Counting down.....

Huggy Nun conference date set for 3:00 pm on March 9. Conveniently, next week is parent/ teacher conference week at the big kids` school.

"We don`t really need to meet, since we`re in such close contact about Big Son`s problems and he seems to be doing better now," said Huggy Nun.

Nice try, Sister. "Oh, actually, my husband really wants us all to meet, with Big Son`s counselor and Mr. Principal present," I told her. Sorry -- there`s no way to avoid facing THE MAN IN THE SUIT.

The big rainstorm that hit SF last night knocked out all the power at the school, and it was still down this morning. Cancel classes? Not a Catholic school! Through rain and snow and sleet.. etc. There`s plenty of light from the windows and hot lunch will be cooked with gas. But the good news is that none of the clocks work, so I guess all the tardy students got amnesty today.

Mr. Principal gave Big Son a custom-designed Social Studies plan and worksheets that he made up himself. It has all the same concepts as the other kids are learning and uses the same textbook, but easier words, and it`s shorter and he can do it at his own pace. I told Big Son I would help him with it, and he said, "No, I can do it myself." Yaaaay!

Now, the bad news: Wonder Number Woman, the math teacher, went home to the Philippines because her mother is dying. Everyone hopes she`ll come back soon.

Mr. Principal assured me that the substitute is a certified math teacher.

"Great," I said. "As long as it`s not another bipolar nun."

He laughed -- another good sign.

Life Just Isn`t Fair, Lesson #1

Little Son was sulking in the corner, with his head down on his knees.

"What`s wrong?" I asked him.

"I don`t have super powers," he sighed.

Sorry, kid. Live with it.

Monkey Business

My parents departed, and left behind a stack of magazines.

I just read Haruki Murakami`s A Shinagawa Monkey in the New Yorker, a fable about a monkey that steals people`s names. It reminded me that our own neighborhood in central Tokyo had a monkey, too.

We lived near a park in a hollow with a big clump of mature trees, and the monkey made several appearances there. We never saw him in the wild, but I knew people who did (and envied them, because of course I always looked for him). We heard that he used to swim sometimes in our elementary school`s pool. We also heard he was eventually captured and sent to a zoo.

I Googled this, and was happy to find some photos from 1999 on someone`s web site, of a crowd assembled to watch the monkey, as well as one of our neighbors offering him a banana.

I had heard various stories about what monkeys symbolized in Japan -- I remember someone saying that the sudden appearance of a monkey was never a good thing, because monkeys were something called marebito, spiritual beings sent by the gods to the human world, who brought misfortune to whatever village they visited. But I remember also hearing just the opposite, that they brought good fortune, too.

This Buddhist site told me more about monkeys in Japanese culture than I wanted to know.

Somehow, a monkey doesn`t seem out of place in that particular park. It`s the one that also had the Edo-era graveyard.

And who knows what else.

Weekend Wrap-up

So on Friday, I dragged my parents to "Chilidog Night" at our church, which was a fundraiser for our school's sports program.

I hadn`t signed up to work in the kitchen, but I was cold and went over to stand next to the steam table to get warm, and the next thing I knew, I was serving hot dogs. A bunch of my new friends sat with my parents, and kept them entertained.

The only downside of the evening was that the bartenders kept refilling my glass for free with cheap white wine, and I knew I would pay the price the next day -- especially since I had a bad cold coming on. I lose my judgment once I start drinking, so I`m careful to have no more to drink than the people around me. Unfortunately, the other kitchen worker was a very large Samoan woman, who probably could have downed several bottles and not felt it -- she wasn`t the greatest person against whom to pace myself.

Highlights of the evening: another mother of a boy in Big Son`s class said her son had told her horror stories about the way Huggy Nun punishes Big Son. "I was going to call you, to make sure you knew what was going on." I assured her I knew, and that the principal knew, too. Apparently, the amount of time Big Son spends sitting in the hallway is a big topic of conversation.

This woman`s son came up to her and asked her if Big Son could sleep over their house sometime. Now, this boy is someone whom Big Son repeatedly insists is NOT his friend -- obviously, Big Son has decided he has no friends, whereas the other boys in the class have made no such decisions. Other mothers have told me the same story. This makes me feel relieved, that Big Son hasn`t managed to alienate every other boy with his attitude. He may yet come to befriend some of his classmates, who for the most part seem like nice boys with nice parents.

Another highlight: Big Son read some books out loud with my parents, and the were "astounded" with how much reading progress he`s made since their last visit in September. Despite his low grades, information is in fact entering his brain at an amazing rate. This also makes me feel relieved. I guess I can`t see it, because I`m with him every day.

I`m going to close this post with an unrelated cute story. Little Son is suddenly obsessed with asking, "What time is it?"

Since he can`t tell time, and has only a loose grasp of numbers, he`s satisfied with any answer.

"It`s half past one," I`ll say, no matter what time it really is.

"Oh! Okay!"

No matter what time it is, he`s happy. This is definitely the way to be.

Funny Sunny Nunny

I went to pick up Big Son today, and Huggy Nun was waiting for me in the schoolyard.

Must...evade...nun... said my internal radar, but it was too late.

"There you are! I have to talk to you!" She actually came running over to me.

I braced myself.

"He did ALL his work today! After two weeks of not doing anything, he did it all, and he did it all well! Glory be to the father!"

I had not expected this. In fact, I had expected the opposite -- this morning, I asked Big Son if he had studied his spelling words, and he said he`d lost the paper. So I imagined him just putting his head on down on his desk, and crying, and refusing to take the test, and continuing his usual pattern of making a bad situation worse.

But no -- he had gotten a "B" on his spelling test. Without studying. And had done everything else, too.

Huggy Nun was genuinely ecstatic. I don`t think I`d ever seen her so animated -- short of developing stigmata, Big Son could not have done anything to impress her more. My elbows flailed right and left, as I positioned myself to fend off the hugs I knew were coming.

"He`s so bright! He can do the work if he wants to -- but he refuses to do anything he doesn`t like," Huggy Nun said.

Uh-oh... this was beginning to sound just like one of her "bad day" lectures. I started backing away.

I don`t think Huggy Nun is responsible for Big Son`s problems in the first place -- she just makes them worse once they start. It`s like a snowball rolling downhill, turning into an avalanche, and he doesn`t realize he has the power to get out of the way. He feels overwhelmed, and he puts his head down on his desk, convinced he doesn`t understand and nobody will ever make him understand.

"Big Son`s problems aren`t academic," I said. "They`re psychological. Really. This is why he sees the counselor every week."

She nodded, but I still don`t think she understands this.

So the week ended on a good note, but I can`t help but worry.

