Ooooooh! Another one down!

MY MOTHER: "So.......did you ever read the Weight Watchers materials I brought for you last time we came?"

ME: "(mumble, mumble, how the hell to change the subject?)...trying to eat less...(mumble mumble)...exercising more...(mumble, mumble, mumble)..."

MY MOTHER: "Well, whatever you`re doing, it`s not working."

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

It was actually so funny, and so entirely expected, that I laughed. Hey -- at least I`m not crying!

Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have a New Record!

Actual conversation, 10 minutes after my parents arrived:

MY MOTHER (frowning, her lips curling slightly): "Are those new glasses?"

ME: "No. I got them in the summer. I had them last time you were here."

MY MOTHER: "They sure are....different."

MY FATHER: "Yeah. But they`re better than your last glasses!"

MY MOTHER: "No, they`re not."

ME: "They`re not?"

MY MOTHER: "I think your old glasses and your new glasses are both ugly!"

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

Whew!

Now that we have the obligatory "glasses" conversation out of the way, in record time, I`m actually feeling a little better.

Wouldn`t it be so nice....

....if I were looking forward to my parents` visit, instead of stressing about it?

....if I didn`t have to run around cleaning everything, with the sinking feeling that no matter how much I do, they will still find something dirty and point it out?

....if I had the kind of parents that would accept my family`s messiness, the way I accepted -- and adapted to --- Hub`s messiness?

....if my mother didn`t say anything about how ugly my glasses are, and why don`t I wear contact lenses anymore?

The silver lining is that I might actually lose some of the extra weight I`ve probably gained from all my holiday eating.

They arrive in an hour.

Hub is vacuuming -- he offered to vacuum, when he found me crying. He didn`t even have to ask why I was crying.

I hardly ever cry. I can`t remember the last time I cried.

Wait -- when was the last time they visited...? Yeah, I think it was then.

If I don`t post for a few days, it`s because I`m spending all my free time locked in the bathroom, crying.

Happy new year, everyone.

When Worlds Collide

The plumber returned my call right away, came right to the house, phoned me with her estimate (I was working today), did the repair involving a few new parts, and returned in the evening to collect her modest check.

Bonus: she`s a woman plumber -- isn`t that cool? Well, I think so. And she drives a very old VW bug with Mexican woven seat covers, making it a genuine San Francisco time warp on wheels. And she brought cookies for my kids -- she remembered we have three kids, after the last time she fixed the leaking pipe under our kitchen sink.

Yesterday`s minor bathroom crisis, involving buckets on both sides of the toilet tank to catch the rapid drips, is now FIXED.

And it occurred to me, guess how I found this cookie-bearing, lovebug-driving Wonder Plumber Woman? A San Franciscan I know only as Pixie Sticks recommended her.

Once again, my blog life brings improvement and satisfaction to the rest of my life.

Today`s Insomnia Moment Is Brought to You by....

....an old Japanese woman on the subway in Tokyo a few years ago, who smiled at then-small Big Son and Daughter, and, still smiling, said, "Your children are very beautiful, but I`ll bet your husband`s parents were angry when he married you!"

Actual Christmas Eve Phone Conversation with my Brother

My brother: "Your blog has been really boring lately."

Me: "......!!!! You read my blog???"

Him: "Sometimes. But it`s been really boring lately. Negative. Your life is really depressing!"

(Not much to say to that -- subject changed -- discussion of spouses and children followed, and that fact that our parents are coming to San Francisco for New Year`s.)

Him: "You are SO MUCH like mom! You get more and more like her every year."

Me: "I know, but I`m fighting it. I try hard not to be like her."

Him: "You look like her, you talk like her, you do the things she does."

Me: "Yeah, but I try really hard not to, and I feel bad about it later if I say something that hurts someone`s feelings."

HEY, wait a minute.... which child of my mother`s doesn`t care if they blurt out something honest that hurts someone`s feelings -- and in fact, revels in watching the reaction to what they`ve just said? That would be YOU, bro!

I didn`t tell him this on the phone when I thought of it, but now that I know he reads my blog, I can tell him here.

And bro? If you ever tell mom and dad about my blog, I will tell your wife and co-workers about....you know what.

Merry Christmas.

Hallelujah! A Christmas Miracle!

I was reading the newspaper yesterday (well, actually I was reading Friday`s paper, since newspapers these days tend to have such stale news that it doesn`t matter if I read them a day or two later), and I came across this AP article, about substandard working conditions in the factories that make Bratz dolls.

I showed it to Daughter, expecting her to shrug.

But instead, her eyes got big and round.

"Workers are only paid 17 cents for each doll they make? That`s horrible!"

Big Son was sitting at the table, and thought about this.

