A Weighty Matter for 2006

For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice. -- T.S. Eliot

Wow, I am spending New Year`s Eve blogging. Does life get any more exciting than this?

I told Hub I wasn`t making any New Year`s resolutions, so he made one for me: "Lose some weight."

Yes, Hub will remember 2005 as the year I regained my postpartum figure, with no baby involved this time around. How did this happen? Well, I explain it this way: I gave birth to our new life in San Francisco.

Just like pregnancy, there was a prolonged period of expectation leading up to our move. We found out we were leaving Tokyo in January -- Hub had to transfer right away, before the end of the Japanese fiscal year in March, but the kids and I stayed until early July, and then joined him here.

That meant a full half-year of going away parties, and dinners with friends, and "Oh-my-God-this-could-be-my-very-last-chance-to-eat-sweet-bean-cakes-from-this-particular-bakery/sushi-from-this-particular-restaurant/noodles-from-this-particular-noodleshop" -- the list was endless. I went on a six-month feeding frenzy.

And then we arrived in San Francisco in the middle of winter. Seriously -- we boarded the plane at Narita on a hot summer day, and half a day later landed in a foggy, chilly city. We had to run out to Target to buy socks and sweaters and warm blankets. Hub had been staying downtown, which is usually a bit milder, so even he wasn`t prepared to move into our rented house in the fog belt. We knew we had a view of the ocean in the far distance, but it would be weeks before we would actually see it.

So I put on baggy sweaters, and I`ve been wearing them ever since. My diet, if anything, is healthier than it was in Tokyo, with lots more fresh salads and vegetables, but with one key difference: I rediscovered Kozy Shack Rice Pudding, and ate it by the drum. I noticed my chinline getting less distinct in the mirror and my waistbands getting tighter, but until I bought a cheap scale at Ikea, I had no idea how much I`d gained -- and then I swore the scale was broken. So I tried on some of my old work clothes, which I hadn`t worn since I quit my job, and...well, the scale wasn`t broken.

If I were still in Tokyo, I would feel pretty zaftig, surrounded by all the female stick figures. Some of them had waists the size of my upper arms -- I kid you not. It`s very easy to feel fat, if you`re a Western woman in Asia.

But hey -- I`m in America now. By American standards, I`m just right -- according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the average U.S. woman is 5' 3.7 (162 centimeters) tall and weighs 152 pounds (69 kilograms). I`m literally just a few tweaks away from that. Even at my new weight, I can still go to Target and wear a size "Medium."

But when I met Hub, I was 19 years old, and weighed 110 pounds on a FAT day. This is the image of me Hub still carries in his head, even though it`s been many years since I was even close to that. Hub fell in love with a skinny teenager, and can`t quite understand why he now wakes up next to a chubby, middle-aged woman. Funny, how that happened.

Okay, now that I`ve lost everyone`s attention, I`ll get right to the point of this post -- the reason why I haven`t dieted. For the first time in my life, (excluding the years I was lactating, when I was too preoccupied to appreciate it), I have big boobs, and God, I am loving it.

I realized this when I went to try on new bras -- it was fun. I filled them up. I`ve never been flat-chested, and compared to the average Japanese woman I`m actually well-endowed, which isn`t saying much. But now they`re big by American standards, too. And I feel...voluptuous.

My new body fits with my new life. I went from a fulltime job to no job at all. I used to wear work clothes, and now I wear at-home clothes. Our apartment in Tokyo was very modern, and we`re now renting a house with lace curtains, flowered wallpaper and a crystal chandelier in the dining room -- it`s like trying on someone else`s taste for a while. And I have a new body to match -- it`s not what I thought of as "me," but I don`t dislike it. It`s new and different.

Alas, Hub is not a boob man. He would be very happy if they disappeared.

Hub, if you`re reading my blog today, and you haven`t died of embarrassment by now, I will say this: I have no intention of starving myself, or going on any strict diet. But in the last few weeks, something changed that should give you hope in 2006.

All of a sudden, I got tired of Kozy Shack Rice Pudding, and stopped buying it --- and have lost 4 pounds.

So I had better enjoy my full figure while I`ve got it. To paraphrase that T.S. Eliot line I quoted at the beginning, For last year's lingerie belongs to last year's wardrobe and next year's bras await a smaller pair of boobs.

Actual Conversation

Hub: "When will we get the new dryer?"

Me: "Have you heard me screaming lately?"

Hub: "Huh?"

Me: "We got it over a week ago. The day I stopped screaming. That was the day it came, and I could do laundry again."

As I said, Hub`s laundry is magically done by elves.... who just might try putting itching powder in his undies one of these days, to see if he notices any difference.

And the tree decision was....

This just in: the children of the Homesick Home had a special election tonight, and voted to leave the Christmas tree up until New Year`s day. The toy nativity set, however, was put away, because, in their words, "Jesus` birthday is over." Sorry, Jesus, you only get one special day, just like other mortals.

I was actually hoping they would want to do it even sooner, because I bought a live tree in a pot, and I`m sure it doesn`t like being inside. It needs to last one more year in order for me to get my money`s worth, so I will be watering it carefully for the next 11 months.

When I was a child, we assembled and decorated a tree that consisted of plastic branches stuck into a pole, which was stored in the cellar the rest of the year. For me, the scent of Christmas was musty and dusty. One year, my mother asked my father to go buy some scented spray, and he came back with floral scent instead of pine, because it was on sale, so our tree then smelled like a toilet after a polite person used it.

After a childhood of that, I wanted to have nothing but real trees. However, when it came down to it, I chickened out. There`s something sad about chopping down a tree that took years to grow, just to stick in your living room for a few weeks and then throw away. So we`ve always had trees in pots, starting out with a little rosemary tree in Los Angeles after Big Son was born, and moving up to a little pine tree.

Then we moved to Tokyo and decorated a potted evergreen shub that started out small but was enormous by the time we left -- I had to cut the top off it last year to make if fit on the bay windowsill of our new apartment. It lived on our balcony the rest of the year. I don`t know what it was, exactly -- I think it was some kind of cedar, but certainly not a pine or a fir. It was truly a shrub, and I had trouble keeping it Christmas-tree shaped. Because our balcony was enclosed and the lower branches never got any light, they soon dwindled to sticks, while the top half thrived. I planted rosemary around the bottom -- the smell reminded me of our first Christmas tree, and it grew like a weed and filled in the bare spaces.

This year, Big Son asked Hub, "Why do you celebrate Christmas if you`re not a Christian?"

Excellent question, Big Son! I figured when I married an Asian that I would be off the hook as far as Christmas, and that my only holiday duty would be taking the expensive bullet train to Kyoto and sitting around in my in-laws` ancient, dusty, freezing house for a few days, venturing out in the bonechilling cold only to trek to a shrine on New Year`s day and burn some incense and pray. Yeah, yeah, I had to do all that -- but Hub wanted Christmas, too.

Because Hub is not a Christian, he has embraced the pure commercial aspects of the holiday, unfettered by any guilt about the true meaning, blah blah blah. Christmas is pretty decorations! Presents! Parties! Eat, drink and be merry! Jesus who?

So Hub told Big Son, "Because I like it."

Hub is glad we`re keeping the tree up longer, and I think he will be the saddest of everyone when I finally take it down.

More on Christmas Trees...

In Japan, almost everyone takes down their Christmas decorations promptly, the day after Christmas, and the New Year`s decorations start to go up. I had forgotten this -- until my kids balked at plugging in our Christmas lights today.

I could tell they felt a little uneasy the day after Christmas, and then the day after that, our Russian neighbor notwithstanding. Today, Big Son finally rebelled.

"Mama, no! It`s not right! It`s not Christmas anymore! Why are we still doing this?"

I explained that in America, people leave their Christmas decorations up through the New Year`s holiday.

