Update

Party great. Mama exhausted. More later.

Will everyone who was inadvertently dropped from my blogroll......

....please identify yourselves, and leave me comments with links to your blogs?

Sorry. I pasted the code by hand -- I don`t know how I managed to lose people, but somehow I did.

I know could have just used the Blogrolling software, but I don`t like the way it alphabetizes the names of blogs beginning with "The" under "T." I also like to keep all the blogs I`ve added around the same time together, so I have separate categories recording my blog-reading history like rings on a tree.

Yeah, I admit that`s a bit OCD on my part -- sorry. I really didn`t intend to drop anyone except MFA Mama, and that`s only because her blog is now password-protected.

My Google ads are still displaying that charity symbol -- I think I managed to squash their little spyware tracker bug. So there`s a dead bug decomposing in my template -- ick!

I am feeling like a bit of a loser this week -- can you tell?

Yesterday, I went to Big Son`s baseball game. The kids are having fun, which is what counts, but boy, do we suck. We "won" yesterday, by forfeit, because not enough players on the other team showed up to make it an official game. So the refs went home, and the kids played just for fun -- and the other team beat us, 21 to 4.

Big Son got walked and still managed to get picked out on first, because he stood there daydreaming and didn`t have his foot on the base. I don`t think baseball is his sport -- too much downtime for him to lose his focus.

I was wearing my old comfy "fat" clothes and no makeup, with my hair a mess -- in other words, looking like most of the other parents on the team. We are not a glamorous, trendy bunch -- we are a comfy bunch.

And who should I run into at the park but a dashing young blogger and his lovely daughter. Oh well -- at least I didn`t smell.

But then I realized driving home, that YES, actually, I DID SMELL, because I had managed to step in some dog shit.

It doesn`t get much better than that, folks.

How To Lose My Business

Little Son `s Halloween party is this Saturday.

A friend gave me some Halloween napkins, and I have orange plants and an orange plastic table cloth. One advantage of the cooler-than-usual weather this year is that uncarved Halloween pumpkins have rotted at a much slower pace, and another friend gave me hers, which was still sitting on her front step. So we`ll have a jack-o-lantern.

I was going to order cupcakes arranged in the shape of a pumpkin, but for the same price, they had cupcakes arranged and frosted into a Nemo-like clown fish. Little Son will love that even more, and the color also fits the theme.*

*(I`m perfectly capable of decorating cupcakes by myself, and even briefly considered a decorate-your-own-cupcake buffet for Daughter`s birthday in January -- but I did the math and realized that for almost the same price as the materials would cost, I could order something cute from the supermarket bakery, and have one less thing to do ahead of the party.)

And I got lucky -- I found ten leftover mylar Halloween pumpkin balloons at the dollar store. Well, they were $2 each, but I decided to spring for them.

As for Little Son`s costume, did you know they actually sell Pillsbury Doughboy costumes? But the cheapest one I could find online was $15, which seemed like a lot to spend for something he`s probably only going to wear once. So I just bought him white sweatpants, a white turtle neck, and made a chef`s hat out of some cardboard, duct tape and an old sheet (and of course the Pillsbury logo off the brownie mix box).

Now I guess you`re wondering about the title of this post. Today I went shopping for party stuff, and I found the cutest Nemo hat, similar to this one. I plan to just wear my bright orange sweater to the party, and tell everyone I`m a pumpkin, but the hat would match and Little Son would love to see me wearing it.

It had no price on it, but I figured it was probably expensive. I rationalized that my youngest kid was only four, so I still have a lot of Halloween functions ahead of me, and a lot of ocassions at which I can wear silly hats.

So I decided to buy it.

I asked the woman at the register how much it was, and she scanned the bar code.

"It`s twenty dollars. OH MY GOD, I can`t believe it! This junky thing is twenty dollars!"

It wasn`t really so junky -- I mean, it was a plush stuffed animal hat. I would have been happy if it was discounted, but I expected it to be about $20. I shifted uncomfortably.

But I was still going to buy it, I thought.

"HEY!," the woman screamed to the cashier at the next register. "CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS THING HERE IS TWENTY DOLLARS?"

"TWENTY DOLLARS FOR THAT?," the other woman said.

"CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? WHAT KIND OF CRAZY PERSON WOULD PAY TWENTY DOLLARS FOR THIS?"

"SOME PEOPLE ARE SUCKERS!"

"I`ll tell you why the price wasn`t on it," the first woman said to me. "That`s so people`s kids see it, and want to buy it, and by the time they ask to scan it to see how much it is, the kid thinks he`s getting the hat. And then when the parents say it`s too expensive, the kid starts crying, so the parents buy it for him, anyway. "

She put the hat in the drawer under her register.

"Yeah, that`s how it goes," she continued. "Hats like this, they make them for suckers who can`t say no to their kids."

She noticed I was still standing there.

"Um...." I said.

But it was no use. I chickened out.

Cluck, cluck -- who needs a fish hat, anwyay, when I`m such a chicken?

Well, that theory is all wet. And speaking of wet....

A commenter below suggested that the problem with my ads is not the number of links on my blog (and in fact, I can think of several examples of blogs that link even more sites, and still keep their ads), but rather my content.

The commenter might have a point -- I`ve noticed the ads usually track not my most recent post, but ones from a day or two in the past. That means Google`s little spyware got an eyeful of gratuitously violent, exclamatory words, in the headline of my post describing what I`d like to do to the rodent that chewed up our hose.

Wow. If I ever get another clear shot at the rodent, and I have time to grab a shovel, and blog about it --- I think the little spyware might explode, as in, POP! goes the weasel.

In the interest of experimenting, I`m going to write the word, BED WETTING in big letters, and see how long it takes for the related ads to appear.

One of my three kids still wets the bed. I will not say which one, because I promised the kid I wouldn`t tell anyone, and I think telling the Internet counts. I will just say that we`ve been assured by pediatricians in both Japan and here that this kid apparently just doesn`t have a mature bladder, and everyone thinks we should give the kid a few more years to outgrow it before we try to do anything about it. Two years ago, I bought one of those "pee alarms," that buzzes whenever the kid pees, but it was going off so many times every night that the doctors said, give it up -- the kid`s just not ready. So our solution has been large-size pullups and waterproof mattress covers.

This problem doesn`t bother the kid, who takes it in stride, simply shrugging and saying, "I can`t help it. My body has a problem." The kid is the most confident and well-adjusted of my kids, and those of you who read my blog regularly can probably guess which kid it is.

But you didn`t hear it from me.

Uh-oh....

I think I added too many links, and my ads switched off -- which is to say, they reverted to that public service ad above. I looked at the Adsense page, and it says you have to keep your links under 100.

Anyone know how to solve this problem? Yeah, remove the links -- DUH! But I don`t want to. Any other suggestions?

The ads were amusing me -- I was getting some in foreign languages, which I thought was cool.

They weren`t bring in any cash yet, though. Google doesn`t send you checks until your revenue totals $100, which I figure I would have reached sometime in 2007.

But hey, I want to do all I can to facilitate the transfer of wealth from big corporations` bank accounts to mine.

Blogroll Updated!

Did I miss anyone? If so, please let me know. I try to make it as inclusive as possible, because it also functions as my de facto bookmark list of blogs I read -- daily, monthly, or even just every once in a while.