"Doesn`t it depend on how much it costs them to live where they are? I mean, 17 cents is like nothing, here in San Francisco, but maybe it can buy a car or something over there."

Excellent point, I told him, but presumably 17 cents is below a fair local wage, which is why people are trying to find out if this is true or not.

Daughter had intended to use one of her Christmas gift certificates to buy another one of her beloved slutty dolls, but here`s the miracle: she has decided to wait, and find out more about the factory conditions before she spends any more money on Bratz.

And she made a very special request: "DO NOT write about this on your blog, Mama, until I tell J. in person!"

J. is a Bratz-loving friend of hers, whose mother reads my blog sometimes. Daughter wanted to break the news to J. herself -- which she did, at church last night, so now I am free to share the news of Daughter`s social conscience.

And this morning, she is playing with....Mulan.

Yeah, sure, on the whole I would prefer that Daughter eschew Bratz because they`re ugly little ho dolls, but what can I say? This nascent Norma Rae attitude is great, too.

Happy happy, merry merry.

Let`s Keep the "X" in "Xmas"

For your enjoyment, here is an assortment of unfortunate holiday cards.

(Hat tip to Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony, down under.)

Happy happy, merry merry.

Monstra mihi pecuniam!

Here`s what I did today -- I will tell it in reverse order, just to keep readers interested with the genuinely touching, heartwarming, milk-of-human-kindness part first:

I was on my way home, trying to get the change machine at the Church St. Muni station to change my $5 bill into change I could use to get on the train (Muni turnstiles only take quarters). But my bill was all creased and worn out -- the machine wouldn`t take it. I tried again and again, and even tried different machines, but they just kept spitting it back out.

So I went up to people, to ask if anyone had change, and here`s where it gets ugly: no one would acknowlege me. They acted as if I were a homeless person asking for change -- they avoided making eye contact, and pretended I wasn`t there at all, even though I was waving my useless $5 bill.

I went up to the guy in the Muni booth, and asked him. He was an older white guy. "Sorry, no money in here. Ask someone for change," he said gruffly, without making eye contact.

"I am, and no one will even talk to me!" I said.

I went back to the machines. I put the money through again -- I figured I had a better chance of making my plight appeal to a stranger if they actually witnessed me trying and failing to use the change machine. I then turned to the man at the machine next to me (a balding, middle-aged white guy in a brown leather jacket), and said, "Excuse me -- my bill`s not going through. Do you have change for a five?"

The man totally ignored me, and walked away. Maybe people who live in certain parts of cities get so used to ignoring homeless people`s constant pleas for cash that ignoring everyone just comes automatically after a while?

The old man in the change booth saw the whole thing, and something about it must have touched his gruff old heart. He left the booth, came over to me, and asked if I was sure I didn`t have any other bills. I only had a one, and the fare was $1.50.

"Change the one, and then come to the gate next to the booth," he said.

He let me through the gate for only a dollar. I was so touched I tried to give him my $5, but he refused to take it.

"Merry Christmas," he growled. "Go! Get on the train!"

There -- that was the happy ending. Now here`s the beginning: I managed to get a very early doctor`s appointment for Big Son this morning, to find out that he does indeed have strep throat, in a very bad way.

After running around all morning to the doctor and then getting the prescription filled, I barely made it to a lunch date I had, that I`d planned weeks in advance and didn`t want to cancel.

I had no time to shower or even change, and I was wearing kind of ratty old clothes. I don`t think I looked homeless, but....oh, well. Maybe I did. Anyway, I certainly didn`t look my best.

I had lunch with the favorite cousin of my best friend Dianne from college, who couldn`t believe that I had lived in San Francisco for a year and a half, and still hadn`t met George.

George is indeed great -- he`s a gay guy who lives in a fantastic rent controlled apartment in the Castro, and sometimes attends services at the same church at which I attended a really excellent funeral a few months ago. It`s always funny when you get together for the first time with someone who is closely tied to people you know well. I did my impression of Dianne`s mother, and George was amazed, and said, "Oh my god, you sound just like her!" I knew all of George`s family stories because I`d been hearing them for 20 years from Dianne, so we could gossip about who was doing what -- I guess I`m almost an honorary cousin, too.

The strep and the mean people sucked, but meeting George and getting help from the kind Muni man really made it a great day.

So I`m just going to concentrate on the happy stuff, and...... go get some sleep. And dream of sugar plums, and all that crap. G`night!

Um...I can`t think of a title.

Big Son is sick -- poor guy. His throat hurts and he has a high fever and migraine, and I think I`m going to take him to the doctor tomorrow to make sure he doesn`t have strep.

In Tokyo, I used to joke with my co-workers that my three very healthy kids only got sick on mornings when GDP or tankan data were being released, or at the peak of earnings season. So of course, the week I start back at a job, I knew at least one kid would get sick. Big Son called my cell phone all day, telling me his head hurt.

