Not Catching Anything Here

Big red parrots! Six of them! FLYING AROUND my bathroom!

"I`m just keeping them until I can find homes for them," explained Big Son.

But the landlord was coming -- he would be here any minute! We had to hide them!

I tried to catch them, and shoo them into their huge wire cages, but they just slipped through my fingers and flew around me, scattering red feathers and seeds and droppings everywhere.

Then I woke up, my heart pounding.

Which is worse -- insomnia, or anxiety dreams?

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

The landlord did call last night. Indeed, they had been away, and he hadn`t been checking his email.

"Why didn`t you call me when the water was dark brown? That sounds like an emergency to me!"

"I didn`t want to bother you until we gave it a chance to clear up by itself, because it did," I said. "And we could shower and laundry at our old house for a few days."

He is probably wondering, What the hell kind of people did we rent our house to, who don`t consider brown water an emergency?

Someone is coming Friday to check the leak in the furnace room.

Meanwhile, our power went out for most of today, which had nothing to do with the house -- a transformer blew down the street, and was cordoned off with yellow police tape while six PG&E trucks dealt with it.

I was finally able to get on my computer in the late afternoon, to find that the Dow fell more than 400 points today.

Tomorrow should be interesting day at work -- interesting, as in the old Chinese curse, May you live in interesting times.

Perhaps my dream of red feathers foretold the market meltdown?

More likely I need to go easy on the wine before bed....

Thinking Inside the Box

One of the biggest silver linings of moving into a smaller place, with much less storage space, is that we are forced to get rid of stuff. Well, make that, some of us are forced to get rid of stuff. Why do I feel as if I`m parting with my precious memories, to make room for other people`s junk?

After 16 years of marriage, I am scuttling most of our wedding presents. Anything dish/plate/object we don`t use every day can`t be shipped around the world anymore.

Someone -- forgot who -- gave us a Royal Copenhagen teapot. It doesn`t match the rest of our stuff, and we never use it. However, I know some people collect things like that, so rather than chucking it in the Salvation Army bin, I want to try to sell it on eBay.

I showed it to Hub.

Now, let me reveal something endearingly embarrassing about Hub: he collects samurai and other movie action figures. If you open his closet, Toshihiro Mifune, Godzilla and the rest of the crowd will stare down at you from the upper shelf. Hub is cheap, so he mostly buys them on eBay (or the Yahoo site in Japan). He`s got quite a closet collection going.

Hub took one look at the box with my teapot and berated me for putting tape around the box.

"You damaged the box! You can`t claim it`s in perfect condition, in its original packaging!"

"But....the teapot itself is in perfect condition. Does anyone really care if china is in its original packaging?"

"Of course they do!" he said, looking at me as if he couldn`t believe I had just asked that. "If I ever bid for something that someone said was in perfect condition, and it arrived in a tape-damaged box, I would be angry!"

"But you only bid on action figures, not teapots."

"It doesn`t matter! It`s all the same!"

But....is it? Is it really?

Anyway, Hub doesn`t want me to sell it through our eBay account, or even a separate account with our contact info, for fear that my stubborn insistence that I am right will damage his perfect buyer/seller rating, when I sell some poor sucker a teapot in a tape-damaged box. So I`m going to take it to one of those "Sell it on eBay" places.

I hate to give them the commission when I`m sure I could sell it myself, but I will view the percentage they take as the price of keeping peace with Hub.

Another Silver Lining

Today, the DirecTV people were supposed to come and install the equipment so we could keep their services.

But according to our lease, we need written permission from the landlord before we install any kind of satellite dish.

And the landlord still hasn`t answered any of my emails. In fact, I`m beginning to wonder if they`re traveling? The guy mentioned that he`d just quit his job to be closer to his wife and daughter during the week (he`d been commuting to Fresno just on weekends, which sounded tough), so perhaps, with their San Francisco house now rented, they used the opportunity to take some time away? Who knows.

Anyway, just in case they`re still fuming over the birds, I told Hub I thought we should hold off on the DirecTV. I found out it`s possible to suspend our account for up to nine months.

There`s something else, too. May I just say how nice it is, that my kids have no TV shows to watch? They`ve been watching mostly Japanese videos instead.

Give me Doraemon over CartoonNetwork any day.

What the Nose Knows

The good news is, I was unpacking and I finally FOUND MY DEODORANT. After a week without it, I was beginning to feel a little too French.

The bad news is that the landlord hasn`t replied to this message sent him yesterday:

Dear Landlord,

Hi -- You got a package from [a computer company]. I was unfortunately in the bathroom when DHL delivered it, and the deliveryman gave it to one of the kids before I could get to the door and tell them your correct address. Would you like me to call DHL and have it forwarded to you, or hold it for you if you`re going to be in the city anytime soon?

I mailed you a check today, for the March rent (certified mail), because I had trouble opening a [landlord`s preferred bank] account online. I kept getting an error code when I tried to transfer funds from my other bank, and their technicians were friendly but had no idea why, so finally today they told me to just mail a check to open my account. Since I`m not sure how long it will take to open my account that way, I mailed you a check today, too. I hope from next month my account will be up and running, and I`ll be able to pay you via [landlord`s preferred bank].

We`ve been having some problems with the hot water, presumably because it`s an older water heater that hasn`t been used for a few weeks. For the first few days we were here, the hot water was the color of dark tea with dark oily smears, so we still showered and did laundry at our old house. It`s gotten better, and the shower and sink water is clear, but the water in the bathtub still sometimes runs cloudy. I`m going to see if I can get an aerator that fits the tub and see if that helps at all, because our 4-year old prefers baths.

Thanks,
L.

------
Maybe he`s away, and not checking his email? Wouldn`t you think he`d want his package?

