In Hawaii, tanning

It has been 40 years since I put on a bathing suit and lay out in the sun. Probably it's because I do water aerobics at home and have become friends with my bathing suit. This week, I put on sunscreen, walked over to the pool and chose a reclining lounge chair.  Monday I spent five minutes on each side, increasing each day until yesterday at 30 minutes on a side. I am getting plenty of vitamin D and I am getting brown! It has been about 82 degrees every day.

I have also read six of the ten magazines I brought along (copies of Time, The Week, Smithsonian, and The Sun) and a book "We Were All Absolutely Beside Ourselves".

And, finally, started working on the travel book.

Otherwise, I have done nothing. I like that sometimes, but not always.

I need conversation, and my husband is not a talker. When we travel, just the two of us, and especially when we spend a week or two in just one place, he reads quietly for hours at a time. Or he watches movies or sports on TV, which he never does at home.

This week at poolside I had conversations. I met a woman about my age from Idaho, and we talked on three days, sitting in the one-foot-deep pool. She is such a fabulous listener and open-ended questioner that I talked a lot about myself. As a mediator I mostly listen, and I told her so. She asked how it felt to be doing the talking instead of the listening, and I said it felt like therapy! We both laughed.

On Monday we went to a timeshare sales pitch. We'd planned on dinner and entertainment at the Parker Ranch, and it was pricey, and if we went to the pitch we'd get a $100 credit. So we went. We didn't buy any more timeshare points, and we did get our credit. That was good.

However, when I was parking the car before the appointment, I backed into another car that had come up behind me. The driver, a man, was calm as we exchanged information; the woman was not. "This is a brand new car," she shouted. I sympathized, but it turned out their vehicle was a rental too. So what was the big deal? I reported it to our insurance agency and they are taking care of it. Minimal damage.

I confess this was not a first for me. I have had, I think, seven backing-into-something incidents in the last 40 years. Two of those times I backed out of my driveway and hit a vehicle parked across the street. Once it was a mailbox on an icy, hilly driveway. Twice it was a pillar in a carport or parking garage. Once it was at a Jack in the Box drive-through line. It embarrasses me, but there you are. No other at-fault accidents in my entire life.

The Parker Ranch evening was fun. Food and entertainment were both good and the conversation with our table mates was interesting. We would never have gone, though, unless they'd picked us up at our condo and delivered us back at the end of the evening. Roads on the Big Island are DARK at night!

Tomorrow we are going on a short guided hike on the Saddle road that connects the dry west side of the island to the rainy east side. We hiked years ago with this same man. He knows a phenomenal amount about the island and the animals and plants. As it turns out, we are the only two who have signed up, so we'll get a personalized hike for much cheaper than if we'd signed up for a customized one for just us. Hiking boots and jeans and light jackets, since the hiking area is at 4,000 feet.

We fly out Wednesday, just as the cold snap is ending where we live in the Pacific Northwest. I actually like the cold, so I'm sorry we've missed it. We'll be returning to rain. Oh, well!