Also, please let me know if you don`t want to be there, for any reason, and I will take perverse pleasure in erasing your name, you miserable spoilsport.

Monday Update

Usually, I use the weekends to catch up on "blog business," but I`m way behind in everything.

For those of you who asked what happened to MFA Mama, I`d been wondering the same. Friends of hers just pointed me to this post by a blogger who has been in telephone touch with her, and writes, "she has left Husband, taking the children with her, and is in a temporary safe place, though without internet access. Husband has removed all her assets and left her with all the debt possible. He is suing for full custody of the children. She has hired a lawyer."

Her blog is now password-protected, so I`ll be removing it from my blogroll as soon as I update that. If any of you folks out there pray, please pray for her and her family.

Next item: The big kids went back to school after their vacation today, and I feared the worst. But I ran into Huggy Nun today, and she said Big Son had a really great day. She showed me a composition he`d written in class, "How I Spent My Easter Break." It mentions going to church on Saturday evening with his mother --- oooh, bonus points! But the rest of it was all about what TV shows he watched: That`s So Raven, Kim Possible, The Suite Life of Zach and Cody. It made me wonder why we even bothered taking him places, if the only highlights he recalled were Tivo`d sitcoms.

My personal highlight from Easter vacation was dragging Big Son with me last Monday, when I went to do my Japantown volunteer work. Big Son gave an origami lesson to them and helped them fold little paper frogs. The old folks were still talking about it today when I went.

"How`s your son?" some of them asked. "You have such a nice boy."

Funny, they never seem to remember who I am from week to week, but Big Son made quite an impression on them, with his polite Japanese. He enjoyed it, too, and wants to do it again.

Next: Moving right along, Mande has tagged me for a meme. I generally hate memes, but I usually make a half-assed effort to be a good sport, so here goes:

Six Weird Things/Facts/Habits About Me

1) I used to ride horses, but when I was about 12, I suddenly became very allergic to them, and now I sneeze and break out in hives all over my face whenever I get too close to one.

2) I have never been a vegetarian, and I wear both leather and fur.

3) I have never shoplifted, and the only time I ever hit Daughter was when she was seven and I found stolen bubble gum in her bag after we left a convenience store. For some reason, that upset me more than anything she`d ever done.

4) Last year, I donated money to build a school in Cambodia, and named it after my grandmother, because I wanted her name to be on something besides her gravestone.

5) My great-grandmother`s urologist was Katherine Hepburn`s brother. Really. This is my family`s brush with greatness.

6) I still say the same prayers every night before I go to sleep that I`ve been saying since I was a little girl, despite the almost overwhelming feeling that no one is listening.

Kill! Kill! Kill!

Did everyone have a nice Earth Day?

I`m old enough to remember the early days of Earth Day, in the `70`s. I have a vague memory of coloring a "Save the Earth! Don`t Pollute! Save the Animals!" poster with big fat crayons.

Now, about my backyard rodent that needs to die....

As you may have heard, this year has been exceptionally wet in the Bay Area. We had rain for 25 days in March, and April was mostly a washout, too. After one rainy spell, I noticed that some small animal had tunnelled under our plastic-floored toy shed. So I aimed our garden hose into the hole and flooded it -- but nothing crawled out.

A few days later, I noticed a huge dirt mound on the lawn, with a little hole next to it. Again, I aimed the hose into the hole, and this time, a small animal emerged.

No, it was not a wombat, but I`m not quite sure what it was.

It was about the size of a small guinea pig, so at first I assumed it was a mole. It didn`t scurry -- it sort of lumbered. And it definitely didn`t have one of those long nasty rat tails. It had sort of an abbreviated flesh-colored stump -- but it occurred to me later it might have been a small rat which had lost its tail in an accident. It was brown, not black, and it was a little larger than a mole. I didn`t get a good look at its snout, unfortunately.

I didn`t chase it -- I lumbered after it, in what I`m sure looked like a slow-motion parody of a chase, trying to determine if it had a rat tail. Picture this: two fat-bottomed, lazy mammals lumbering across a wet lawn. It went under a bush, and I left it to itself.

Ironically, this all happened right after I told the kids I`d think about getting a hamster. I had a nice email conversaton with Andie D., whose profile identifies her as a hamster owner, and she assured me they are low-maintenance pets. I have a dim childhood memory of our pet hamster being a little bit stinky, but Andie said no, theirs doesn`t stink at all.

But I`ve put our pet rodent plans on hold, until I get our pest rodent problem under control.

I have not seen any new holes since, but then, our little rodent did the unforgivable: it chewed up our garden hose. Perhaps it didn`t like having its tunnels flooded.

Some of you might ask, could it possibly have been Little Son who chewed up the hose? And I must say, no, I know what Little Son`s teeth marks look like, and it definitely wasn`t him.

So, cursing bitterly, I wasted good money on a new hose.

And I vowed to get my revenge on the wee wombat.

Any ideas?

Warning: Don`t Sulk And Hack

So -- I decided to channel my foul mood in a postive direction, and clip the hedges today.

BAAAAAD idea.

Our house is now surrounded by sticks instead of bushes.

Next project: hunt down and kill the small rat/mole mammal-thing that is making tunnels in the lawn.

Yeah.... kill a small animal. That should feel good.

Spring Broken

The school vacation this week has given me a cold feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach, whenever I think about the coming summer.

The kids have been restless. They tear things apart, then put them back together in a slightly different way. They yell. I yell for them to stop yelling. They cheerfully yell back at me to apologize. They break things, and apologize. They spill things, and mop them up. They yell some more, and chase each other through the house. They wonder why Mama is curled up in a fetal position on her closet floor, muttering to herself, and decide to go watch That`s So Raven for the hundred-millionth time.

I am bitter, brittle. Two bloggers have sent me emails this week, both indicating they were "troubled" by comments I left on their blogs. They both used that word, so I guess it`s not them -- it`s got to be me. (Note to other bloggers whose blogs I read: You may have noticed my comments have trailed off lately, and this is why.)

I wanted to go away somewhere, for this school vacation, but the big kids had Japanese school both Saturdays, so it wasn`t practical. However, Hub decided to take a day off from work Wednesday, and have a very rare "family day."

I resolved not to let my bad mood ruin this, but boy, was it tough.

One of Hub`s many quirks is that he likes things on a schedule. If I say I`m going to the supermarket and will be back at 2:00, and do an extra errand and get back at 3:00, this will bother him, even if all he was doing himself was taking a nap while I was gone.

Therefore, I learned very early in our marriage to be as vague about time as I possibly can, to allow myself the most leeway for spontaneity, errors and other potentially time-consuming distractions.

Unfortunately, Hub remains very specific about time. When he says we should leave at 9:00 am, to get to the amusement park exactly when it opens, he will be very cross if we actually leave at 9:20.

Now, I am a generally punctual person. My fulltime jobs have always involved lots of deadline pressure, and I always met those deadlines. But if I happen to miss one of Hub`s self-imposed deadlines because I want to use the bathroom right before we leave, or some other silly natural body function-- I`m sorry, but he has to live with it.

So, since Hub was in a bad mood, and I have been in a bad mood all week, I figured our hour in the car was a good time to tell him that I want to go back to work. Little Son will be in preschool five days a week in the fall, and Big Son seems to be over the worst of his anxiety and adjustment problems, knock wood. My six-month hiatus has stretched into nine months, and will probably stretch into a year, but it is not an indefinitely sustainable situation.