But my Japanese kids actually thought I was kidding -- they just couldn`t believe this. "It`s not a New Year`s tree! It`s a Christmas tree!"

So tonight we drove around the neighborhood, and I showed them all the houses that still had Christmas lights.

They still did not seem convinced.

And what kind of lesson am I teaching them, anyway? "Do what everyone else does." Is that the message I want to send?

I think our decorations will come down early.

A Good Idea

Yesterday, I was amazed to see our neighbor across the street carrying a Christmas tree up the hill to his house. How odd, I thought -- maybe he`s going to chop it up and use the wood for something?

Today it is decorated and lit, in his window.

He`s Russian -- perhaps he`s Russian Orthodox, and will celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7?

Either that, or he`s figured out a great way to get a real deal on a tree!

Christmas Coda

`Twas the day after Christmas, and all through the house.... the kids played with their new toys.

This is another day on which I rue my inability to post photos on my blog. Picture this: the kids have incorporated our toy nativity set into their play. A plastic Godzilla and a few dinosaurs are among the animals surrounding the manger. A Lego speedboat is transporting one of the three wise men. And the angel is standing on some kind of podium, also made of Legos.

Hey, it is a kid-friendly nativity set, after all. (And it`s the special San Francisco edition, too.) It`s not as if they`re playing with it in a disrespectful way -- Joseph isn`t toting a little weapon, Mary isn`t dressed up in Bratz doll accessories, and no one scribbled with crayons on Baby Jesus` face.

We`re not exactly the most traditional family. Hub made his annual appearance at mass on Christmas Eve, and after it was over, even before all verses of "Joy To The World" were sung, he bolted like a vampire repelled by crosses. It was the first time he had set foot in our new church, although he did enter the church hall to make balloon animals at the Christmas fair a few weeks ago, and he insists that counts.

I`m a half-assed Catholic at best, Hub is a half-assed Buddhist, and hopefully between us, we will manage to give our kids an entire spiritual ass, on which to sit and center themselves. Whatever values and beliefs they manage to get out of being raised this way, I do hope they incorporate them in their day-to-day lives, and not just trot them out on special occasions and then put them away the rest of the year.

If their use of the nativity set is any indication, we`re off to a good start.

A Christmas Carol

One of my grandmothers is dead, and the other is even farther away. My memories of the dead one are perfectly intact, but Alzheimer`s has taken the other woman we knew and loved, and left a strange ghost in her place.

I called my aunt today, my father`s younger sister. My grandfather, grandmother and their live-in health care worker were all at my aunt`s house for the day. My aunt said it was hard to get her mother into the car -- she howled because she didn`t know what was happening.

I spoke to my grandmother very briefly. She seems to respond best to, "Hi, Grandma! I love you!" and everything else confuses her.

My aunt told me some other stories about what`s going on with them -- some funny, some scary, all sad.

In a rare moment of lucidity, my grandmother had focused on some teddy bears my aunt had set up under her Christmas tree.

She picked one of the bears up, and.... attempted to breastfeed it.

So there it is, I thought, as I pictured this -- a scene containing the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight.

A Very Jungian Christmas

We at the Homesick Home desperately need some Carl Jung dream analysis.

Perhaps it was the pork roast I made last night -- the recipe called for sake, but I didn`t have any, so I put in a bottle of Anchor Steam beer. Whatever it was, three members of our household had weird dreams.

I had a dream I was lying on the ground, being violently kicked. I woke up, and Little Son had somehow managed to get both of his legs trapped inside my pajamas, and was repeatedly kicking my ass in an effort to free himself. He managed to sleep through this -- I did not. My interpretation: everyone needs a strong kick in the ass now and then. Thank you, Little Son.

Daughter had no dreams. This is typical for daughter, who sleeps soundly, often with a big smile on her face. My interpretation: this kid is way too normal to be a member of our family.

Big Son had a nightmare that his school had turned into a haunted house, and he couldn`t get to his desk or do his work. My interpretation: this was not a dream, this is his reality.

And Hub? Hub had a dream that he was trimming his beard, and somehow the razor went crazy and sheered it all off, and his eyebrows, too.

"Oh, God, that`s funny!" I said, when he told me about it. "Can I write about that on my blog?"

"Why? Everyone has dreams like that!" he said.

"No, actually -- I have never had a dream like that. And I don`t know anyone else who has. I think it`s really weird."

Hub just glowered at me in response.

My interpretation: Hub is worried that his wife will humiliate him on her blog. Poor Hub.

Merry Christmas, from all of us at the Homesick Home.

Playing Hardball with Nuns

The big kids` classes ended yesterday, and Big Son had a great week in school, after last week`s nervous breakdown.

Part of this is no doubt due to the fact that our Korean exchange students left on Sunday, so Big Son is now getting to sleep at a reasonable hour, there`s less excitement in our household, and the Mama Monster is slightly less grumpy at any given moment and less likely to yell.

Most of it, though, is due to the new "points" system devised by his counselor, in which Big Son earns points through good behavior and can put them toward Yu-Gi-Oh cards and Bionicles. The counselor was even sensitive enough to ask me if our family could afford to buy these rewards for him. Hell, yes -- good behavior doesn`t come cheap.

But I got a look at his point card, and saw that he gets points for "staying on task" and "not talking back to teachers." Hmmmmm, as far as I know, that`s not good behavior -- that`s normal behavior. The fact that my son is now going to be rewarded for acting normal really drives home the point that he`s NOT normal. Oh, well -- I knew that.

I`m not quite normal myself, and it took me years to learn how to act normal. I am naturally a loud-mouthed person, who was raised by wolves. Intricate psychological nuances do not come naturally to me -- my first instinct, when a nun bugs me, is to yell and strangle her with her rosary, metaphorically speaking.

But I did learn a lot living in Japan all those years, about conflict avoidance, and conveying meaning with small gestures. Ironically, I credit my years in Japan for preparing me to play hardball with nuns.

Huggy Nun, after her long talk with the principal, is off Big Son`s back. She gave me a Christmas card on Wednesday, in which she thanked me for my help on the class fundraising quilt. It was a very nice gesture, filled with words like "grace-filled" and "blessed," in her spidery nun`s handwriting. So she fired the first salvo of holiday niceness.

But I was ready for her, with my secret ammunition.

On the last day of school, Big Son gave his teachers Christmas cards I had bought at our church in Tokyo last year.

On the front is a Japanese-style print of a Madonna and child. Did you know Jesus was Japanese? I didn`t, either. Taped to each card was a little wrapped gift -- wooden blocks, a few inches high, with similar Japanese Madonna and child scenes, and a prayer written in Japanese.

Inside, the cards were printed, "May the Peace of Christ and every Happiness fill your heart this Christmas and the New Year!" I had Big Son sign it in both English and Japanese, and write, "Merry Christmas" in Japanese for good measure.

If you read between the lines, I figured out a way for Big Son to say, "My mother may in fact be a fallen Catholic who married a heathen, but she has enough respect for this Catholic stuff to send religious cards. And even though my mom is American, please don`t forget that I`m Japanese, and I miss Japan, and I`m terribly homesick, so cut me some slack, okay?"

I also enclosed one of Big Son`s origami cranes in each card. Big Son figured out how to make an origami nun, which he included in Huggy Nun`s card -- it looked suspiciously like an origami penguin without a beak, but I didn`t question it.

Ho, ho, ho. Take that!

A Brief Unpleasant Shopping Experience

I was at Target today, and I happened to look at some clothing.

Wow, I thought -- how stylish, and yet comfy, with expandable waistlines, and long flowing tops to hide my gut. I grabbed a few items to try on, but before I got to the dressing room, I happened to look at the labels:

Liz Lange Maternity.

AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!
Get...this...stuff....AWAY... from...meeeeeee!!!!

TV or Not TV

I left the following comment on Tertia`s blog today. It doesn`t count as plagiarism if you`re stealing your own words, right?