Did today`s "good day" just raise her expectations, and set the stage for the next "bad day" to be even worse?

We shall see. But at least we can all enjoy a day of sunshine for a change.

Where I Get My Good Manners

I was sitting on the floor.

My mother got up off the sofa to walk to the kitchen, and stepped right on my hand.

"OW! What do you say when you step on someone?"

"MOVE!"

Yup. That`s what she says.

That Ol' Language Thing

Actual conversation with my father, providing evidence that my tendency to get words mixed up all the time is hereditary:

"Those are nice wall scones."

"Um, they`re sconCes, Dad.

"Whatever."

Hot buttered sconces, anyone?

Food for Thought

I will NOT DWELL on the fact that my parents will be here in a few hours, nor on my older son`s perpetual Trouble with Nuns. No, I WILL NOT. Instead, I will conduct an exercise in positive thinking.

A funny story would be good right now. Odd, how I can always think of a gazillion funny stories to write about on my blog, until I sit down at my keyboard and consciously try to distract myself from stressful matters.

Oooh! Oooh! I`ve got one! The other day, I think I grossed out some of my new friends here, by revealing a little too much of my true self.

I`ve made some friends, with the mothers of other school kids. Our school has no shortage of nice, normal parents. A few of the moms are really into cooking healthy foods, and have been a wealth of information about where to buy what, where the best farmers` markets are, etc.

I love food. I truly do. Cooking food was one of the primary ways my late grandmother showed her love for us, and we showed our love for her by eating it.

But I`m not a gourmet type. While I do appreciate truly fine food, and enjoy it when I can, I can also appreciate food that`s, um.... not so fine. Often, my tastes run to the common, and sometimes even a little... well, gross.

I learned to cook from my grandmother, and it was only many years later that I realized she was not a "good" cook, according to most people`s definition of "good." Gramma was an expert in what I now call "Polish Poverty Cooking." Her creed was, "Never waste anything."

Many of her recipes call for sour milk, and this is a taste I associate with many of her dishes. I now make my sour milk by adding lemon juice to regular milk to curdle it, but it occurred to me that this ingredient was probably Gramma`s way of using up milk that had gone bad.

My grandmother`s mother died when she was 8 years old, and her stepmother was a serious alcoholic. So Gramma learned to cook from various aunts and cousins. She specialized in what Polish immigrant factory workers ate in the 1920`s and '30`s, so the scope of her culinary education encompassed the Great Depression.

As I result, I know dozens of ways to cook cabbage, and can make about 1,000 different kinds of soup.

I must say, everything I learned from Gramma came in mighty handy when I first moved to Tokyo, straight out of college, in 1987, and worked at various menial editorial jobs on the far fringes of my chosen field. These were Japan`s halcyon "Bubble" days, when the land surounding the Imperial Palace was valued at more than the entire state of California, when Japanese business were buying Pebble Beach and Rockefeller Center. Remember all that? It didn`t last -- it really was a giant soap bubble that sprang from the frothy banking system, and it soon popped and evaporated and left most Japanese people staring at the little wet spot on the pavement, wondering what happened.

When I was trying to stretch my tiny paychecks to cover the cost of living in Bubble-Era Tokyo, I put Gramma`s lessons to use on a daily basis. Just give me a wilted cabbage leaf and a bone, and I could make soup, and get through another day.

I used to cook the same chicken three times: first, I would boil it with some day-old vegetables, and make soup. I would eat that soup the first day, then I would fish out the chicken and roast it in aluminum foil in my tiny toaster oven, with some garlic and pepper, and eat it the second day. The third day, I would make another batch of soup from the bones.

Whenever it`s time to swap recipes with friends, I usually only tell them the "good" ones, and keep a lot of Gramma`s recipes to myself. To be sure, Gramma learned to make a mean lasagna somewhere along the way, her stuffed cabbage rolls were pure heaven and her cookies were divine. But her Poverty recipes -- those just weren`t meant to be written on index cards and filed in a little tin box with flowers on it, you know?

But one morning I had too much coffee with my friends, and I started babbling about what we`d had for dinner the night before.

When my brother visited, he and his wife had gone out for a steak dinner and ordered way too much. They brought us their doggy bag the next day, and I threw it in the freezer and forgot about it.

One day I noticed that our onions were growing green shoots, so I peeled them and threw away the mushy parts, and threw them in a pot. I looked through the freezer and lo and behold, there were two beautiful pieces of sirloin, with the bones still attached! I threw that in the pot, too, with some garlic -- both fresh and dried, since I wanted to used up the dried. I also had some broccoli stems, since the kids only like the flowers. I had a ton of leftover packets of soy sauce from the Chinese takeout place, so I threw those in, and some honey that had hardened into the bottom of the jar, and some salsa that had expired.

I boiled this all for a looooooong time, then removed the bones, chilled it overnight, added flour and milk to make it creamy, and reheated and served it.

My friends looked at me and smiled and said, "Oh, ah, you boiled leftover meat? Oh, mmmm."

And I realized that perhaps I shouldn`t have shared this story with the people I count on to tell me where to buy the best tomatoes.

Oh, well. Let them eat...cake?

The Eve of Destruction

My parents are coming to visit tomorrow, so please forgive me if I`m a little.....tense.

Now excuse me while I go clean my house. This would be a perfectly normal, reasonable thing to do, if our cleaning person hadn`t already done it this afternoon. But she might have missed a fleck of dust, goddamnit! And that fleck could be the one that lodges in my mother`s eye.

You know?

That Ol` Language Thing

Here`s another pair of easily-confused-in-the-heat-of-the-moment Japanese words: kabi and kubi.

Their misuse can add to the horror of a nasty kitchen surprise. To wit:

When you mean to say, "AAAAAH! The sour cream is growing MOLD!"

And instead you say, "AAAAAH! The sour cream is growing A NECK!"

Hub actually dropped what he was doing to come and look, and was disappointed to see it was only a little fuzzy.

Rolling with the Oldies

Today is Tuesday, so I went to Japantown to work in the kitchen of the old folks` home. While we were drying and putting away the dishes, one of the residents came in to help.

She has dementia, so she doesn`t quite know where she is or whom she`s with, but she smiled and put on an apron, and chattered merrily away in Japanese with everyone as she dried her share of the dishes.

My surviving grandmother has Alzheimer's. Here`s something worth praying for: if someday I am fated to end up that way, too, please, at least let me end up like the cheerful woman in the kitchen today.

Then I helped with the bingo game again. This was very low-pressure, because the woman I helped this week fell asleep.

Good times.

Alone Again

No one wanted to go to church with me today. I think solitary attendence is going to become the norm for a while.

"Why should the kids go? They`re Buddhists!" said Hub. I guess he`s already psyching himself up for our conference with the principal and Huggy Nun.

