Antiquing in Hawaii

Sometimes Cadillac takes a day off so we can get some “alone time” without paying for a babysitter.  This “alone time day,” I said I didn’t want to go snorkeling again.  I mean, I like snorkeling, but it’s getting cold.  The water’s only 75 degrees, for the love of God!  Hee hee.  (In San Diego it was hot at 70 so I am indeed kidding).   “I really really really want to go to Boots & Kimo’s with you,” I said.  Boots & Kimo’s is a breakfast place (they might serve lunch too) in Kailua that serves the deadliest Macadamia nut banana pancakes.  I took the kids there when we arrived, and it also goes down in the record books as being The Only Place in America Where Ethan Had Real Fruit Juice.  Guava lava, like Scooby-Doo in the movie, Aloha Scooby-Doo, the movie by which all things Hawaiian are measured and compared.

Anyway, Cadillac  had not been, and I felt it was time for him not to be deprived.

“Okay,” he said.  “But I have a plan, too.”

All right. I love plans, especially when I don’t make them and have to do no work.

We got to Boots & Kimo’s early enough so there was no wait(usually you have to sit outside for awhile) and he got the pancakes and I got the Eggs Benedict.  The macadamia nut pancakes are covered in something that people think is either melted macadamia nut ice cream, or condensed milk with nuts.  I vote condensed milk.  Hawaiians LURVE their condensed milk. Anyway, it’s very rich and creamy and you don’t want to eat it all the time, or you will die.  Die happily, but die just the same.

The Eggs Benedict were excellent, too.  Best Hollandaise Ever.  I’ve only actually had it once before, at the Marine Room in San Diego, and this is BETTER despite the Marine Room being an extremely fancy and glamourous beach-side place and this being a hole in the wall diner.  And cheaper.

Then it was time.

He drove us to the other side of the Kailua tracks, the part where people say you don’t want to live because it smells like KFC and there’s a bunch of boarded-up places.  This is where the two antique stores in Kailua were.

I love antiquing.  Granted, I’ve only bought an antique once, a real print that my arty eye spotted in a window, gotten for a song, and still not framed.

Is this my husband’s idea of a good time?  Probably not so much.  It was a true act of heroism.

One store was especially scary.  It looked like the entrance to an extremely seedy strip club, with old broken down lights and blackened windows and the fact that it was off an ALLEY.

Turns out that wasn’t the place.  No, that was the auxillary place because this place didn’t have enough room to store its stuff.

There was hardly room to put two feet together, especially big clodhoppers like mine.

Then I saw her.

The stuff my nightmares are made of.  Things that are supposed to be sweet and cute but are scary, like clowns.

Ahhhh!

Then I had an epiphany: Halloween haunted house.   Room full of scary baby dolls.  Then a person dressed as a baby doll POPS OUT and frightens the life juice outta you.

Of course, I did not buy it.  Do you see the price tag?  It’s like $35.  That’s like two breakfasts at Boots & Kimo’s!  With drinks.

Then, I was over at Mommy Pie today and saw this, who would be a good candidate for my Haunted Doll Room too.  Be forewarned; as one commenter said, you might need to bleach your eyeballs after viewing.

It also reminds me of the episode of Anthony Bourdain‘s show No Reservations where he goes to Mexico and visits the Island of the Dolls. YouTube has this version of the doll island, some ghost show on the Syfy channel; they made it look much spookier than Bourdain did.