Okay, here`s an unrelated gripe. I was complaining about the dark water and the primitive plumbing to people at work (yes, I`m still working two half-days a week), and one guy there said, "I`ll bet that`s like being back in Japan!"

I looked at him blankly and said, "No, we always lived in new apartments there, including the one we bought, where everything worked."

Thinking later about what he said, I can`t help but wonder that there really are intelligent, educated people who picture Japan as a backwards nation with backwards urban plumbing (yes, I know rural plumbing is a different story, but that`s true just about everywhere).

Now, as for my own gross generalization at the beginning of this post, about French people not wearing deodorant, I will say my opinion is based on my field research in the French city of Nancy in the summer of 1981.

I admit the scope of my study was limited and my research might need updating, but let`s just say my impressions at the time were, um.....quite strong.

Just as the smell and taste of a madeleine dipped in tea sent Proust back to his childhood, the smell of body odor sends me right back to Nancy.

To this day, I can`t eat quiche Lorraine without gagging.

Water, Ashes and Fat

The clean water was nice while it lasted, but last night the water in the bathtub was somewhat brown again, and Little Son went to bed without a bath.

However, the hot water in all the other sinks was fine, suggesting this time it`s a problem with the bathtub faucet, which looks like the original 1920`s fixture. Perhaps I can buy some sort of filter for the tub faucet? Or aerator, is that what they`re called...?

One of the showers is leaking, too. I have a feeling I am about to learn a great deal about do-it-yourself plumbing repairs. Fortunately, our new neighborhood has a great little hardware store, and I think I`m going to bond with the people there.

Poor Little Son. He was talking in his sleep last night, and blurted out, "I want to go back to the old house!"

He woke up and told me he was dreaming about the old house.

Okay, enough about the house. We don`t live in the old house anymore -- we live in the new house with the old plumbing, and we`ve got to get used to this and make the best of it.

Fortunately, the big kids seem to like it here. I was talking to Big Son`s counselor this morning, and she said, "Big Son told me you`re in a great new place!"

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, and I went to the school mass to hear Daughter sing, and see Big Son presented with the medal for his science project. He won second place in physics for the sixth grade, but because his total points was so close to the winner, they decided to give two first-place medals. He was trying so hard not to smile.

Then we all got ashes smeared on our foreheads, so that we could walk around all day with the equivalent of a billboard on our faces proclaiming, "Hey, I`m CATHOLIC!"

(Wait, though -- don`t a few other Christian religions do the ash thing, too? I don`t know, and am too tired to Google it.)

Last night, Daughter was promoted to purple belt in karate. The teacher told me she`s going to pass out Big Son soon. He loves it, but he`s just not as serious as she is -- he likes to clown around a lot. I figure, as long as the teacher puts up with it and Big Son enjoys himself, it`s fine, but perhaps his sister passing him out is the motivation he needs to get more serious?

Ash Wednesday is supposed to be a day of repentance, abstinence from meat, and fasting, but a friend of mine in Tokyo, moved by our recent relocation plight, sent me a housewarming gift of champagne and chocolate.

So....I celebrated Mardi Gras a little late.

Speaking of fasting, the final count for the move was.....eight pounds lost.

Since the laws of physics state that matter is neither created nor destroyed in the universe, I think that means that somewhere, someone gained that eight pounds.

Whoever you are, if you`re reading this, I`m sorry. Really, I am.

But not sorry enough to take them back.

Stuff

I'm not complaining. I will not complain!

I'm very glad that we have both Internet and hot water at the new house, but I seem to have little time to enjoy either one. I'm waaaaaaay behind on blogging and blog-reading, and I can't remember the last time I showered. No, ha ha ha --- just kidding. Really, I've been showering every day, but I'm unable to enjoy it. I'm far too worried that the water heater will act up again and blast black greasey stuff all over me.

I am looking at the fact that we moved to a slightly smaller house, with much less storage space, as a blessing. Our old house gave us no incentive to pare down our possessions -- or refrain from acquiring even more. Our eventual move home to Tokyo will be smoother, if we can use this opportunity to get rid of stuff now.

I have the smallest closet at the new house, which meant I had to brutally pare down my clothing to make it all fit.

And....wow, it was ridiculously easy to get rid of lots of stuff. My wardrobe requirements have shrunken in inverse proportion to my body size over the years -- funny, how that works.

Because we move every few years, thanks to Hub's job, we tend keep most of our clothing in long plastic bins with drawers, which are easy to stuff and transport. But all kinds of things get jammed in the backs of these bins, and searching through them all was like opening a time capsule.

I just threw away all of my maternity clothes, which is really funny, because I thought I did that years ago -- I didn't realize they have been following me from house to house, across the Pacific, waiting for me to get knocked up again.

I also reached into the back of my underwear drawer and found bras I haven't worn since I was in college. Sure, they're pretty, which is why I didn't want to throw them out, but the idea that I might ever be able to stuff myself into them again, after breastfeeding three babies, is laughable. They're so tiny that they look like doll clothes (just like Daughter's Bratz doll clothes, in fact). Out they went.

And why ever did I still have my size four skirts, hopefully hanging around? I don't think I`ve worn them since having kids. I can't believe garments that small actually fit around my waist.

I also found a bunch of old miniskirts. What was thinking, in keeping those? Even if I lost a ton of weight, I would never put my matronly ass in a miniskirt again -- it's just not me, anymore.

I put some of my old clothes aside for Daughter, but NOT the miniskirts or the sexy bras (or, for that matter, the maternity clothes). I don't want to encourage her to dress the way I dressed when I was a teenager -- does that officially make me a fuddy-duddy?

Now, if I could only get Hub, my fashionista, to stop collecting COATS......sigh.

Considering that he can only wear them one at a time, why have more than a few?