I know what Hub is thinking. I know he thinks we should have taken that house in San Mateo, in the `burbs, and sent the kids to the public school right nearby, which did have really stellar rankings. But noooooo -- I insisted on living in the city, and sending the kids to Catholic school.

For one hour this morning, I tried to empty my mind and not think about anything stressful, and concentrate on peace. It`s actually far more peaceful to go to church without the kids -- I always sit between them, to make sure they don`t make faces at each other, or fidget too much. Of course I missed having them along, but it`s a completely different experience without them.

Sometimes, if I sit absolutely still and stare straight ahead, I feel as if my grandmother is sitting right there next to me.

I realize that on some level this makes me a pagan ancestor worshipper, doesn`t it?
Maybe Hub and I are really on the same page after all. I mean, except when it comes to living in the `burbs.

Eternal salvation is one thing -- but life in the `burbs is another.

Signed, Sealed and Delivered

The letter was sent yesterday. Hub thanks everyone who thought he wrote it all himself -- his English isn`t anywhere near that nuanced. He insisted on getting in the anti-Catholic jabs, which I managed to tone down, but the rest of the words were mine.

Big Son gave his copy to Huggy Nun, and I had another copy for the principal, who was out today. Later in the day, I got a call from the Vice Principal, who said she discussed the letter with Huggy Nun. She said we will get our conference as soon as they can arrange it.

I do not think it`s any coincidence that Big Son`s "Trouble with Nuns" started around the time the nuns found out from their Mother Superior that they will be leaving our school at the end of the year to be reassigned somewhere else. This must make them feel very unsettled, and perhaps there are issues I don`t even know about -- their attitude has definitely changed from November, when Big Son was settling down and doing much better in Huggy Nun`s class.

I`m not a traditionally religious person, and I don`t even pretend to be a devout Catholic. But I am trying very, very hard to remember what I think are some of the most profound words in the Bible -- "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

I still do not think Huggy Nun is malicious -- I think she simply does not know the extent to which she is tormenting Big Son. She is doing her best, in the only way she knows how. She has been a teacher for decades, and is only doing what has worked for the majority of students she taught. Flexibility is not her strong point -- she can`t adapt to the needs of the minority, and Big Son, with all of his adjustment problems, just doesn`t fit in with her way.

I had to see Huggy Nun, face to face, when I went to pick up the kids. I could have copped out and sent our au pair, but I figured I had better get it over with.

She came up to me and said, "I thought explained everything to you when I talked to you yesterday."

Well, I said, my husband heard the story from Big Son, and decided to call a conference. There have been too many problems. We need to think of solutions.

Okay, she said.

Okay, I said.

She didn`t hug me.

Calling all blog friends -- suggestions, please.

What does everyone think of this? We tried to end this on a positive note, but damn -- it wasn`t easy.

Dear Huggy Nun,

Earlier today, my Big Son said he misbehaved in your class. Specifically, he said you told him to stand in the back of the room “forever,” and when you asked him to sit down again, he said no, because he was going to stay there “forever” as you had said. Apparently, he also forgot his reading book every day this week.

According to Big Son, you wrote some sort of note to my wife today, presumably about his misbehavior. You then did something odd – instead of giving it to Big Son, you asked for a class volunteer to deliver it. O. volunteered, and said he was coming to Big Son's house after school. This was not true – O. had no such plans. He has been to our house before, but hasn’t come in several months, since Big Son began entirely withdrawing from all of the other boys in his class. Perhaps O. just wanted to gain your favor by volunteering to serve as your messenger? I can only guess at his motives.

In any case, my wife was quite surprised when she went to pick up the kids at school today, and heard all about Big Son’s misbehavior from O. But O. did not pass her any note – if in fact you gave him something to give to her, we did not receive it.

I would like to know, why are you involving a 10-year old in the discipline of another 10-year old? Why did you ask one of my son’s classmates to deliver such a message to my wife? This wasn’t just a message about a class project or assignment, but one about my son’s behavioral problems. I think that was highly inappropriate for you to ask another boy to do this. I am a Buddhist, not a Catholic, so I have to ask, is this the normal way a Catholic school handles such problems?

You also keep telling my wife that you think Big Son’s behavior is due to his being “spoiled” at home. Let me assure you, our son is not “spoiled.” I would never allow anyone to “spoil” my sons. Many days, Big Son comes home from school and cries. As recently as early December, Big Son was beginning to like his new school, and was making friends, but now he prefers to be alone in his room, or play only with his younger brother. All he talks about is how much he wants to go home to Japan. He is not “spoiled” – he is depressed and lonely, and he is only 10 years old and does not realize his misbehavior in your class just makes his own difficult situation worse.

I originally opposed my wife’s decision to place our children in a Catholic school, and I now regret I permitted it. Our children are behind in reading English, and I thought they could receive better specialized ESL reading help in the public school system. This was supposed to be our children’s “catch-up” year in English language instruction, but I fear Big Son will fall even further behind his classmates because his problems have begun to interfere with his learning. He seems to spend a significant portion of his class time either in the back of the room, or sitting out in the hallway.

Therefore, I would like to request a conference with you and Mr. Principal and Big Son’s counselor, as soon as possible, to discuss ways in which we can all work together to help Big Son overcome his problems.

Respectfully,
Hub, Big Son`s father

cc: Mr. Principal

Nunsense Update

There was a lull in our nun situation. At least, there was one from my side. Big Son didn`t come home and cry, he wasn`t having nightmares, and I wasn`t hearing any horror stories. But apparently, from the nun`s viewpoint, Big Son continued to have good days and bad days.

Today was a bad day.

I happened to run into Big Son`s counselor this morning. She said he seemed better lately, since he started taking a twice-weekly karate class last month. Karate is his new passion, and I hope it lasts. Kicking and punching, and bowing to the teacher and calling him "sir" -- it doesn`t get much better than that, for a troubled kid.

But then later, when I went to pick up the big kids up at school, a friend of Big Son`s (not a close friend -- he has no close friends) came up to me in the schoolyard, and said, "Sister told me to tell you that Big Son is refusing to do his work, and we all tried to help him, and he still wouldn`t do it."

So I went up to Huggy Nun`s classroom to ask, why the hell did she send a 10-year old messenger, instead of telling me herself?

She said the boy had told her he was going to our house after school today. In reality, he hasn`t been to our house in four months -- maybe he was just lying to be funny? Or maybe she misunderstood him? In any case, WHY did she tell another student to talk to me? She never adequately answered my question.

She said she`s been teaching since 1969, and she has never had such a problem student before. I find this hard to believe, since Big Son isn`t destroying school property, or getting into fights.