Hub paid supportive lip service to this idea, but I know him well enough to know what`s going through his head. He loves the idea of my bringing home a nice paycheck, but he also loves being completely off the hook as far as running the household. Hey -- who wouldn`t?

Oh, I have to go now.

I just heard Daughter scream, "GROSS! WIPE IT UP BEFORE MAMA SEES IT!"

If you need me later, I`m sure you`ll be able to find me on my closet floor.

Okay, so I was wrong about the Swede.

I realized after the fact that "Mike the Swede" was responding to another commenter on my very old post -- one who in fact DOES use haxabubbla as her blog name and was an exchange student in Sweden. I didn`t notice, because that comment thread was so cold.

You know what this feels like?

It`s like standing in my front yard, and having someone scream an insult at me, and taking the time to reply at length.....

...only to realize the person wasn`t yelling at ME -- he was addressing some other random person walking down the street.

But I had so much fun writing that post that I`m going to leave it up, anyway.

I guess I`m just a stupid twat.

Hey, I Pissed Off A Swede!

My "anti-anti-spanking" post the other day was entitled, "Why I Will Never Move to Sweden." This is because I figured it`s common knowlege that Sweden has criminalized physical discipline for children.

My post wasn`t about Sweden at all -- it was about why I personally don`t have a zero-tolerance approach to physical discipline, even though I acknowlege its potential to cause harm. I never referred to Sweden in the body of the post.

But because it was in the title, I started getting lots of hits from people searching "Sweden," and "Sweden discipline," according to my site meter. So I figured it was only a matter of time before some Swede found me, and took me to task.

So, without further ado, allow me to introduce "Mike:"

....why do you not add the full story! That you where drunk as a skunk during the entire visit! I am from Sweden and what you are talking about I have never seen or heard about! Straight translated haxabubbla (what you are using as an alias)by the way means in Swedish: haxa=witch and bubbla=bubble. So I am thinking of you as a "bubble headed witch" that does not really know anything about Sweden. Swedish children are no offense more behaved then Americans. Trust me since I have been in USA for 16 years and I was born and raised in Sweden. For the record I am going back just so that I can spend more time with my child. Do not trash talk about things that you do not know anything about!

Unfortunately, "Mike" didn`t leave his email address with his comment, so I have to respond to him here.

Mike -- hey, is that really a Swedish name? It doesn`t sound like one, but I wouldn`t know, because you see, I`ve never actually been to Sweden! And my post, which perhaps you didn`t read, wasn`t about Sweden! How about that!

I have to say, though, I LOVE that line about my being "drunk as a skunk during the entire visit" I never made there. As a matter of fact, it sounds like so much fun that I think I`ll grab a bottle of tequila and go to Ikea some time, just to see how it feels.

And I want to thank you for teaching me the coolest word I`ve learned in a long time -- haxabubbla. It sounds like an Ikea bong! I can assure you, I have never used haxabubbla "as an alias," but honestly, I`d like to, someday, if I ever get the chance.

So I am thinking of you as a "bubble headed witch" that does not really know anything about Sweden. You would be correct there! Not only about me being a "bubble headed witch," though that`s definitely true --- ask my husband, kids, and friends if I am a "bubble headed witch," and they will all laugh and agree with you 100%. It`s also true that I don`t really know anything about Sweden --- but since I never claimed to know anything about Sweden, except that you have an anti-spanking law, I`m not sure why you feel compelled to make that particular point. (Okay, okay, I lied..... Hub drives a Saab, so I do know your country makes cars.)

Swedish children are no offense more behaved then Americans. I have to take your word on that, since I don`t think I`ve ever met any Swedish children. Or perhaps I have, and just mistook them for Finns?

For the record I am going back just so that I can spend more time with my child. Um.... great! Good for you! But what does this have to do with my post?

Do not trash talk about things that you do not know anything about! I`d like to ask the same of you, but if my post didn`t piss you off, I might never have learned the word, haxabubbla.

And damn, it`s a fine word.

Living On The Edge

I woke up to the bells of our church this morning.

Damn, time to get up, I thought, then looked at the clock -- 5:12.

Ah.

Unlike residents of San Francisco 100 years ago today, I was able to go back to sleep.

I`m originally from Connecticut, and I remember hearing about earthquakes when I was a little girl and wondering what kind of crazy people would live where the ground violently shakes.

And now I know -- crazy people like us. I`ve lived most of my adult life in earthquake zones: Los Angeles, Tokyo, and now San Francisco. Earthquakes are on my list of fears, right up there with car accidents, plane crashes, fires, violent crime and incurable illnesses. I am well aware that even if I moved to a place where the earth is stable, I will always be vulnerable to events beyond my control.

When we bought an apartment in Tokyo, I considered all the bad possibilities. Worst case scenario: family dead or injured -- but we`re on the top floor, and the building was built after `89, when Japan last upgraded its codes. So while I did worry about The Big One, I worried more about ordinary house fires, since our street is too narrow for most fire trucks.

Second worst case scenario: apartment destroyed, and we`d have to live somewhere else. You can`t declare bankruptcy and walk away from a mortgage in Japan, the way you can here -- you`re liable for the full amount of the loan, even if the property is rendered unlivable. There are people still making payments on vacant lots in Kobe, where their apartment buildings once stood. But there only seven units in our small building, and four of them are owned by the same family, which originally owned the land, so we would likely be able to either rebuild or sell out. We would take our lead from the other unit owners.

I certainly understand all of San Francisco`s earthquake hoopla -- most people are celebrating not the disaster itself, but the fact that life went on.

At the centennial of my kids` old school in Tokyo, the sixth graders put on a historical play, and acted out events in the school`s timeline. These included the school and neighborhood getting destroyed twice -- first by the 1923 earthquake, and then by the 1945 firebombings. It was not an entirely happy little play. There was no way to gloss over the fact that lots of people died on the very ground on which we had built our lives.

When one lives in a city that has been devastated and rebuilt, one can`t help but realize how frail our individual lives are, but also how resiliant civilization is. Some people die, but most survive.

I hope we`re in the latter category, but unfortunately, we don`t get to pick.

Actual Conversation

(This is not a "cute kid" story -- it`s a "cute husband" story.)

------------
ME: "Today I finally saw the animal that`s been digging the holes in our backyard!"

HUB: "Was it a wombat?"

ME: (can`t stifle laugh)

HUB: (wounded tone) "What? What`s so FUNNY???"
-------------


Poor Hub.

Free Range

Daughter can now make a cup of hot chocolate by herself. She knows how to put water in the pot, turn the gas on under it, wait for it to boil, and then carefully pour it into the cup with the the instant cocoa mix.

"You let a nine-year old use the stove?" some of my friends asked, incredulously.

So I tell them last year in Tokyo, Daughter and her group of eight-year-old friends used to go to our neighborhood coffee shop and order hot chocolate, all by themselves. No adults -- just a table of little girls, sipping their drinks, eating their cookies.

"You let an eight-year old walk around unsupervised?" my friends ask, their mouths agape.

