Happy Bunny Day

We interrupt our regularly scheduled episode of, "Trouble with Nuns" to bring you a live dispatch from Daughter`s ninth birthday.

I just dropped off the cupcakes and drinks in her classroom: I went all the way to Albertson`s and bought one of their packs of cupcakes arranged like a big butterfly (cheaper than making them myself when you factor in how much it would cost me to buy all that food coloring I would probably never use again), and little plastic bottles of fruit juice. I figured I`d win points for daughter with her friends by bringing in juice the kids will probably like, and should also get points with the teacher for paying a little extra for the kind that says, "50% Less Sugar!"

Earlier, I did something I rarely do -- I fell asleep. I was in the boys` room, and the down comforter looked so soft and inviting that I lay down on it for a minute, and.... zzzzzz. No doubt inspired by the stars and planets stuck to their ceiling and their various lamps, pillows and wall hangings decorated with moon themes, I had a dream that I was looking through a telescope at the moon. Daughter was in small spaceship orbiting it. Oh, she`s so far away, and so alone up there, I thought, as an incredibly sad, lonely feeling swept over me. But despite this, I knew she was fine. Daughter is rarely afraid of anything, and never seems to get lonely. I imagined her sitting up there in the capsule, reading her Japanese comic books.

Daughter`s real life story began with another dream, before she was born. She goes by her Japanese nickname, but her full name comes from my grandmother, who lived with my family throughout my entire childhood.

Four days after I told my grandmother I was pregnant again, I had a dream in which she said to me, "I`m sorry I won`t be around to see the new baby, but I heard from someone on the other side that it`s my time." And she pointed to a gravestone with "Zofia Anastasia Krasowski, 1918-1996" written on it. It was a sad, vivid dream, and I told Hub about it in the morning.

I called my grandmother that night, just to hear her voice, but my mother said she wasn`t feeling well and had gone to bed early. The following morning, we were awakened by a call from my father saying Gramma had suffered a fatal heart attack.

Of course I was determined to name the baby after her, if it was a girl, but there was one problem: "zo" means "elephant" in Japanese, and Hub said, "No daughter of mine is going to be named elephant!" So we switched the first name and middle name around, and also came up with a Japanese compromise, and managed to find a way to do it.

I wondered whether Daughter would take after her namesake. My grandmother was quiet and painfully shy and yet worked most of her life as a waitress. Somehow, she was not afraid to approach tables of strangers every night, as long as she was wearing her waitress uniform and holding her notepad, and all she had to say was, "Can I help you?" She always said it was very satisfying, to put food in front of hungry people. Even at home, she would call us all to the table a few minutes before dinner was ready, so she could serve us properly -- if one of us was late, and the food was already on the table, she would give us a stern look and say, "It`s ice cold already!"

But I digress. I could tell Gramma stories forever, but today is Daughter`s day. Daughter has never shown any signs of being shy, but her standoffishness is often mistaken for shyness. She likes to stand back and carefully observe every situation before acting.

"I haven`t decided who my friends are going to be yet," she told me a few weeks after her new school started.

When I pick her up after school, she is always surrounded by a flock of little girls, and I hear her turning down invitations to play. I always ask her if she wants to invite friends over, but she rarely does -- most days, she would rather come home, play by herself with her doll house, watch TV or take a nap.

She`s always been a good sleeper -- she was one of those infants who slept 20 hours a day and woke up just to eat and smile. She was born by planned c-section, and when the doctors took her out, she was sleeping and didn`t cry. I worried that something was wrong, but then they showed her to me, and she opened just one eye and looked at me, and then went back to sleep.

She loves her new school as much as her big brother hates it, and is flourishing there. Considering she began the year able to read and write little more than her own name and a smattering of easy words, she`s made incredible progress, and is reading books out loud to me at night.

I am aware that I don`t write about her on this blog as often as I write about her little brother, who is small and still does cute babyish things, and her big brother, who has lots of problems right now. Both of them make for more interesting stories, but take my word for it -- Daughter is every bit as interesting and brings us just as much joy.

Will she read this someday? I don`t know, but I hope so --- Happy Birthday little bunny, from your Mama.

Remind me.....

....it`s never a good idea to drink lots of tequila the night before you`re hosting a little girl`s birthday party, with a dozen kids all blowing party horns and screaming. Daughter turns 9 on Tuesday, and we had a birthday blow-out today at our house, to match the blow-out inside my head. Yeah, I feel as if someone blew my brains out my ears, the way some people blow the yolk out of Easter eggs before dying them. Why are little girls` voices so goddamn shrill? They can practically shatter glass.

And no, I didn`t beat up the nun last night. Or maybe I did, and I just don`t remember it. No, if I did, I would have heard about it by now. I think.

No more nunsense!

So tonight was the annual Zydeco dance at our church.

I said to the principal, "I`m going to do a few tequila shots and beat up Huggy Nun, okay?"

The principal laughed. I took that as a very good sign.

My Inner Bear Instincts Awaken...

Big Son stayed home again yesterday even though he felt a little better and probably would have gone to school if I had made him. I brought all of his school books home so he could keep up with his work.

As he was doing his math homework, he looked up at me and smiled and said, "Math is my friend!" It was one of those moments I wanted to freeze-dry and preserve forever.

I got his report card yesterday, and math is indeed his friend -- he got an A, and also maintained his A in handwriting. But alas, math and handwriting are mighty lonely -- none of his other subjects even came close. He got all C`s, and a D in his dreaded Social Studies, and "unacceptable" marks in both conduct and effort. With these grades, his chances of transferring to another school are just about nil.

His counselor, though, says she thinks we "need to start thinking of alternatives." And this is not an outside counselor -- he meets with her at school, through an Archdiocese-sponsored program. She has observed him in the classroom, and has also spoken with Huggy Nun -- and she is all but telling me that she thinks the situation is hopeless. "That nun is never going to change. She sees your son only as a discipline problem, and will never recognize any of his other problems," she said.

The principal, of course, is concerned, and has told me he will start tutoring Big Son in his office whenever he has a problem with Huggy Nun. He will also start coaching Big Son in Social Studies, because, as he said, Big Son "is capable of understanding the concepts, but just needs extra help with the reading and new vocabulary." Okay, I said. Big Son likes the principal, so this might be exactly what he needs.

But overall, Big Son says he no longer wants to go to school, and is begging me to teach him at home instead. Hub absolutely opposes all homeschooling and is dead-set against this. Unless Hub is on board, it`s not a real option. This is too bad, because we`re in a city with great resources and groups for homeschooled kids. The people whose house we`re renting homeschooled their daughter, and I`m sure they`d be happy to make introductions.

One of Hub`s main objections is a valid one, though. Big Son excels in math, which is a subject in which Hub and I both fell short. I admit it -- it`s all I can do to stay on top of the fifth-grade homework.

And our Catholic school has a kick-ass math teacher. In the beginning of the year, she and Big Son didn`t hit it off at all, because she`s very strict and, unlike the nuns, she yells a lot. She puts up with no misbehavior, and doesn`t suffer excuses for not doing homework. She`s rumored to be an ex-nun -- she graduated from the same university in the Philippines from which all the nuns did, though she`s much younger than they are. I think she`s around my age. She has completely won Big Son over, for which I am profoundly grateful. If he stays at this school, she would continue to be his math teacher.