It`s a mystery.

Yeah....

We have Internet. And we have hot water. What more can I ask for?

I decided not to call the landlord, and give the water a few days to clear up -- since the house had sat empty for a few weeks while it was being repainted, after the previous tenants moved out. It seemed like a problem that might sort itself out, and in the meantime, we could easily shower at the old house.

The water was much better the next day -- Hub took a shower and said he didn`t notice anything, and wondered what I was getting all excited about. Who knows what greasey gunk went all over Hub, but since his shower, the bath water has gotten clearer and clearer.

I met our old landlord today -- he was in town, so we went to check out his house. I asked our cleaning woman to clean it, but she hasn`t done it yet, so we had to walk through a dirty house. It`s amazing, how much dust was under our heavy furniture, and the movers tramped it all over the place.

I really loved the old house, and it was hard to leave. And it`s not as if we were perfectly happy there --- honestly, we were miserable, a lot of the time. The first lonely months before school started, when we had no friends yet, when the entire neighborhood was banked in fog for weeks on end....Big Son`s wretched year with Huggy Nun........ There was a lot of anguish, in that house. That was a hard first year, and sometimes I think it was the house that kept me going. Being in a large, clean, comfortable place gave us the strength to get through it.

Daughter remarked to me that in her whole 10 years of life, she had never seen me cry before, until last Wednesday when the dark tea was pouring into the bathtub.

All people have their breaking points, and I guess that was mine.

This Takes the Cake

...I cleaned the bathtub and turned it on to fill it, to bathe Little Son.

It filled up with tepid brown water.

I thought perhaps the pipes were rusty after not being used a while -- I let it run, and....the water turned ice cold. And brown. With bursts of black.

Same with the hot water tap in the kitchen, and the downstairs bathroom.

I looked at the water heater, and realized it is similar to the one we had in the house I grew up in, which was built in 1970. How are six people going to take showers in this house? We`re going to have to go back to Japanese-style family bathing -- if we ever get clear hot water back, that is.

The kids and I are now showering at the old house, where the movers left my computer. So I can still blog about my life, until tomorrow, when the phone line will be cut off here. I am trying not to cry too much, because I think it`s scaring the kids.

No email answer from the landlord about the leak.

If we still don`t have hot water tomorrow, he won`t get an email -- he will get a phone call. It will be hard to be nice, but I will do my best.

Whoops....

Happy Valentine`s Day.

What a fucking stupid holiday -- I`m not sorry we picked it to move.

Daughter made her own valentines, and Big Son declared himself beyond that.

But I realized this morning that Little Son was supposed to give valentines to his whole preschool class today, and guess what slipped my mind? Little Son didn`t seem very excited about it when I mentioned it to him last week (before I forgot) -- last year, he appreciated the candy hearts but couldn`t care less about all the little paper cards.

So....I guess he`ll be skipping preschool today.

I still held my head up high after blowing off the preschool fundraising auction over the weekend, but I dare not send him to school and tell the teachers and other mothers, "I decided to blow off Valentine`s Day this year!"

Even though it`s true.

One more today, since I`m still connected...

The new house smacked me tonight.

I was unloading stuff, and thinking how much like home it felt, and BAM! I turned around and there was the pointy newell post. In fact, I think it actually jumped up and bashed me.

I now have a huge black-and-blue mark on my arm.

I wouldn`t take this as too much of an omen, except the specific thought in my mind, seconds before the impact, was about the house and how glad I was to be moving in.

I think it was saying, "Girl, don`t get too uppity. This is a warning -- don`t take us for granted. Take care of us, or we won`t take care of you."

Us? Yeah, the new house is definitely plural. The upstairs and the downstairs are like two separate houses. And it was the downstairs that smacked me.

The upstairs, with its huge kitchen and polished wood floors, is happy and welcoming, and the downstairs.....well, I will put a bucket under the leak in the furnace room and get a dehumidifier, and keep the kids` toys and all of Hub`s junk down there (Hub is ecstatic that I am giving him the closet that is three times the size of mine upstairs).

And I will never turn my back on the newell post.

That Last Post Makes Me Sound A Little TOO Upset

Okay, the movers didn`t pack my computer after all. So rather than leave that last depressing post on the top of my blog indefinitely, I want to relay some GOOD, HAPPY thoughts before I go away for a while:

* The movers had planned to be here all day to pack our stuff, but they left in just two hours. The guy who did the estimate was really amazed at all I`d done by myself, and says I cut the estimate by at least a third, perhaps more. I had time to go to the DMV after all today, and then to the Department of Parking to get the permits for our new address.

* As I was agonizing over the herd of dust bunnies that stampeded out from the closets and under the furniture, I heard one of the movers say to another (without knowing I was outside the room), "Can you believe how clean this house is? And their stuff is so organized!" All I can say is that if we`re the shining example of order, the rest of the people they move must be pigs.

* Whenever we move, I always reach a point in my packing at which I stop caring about our belongings, and want to chuck everything and live in a yurt. It is some kind of Zen moving epiphany -- the significance of the material world slips away. Who cares about the damn dishes, the lamps, the pillows, the sweaters and the shoes? What does it really matter, any of it? Once I reach this point, everything is more bearable.

* The movers were so cheerful, polite and professional that I don`t even care that one of them packed all the dirty dishes from the final load I intended to do in the dishwasher.

* I told the movers the story of the two-year lease that became a one-year lease, and the awful possibility that we might have to move again next year, and one of them said, "Don`t worry ma`am -- we`re here for you!" He said it so gently and sincerely that I expected them all to surround me and hug me.