Well, of course I don`t let her do that in San Francisco. But walking to and from school with no adults present is still the norm for Tokyo elementary school students, so my kids were used to having free run of our neighborhood after school, and on weekends.

Daughter didn`t have her own key, because she was bad about losing things, but Big Son had his. That way, he could let himself in if no one was home, in case I had stepped out to do errands with Little Son.

"Where`s my key to the new house?" he asked, when we arrived here.

"You won`t ever need one here," I told him, much to his chagrin.

I`ve written a lot about how much Big Son misses Tokyo, but I haven`t talked much about how much Daughter misses it, too.

Overall, she`s been happy here -- she`s made great new friends, she`s doing well in school, she loves her class and her teacher. But still, she keeps inquiring, "When are we going home?"

"What exactly do you miss?" I asked her, thinking that maybe I figure out a way to get, or recreate, whatever she craves.

"I miss shopping by myself. I want to go to stores with just my friends, without anyone`s mother with us."

I imagine dropping her and a third-grade friend off at the mall, and leaving them there. Um....no! It`s simply not possible to recreate what she misses.

"In a few years, when you`re in junior high school, you can go shopping alone again," I say, and instantly regret saying this. That was the norm in my hometown in Connecticut, when I was growing up in the late `70`s. But has the norm changed? Do people no longer let their junior high school-age kids go to the mall alone?

So, yeah, I let Daughter use the stove to make her hot chocolate.

It seems like the least I can let her do.

My Easter Bonnet Is Not A Thinking Cap

Oh, if God is Catholic, I`m gonna burn in hell.

No, I don`t mean for all my Culture of Death, Homosexual Agenda opinions, or even for my marriage to a heathen -- I mean, for not paying attention to what Daughter was wearing when we dashed out of the house, almost late for our Easter vigil mass.

We walked in the church door -- too late to go back -- and I realized she had put on JEANS.

Damn.

It gets worse. After we sat down, I noticed she had something entwined around her praying hands. A rosary? Hmmm..... I don`t remember her owning a rosary....

I looked closer: they were Buddhist prayer beads.

Double damn.

What`s In A Name?

Names are funny sometimes. I never understood why they called it "Good Friday." I mean, if you get crucified, you`re NOT exactly having a "good" day, are you?

One good thing about Good Friday: Catholic schools are closed -- and all of next week, too, and Little Son`s preschool is also on a break. So we all slept late, and are now lounging around in our pajamas. Our vacation has begun! A nun-free week! No homework! No basketball practice! Unlimited Tivo for my TV-additcted children! And plenty of blogging time for Mama without keeping one eye on the clock, trying to remember who I have to drive where and when.

I suppose I should take my kids to the Stations of the Cross this afternoon, especially since one of Big Son`s friends is the alter boy serving it. But I took them to mass on Palm Sunday (the Spanish mass to boot, so they understood even less of it than usual) and their school had a prayer service yesterday, and of course they can`t get out of going on Easter. I think making them go today would officially put us into "too much church" territory. (I told you I was a bad Catholic.)

Anyway, back to names. Yesterday in the schoolyard, I had a mini-argument with another mother about how her daughter should address me.

I have revealed on this blog before that "L." stands for "Lisa," the most common name for American girls born in 1965, as I was. I started commenting on other people`s blogs "Lisa," but switched to "L.," because there are too many of us Lisa`s out there.

Common though it is, I`ve never hated my name, because I recognized its advantages. It`s easy to write, and no one every mispronounces it. My last name is Lithuanian, by way of Ellis Island where it was mangled, and gets further mangled all the time.

So when Daughter`s friends started calling me "Lisa," I didn`t mind at all. They are all polite little girls who say, "please" and "thank you," and the fact that I`ve heard them call other mothers by their first names, too, made me believe it is the norm in the community in which we now live.

Plus, in Japan, everyone -- all our neighbors and their children -- called me "Lisa-san," even though it is unusual to use first names in Japan. I guess it was easier than attempting my difficult last name. I legally added Hub`s Japanese family name a few years ago, but it probably seemed a bit strange to them, to address an obviously western person by a Japanese name. So "Lisa-san" it was.

Yesterday, I was talking with the mother of one of Daughter`s third-grade friends -- a mother to whom I`m not particularly close. Her daughter is the one who doesn`t always come, or shows up late, to basketball practices and games. She heard her daughter call me "Lisa," and got angry at her.

"Don`t you EVER let me hear you say that again! She is MRS. (Japanese name)."

"Actually," I said, after her daughter was out of earshot, "I prefer 'Lisa,' and it`s what all the other girls call me."

"Well, I am teaching her to ALWAYS show respect by calling people MR. and MRS."

"That`s great when she meets people for the first time, but I prefer 'Lisa.' I really do."

Now she was mad at me. "PLEASE WORK WITH ME ON THIS," she said, giving me one of those, "What is wrong with you?" looks.

"I`m teaching my kids to let the grownups decide how they want to be addressed. I`m teaching them to let the grownups call the shots, " I said with a big smile.

I was in a great mood, because vacation had started, and not even this disagreement could ruin it.

Later, I thought, what if I decided I wanted to be addressed informally as my college nickname? (Readers who know what it was are already laughing.) Without revealing my real last name, I will say that its abbreviation resembled a slang term for the female genitalia, and I went to a women`s college. My closest friends there called me (and still call me) "Twat."

The funniest part was, after a while, we were all so used to it that we forgot it was supposed to be a dirty word.

My former roommate once slipped up and used it in front of her mother -- who didn`t know what it meant, and started using it herself! She would ask things like, "Will Mr. and Mrs. Twat be joining us for dinner on Parents` Weekend?" and not understand why this made her daughter howl with laughter.

Once, I was walking down the street in downtown Northampton, and this same friend saw me and yelled, "HEY, TWAT!" without thinking.

I didn`t even turn around, but everyone else on the street sure did, and was her face red.

I think I should tell all the parents of my kids` friends that I would like to be addressed from now on as "Twat," and see how it goes over.

Kidding, of course -- I have no desire to give the woman I argued with yesterday any more fodder.

------------------------------

Unrelated postscript: The horrible incident I described in my post yesterday took place not in Japan, where we didn`t have a car, but at a Vons supermarket on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, the city in which Big Son and Daughter were born. I don`t remember how far I got before I realized the baby wasn`t with me. I only remember how grateful I was to find him unharmed when I got back to him.

Lots of Stone-Chuckers Live In Those Glass Houses, Y`Know?

There`s a heated discussion going on over at Blogging Baby, about a mother who forgot her one-month old infant in a store. The comments range from, "That poor woman -- thank god the baby was okay -- she needs help," to, "Moron!" "Idiot!" "I have no sympathy for 'tards'.....Jail her ass and take the baby she obviously isn't capable of taking care of!" "Some people shouldn't reproduce!" etc.

This post hits home, because I did exactly the same thing when Big Son was a few months old.

I drove home from the supermarket and realized I had left him in his car seat, strapped into the shopping cart (but in the parking lot -- not in the store).

At the time, I considered myself lucky that no one had called the police, but perhaps if someone had, it would have been the wake-up call I desperately needed.

I wasn`t drinking, or using even over-the-counter drugs -- I was doing the best I could. But I was suffering from untreated post-partum depression, severely sleep-deprived, getting insufficient help from my spouse, far away from my family, friendless in a city to which we`d recently relocated, and totally overwhelmed by my Baby From Hell.