So I will cut today`s posting short, now that I`m home with him, and just share something the man at the reception desk in the lobby said to me this morning.

I don`t have a company ID to get into the building, since I`m just working on a contract right now. There are two sign-in books for people who don`t regularly work there -- one labeled, "Visitors" and the other "Contractors." I figured the latter is for electricians, plumbers, etc., but since I am officially a "Contractor" now, too, I went to sign that one.

"No, you need to sign the 'Visitors' book," the man said.

"But I`m working here temporarily on a contract," I said.

"No, that book is only for people doing real work here in the building."

Wow -- he`s got my number, all right.

It`s great to be here.

For a year and a half, after we moved to San Francisco, I was a stay-at-home mother. As I mentioned in the post below, that ended this week.

I have a part-time job that will hopefully turn into a fulltime job. If it doesn`t -- well, I don't want to think about that right now. I will just keep going in when they say they need me, and hope for the best. Today I`m at home, but will go back in tomorrow.

I had intended to post about great it feels to be back at work, when I stumbled across this post today over at Sweet Juniper, in which Dutch extolls the joys of being a stay-at-home dad.* He does it in a nonjudgemental way, without a trace of, "I love doing this so it must be the right thing for EVERYONE to do," that so often plagues other people`s similar posts. He is clearly happy, and more power to him -- really! -- but (yeah, you knew there would be a "but") I just can`t relate to what he says. My own experience was very different.

(*Dutch also extolls the joys of ruined buildings, to which I absolutely CAN relate, and links to this cool site.)

Now, I`m a firm believer that families should do whatever they feel is in their collective best interest, with no guilt or hand-wringing. That`s why I quit my job (which I liked a lot, and could have continued) when we moved to San Francisco, and didn`t go back for 18 months -- the kids were much better off with me around, to help get them through their rough transition into American life. And as longtime readers of this blog know, I really had to keep a close eye on a particular nun.

But now that the kids are finally settled, and I feel as if I can go back to work -- well, what can I say? I`m happy! The night before I started, I was so excited I couldn`t sleep, like a kid on Christmas Eve. It felt so right, to leave the house for a few hours, to do something I like and I know I`m good at, and earn a paycheck for doing it.

I consider the four-and-half years I spent as a SAHM in Los Angeles to be the most miserable, wasted years of my life. Hub looks at old videos of baby Daughter and toddling Big Son, and says things like, "Don`t you wish we could go back to those days?" And I shudder, and think, NO. Yeah, the babies themselves were great, but I cuddled their little bodies against the bleakest of backdrops.

When Big Son and Daughter were babies, I was at home not really by choice but by default -- after we moved from Tokyo to LA, I got pregnant before I found a job there. In restrospect, I know much of my bad experience was due to untreated post-partum depression, combined with being in a city where I had few friends, no family and trouble feeling connected to any community. But I know that part of it was because I was missing my outside work, too.

Of course, I`m not romanticizing the working world, which certainly has its ugly side. Right after we moved back to Tokyo, I worked for a wire service for five years (another company that shall go nameless, but its parent company also rhymes with "Cow Bones"). The job had its bright moments, and some great co-workers, and the pay was all right -- but the hours were long and the work was often monotonous. I wouldn`t willingly re-live those days, either, even though they coincided with my older kids` precious toddlerhood.

So what`s my point here? I realize that I just can`t write my "It`s so great to be back at work!" post the way I intended, and expect everyone to relate to it, anymore than I can relate to Dutch`s (or, for that matter, to posts written by women who loved being pregnant, and/or loved breastfeeding). While I enjoy reading about other people`s experiences because I want to understand perspectives beyond my own, very often I end up thinking, "Huh. I just don`t feel that way."

Which is fine.

Dutch and a number of other bloggers I admire are also writing for Babble, a new site that bills itself as being for the "new urban parent." I`ve checked it out, but find myself repelled, almost as if a magnetic force is sending me back, clickety click click, to my own parenting world of fast food French fries, Bratz dolls and CartoonNetwork. I don`t fit into this urban parent scene at all -- "hip" is an ample body part of mine, not my attitude. (And don`t even get me started on one of their message board headlines: "Elective C-Section - Evil?" Is that last word really necessary??? Okay, I will shut up now.)

But it occurred to me, I don`t have to like this site. I can continue to enjoy some of the bloggers on their own blogs, and steer clear of their uber-cool collective.

And I can be happy about going back to work, even if not everyone is going to understand why.

Bad Holiday CARma

I went back to work yesterday, doing some holiday copyediting fill-in at my old company. (I know better to name it on my blog, but the parent company rhymes with "Cow Bones.") I worked a half day yesterday and today, and will work a full day Thursday, and then three days next week.