* I never mentioned it here, but three friends (one very old friend, and two new friends from the kids` school) actually offered to help me pack! I didn`t take them up on it, but I was amazed that people really offered, and sounded as if they meant it, too. It reminds me of a postcard I have, of a drawing with the caption, "Unusually Repulsive Cat Startled by a Gesture of Affection."

* I missed the big fundraising auction for Little Son`s preschool on Saturday. I had planned to go, because I had signed up for cleanup duty, but decided I was just too exhausted and distracted to dress up and go out that night, and made a final trip over to the new house with a load of stuff instead. And I just don`t have the energy to feel guilty about it.

* Still no word from the new landlord. Perhaps he`s not even checking his email regularly? But I will consider no news as good news -- it means at least he isn`t seeking a court order blocking us from moving our pet dander-contaminated belongings into his house, right? We will move in sans pets, pay the rent on time every month, and enjoy the house without dwelling on the people who own it.

* Our next-door-neighbors invited me over tonight for a farewell drink. I told them if I am still standing at 8:00, I will take them up on it.

I will drink to the fact that no one in our family is sick or dead, we have no financial problems, we have wonderful friends, and we know how to make our home wherever we happen to be.

And asking that our home just stay put for a while is obviously asking too much, so we will deal with it.

Bye for Now

I`m going to have to take a break from blogging, because I think writing about everything is making it worse, not better, for me to deal with all I have to do right now.

Big Son found me crying last night -- I had snuck away to the farthest corner of the house, to have a few minutes of peace to weep. Of course I got a hold of myself immediately and told him everything was all right, but he was so upset that he immediately went and packed up his entire room without me nagging him.

I really wanted my kids to have a more settled and secure life than this.

Things NOT TO SAY, to People Who Are Moving

"Moving is such a pain in the ass! Why don`t you just buy a place?"

In fact, we did, but it`s several thousand miles away. And much as I wish we were moving back to it right now, we can`t yet. But, thanks for the ass-vice!

And then when I complained to a different friend about how much money this move will cost us (since, in addition to the movers, we essentially paid double rent for most of February), and how I was even beginning to worry if all of our checks will clear after our credit-card autopay goes through this month (since Hub sometimes uses the card for business, and he`s entertaining guests from Japan this week), she said:

"Well, you`ll just have to move the money over from one of your other accounts!"

Hello! Earth to rich girl! Not all of us have those wonderful "other accounts!"

I know neither of those friends meant anything by their comments, but I`m a little bit...prickly these days, you know?

Sigh....

No return message from the new landlord. I wonder, now that he found out that his new tenants are filthy-dirty animal lovers, is he having second thoughts, and talking to real estate lawyers to figure out how to get out of the lease we all just signed?

Maybe "no pets" meant, "people who have never owned a pet." Maybe he wanted to write, "do not even think of applying to live here, if you have ever thought of owning a pet, because that tell us you are definitely not the kind of germ-phobic people we want living in our house."

And I called the elderly real estate agent, to ask her about the term of the lease. She is a 70-year old Italian immigrant who says, Mama Mia! alot.

She said, "Oh.....I asked him about a two-year lease, and at first he said yes, which is what I told you on the phone. But then he asked me to write just one year on the paper."

What a trusting idiot I am.

"Really," said the old lady," you have nothing to worry about. He told me two years. Don`t think about what the paper says! It`s okay!"

Ha ha ha....right.

So...... it looks very likely that we will be going through the moving process again, one year from now. At least I will see it coming, and prepare for it, and keep our stuff better organized.

For those of you wondering why despite all this, I am still excited about moving into this house --- the leak is in a cement-floored space next to the garage, not a real room. Also, I asked the neighbors about the street flooding problems (hey, I was a reporter -- I have no qualms about asking total strangers invasive questions) and they said it rarely happens, and it`s not so bad. One neighbor has been there since 1972.

In fact, even knowing in advance that we would only have it for one year, I would still have wanted to go for it. Wthout revealing where it is, I will say it`s really a perfect location.

I looked at five other houses for rent, all from the outside, but didn`t even make appointments to see the insides. Two of them were overpriced, two were too noisy --- plus, even if they were beautiful, and even if we could be assured of living in them until we returned to Japan, I would still have wanted to rent The Little House in the Ditch.

I just wish there were some way of screening landlords, the way they screen tenants.

Oh, one more gripe:

We need parking permits to park overnight in our new neighborhood, and the city won`t issue them until we change our car registration to the new address.

I went all the way down to the Department of Motor Vehicles today, and guess what? It was closed, for Lincoln`s birthday. The kids` school is open, the banks are open, even the fucking post office is open. But those DMV workers got their three-day weekend -- and it looks as if we will have to park one car a mile away from our new house for a few days.

Just one more little sucky thing, to make our lives more fun.

(*For anyone wondering why Hub can`t take care of the parking permits -- another story of bad timing. Hub got a call this morning from his big boss, who said his wife and daughter were in a car accident over the weekend. He said they`re "okay" --- and we sincerely hope he meant, "really-okay-OKAY," and not, "okay, compared to being dead" --- but guess who has to spend this week escorting the Very Important Visitors from Japan around the Silicon Valley? So guess who won`t be doing ANY packing, or even showing up on moving day...?)

DEEP Denial

Picture this domestic scene, if you will:

WIFE is scurrying around, taking pictures down off walls, ordering children to pack boxes and generally moving in ten different directions at once.

HUSBAND is..... watching Japanese TV sitcoms on YouTube.

"Um....? We`re moving? In three days???" says Wife, walking by with a stack of dishes in one hand, a potted plant in the other and three kids` books tucked under her chin.

"Yeah," says Husband, not even looking up from his screen. "Uh-huh. I`ll pack. Really."

Wife knows from years of living with Husband, and several moves with him, that nothing she says will prompt him to pack boxes before he is ready, and any perceived nagging on her part will only anger him, start an argument and add to her already sky-high stress level.