When we lived in Tokyo, I had a very strict TV rule: it was switched on as soon as my kids got home from daycare, and stayed on until they went to bed.

My kids could watch as much of it as they wanted -- Cartoon Network, videos or DVDs -- but the catch was, it all had to be in English. I would make exceptions to this in a case-by-case basis, and let them watch a few Japanese-language shows sometimes, but they knew I was very serious about my rule. As they got older and had homework, I would leave the TV off until they were finished, but otherwise, it was on. I viewed our TV not as a passive babysitter, but as a passive language teaching tool.

Our youngest son`s last daycare teacher was waging a personal campaign against TV-watching. At one of her parents` group meetings, she went around the room and made everyone tell how many hours of TV they allowed their small children to watch. Parents who admitted to an hour or two were gently chastised, and parents who said they didn`t allow any TV at all were praised.
Then it was my turn, and I told her that the TV was always on in the background at our house, as long as we were home.

And I told her about my "English only" rule, and its effect on our other kids. At the time, my daughter was in second grade at a Japanese public school. Before that, she had been in Japanese public daycare since she was two. Her two brothers and her father and her teachers and all her friends spoke Japanese to her. The only English-language influences in her life at that point were her Mama, who worked at least 10 hours a day outside the home, and....TV. Thanks to TV, which reinforced my other efforts, my daughter could speak English like a native American, I said.

The teacher looked at me blankly and moved on to the next parent.

We are now back in America, where unfortunately I am having trouble enforcing a "Japanese only" TV rule. But I`m trying.

Be careful what you wish for.

Just now I was reflecting on my Big Son`s language problems (see previous post) and thinking, "I hope Little Son picks up more English words now that we`re in America."

And then I happened to burp.

"Mama!" scolded Little Son. "That`s disgusting! You`re such an IDIOT!"

Wow -- he`s three and a half, and already coming up with polysyllabic insults. I guess I need to refocus my language concerns on his manners instead of his vocabulary.

Reading Lessons

The principal told me today that he spent some time with Big Son, and asked him to read from his latest lesson. He can read it all right, but he told the principal he didn`t know what some of the words meant.

"He didn`t know what a beaver or a dam or a birch tree were," said the principal.

"I see," I said, wondering why he found this so surprising.

When we applied to this school when we were still in Tokyo, I sent a long letter explaining our situation, and explaining that my kids were fluent in spoken English but their reading and vocabulary were far below grade level. Big Son is actually more than fluent -- he is quite articulate, when he is talking about something he understands. But when he doesn`t know the words, he doesn`t know the words. Beavers, dams and birch trees do not figure prominently in our household conversations.

I faced a similar problem in Tokyo. I could read earnings reports, and Japanese government statistics reports, and I used to even read a foreign exchange-related blog in Japanese everyday, set up by a trader at a Tokyo bank with too much free time on his hands. But when Big Son was in second grade, I found I could no longer help him with his homework all the time -- I didn`t know enough of the kanji characters for the animals, or the colorful action verbs.

I used to give it my best try.

"The little, ah.... the little something...." I would stammer.

"The little fox," said Big Son. "See, the picture of the fox?"

"Right. The little fox did, ah.... did something... in the woods, and his friends got angry." I tried to discern from the picture what he did in the woods to anger his friends. Shat in the woods, maybe? No -- I knew that word, and that wasn`t it.

I thought it was tough then, but it`s so much worse now. I really hate to see my kid struggling so much. It would be very easy to blame the new school, but the truth is, there are many people at this school trying to help him. I truly believe he would be having similar problems at any school -- any school, that is, except for his old school in Japan, with his old friends.

"I hate San Francisco," Big Son keeps saying.

"Why?" I ask, because he has different reasons all the time.

"Because there are nuns here," he says.

"Would you like it if there weren`t any nuns?" I ask.

"No," he says.

Huggy Nun told me after school today that Big Son`s bad attitude is "our cross to bear," and that she would pray for us. Whenever she says stuff like that, she makes me feel as if I`m in a Monty Python nun skit or something. I know she means well, though. At least with the principal more involved now, she is less likely to make Big Son cry.

"I don`t understand why he has so many problems. Some kids can move to another country and be just fine," said Huggy Nun.

"I know, like this kid right here," I said, and pointed at Daughter, who was running around the playground with her new friends, a giant smile across her face.

Sometimes I can`t help but wonder, is she really my Daughter, or some mutant cheerful alien implanted in my womb? How did I spawn something so cheerful?

Okay, I`d better go. It`s time to help Big Son with his reading. What kind of red wine goes with beavers and birch trees? I think I`ll open some cheapo Ravenswood Zinfandel I bought on sale at Safeway. Anything to help get us over the dam.

I drink to forget.

Oh, dear. I had better stop obsessing about nuns, and my Big Son`s problems, or everyone is going to stop reading my blog. Hey -- it`s after midnight! I can count this as Monday`s post. Wow, I`m getting ahead of myself here.

I finally surrendered in the laundry war tonight, when our dryer decided it could only run every hour, for just 5 minutes at a time, without shuddering to a halt. I realized that drying a load of damp clothing in hourly 5 minute increments was a lost cause, and I knocked on the neighbors` door, and they invited me to have a glass of wine with them. My kids did not miss me, and Hub dared not ask where I`d been, because I emerged carrying a basket of clean laundry. Good times.

Unrelated funny seasonal story: I was wrapping a Christmas present to a dear friend in Tokyo, for whom I had bought some very pretty dish towels. I found them on sale, so I bought some for myself, and then realized this friend would probably like some, too.

As I was wrapping them, the doorbell rang, and it was a delivery. This very same friend had sent my kids one of those remote control dinosaur robots! I thought, golly, this is a bit more of a weighty present than the dishtowels I was wrapping for her. So I emailed her immediately, and she assured me she didn`t try to make me feel inadequate on purpose. My boys are going to love the dinosaur -- especially Hub. And I do hope she enjoys her dishtowels, too.

This friend still can`t read my blog at work, because she works for the financial services company that has started blocking it. Coincidentally, my younger brother had a global IT information security job with this very same company. I asked him, like, what the hell?

He doesn`t exactly know -- and of course he asked for the link to my blog. So I told him, so now I can`t tell stories about him. Oh, well.

(Dear Bro, if you`re reading this, and you tell Mom about my blog, I will have to kill you. No, even worse -- I will reveal my name, which is our rare family name, thereby exposing myself as your sister. You wouldn`t want that, would you? WOULD YOU? Of course not. Please figure out a way to get my friends past the firewall. Thank you. Love, Sis.)

Okay, I`m off to fold my gloriously dry laundry now.

See, all I need is a couple glasses of wine, and I`ve forgotten all about our trouble with nuns.

Fewer kids in our house now, but just as much trouble. Why is that?

I love my blog. I really do. And all the people who read it.

Oh, it`s so easy to be a perfect parent on paper. I hope I can calmly follow the ideals I have laid out for myself. If your kid is not a model kid, it really, really helps to be a model parent, to the extent that you are able --- I have to grit my teeth, and remember this.

It also helps to put myself in Huggy Nun`s place, as much as I can. She is not an evil woman. She is "old-school," but....she is certainly not "beating-kids-with-rulers old school." She has devoted her life to teaching children. She truly loves doing art projects with the kids -- in fact, Hub was quite pleased to see that both kids` Religion classes consist almost entirely of art projects. Hey, I said -- Catholicism is the religion with the world`s best art collection, after all.

She is also an anachronism, and it can`t be easy to be that. How many young nuns wear black and white habits with veils, and giant rosaries around their waists? I calculated that she must be in her 60`s. She is from a developing country, and taught in Kenya and Hawaii, before ending up in San Francisco a few years ago. She, too, must be facing some kind of culture shock -- I mean, our school has lots of students from single-parent homes, and even some with two daddies. She embraces and espouses black and white Catholic values, but her students come to her from the grey world of the most liberal city in America. About one-fifth of them aren`t even Catholic.