I will get paid -- not a boatload of cash, but very reasonable compensation that seems like a lot to me, coming after my long spell of unemployment.

I got off BART this morning at Embarcadero, and there was an old Chinese man playing "Jingle Bells" on a shamisen.* I should have given him some money instead of rushing right past him -- his music made me smile, and I felt bad as I raced away, but I wanted to get to work a little bit early.

Thus, I screwed up my karma.

Hub got a call from the garage today. His car needs a new part of some kind, and the repair will cost....almost exactly what I will make from my holiday job.

If I had tossed the old man a dollar, would I have had better luck?

Maybe -- or maybe I`d just be out a few hundred bucks, plus another dollar.

*Wait -- it had a bow. It must have been an erhu.

Mono-Brow

Daughter and Little Son were arguing yesterday -- well, not arguing. They were fighting. They were beating each other up, as siblings sometimes do.

Little Son leaned over Daughter`s face and somehow.... chewed one of her eyebrows off.

We don`t know exactly how he did it, but half of her right eyebrow (the bushy half) is just GONE.

He was very contrite -- he realized he had done a very bad thing, by disfiguring his sister.

Daughter went off to school today with her hair combed over one side of her face, a la Veronica Lake.

We assured her it will grow back.

On the downside, Hub`s car didn`t start this morning. Alas, whatever is wrong with it won`t grow back, and we are going to be out some more $$$.

Merry fucking Christmas....

Oops....

Almost forgot to plug THIS.

And still haven`t updated the damn blogroll, which contains a few blogs that are now defunct, and omits some I now read everyday.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the most important update of all: I think Little Son`s kindergarten screening went fine.

At first he said he didn`t want to go with the teacher, and clung to me. But the teacher knows he`s not shy, because she sees him roughhousing with his big brother and friends in the schoolyard everyday, so she thought it was funny.

Afterward, she said, "Okay, we`re all done! He was so polite!"

Polite?

My kid...?

Update, and a Question

Well, Hub`s office party was so interesting, on so many levels, that I will have to write about in installments. Summary: it was fun, and after a bad beginning (I was late meeting punctual Hub, and made him about half an hour late for the party, so when I met him, he had steam coming out of his ears), it got better, and was overall quite nice. I started the evening thinking I was married to an angry asshole, and ended it realizing that Hub`s drunken co-workers really like him. And YES! They all think he dresses like a gay man, and some even said so with no prompting from me!

Here`s a totally unrelated question: what kind of gifts do you give your kids` teachers?

In Japan, gifts to public school teachers were discouraged, so the kids just made them cards. Since we moved here, I`ve been giving teachers all $10 gift certificates to either Barnes & Noble or Borders inside the kids` homemade cards.

These certificates add up: Little Son has four teachers at his preschool, Big Son has four subject teachers, and Daughter has only one main teacher but remains close to the librarian who tutored her in reading last year. We forgot about Big Son`s counselor (I mean, I forget when his last session with her was, so we won`t be able to give her a card until next year). All together, that adds up to over a hundred dollars on teacher gifts at Christmas, and then we`ll do it again at the end of the year.

But I just found out that a single mother with what I believe is a somewhat low-paying job gives her kids` teachers $25 gift certificates. Is she generous, or the norm?

People who know me in real life know I am C-H-E-A-P. Even as our family`s income has grown over the years, I haven`t completely shaken the poverty mentality that got me through Japan`s Bubble years working various jobs in which I always made less than Y4 million a year.

I can now spend money know without physically feeling as if I`m being kicked in the stomach, but I`m always conscious of all our big expenses (kids` education, retirement in two countries, etc.) looming ahead.

I try not to be too cheap with the kids, and I don`t want to be cheap with the kids` teachers, either.

Any thoughts on this, anyone?

I am going to Hub`s office party tonight!

It`s very last-minute, and I don`t quite know what to expect.

Why did he decide that he wants me there? He NEVER wants me around the people he works with!

My theory is this: he is such a Fashonista that everyone has begun to wonder if he might be gay, and he wants to prove he has a wife.

Yeah -- that must be it.

Tonight`s Random Insomnia Thoughts Brought to You by.....

....the label on my shampoo bottle, that really says, "WITH ACTIVE FRUIT CONCENTRATE."

Active? How??? Do I really want to smear that shit on my head?

Also, to pique my homesickness, Reuters just did a story on Higashi-Azabu, the urban village we call home.

On an unrelated stressful note, Daughter has a report due tomorrow on Hernando Cortez, a Spanish conquistador. I am stressing that she won`t get it done, but nonetheless, I have been making her do it herself.

