5 posts from May 2008

BUT, Yes. I. Do.  I know lots of people there on Okinawa.  I know how they feel about things.  I know what they enjoy doing and when they get frustrated with life in general.  I know a little about what they're good at. I know what their toes look like after a Cocok's pedi.  I know I wish I could open a great little maternity store there because they can't find cute maternity clothes at the PX/BX.  I know women who are starting businesses and spreading their wings.  I know where many of them live and where they like to go out to eat.  I bet I can name at least 20 people there and would recognize their faces and be able to call them by name, more than that if I include their children and spouses.  Hopefully, they're not reading this and getting creeped out.  

And now, many of those wonderful people I know through their willingness to publish to the whole wide world know ME, because here I am, willing to publish for the whole wide world to see.  I feel like I have a new circle of new friends.  So many of these new friends have been generous with me in so many ways.  They've reached out and reassured me and congratulated me and cheered me on and complimented me and sent me things in the mail and invited me to do things when I'm there.  Just like friends do.  I'll be fortunate enough to meet some of them in person.

Maybe I'll take things to dress comfy and practically anyway, but Okinawa isn't that big.  I might just see someone I "know", even if they don't know me and we've never "talked" to each other.   If I see someone whose blog I've been reading, I might just have to go and say hello and ask for their autograph! 

Make new friends, but keep the old.  One is silver and the other's gold.   

Carry on.  My Delta partner desk angel, Kelly Keeler (in Salt Lake City) told me my luggage would be checked in in Atlanta and would go all the way through with me to Okinawa.  All the way through with my change to Singapore Air in LA and with my change to China Air in Taipei.  Then, she told me it might be good to have a couple changes of clothes in my carry on and toiletries are a good idea, too, and that those toiletries can't be in bottles that hold more than 3 ounces and the toiletries have to be in a not larger than a quart sized bag.  Lucky for me, someone already thought about that and that someone has manufactured a whole kit of little empty bottles, one with a pump and one with a spray and one you squeeze, and little empty plastic jars and they've put them into a little quart sized clear plastic bag  with stick on labels in the bag so you don't use your lotion as leave on conditioner or your mouthwash as contact solution and they are currently selling them at the Container Store where my whole face lit up when I discovered them there.  I put that little kit into my shopping basket right away where it landed right next to my 3 bags of a dozen each of fat little things that look like capsules you would choke on if you tried to swallow them, but they are actually disposable washcloths that unfurl when you wet them with the liquid of your choice.

Still on what to put in my carry on.  What 2 outfits do I put in there and how much can I take until I look like those people I can't stand who just won't check a bag and they huff and puff and grunt as they heave their carry ons into the overhead and you sit there below them praying they have the strength to get it into the overhead before they lose their grip and drop in on your head.  I have other stuff I want to take in my carry on for my 30 hour journey in planes and airports.  I have to have my 2 cameras, because what would I do if they didn't make it.  I have to have my iPod to cram some more Japanese lessons in on the way.  I have to have some magazines and snacks and gum so my ears don't pop.   Makeup.  I'll leave my knitting at home.  A book.   What am I forgetting?  

On to checked bags that may or may not make it to arrive when I do or at all, but that would never happen on this charmed trip.  A friend's husband suggested the undies you get, another trip to REI, that you can suds out and they dry in 3 or 4 hours.  That might not be a bad idea, considering the alternative is at least 21 pairs of undies and that's if you only change once a day or do you end up wearing your cleanest dirty ones?  Ew.  I just know there will be laundry facilities in the hotels.  Another good friend has lent me some of those bags you can zip up and squeeze all the air out of and it squishes down your clothes so you can get more in.  I've got to decide what to take and get it all in.  Then I have to be able to actually move it under my own steam from A to B.  Part of my plan, and I use that term lightly, is to take the monorail to a station near the hotel in Naha where I'll be staying.  I really don't want to look like a refugee.  I always say I never take my husband for granted, but I think that may be partly a lie.  I don't think I've ever truly appreciated his ability and willingness to move my luggage from A to B.  Now I do.  Thank you, husband for that and everything else.  Thank you.