I didn`t need a criminal record -- I didn`t even need parenting classes. I just needed some help and a little more sleep. Perhaps this woman does, too, and that`s why I am not as quick to judge her as some of the other commenters.

Maybe they can`t imagine themselves ever doing what she did -- but I certainly can, because I did it, too.

What I Did Today

I mailed these:

You are invited to a HALLOWEEN IN APRIL party, to celebrate LITTLE SON`S fourth birthday.
Please come in costume, so we can go trick-or-treating to a few houses on our (low-traffic) street.

WHEN: Saturday, April 29, 5-8 pm
WHERE: (our house in San Francisco)
PLEASE RSVP: (our phone number)

Parents are welcome to stay, but equally welcome to drop kids off. If your child is an early sleeper, you can pick him up early. We are late sleepers, so you can also pick him up late. Siblings welcome, but PLEASE LET US KNOW THIS IN ADVANCE, so we can be sure to have enough adults to supervise the trick-or-treating.

(Each invitation decorated with a pumpkin, hand-colored by Little Son.*)
---------

Four is such a great age -- kids are old enough to know exactly what they want, and yet not old enough to understand why it might not be practical.

Little Son loved Halloween, and can`t wait to go trick-or-treating again, so when I asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday party, guess what he said? Fortunately, we live on a quiet backstreet with friendly neighbors, some of whom have already volunteered to pass out candy to a bunch of partygoing preschoolers.

When Daughter was four, we just had some friends over for French toast, her favorite food. That was an easy one.

When Big Son was four, he requested a "Tokyo Tower" theme party.

Our old apartment was very close to Tokyo Tower, and we could see it from our futons at night, if we left the curtain open. "He walks around at night, and goes back to his place in the morning and no one knows," Big Son said. For his party, we took a group of his friends and their families to the top of the tower, then came back to our place for cake.

I even tried to make him a cake shaped like Tokyo Tower, but for some reason, the red food coloring just didn`t work. I put in the whole box, but the frosting stayed a pale pink. Then I tried to carve and layer it into something tower-shaped, but it sagged and got all round. Big Son was perfectly satisfied and told everyone he had a Tokyo Tower cake, when in fact he had a cake that resembled a giant frosted breast, complete with nipple.

I asked Little Son what he wants to be for "Halloween," and guess what? He wants to be the "dancing cookie man," the one he`s decided he resembles. So now I have to find him some white clothes and a chef`s hat.

And of course I`ll take LOTS of pictures, because part of having fun at parties is doing stuff you`ll be embarrassed to remember someday, when you`re more mature.

Right?

---------

*Our color printer ran out of ink. Hub bought it in Japan and shipped it over -- and of course we can`t get refill cartridges here. Ordering them from Japan would have cost less than the new printer I just bought. I`m still waiting for it to be delivered, so in the meantime, Little Son got to put his crayons to good use.

Hey, bloggers -- how do you feel.....

...when you notice someone who had you blogrolled has dropped you?

I think it`s the virtual equivalent of having what you thought was a great conservation at a party, and then the other person abruptly saying, "Excuse me -- I need another drink. Bye."

Fun With My Sitemeter

To the person who found this site searching, "dealing with husband who slept with many women," you poor dear -- hang in there, no matter what you decide to do next.

To the person who found it searching, "insecure wife because husband looks at women," think about what the searcher above is facing, and stop being so insecure. I`m sure you`re gorgeous and he`s just a lech.

To the person who found it last week, searching, "womens stomachs change as they get older," I would have to say, yes, they do -- live with it.

To the person who found this site searching, "gave up my love for lent," I suggest you GET HELP.

To the person who found it searching, "polish pronunciation galumpki," and actually found the answer in one of my posts, my grandmother would have been so proud of me!

Winning Strategy

Big Son and Daughter really truly hate their Saturday Japanese school. But they haven`t yet figured out that there`s a direct correlation between their homesickness and their father`s insistance that they need to keep their Japanese up to grade level.

Every time they whine about how much they hate San Francisco, and want to go back to their old school and friends in Japan, and want to go high school in Tokyo -- they buy themselves a few more months of intense Japanese studies.

And it is really intense -- it kills most of the day, from 8:45 to 3:30, and the teachers attempt to cram a whole week`s worth of work into that single day. It also wreaks havoc with any attempt to keep our kids playing organized sports.

Now, Hub was captain of his high school baseball team. They made it to the Kyoto finals, and he hit a homerun on TV, and it was the happiest day of his life even though they lost the game. If you ever meet Hub, he would be happy to tell you ALL about it and show you the game photos in his Palm Pilot -- I`m not kidding. He fully understands the concept of diehard commitment to one`s team -- most Japanese people are born with this hardwired in their DNA, and it explains their nation`s collective behavior in World War II.

Until now, Hub has allowed the kids to miss a morning, or an afternoon, of their Japanese school to play in their games. Big Son was on his school`s soccer team in the fall, and Daughter is now on the third-grade basketball team.

But today was the first day of the new school year at their Saturday school, which follows the Japanese school calendar. There was a little entrance ceremony, and the kids were introduced to their new teachers.

And....Daughter`s team was playing Mission Dolores at 9:00 am. There are only seven players on her tiny team, and one is unreliable.

All week, Hub and I argued about this. Or rather, he argued, and I kept quiet and let the little sportsman in his DNA whisper my case on my behalf.

Monday: "The reason they hate their Japanese school so much is that you allow them to miss it so often," he said. I didn`t say anything. The little DNA voice in Hub`s head said, "She can`t let her team down."

Tuesday: "Daughter has gone to every other game. She can miss this one," Hub said. The little DNA voice in Hub`s head said, "She can`t let her team down."

Wednesday: "Other kids have missed games when their families were away on trips. Daughter has a right to miss a game, if she has something else that`s important to our family," Hub said. And the nagging little DNA voice said, "She can`t let her team down."

Thursday: "Basketball games are about having fun, and Japanese school is academics, and academics come first," Hub said. Nice try, but that little DNA voice said, "She can`t let her team down."

On Thursday, Daughter`s coach stopped me in the schoolyard and said she heard from Daughter that she wouldn`t be able to play in Saturday`s game, because of her first day of Japanese school.

"Oh, she`ll be there," I said.

Friday: "I`ll call the principal of the Japanese school and tell her that Daughter will be late on the first day of the school year! I`m sure she`ll give me a hard time because Daughter misses so much school, and it`s really inexcusable!" Hub said.

But the little DNA voice was whispering to him, "She can`t let her team down."

So this morning, Hub went to drive Big Son to the Japanese school, and Daughter put on her basketball uniform and I took her to her game.

Hub and I had a mini-argument over whether Little Son would go with Mama or Papa.

"I need to talk to Daughter`s new teacher, and apologize for her being late on the first day of class, so I need you to take Little Son," Hub said.

"Little Son will be bored and bother people in the bleachers," I said. "Besides, when you talk to the teacher, you`re going to play Good Parent/Bad Parent, aren`t you?"

I knew he was.

"You`re going to imply that the Bad Mother insisted Daughter go to her basketball game. Right? You`d have more credibility if the teacher sees that the Bad Mother also made you take Little Son with you. It will enhance your standing as Good Father," I said.

