Question

How many of you have ever heard the word plonk?

Please answer!

Shameless

Sorry for the sparse posting lately. I seem to have caught Little Son`s cold -- I`m more or less fine during the day, but then I`m up all night coughing, and so I`m gradually turning into an exhausted zombie.

Of course, as Murphy`s Law would have it, this also happens to be the week that I`m getting extra hours at work, because another copyeditor is on vacation. Alas, my zombie brain isn`t all that good for catching errors in copy, and a few have slipped by me.

Today I was so tired I wore my flowered jeans to work, even though it`s not even Friday.

And guess what -- it turned out to be the day some big muckety-muck executives from the financial news company that rhymes with "Cow Bones" were in town, in our office, for some big meeting. Fortunately, I looked okay from the waist up, so I just sat at my desk until the meeting ended and they dispersed.

After they were gone, we mere mortals were allowed into the conference room to eat their leftover food. I mean, of course it was catered, and there were sandwiches! Chicken salad! Brownies! I even went back for seconds.

And I thought, wow, I have no shame -- here I am, not even a real employee -- still just an hourly worker -- and I`m wearing jeans to work and scavenging leftovers like a goat.

Oh, well. As we goats say, "Baaaaaaa!"

Delusional

I got my toenails done today. I finally used the gift certificate my friends here gave me for my birthday last year (if you`re reading this -- thanks!)

With red toenails, I think I can conquer the world.

Please -- nobody shatter my illusion/intrude on my delusion.

I need to feel this way for a little while -- at least until it chips, okay?

Linkfest

Wow, in a few days, Johnny and his family will leave for China, to adopt another baby there. Where did the month of March go? (Oh....do I sound like a woman who hasn`t done her taxes yet?)

A few days ago Johnny wrote an excellent post entitled, What if your child IS the diversity? That really hit home -- since my kids are biracial, they count as a little bit "different" in both of their home countries.

Those of you who read Amfam know they`re home from China with their new daughter. But all is not sunshine and puppies -- this post about a horror of a social worker and the sociopath who almost derailed their adoption entirely had my blood boiling.

Unrelated -- the lovely Mo-Wo tagged me for the "Real moms...." meme. I love Mo-Wo`s take on it: "Real moms....don`t need yoga. We just need the pants." That`s even better than "Real Moms have flab."

So here goes mine.

Real moms....eat like goats.

Hey, I love good food as much as anyone -- probably even more -- but since I had kids, I find myself eating lots of gross food. I eat the burned toast, the pizza crust and the half-eaten pop tarts. I finish the last bite of spaghetti left in the bowl, and the lone chicken nugget that no one will touch because it fused into a funny shape.

I hate to waste anything, so I am shameless about eating leftovers. I eat not only my own kids` leftover food, but if they happen to have a friend over, I will usually eat the friend`s food, too. On Friday, we had a little girl over here with a cold, who didn`t finish her burrito. I carefully cut away the part she`d bitten, and consumed the rest.

I once found part of a waffle on the living room floor, and ate it because I was too tired to walk to the kitchen garbage can.

I am not tagging anyone for the meme, but if anyone has any "Real moms...." ideas, please do share!

Weekend Update

The Teapot of Dorian Gray sold for $108.50.

Hub had a good time at the crab feed, and we even won a bottle of cheap champagne as a raffle prize. He agrees that my friends are nice. My friends finally believe that I am truly married, and not just making up an imaginary husband.

And the old Chinese guy with the erhu was there, on Friday, after a long hiatus. I gave him a buck and told him to have a nice weekend, and he looked up and thanked me.

Good karma, please come my way.

Poor Crabby Hubby

Today is the day -- our wedding anniversary, that I wrote about last week.

Hub is away all day today, in Los Angeles, leaving early this morning and expected to return home after midnight.

"I`ll make it up to you," he said. "We`ll go out on Saturday -- your choice! Wherever you want to go!"

"Oh, great," I said. "Our school fundraiser crab feed is Saturday, and I already bought tickets for us and asked Trista to babysit, because I know you love crab."

Heh heh heh..... I am soooooooo evil.

You see, Hub is a bit antisocial. He gets offended when I call him that, because he`s a good Japanese boy who is always painfully polite around people. But the truth is, at any given moment, he would rather be home with the kids, or even all alone, watching his old Japanese movies, or Japanese TV comedies on YouTube, or listening to his rakugo CDs.