"He`s very spoiled," she said again. "At home, you should take away everything he likes, when he acts this way."

"He`s not spoiled," I said, making my voice as impassive as I could, ignoring the little voices inside my head that were screeching, "Flee....from...nun...."

"He does his homework. He reads his Japanese comic books. He plays with his little brother."

"Well, he acts very spoiled. He`s very stubborn. He refuses to do his work," she insisted. I could hear her thinking, This mother is obviously spoiling her son and refuses to discipline him.

"He`s getting straight A`s in math, even though he has trouble reading the word problems," I said, hoping that she heard me thinking, So the math teacher, who has a reputation for being a tough teacher, was able to get through to him. Why can`t you?

"He keeps saying he misses Japan, but that`s no excuse," she said.

I turn to leave. I do not want to hear the same speech I`ve heard dozens of times before.

"Maybe his bad moods have something to do with the moon," she said, as I walked out.

Yes, of course! And that would also explain why he grows fangs and hair every month!

I knew there was a logical explanation.

That Ol` Language Thing

(UPDATED: A friend of mine pointed out that hotate actually means "scallop," not "oyster." There`s something profoundly pathetic about making a mistake in a post about a mistake. For the record, I no longer eat shellfish, so these words do not come up very often in my day to day life.)

In the spirit of yesterday`s post about miscommunication, I will now tell one of my many "Funny Language Mistakes" stories.

Once, when we were visiting the in-laws in Kyoto, I told my mother-in-law that I was sad my kids had never seen fireflies before.

"I`ve heard that Kyoto has many fireflies in the mountains, and there`s even a firefly festival in June. Maybe sometime we can visit in time to see the fireflies," I said.

"Ah. Hmmmm," she said.

As I`ve said before, Japanese people communicate primarily by telepathy, and people in Kyoto take this to an extreme. My MIL was too polite to question what I was saying, but I could tell by her expression that something was just not right.

So I made funny little open-close hand gestures, and said, "Pika-pika mushi?" meaning, "blinking bugs."

"Ah! Hotaru!," she said, as she realized what I had meant to say.

I went and got my dictionary, and I saw that instead of the word for "firefly," hotaru, I had used the word hotate -- which means, "oyster."

Those mountain oysters -- yum!

I couldn`t help but wonder, how many years had I been saying, "oyster" when I meant "firefly," and polite Japanese people just nodded and thought, "I have no idea what this weird foreign woman is talking about."

Happy V-Day, and An Old Story

Oh, dear. It`s Valentine`s Day, and MFA Mama wants her friends to write about their "worst dates ever." So much for the mushy, lovey-dovey post I had planned! That was a joke --ha, ha! Laugh, okay? Please?

I must admit, I didn`t play the dating game very long, since I met Hub when I was 19 and he was 20. I wasn`t even interested in boys until I was 15 or so, and therefore I had only a very small window in which I accomplished... ah, a great deal in the dating area. Let`s just say that by the time I met Hub, I was ready to settle down.

I am also ashamed to say that there are lots of guys out there in the world somewhere, telling their "worst date ever" stories about teenage ME, all of which involve binge drinking followed by vomiting in inconvenient places. But....let`s not go there.

Instead, allow me to regale you with: my first date with Hub.

I first laid eyes on Hub on September 21, 1985, in front of the Maruzen department store on Kawaramachi-dori in Kyoto. A huge group of American exchange students was going to have dinner and then go out dancing with an even larger group of Japanese students from Doshisha University. Hub and I were in the assembled crowd, and we both noticed each other, but there were too many people around -- we were unable to get near enough to start a conversation. I did manage to ask another student what that great-looking guy`s name was.

The huge crowd ambled off the dinner, and somehow we ended up going to two different restaurants. I didn`t see Hub until we got to the club (anyone remember 1980`s Kyoto? it was China Express, the place in the basement). Hub came over to me and said, "Has anyone ever told you that you look just like Catherine Deneuve?"

I`ve told this story on this blog before -- to make a long story short, I look nothing like Catherine Deneuve, but I gave him my phone number, and he called me, and we made plans to go out for a drink.

I think we had the most boring first date ever, in the history of people who not only had a second date but then eventually ended up getting married. We had a quick beer at the only bar we could find that was open on a Sunday night, then spent most of the evening driving around Kyoto looking for a gas station that was open, because he needed to fill his father`s car`s tank. Yes, he lived at home while he went to college, with his parents, two younger siblings and grandmother. I remember we talked about how great it was to grow up with a grandmother in the house. We couldn`t talk about very much, though, since his English was poor and my Japanese was almost nonexistent. We smiled a lot.

Cut to the punch line. When he dropped me off in front of my homestay house, he asked me, "When can I see you again?" And I said, "Whenever."

He thought I had said, "Never," and was utterly shocked.
"N-n-n-e-ver?!?" he sputtered.

"No,no,no,no! I said, WHEN-ever!" And I tried my best to explain what I had meant. After a brief fluttering of dictonaries, the misunderstanding was cleared up, and we set another date.

As one of my friends said at our wedding, perhaps I had meant to say, "FOR-ever."

Happy Valentine`s Day, Hub. I love you, even though I know you don`t read my blog very often. Actually, the fact that you don`t read my blog very often makes me love you even more.

Questions Only My Mother Would Ask

My parents are coming for the weekend, at the end of the month. They are staying with us this time, even though I warned them they may see a few ants.

My mother asked me on the phone, "Do you have enough towels for us?"

"Oh, no problem -- I figured you could just dry yourselves with some old kids` T-shirts. Or I`ll cut up an old sheet, okay?"

No, I didn`t really say that.

But I wish I had.

Blog Stuff

Sunday housecleaning time! And instead of cleaning my real house, I`m going to tidy up my little corner of the Internet.

I am pleased to say that my site meter is FINALLY up and running. Notice to all blog trolls -- go ahead and flame me. I can now see your IP address, ha ha HA HA!

And I can see searches -- someone found their way to this site by searching "70s dress up," and they got my Barbie vs. Bratz post. That is too funny.

There`s a lot of very un-funny stuff out there, though. The blogosphere isn`t the happy, sanitized place I originally thought it was, when I first started reading blogs. I first found this out on Blogging Baby, where I was called all sorts of ugly names on several comment threads. There`s something about anonymity that brings out the worst in people.

Along these same lines, it also appears that one of my favorite bloggers is now on the receiving end of some very undeserved ugliness. And no less than two blog pals have emailed me this week, responding to comments I made on other blogs. This is getting too much like the real world!