This journey to Okinawa is proving to have all kinds of positive effects on my life, not the least of which is the motivation to finally see the opthamologist about my increasingly poor vision.  How, I asked myself, can I even think about going on this trip when I can’t half see?  How can I even consider missing one bit of the wonderful visuals that will assault me while I’m there?  Do I want to be encumbered by my perpetual “reading glasses as headband” fashion statement?

 

When I turned 40, almost immediately my close vision began to falter.  Visions of my mother with her reading glasses on a chain as the constant, but necessary, accessory jumped into my mind. 

 

Yes, I guess I do believe in karma.  How many times did I answer impatiently my mother’s request to read a number out of the phone book to her.  Or, while shopping (our most favorite pastime) did I tease her more than once about not being able to read a price tag?  I can still see my mother with her crossword puzzle in her lap, reading glasses perched on the bridge of her nose.  She loved her “puzzle”.

 

A couple of years ago, I began to realize my distance vision just wasn’t what it used to be either.  I had a hard time making out those signs in the distance, or faces of people as they approached.  I couldn’t quite read the scrolling directory on television without really squinting.  I compensated in stores by just putting on my +2.50 reading glasses and walking right up to items on the shelves to get a closer look. 

 

I could buy that car my daughter wants if I had half the money I’ve spent on reading glasses.  My vision is such a handicap that if I find myself anywhere without my glasses, I have purchase a new pair just to be able to function.

 

So, even though I have dry eyes that some doctors have told me won’t do well with contacts, I now have contacts and am trying “mono-vision”, one contact in for distance and one for close up stuff.  My current doctor says you give up something with mono-vision and your brain has to learn how to adapt to it.  It’s kind of a win-win for me most of the time, as my distance is much better and I can read the license plates and the scrolling menu on TV and I can read a menu without my reading glasses.  I get the mono part and find myself losing the battle not to close one eye.  When I’m reading something really small in not great light, I admit I do close my distance eye, and I sometimes, but less often, close my close up eye for distance.  It’s the true definition of mono, which I think means one – me the great Cyclops.  Then there’s the dryness part, when things get a little foggy, kind of like watching an old episode of Moonlighting with Cybil Shepherd where they must have shot the whole thing with a veil over the lens of the camera to make her look ethereal.  I carry the Blink drops and then do a lot of blinking when the dryness happens.

 

At the end of the day, I think I see a whole lot better with my new mono-vision and am looking forward to the sights on Okinawa.  Getting off the fence and doing something about my mediocre eyesight – it’s another reason to be thankful for my Okinawa trip…..

 

 

 

 

I was born on Mother's Day in 1960 and my birthday falls on Mother's Day every few years.  I always tell my family that no matter how close the two days are, and especially when they are on the same day, they are to be considered two separate and important national holidays.  Fair's fair.  

This year, with my big trip looming so large in the near future, my husband/official photographer of all events/all around great guy decided to help me find the perfect camera for me.   For me.  His camera is great, a Nikon D70, but it would be a waste on me - like giving me a helicopter for my commute to school each day.  He manages to get great pictures, not only with it, but with much lesser cameras.  It is not just about the equipment, is it?  Sometimes it's about whose hands the equipment is in.  After lots of angst and looking and holding and trying, and then going to a Japanese restaurant and talking about it, we decided the Canon Power Shot S5 SI with 12X zoom would be my perfect camera.  Between now and July 2, I want taking pictures with my new camera to be intuitive and natural.  Like I've said to my husband, to type the word "Atlanta", I don't say to myself "shift a, t, l, a, n, t, a".  No, I type the whole word, not the word letter by letter.  Infinite patience is, thankfully, is one of his virtues.  I'll be ready. 