The principal has also assured me that next year, Big Son would have the current sixth grade teacher, a young man who seems to be popular and respected by the students. Big Son would almost definitely have a very different experience.

I`m also thinking that I don`t want to send Big Son the message that it`s okay to quit school if you have a bad teacher. Alas, life has its share of bad teachers -- and then bosses -- and an important and necessary lesson is learning to deal with them. Sometimes, you can make a bad situation better, sometimes you do need to remove yourself from the situation, but sometimes the best thing you can do is switch into survival mode and learn to get through hard times.

In recent months, Huggy Nun and I had a little routine we would go through whenever we met.

Sometimes Big Son would have a "good" day, and she would write a note for him to take home to show me, that said, "Excellent job!"

But other times, she would walk up to me and sigh deeply.

"He`s just not trying. He can do the work, but he`s just not trying."

"He IS trying. He is having a very hard time. Thank you for doing all you can to help him," I would say.

"We must pray that he gets through this," she would say.

"He is trying very hard. He`s very upset. He misses his home. Thank you for doing all you can," I would say.

My conversation with her yesterday, however, included some new phrases.

"He`s just not trying. He can do the work, but he`s just not trying. If you let him get away with this behavior, he will be even worse in a few years when he`s a teenager."

"He IS trying very hard. He`s very upset. He misses his home. Thank you for doing all you can, but it`s clearly not working. You need to try something else -- what you`re doing to him is making him worse."

"We must pray that he gets through this."

"Yes -- just four more months!" I said, thinking, and we`re counting down.

"Oh, yes! Just four more months! Not long at all!" said Huggy Nun, no doubt thinking, and I`m counting down, too.

She looked as if she were about to hug me, but I had Big Son`s books in one hand and my bag in the other, and I stuck my elbows out and made myself as pointy and un-huggable as I could.

So she patted me instead. She`s not tall enough to reach my head, so she patted my collarbone. And all the while, I was thinking about the words I had just said to her -- It`s clearly not working. You need to try something else.

Maybe I need to follow my own words. Maybe my polite restraint that usually works so well is the wrong approach with Huggy Nun.

Maybe it`s time to be a Mama Bear, and growl, "Leave my cub alone."

Oh, dear....

Big Son stayed home from school today, with a migraine. This is his internal warning signal. He doesn`t have a fever -- he`s not coming down with anything. It`s his first purely stress-related migraine since he left Nishimachi International School.

I had long talks today with his counselor, and with the principal. Ideas are flying like bats at sunset.

And in case anyone is wondering how I can tell Big Son is not just malingering --- he says his head hurts too much to watch TV, or play with his Gameboy.

Poor little fellah.

I also had an eye-opening conversation with Hub today. He said when he was in fifth grade, in Kyoto, he pointed out to his teacher, not a nun but an older woman, that one of her answers to a math problem was incorrect. Hub`s childhood nickname was, "IIko," which literally means, "good child," so I can only assume that he pointed it out to her with his proper, ponderously polite Japanese manners. But the teacher insisted that she was right, and got angry.

"What did she do?" I asked.

"She hit me," he said. "It used to be legal in public schools. That was the only time a teacher ever hit me. And I remember it to this day, just like Big Son is going to remember his monkey."

I think in our family, "breaking the monkey" is going to be the new expression for, "jumping the shark."

Oh, dear. More nunsense.

Big Son came out of school with the usual scowl on his face, but it soon became clear that today was exceptionally bad.

"Sister sent me out into the hallway twice and to the principal`s office once, because I couldn`t do my assignment, because I didn`t understand it," he said.

I didn`t want to ask, but I had to. "What was the assignment?"

"I didn`t understand what the word, `respect` means," he said. Gee -- why wasn`t I surprised to hear this? Seriously, though -- we use the Japanese word at home all the time, but it is very possible he didn`t know the English word.

While I was talking to another parent, Big Son slipped away and went back up to his classroom. When he came down, he was crying.

"Everybody hates me! I have no friends!"

"What now?"

"While I was sent out, someone crumpled my monkey! I just found it in the trash!"

It took me a while to get the story. I knew his class had recently made monkeys and jungle scenes out of pipe cleaners, and he enjoyed doing this so much that he had made some extra monkeys. There were lots of them all over the house, and I guess he had brought his favorite one to school and put it on his desk. And while he was out of the classroom, someone had destroyed it -- he showed me the crumpled ball of pipe cleaners.

I thought, I can`t wave a magic wand and improve this kid`s attitude, but at least I can let his teacher know about the monkey, and hopefully she could prevent further teasing incidents. I knew this was unlikely to be the last time Big Son got sent out to the hall or the office -- people should at least respect his property while he`s away from his desk.

So I looked all over the school for Huggy Nun, and found her as she was running off to her weekly Wednesday meeting.

"I heard Big Son had some problems today. I just want to let you know that someone crumpled up his monkey while he was out in the hall," I told her.

"I know!" she said. "It was ME! He was just playing with that thing, and not paying attention!"

My jaw hit the floor.

"I`ll give him some more pipe cleaners, and he can make another one. But now I`m late for my meeting!" she said, and raced away.

What can I say? I`m sure Big Son was indeed playing with his monkey, and not paying attention, and generally behaving badly, or she wouldn`t have sent him out to the hall. But to crumple up his monkey while he was out of the room, and let him think his peers did it?

The sad part is, I was really relieved that his classmates didn`t do it. I was able to tell Big Son that no, it wasn`t one of his friends -- it was his teacher, whom he already hates, so no new damage was done. Just plenty of old damage. In fact, I see a pattern forming here.

How to break it?

"Five Weird Things"

MFA Mama has come up with a challenge that`s "worse than a meme." She says it's "perhaps the most conceited thing ever to happen in the blogosphere." That got my attention, as superlatives always do. She has challenged a few bloggers in particular, including me, to participate in what she calls a "Workshop," and has also opened it to the blogosphere at large, in case anyone else wants to join in the fun. "I thought I'd keep track, just for grins, over the course of the academic term and award prizes at the end of the `semester,`" she says.

I hated school, so I`m bound to hate anything that reminds me of school. However, I like her assignment for this week, which is to "write five weird things about yourself." Her own example list has five sequentially related items.

I spent most of today hacking our next-door neighbor`s raspberry bushes down, because they kept reaching out and grabbing my children. This wouldn`t be a very good subject to blog about, however -- you would all be asleep after a few sentences. So I think I will do MFA Mama`s "five related weird items" list. Here goes:

1) When Hub and I were young and pathetically immature and had been married for a couple of turbulent, dish-throwing years, we had the worst fight of our marriage over a brief pregnancy and early miscarriage I had. You all know this story has a happy ending -- we stayed together and had three children. But things did not look very hopeful at one point. A single impulsive unprotected encounter led to two lines on a home pregnancy test, and Hub came home one night and found me weeping at the kitchen table. He got really angry. "This isn`t how I wanted it to be," he said. "I wanted my wife to be happy when she told me the news -- not crying!" Oh, right -- this is all about YOU, and your perfect experience, I thought. Or maybe I actually said it out loud, come to think of it.