She obviously sees Big Son`s antics as a black-and-white contest of wills, and put that way, I can understand why she thinks she has to win. She is a tiny, soft-spoken elderly woman -- I have never heard her raise her voice, even when Big Son was sobbing on her floor. "She doesn`t yell -- she`s just mean," says Big Son. This amazes me -- I yell. Heck, I bellow, to get my point across sometimes.

If she sees my son`s complex struggle as this simple contest of wills, and refuses to see it any other way -- then, I just have to get this through to Big Son: you will not win this contest, so, do not play. Take the classic Japanese route -- conflict avoidance.

Alas, expressing all of this on my blog and somehow getting it to sink into Big Son`s thick 10-year old skull are two entirely different things. "Between the idea and the reality....falls the shadow." T.S. Eliot -- love that quote. Isn`t it so true?

Okay, update on my life: the Koreans are gone, as of this morning, leaving an impressive amount of detritus in their wake. My initial impression was incorrect -- they were not tidy children at all. It is going to take me a while to clean everything up. Silver lining: the girl left behind a half-consumed box of See`s chocolate, and I ate the other half for breakfast. I am not too proud to eat trash -- no, not me. Yum.

We still do not have a new dryer. Our landlord said he would buy us a new one, but I am still waiting to hear delivery details. In the meantime, in a true Christmas miracle, the old one has begun to work again, intermittently. Sometimes I turn it on and nothing happens, but sometimes it makes a noise like a motorcycle revving, or other times like a jet taking off, and then starts working for 10, 20, even up to 40 minutes, before it stalls again. I have managed to dry 3 whole loads of laundry in the past 5 days. Socks, underwear and school uniforms have priority, and the rest is piling up.

But at least I have stopped using the neighbor`s dryer, and don`t need to trek all the way down to the laundromat in the pouring rain. Our neighbors were so nice about it, but they`re a childless couple, and couldn`t quite comprehend how we managed to produce so much dirty laundry. "Oh....you have another load after this one?" They would look surprised -- and this was even with my laundry triage, and giant piles left undone on the floor.

Totally unrelated good news: Trista, our au pair extraordinaire, wants to stay another year with us. Can I tell you how great it is to have a cheerful human around my house, where everyone else seems to have little black rain clouds following them all the time? Now I just have to start working again, and bring home a little $$$ to justify keeping her.... oof.

Can I just end this post with that T.S. Eliot quote above, about the idea and the reality and the shadow? Please?

Thanks. You guys are great. Really.

More Nunsense

Thanks, everyone, for your comments. I actually don`t see the situation as a matter of whether my son or the nun is "right" or "wrong." In fact, quite honestly, I think they`re both wrong. She did not handle the situation well, and my son did not respond appropriately.

As VMC pointed out, the last thing I want to do is reinforce that it`s okay to refuse to take a test if you think your teacher is in the wrong. Huggy Nun will be out of our life in just a few months. Big Son has learned a lot in her class so far, and it is up to me to see that he keeps on learning. My educational experience, from first grade on, taught me that you can learn just as much -- or sometimes even more -- from a bad teacher as you can from a good one. Huggy Nun might in fact be a good teacher going through some bad times.

Something has definitely changed here. As recently as a few weeks ago, Big Son liked and respected Huggy Nun. And then, in Big Son`s words, "she turned mean." There is obviously more going on here than I know about. Perhaps it has something to do with the nuns all leaving at the end of the year? Are they being forced to leave? Do they not like where they`re going next? I can only guess. I don`t really care to know, either - all I know is that the teachers I thought were like adorable wind-up nun dolls suddenly grew vampire fangs and glowing red eyes.

The school used to have a whole gaggle of nuns, but now, there are only three left: Huggy Nun, Social Studies Nun, and Music Nun, and the last is a just a supporting character who teaches a minor subject. I know the church is itching to convert the convent into a preschool, which is why I`m wondering about the circumstances of the nuns` impending departure.

Most of the teachers there are not nuns, and there`s a good mix of male teachers, too. I quickly spoke with Big Son`s math teacher yesterday, to ask her how he`s been behaving in her class. She is -- how to put this? Not a warm and fuzzy human being at all. She is also a Philippina, but much younger than the nuns, and rumored to be a former nun. Big Son cried a few times in her class at the beginning of the year, and I feared for the worst, but he got a hold of himself. She is tough but fair, and sets very clear goals. "He`s doing great in my class," she told me yesterday. So all hope is not lost -- his best subject is safe.

I also spoke briefly with the principal yesterday, who said he spoke with Huggy Nun at great length. He said he was surprised to hear that Huggy Nun thinks all the trouble is a simple matter of Big Son being too "willful," when that is in fact only one tentacle of what the principal thinks is an octopus-like problematic situation.

The principal kept assuring me, "Everything will get better again. We will work to make everything better. We will try hard and make everything better."

The counselor, bless her heart, actually has a concrete plan as to how to make things better. She is proposing a "point" system, in which Big Son will accrue "points" for what she calls, "keeping to task." I think that means, "Not starting to cry, or refusing to do work, or pulling his sweatshirt over his head." If he gets a certain number of points by the end of the week, he will get a reward -- in his case, I will take him to Target and buy him Yu-Gi-Oh cards.

And at home yesterday, whenever Big Son started his, "I hate nuns" ranting, I treated it exactly the same way as I treat his, "I hate what we`re having for dinner tonight" ranting, to which I always respond, "It is not required that you like it. Liking it is absolutely NOT a requirement. You have to eat it, but no one is telling you that you have to like it."

Thus, "It is not required that you like your teacher, or any teacher. Liking her is absolutely NOT a requirement. You have to get your schoolwork done, but no one is telling you that you have to like your teacher, your work, or anything else. It`s okay not to like it."

I`m always telling Big Son, "You can`t control your feelings, but you can control your actions."

And I am trying hard to practice this as well, and set an example here. Can I tell you just how very, VERY gratifying it would feel, to express all of my raw anger directly to Huggy Nun? But if there is one thing I learned over the years, it is this: if you piss off your child`s bad teacher, he or she is likely to turn around and take it out on your child.

I don`t think I mentioned it on this blog before, but I`m one of the fifth grade homeroom mothers. Parents don`t regularly help in the classroom at this school, but we do things like organize class parties and help the kids make the fundraising quilts. So since the beginning of the year, Huggy Nun has seen my face on a regular basis. There is a line of communication open between us, and now is certainly not the time to close it.

Keeping my mouth shut does not come naturally to me, so I know exactly how Big Son feels. It`s funny -- the mother of one of the other boys in Big Son`s class said the other day that she is trying to teach her sons to stand up for themselves. It occurred to me, I have the totally opposite problem. Big Son thinks he is righteously defending his position, and needs to know that what he is doing is talking back, mouthing off, from the teachers` point of view.

I know that two of my old bosses in Tokyo sometimes read this blog, and are now probably laughing. L., you thought you were righteously defending your position, and what you were doing was talking back, mouthing off, and acting like a freak. Yes, yes, this is true. I have no natural respect for authority, and Big Son seems to have been born without one, too. But I learned from bitter experience that saying the right thing the wrong way can have bitter consequences (and saying the wrong thing the wrong way can be worst of all, but let`s not go there now).

It took me, oh, 36 years to figure all that out, but I finally did. I really hope I can use Huggy Nun as an example here, and give Big Son more of a head start.

I really hope he "gets" it sooner than I did.

Everything Was Just Wonderful, Until It Wasn`t.

Big Son is on strike.

Last week, I had a happy, normal son who seemed to be adjusting well, making lots of both progress and friends -- I now have a kid who was asked to stay home from school today, to "give everyone a break." Those were the principal`s words.

