When you have 3 kids, you can't just jump on a plane and fly home... Unless you can easily pull 3-4k outta your butt. Then there's Space-a flights aka airforce flights that have room for passengers. But they very rarely fly into Wisconsin and a flight back from Wisconsin is even more rare. The flights are hit or miss, so trying to line up a commercial flight can be dangerous, plus the chance of being stranded somewhere until you can get on a flight... But it's worth the risk if I can figure it all out. Because I want to go home for a visit.
As for oahu... It's crowded. Honolulu and Waikiki are typical tourist big city crap. They are dirty, over populated, and full of tourist...and homeless people... I avoid Honolulu at all costs! As for north shore and the windward side of the island... They are amazing! I love going to north shore! Bellows beach on the windward side is amazing. Driving through the mountains is amazing. And now that the hubsters decided to buy a Harley, I will be able to get out and do a lot more! I plan on getting a carrier and taking the littlest duckling with me!
Homeless people and stray animals cover this island... And at first I had a hard time with seeing so much of it, but I made a vow to do something to help. I thought I'd make blankets or work a soup kitchen... Well I veered a different way and have become involved with animal shelters. When Bob Barker said to neuter and spade your pets, Hawaii was the reason why... Lol. Seriously, this island has soooo many stray animals, I now understand why it's so hard to get a pet into Hawaii and why they want to keep rabies at bay. There are stray animals EVEEYWHERE. Cats just stop in the middle of the road to lick their butts, and homeless people breed dogs to sell the puppies they cannot care for to make money. But with all that comes issues like dog fighting. It's a huge thing out here. Dogs get stolen to use as bate dogs, people pick them off of craigslist to use as bate dogs. We also have quite a few puppy mills here on the island.
I got involved with a rescue called PAWS of Hawaii. It is solely run by a young lady who does everything she can for her animals. She is picky about who adopts and so forth. But her animals are her everything. We came across one of their pups, who was believed to be a puppy mill pup. He was found not too far from one. He had very little fur, scab, fleas, ticks. He was in rough shape. We took him in when he was around 15 weeks. We gave him special baths and ear drops and slowly but surely his health began to turn around. We named him Emmett and he has grown into our hearts forever. Then we started to foster dogs. We were going to take in a beautiful boy named tiger, but someone had fallen in love with him, so instead, PAWS asked if we would like to adopt an itty bitty fuzz ball they call teddy bear. He too was not fully healthy after being found emaciated with his mom and sister. He's a shepherd/lab mix and when we got him at 8 weeks, he was only 3.6lbs. Almost 3 weeks later and he's about to hit 6lbs!!! We're waiting to find out if all the worms are gone, too, but with how well he's been eating, I think we're good! We changed his name to Brewer, which my hubby picked out. He was excited that he finally for to name a pet lol. The oldest duckling and I wanted to call him Monroe... But he's our sweet little fuzzy wuzzy.
There is a lot to do here on this rock, it's just a matter of doing it. Food quality has also been a big thing for me. Our commissary here sucks ass. The meats give is gut rot every single time. The produce spoils easily and just bleck. I've found a couple farmers markets, it's just a matter of getting to them ;) I've also found a natural food store called down to earth, so I plan to check that out too. Stuff is definitely more expensive here.
All in all it's not a horrible place to live. It's a matter of what you make of it. Right now I'm just homesick.
This is my Brewer (I call him boo boo or brewer bear)
And this is my Emmett. My sweet sweet shmemmett lol. He loves the beach, but hates the water....