Japanese national health insurance does not cover childbirth. We had no savings, and I had a mountain of student loans I was slowly paying off. But okay, fine -- we would borrow more money, and I would have the baby. Nope, think again -- a few days after seeing the little heartbeat in the ultrasound, I lost it, at around 7 weeks. I was so relieved that what I felt can only be described as ecstatic; Hub was devastated, and stopped speaking to me for a while. "Maybe it died because you didn`t want it," he said. I pointed out that if it were possible to simply wish away an unwanted pregnancy, no woman would ever have to seek an abortion.

2) My doctor didn`t believe me when I called her and told her I was miscarrying. This was probably a very good thing -- it saved me from going to a Japanese public hospital, which I`m fairly sure would have been much worse than dealing with it by myself at home. I called her on Friday, and she said she was too busy to see me that day, so could I please come in on Monday? On Monday, she did another ultrasound, and said, in a voice loud enough for everyone in her waiting room to hear, "Oh, my God -- the baby is GONE!" Yes, indeed, I said, don`t you remember my frantic phone call? "I never believe first-time mothers when they`re panicking," she said. "They see a little blood, and they exagerrate." Well, I wasn`t exagerrating, I said. When I left, there were six pregnant women in her waiting room, and they all stared at me as I walked out, with mixed expressions of curiosity, sympathy and horror. The doctor told me to go home and rest, and instead I went straight to work, because I didn`t have paid sick days at my job, and damned if I was going to waste any vacation days.

3) Hub was horrified that I had flushed the dead embryo down the toilet, which led to the most surreal argument we`ve ever had. I made the profound mistake of telling Hub I had seen the embryo. If this grosses you out, stop reading now. I found something flesh-colored with dark veins, about the size of a very small bean, with a fat red spider attached to it. I thought the bean was the embryo, but my doctor told me later that it was most likely the placenta, meaning the embryo was the spider part. Flushing it down the toilet truly seemed like the most appropriate thing to do at the time. In Japan, however, even pet goldfish usually get funerals instead of "burial at sea." Hub said, "You flushed our baby down the toilet?!?" It wasn`t a baby, I said. It was a tiny little bean and a spider! What was I supposed to do, save it in a little jar and have it baptized?!? Ick!!!

4) Almost a year later, a quack counselor told me I would never be mentally healthy again until I "admitted that what I lost was a child." Right before Hub was transferred from Tokyo to Los Angeles, I started getting anxious about the move. (Anyone see a pattern here?) A friend recommended an English-speaking counseling center, and so I decided it couldn`t hurt to talk to someone. Well, my friend`s counselor wasn`t available, and the guy who saw me instead handed me his business card, on which I noticed his title was not, "Doctor," or MA, or Phd, or even "therapist," but, "Reverend," which should have tipped me off. I started telling him about how I had just quit my job to follow Hub to a strange new city where I had few friends. He asked if we had children, and I said no. Later, he asked if we planned to have children, and I mentioned I`d had a miscarriage. "Aha!" he said, "So you had a child, but lost it." No, I said, I lost a pregnancy, but it hadn`t gotten to the "child" point. It was very early, and I hadn`t wanted to have it, anyway, and wasn`t even sad afterward. "What you lost was a child," he insisted. "You think you weren`t sad, but of course you were. You need to admit this. This is the source of all your problems." He was so dead wrong that it was almost funny -- except that I had paid him in advance.

5) I didn`t tell my Japanese mother-in-law about the miscarriage, because I was afraid she would dedicate one of those Buddhist "Mizuko Jizo" statues to it. "Mizuko" literally means "water child" and is used to describe the soul of a baby who was aborted, miscarried, stillborn or died within 40 days of birth. If you go to certain Buddhist temples, you can see rows and rows of these statues, dedicated by the people who lost or aborted the babies. Hub assured me his mother would never do anything like that, but I took no chances. I think I eventually told her years later, but at the time, I thought the idea was so creepy that I swore him to secrecy, too.

Is anyone still reading this far...?

Unchurched Again

As I said in my first post yesterday, Saturday mornings here have become tense, even hostile times, as Hub drags the two unwilling older kids out of bed and takes them to Japanese school.

So I admit, I saw it coming this morning when Big Son and Daughter balked at going to church with me. They reacted exactly the same as they now do every Saturday -- they said, "NOOOOOO!" and scrunched the pillows over their faces, and asked, "WHY? WHY WHY?" They got out of bed with faces so long they dragged on the floor. They shot me looks of pure hatred, the same looks they give Hub.

But I was ready for it. "Fine," I said. "Don`t go. I`m not going to make you."

"Okay," said Daughter, and went back to bed, without a second thought.

Big Son, though, seemed surprised that church was suddenly optional, and thought it over.

"Well, I guess I won`t go this week. But I`ll pray for Nobu at home."

Nobu is his little friend who died. That was the whole reason we started going to church in the first place -- to pray for Nobu.

"I don`t think there`s a God, but I`ll pray for him, just in case," Big Son quickly explained, seeing the questioning look on my face.

"Well, if you want to come with me to church, I would be happy," I said. This is true -- I like going to church with the kids. I really do.

It occurred to me, if the kids didn`t come with me, I could just leave the house for an hour and go to the coffee shop and read a magazine, then go home and say I`d been at church. But this wouldn`t have felt right. I suppose I could have stayed home, too, but I figured I`d set an example, in case the kids changed their minds.

So I went to church by myself this week. I`m not a very traditionally religious person and on the whole, I`m a pretty rotten Catholic, but I do like church. I like the dim light, the candles, the stained glass windows, the organ music and hearing the familiar prayers. I feel very close to my grandmother there, and if it`s possible to feel God`s love on earth, I think it was the way my grandmother loved me. These are all good things. And really, is there a bad reason to go to church?

The funniest part was, Hub -- who calls himself a Buddhist, but actually practices some kind of pagan ancestor worship -- was quite impressed I went to church by myself today.

"Wow, it`s great you go every week, no matter what," he said.

This proves that some people worship routine. And gee, lots of these people happen to be Japanese, but that`s another story.

Okay, I did that dumb trivia link....

....you know, the one at http://thesurrealist.co.uk/trivia.pl -- all my blog pals seem to be doing it. And here is what I got, interspersed with my own comments about the veracity of each statement their program spit out for me:

Ten Top Trivia Tips about L.
Only twelve people have ever set foot on L. (If they`re speaking metaphorically, the actual number is exponentially higher.)
You share your birthday with L. (I do indeed.)
The patron saint of L. is Saint Eugenie. (No, it`s Clare of Assisi -- not even close.)
The number one cause of blindness in the United States is L. (I plead the Fifth on that.)
Only 55 percent of Americans know that the sun is made of L. (I would have guessed a much lower figure, since I brighten so few people`s days.)
By tradition, a girl standing under L. cannot refuse to be kissed by anyone who claims the privilege. (Wow, that`s so....butch.)
Until the 1960s, L. was not allowed to enter Disneyland. (This is true, since I was not born until 1965.)
The canonical hours of the Christian church are matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, L. and compline. (Alas, I wouldn`t know.)
The only Englishman to become L. was Nicholas Breakspear, who was L. from 1154 to 1159. (I had no idea I was one in a long unbroken chain of L.`s going back to the Middle Ages.)
L. will often glow under UV light. (Like cat piss!)

The Valiant Struggle to Remain Horizontal

The big kids are still going to Japanese school all day Saturday, and they hate it. Every Friday night, they whine and complain that half of their weekend will be wasted. Hub attempts to come home from work at a reasonable hour to help them with their homework, which of course neither of them ever finish. There are usually arguments, with harsh words and tears. Somewhere, a door will slam.

