Mother's Day and Economy Kauai Sis

Uh oh, this blog is experiencing a KauaiSis of its own, being so badly neglected. Cousin Al warned me!!

Well while Leonardo sits watching the rather inane "Hulk" movie, I'm ordering photos online for my mom on this, my 21st Mother's Day. A mother's work is never done!!!! How come the father gets to sit in front of the TV and the mother has to work? Ok, I admit this morning I lay in bed reading and dozing until 11 a.m. while he was at work.

My Mother's Day celebration included a visit to Border's and a "tall" cup of Java Chip Frappucino from Starbucks. You see, here is yet another reason America is in a sorry state these days: they call that cup a "Tall"...like we the consumers are idiots and don't realize it's really small. Just like the way they put less tissue on the toilet paper rolls then make "Double Rolls" like we're such idiots we'll be impressed. OR putting less Vienna Sausages in the cans, or less tuna, shrunken ice cream cartons, etc. ad nauseum. So the question is, are the majority of American shoppers really idiots or are we becoming idiots because the marketers who come up with these sneaky "let's fool the consumers" ideas treat us this way?

Where was I? Oh yes, Borders. We hadn't been to Borders in a few months and perhaps because our shopping habits reflect the public's in general, Borders Music has definitely gone downhill. The selection of CD's is dangerously beginning to resemble WalMart's crappy selection. Not one Bobby Caldwell CD! Whoa! They totally lost some sales today. In the past, Leonard would always end up with some new Jazz CD in his clutches (which I would try to talk him out of saying "I can order that online for cheaper!). Today, to my surprise, he had NOTHING clutched. They've removed those listening stations and now you can listen at the "search" stations. This may be more efficient, but does not encourage impulse buying, IMHO. Ironically today we were armed with gift cards and I was prepared to make purchases rather than come home to order on Amazon Marketplace. Toooo bad for Borders, they lost out except for Jordan's one purchase of "Brazilian Groove".

After "helping" Borders with Jordan's $11 purchase ($14.99 less 30% off coupon), we proceeded to Long's, Costco, and WalMart to "help" their bottomlines too. And lest you think we're only helping the "big guys", we went to Hong Kong Cafe for my Mother's Day dinner. Ron and Laura Wiley were there, by the way. Which reminds me, I got a big thrill a couple of weeks ago while flipping through the Kauai People tabloid. There was Ron wearing my Koi Shirt, posing with Senator Dan Inouye and his wife. Way cool!!! This is the second time Ron's been in the newspaper with this same shirt. He owns several of my shirts, but I'm guessing this is his fave. (FYI Ron Wiley is Kauai's #1 radio personality.) (See below)

After dinner we visited Blockbuster to give them a hand (I hear they're near bankruptcy!). I rented "Religulous" (so sue me, I'm a Bill Maher fan), George Carlin (*sob* I can't believe he's gone), and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" (I have this very strange attraction to Russell Brand!). Hubby rented "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and "Hulk". I'd say you can tell a lot about us from those two last sentences right there. *LOOOOOOOOL* (I think I hear Karen laughing!)

De-stress from TMC and Read My Blog

Hmmm it's over a week since I last fed my blog. I'm not in a writing mood this week. It probably has something to do with TMC (Too Many Clouds or Too Much Crap)these days. Like natural disasters (Texas hurricane), Sarah Palin, Jordan's ridiculously high dental bill (Kauai does not have an HMSA participating oral surgeon), and the stock market plunge (why why why does it happen when we have ridiculously high dental bills, need tires on two vehicles, have to repair the garage, etc. etc.?).

Dave Barry claims that his appliances can hear when there's extra money in the house. Well our stuff can do more than that, they can affect the stock market! Yep, whenever we have big expenses the stock market takes a dive. Nice, really nice. How are we supposed to retire and go to Vegas 4 times a year???

Since I'm not in the mood, I shall cheat and post more of those "coincidences" instead:

Many years ago I dreamt about a married relative I hadn't thought of or heard of for years. She was dressed in a wedding dress and surrounded by her young daughters. After I woke up I thought "What a weird dream, what made me dream of her getting married when she's already married with kids?" Well within the week, my mom told me that this relative was getting divorced. Years later she remarried.

I decided to post on an eczema message board about Jordan's experiences and while typing out the long entry, LeAnne Rimes appeared on "The View" and said it was Eczema Awareness Month.

One day out of the blue, I wondered how long Carla would stay on as Jordan's aide. The next day when she came over to pick Jordan up, she said "I have some bad news...I found another job so I'm quitting."

We went to my mother-in-law's on Christmas Day. On our way back to Palolo about 15 minutes after leaving Kailua, I suddenly missed our videocam and was about to ask my hub if he took it. His cellphone rang and it was his mom saying we left the cam at her place.

We were driving down to Waipouli and decided to go to Hong Kong Cafe, our favorite Chinese restaurant on Kauai. Leonard said "Eric will be happy to see us, we didn't go there for a long time!" (Jordan had been somewhat allergic to corn and chicken). Inexplicably, I thought to myself "Well, maybe he'll be so happy he'll show us some customer appreciation!" WELL..that night for the first time ever, they gave us a free dessert: deep fried black bean rolls!!

I was chatting with Karen and telling her about my conversation with my hub the night before about Portuguese: Why do we know so little about Portugal and why don't we hear stuff about Portugual the way we hear about France, Italy, Spain, etc.? Portugal needs a Press Agent! At the same time I was chatting with her I was playing a DVD of "Lost" (season finale) and I had the closed captioning on. I looked at the TV and two men were talking a foreign language. The Closed Captioning said "...speaking Portuguese". Whoa!!

Okay, there'll be more of this later...on another night when I'm uninspired.

Oh, forgot to mention that I took Jordan to her American Sign Language class tonight. I really love sign language! It makes so much SENSE and I really appreciate LOGICAL in this ILLOGICAL world! The only thing illogical about it is...why on earth should there be an AMERICAN sign language? I'm assuming it was developed in the days of more efficient communication, so why couldn't there have been an International Sign Language? I've got to Google this later....