So I figured, I`d come clean. I will hearby reveal all of the ugly secret things I`ve said about other bloggers:

1) I have called this blogger "uber-cool." I don`t know her personally, and haven`t been reading her blog very long, but.... I get the feeling she might actually LIKE that description. However, I don`t want to take any chances and piss her off, because she lives near me, and I don`t want her to come over in the dead of night and leave a pile of dirty diapers on my doorstep or anything.

2) I found my way to this blog one day when I was searching "leather-clad midget gimp." go ahead -- try it searching that and see.

3) I accused this blogger of being a very gifted writer merely pretending to be a mother of three, with serious health issues, just for kicks -- to see if he/she could pull it off.

4) I offered money to this blogger to send me a photo of her ass in a thong, and had an email conversation with her about spanking.

5) I said I would sleep with this blogger AND her husband.

6) I met this blogger and she swept me off her feet, and we had a wild, passionate lesbian affair. Well, actually, no, we haven`t met yet, but we might. And when we do meet, we probably won`t have an affair, but we might. Can`t rule anything out, right? Anyway, I bet that got your attention!

And now that I have your attention, I`ll get a MEME out of the way. VMC has challened me to do this. But instead of passing it on, I`m going to take the highly unorthodox step of starting an entirely new MEME. Why? Because, because, BECAUSE! This is the Wild Wild Web, and I can do as I please, for good or for evil. Except in China.

FOUR JOBS I`VE HAD:
1) My very first job ever, besides babysitting, was CASHIER AT KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN. I lasted just a few weeks -- when they fired me, they told me I was "too high strung for fast food."

2) TELEPHONE SOLICITOR for New England Green chemical lawn treating service. "Hi, this is L. From New England Green! In the next few days, we`re going to have a representative in your neighborhood doing FREE lawn analysis and price estimates! There`s no cost or obligation, and you don`t even have to be at home while they`re there. Can we leave this information at your door, sir? Hello? What? No, I will NOT go fuck myself! GoodBYE!" Fortunately, I was paid by the hour, not by my success rate.
But I kind of liked calling people, even though most of them were hostile. Sometimes I reached lonely old people, and chatted with them for a while. If they said yes, please leave the information, we were supposed to make sure they didn`t have any dogs who would attack our lawn guys. This was a great opening for people to talk about their pets -- sometimes even memories of their long-dead pets. As I said, I was paid by the hour.
And at this job, I encountered the most unfortunate last name I have ever seen: "Wormfuch," pronounced -- yes, you guessed it -- "Wormfuck." I still Google her every so often, but I guess Mrs. Wormfuch changed her name, or died, because she`s no longer out there.

3) DOUGHNUT FINISHER on the midnight to 6:00 am shift -- I LOVED this job. I worked with these two really funny guys, and I got to know every cop in that town. You know why cops love doughnut stores? Free coffee and doughnuts. It`s really that simple. What`s not to love?
I was so spectacularly good at this job that the guys even begged me not to go back to college, but to stay and keep making doughnuts. Perhaps this gave me self-confidence in life -- I always knew, in the back of my mind, that I had a skill, and could always go back to doughnuts if I failed at everything else I attempted.

4) ASIAN OIL MARKET REPORTER for the now defunct Knight-Ridder Financial News wire. This is one of those jobs that should have sucked, but didn`t. I was criminally underpaid, the job itself was tedious, and I mean, come on -- it was OIL, you know? But I had a great time, for a couple of years, and worked with some great people. I even got to take two reporting trips to China, which was waaaaaaay cool. I still have a sweatshirt from the Shanghai Petrochemical Corp., made of 100% polyester fiber from their plant. It really puts the sweat in sweatshirt.

This is getting too long. I`m bored with this MEME. Sorry, VMC, but do you really care about what movies and TV shows I watch? I don`t even care, so how can anyone else care?

As I said, I will now start my own MEME, and randomly tag a few people -- VMC, you asked for it. Andrea? Uncle Roger? Gawdessness? Mollie? Dongurigal? Mande? Val? Jenorama? J? MFA Mama? Happy Feminist? Mo-wo (and/or p-man)? MetroDad? AndieD? Autumn`s Mom? RocRebelGranny? MIM? The Juniper`s? Susan? Mary P.? Oh, I could keep going -- there`s too many people I want to list here. I could just go down my blogroll and delurkers list, and tag everyone. In fact -- anyone who reads this, consider yourself TAGGED (and I have a site meter now, so you can`t hide!) and leave your answer in my comments if you don`t want to clutter up your own blog.

1) What was the last thing you prayed for?
2) What was the nicest thing you ever did for someone else?
3) What do you think about to cheer yourself up when you`re down about something?

Ready...set...GO!

US and Them

Yesterday, while I was taking Little Son to get his decayed molars inspected, Hub took Big Son, Daughter, and Au Pair Extraordinaire to see the U.S.-Japan "friendly" soccer match at SBC Stadium.

When they got home, both Big Son and Daughter sadly told me, "Your team won, Mama." I pointed out that they, too, are Americans --- and they looked at me as if I told them that they hatched out of giant dinosaur eggs.

"Nooooooo -- OF COURSE we wanted the Japanese team to win! We`re Japanese!"
Silly, silly mama!

This morning, Au Pair Extraordinaire told me that my two older kids had stood up and belted out "Kimigayo," the Japanese national anthem, and then earned nasty looks from the people sitting around them by cheering everytime Japan scored a goal.

I am very familiar with the expression, "You can take the man out of Japan, but you can`t take Japan out of the man."

But I had no idea it took effect this young.

Can it be reversed, or is this hopeless?

Sigh...

Good news, bad news...

The good news is, the dentist looked in my mouth and said, "I can tell you floss -- your gums look great! And your all fillings and your crown look just fine. You take very good care of your teeth."

Then he got very serious and told me the bad news: Little Son has FOUR CAVITIES. And he`s not even four years old! That`s more than a cavity a year. Wait -- even more, since he`s only had molars for about half his life.

So I guess this means I take very good care of my own teeth, and very bad care of my baby`s teeth.

Baaaaaaaad mother. Bad!

Damn.

Immaculate Assumptions

We all know the old saying -- "When you ASSUME, you risk making an ASS out of U and ME."

I like to think I go through life doing my part to fight gender, racial and cultural stereotyping, but sometimes, despite my best efforts, I end up perpetuating it. I`m always surprised when this happens and I realize it after the fact, but I guess I shouldn`t be.

Yesterday, on Andie D.`s blog, I made a comment, and then a joke about a response to my comment. I guess I have to explain -- Andie D. wrote that she inadvertently let her daughter transform into an Oompaloompa, when she failed to notice that the baby had smeared carrot vomit over most of her tiny head, and stained herself orange.