I try to stay out of this. In principle, I support the idea of maintaining the kids` Japanese language skills, since we plan to go back to Tokyo in 4 years when Hub`s posting is over. But I`m not sure this Saturday school is the best way. I have tried to discuss this privately with Hub, but he gets defensive and upset, and probably feels as if the whole household is against him. So I`m giving it a little more time.

Every Saturday, using the best passive-aggressive techniques that I mastered in Japan (and believe me, this did not come naturally -- I`m more the aggressive-aggressive type when something pisses me off), I make every attempt to sleep late, and totally remove myself from the morning routine.

Using his own best passive-aggressive techniques, Hub makes every attempt to wake me up.

I usually make the kids` lunches the night before, and leave them in the fridge. But Hub will still nudge me and say, "Where are their lunches?"

I tell him.

"Which lunch goes to which kid?"

Ask them.

"What should they bring to drink?"

Whatever they want.

There is always something he has to check on the computer before he leaves. The computer is in our bedroom. I put a pillow over my face.

This morning, he said, "I`m going to do some errands after I bring them to school."

Fine, I said. Do whatever you want.

Then he does the unforgivable -- he wakes up Little Son, who had been sleeping peacefully in the boys` room. I guess Hub just wanted to cuddle him before he left. Okay, fine, I understand that -- it`s very hard to resist cuddling Little Son. But now Little Son was wide awake, to continue doing his father`s dirty work after he and the big kids finally left.

"Wake UP, Mama! It`s moooooorning!" he sang.

Little Son was eating a banana. "No eating in the bedroom. Go watch some TV," I said.

He watched TV. I fell back to sleep. For 10 minutes.

"Mama?"

"Ummpf. WHAT?"

"Watcha doing?"

"SLEEPING."

"Oh. Will you cuddle me?"

Who could resist that? Talk about getting out the heavy artillery.

So I lifted up the covers for him to get into bed. Miraculously, he closed his eyes and snuggled next to me, and I hoped against hope that I would be able to fall back to sleep.

"Mama?"

"What?"

"Will you rub my feet?" He knows I never refuse.

"Mmmmmm. Goooooood. Now rub my tummy, Mama."

Okay, I decided to surrender to this and give up on sleep. So I asked him, "What do you want to do today?"

"All day cuddle Mama."

I definitely did not emerge victorious in this morning`s sleep battle. But when it`s Little Son I`m fighting, even when I lose, I win.

A Few Christmas Afterthoughts

So I saw our Russian neighbor and asked him what the deal was about his Christmas tree, the one he put up the day after Christmas.

"It wasn`t a Christmas tree," he said. "It was just....a tree. You know? We had it for New Year`s Day."

He said while Russian Orthodox Christmas was indeed observed on Jan. 7 this year, his particular tree had nothing to do with it.

"No trees for Russian Christmas," he said. "It was not a Christmas tree. It was just a tree. You know? A tree."

What a way to get a bargain -- I`ll bet he got it for next to nothing, or perhaps for truly nothing. Or maybe someone even paid him to take it away.

And speaking of Christmas, remember how Big Son asked me why Papa celebrated Christmas if he didn`t believe in Jesus? I asked Big Son, "If you`ve decided you don`t believe in God, does that mean you don`t want to celebrate Christmas anymore?"

"I still believe in Jesus," he said.

"Well, why? Jesus was God, too."

"No, he wasn`t. He was a great man who knew everything, but he wasn`t God."

"But Jesus said he was God," I pointed out.

Big Son had an opinion on that point, too. "Jesus was probably only kidding when he said he was God, but he was so great that people believed him."

No wonder Huggy Nun keeps sighing, and telling me that Big Son is her "cross to bear." Some nuns get off easy, and just have to wash the feet of lepers, but Huggy Nun has to face my homesick little Buddhist/athiest in a classroom everyday.

It`s enough to drive a nun to drink.

Oops....

Forgot to answer one question. Kath2003sma asked, "do you think blogging is the new journalism?"

Short answer: Nope.

Long answer: Was radio the new journalism? Was TV the new journalism? Did one entirely replace the other? No, it`s just one more source of information and opinion -- mostly the latter. Humans have been keeping some kind of diaries going back to, well, I guess going back to cave paintings. There are millions and millions of blogs out there. Until someone comes up with a way to organize them, I can`t see how we`re all going to have as much impact as a news program or online publication. So, nope, we`re just more rotting leaves on the compost pile -- that`s all, folks. Enjoy.

Wow...

I have a postcard of a drawing, with the caption, "Unusually Repulsive Cat Startled by a Gesture of Affection." That`s how I feel, looking at my comments. Okay, so I DID leave that post on top of my blog for an extra day, like a cheap floozy propositioning as many sailors as she can. But I`m mighty glad I did a delurking post after all.

To be sure, I didn`t get 78 comments like MFA Mama did. I didn`t get 460 comments like Finslippy. Nor did I get so many comments that I decided to shut them down entirely months and months ago, like Dooce, whose husband was able to quit his job because they can live on the ad revenue from her blog. I told Hub about her, and he didn`t believe me. (I mean, wouldn`t it be hilarious if Dooce turned out to be the blogging equivalent of James Frey or JT Leroy, and Heather Armstrong is really not the sharp, witty stay-at-home mother of an adorable baby girl, but some childless old fart who created the whole persona from scratch to get attention?)

But I think I got just the right number of comments, so that a personal response to each one is possible, and I can also return your favor and start reading all of your blogs, too. This would not be possible past a certain number, because, well, I do at least try to have a life outside my computer, though whether I succeed or not depends on your definition of "a life."

So, to continue... in the order of comments received:

1) Becky, I confess I didn`t believe you when you said you asked for delurkers and got zero -- not even one from your husband. I am sorry for doubting you. I feel like the man with cheap shoes complaining to the man with no feet.

2) Granny -- hi. Keep it up!

3) Jen, thanks for helping me set up my blog (which is why Jen is listed as a "contributor" at the top, in case any of you have ever wondered). I think I already answered your question in this post, but I will recap: our household consists of an English-speaking mother who speaks only English to the kids but Japanese to the father, who sometimes speaks English to the mother but never to the kids. The kids speak Japanese to their father and to each other, but only English to their mother. If you find that confusing, it might help to draw a little chart, with arrows.

4) Kath2003sma, I`m guessing you went to Sacred Heart? I`ve heard stories. And you married a French guy instead of a Japanese guy? Oh, lucky you! You wanna trade? (Just kidding, Hub. Stop reading my blog if it upsets you so much.)

5) Faith, thanks. I think you are the first human who has ever called me, "personable." This makes me really, really like you.

6) AmericanFamily, I have lurked on your blog, too, on and off, for nearly a year. I think I found you through comments on Blogging Baby. Raising a mixed-race part-Asian family in SF is as easy as breathing, but it seems to be a different story sometimes in the Midwest.

7) JW, `nuff said.

8) Andrea, it looks as if half my commenters found me through your blog! What can I say, except, THANKS. And yes, I checked out the foreign wives link. Thanks again.

9) Uncle Roger -- hi, neighbor! It`s a beautiful day in the neeeeeeeeeighborhood....