So Wife continues packing, stepping around Husband and not letting him get to her -- the way he is not letting her get to him.

Actual Email I Sent Today to New Landlord

Hi -- do you know about the leak in the furnace/water heater room? You said you never used that room (and we won`t, either, because of all the dust and the mildew on the wall), but yesterday I opened the door because I heard water dripping. It was raining hard outside, and it was "raining" pretty hard inside the room, too. I think it`s a leak (or several) in the pipe that drains water from the air space next to the upstairs bathroom -- when the rain let up, the "rain" inside the room let up, too. I put a bucket under the main leak as soon as I noticed it, but beforeI did there was about a half inch of water pooled in the low places on the floor, and the wood all along the baseboard was wet. We still look forward to living in your house -- the first thing I am going to buy for it is a dehumidifier to put next to the "rainy" room. Happy birthday to (landlord`s little daughter) ---

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

No response yet. The leak is in a closet-sized space (not even a room, really) that contains just the furnace and water heater, and I don`t particularly care about it. But I would guess the landlord might care -- I mean, if they`re worried about parakeet allergens, wouldn`t you think they`d also be worried about dampness and mold? Just a little???

I purposely avoided taking a "please-fix-this-immediately" approach. I thought my "you-really-should-know-this" approach was very understated, don`t you?

I was going to buy a dehumidifier, anyway.

One more development: we asked the real estate agent if we could have a two-year lease, and she asked the owners and she said they said yes, and when I met the husband, he said he would be glad to rent to us for two years (this was when they still liked us, before they found out we were filthy pet-keeping people).

But.......I just noticed today that the lease I signed is the standard one-year form, reverting to month-to-month tenancy after the year ends. The eldery real estate agent prepared it, and she had a few other mistakes in there that both he and I pointed out to her (such as getting the landlord`s current address and the spelling of one of my kids` names wrong), so I`m guessing it was just her mistake and nothing more nefarious.

"Didn`t you read it over before you signed it?" asked Hub.

"Yes, but I was too busy reading all the fine print to read the big print," I said.

"Aren`t you a copyeditor? Isn`t catching things like that your job?"

Well, um...(ahem)...what can I say?

But I decided I`m going to see how the new landlords react to my email about the leak, before I bother asking about the term of the lease.

Much as I hate moving, and really like this particular house, I can imagine circmstances in which moving again might be the lesser of two evils.

Dirty Birdies

So would anyone in San Francisco like a pair of parakeets?

Big Son took the news quite well. He is disappointed, but - let`s face it, they are not very affectionate birds, to say the least. They bonded with each other, not with the human members of our family, and I dare say that wherever they go, they will not miss us at all. Big Son enjoyed watching them, and he was very adept at catching Tiger, the green one, but Tiger never seemed to enjoy being handled much -- and Shiro, the white one, clearly didn`t like it at all.

I will miss hearing their cheerful twittering in the morning, but I will not miss nagging Big Son to vacuum up the seeds.

There are plenty of bird rescue groups in the Bay Area who help in situation like ours, but if possible, I want to give our birds to someone we know, so that Big Son can sometimes visit them. And I know not all rescue groups are equal -- some aren`t very picky about new placements, and I don`t want our timid, antisocial birdies to end up somewhere like a preschool classroom, where little fingers will be poking them (or worse) all day long.

Ed, the old man down the street, is thinking about taking the birds, but I`m not going to try to persuade him if he seems reluctant for any reason.

He was very insistent that the guinea pigs come back to him, and not go to a guinea pig rescue group.

"Those groups don`t always give them love," he said, emphatically.

Several people have suggested sneaking our pets into the new house, anyway, because the landlords live three hours away, not next door. But that seems wrong to me, since it`s their house and they obviously feel very strongly about this. We signed a two-year lease -- they will be in our lives for a while.

I`m looking at the landlord`s email again. It says,

"We`re against having any pets at all (not even parakeets). That's why we had listed the house on Craig's List as "No Pets." I was surprised that the real estate agent didn't alert me to this when you had originally applied. "

He is surprised that he wasn`t alerted.

We are dirty people, with dirty pets, and he should have been alerted to this. Forget our excellent credit report and glowing references from our current landlord and neighbors --- we are the kind of people who should have raised an ALERT.

Yes, I am reading too much into that word, and thinking about it too much.

That`s some very good fodder for the next time I have insomnia.

Guinea Pig Karma Comes Around

I knew things were going a little too smoothly.

The house listing had said, "no pets." I asked the real estate agent if parakeets or garage guinea pigs counted, and she said, "I don`t think so."

The day I signed the lease, I asked the guy landlord about our birds and guinea pigs. I figured it was best to be honest, since the landlords live relatively nearby and he said something about how he would like to bring his wife over to meet us someday, and I didn`t want them to see cages and get a nasty surprise.

I explained that the guinea pigs live entirely in the garage and never come in the house, and that the parakeets are tiny, inbred Petco birds who are afraid to leave their cage and rank just above houseplants on the scale of living things.

He said, "Hmmmmm, let me ask my wife."

That made me worry. I had a feeling that if he had to ask her about something, it was not going to go our way.

I got his email today at work. His wife is a pediatric pulmonologist who works with asthma patients and therefore has a heightened awareness of potential allergens. Her verdict was, no birds, no caged animals, not even in the garage -- no fish, even. Well, the fish probably have more to do with concerns about leaks and water damage than with allergens.

I do recognize one silver lining in this. The damp garage at the new house made me worry about the possibility of MOLD. We had a mold problem in one apartment in Tokyo (not the one we bought, thankfully) and it was revolting -- and potentially unhealthy.