I printed out some web sites for her, and a friend`s mother brought her to the library last week and photocopied some books for her. I have pretty much left her alone with her little pile of papers.

Fellow writers out there (including bloggers, since you obviously like writing enough to do it for free): isn`t it hard not to write your kids` papers for them? I have to sit on my hands to keep from doing it sometimes. I`m so afraid of crossing the fine line from "helping" into "doing it for her" that I mostly just disengage, until she wants me to type it, and then I try to restrain myself from fixing it up.

But tonight she left a note on my computer, written on the margin of one of her printouts about Cortez`s life. It says,

I need HELP!
P.S. I ment help from Mama.

So my 3:00 am half-dream random thoughts tonight will likely be all about conquistadors wiping out the Aztecs, all neatly double-spaced with a crayon drawing on the cover, and active fruit concentrate in their hair....

Random Insomnia Thought

I couldn`t sleep again last night, and remembered the dumbest question my late grandmother ever asked me.

She asked me, "Do they have cars in Japan?"

It would have been much less dumb if Gramma herself didn`t drive...............a Honda Civic.

I pointed that out to her.

"Well, I knew the Japanese made cars, but I didn`t know if the people there owned them -- I thought maybe they were just for export!"

Gramma, despite getting no formal education past the age of 14, was remarkably well-read and usually pretty informed about current events. Based on her explanation, I figured she was just getting Japan mixed up with China, and its centrally planned economy.

Of course, remembering all of this at 3:00 am reminded me of how much I miss Gramma this time of year.

...and then I really couldn`t sleep.

Chez Scrooge

We don`t "do" Christmas in our house.

I mean, we put up a tree and decorations, we go to church, and I usually cook a nice meal --- but we told the kids they could only have one present each, and it can`t be a big one.

This started when we lived in Tokyo, where Christmas is not a national holiday. Sure, it`s catching on as a commercial holiday, but just like Halloween and Valentine`s Day, there`s no day off to commemorate the merchandising. We went to work and the kids went to school.

"Didn`t you keep them home from school on Christmas DAY???" my friends and relatives in America would ask, aghast.

Why? To sit around singing Christmas carols by ourselves? No, we sent them to school --- bah, humbug.

So one present each? It seemed pretty damn generous when they were the only ones in the neighborhood who got presents.

Of course, now that we`re on our second Christmas season in America, they`re onto the whole commercial scene -- but we`re not budging. Hub and I fight a lot (!!!), but on this front, we`re united.

"We don`t care what other people get -- you`re getting ONE present, so think about it carefully," we say.

But Little Son thinks he`s found a way around the two meanies he has for parents.

"SANTA will bring me more presents!" he insists.

And you know.........he just might be right.

If it isn`t one thing, it`s another.

Guess who had a meltdown at preschool today? No, wait -- the teacher called it a major meltdown. Yeah -- my "good" kid.

At snacktime, he wanted to sit next to his friend, but another boy got their first. So he cried -- louder and louder, when he didn't get his way. His teacher said he`d never done anything like this before.

"I had to pick him up and remove him, and he didn`t like that at all," said his teacher. "So he didn`t eat any of his snack today. You need to talk to him about this!"

"Um....what angle should I take?"

The teacher looked at me as if I were a little slow.

"You need to tell him that crying isn`t how he gets what he wants, and it bothers everyone."

"Ah....well... he knows that. He does this a lot at home, usually with his brother, and he knows it never gets him what he wants. "

In fact, come to think of it, rarely does a day go by in which Little Son doesn't have a "major meltdown" at home, over some disagreement with Big Son.

The teacher blamed this episode on the fact that Little Son`s best friend at preschool, next to whom he used to sit every day, recently moved to Arizona. But that`s not what Little Son told me, when I asked him about it.

"Yeah, I cried a lot today. I cried so much I got the hiccups!" he said. "I cry when I`m hurt, or when someone hurts my feelings, and the other boy hurt my feelings by stealing my chair."

"But he wasn`t stealing it if he got to it first," I pointed out.

"But it was the chair next to MY friend!" said Little Son.

I wouldn`t care much about this, but Little Son is applying to kindergarten at the big kids` Catholic school, and until now, I just assumed he would get in, since I volunteer there a lot and we pay our tuitiion on time.

This year, though, there`s more applications than openings, and since our family isn`t bona fide Catholic, we might be at a disadvantage. (For those of you new to this blog -- I am Catholic who is no longer eligible to receive communion so I don`t think I count, Hub is a heathen anti-Catholic, and our kids are baptized but Hub insists they`re not Catholic. We pay the non-parish rate at the school.)

In fact, Little Son`s kindergarten interview is....this Saturday.

Perfect timing for him to turn into a howling animal!

Coda

Hub and I can`t seem to stop talking about the sad James Kim story.