10) Christine & Eishichi, I will enjoy following the story of another mixed couple in Japan. I really hope your father-in-law doesn`t make you eat sea cucumbers, as mine does.

11) Sedmikraska, you win the prize for weirdest question. Did I ever attend a Baptist uni? Is that short for "university," or is it some other slang of which I am not aware? To the best of my knowledge, I have never attended a Baptist anything, except for a mothers` group in LA that met at a Southern Baptist church hall. Um.... why do you ask? Is there something about me that strikes you as particularly Baptist? Is it all my swear words and references to consuming great quantities of alcohol?

12) Frannytop -- another Canadian reader. I seem to be attracting a fair number of readers from north of the border. Is it because I hate America? C`mon, you can tell me -- is that what it is?

13) Tertia -- yours was the very first personal blog I ever read, from the link on Blogging Baby (which was the very first blog of any kind I ever read). You are my blogging idol, and every time I hear from you, it`s as thrilling as hearing from Oprah or something. (No, even more -- I`m not much of an Oprah fan, because I don`t watch much TV). The idea that someone in South Africa is reading about my boring life here in SF is really, really cool. And I am utterly in AWE that you shave your cooter. (Oh, Hub -- I did warn you not to read this!) I raise my glass (of wine) to you.

14) Dutch, you and Wood and Juniper are the cutest, coolest family. Heartwarming, with an edge. Okay, I had better stop, before I gush too much, and you start worrying about me stalking you. That is NOT me sitting in the car parked outside your building, I swear. Really.

15) Sally, since you`re a graphic designer, I am imagining you as a cool, arty type of person. I am also envisioning friendly dogs that smile and wag their tails. And I am picturing horrible winter weather in Chicago, and wondering how you get any work done stuck in the house with your kids? Kudos to you, and your comment has raised more questions than it answered!

16) J. -- my God, I never knew you existed, and you have me blogrolled! Imagine THAT! I do think I remember you commenting once when I was complaining about doing laundry. (I usually click on the link to other people`s blogs if they leave comments on mine, but I do get busy and miss some -- hey, I`m human, sorry!)
Okay, about the laundry -- the truth is, I really don`t mind doing it. For several years, when I was young and single in Tokyo, I had to do my laundry at a laundromat. Since then, having my own washer and dryer has always felt like a luxury. I throw the dirty clothing in the machine in the comfort and privacy of my own home, press a few buttons, throw it in another machine, and voila -- it`s done. As for putting it all away, I have that very simplified -- all three kids` clothes are kept in dressers in our guest room, right next to the laundry room. If they want to bring some clothes to their own rooms, fine, but they have to do that part themselves. When I was working fulltime, I used to throw Hub`s clothes in a big, wrinkled pile in front of his closet, for him to fold and put away. Now that I have more time, I do fold them, and put the stack inside his closet door, so I don`t have to look at it. I don`t iron, however. Never. Never ever ever.

17) Val, when I was little I wanted to be a veterinarian because I truly love animals. But I am very allergic to fur -- I get all sneezy and wheezy and sometimes even itchy, especially from horses. I read your blog and envy your life, except for the cancer part. Yeah, your cancer is a bitch. I hope it spontaneously disappears, along with your ex-husband.

18) Autumn`s Mom -- were you really never going to delurk, if J. hadn`t outted you? Another person who had me blogrolled -- right under Dooce herself, for godssake! And you know me from MIM -- that`s some introduction.

19) MFA Mama, hey, shut up, will ya? Who are you calling a whore? Look at the whore calling a whore a whore! WHORE!

20) Kitsunekaze, thank you for saying I`m "not stupid." Be assured that I am still challenged in many other ways, ways in which intelligence can`t save me. As I`ve said before on "I`m Not Sorry," I really love your name.

21) Hello, Midori in Kagoshima! I`ve never been there, but I heard it`s pretty. One of my best friends in Tokyo has a son who also burned his hand on a supposedly baby-safe humidifier, and he later had to have plastic surgery and a skin graft to get rid of scar tissue because he wasn`t using one of his fingers. Those things need more warnings -- I`ll bet this happens more than people think.

22) Angela, as for getting magic markers off walls, I`ve found that if Mr. Clean Magic Erasers don`t do the job, the only thing to do is paint over them. Anyone else have any ideas?

23) Andie D.! Stay-at-home-cowgirl! Whenever I open your site, Little Son points to your blog template and says, "kaba," which is the Japanese word for hippo. And this is very, very cute. So whenever he`s sitting on my lap, you get a ton of extra clicks.

24) Mo-wo, what do you mean by the "tantalizing reserve and mystery of your persona?" Do you realize that if I revealed ALL the details of my mundane life and experiences, even my old friends would stop reading my blog? And goddamnit, I`m a First Ammendment fanatic -- if I want to do a delurking post, then I will exercise my right to do one. And as for your question about weird festivals, I`ve heard of places in Japan that have some dedicated to penises, but our neighborhood shrine just had one dedicated to rain for crops. Sorry. Actually, considering how little land is devoted to agriculture and how many hostess bars there are in Tokyo (especially since we lived very near Roppongi), it would have made much more sense to have one dedicated to penises.

25) Carolyn R. from Michigan -- you don`t have a blog? How will the rest of us know what it`s like to raise a "caboose" kid, with much older siblings? I`ve wondered about that.

26) Carrie Jo, you found me through Tertia`s blog, so I hope some of her eventual great luck in creating beautiful offspring rubbed off onto you.

Whew! I`m tired now. I will publish this, and then, to bring myself back down to earth, I will go read a copy of my performance evaluation I got a few months after I returned to work following my maternity leave with Little Son -- let`s just say it didn`t refer to me as "personable" or "smart."

And thanks again. Really. I love you guys!

Never too late to ask people to delurk....?

I missed International Blog Comment Delurk Week last week. Well, I admit, I missed it on purpose. Of course I knew about it from reading other people`s blogs, but I couldn`t muster the nerve to try it myself.

Lots of my blogging pals did, and were rewarded with like 69 gazillion comments. I thought, what if I did it, and got even fewer comments than I normally get? Do I really want to know that no one reads my blog?

Those were my thoughts last week. Last week was rainy and grey, and I spent too much time ruminating on grim thoughts. But right now, the sun is shining, I can see the ocean shimmering in the distance, and I honestly do not give a rat`s ass if I only get a handful of comments. Or even none at all.

After all, the only reason I started this blog was to save time on personal email. I was spending too much time sending messages to my far-flung friends, particularly, those we left behind in Tokyo, updating them on the mundane details of my life. I was also emailing new people I met on other blogs, and introducing myself. So I figured, why not combine all of that, in a single daily dispatch?

I did initially resist the idea of starting my own blog (I think I said something along the lines of, I`d rather go to other people`s parties instead of throwing one of my own), but I`m very glad I took the plunge.

I know many of my old friends read this because they email me. I know many of my new friends in the blogosphere read this, because I have a wonderful core group of readers and they leave comments regularly. And I was thoroughly tickled to know that one reader, a Catholic priest (and brand new blogger himself -- welcome, JW!) found his way to this site by searching, " latae sententiae." How cool is that?

Who are the rest of you? Where are you? And why do you read my blog? Do you have kids? Pets? Bunions? I am truly curious, and would love to know who you are, even if you never delurk again.