Hub didn`t argue with that. He left with Little Son.

Daughter`s team lost by two points, but they played a good game -- and it certainly felt better than losing by forfeit due to too few players.

So Daughter didn`t win, but the little DNA voice in Hub`s head did, as it does everytime.

Species Clarification

Actual Conversation:

Me, as I tickled Little Son: "Hey, who`s a monkey? Who`s got stinky monkey feet?"

Him, suddenly sitting up and getting very serious: "Mama. I`m not a monkey. I`m a boy. I have stinky human feet."

Me: "Well, thank you for clearing that up."

Him: "You`re welcome."

Oh, my baby is growing up so fast! And he`s turning into a nitpicking smart-ass just like his mama!

Why I Will Never Move to Sweden

When Big Son was two, I spanked him in the middle of a crowded public playground in Los Angeles.

He was playing in the sandbox, and I was sitting on the edge, breastfeeding his newborn sister. He wanted me to play with him. I said, "Wait. We can play as soon as the baby is done eating."

He didn`t want to wait. He was angry. So he picked up a huge handful of the damp, filthy LA playground sand and threw it at us, as hard as he could. WHAM! Direct hit! Sand went everywhere -- in our hair, our eyes, in the baby`s mouth. I spit it out, cleaned up the baby as best I could, and gave Big Son a whack on the bottom -- something I had never done before.

Then, around me -- silence. The other women all stopped talking, and stared at me.

"You should never hit them, no matter what they do," one said -- not to me, but to the woman next to her.

"Come on," I said to Big Son. "Get in your stroller. We are going home, right now."

Two of the women followed me out.

"Get her license plate," I thought I heard one say, as we crossed the parking lot. But I had walked to the park that day.

The women followed me all the way to the sidewalk.

"Child abuse is against the law!" one called after me.

Yes, child abuse is against the law, and it should be. But to say that every swat on the bottom is abuse is like saying all property is theft and all intercourse is rape.

I get a lot of hits on this blog from people searching "pro-spanking children," which is odd for two reasons. I`ve never written about spanking before, and I don`t consider myself "pro." It was never my primary disipline method -- I very rarely hit my kids. Now that they`re all older and can understand words perfectly well, other methods work much better, to get their attention and get my points across.

However, I am unapologetic for the few times I did hit or grab them in the past. So if people who are not 100% opposed to physical discipline in all circumstances count as "pro," then fine -- put me down as "pro." I`ve been called worse.

In our family now, I am the meanie when it comes to discipline. But it`s all within limits, because I was able to learn from my parents' negative examples.

My mother and father had very different discipline styles. My father would yell, scream, and then strike, leaving bruises and blood. My mother just hurled insults and belittled me, but her punishments were the ones that left scars. Thus, I learned at a very early age that words could have more power than physical blows.

I would never order a "no spanking" sticker from this group, but I checked out their Web site to see what kind of advice they have, for dealing with people like me.

The women who confronted me at the park could have taken their response directly from What Should I Do When I See Someone Hitting Their Kid? on the group`s site:

Be a witness. Direct confrontations can be frightening and dangerous. But even if you are too intimidated to confront a hitter, you do not have to simply walk away. Instead, stand at a safe distance and look directly at the hitter without smiling. Maintain eye contact. Many hitters will feel uncomfortable and stop what they are doing. A few may challenge you by saying something like, "What are you looking at?" Your answer, of course, is simple. "Child abuse."

Okay, that is just going to piss off the hitters, and maybe make them hit even harder! But I also read the other suggestions on the group`s list, and this one really made sense to me:

Intervene early. If you see a confrontation between parent and child escalating, step in. Parents may hit if they become frustrated with their child's behavior and feel pressure from onlookers to "make that kid behave." Your best bet is to try to validate the parent's frustration while normalizing the child's behavior. ("Looks like you're both having a long day. My little one used to get like that while we were holiday shopping.") If you know the parent, offer to watch the child for a few minutes while the parent regains emotional control.

That is really great, common-sense advice! Instead of stalking someone through a parking lot, try to validate the parent's frustration while normalizing the child's behavior.

In fact, I can actually recall a time when that very technique worked on me.

Big Son was three, and sitting in the front of a shopping cart and "helping" me unload the groceries. He picked up a cantalope and nearly dropped it -- I barely caught it in time before it splattered all over the linoleum, and I screamed at him, in a particularly nasty tone of voice, "I TOLD YOU NOT TO TOUCH!!!!"

Once again, there was silence all around me. The other shoppers were horrified, that I had just screamed at this sweet, wide-eyed little boy who had only been trying to help me.

What they hadn`t seen was him knock over a stack of boxes 5 minutes before, after repeated warnings not to touch them -- which had gotten him banished into the shopping cart, even though he had wanted to walk.

The checkout cashier, an older woman, looked at me and softly said, "It`s tough sometimes, isn`t it..."

"Ooooooooh, yeah!" I sighed, my anger instantly diffused by this woman`s flash of understanding.

I`ve said before, physical discipline is exactly like drinking alcohol while pregnant, or feeding your kids junk food.* Are any of these examples healthy if you do them often? Can they all be potentially very harmful if you do them too much? Should they be held up as positive examples of desirable behavior, that society should encourage? No, no and no.

But should they be considered shameful, even criminal? I would say, no.

That is, unless our already over-burdened courts and social services want millions of new cases -- parents just like me, on that long-ago day in the park.

(*Updated to add, I`ve done all three.)

Some Background, and a Bonus Rant

A little more background on my "Baby Allergy" post below:

Hub is wary about adoption, which is partly a Japanese cultural thing. I argued for adoption right from the start, because I had no desire to experience pregnancy or childbirth, and because the world has plenty of children who need loving homes. I even looked into it in Japan, when we decided to go for a third kid, but Hub got cold feet.

My "allergy" toward babies is directly related to my desire to never be pregnant again. I would willingly adopt another baby, and Hub knows this, but he says he has too many doubts. He said he worries that he would love an adopted child less than his "own" child, and that it wouldn`t be fair to a child to be raised by a parent who didn`t think of it as his "own."

But Hub makes moony eyes at every infant he sees, and wants to kidnap it and take it home, so I am confident that he would love any baby that came into our life, no matter how. Still, unless he`s fully on board here, adoption is not an option for us.

To the commenter who suggested I get my tubes tied: when I consulted my doctor about this, he warned me that tubal ligations can fail, because Fallopian tissue regenerates. He said he`s had several patients who had surprise pregnancies, ten or fifteen years after their operations, and told me that using multiple forms of contraception, which is what I do, is more effective.

And of course Hub refuses to get snipped himself, because he holds out hope for more babies.

And yes, my friend probably thinks it`s my distaste for the children of others that`s "not healthy." I think, however, that it`s perfectly fine to think little babies are disgusting, germy lower life forms, and be physically repelled by them. This is especially true because I believe I have identified the cause of my feelings: my own desire to stop breeding. It seems pretty healthy to me!

Okay, and now here`s my bonus rant, for readers who are bored by the entire baby conversation:

I just found out that Mr. Mellow Guy, the wonderful sixth grade teacher at our school is LEAVING! We had been counting on him getting Big Son back on track after his Huggy Nun year.