Well, talking is the wrong word -- we`ve been arguing about it.

As Hub likes to point out, he hates driving in snow, and he is very leery about driving on back country roads -- he prefers to stay on the beaten path, even if it takes longer to get somewhere.

"We never would have been in their position. We never will be stranded like that, because we just don`t go to places like that," he keeps saying, and he is correct.

Kim physically resembled Hub, who is also an Asian man and has the exact same eyeglasses. I think Hub is trying to point as much dissimilarity between himself and the dead man as he possibly can, in a futile attempt to deny his own mortality. Yes?

Anyway, the main crux of our argument is that IF we were ever in that situation (and we won`t be, he keeps saying), it would make more sense for ME, not HIM, to go for help.

"You`re more outdoorsy," he said. "Plus, you could live off your fat for weeks."

"Look who`s talking! You`ve got just as much spare body fat as I do! Would you really push me out of the car, and make me go for help?"

"I would stay with the kids! What if I went, and fell into a river? I`m not a good swimmer! You should go because you`re a better swimmer!"

"So you would really push me out of the car?"

"No, you would willingly go to save your children, as any good parent would."

"While you would willingly stay in the car?"

"Someone has to stay with the kids -- I would stay. You would go for help."

I don`t mean to make it sound as if we`re making fun of the Kim`s tragic situation at all -- we`re not. Both of us were deeply upset by their story, and its horrible ending.

But we really do fight about the weirdest things sometimes.

Shameless Bragging

It`s my birthday! Yaaaaaaay, me! All I did was get another year older -- no feat in itself, I guess, but I`m celebrating, anyway. We`re going out for sushi tonight.

(Age? 41 -- one year past the big "oh-my-god-I`m-so-OLD" year, so this year came as no shock.)

My friends here gave me a gift certificate for a spa pedicure, and one baked an apple tart. Then I went to the school mass this morning (since God obviously has a wicked sense of humor, and had me born on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception) and got the biggest surprise of all: Big Son was on the honor roll for the first quarter.

I probably didn`t make the best impression on his teacher, the Puritan Maiden, when I asked her, "Was there some mistake?"

I thought a kid couldn`t get honors if he got C`s, and Big Son got a few. However, our school`s honor roll is based on GPA, and his A`s apparently were enough to give him a high enough average to get into the lowest rung of its three-tier honor roll.

I don`t care so much about things like GPA`s, but I will never forget the look on his face when they called his name, to go up to the alter and get his certificate. He was trying so hard not to smile.

He wasn`t expecting it, either.

Daughter sang with the choir -- she`s really into it. She insists she`s an alto, although her voice sounds like a high-pitched little-girl soprano to me. The main reason I even went to the mass was for her, because she said she wanted me to come hear her sing.

After church I picked up Little Son at his preschool. He made me a paper Christmas tree ornament today -- "a star with a hat on."

And it occurred to me, that as far as my life goes....

...it doesn`t get any better than this.

Our Nativity Set

We just unpacked our nativity set, and I remembered that it`s the "Special San Francisco Edition," and laughed.

I don`t usually do this, but I really love the post I wrote about it last year, so.....

....please read this.

Thanks!

Because Misery Loves Company

I showed Hub the photo of James Kim on the CNET site, and the first thing he said was, "Wow...he`s got exactly the same glasses as me...."

The second thing he said was, "Why did you have to show me that?"

When News Hits Home (UPDATED)

(UPDATE: Unhappy ending.)

Why is the Kim`s story getting to me so much? I`m glad the mom and kids are safe, and I hope they find the dad alive soon -- but I can usually resist the urge to follow up on every sad news story.

This time, though, there`s a very prosaic reason why I keep checking for news: James Kim looks a little like Hub, before Hub grew his beard. He`s an Asian guy married to a white woman, just like Hub, and their kids look a little bit like our kids.

So of course now I`m imagining Hub lost in the woods.

And somehow, because of this, I`m having trouble staying angry at Hub.

I told you all I was angry at him, right? Last week and through the weekend, he was entertaining guests from Japan, meaning he stayed out late and ate at nice restaurants.

"I`m really getting sick of this," I said to him.

"Oh, you go out sometimes, too!" he said, which was a dumb thing for him to say, because I don`t.

"WHEN?!?"

"Um........."

Finally, he said, "Well, you go swimming all the time!"

Yeah, I go swimming at the YMCA two or three times a week at most, usually on weekdays before he comes home from work. I still can`t believe he said that.

Mostly, though, I was pissed off at him because the woman in charge of games at the Christmas fair asked him to make balloon animals for the little kids again, as he did last year, and....he refused.