And if anyone has any questions they`d like to ask me, or requests for future posts, go right ahead. I was a reporter for many years, remember? So I`m used to getting assignments. (Just don`t expect me to meet any deadlines unless you pay me.)

Thanks.

Happy Martin Luther King Day

Today is Martin Luther King Day here.

No, it`s not a holiday "just for black people," as I overheard someone say in Target the other day. I want my part-Asian kids to fully appreciate what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did to jump-start desegregation in the 1960's, which led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and helped make life easier for all interracial families like ours.

The neighborhood in which now live, built in the 1920`s, was one of the first developments in the United States to be governed by a covenant, which limited house ownership to Caucasians and excluded people of African, Japanese, Chinese and other Asian descent.

The 1922 Cable Act said that any female citizen who married an alien ineligible for U.S. citizenship, such as one from an Asian country, would in turn lose her citizenship.

California was the first state to do away with its ban on interracial marriage, in 1948 -- meaning that when my parents were kids, their future daughter`s future marriage was still illegal. (I`m fairly sure this did not occur to either one of them at the time, because they were too busy making mud pies and watching Howdy Doody.)

One thing I really love about my kids` school is that most of the students are some shade of light brown -- mixtures of two or even three different races. My own kids fit right in.

Funny story -- when I first told Hub I wanted the kids to go to this school, I showed him the web site.

"Hey, there are no white kids!" he remarked, after looking at the few pictures on the site at that time.

"But our own kids aren`t white. And, wait a minute -- you`re not white!"

"I know," he said, "I was just making an observation."

Well, fine. Race still matters -- it`s still an issue, and probably will be for a long time, in one way or another. But look how far things have come in my parents` lifetime -- how far will it go in my children`s lifetime?

Thanks to people like Dr. King, things seem to be bumping along in the right direction.

Followup: Brother, can you spare a tip?

My brother attempted to tip the guy who bagged our groceries yesterday. The guy quietly waved him away, and looked a bit embarrassed.

"Um... nobody does that," I said.

I wonder, is that a NYC thing, or does my brother just not do much ordinary grocery shopping?

My sister-in-law, who truly is the nicest person, said she has a standard line she uses when someone has helped her, and she wants to do something for them, but doesn`t know if they accept tips -- or worse, if the offer of a tip would embarrass or upset them. Some situations are crystal clear -- waiters, hair-stylists, cab drivers etc. But what about people in the gray area, like a store employee who performs an extra service or someone who goes out their way to be helpful?

I think I will start using my sister-in-law`s line. She always says, "Here, let me at least buy you a cup of coffee." And people accept her money.

Still, I doubt it would have worked for my brother with the grocery bagger. Oh, well.

Brother, can you spare an insult?

My only brother is in town. I hadn`t seen him in more than seven years, since the summer before we moved back to Tokyo. He hadn`t seen the big kids since they were tiny, and had never met Little Son until today.

He saw Daughter and said, "Wow, she doesn`t look like you at all. She`s really pretty!"

Yep, that`s the brother I remember. Nice to know some things never change.

The Lamest Post in the History of Blogging.

This afternoon I drove down to Ikea and bought some ice cube trays.

Hmmmm. That works as a haiku.

This afternoon I
Drove down to Ikea and
Bought some ice cube trays.

All right, I give up. There`s no way to make my day sound any more interesting. But it was a good day -- the trays are really cool shapes, I met an old friend there, and we had nonfat frozen yogurt cones and talked about our kids and her divorce.

I also bought some
Inexpensive and useful
Plastic containers.

Hmmmm. Maybe I really DO need to get a job....

Deep Thoughts

Big Son has been sleeping in a sleeping bag next to my futon lately. We have always played "musical beds," and now that we have a bigger house with more sleeping options, the game has gotten even more interesting. We often all end up sleeping in one room, as we did in Tokyo.

Last night, before he fell asleep, Big Son said, "Mama? I don`t believe in God."

I asked, "Why?"

He said, "Because if there really was an all-powerful God, why did he let Jesus die? Why did he let my friend Nobu die? It doesn`t make any sense."

I don`t think I gave him the Vatican-approved answer. I just said, "Yeah, that`s a tough one. It`s good you`re thinking about these things, and it`s up to you what you decide you believe in your own heart and mind."

Big Son is 10. I was about a year younger than he was when I started really asking questions like that. But I had been immersed in the whole Catholic thing since birth, whereas he`s just getting into it, so it`s interesting that his doubts have arrived on roughly the same schedule.

How do you explain to a kid that for some people, faith equals belief, while for others of us, it`s more like the conscious suppression of disbelief?

"You know," I said, "I don`t really think of God as a person. It`s more of a feeling to me. You know the feeling you get when you`re outside on a beautiful sunny day? Or when you`re with someone who loves you?"

But he was already asleep, and snoring gently.

This morning, I asked him if he remembered what he said right before he fell asleep.

"Yeah," he said. "I said I didn`t believe in God. If God is supposed to be so good, why did he make nuns?""

"So much for Catholic school," said Hub, ever the good Buddhist.

Yessir, that`s our boy!

Daughter`s Incredibly Bad Hair Day

I got a call from the big kids` school yesterday.

"It`s not Big Son," said the office administrator. That had in fact been my first thought.

It turned out to be an emergency of the very lowest urgency. Lately, Daughter has been using a "gummy eraser." It`s kind of like a blob of clay, that also erases pencil marks. Maybe it`s more accurate to describe it as a blob of chewing gum. Somehow, Daughter had gotten this blob caught in her hair, and couldn`t get it out.

"Can you come?" asked the administrator.

"Um... can`t you just cut it?"

"You have to see this to believe this."

Sure enough, Daughter had managed to gum up most of the hair in the area immediately over her forehead. Snipping it was not a real option, at least if we wanted her to look normal for the next few weeks and not have a bald spot right over her face.

Poor Daughter looked like a small animal caught in a trap.

"How did you DO this?"

"I don`t knoooooooow! I was just playing, and then it was stuck!"

Drumroll, please --- Mama to the rescue. I brought a jar of peanut butter and a comb with me to the school, and in a few minutes Daughter rejoined her class, blob-free and unshorn.

I can`t believe no one at the school knew that peanut butter removes gum from hair. I thought everyone knew that.

Hub said later, "It`s a good thing you`re not working now, and you were at home when they called you. What if they couldn`t reach you? How can you even think about going back to work?"

Gee -- had I been unreachable, or too busy, I guess she would have spent the day with a blob of gummy stuff in her hair. It`s not exactly a severed limb we`re talking about here, it`s just hair.

Daughter actually asked me if she could have her eraser back. Um, NO. No way!

The eraser went into the garbage can -- the one in the teachers` lounge, which I knew Daughter wasn`t allowed to enter to surreptitiously retrieve it.

Grade Deflation

According to Social Studies Nun, Big Son`s average in her class is a whopping 7.9%. Obviously, he has missed a few projects and assignments.

"Nice going," I told him. "Can we at least try to get that into the double digits?"

"But Mama -- I don`t even know what `Social Studies` means."

