It is almost 5am and Mom, Dad and I just ate a midnight breakfast with decaf coffee.

Jetlag and impromptu hospital visits

I woke up at about 3am, unable to go back to sleep, and then I heard the honk of our Honda Pilot locking up and my parents come in. My Tito Chad, who has been bedridden since he was a teenager from Wilson’s Disease, was taken to the hospital for fear of his having a UTI, but it turns out that he had pneumonia and both his lungs were filled with fluid but for a tiny portion of one lung. So my parents went to the hospital, and I heard them come back.

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Theives, ghosts, and memory-loss

I didn’t know this at the time and tried to go back to sleep, but then I heard a series of alarms going off periodically and decided to give up trying to sleep. I came downstairs, they told me about Tito Chad, and then showed me the footprints on the sill of the stairs that lead from the basement to outside that we can see from the kitchen.

While we’d been gone, my cousin Camille had been getting our mail and taking care of Comet, my golden retriever brother who unfortunately couldn’t accompany us on our family vacation. One day she called us while we were in Kauai and reported that somehow, the lights, different ones from the ones she left on, had been turned on. She usually leaves a couple of lights on for the appearance of the house being inhabited, but when she came back to the house the next day, it was a different set of lights that were on. The laundry door was open too.

Mom joked that it was a ghost, and that Dad shot her a look because he didn’t want Camille to get scared. She’s about 4′11 and 18 years old. Shorter than me!

Here’s an interjecting anecdote that I found hilarious that is her worst short-story (forgive the pun!):

She and her friends went to a restaurant and the waitress gave everyone regular menus, but served her a kids’ menu! She said they probably thought that she was the younger sister of one of her friends! Oh man. And she says that while she’s in line, people cut her sometimes because they apparently think she’s with someone else, as a child or younger sibling! Jeez. Poor kid!

Anyway, my parents were setting up alarms on the doors, just cheap ones that if the door is opened when it’s on, then they’ll go off. We though briefly that someone had stolen Dad’s work laptop, but left all our cars and tvs and the precious Wii, but Dad just found the laptop. So now it’s either just a ghost or Camille forgot which lights she left on and which doors she left open.

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Near-arrests

So we ate a midnight breakfast. Hunger was the main reason I pushed myself out of bed in the first place. However, we had no eggs so Dad, as energetic and ADD as ever, decided he’d go to the 7-11 in Sully Plaza to fetch some.

Eggs in hand, he walked out of the store and was stopped by two humongous, white policemen.

They said that there had been some activity in the area and the suspect was an Asian male. They asked for his ID, and he was so worried that he double-backed and told us later that he thought that that may have made him look guilty or something, which made him even more worried. He was also worried because he’d heard of people being mistakenly arrested, and he also worried that he had ::ahem:: a certain substance in the car.

Anyway, they ran his ID through a database, saw his age and said, “Oh, you’re 48? The guy we’re looking for is a lot younger.” At this, Mother and I both laughed because he’d been getting a lot of words about how young he looks, and this was the first time that it was in a rather negative situation! They asked where he worked, to which he replied, “I’ve worked in the World Bank for about 23 years.” The cops raised their brows at that, apparently, and said, “Oh, so you really are pretty old!”

Then they returned his ID and let him go saying, “Thanks for your time!” And off he went.

Poor thing came back a bit frightened and edgy.

Anyway, going to try to get a bit of shut-eye and then wake up tomorrow. Mom and I are going to make apple pie (my FAVORITE; we have a family recipe and it’s a little bit DELICIOUS), and since I know I’m going to be exhausted, I’m going to help her make dinners for the week (chop and stuff), and sleep early. No naps!

Aloha.