This started a week ago, when his teacher, Huggy Nun, asked him, "Do you want to do your work, or do you want to go to the principal`s office?" When clearly faced with a choice like that, Big Son chose the option that did not involve doing work. The principal realized this, and made Big Son go get his work, and do it there.

All weekend, Big Son kept asking, "Why does Sister hate me so much? Why do the nuns all hate me?" I didn`t think too much about this -- I`ve heard from some of the other mothers that other kids at our school had been having problems with some of the nuns lately. They are basically kind and well-meaning people, but they are all in their 60`s and are from a developing country, so they are decidely old-school, and some kids -- and parents, too -- have had trouble dealing with them.

In fact, it seemed that all of sudden, I was hearing more and more nun stories. Do they all get a form of PMS during Advent or something? Pre-Messiah Syndrome? Since I had heard so many stories from parents about various problems, I had no reason to think that Big Son was being singled out, and I told him not to fret.

Well. This week was a different story. Have you ever seen the movie "Rashomon," in which several characters give their varying versions of the same event? This was what I heard, on Wednesday:

Huggy Nun: "Big Son refused to take the vocabulary test. He said he didn`t study for it. He said he lost his paper. I sent him to the principal`s office."

Big Son: "I told sister on Wednesday that I lost my word list and she wouldn`t give me another one. So I couldn`t study, so I couldn`t take her test, so she got mad at me."

Principal: "Sister sent Big Son to my office because he was giving her lip. I wrote Sister a note asking her to please let him retake his test next week, in my office, and I`ll correct it and give it back to her."

But that wasn`t the most upsetting event of Wednesday, by far. I went to the schoolyard to pick up the kids, and one of Big Son`s classmates said, "I think you`d better go up to the classroom right now."

So I did. I could hear Big Son`s sobbing all the way from the end of the hall. It was hard to understand what he was saying -- it sounded like, "It`s your fault because you wouldn`t give me the paper!"

I stood outside in the hall and watched. Big Son was crouched on the floor, sobbing. Huggy Nun was standing over him, saying, "No, it`s your fault, because you didn`t study, and now you`re acting like a baby!"

I had that, "Am I dreaming this?" feeling -- I just couldn`t believe what my eyes were seeing. I stood outside and watched for a few seconds, but could only take it so long. I stepped into the classroom, and was horrified to see that many of Big Son`s classmates were standing there, also watching the spectacle.

"Okay, children, please all leave now," Huggy Nun said as she dismissed them, after she saw me.

"He just won`t listen or cooperate," she said to me, and then dashed off to her weekly staff meeting, for which Big Son had made her late.

I was left to pick up the pieces.

"I.....HATE.....NUNS!" Big Son sobbed. It took him long time to stop crying.

That night, there was a Christmas party for the Korean exchange students. Big Son had been looking forward to it. But as soon as we arrived, he wanted to go home, because.... the nuns were there, in their black and white habits, looking particularly austere amid all the colorful holiday decorations. Big Son dashed into another room, and didn`t make any appearance at all.

Of course, I had to make party talk with the nuns.

"Oh, how are you? It must be so hard, to be the mother of such a willful, difficult child. No wonder you look so tired," said Huggy Nun, and then she started to rub my shoulders.

For the second time that day, I had that, "Am I dreaming this?" feeling -- I just couldn`t believe that the nun who had reduced my son to a sniveling lump on the floor was now rubbing my shoulders, while saying the most offensive things possible. She probably didn`t even realize it, the way so many people who aren`t parents themselves don`t realize that if you criticize someone`s child, it is exactly the same thing as sticking a knife in their heart, and twisting it.

"He`s very spoiled, isn`t he? He acts so babyish that I can tell you must let him have his way at home, " she said.

It was very hard to hold my tongue, which was twitching in my mouth like a rabid boa constrictor, but I didn`t want to make anything worse for Big Son. So I muttered some disagreement and escaped. Unfortunately, there was no alcohol served at this party, so I did my best to get a sugar high from the gingerbread cookies.

This post is getting too long, so I will press "fast forward" and just give you a summary of Thursday`s highlights, in chronological order:

1) Big Son, for the first time ever, didn`t want to go to school in the morning. He vowed he would have "another bad day," which I knew was a self-fulfilling prophesy.

2) I warned the principal that he should probably expect to see Big Son in his office at some point that day, and also filled him in on Big Son`s tantrum the previous afternoon.

3) I went in to Big Son`s counselor`s office, and asked her if she had a minute to talk. I filled the counselor in on what had happened the day before, too. I had signed Big Son up for counseling soon after school started, because he`s still getting over the death of a little friend of his last year. I expected Big Son to have problems adjusting to his new school and new country, and hoped I could head off some of these problems. Five years ago, Big Son had some trouble adjusting to a very rigid kindergarten program. Much of that was undoubtedly due to an unsuitable environment for him, but he`s not a kid who adapts well to changes.

Based on their weekly meetings, and the counselor`s observations of him in his classroom, her summary of Big Son was this: "Your son is less angry than he is overly sensitive, and takes everything very literally. He is desperately trying to please and doesn`t know how, and can`t cope."

After being a class leader in Japan, with many friends and consistently excellent grades, he can`t deal with being the new kid, the class straggler, the misfit. This would be hard for any kid -- it`s especially hard for Big Son, who is the progeny of two tense, nervous people. His father has a temper and his mother is a paranoid drama queen -- the way I see it, the gene pool deck was stacked against the poor kid.

Most interestly, his counselor said she thought Big Son`s teacher is a "very bad fit," because Huggy Nun thinks Big Son is very bright and can just "snap out of it" if he really wanted to. And, well, he obviously can`t just "snap out of it." He is not a little kid -- he`s a 10-year old. The fact that he is throwing tantrums and sobbing on the floor is a clear sign that he`s at the end of his rope.

I wonder, what changed suddenly? I guess this had been building for a long time, and I hadn`t noticed the signs. Granted, there have been two Korean exchange students in our already large household, and our dryer is still out of commission, so I haven`t been all that observant.

Huggy Nun seemed to "get" Big Son -- at our parent/teacher conference, she told me that she noticed he responded so much better to praise than to pressure. YES! But after a bumpy beginning, Big Son had been doing really well -- unfortunately, so well that Huggy Nun assumed everything was just ducky, and started cracking the whip. ( I mean that metaphorically, of course -- if she ever laid a hand on him, except to hug him, I would strangle her with her rosary. And I mean that metaphorically, too. Of course.)

Big Son did indeed have a "bad day" yesterday. He sulked in the most dramatic way possible. He pulled his sweatshirt over his eyes, and put his head down on the desk, and repeatedly got sent out to sit in the hall, or the principal`s office. He even walked around with his sweatshirt pulled up like that -- the office administrator told me he "looked like a turtle all day."

The principal said, "Keep him home tomorrow, and give everyone a break. I`ll talk to Sister."

So I lied to the other kids -- to Daughter, and our two Koreans -- and said Big Son was staying home today because he had a headache. I do not want Daughter, my resident weasel, to know that her brother is having a "break," or she will try to figure out ways she can get a "break," too.

I told Hub all about Big Son, and oddly enough, instead of freaking out, he took it in stride. "If I had to leave my happy elementary school in Kyoto, and my home and all my friends, and move to a foreign country, I would have had a breakdown, too," he said.

And this morning, the parents who usually cluster around the schoolyard gate gave me an early Christmas present: the unofficial news that the nuns are all retiring at the end of this school year.　

Of course, this is no magic solution to Big Son`s problems. I have a feeling the school principal, the counselor, and perhaps others, are going to be fixtures in our life as Big Son adjusts to his new school in America. We also need to determine whether his problem is simply difficulty adjusting, or whether his adjustment problem is the symptom of something else he needs to address before he`s a teenager, which will be in just a few years, God help us.