Mr. Mellow Guy is perfect in so many ways. He`s patient and doesn`t get angry, he uses project-based learning as much as possible, and his students are devoted to him. He`s also very religious, and I wanted Big Son to get to know a living example of an intelligent young religious guy, so he can see that religion is not only for uncool mothers and elderly nuns.

I incorrectly assumed Mr. Mellow Guy was gay, showing that my "gay-dar" is not functioning properly. I used to have really accurate "gay-dar," but I guess all those years of being surrounded by Asian men, many of whom look a little bit gay, threw it out of whack.

Mr. Mellow Guy has very short hair, a slight build and he always just seemed kind of, you know, GAY. So I figured he would stay in San Francisco forever. But no -- not only is he NOT gay, but he has a girlfriend in Louisiana, and is tired of being in a long-distance relationship.

I know these details from a friend who has a kid in the sixth grade class. All the girls think it`s very romantic -- apparently, he`s going to propose to his girlfriend, and even if she says no, he`s going to move to Louisiana to try to change her mind if necessary, because he thinks she`s "the one." It`s better than TV, isn`t it? The entire sixth grade class wants to move to Louisiana with him.

Our principal has a great track record of hiring good teachers, and the elderly nuns are all leaving, so hopefully Big Son will still get someone good next year.

And with any luck, it will be a gay guy with roots in this city, and not some hetero dude just passing through.

Apologies to Everyone Who Liked The Blue....

...but today the sun came out, and a black blog doesn`t seem quite so depressing anymore.

Sorry, but I want my blog to match my bedroom.

Allergy Season

A new friend of mine here casually mentioned yesterday that she thinks she might be pregnant.

And when she said this, my stomach did a flip-flop.

I call this reaction my "baby allergy." It started exactly at the time Hub started making those moony eyes, staring wistfully at other people`s infants and sighing, "Wouldn`t it be great...?"

So now, the sight of a baby or any baby goods, or even the mention of a pregnancy, sets off a little physical reaction inside me. I know lots of people who feel this way about snakes, and I once knew a very squeamish girl in school who would feel faint if she so much as heard the word, "blood." Well, all anyone has to do is whisper "baby" in my ear, and I will involuntarily shudder, and feel a bit ill.

I know that some of the people who read my blog have struggled, or are still struggling with infertility. I will say now that this post is not about you -- it`s about me. I don`t know what it`s like to be you, and I never will. Nor will you ever know what it`s like to be me, but I hope this post gives you some insight, the way my "baby allergy" has give me insight into how my childfree-by-choice friends feel.

Over the years, I`ve known a number of women who never wanted children, and always knew they never wanted children. A few of them had their contraceptives fail, conceived, and subsequently aborted. Most of them either got their tubes tied afterward, or persuaded their husbands to get snipped.

I`ve also heard what other friends have said about these women`s choices behind their backs. A few supposedly pro-choice women, who have nothing but compassion and support for women who abort in drastic circumstances, said, "How selfish!" whenever they heard about these well-off, married women ending their pregnancies "just for convenience." I didn`t understand this -- did they think an abortion should only be procured under duress, and never as a fully informed, rational choice made after calm reflection?

While I myself never judged my friends` decisions, I honestly could not imagine what compelled them to do what they did. My husband and I really wanted children, and I just didn`t understand people who really did not. It was as Mother Theresa said -- "How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers."

But Mother Theresa, God rest her soul, never gestated any nine-pound flowers and then expelled them from her vagina. I think I understand child-free people better, now that I don`t want to have any more children myself. Of course, I will never know what it`s like to be them, and they`re all very different people, but if any of them have anything like my current "baby allergy," then I can empathize.

Now, I am an educated, liberated woman in a developed country -- I do not have to have any more babies. This is entirely my choice. Hub, his wistful eyes notwithstanding, is resigned to my decision, and even if he weren`t, there is no legal way he could force me to bear another one for him. I have the means to use several forms of contraception, to reduce my chance of concieving to as close to zero as I possibly can. And if that one-in-a-million chance still happens, I live in San Francisco, not South Dakota. So my "baby allergy" isn`t a problem that affects my life much. If I happen to see a lost pacifier or a tiny mitten in the street, I shudder and step over it, and keep on walking.

I don`t love my three children any less, or regret anything I`ve ever done for them -- they were worth it all, beyond words. My current "baby allergy" isn`t about them -- instead, I think it`s a direct signal from all the various cells of my aging body. My scarred, thin-walled uterus is telling me, "Please do not stretch me out and cut me open again!" My hormones are telling me, "Please do not kick us into overdrive again!" My breasts are telling me, "Please don`t make us lactate again!" My brain cells are telling me, "Enough is enough!"

I know for a fact that not all humans share my "allergy" -- while I am repelled by the young of my species, I realize most people are not, nor should they be. This "baby allergy" is entirely mine, and mine alone, and don`t worry -- it isn`t contagious. I keep it myself, for the most part, and only reveal it on my blog and to a few friends.

But one of these friends suggested to me that my "baby allergy" sounded like something for which I should "seek help," because it`s "just not healthy."

Huh? So, the only "healthy" attitude for a woman is to desire pregnancies and babies? And if this desire should suddenly vanish, then something is wrong with the woman`s thinking and she needs to go get her head straightened out?

That made me angry.

Pardon me, while I go burn my nursing bra.

Easier On The Eyes?

I mean, this blue color? Yes? No?

People have complained about the white-on-black template ever since I started this blog, but I really liked it.

However, I think perhaps the anonymous commenter who said, "Maybe it would help if you didn't blog on a black background! I feel like I need an anti-depressant to read you sometimes!" may have had a point.

The Upside of Dementia

I managed to deeply disturb an old woman with dementia yesterday, at the Japantown home.

I`m always the first one to finish my lunch, so I always start to clear the trays before the other workers.

"Are you finished?" I asked Mrs. H., because she had pushed her tray away from her and put her napkin over her plate.

"Clean up your own tray! I`ll clean up mine when I`m ready!" she actually snarled -- her lip went up over her teeth, like an angry cat.

The other two workers who were sitting nearby thought this was very funny, and smiled and gave me looks that said, "Don`t mind Mrs. H.," they whispered. Later, they told me that she`s on new medication, and it`s making her a little tense.

Mrs. H. remained at her seat long after most of the other residents finished and left the dining room. Everytime I would clear one of the trays, Mrs. H. would say, "Look, there! She`s doing it again!"

I couldn`t help but wonder, did Mrs. H. remember the years after the war in Japan, when food was scarce? Did she think I was trying to steal food?

The kitchen has a large window that opens onto the dining room, and Mrs. H. kept staring at me, as I helped the other workers clean up the dirty dishes.

"I`m afraid to turn around -- I can feel her eyes on my back. Is she still glaring at me?" I asked them. Their smiles told me that she was.

"Don`t take it personally," they said. "She`ll forget about this in a few minutes."

Sure enough, half an hour later at arts and crafts time, Mrs. H. let me help her cut her paper, with no trace of a snarl.

"That`s the upside of dementia," one of the workers said to me. "You forget the bad stuff, too -- not just the good."

Sunday Night Homesickness Attack

A friend just called me from Tokyo, where it`s Monday.

It was great to talk with her and catch up -- well, catch up with HER, because she reads my blog so I had almost nothing to say to her that she didn`t already know.