I had thought the principal was going to have a little talk with Social Studies Nun, around the time he had a talk with Huggy Nun. I had mentioned to him that Big Son seemed to be struggling in her class, because 1) she has the thickest accent of the Philippina nuns, and he can`t always understand her; 2) the homework is more reading than he can keep up with, even more than his English or religion classes; and 3) the vocabulary is really tough for a kid not well-grounded in English -- words like, "pluralism" and "interactive." It takes him a long time to get through a single page, even with me helping him -- and he hates it when I help him. And I hate it that he hates it, so I always have to have a few glasses of wine to........calm down, y`know? Chill? Stop screaming?

Social Studies Nun gave me some assignments for him to finish in the next couple of weeks, so she`ll have something to actually grade him on. And she told me that Big Son had asked her what "Virginia" was. Well, yeah -- why is that surprising? I told her again that he`s been going to school in Japan. He`s been memorizing Japanese prefectures, not U.S. states.

But all is not lost: his average in math is a 97 --- nearly 90 points higher than his Social Studies grade. This, combined with his other mediocre grades, means that they really can`t make him repeat 5th grade, even if Social Studies Nun fails him. But it also means that Big Son will be getting a crash course in Social Studies in the next few months.

And it means that Mama`s wine consumption is going to go up in direct proportion.

Bring it on.....

Home Sweet Homesick Home

We`re baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

I knew it was going to be a memorable vacation when our car was towed away as we were checking into our hotel. Welcome to Los Angeles, where people live in their cars to avoid parking them.

We were too cheap to pay even the short-term parking fees, so we had parked on the street, in a metered space. It was in fact a legitimate parking space, except during rush hour, when it turned verboten. Somehow, both of us missed the sign that said, "NO STOPPING/ TOW AWAY ZONE/ 4PM-6PM."

So the damage was:

$1.25 -- Wasted in the parking meter
$7.00 -- Cab ride plus tip to city impound lot
$144.00 -- Towing charge/cost of retrieving our car from impound lot
$65.00 -- Ticket waiting for us on windshield of our car
--------
$ 217 .25 = Total damages, minus any trace of humor and goodwill for the rest of the weekend.

Big Son burst into tears and said it was all his fault the car wasn`t there. Hub had wanted to go directly to dinner, but Big Son really wanted to go to the hotel, so he blamed himself. "If I had listened to Papa, we would still have our car!"

I told him, no, it was Mama and Papa`s fault for not reading all of the signs. But I couldn`t help wonder, why doesn`t he feel as guilty for not doing his schoolwork? How come I can`t tap into his hidden reservoir of guilt?

I tried to look on the bright side. It could have been worse -- the car could have been stolen, or we could have been in a serious accident. And the amount was less than the $300 speeding ticket I was sure Hub was going to get for racing on the freeway. And the best part was, Hub -- not I -- had been driving when we parked there, so although he did try to blame me for not reading all the signs, it was clear that he hadn`t read them all himself.

Also, while the waste of money is painful to think about, at least we are at a point in our lives where it wasn`t a make-or-break sum. When we were newlyweds, that amount would have represented a substantial portion of our net worth.

Nothing drove this point home more than seeing the other people waiting in line with us at the city impound lot, many of whom looked as if they were about to spend their last dollars getting their cars back. One elderly Chinese woman was actually crying.

"This not fair! I write letter to city!" she said, and then turned to me, and ordered, "You write letter, too! We all write letter, okay?"

I assured her I would, although what would ours say? "Dear City of Los Angeles: Please put up even more parking signs, totally idiot-proof, in enormous letters lined with blinking neon, so that even sleep-deprived parents who have just spent six hours in a minivan with 3 young children can`t fail to notice them."

There was one moment of high drama, when the impound clerk insisted that the name on my license didn`t match the name on the car registration. I wasn`t too worried, because it`s registered in both of our names so Hub could have signed for it, but I didn`t want to spend any longer than necessary at that place.

"Look carefully,"I said slowly and patiently. "The name on my license IS right there on the registration, but with another name after it. The other name is the same name as the other registered owner, because we got married. See?"

But on the registration, both of my names were written together as one long name, with no space between them. This really threw the man, whose name on his nametag was "Jr. G." I wondered if that meant there was more than one "Jr." working at the impound lot. Perhaps there was even a whole squad of "Jr.`s." ---- "Jr. T.," "Jr. C., "Jr. S...." If you went out into the lot and yelled, "Hey, Junior," how many people would turn around?

Finally, a little light went on in Jr. G.`s head. "Ooooooh, I see! It is the same names! They just look different because there`s no space between `em."

Uh-huh, right. I didn`t even have the energy to be annoyed. In fact, I felt kind of sorry for him.

"Every single person you deal with is having a bad day, aren`t they?" I asked him.

"Oh, yeah," he sighed.

Of course, this included us, too.

"You`re going to write about this on your blog, aren`t you?" asked Hub through gritted teeth.

Oh, yeah, I said.

We had great weather, and it was great to see the few friends I did manage to see, but all in all, it`s good to back in the Homesick Home. As soon as I get the laundry under control, I`ll start reading all of your blogs, and see what I missed out there.

Now all I need is a vacation to recover from our vacation.

If you see someone in LA who looks homesick, it`s me.

In just a few hours, we will be on our way to Los Angeles. Unless we decide to bring the laptop after all, I will be taking a brief hiatus from blogging, until Monday.

We`re driving down 5, and back on 101, which takes longer but is more scenic -- that is, when mudslides don`t close it. We`re stopping in Carpenteria to visit friends on the way back.

This is the first trip we`ve taken since moving to SF. We`re only going for a long weekend, and yet it seems to require more preparation than a polar expedition. Why is that?

I apologize in advance for not calling most of my friends in LA, but this trip was all Hub`s idea, and he has our schedule mapped out like, well, like a polar expedition. Come Monday, I`m sure I will have a long list of complaints and pent-up ranting to vent, so stay tuned.

P.S. I went to the DMV today and got new stickers for our license plate. I figure, I`m going to fall asleep on 5 because the scenery is so boring, and Hub is going to speed, and when the cop asks to see our registration, he will notice that it`s from July and ask why the hell we still have dealer plates, and give us another ticket. Right? Right.

Uneasy Rider

We are about to go away to Los Angeles for a long weekend, and the preparation is driving me totally insane.

Just now, Hub finally affixed the license plates to our "new" minivan. We bought it in July, and before the plates arrived, Mazda recalled it and held it hostage for over a month.

When we finally got it back, I nagged Hub to put the plates on it. But he knows that this is something I am fully capable of doing myself, so he took the Japanese passive-aggressive approach and said, "Okay, okay, okay,” and then did nothing.

A game of chicken ensued. Meanwhile, the car still had dealer plates and a temporary registration sticker in the window. Theoretically, we weren`t doing anything recognizably illegal or dangerous, so this could have gone on forever.

But before we embarked on a long car trip, Hub finally cracked, and put the plates on today -- then came and asked me where the registration stickers were. I said, they should be together with the plates -- the little stickers displaying the month and year should be there in the same envelope.

They weren`t. Of course, this envelope has been sitting in the corner of our living room for several months, so anything could have happened to it in the meantime.

But it was very important to Hub to play The Blame Game. Things like car registration stickers fall under the "household" category, so clearly if something is amiss, it must be due to my failure to perform my share of our responsibilities.

We have several copies of the paper registration. Hub theorized that the stickers came in a separate envelope with these, and that, "You must have thrown out the stickers because you always put old envelopes with the recycled paper." He felt compelled to create a scenario in his head in which the lack of stickers was clearly my fault. I must have thrown them out -- that was the ONLY explanation, so I needed to take responsibility, and show the proper remorse.