And then Daughter`s teacher let me know that Daughter hasn`t been doing her homework this week, no doubt realizing that Mama has been too distracted to check her book bag. Weasel! How ever did I give birth to such a slippery weasel, and a surly turtle?

Oh well -- at least, in the foreseeable future, my life will be free of penguins. One less species to worry about.

Identity Crisis

I was at the big kids` school, waiting for Big Son and Daughter. I went over to see what one of Daughter`s little third-grade friends was doing.

She was sitting with another little girl, whom I didn`t know. This girl looked up at me and asked me, "What culture are you?"

Before I could answer, Daughter`s friend chimed in, "She`s Japanese!"

The other little girl looked skeptically at my light hair and clearly non-Asian features.

"She sure doesn`t look Japanese," she finally said.

"Well, Daughter is Japanese and they moved from Japan, so that means they`re Japanese," Daughter`s friend said, looking to me to back her up. "Right?"

"Um, right," I said. "Daughter`s father is Japanese and we moved from Japan."

"Say something in Japanese!" demanded the skeptical girl.

So I did.

She seemed satisfied.

But I was left feeling a little confused.

A slightly stinky afterpost....

Okay, wake up. I`ll now write a quick post with more general appeal.

We had two extra Korean boys over for dinner tonight. So there were seven kids out there -- five of them boys. I just dumped some fried chicken, rice and kimchi on the table with paper plates, and then left the room so I didn`t have to watch them devour it like starving pirahnas. When it was over, there were just a few bones and greasy plates left -- it was a little scary.

Later, someone broke a lamp, but it turned out to be Little Son, not one of the Koreans. Thank God it didn`t break over someone`s head -- it was a floor lamp, and it fell over and the bowl part on top shattered. I won`t be replacing it.

The Korean kids leave on Sunday, and I`m going to be glad when I no longer have to keep big vats of kimchi around. That`s the spicy pickled cabbage stuff -- they really love it, but it always smells like someone farted in my fridge.

And oh, our dryer is officially dead. The Whirpool guy got it to start again, only to stall again. He said it needs a new motor, which would cost almost as much as a new dryer. The matter has been referred to our landlord, and I await instructions.

Can I tell you how paranoid I was, that the repairman would tell me that it broke because of something my family did? I was terrified that he would reach into the motor and pull out a little Happy Meal toy that somehow got jammed in there....yeah, I know the motor is deep inside, and that realistically there`s nothing any of my kids could have done to it, but you never know.

All I know is, I need a dryer, soon. I can hang the little stuff up to dry, but not the big items. And Daughter lately has insisted on sleeping in both pairs of her new Bratz pajamas, so she sweats rivers and her sheets have begun to smell like socks.

That was pretty gross. Maybe I should go back to talking about markets? They don`t smell bad -- even when they reek.

Over the firewall and down the rabbit hole....

I have signed up to get a site meter for my blog, so I can see how few hits I get -- just in time. As of this week, I will get even fewer, because friends in Tokyo who work at one particular large financial services company have told me that they can`t access my URL from work anymore. There go half my readers!

So, in order to try to get my URL added to their local "white list" of sites that get past their firewall, I will write today`s entry on Japanese financial markets.

(Ahem.) Wow, I can`t believe how much the Nikkei has risen since I stopped paying daily attention to it. It`s above 15,000 now. How did that happen? Damn, this makes me want to call a few traders. I don`t miss writing market reports, but I do miss talking on the phone to traders. Traders are very interesting folks -- especially hedge fund traders. They always paid for my drinks.

The weaker yen must be giving exporter shares a lift. I know without checking that the yen is relatively weak -- the dollar is now trading around Y120. I know this, of course, because Hub is paid in yen. Go, yen, go! You can still get back to Y100 if you try -- especially if this nice little stock market rally continues in the first few months of `06, ahead of the Japanese fiscal year end in March, as everyone always predicts. Unless, of course, it`s another "bear market rally," and then we`ll all just play more ping-pong.

Has the BOJ changed its quantatative easing policy? Nope. When is the next Tankan survey of business sentiment due out? Oh God -- tomorrow! That should be interesting -- not.

And the yield on the benchmark 10-year JGB is.....2.3%??? Is that right??? No, whew, I looked at the wrong chart -- it`s 1.58%. For a minute, I thought something drastic actually happened in the most illiquid sovereign bond market in the developed world.

Is that enough? I hope so. That`s all I`m going to say, since I`m not getting paid for it anymore.

Dirty Laundry is My Life

I was actually a pretty happy person until our dryer bit it, but now I`ve transformed into The Mama Monster. There`s just something about carrying loads of wet laundry to the neighbor`s house for 5 ungrateful kids that`s pushed me over some line.

Now, I still have nothing to complain about, overall. We`re all healthy and we can pay our bills, and as far as I`m concerned, those are the key factors in a happy, stable life. The difference, though, is that one little thing has gone wrong -- some little dryer belt or gear went rip! or ping! -- so now I`m planning my days around how I can bother the neighbors as little as possible and still get most of the laundry done (giving priority to the exchange students` underwear and everyone`s school uniforms, and letting my own kids` underwear pile up in the garage until our equipment is back in order, because I know they have spares).

In other words, I am by no means in crisis mode here, but I am finding it damn near impossible to be cheerful.

This morning, I asked our Korean girl student if she would please use her towel more than once, after showering. I hadn`t been keeping careful track of this, but now that our dryer is broken, I was upset to see the clean towel I had given her yesterday already placed in her laundry pile.

She gave me a look as if I had asked her to please sleep outside in the yard.

She did not remove it from the laundry pile, but I will not be giving her another one.　Sorry, I refuse to feel guilty about this -- the summer I was an exchange student in France when I was 15, I lived with a family that did not encourage frequent bathing. Imagine how horrifying this was, to an American teenage girl accustomed to washing and conditioning her hair every day. I once went five straight days without a shower in their house, and amazingly enough, it didn`t kill me.

How often do I wash our towels? You know, I never really thought about that before. I just wash them when I sense it`s time -- the same with our sheets. If it`s summer and people are sweating, I wash everything very frequently, but in winter, I let it go (unless, of course, one of the kids spills food, drink or bodly fluids on the bedding). I just think, hmmmm, it`s been a while, I`d better wash the sheets and towels. In our house, linen maintenance is an art, not a science.

I once knew someone who said he only changed his sheets either when they started to smell funny, or he started to itch. Gee, maybe our homestay student would be happier staying at his house! Oh, I`m SO mean.....she`s really a nice kid, but she`s obviously used to a different lifestyle.

I will leave you with a totally unrelated, obnoxious comment that Hub made last night, which I`m burying at the bottom, just in case he reads my blog. I doubt he`ll read down this far.

He said, "You know, if you lost some weight, your car might get better mileage."

I am going to KILL......

....the next person who asks me, "Eeeeew, what`s that on your lip?"

Random Ranting

Oh, life just keeps getting more and more exciting here at the Homesick Home.

The parents of our Korean girl student very suddenly arrived in town, to visit their daughter. They`re staying at a hotel downtown, and will zip over the Las Vegas, and then fly back with all the kids next weekend.

The father is a television news announcer. The mother looks like the kind of woman who would be married to a television news announcer. Have I mentioned before that I`m kind of fat and dumpy now, with yellow teeth and a huge cold sore on my lip? Yes? I have? Yeah, I thought so. I didn`t think it could be possible to feel any uglier -- but then I stand next to some beautiful people and I realize, oh, yes, it could be.

And in other news: our dryer conked out. Can I count this as a crisis? Please?

Hub and I, our three kids, our au pair and two Korean exchange students do produce a lot of dirty laundry, and the Whirlpool guy can`t even come to look at it until Tuesday. It gave up the ghost on my birthday -- approximately 5 minutes before I was supposed to leave the house to get to the BART station in time to meet Hub for my birthday outing. So I frantically called him and he drove all the way home to pick me up instead, and grumbled about this, even though it was my birthday. I explained to Hub the reason I was late -- I had to call the Whirpool people immediately, and spend half an hour on hold, because if I waited until the next day to do it, we might have to go without a dryer even longer.

