discovered that there were three weeks worth of chores to catch up on and I have made a good start on those. I also had to pick a bunch of bananas, a couple avocados and a whole bucket of papayas and repair Myrna’s car. Tomorrow I will go down to the Hakalau Community park and see how the volunteer maintenance crew has held up. Maybe then I will buy a hand held power planer that I think I need for my next wood working project which is to be a curvy lychee wood love seat.
The temperature range for the next few days is forecast to be 67-83. I can take that!