I said that it reminded me of the time, years and years ago, that Hub "got a great deal on some BLUE condoms, and.... I took one look, and screamed. I thought either he had gangrene, or he was turning into a Smurf."

JW, who is a Catholic priest, feigned surprise, and I kidded him about this. In an email, he assured me he had been joking. The fact that he took the time to email me made me think about how tough it must be, to go through life as a priest or other religious authority figure. People must censor themselves right and left in front of them -- they always have to wonder, am I seeing people as they normally are, or am I seeing the "cleaned-up, clergy-friendly" version of their personalities?

In JW`s case, I really had been kidding. I don`t think of him as a priest, but as one of my "Internet pen pals," so I don`t censor my comments. But I do plead guilty to ASS-U-ME-ing this past weekend, when an old friend of mine came to visit.

I meant to wake up early on Sunday and clean the house, but I had been out late at a preschool fundraiser the night before. Hub had stayed home with the kids, because he was leaving at the crack of dawn on a business trip.

Now, whenever Hub watches the kids, bad things happen to the house -- lamps self-destruct, dishes soil themselves, dirty laundry scatters itself through every room. Make no mistake -- it`s no one`s fault. The stuff just does these things on its own, poltergeist-like, to make Hub and the kids look bad. I know all about it, and expect it to happen everytime, so it`s all factored in, and I don`t even waste energy getting angry about it.

But I didn`t wake up in time to get everything cleaned up before my friend arrived, and I apologized profusely to him. "If you were a parent, I wouldn`t feel as bad," I said, "But you`re a gay guy, and your house looks like a magazine!"

I`ve known this friend since I was 6 years old. We sang in a church choir together for five years when we were teenagers and we even went to the junior prom together. To be sure, he`s never been a slob, that I can remember, and the one time I visited him and his partner in Seattle, their house did look like a magazine. But I`ve never known him to say one unkind word about someone else`s personal or household appearance, and I had no reason to assume he`d hold it against me that my house looked like the aftermath of Katrina without the water.

He immediately sought to reassure me. "Hey, don`t worry about it -- we don`t have kids, but we have six dogs right now!"

It occurred to me that thanks to shows like "Queer Eye," I had fallen into the popular assumption that gay guys are more discriminating and appearance-conscious than "breeders" -- er, human breeders, that is. But as my friend pointed out, he and his partner are dog breeders, and so crumbs and dirty laundry don`t faze them. I needlessly let my cultural assumptions overwrite what I knew about an old friend.

This time, my assumption was fairly innocuous, but how often do such assumptions damage friendships -- or worse?

Does anyone else have stories about incorrect assumptions they`ve made?

Pluralism

So Daughter said to me, "I`m getting really good at spelling, Mama! Ask me how to spell something!"

I decided to ask something she was likely to know. "Okay, spell `friend`."

Daughter thought hard for a few minutes.

"I can`t spell that. But I can spell `friendS.` Is that okay?"

Yes, that`s more than okay, but I can`t help but wonder what`s going through her head sometimes.

A Home To Banish My Homesickness

I did my volunteer work today. I`ve started doing something that is perfect for me, in so many ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the purpose of volunteer work isn`t to do something for me, but let`s be honest -- it`s great, and I`d be an idiot not to appreciate it.

I go to a really nice retirement home in Japantown, and help them serve lunch, and help them clean up, and then help them play Bingo with the residents.

First of all, there`s the old people. I like old people, probably because I grew up with a grandmother in the house and she taught me the meaning of "unconditional love." I therefore see a little bit of my grandmother in every old person I meet.

Second, there`s the food, which is is restaurant-quality Japanese food, and yes, I get to eat it, too. I am a foodie -- no doubt I get this from my resident grandmother, who worked nights as a waitress, and who taught me that food is fun to cook, serve and eat. I am not ashamed to admit that I selected my college partly because my idol Julia Child graduated from it.

Third, there`s the Japanese. Everyone there, both residents and staff, speaks Japanese. The old people expect it. In Japan, many people would often take one look at my hair and my pointy nose, and assume I didn`t speak their language, but the residents of this home assume that anyone around them does, and they chatter to me as naturally as if they`ve known me all their lives. I think I get to speak more Japanese in a few hours there than I do in a month with Hub.

I don`t just speak Japanese with the residents, but with the staff, too, among whom Princess Kiko`s pregnancy was a hot topic. So there I was today, wearing an apron, volunteering in a kitchen just as I did in our old neighborhood in Tokyo, and gossiping about the Japanese royal family in a very snarky way -- I really feel as if I went to Japan for a few hours today.

And I really love this feeling.

Better Bratz than Boyz (or Why This Feminist Mother Decided to Allow America`s Sluttiest Dolls into Her Home)

Confess -- how many of you have sworn that your daughter would never, ever play with a Bratz doll? You know what I`m talking about, don`t you? These. Target and Toys R Us have now have entire sections devoted to Bratz dolls and their accessories. Late last month, Mattel Inc. (MAT) said its U.S. Barbie sales dropped 18 percent in the fourth quarter, and the reason is no mystery.

Bratz dolls look like the kind of girls you fear your daughters will turn out to be. If Barbie is the good, wholesome cheerleader next door, Bratz is the class slut, the girl you could always find making out in her boyfriend`s car between classes. Bratz dolls look as if they`re all on the pill -- they`ve got that pouty smirk, and their eyes have that all-knowing, Been there, done that look. You know what I mean. While Barbie is also all about sex appeal, can you really imagine her letting Ken touch her and muss up those outfits? I never could (and besides, everyone knew Ken was a closeted gay guy, and that Barbie was secretly hot for G.I. Joe).

My daughter will never play with a Bratz doll, I said, because as a feminist, I want to encourage positive role models for my sons and daughter every way I can. For years it was very easy to enforce this, because we lived in Tokyo. But then my mother, who has this annoying habit of ignoring everything I say and doing the opposite, mailed my daughter her very first Bratz for Christmas one year.

"Wow, that doll is ugly," I said, hoping that my daughter would take the hint. But alas, she started showing signs of taking after her grandmother, and developed the exact same annoying habit of ignoring everything I say and doing the opposite. If I had only known, I would have said, "What a lovely doll," and it might have ended up in the bottom of her toy box.

But no, her Bratz doll soon became her main doll, and then we moved to San Francisco. Daughter`s new friends all eschew Barbie for Bratz, and Daughter is now an even bigger fan.

For Christmas, I allowed her to select her present, and she headed straight for the Bratz aisle. After much deliberation, she held up what I swear was a Dominatrix Bratz, wearing a laced-up bodice, with a mask, a cape, a little dress stand and -- dear god, is that a whip?!? -- whew, no it`s just a ribbon. But a whip, chains and handcuffs would not have looked out of place on the "Midnight Dance" doll, as she was called. Daughter was enchanted. "Look, Mama! She`s dressed for Halloween!" Yes,　indeed -- for Halloween in the Castro.