Well, I have no idea where the stickers are, but as Chief Sanitation Engineer of this household, I can say with certainty that I did not throw them away by mistake.

So instead of groveling, I did what a Japanese man would do -- I shrugged, and walked away.

I went to the computer and checked the DMV web site to see how to get duplicate stickers -- and also noted that the site said stickers are in fact sent together with license plants. We still had the envelope for the license plates -- I hadn`t thrown it out. I pointed this out to Hub, so now I can hear the gears in Hub`s head grinding, figuring out how to come up with another theory to directly blame me for the loss of the stickers.

Now the big question is, do I spend the day before we leave on our trip waiting in line at the DMV to get new stickers, or do I put the dealer plates back on?

We haven`t even left yet, and we`re already arguing. This will be one tense road trip.

But perhaps it will be better if we`re not on speaking terms.

Loose Ends

Okay, today I will wrap up a few loose ends from 2005 that are still flapping in the breeze here.

Commenter Andrea asked me, am I still homesick for Tokyo? Yes, I am. I think it has a lot to do with Big Son`s adjustment problems -- much as I do like San Francisco, I can`t help but be nostalgic for the time when all of my kids were happy.

I miss other things, too. For Christmas, Hub got me an incense burner and some incense sticks, which he thought would have some cool San Francisco smell, but... of course, incense is incense. He apologized for getting me incense that smells like incense -- for him, it conjures up images of his parents burning it on their family alter and grave.

For me, it smells like morning in Tokyo. Our building was right across from a small yard in which a woman burned incense on her little dog`s grave every morning. I remember walking the big kids to school, and smelling that smell.

I`ve just lit some -- I`m smelling it right now. Yes, I`m definitely still homesick.

Other loose ends: the post about Hub making balloon animals was updated long ago, for people interested in how many balloons he gave away that day.

What else? Our Korean exchange students went home a while back, and the girl`s parents called a few days ago to wish us happy new year. The hideous sore on my lip finally healed and left a scar, that makes my mouth look slightly crooked. So my lower lip matches my stubbed toe, which is still sore and no longer bends all the way, but at least I can walk just fine.

Anything else? Yes -- Mo-Wo thinks I`m really nice. Not just nice, but really nice. Damn -- niceness, the blog kiss of death. I will not hold this against her, though, because she also said I was smart, and that she agrees with me often. This is an excellent strategy: flatter me, and say you agree with me, and I will love you.

More? Yes -- Grumppopotomus has tagged me, in one of those blog games. Thanks -- I love attention, of any kind. But now I actually have to DO the chain letter exercise, so I will get it over with quickly.

Remove the top blog from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom.
Childsplayx2
The Weirdgirl
It's Not All Mary Poppins
Grumppopotamus
Homesick Home

Select five people to play.
Roc Rebel Granny
Andrea In Japan
Ipodmama
MFA Mama
I Was Asked

What were you doing ten years ago?
Ten years ago, I was a freelance journalist in Los Angeles, struggling to get work while taking care of Big Son. He was The Baby from Hell, but at the time, I didn`t realize it -- I thought all infants woke up every two hours and screamed whenever you tried to put them down for a minute, and that I was a bad mother because every time I passed a church, I fantasized about abandoning him on the steps so I could go home and take a nap.

What were you doing one year ago?
One year ago, I was doing the math to see how much my stock options were worth. I was the Tokyo-based Asia Bureau Chief for a really cool Internet news organization, which was about to be acquired by my former employer (they stalked me, I swear they did!). I had no idea my family was going to relocate to San Francisco, but I was expecting changes. I had really loved this job, and was haunted by the feeling that it was too good to be true. Surprise -- it was.

Five snacks you enjoy.
Sorry, not thinking about snacks now. I`m trying to fit in smaller underwear without dieting.

Five songs to which you know all the lyrics.
Damn -- all I can think of are kids` songs. This is too embarrassing. Next, please.

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire.
This presumes I`m not one already. Fair enough.
A million dollars doesn`t go far these days, and we have three kids and a mortgage. So quite honestly, I wouldn`t do anything differently. I would stick to what I`m doing now:
1) Diversify, in both types of investments and currencies (remember, we don`t know whether we`re going to be spending dollars or yen when we send our kids to college -- if they want to go, that is).
2) Consider tax implications -- I don`t mind paying taxes, but boy, do I mind over-paying taxes.
3) Save string. No matter how many gazllions of dollars I have, I will never get rid of my string collection.
4) Give to charity, and to the people around me. I try not to skimp now -- if I had more money, I would do it even more.
5) One luxury? If I were ever truly rich? I would travel more. Hub is a homebody, and the kids are still small, but some day when I retire, I hope we have enough saved so I can travel with my friends.

Five bad habits.
1) Worrying.
2) Fretting.
3) Getting paranoid.
4) Freaking out.
5) Can I stop now? Please?

Five things you like doing.
1) Having sex with strangers. Just kidding, Hub! Stop reading my blog if it upsets you!
2) Tickling the kids.
3) Drinking good wine and talking to people.
4) Drinking bad wine and talking to people.
5) Drinking coffee and talking to people.

Five things you would never wear or buy again.
1) Day-old sashimi.
2) Wine that comes in a six-pack.
3) Sake from a vending machine.
4) "One size fits all" stockings in Japan -- one size does NOT fit all, unless "fit" means having the crotch slip down to your knees every 5 minutes.
5) Rice pudding -- see above reference to, "snacks."

Five favorite toys.
1) My computer.
2) My garlic press.
3) My Black and Decker cordless grass shears.
4) My waffle iron.
5) Okay, this is the coolest one of all: Hub`s remote control 3-foot Godzilla. I bought it for him for Christmas when we were penniless newlyweds, and really couldn`t afford it -- I remember the look on his face when they delivered it. Oh, this is worth a post of its own someday.

That`s all, folks.

Oldie But Not-So Goodie

We started off 2006 by lying to our kids.

On New Year`s Eve, to fill up the time between our late dinner and the new year countdown, Hub wanted to watch a movie -- not just any movie, but one of his favorite movies of all time, Kurosawa`s Seven Samurai. Hub has an enormous DVD collection of every Japanese movie in print, including many even Japanese film buffs will find obscure -- but the classics are the classics, he always says.

It is not a wonderful movie for small kids, even kids who understand Japanese. I lied to them, and told them we were going to watch a Japanese version of A Bug`s Life. I mean, it wasn`t really a lie -- it is basically the same plot: an oppressed farming village goes in search of warriers to defend it from bandits. But instead of cute, colorful bugs, Seven Samurai features black-and-white humans speaking Japanese the kids couldn`t quite follow, because of all the old expressions.

Plus, it`s not cute and funny, not even a teeny tiny bit. I forgot how violent it was -- because it`s black and white, there`s no blood, but there`s lots of people getting killed in all different ways. So the kids were mostly bored out of their minds, but a little disturbed, too.

"What`s the old lady going to do with that shovel, Papa?"

"She`s going to kill the bandit to avenge the death of her family."

"Eeeeeewwwwww. That`s gross!"

Oh, well. Hub still has a decade or so to turn them into Japanese film buffs.

Happy New Year from all of us at the Homesick Home.