So it put my mind at ease that we have landlords who are paranoid about allergens. If I notice any mold, I am sure they will take it seriously.

Anyway, I was walking home from work today, thinking about how to break the bad news to the kids.

We`ve been through this before -- every time we move across an ocean, it seems we always have some small pet who can`t come with us, who needs a new home. When we left Tokyo, I spent four months trying to find a good home for an enormous green turtle who now lives at my kids` old school in Azabu-Jyuban.

In fact, even if I weren`t very allergic to dogs or cats, I don`t think we could ever get one, for this reason. Some pets bond with their owners, and it wouldn`t be fair to get a dog or cat, knowing it would have to change homes and get a new owner at some point in its future. However, I would bet that every bird/fish/reptile in our long chain of pass-along pets was just as happy in its new home, with a responsible person feeding it.

I walked past the home of Ed, the old man who gave us the guinea pigs in the first place, and he happened to be outside putting away groceries. I told him about our new house, and the non-negotiable "no pets" rule.

"Oh, then I want them back!" said Ed, without hestitating.

In fact, I wonder if he missed them, and regretted giving them to us in the first place?

Last summer, when I took the guinea pigs, one of them had a slightly infected foot, and they all needed a toe-nail trim, but vet pronounced them all to be in overall good health. The one with the sensitive feet was Tim, who has since gone to Guinea Pig Heaven, and Jessica and Monkey are still as sturdy as ever.

So I will give them back to Ed at noon tomorrow. He is thinking about taking the parakeets, too.

He said the kids can come to his house anytime they want to visit the guinea pigs. This way I can also keep an eye on them, and offer to help out or take them to the vet if I notice anything wrong.

I think this means....my karmic rodent debt has been repaid, maybe?

A Disjointed Post Recalling Moving Horror Stories In My Past

So we move on Valentine`s Day. We booked a crew for packing the day before, but I`m going to try to do a lot of it ourselves - hopefully when they show up, there will be little left for them to do, but just in case anything happens, we`re covered.

I got the estimate for the full-service job, and it was about what I expected (...gulp!...), but I think we can make it a lot cheaper if we move some of our junk ourselves this weekend, since we have a minivan and we`re moving only a mile away.

Thanks to everyone who had moving company recomendations -- we decided to go with Delancey Street. One of the moms at school who moved five times in five years raved about them.

I am simply not going to tell Hub that it`s a rehab organization. Personally, I think that aspect is a plus: I will know our movers are NOT taking drugs, and have sworn to live the straight and narrow. And I`m really hoping they send Gavin Newsom to pack our boxes, since they`re the ones doing our hot mayor`s rehab. (Oh.......is it still okay for me to be attracted to him, even now that we know he screwed his best friend`s wife? As Leah Garchek quoted someone in her column the other day, "Who wouldn't want to bed Gavin? Even my dog wants to hump his leg." )

Hub was not home the day the San Francisco movers unloaded our stuff from the container from Japan, so he didn`t have to deal with The Crazy Mover.

Imagine this scene from July, 2005:

Crash! went something in the kitchen, but by the time I got there, there was no broken dish to be found. There were three missing when I counted later. They were very cheap dishes, so it wasn`t worth filing a claim, but it really pissed me off.

I thought at first The Crazy Mover just had a problem understanding English, so I asked one of the other three movers to translate into Spanish for me.

"No, he does understand -- he`s just, you know...." and he lowered his voice to an emphatic whisper, "....CRAZY!"

The other three movers were very apologetic about The Crazy Mover, no doubt worried that his craziness would affect their own tips. At the end of the day, I gave all the tip money to the head guy, and I really hope he didn`t share it with The Crazy Mover, but the whole matter was out of my hands.

The Crazy Mover unpacked my dishes and stacked them in the sink -- which was FULL OF WATER at the time. I guess I would have washed all of them, anyway, after his crazy fingers touched them, but on the very top he set a large Japanese platter that was carefully packed in a cardboard box with little cranes on it....and of course the wetness of the dishes underneath seeped into the cardboard, and the red dye ran into the sink water and made a HUGE MESS.

"What are you DOING?!?" I asked him, and he looked blankly back at me with eyes empty of all understanding.

"Unpack," he said. "I unpack. You no want unpack?"

The other three movers gently led me away from The Crazy Mover.

"Sorry, lady -- we`ll try to keep an eye on him."

The Crazy Mover unpacked the kitchen and the boys` room. The latter ended up being a giant mound of toys, clothes and shoes that went halfway to the ceiling. I felt faint everytime I opened the door, so I had to keep it closed for a few days and do the rest of the house first.

Hub got home from work that day and found me weeping as I cleaned up the mess in the kitchen. He vowed we would never try to save money on moving again, since he really can`t stand to see me cry.

"Next time, we`re using the full service Japanese company!" he vowed, and I didn`t remind him that although they cost about 50% more than the American company, I still cried when they moved us to Tokyo from Los Angeles.

I cried for a completely different reason that time. They did all the packing, and not a thing broke, but.....they packed only like three items in each box.

"Otherwise, the boxes will be too heavy for us to lift," they explained. Indeed, they were very little guys.

But since it was an international move, we were being charged not just by weight, but by volume, too, and I`m sure those half-empty boxes cost us plenty of extra yen, and the thought of wasting all that money made me just as miserable.

I keep telling myself that local moves are so much better than international moves. Since 1985, I`ve moved my stuff across the Pacific ten times.

The first time, I went to Kyoto for my junior year in college, with two suitcases and a carry-on bag. A year later, I went back with the same, but mailed three or four boxes of things I`d acquired.

Then I moved back to Tokyo after I graduated from college in 1987. I got set up in a temporary apartment and bought a few things like a futon and kitchen stuff -- and then got hired by a company that wanted to send me to their Palo Alto, Calif. offce for three months` training. So I had to store my new stuff with friends in Tokyo, and move my basic things to Palo Alto, and then back to Tokyo.