Daughter now wants the Western Bratz. I haven`t seen it yet, but I imagine this doll probably doesn`t look like a squeaky-clean rodeo queen, but rather like the girl out back smoking Marlboros and rolling in the hay with the ranch hands.

But nonetheless, I will allow her to buy it with the birthday money my parents sent. Here are my reasons:

1) Bratz dolls come in ethnic shades that match my daughter and her friends. At my daughter`s birthday party last week, there were a few blonde heads, but most girls had varying shades of dark hair, and darker skin tones. I can understand why these girls are attracted to dolls that look like them. And let`s face it -- as other bloggers have noted, Mattel`s attempts to fill in the ethnic gaps in its Barbie line fall short.

2) Bratz dolls have those creepy big heads, but at least that makes them seem less real and therefore less damaging for comparison purposes. How many little girls in the `70`s longed to look just like their Malibu Barbies? I know I did! The most disturbing thing about Barbie is that she looks kind of real. But according to one estimate, if Barbie were 5 foot 6 instead of 11 1/2 inches tall, her measurements would be 39-21-33 --- next to her, even some top models would look dumpy. I went to a women`s college, and saw firsthand just how ugly eating disorders and unhealthy body images can be, and I think Barbie plants the first subconscious seeds -- I remember girls who were 7, 8, 9 years old, who even then were trying to eat less. To be sure, Bratz are unrealistically skinny, but they are also just plain unrealistic. I can`t imagine a little girl saying, "Mommy, someday I want to look just like my Bratz doll, and grow a really big head!"

3) As my daughter and her friends begin to experiment with self-expression through their appearance, Bratz dolls offer an opportunity for several lessons. I want my children to know that they sometimes need to dress seriously if they want to be taken seriously -- for example, if they wear lots of leather and dye their hair magenta (as their mama once did), they might not get hired for certain jobs and airport customs officials will spend extra time searching their bags. Yet, at the same time, I want to teach my kids that they themselves should never let appearances be their sole guide. In the coming years, some of my daughter`s friends will likely start to dress like little whores, but will still have hearts of gold. Others, though, will remain well-groomed and yet desecend into back-stabbing, boyfriend-stealing bitches. Sure, my daughter`s Bratz dolls look as if they`re ready to go hang out with some biker gang, but instead, my daughter and her friends have tea parties with them. Appearances count, but they can be deceiving, too.

4) Better Bratz than boyz. The title of this post is key. I would never buy a Bratz doll for a very young girl, but the word "young" is relative nowadays. The kind of girls these Bratz dolls represent to me aren`t the kind of girls who would bother playing with one -- they`ve moved on to other things.

One of my new friends here summed it up for me. Let me describe this friend -- she`s a considerate, intelligent woman with two daughters, who helps her husband with his business and spends many hours volunteering at our parochial school, and pondering new ways to cook nutritous meals for her family. She is the antithesis of a Bratz type, and neither of her daughters is remotely close to a Bratz type. And yet, her girls have lots of these dolls and their accessories.

"I didn`t like Bratz at first," my friend said, "But some 12-year-olds are already dating. I`m so happy that mine is still home playing with dolls!"

That, for me, is the bottom line. It`s a doll, for godssake, not a sex toy. If this is as bad as it gets -- bring it on.

"And the award for Best Actress goes to....."

Last night, Big Son was clearly feeling better, and Daughter was incensed. "Why did he get to stay home from school, if he`s not really sick?" I said that his head had hurt for most of the day, and we didn`t want him to develop a full-blown migraine. Daughter has never had a migraine, and rarely gets sick, and clearly resented that her brother had spent the day at home.

So this morning, when Hub went to wake the kids up for their dreaded Japanese school, I heard a heart-rending little voice say, "...ooooh....my....tummy...hurts....SO...much...."

Generally, I tend to follow my own mother`s rules about staying home from school. My mom was a working mother, who generally believed that children were well unless proven sick. Throughout my childhood, I had to get on that school bus unless 1) I had a fever, or 2) I was actively spewing bodily fluids. "Feeling sick" wasn`t enough -- it was not the same as, "being sick." I would be sent off to school, and if I developed a true illness, someone would come to get me, but otherwise, I was expected to stop whining and deal with it. I have tended to follow my mother`s Sick Day Rules. I broke the rules only for Big Son`s migraines, because I know that he can feel them coming on, and if he lies still in a dark room for a while, he can usually keep them from getting worse.

Daughter knows my Rules, so she never gets very far pulling a sick attempt on me. She has perfect attendance at her school so far this year. Hub, however, is a pushover for a good pathetic act, and I have to say, Daughter has a great career ahead of her as an actress. She dragged herself out of bed to the couch in the living room, where she curled in up a ball. Her eyes looked like Bambi`s after the hunter shot his mother. She asked me to please get her a bucket, in case she threw up.

I did -- then I went back to bed, and spent a few hours there cuddling Little Son.

When I finally got up, I was not surprised to see that Hub had not made Daughter go to Japanese school.

But I knew I had been right and that she had been faking it when she asked me, "What`s for breakfast?" HA! Busted!

"But Mama -- I really felt sick, but now I really feel better!"

"Great! You`re well enough to finish writing all your thank-you cards for your birthday presents!"

"Nooooooooo......"

Oh, I`m such a mean bitch. Someone around here has to be.

It`s Always In Two`s

If something happens, it will happen again. Stuff happens in TWO`s -- first one shoe drops, the the other. How`s that for a theory?

Take Big Son`s headaches -- he had one last week, so I should have known to expect a repeat performance this week. I`m not calling this one a migraine, though. They don`t seem to be as long-lasting and intense as his migraines were, and he seems to be eating almost normally, instead of throwing up. So from now on, I`m calling them "tension headaches." And this had better be the last one, for a while.

Alas, I can`t directly blame Huggy Nun for headache number TWO. Yesterday, she cornered me to tell me that Big Son has seemed a little better this week.

I had been trying to lie low and avoid her for a while -- that old Japanese strategy of "avoidance" comes in mighty handy sometimes. Usually, I can hear her sneaking up on me, because even though she wears soft-soled old lady shoes, the giant rosary beads on her belt clack together when she walks. But I had just thought it was my own aging knees cracking, so I surprised when she tapped me on the shoulder.

"He`s been so much better," she said. "He behaved very well, and did all of his work. I just wish he would show more effort all of the time." She then launched into a tirade about how he`s just not trying, and all his problems are due to his attitude. I was amazed -- she delivered the same speech on a good day as she does on a bad day. Perhaps she just needed to vent a little? Or maybe her tape loop got stuck? I nodded, and said, "Yes, Sister. Thank you, Sister," in the appropriate places, and got away as quickly as I could.