But Hub`s laundry is magically done by elves, right? How could he possibly understand why I was so upset, and why this was a good reason to be late? So he grumbled about the inconvenience, which pissed me off, and so I proceeded to have too much to drink at the Asian Art Museum event, and all my lipstick faded and so everyone could see my hideous cold sore (they were all staring at it! I KNOW they were!), and then I had to wobble through the exhibit of Kyoto paintings in my high heels, so it was hard to pay attention because I was in too much pain. Remember my stubbed toe? Well, it`s much better, but it still hurts a little, and after the swelling went down I realized that it`s not quite perfectly aligned with the other toes anymore, and probably never will be.

Until our dryer is fixed, I am imposing on the kindness of strangers -- or rather, on the nextdoor neighbors, who are actually not strangers at all, thank goodness. They said, "Sure! Use ours! And take home this plate of Christmas cookies for the kids!"

God bless people like them. Thanks to them, I can write a happy ending to this post.

At least until something else goes wrong and pisses me off.

How you do spell P-A-R-I-A-H?

A sure sign that your family is going to be unpopular this holiday season: when your 8-year-old Daughter says, "Mama, some of my friends still believed in Santa Claus, but I told them you said there wasn`t one, and they want to know why their parents are lying to them."

Lordy, lordy -- L. is FORTY!

Happy birthday to me.

We all got up late because our alarm didn`t go off, and I awoke with a really sore throat, meaning I`m getting a cold. I still have a massive sore on my lip. And speaking of massive, I weighed myself this morning, and I weigh 4 pounds more than I did last week. How is that possible?

And to top all this off, I can no longer say I`m "in my thirties." Without lying, that is.

In addition to being my birthday, it`s also the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day of obligation in the Catholic church. This morning, Big Son`s fifth grade class had their class mass. Big Son actually had a brief line to read, and managed to do it without either screwing it up or doing something weird on purpose to get attention -- can you guess which of those possibilities had me more worried?

I`m grateful that Big Son is already reading out loud in church. I`m grateful for my happy, healthy family, and all my friends, both old and new. If growing old gracefully means being grateful for one`s blessings, I`ve got that part down pat. But there must be more to it, because I still have a vague sinking feeling whenever I think about my 30`s being gone.

So I`m going to go to the farmers` market now, and drown my sorrow in vegetables.

Wishful Thinking

To whom it may concern at L`Oreal:

I have what sounds like a crazy suggestion, but please hear me out. I suggest you rename the shade of lipstick you now call "Au Currant" something like, "Cold Sore Red."

Yes, that name might gross some people out, but I`ll bet it would be a HUGE hit. Excuse me for implying that "Au Currant" isn`t already a hit -- I don`t know much about lipstick shades. But I know more than I did yesterday, because last night I spent way too much time in the makeup aisle of my local drugstore, looking for a shade that I could wear to camoflauge my hideous cold sore.

I examined all shades of all brands, casting aside such sexy-sounding names as, "Blushing Tulip," "Crimson Glory" and "I-Need-To-Get-Laid-Tonight Red." Okay, I just made up the last one, ha ha -- a little lipstick humor there. Anyway, your "Au Currant" was exactly the same shade as my cold sore.

In case you`re wondering, NO, I didn`t test any of your lipsticks on my actual scabby lip. I believe there`s a federal law against that -- and if there isn`t, there ought to be. Instead, I rubbed some on my hand and held it up to my face in the little mirror. It occurred to me, while human skin tones greatly vary, the color of dried blood is more or less the same. Therefore, others in my situation (and there must be lots of us) would appreciate saving our time, and just grabbing a tube of "Cold Sore Red," whenever we get a cold sore right before an important event.

Why does that always seem to happen, anyway? Have your crack researchers figured it out yet? Actually, if they have, it`s probably a proprietary trade secret and you`ll never tell me, so I`ll just sign off now.

Think about it, okay?

Thanks,

L.

May I be excused?

Dear families,

It is quilt time again and once again I need your help.
Attached you will find:
-- 1-6 1/2 inch x 6 1/2 inch square of fabric (larger)
-- 1-5 inch x 6 inch rectangle of fabric (smaller)
-- outlines for four different stencils (on reverse side of this letter)

How to complete your child`s quilt square:
-- have child choose a stencil shape
-- cut and use stencil to trace shape on smaller fabric rectangle (5"x6")
-- hand stitch shape onto larger fabin square (6 1/2" x 6 1/2")
-- please leave 1/4 inch seam allowances on each side of the fabric! This is very important.
-- hand stitch your child`s name or initials on the square

I got the above letter today, and the deadline is December 16.

My readers who sew probably read that and said, "Yeah? So?" If that was your reaction, skip this post and come back tomorrow. My readers who know the story of how I once tried to save time by mending a pair of jeans while wearing them, and ended up bleeding in several sensitive places, will understand how I am feeling right now.

This small exercise in needle torture is brought to me by Little Son`s expensive, trendy preschool. Our parochial school makes fundraising quilts, too -- but only the truly gifted parents volunteer for sewing duties, and the kids do their squares with fabric paint, during school hours. If they ever tried sending parents little bits of fabric and instructions, I guarantee it would take them decades to get back enough squares for a single quilt.

To be sure, this quilt square is not as bad as the time Daughter`s (male) second grade teacher in Tokyo sent home a stick and a piece of red fabric, and asked parents (mothers) to fashion a bullfighter`s cape for their kids to use to do a matador dance at Sports Day...two days before this event. His instructions suggested using a sewing machine, which was no help at all to the underpriveleged (or handicraft-challenged) families who lacked them. I gave up several precious hours of sleep and did the whole goddamn thing by hand, and let me tell you, it was a good thing it was already blood-red.

I would whine about this some more, but Trista just picked the kids up at school and I noticed.... there`s an extra Korean boy with them. Why did he come here, how did he get here, and what are my responsibilities as far as feeding him and bringing him back to his proper homestay family? Nobody has offered any of this key information -- I must go find out.

And maybe, with any luck, he can sew.

Christmas Faire 2005: Jello shooters and Hamster Racing

Yes, you read that correctly -- hamster racing. Our parish and school Christmas fundraising event included a booth in which small children were encouraged to gamble, and little furry animals were exploited. It sounds wrong on so many levels, doesn`t it?

But it was actually great! Aside from the exploitation factor, the hamsters were handled quite humanely. The two hamsters were in those plastic hamster balls, and they ran down a straight path with Lego borders. The children all stood behind ropes. The hamsters were given long rests in between, and grownups guarded their cages to keep them safe from the children`s eager probing fingers. The hamsters probably didn`t even know they were stars.

Kids "bet" on the hamster of their choice, and the winners got a ticket for every victory. The kids who amassed the most tickets won the hamsters, with cages and supplies. This was to keep the kids coming back again and again. The rule was, parents had to give the okay before the hamster could be adopted. Lots of parents said "no" even before their kids asked them.

This booth was hugely popular. I don`t know if it was profitable, but let me say, the kids loved watching these races, and cheering for their favorite hamster, whether they were betting on it or not.

And true to the spirit of, "No good deed goes unpunished," the son of the booth`s organizer collected enough tickets to win one of the hamsters, and his mom could hardly refuse since the whole thing was her great idea.

What else did they have at the fair? Jello shooters. Yes, you read that right -- little cups of jello, made with vodka or tequila, for $1.00 each.

Did we join an excellent church, or WHAT?

Happy Birthday, Hub.

Hub, you don`t read my blog very often, for which I am grateful. I have assured you I don`t write about you all the time, but today I must. You turn 41.

I remember your first birthday we spent together when we were dating -- you turned 21, and that seemed so old to me then. But don`t worry -- you seem so much younger to me now.