I stayed in my first apartment in Tokyo for almost three years, and then moved to New York for a year, for graduate school. I sublet my apartment, but once again I stored stuff with friends all over Tokyo.

Hub and I got married over my grad school spring break, so that when I moved back in the summer, we could move into his employee family housing. It was a grim project in the dreary Tokyo suburbs (near Sakura-josui, on the Keio line), built in the early 1960`s when Japan was still a developing country. It had no hot water tap in the bathroom sink, and I remember how freezing it was to wash my face in the winter. Okay, okay, that has nothing to do wth moving -- I`m just remembering how much less comfortable our life was, when we were first married.

Then we moved to Los Angeles for four and a half years, and moved back to Tokyo with two preschoolers and all the baby stuff. That was a pretty rough move. Yeah, that was bad.

We were in the same apartment in Tokyo for six years, and moved when we bought a place of our own. It was less than a mile away, but we didn`t have a car so we couldn`t do it all ourselves, and had to get a domestic moving company.

The last move from Tokyo was definitely the hardest move of my life. The kids didn`t want to leave their school and their friends, I didn`t want to leave my great job and my friends, and no one wanted to leave our new apartment we had bought literally weeks before we found out we had to move.

And then when we finally got here, I thought it was going to be so wonderful right from the start to live in San Francisco -- but The Crazy Mover was the harbinger of a really awful year of adjustment and homesickness. I honestly didn`t expect our adjustment to be as bad as it was -- in fact, I`m only realizing in retrospect how hard it was, since things finally got better.

Okay....enough disjointed blogging. I am now going to take all of our pictures off the walls and then duct-tape the picture hooks to the back of the frames, to make rehanging them easier.

Moving.... I hate it, but I have to admit -- I`m really good at it.

Coming Down

It is pouring cats and dogs out there.

I went down to The Little House in the Ditch, and knocked on the door of the house next door and introduced myself. I said we would be moving in shortly, had the keys, now lived less than a mile away, and would they please call me if they thought I needed to come over and put the sandbags in front of the garage?

They were nice -- a young couple with two friendly dogs and some birds in cages. Their garage has the same flooding problem, and they said it only happens rarely, once every other year or so, when the street drainage backs up.

Once we move in to this house, I will never look at rain the same way again.

Got the Keys!

We will be decamping to The Little House in the Ditch as soon as we can book some brawny humans to heft our junk.

I picked the big kids up at school and showed it to them. The verdict: "COOL!"

Pretty funny -- one week ago, I didn`t think I would be getting ready for a sudden move, let alone that we`d already have a house to move to.

Speaking of brawny humans and heft -- I`ve lost 5 pounds since Wednesday. I keep forgetting to eat. Maybe I should prolong the moving process, and actually look good in a swimsuit this summer....?

Nah -- it will all come back, anyway, as soon as I get into my new kitchen and start cooking up a storm.

Bear With Me....

I`m really no damn fun, you know? I`m sitting around waiting for the real estate agent to call us back, to arrange a time when the owners of the Little House in the Ditch can meet us.

It`s hard to have a decent conversation with me now, because all I can think about is the Little House in the Ditch. Of course, I am also preparing for the possibility that it might fall through for some reason, and so when I`m at my computer, I continue to compulsively check the new rental listings on craigslist, every...oh, 30 seconds or so.

I have vowed to say something today that`s not about moving. Let`s see.....oh, last Friday, I wore my new flower-patterned jeans.

They were only $4.99 at Ross (Dress for LOSS) and they fit me perfectly, so I bought two pairs of them, in both blue/black AND red/green.

Daughter was with me when I bought them last month, and her only comment was, "Papa is not going to like those at all."

Indeed -- Hub, our resident fashionista, looked at me and blurted out, "You look like a sofa!"

He immediately tried to cover for himself, and said, "I don`t mean they make you look BIG like a sofa -- but it just looks like the kind of fabric you`d see on a sofa. I mean, if you don`t mind looking like a sofa...."

Shut up, Hub.

I thought it was just him, but then I dropped off the kids at school, and one of my mom friends looked at me and said, "I used to wear things like that when I was younger."

Yes, it`s official: I`m a chubby, middle-aged lady in flowered jeans, trying to look younger, but looking instead like a piece of upholstered furniture.

But am I going to stop wearing them?

Never.

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

UNRELATED REQUEST: Do any of my readers in the Bay Area have any advice about moving locally, and how to find someone cheap and reliable to do the heavy lifting for us? Thanks!

Hopefully Ditch-Bound

Okay. The mode is now, "Operation Moving;" level: high. Ready, set, action. I just want to get it all over with.

We put down a deposit for the house in the ditch, but until our name is inked on the lease, I`m not relaxing. In fact, I don`t think the word "relax" will have any meaning for me, until our boxes are unpacked.

I can`t reveal where it is, nor can I even link to the craigslist posting with the photos (since it includes the address), but I will reveal that it is indeed in a certifiable flood channel. The real estate agent said, "I have to disclose that this garage has flooded in the past, when a storm drain was clogged," and she pointed to a water mark a few inches above the floor....and some sandbags.

The last time we were looking at houses in ditches, we were buying one in Tokyo , not renting. We would certainly never have bought one with any "water issues," and in fact we ruled one out for exactly this reason. But renting? That`s a whole different ballgame, and I`m realizing that a deal-breaker for a sale can be a minor inconvenience for a rental.

I mean, most of the key rooms in the house are on the second floor, plus even if there IS another flood, and even if it`s a big one and water seeps into the first floor rooms-- heck, it`s not our drywall and carpeting.