"You`re doing so much for that event that I shouldn`t have to do anything at all," he said, pointing to the mounds of cookies and brownies and cakes I`d been churning out for it --- which is so not the point.

But now I`m imagining our family stuck in a car in the woods. I don`t know the Kims personally (though since he`s a journalist, I bet I know people who know him), but if it were Hub and I, our last conversation would certainly have been an argument.

"Stay in the car! I`m sure they`re looking for us by now -- we should just stay together until they find us!" I would have pleaded. "Don`t go!"

"Aho!" Hub would have called me, which loosely means "idiot" in the Japanese Kansai dialect that only comes out of his mouth when he`s mad. He would have insisted on going for help -- nothing I could have said would have stopped him.

I hope they find James Kim soon. I mean, everyone does -- even people who aren`t wasting their time projecting their own lives onto his.

(Here`s the link to the Kim`s guestbook, in case anyone wants to sign it: http://www.jamesandkati.com/guestbook/)

The Christmas Fundraiser Was Great, Except.....

You know what I hate about serving food at fundraisers?

THE OLD PEOPLE.

Yeah, you heard me. Me, the same person who was so close to my beloved grandmother, and who has done so much volunteer work with the elderly over the years.

I truly like being around old people the vast majority of the time, but the old people I don`t happen to like....well, I dislike them more than I dislike annoying people of other age groups.

I wonder why this is? Perhaps because old people have had those extra decades on this planet, in which to hone their annoying habits into a razor sharp edge?

I wish I had a dollar for every time an old person complained about the food at our Christmas fair. I took orders for the kitchen most of the time, which is not something I usually do -- I`m more of a "back operations/help-with-the-cooking" person, but they already had plenty of people doing that.

So I was at the front counter, dealing with The Ugly Ones, who really stood out from the mostly pleasant crowd.

"This hot dog is COLD. TAKE IT BACK! RIGHT NOW!" said one woman, who had received a hot hot dog a few minutes before, but then sat down and didn`t eat it right away, and guess what? It got cold.

"Oh my GOD! If I had known there were no jalepenos for the nachos, I would NEVER have ordered them!"

"What -- NO RELISH? I can`t eat hot dogs without relish! I don`t want this anymore!"

"The food was SO much better at the Christmas fair last year/five years ago/twenty years ago."

And the recurrent refrain, about portion size:

"Is THAT ALL I get for my money?!?"

If any of them had been hungry and didn`t have enough to pay, we certainly would have fed them for free. Heck, I would have paid for it myself. But these were all people from the parish -- sure, they`re not wealthy, but no one is starving.

I wanted to shake them and scream, "SUPPORT YOUR FUCKING CHURCH AND SCHOOL, YOU OLD BITTY!"

Instead, I did my best to piss them off with kindness. See, all my years in Tokyo, I really learned something from all those passive-aggressive Japanese customer service people.

"Oh, sorry, but this is a fundraiser, not a restaurant!" I said cheerfully to all of them.

Hell, I wasn`t even that annoyed at them, because there was nothing they could do to me if I didn`t scurry to please them.

What could they have done? Not tipped me? Complained to my boss?

Go right ahead, I thought. Let them rant and rave at my smiling face.

Make.....my.....daaaaaaaaaaay.

And Another Thing....

More insomnia.

No doubt it`s due to my exhaustion from the school fundraiser Christmas fair -- and I have no right to complain. I worked hard, but some other moms worked much, much harder: they took a few days off from work to devote 20 hours a day to making it happen. It reminded me of some of the matsuri in our old Tokyo neighborhood.

Oh, and happy fucking birthday, Hub. I am so angry at you for refusing to volunteer at the fair, and a few other choice things you said this past weekend, that if it weren`t your birthday, I wouldn`t be being nice to you. I will resume being a bitch tomorrow.

Anyway, back to my insomnia.

Last night at 3:00 am I recalled one of the few things a stranger has said to me, that made me instantly not want to talk to her.

A few years ago, I was at a party in Tokyo, and a woman was telling me all about what a great job her husband had. I figured, okay, she had a few drinks -- maybe she`s genuinely proud of him and his accomplishments, so I didn`t immediately judge her for that.

I asked her, "What kind of things do you do?" That question is almost always safe -- it doesn`t make me look as if I expect someone to be working outside the home or not, and stay-at-home moms can answer it any way they like.

She told me she was a stay-at-home mother, in the same bragging tone.

Then she said, "My kids deserve a stay-at-home mother."

"Oh!" I said, and laughed. "Mine sure don`t!"

And I turned around and walked away, to get another drink.

I really have to get some sleep tonight....

Stupid Things That Keep Me Up At Night

I only got about four hours of sleep last night, because I woke up and couldn`t fall back to sleep (and then finally did, and overslept, and now have to go serve food at our school`s Christmas fair all day today -- but that`s another story).