Has your loving wife scheduled something really special for you today -- or even allowed you to take the whole day off to nap, take it easy, read and play with the kids, which is what you really love to do in your free time?

No -- instead, she is forcing you to dress up as a clown and make balloon animals at our parish Christmas Fair. There must be a special circle of hell for wives like her.

You have tried to get out of this, but I have laid guilt trip upon guilt trip until you caved in and agreed to do it, for the kids. Hub, you know you are just so good at making balloon animals. You signed up once to do this at our daycare center in Japan, and we all realized you had a special talent for it, and could make all sorts of wonderful creations (whereas most of the parents, including me, could only make lopsided dogs, and snakes).

Dear Hub, I never loved you more than when I told you that the parish fair organizers want you to charge a dollar per balloon animal today, and you got so angry.

"Balloon animals should be free!" you protested. "They`re for the little kids to enjoy! No one should have to pay for them! I refuse to take any kid`s money!"

I had to promise you that most of the kids will show up with pockets full of cash from their parents, even those for whom money is tight, because this is the major fundraiser of the year and they know that all of the proceeds go directly to our school. Surely their parents would rather they spent it on a balloon than some sugary junk food treat?

Besides, I said to you, if any kids come up short, and look at you with their doleful eyes, you will be free to break the rules and give them free balloons, as long as you do it discreetly, and discourage them from coming back again and again and again.

I probably shouldn`t have added that last part, because now I think you are going to give away most of your balloons, Hub, and just put your own money in the cash box.

Many happy returns.

(Update: Hub made more than 100 balloons. Guess how much was in the cash box! I will come up with a prize for the respondent who comes closest.)

(Update #2: Val wins! We spent $27 buying balloons and the thing to blow them up, and netted... $25. Hub indeed gave away most of his creations. But we donated the stuff, though, so the school got all the cash, and Hub admits he had a great time -- and he didn`t even dress up as a clown.)

Just wondering....

I`ve lived outside America for most of my adult life, so I want to ask everyone, when did American people`s teeth get so white? What`s up with that? I didn`t notice this the last time we lived here in `98.

My parents had my teeth straightened when I was young, at great expense. When I went to France when I was 15, lots of people there told me they "knew I was American" by my "nice smile."

But straight teeth alone is no longer the sign that someone is a middle class American (or else someone blessed with a fine mouth or a great dental plan). Now people`s teeth need to be really white, too -- like brand new kitchen appliances, or cattle bones that have been out in the desert sun a long time.

My teeth are straight, but small and rat-like, somewhat discolored after several decades of coffee and red wine consumption. One of my old friends, who hadn`t seen me in a few years, offered to introduce me to her dentist, who "can work wonders." I just looked at her blankly -- I have no pain or cavities, and I can chew just fine. It occurred to me later she meant cosmetic wonders.

I have made many new friends since moving here in July, and I`ve noticed something funny. Out of the people with whom I feel most comfortable and familiar, from all different socioeconomic backgrounds, not a single one has really white teeth. Many have crooked teeth, and a few even have missing teeth. What`s up with that? Are we a lost tribe of weak-enameled folk who found each other psychically?

I will leave you with one more question: why is it, that when I have to go pick up Little Son at a playdate at the house of one of his trendy preschool friends, whose mother looks like a model with a waist as big as my leg and teeth that practically glow in the dark, I always seem to be a dumpy, puffy wreck, with stringy hair and a big sore on my lip? Why is that?

Just wondering.

(Edited to say, I wasn`t speaking metaphorically -- I really do have a big sore on my lip now, and I never feel uglier than when I have a big sore on my lip. It doesn`t hurt much, but I feel as if everyone is staring at it because it`s so big and scabby and gross. Sorry, TMI there.)

That Old Black Magic

I don`t post photos on my blog at this point due to a Japanese software glitch that I can`t even properly explain, let alone solve. So I`m going to try be very descriptive, and give you the full benefit of this post.

Picture this -- a cornhusk doll, about six inches tall, adorned with colored feathers and bits of yarn, and on its face is the most terrifying scrawled scowl you have ever seen.

It is propped up on our kitchen shelf. Hub got home and said, "Dear God, what is that? Do you have to keep it up there? It`s going to scare the children!"

It really does look as if it should have some pins sticking out of it. Its eyes really do follow you when you`re in the kitchen.

When I signed Little Son up for his expensive trendy preschool, little did I know they would be making Voodoo dolls there.

Failure to the Cause I Never Joined

I, and women like me, am why feminism is failing. If this is really true, then goddamnit, I hope it fails completely, and I will help drive a stake into its heart to make sure it stays dead.

You can probably tell, I just read Linda Hirschman`s article in the American Prospect Online, which begins with this bombshell: "Half the wealthiest, most-privileged, best-educated females in the country stay home with their babies rather than work in the market economy."

I know she was talking about me, because a few months ago, when I was still working, I took this poll, in the New York Fucking Times when they published their series on class and social mobility in America. It was an interactive poll that asked, "Where do you fit in?"

I expected to finish somewhere in the middle, because I consider myself a pretty average middle-aged woman, in all respects. But even though my job area (news correspondent) ranked only slightly above the halfway mark on the "prestige" scale, my levels of education, income and assets put me waaaaaay up there on their other charts. I thought I was average, but nope -- I am "elite," no matter how chipped and yellow my teeth are, or how prosaic my tastes in fashion and wine.

Soon after, to make a long story short (husband`s job transfer, international move, etc.) I quit my job. I decided to stay home, take it easy and enjoy my three kids for a while. Is that a problem?

Hell, yes! Linda Hirschman thinks it`s a big problem. She drew her conclusions from something in the New York Times, too, but not their recent poll. Instead, she researched what became of the "brilliantly educated and accomplished brides" of the Sunday Styles section from a few years ago (not exactly a representative sample of America, or even of Manhattan) and found that -- horrors! -- most of those slackers were now staying home wiping babies` butts instead of taking the world by storm.

Tell it, Linda:

The privileged brides of the Times -- and their husbands -- seem happy. Why do we care what they do? After all, most people aren't rich and white and heterosexual, and they couldn't quit working if they wanted to.
We care because what they do is bad for them, is certainly bad for society, and is widely imitated, even by people who never get their weddings in the Times.

There it is, folks. My husband and I may be happy, but what I`m doing is bad for me, and bad for society. Thank you, Linda, for caring.

The first day or two after I read her piece, I was righteously angry at Hirschman -- and boy, let me tell you, this palpable anger felt good. I was able to savor it, like a fine gourmet meal. Alas, after a while, this feeling faded, leaving only a vague sense of bemusement, that this woman really sees something sinister in the fact that lots of monied moms choose to stop working.

Are my feelings normal? Shouldn`t I feel at least a little guilty, for trying to kill feminism? I just realized why I make such a rotten Catholic -- I don`t have a well-developed sense of guilt. Never did, probaby never will -- I must have been out sick the day they laid the official guilt mantle on my Catechism class.

Ironically, my many years as a fulltime working mom probably contributed to removing any vestigial shreds of guilt when it comes to my family and household. I didn`t feel guilty when I went back to work when Little Son was 14 weeks old, leaving him with a babysitter he later began calling, "Mama." I didn`t feel guilty when I sometimes missed school events, because I wasn`t able to get away from work. I didn`t feel guilty for all of those dinners of convenience food we ate in front of the television. I made what I thought were the best choices for my family overall at the time, and we lived with them.

So, now that my family`s circumstances shifted and I`m at home, spending more time with the kids and generally enjoying my life, I`m supposed to start feeling guilty now?

Yes, says Hirschman. I am not being fair to myself.

The family -- with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks -- is a necessary part of life, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government. This less-flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust.

I won`t even touch Hirschman`s description of "full human flourishing," because her definition is bound to clash with mine. Her