But she said she went with her family to see the cherry blossoms in Yoyogi Koen, and was sad that our family didn`t go with them this year.

I`m sure the cherry trees in the park near our apartment in Tokyo are blooming, too.

So now I`m sitting here at my desk in San Francisco, where a cold rain is still falling outside, wishing I was back there instead of here, wishing I could trade this big beautiful house for our tiny apartment.

But some Shinsei banker is renting it now.

Weekend Update

Here are the usual odds and ends, thrown together on this rainy Sunday afternoon:

1) Apologies for not updating my blogroll. I have so many of you to add, but... I just can`t motivate myself to paste all those lines of code into my template. I realize this makes me a lesser person than you are, for which I am deeply sorry. No, really.

2) Big Son had a "fantastic" time at his sleepover Friday night. Can I tell you how happy this made me? At the very least, I don`t expect to hear him say, "I have no friends in San Francisco" any time soon. In fact, I pointed this out to him -- and he retorted that his friend`s parents are divorced, and the sleepover was at the friend`s dad`s house, which is over the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin -- NOT in San Francisco, which Big Son insists he "still hates."

3) I was in church this morning, sitting in the back row as usual. I always have at least 2 cups of coffee in the morning, and I like to be able to make a quick exit if nature calls, and I also like to watch all the people in front of me. So there I was, quietly thinking my peaceful thoughts, and suddenly -- there were arms around my neck! AAAAAAAH! A crazy person is strangling me!!!

I turned around and realized it was just Huggy Nun, saying hello in her preferred manner.

Good thing I realized this in time, before I wrestled her to the ground.

4) Friday was report card day: no D`s, no F`s, no complaints from me.

6) Finally -- I was out shopping with Little Son yesterday evening, and he stopped and pointed at the Pillsbury Dough Boy on a box of brownie mix, and said, "Look -- it`s ME!"

The resemblance is indeed striking.

Lost in Translation

Daughter asked me in a hushed voice, "Mama, what does FOX mean?"

"Oh, it`s an animal. In Japanese, it`s kitsune."

"No... I think I mean a different FOX."

"Well, sometimes people call someone a 'fox,' if they`re smart, or if they`re attractive."

"No, I don`t think that`s it.... Is there a FOX that means a dirty word, something a man does to a lady?"

Ah.

My kids are learning so much English vocabulary from their little Catholic school pals.

Advice

A good friend has asked me to contribute to a " book of marriage advice" she`s putting together, for a friend of hers who is about to be married. The bride-to-be is Japanese, but her father is a diplomat and she was brought up in various international schools abroad and returned to Japan only for university. She is marrying a Japanese national.

It`s funny -- lots of people have asked me for marriage advice. I don`t know if Hub and I are exactly a picture-perfect, happily married couple, and since neither of us has ever been married to anyone else, we have nothing with which to compare our relationship. But we just celebrated 15 years of marriage, so that in itself is probably worth a few points.

I think people wonder, how does this feminist American chick manage to stay married to a caveman from Kyoto? I have a secret weapon, which consists of a single phrase, which I`ve found allows me to stand my ground in every argument: "What you say is true, but our situation is different."

Let me give a few examples of this in action:

I now do the laundry in our family. That is to say, our washer and dryer do the laundry, but I`m the one who puts the dirty clothes in, and takes the clean clothes out. Hub, if he`s home at night, is usually the one to help Little Son change into his pajamas. Instead of putting the dirty clothes into the laundry basket, Hub folds them up and puts them on the floor in the corner, and he insists he does this because they`re clean enough to wear again. Pretty soon, there is a large pile of Little Son`s clean enough to wear again clothes.

"Look," I say to Hub. "That`s a blob of ketchup on this sweatshirt. And these jeans have grass stains on the knees."

Hub argues like a typical Japanese man. He will never say, "You`re right, those are dirty, and should be washed." Instead, he says something like, "Washing clothes too often wastes water and electricity. Americans wash clothes too often."

Then, for the crowning blow, he will say something like, "People a few generations ago didn`t wash clothes all the time, and they all survived."

So I say, "What you say is true, but our situation is different."

I don`t disagree with what Hub says. I just point out that, Lo, the world has changed! And our particular family has reaped the benefits of modernization and education! Moreover, we are blessed to be at a socioeconomic level that allows us to wash our clothing when it becomes stained, if we so choose!

Here`s another example. Before we bought our apartment in Tokyo, we tried to buy a teeny tiny piece of land, on which an architect friend was going to help us a build a teeny tiny house. Hub and I were mostly in agreement on what we wanted in a house, except I wanted a small bathroom next to the master bedroom, because I didn`t want to have to go all the way downstairs to pee in the middle of the night.

"That`s ridiculous! A house this tiny only needs one toilet!" said Hub, and then hit me with his best shot: "When I was growing up in our house in Kyoto, me and my parents and my brother and my sister and my aunt and my grandmother, all seven of us were just fine using a single outhouse in the yard!"

So I say, "What you say is true, but our situation is different." Lo, the world has changed! And our particular family has reaped the benefits of modernization and education! Moreover, we are blessed to be at a socioeconomic level that allows us to afford to pee in comfort and convenience in the middle of the night, if we so choose!

In short, whenever Hub falls back on any argument that says, this is the Japanese way, it's the way my people have always done things, I always remind him, "What you say is true, but our situation is different."

You might not win every argument with that line, but it`s not about winning -- it`s about achieving a state of peaceful detente, in which a happy home life can take root and thrive.

My other piece of advice is that if you ever find yourself arguing about who should clean up what, it`s cheaper to hire a cleaning person than it is to see a marriage counselor.

Remember -- arguments always go better in a clean house.

The Homesick Home Blogroll

I aim to have the most inclusive blogroll on the planet, and do my part to spread Internet peace, love and understanding. If you would like to be here (or if you`re here and you don`t want to be associated with a blog like mine in any way), please post a comment and let me know.


My First Friends Inside The Computer

Blogging Baby
Gawdessness
Incurable
( Ipodmama ) on haitus
Jenorama
MetroDad
Morphing Into Mama
Roc Rebel Granny
So Close
Sweet Juniper
Uncle Roger

More Friends Inside The Computer

Achromic
Andrea in Japan
Caloden
Childs Play
Chocolate Makes It Better
DadCentric
Friday Playdate
Grumppopotamus
The Happy Feminist
In The Trenches
It`s Not All Mary Poppins
I Was Asked
Misfit Hausfrau
Mother-Woman
Vast Moderate Conspiracy

More Blogs Upon Which I Clickety-Click

Adventures of a Nanny
American Family
Anna Dilemna
Autumn`s Mom
The Babe in Kyushu Is Back
The Blogfathers
Chaosfox
Clearly Delirious
Crazed Parent
Crazy Aunt Purl
Dongurigal
GreenSunflower
Here Be Hippogriffs
International Marriage?!?
Leery Polyp
Life With Belly & Syd
A Little Pregnant
Mande`s J-Life
The Naked Ovary
Rice Daddies
Suburban Bliss
Suburban Misfit
Thinking About...
Third Culture Kid(s)

More Blogs I Found, Or Bloggers Who Found Me

Accepting the Echo
Alas (a blog)
AmericanStoic
Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony
The Blythe Spirit
Crazy, But That`s How It Goes
Daddy TK
Daily Mumps