If we were looking for a house to buy, we would have heard the word "flooded" and turned right around and left -- but since we`re renting, all we thought was, "Sandbags -- okay, sure." Funny how one`s priorities can change.

The real estate agent wanted our FICO scores. I had no idea what she was talking about, since our mortgage in Tokyo is with a Japanese bank. Then I remembered that in fact, I had heard of this (uh, yeah, I`m supposed to be a financial journalist), and figured out how to get ours online. Since we have just one credit card that we pay off every month, our FICOs look like a very intelligent student`s SAT scores.

There was a another couple there with an application ready to hand in, but I had already seen the house during the week, and the agent said we expressed interest first. The owners want to meet us now, and if they like us, we can move in right away.

I`m trying to make myself feel better about the whole moving thing by telling myself that the new place, though smaller and with less storage (**but with free sandbags!**) has the only two key things that our current palatial house lacks: it`s within close walking distance of a park with swings for swing-loving Little Son, and it`s even closer to the BART station. Plus, it`s only about a mile from our current place, so our entire life remains within convenient reach.

I will miss the big lovely yard, but I will NOT miss mowing the lawn. I will miss the beautiful view of the ocean, but I will NOT miss walking up those killer hills. I will miss our current great next-door neighbors, but we will definitely stay in touch with them.

Oh, and our current neighbors on the other side -- they`re nice, too, but they`re Chinese and keep pretty much to themselves. I told the husband we were moving out, and he said, "You are the best neighbors we ever had, in all our years living here." (We actually have had very little contact with them, but I think he`s very grateful that I cleared his brush between our houses -- which I had to do, because the wild blackberry bushes on his side kept reaching out and grabbing my children.)

Ever the opportunist, I asked him to be a reference for our new apartment application, since I figure it can`t hurt to fill up the page, with neighbors. He agreed -- it was very touching, but....ill-timed.

Later that same day, he had a new driveway put in, and the workers were carving up the stones with a giant buzz saw, raising clouds of dust. But after our touching conversation, I just didn`t have the heart to complain to him about it.

My freshly-washed car now looks as if Mt. St. Helens erupted next to it.

Ordinarily, that would have ruined my day, but now all I can do is sigh, and acknowlege that it`s a very easy problem to fix.

Sorry, everyone, if my blogging has gotten increasingly myopic lately -- I know the world doesn`t revolve around me and my moving. In fact, though it looms ominously in my mind, it doesn`t even factor much into our day-to-day family life yet. Yesterday, we brought four friends of Daughter`s to Japantown to her favorite ramen place, for her birthday, and then they slept over in our huge guestroom (which is really the master bedroom).

Daughter had a great time, but all I could think was, "How many more kids` sleepovers will we host in that great room? Soon, one of them will be the last...maybe even this one...."

Sigh...

I will close by tacking on a totally unrelated quote, that deserves to be remembered for posterity.

From the San Francisco Chronicle`s coverage of Gavin Newsom`s cheating penis:

A family friend who asked not to be identified said she would have no comment.

That made me smile -- and right now I need all the smiles I can get.

What not to ask your wife, when she is weeping because she has to move for the third time in less than two years

(EDITED -- It`s actually only the third time in less than THREE years, not two, so it could be worse, and I`ve got to keep remembering that.)

Hub: "So....before we have to leave this great house....can I invite my whole office over for brunch again?"

Yes, he really did ask me that, shortly after I got the landlord`s email. Hub is very, VERY lucky indeed, that I was crying too hard at that particular moment to cut his balls off and make them into earrings.

I was going to make this a "Top 10" list of things not to say, but you know --- I just don`t think I can top that one.

Wow

I`m feeling kind of overwhelmed here.

Less than 24 hours ago, I thought the biggest issue in my life was whether or not I would get the fulltime job I just applied for (at the place where I`m now working part-time). I was planning to go to the farmers` market in Daly City this morning, and get some flowers and apples. The top post on my blog was a rant about something a gossip columnist said. Wow! Imagine caring about stuff like apples and gossip columnists!

But then, just before I lit the candles on Daughter`s birthday cake, I checked my email and got the bombshell from our landlord: they decided they wanted to come home to their house.

He was very apologetic about it -- he`s my former boss and a good guy, and when he rented his house, I had assured him that we would leave someday if they ever wanted to come home. But who knew, that they would truly prefer San Francisco to suburban New Jersey? I mean, suburban New Jersey, in the winter? What`s not to love?!?

I looked at a house for rent this morning, not far away, in our budget, with plenty of room. Hub is going to look at it Saturday.

It`s in a ditch -- literally. The street dips into a "U" and it`s nestled right in the "U." We would moving from the side of a mountain with a view of the sea -- to a ditch. A nice ditch, to be sure, but a ditch just the same.

I liked it, though. I feel more hopeful than I did last evening, when I lit poor Daughter`s birthday candles and fought back tears.

When I told Daughter we were moving, her whole face lit up and she said, "Yaaaaaaay!" She really likes this house we`re in now, but I guess she likes the idea of moving even more. It really made her day.

Later yesterday, I talked to Hub about what we really wanted. He`s been pushing to move to the suburbs, and this would have been the perfect time -- but it turned out that what I had taken for "pushing" was just Hub thinking out loud again, and he said he wants to stay in the city after all, so the kids can stay at their school. Nice to be on the same page there.

I am ashamed to admit that when I told Hub about the email, the first thing I asked him was, "Let me move back to Tokyo with the kids!"

Hub didn`t like that very much.

I guess I was just jealous, that our landlord is moving home, so shouldn`t we get to move home too? I know, I know -- our time to go home will finally come. I just have to be patient.

And find somewhere for us to live, in the meantime. Maybe the ditch.

Wow.