I have been a chronic insomniac since I was a small child. So I am very familiar with the kind of thoughts that float into my mind at 3:00 am. -- thoughts that I believed I had buried at the bottom of the ocean, encased in concrete.

When I was pregnant with Big Son in Los Angeles, a friend of mine, a fellow journalist, was pregnant in New York. We were fairly close at that time, but pregnancy brought out some competitive spirit in her that I hadn`t seen before (and then motherhood amplified it by ten thousand, and I have since lost touch with this person, sort of accidentally on purpose).

She had (and still has) a very good job -- some of you might even see her on TV, so I won`t mention her name. Her husband stayed at home with the baby.

They had another baby, and so did we.

I remember one day she told me that she finally broke down and hired a cleaning woman for their small apartment. Her husband had been doing the cleaning, but was having trouble keeping up, now that the second baby had arrived.

She was disturbed by the idea of him taking time away from the babies to clean, time he could be spending at the park or interacting with them.

"Cleaning your own house is fine when you have only one baby, but when you have two, it`s unconscionable," she said.

Unconscionable! She really used that word. I remember wondering, why the hell did she just say that to me? I have two babies, and clean my own house. Damn, I guess I will just have to make the choice to either neglect my babies` needs, or live in filth.

I didn`t say anything to her -- I just sat on the phone. I wish I hadn`t repressed the sarcastic reply that immediately rose to my lips, but I did.

And I remembered this -- nearly ten years later. At 3:00 am......

Just As I Expected....

Remember my mysterious voter disenfranchisement last month?

Today, I got this in the mail, for the second year in a row:

"Recently, you voted a Provisional Ballot for the November 7, 2006 Consolidated General Election. Unfortunately, you were not listed on the active voter rolls. Please complete and return this voter registration card for future elections."

It will be the fourth time I have sent them a voter registration card.

Maybe I`m a convicted felon, and I don`t even know it?

Hmmmm.......

A Discipline Problem That For Once Doesn`t Concern My Kids!

Today I heard about something that happened at our school.

It happened in the seventh grade, where Wonder Number Woman, the math teacher, is the homeroom teacher. She`s extremely religious (rumored to be an ex-nun) and very tough, but is an excellent teacher. In fact, she`s Big Son`s favorite teacher.

Wonder Number Woman said she heard a girl in her class swear, and gave her a detention. I don`t know the girl or her parents very well -- I`ve heard she`s a decent kid who gets good grades and isn`t known for causing problems.

The girl went to her detention without protesting, and is also supposed to write an essay about not swearing. Later, she told her parents that she hadn`t sworn, and the teacher must have misheard her on the crowded playground. But the girl didn`t want to make a fuss, and intended to write the essay, and move on.

The parents did not want the girl punished for something she said she hadn`t done. They met with Mr. Principal today, to tell him what their daughter had said. According to the mother, Mr. Principal said to them, "It`s your daughter`s word against the teacher`s word, and in cases like this, I always believe the teacher."

I had trouble stifling a laugh. Can you imagine, Mr. Principal ever saying something like that to OUR family? He sure seemed more than willing to believe every bad thing Big Son said about Huggy Nun last year! No, the truth is, Mr. Principal only takes the side of his good teachers, not his bad ones.

The Principal refused to compromise, even though the girl had already sat through a detention she said she didn`t deserve. She still has to write the essay, he said.

The girl`s parents said she would be writing it about how bad swearing is and why people shouldn`t do it, without including any mention that she had done it, because she hadn`t.

What would I do, in the parents` situation?

I know the teacher is not a bad teacher, but even good teachers make mistakes. I understand that good principals generally support their teachers, and don`t cave to parental pressure. But I also know that so far Big Son has been a butally honest kid, and if he ever said he didn`t do something, I would believe him. I would not want him punished for something he insisted he didn`t do.

I would probably give him the choice: either write the essay, to minimalize the fuss and move on, or I would allow him to refuse to write the essay, and accept the consequences. The consequences for standing up for himself in that case would likely be a suspension.

So I would allow him to get suspended, if standing up for his principles were important enough to him.

See what kind of parent I am? I literally would not care if my kid had a suspension on his record -- I would put the life lesson first.

Twice in my life I have given notice in jobs, with no next job lined up yet. For different reasons, I could not stand to work at those jobs anymore, and I was prepared to face the consequences (lack of income, a hole on my resume, etc.). One time, I was accepted at graduate school, and the other time, I was hired by a much better company, for a much better job, but I know it might not have worked out like that.

What would you have done?

Wishful Thinking

Hub: "What do you want for your birthday this year?"

Me: "A vasectomy for you."

Hub: !!!!!

Based on his reaction, I`m not holding my breath.