But then later that night at home, I asked Big Son to study his vocabulary and spelling words, and said I would quiz him on them after he was through (he prefers doing it this way, rather than memorizing the words together). An hour later, he hadn`t studied them at all, and we had an argument that ended with him crying and me bellowing at him. I`m a yeller, but have made an exceptional effort to keep it in check since we moved here. Last night, though, we were both very tired after going to Daughter`s basketball practice, and I should have seen it all coming.

I didn`t yell anything outrageous -- it was along the lines of, "WHY didn`t you study? Why is the still TV on, when I told you to turn it off? WHY didn`t you learn your words? GO TO BED!" But I think my volume and tone indicated that I am a totally inappropriate candidate for homeschooling. I personally think that screaming at a kid can do even more damage than hitting him, and I feel much worse after yelling at my kids than I ever did after the few times I swatted them on the butts when they were younger.

A short while later, I went to say goodnight, and I said, "I`m sorry I got so mad. That was wrong," and he said, "I`m sorry I didn`t study my words." And that was that, but then this morning he woke up, and said his head hurt when he stood up. So I figured that this time it was stress from me, not from Huggy Nun.

But we really have to cut this out, you know?

I`m sure Big Son isn`t faking it, because he loves TV more than life itself, and can`t bear to watch it when he has a headache. But he has to learn to control these physical manifestations of stress. He`s got to learn to relax. When I was growing up, I knew kids who would get so worked up over events, both good and bad, that they would throw up or spike high fevers almost on cue. My son will NOT be one of those kids!

More TWO`s....

I woke up in a waterbed in the middle of the night, even though I sleep in a futon. Little Son, who recently stopped wearing a pull-up at night, evidently had too much milk before bedtime, and released an amazing amout of pee into my bed -- perhaps equivalent to his body weight. How is this possible? Even more amazing -- Little Son had done the same thing the night before, proving my TWO theory.

Last night, God bless him, Little Son woke up, too, and said, "PAPA! OSHIKO!" (which means, "pee pee" in Japanese). So Mama pretended to remain asleep, while Papa got up to get Little Son some dry pajamas. Of course, this meant that he couldn`t strip off the bedding, so he just put a towel over it, and then he and Little Son went off to sleep somewhere else. But that old "avoidance" strategy worked like a charm. (UPDATED: As one of my friends pointed out in an email, you have to be a parent to consider sleeping in a damp bed full of pee to be a victory -- but the waterproof mattress pad did absorb most of it.)

One more piece of TWO theory evidence: at basketball practice yesterday, Daughter got two baskets in a row. These were two of the three baskets she has made in her entire life.

Her first one ever was last week. She turned to me and said, "Mama! Did you see that? I made a goooooooal!"

I guess I should end on that happy note -- it`s better that nocturnal urine, headaches, or nuns.

Short, But Cute

Little Son looked through the window at the misty, drizzly weather today, and said, "It`s so FROGGY out there!"

Hub Versus the Nun

We now return to another episode of, "Trouble with Nuns." Allow me to bring you up to date.

On Sunday morning, after the monthly children`s mass, our school held its open house. I didn`t make Hub go to the mass, since he suffers from a vampire-like aversion to crosses, but I did guilt-trip him into showing up for the open house and having a word with Huggy Nun.

"We need to play `good parent/bad parent`," I said. "I`ve been too much of a `good parent` so far, which means you really need to step in and be the `bad parent,`" I told him.

"I can`t!" said Hub. "I`ve always been the `good parent,` and you`ve always been the emotional, hysterical parent. This won`t work!"

Alas, this is true. Hub is the outwardly calm, rational PR genius -- and I`m the freak. And let me just say, after practicing my best polite restraint techniques with Huggy Nun, I must conclude that I should have released my inner freak with her, right from the start.

So we went to the open house, and Hub introduced himself to Huggy Nun, and said he would like a word with her. They went over to one corner of her classroom. I stayed out in the hall, but peeked in every so often, so see how they were doing.

Hub, to his credit, maintained his scary expression and stern tone. Huggy Nun made no attempt to hug him.

When Hub emerged, after 10 minutes or so, he looked at me, shook his head, and said a single word in Japanese -- "Da-me!" This word is most often translated as, "wrong," "bad," "useless," and/or "impossible."

The meeting was not quite useless, however. I think until now, Hub has been assuming that most of Big Son`s problems are the result of his undeniably abyssmal attitude, and the teacher problems are only secondary. I think Hub has now gained a visceral understanding that the latter problem has grown to the point where it is now fueling the former problem.

There is one tiny bright spot in all of this trouble. At the recommendation of Big Son`s counselor, I did look into alternatives, and discovered that one of the SF public school Japanese Bilingual Bicultural Programs has an opening in fifth grade. The program only goes up to fifth grade, which is one reason I stopped considering it when we moved here, since Big Son would only have had to change schools yet again (and also, as I`ve said before on this blog, the SF public school lottery system is such that if you move to the city in July, you would probably have an easier time getting your cocker spaniel into Harvard than your kids into the school of your choice).

Last week, Big Son was begging me to let him leave school. But when presented with the chance to actually switch to a new school, guess what? He started reconsidering just how bad his present situation is.

"But I don`t want to leave! I love math, and I like my math teacher! And Huggy Nun and Social Studies Nun will be gone next year, and I`ll have Mr. Mellow-guy! And the boys in my class have started letting me play football with them at recess! And if went to a new school, I`d have to start all over as the new kid again...."

So Big Son has decided to stick it out.

"I can handle it," he said. "It`s only four more months. Or three and half, because there`s a vacation."

I will, of course, allow him to reconsider this, and change his mind. Quite honestly, I was hoping he would want to change schools, so I could stop spending so much time ruminating about our nun troubles. But right now, Big Son seems pretty adamant. He`s a stubborn little guy -- which is actually part of his problem. Just like his hysterical mama, he really needs to learn to relax and chill out, and not make bad situations even worse. Isn`t it awful when you recognize that your kids have inherited the traits you hate in yourself?

Anyway, if Big Son`s problems with Huggy Nun persist, Hub agrees with me that the next step will be to call a daytime meeting with her, the principal and Big Son`s counselor.

"Maybe she`s one of those old ladies who respects men more than women," he said, which is funny, because Hub has absolutely no clue how patriarchical the Catholic church is. "Maybe I just need to show up one day in my suit."

Oh, no -- not the suit! Beware of the Japanese salaryman when he puts on his suit -- he will mean business.