My new Canon camera has a video feature, too.  A pretty good, super easy to use video feature.  But, in case it's not good enough, I have a separate little video camera.  There are alot of people counting on me to capture my moments and I can't let them down.  There will be action I'll want to share and look at again and again myself and I'll know just how to do it all by July 2.  

Now I've got all my stuff and I need something to carry it in.  Here's where the great battle begins.  Which will win?  Form or function?  I know about the basic design precept, form follows function, but sometimes my sense of aesthetics is at odds with this basic principle.  

A trip to REI was clearly in order.  The ultimate practical, outdoorsy, traveler's geek-a-torium. I didn't want to have to carry around a handbag.  How could an ordinary purse type thing be practical enough?  I went in thinking I needed a messenger bag to carry all my stuff - video camera, camera, passport, water bottle, poncho for typhoon season, yen, and Bobbie Brown lipsticks in two shades, mango and nude.  That should do it.  We went to the messenger bag section.  I tried on every messenger bag.  Five times.  This one's too fussy.  This one says tourist.  This one's too big.  Too small.  

My daughter decides to lobby hard for a backpack in lieu of a messenger.  I don't want a backpack.  I'm too old for a backpack.  A backpack looks too backpacky.  She goes to the backpack section and comes back with the North Face Isabella women's daypack in khaki with robin's egg blue accents.  Well, I was named after the bird that lays the egg that the robin's egg blue was named for.  I tried it on.  It is real comfy.  Not too fussy.  Okay.  I'll have the backpack after all.  I won't die in the messenger bag ditch.  Here is a photo of us and the new daypack standing on the sidewalk outside REI.  I see the North Face daypack envy in my daughter's eye.  I can see that she is imagining how it would look on her next year at school after I've knocked the new off it on my excellent adventure on Okinawa.  See the photo for yourself.  Can you see the North Face daypack envy?

It immediately became apparent, even though we were both speaking English, that we did not speak the same language.  I didn't take into consideration all the jargon and acronyms understood only by seasoned Delta employees that would be used on me, an unsuspecting and not very savvy traveler.  I didn't take into consideration blackout dates that would allow me to get to Japan, but not to get back until sometime in October.  I didn't take into consideration the Delta partner airlines that don't fly out of Atlanta.  Silly, me I thought I'd make a call and in ten minutes, I'd know when I was going and coming back and how many Frequent Flyer miles it would set me back.

Fifty minutes later, I was transferred to the Delta partner airlines desk and I spoke to a lovely girl in Salt Lake City, an angel of anxious travelers actually, whose first and real name was Kelly.  My sister's name is Kelly, a good omen.  Kelly helped me navigate the possibilities and translated along the way.  I'm quite sure she felt like she could have been talking to Forrest Gump or a two year old, and most assuredly planned for a very big glass of wine when she got off that evening.

One way or another, by the time I hung up with Kelly, a good hour and a half after I initially dialed Delta, I had my itinerary and was satisfied it was the most practical plan and used the fewest possible Frequent Flyer miles (145,000) to boot.  On the evening of July 2, Delta will fly me to Los Angeles, where I will be able to visit with my best friend from my adolescence on Okinawa, Kim, whom I haven't seen in 25 years.  How divine is that?  Then, Singapore Air will fly me to Taipei, Taiwan.  Wow, I hadn't counted on being able to visit a total 'nother country!  How lucky for me.  Then, and finally, China Air, will fly me to Okinawa, where I can just picture myself dropping to my hands and knees and kissing the tarmac on July 4, Independence Day!  I will fight the urge to visualize the images of that China Air flight that landed on Okinawa a few months ago in flames.   

On the evening of July 23, I will board a plane in Okinawa and reverse the trip over, to land in Atlanta at 6AM on July 24.  Once again, and can't say it enough, thank you to my school for making it possible and for the Greenbaum Family grant and to my family for supporting every bit of this obsession  journey of a lifetime, dream come true.