My Vacation in Hawaii, Not All the Time
By: Vanessa Fiske
Tags: Kauai, Hawaii, Remote Work

From the Instagram and Facebook pictures, it looks like we are having one long vacation. After I had a loneliness meltdown and called a friend, I realized I had to debunk the vacay myth. I appreciate that no one has wanted to disturb our vacation, but we are not on vacation, except for the weekends.

Our day starts at 6 a.m. We try to get up before the kids and get the milk poured and Fig Newtons ready (the original granola bar in my opinion). The first couple of weeks it was easy to get the kids in front of their iPads and Chromebooks by 6:30 a.m. when school starts on the West Coast. These days the kids are barely making it on time as bedtimes have crept later.

One of the kids finally figured out his own hack. It is actually cold here in the wee hours of the morning, so everyone is wearing a jacket. He realized just this week that he could still wear his pajamas if he had his jacket on.

Sunrise on my morning run in Koloa.

While everyone’s Zoom is starting and before they need any help, I throw on my running shoes and catch the sunrise. I do a twenty-minute out and back, trying to be back in time to resume the teacher role. I’ve definitely become a stronger runner, with much thanks to the Peloton outdoor workouts. They are the next best thing to having your favorite running buddy.

At this point, I assume that my husband, Clay, is occupied until he takes over at 2 pm. His company is understanding and he can help in a pinch, like when we got caught in the Starbucks run rainstorm this week or when I’m about ready to throw a math book in frustration.

From 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. I am teaching English Language Arts as there is only one twenty-minute Zoom session for one child. About this time my wonderful mother puts the coffee on and helps with breakfast, else I am probably not eating until 10 a.m. We feed the kids breakfast in their morning recess and then it is on to math Zooms. If you have an elementary child who pays attention and does all their schoolwork when the teacher asks them to, count yourself lucky.

The math hour is one of my least favorites when I am expected to sit with the kids and help them with word problems they can’t read and find hard to answer on iPads. I am continuously having to answer the question ‘why do I have to learn math?’ I get some of their frustration. If you understand what 10 + 3 is, why do you have to learn how to do that same problem four different ways that are far more complicated than just adding the two numbers together.

It’s now 9:20 a.m. Hawaii time and lunchtime back home. I feel like I’ve been up for hours. We snack the kids again and they go bother our wonderful neighbors who have shared their trampoline with us. I then attempt to get a morning’s worth of work done for She Lives Aloha in forty minutes. Sometimes that doesn’t happen as I need to help my mom navigate the online world of bill paying. The extra time here in the islands threw off her regular postal routine. A word to the wise, make sure those accounts are created from home ahead of time because they mail temporary passcodes.

Depending on the day we might take the next two hours to do something fun, but it is hard to do a beach trip in two hours, even when it is five minutes away. Living in someone else’s house, we’ve been extra sensitive about bringing sand in. I need to allocate at least fifteen minutes for sand removal when we return. Plus, the kids still are expected to do some independent activities for school in the afternoon. My own workload usually dictates what we do. This is probably one area where I’m going to have some regret that I didn’t just do more around the island. However, this really gets to the crux of living here versus vacationing. We’re down to just one more week here and I’m still scrambling to get some of my sourcing work done.

Our crew enjoying a field trip to CJM Stables.

Noon is the last Zoom of the day for the kids. At this point we have lunch and depending on the day, we either get ready for sports or shopping. One of the challenges has been only having one car. When Clay takes over at 2 p.m., he usually needs it to shuttle the kids. Instead of exploring more of the island for my business, I usually stay back and do the creative and strategy work. However, I am more of a morning person, and it’s been tough to really start my day in the afternoon.

About 5 p.m. I usually stop working and try to enjoy the sunset hour. If the weather is good, we’ll try to catch the last swim at Poipu Beach. The other night I had the water all to myself for a bit. It was after that evening, I started wondering what if we stayed here for three months and avoided the Covid-19 mess back home? That was quickly dismissed the next day during another math teaching hour.

Loving the solitude at Poipu Beach at sunset.

For the next two hours, we work on dinner and then “early bedtime” for the kids. After bedtime, the grownups may enjoy a quick Scrabble game, though we’ve been pretty tired lately. We try to catch up on what’s been happening at home and then we call it an early night by 10 p.m. The one habit we have improved upon being here is sleeping. With less of our own house chores to do, we’ve had the opportunity to embrace some healthier habits. Plus, with the roosters that really don’t have a sense of time, you need to bank that sleep for those early morning cock-a-doodle-doos.

We’ve had an incredible time here. I’m so glad to still be wearing shorts and flip flops. However, I look forward to coming back to Kaua’i and just being on vacation because it’s been four days since my toes have been in the water.