"Momzilla"

I have a little more time to kill, waiting for Michael to come back from tonight's conference session so we can go to dinner. I have a story from last night's food search....

Yesterday I mentioned we ate at the yummy Greek restaurant during the day. That was around 12:30pm. I had a few small snacks during the afternoon, but by the time Michael came home from the conference it was already late and I was super-hungry (of course in general, I'm pretty hungry these days!). I'll preface the story by giving Michael the credit, he really did try and even came home a little early. But despite his best efforts, after walking past several restaurants and for over 15 minutes and weren't finding anything cheap enough that he wanted to eat, what you could call "Momzilla" was unleashed! I normally get to a point when I'm hungry where my blood sugar drops, I feel lightheaded and unwell, and unable to make any decision. With pregnancy now, this feeling is heightened! When I get like that, look out! I'm not fun to be around :-(

Thankfully, the moments both Michael and my physical weaknesses concerning food rarely clash (he has certain texture aversions in food that limit some of his choices, I cannot go long without food or eat too late without feeling bad and being super cranky). Finally, we decided just to go back to the International Food Court where we stopped at our first night (plenty of choices and we didn't have to chose the same thing). We both ended up having Korean BBQ, and though the meat had good flavor, it wasn't the best (too fatty, and the veggie sides were mostly too sour). Still, I was glad to feel better (and I'm sure he was happy too)! We got to watch a free show where a woman was belly dancing and men and women did some traditional hula dances too.

We did hit the point where we felt like we ruled out every restaurant we were interested in trying in our area (the rest seemed too expensive, unappetizing, or too common). In this state, we just ate at McDonald's for lunch to save Michael time so we were able to go to the beach a little. I'm generally anti-McDonald's but the premium Asian chicken salad was really good and it did have the benefit of being our cheapest meal yet. They had free bus routes/schedules we picked up (we're buying passes tomorrow so we can venture out more), which was also cool! It was funny how value meals here come with fresh pineapple slices. Tonight I did more research on restaurants and found some interesting, budget-friendly places within walking distance of our hotel to try!

When Michael went to the conference, I took a free trolley to a local shopping area to look for some gifts and souvenirs. On the way, they mentioned a few interesting facts about Hawaii. One, Honolulu has water that is ranked among the top 5 in the world. It all comes from the area mountains where it rains every day, and flows through all the volcanic rocks which are as good as or better than the charcoal filters many treatment plants use (Michael already guessed this was the case). Secondly, I also learned the canal we saw yesterday had to be formed because most of Waikiki used to be a swamp. That might also explain part of why it is greener here as opposed to other places. Finally, Hawaii does not export it's own pineapple any longer, most of it is now grown in Mexico and Central American. The pineapple in Hawaii is now grown just for local consumption unless special ordered. I don't remember why (we'll learn I'm sure when we go to the Dole Pineapple Plantation), but I never would have guessed that!