Our school crab feed will be difficult for him to endure, on so many levels.

For one thing, Hub finds it a chore to speak English. Now, Hub`s verbal English is quite excellent -- in fact, he can speak extemporaneously to large assembled groups with no notes. He is often called upon to do so for his job, which is promoting investment into his country. He meets with English-speaking business people nearly everyday, and has dinners with them many nights. In fact, he gives the outward appearance of being very comfortable in all social settings.

Inwardly, however, he is wishing that he was at home, taking a bath with Little Son and then watching Akahige for the forty millionth time, with the older kids gathered around reading their manga. Nothing makes him happier than a domestic scene like that.

So the idea that he has to spend his precious Saturday night speaking English to people he doesn`t know well is a bit....well, less than desirable. Plus, he has to actually set foot on Church property to do this, which he avoids doing. Perhaps he`s worried that lightening will strike him dead one of these days for all his jokes about his wife trying to brainwash his kids into her cult?

"It will be fun. We`re sitting at a table with all our friends," I told him.

"All your friends," he corrected.

"They`re all great people. They could be your friends, too," I said, though I knew this was futile.

Language isn`t the only issue here -- some of it is just Hub`s nature. Even in Japan, where he was exponentially more involved in our social life than he is now, I was far more involved than he was. I, the non-Japanese spouse, was the one joining all the neighborhood matsuri committees, going on the onsen trips with the neighbors, and pounding the mochi, while Hub stayed home much of the time.

In fact, I suspect one reason Hub married me was the he knew it would be useful to have an extroverted, involved wife who would satisfy all of our Japanese social obligations, and get him off the hook. That, and my cooking.

Sorry, Hub. And happy anniversary to you, even though I know you never read my blog.

The Naked Truth

Tonight I was taking a bath. Doesn`t that sound leisurely? Actually, I spontaneously climbed in with Little Son, because it`s easiest to wash him that way. He got out first and ran downstairs to ask Hub to put his pajamas on, and I remained soaking for a few minutes, trying to relax.

I hadn`t locked the door, and our au pair, whom I didn`t know was home, walked in, saw me and.....screamed.

"Oh, I`m sorry, I`m sorry, I`m so so so so sorry!" she kept repeating, clearly agitated.

She`s from Taiwan, which I know to be a shy, Asian culture, but for godssake, she worked as a nurse over there, and has surely seen naked people before.

I got out and got dressed, and she came up and apologized profusely to me again, and again.

Later, Daughter said to me, "She was so upset I thought she was going to cry."

I hope she was just upset about the idea of invading my privacy -- which, when you think about it, is pretty funny, since I have three kids who can pick bathroom locks and my privacy is pretty much nonexistent. Hey, I hadn`t even bothered to lock the door in the first place.

But perhaps what really upset her was seeing what bearing three kids can do to a female body...?

Hmmmmm. Better not think too deeply about this, and hope she forgets.

Bleh

Not in a very bloggy mood today.

If you have a spare moment, go give some love to my blog mentor Tertia. Life kicked her in the ass this week.

I don`t usually send traffic to other people`s blogs at times like this --- but as usual, her post makes me grateful for all I have. Plus, I know Tertia won`t take it the wrong way (or if she does, she will just say, "Fuck that insensitive L.!" and have a glass of wine, and get over it).

My Little Donald Trump

"RUB MY FEET!" demanded Little Son, sticking them in my lap as I typed on my computer.

"No! That`s NOT the way to ask someone to do something for you," I said, not even looking up from my typing.

"RUB MY FEET OR YOU`RE FIRED!"

That line didn`t work on me, either -- I was laughing too hard to rub his feet.

Spot the Error

Okay, I know picking on the San Francisco Chronicle is like kicking a quadriplegic, and none of us ought to feel too feel smug when we catch something their editors don`t, but I wonder how many of you will enjoy finding the error in the following sentence, from the Chron`s coverage of today`s anti-war protest downtown:

While Iraq was the day's main focus, the marchers had plenty of other concerns. More than a half-dozen speakers fired up the protesters before the march, calling on the United States to abandon its military bases throughout the world, most especially in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Philippines.

(Hint: factual, not grammatical)

Do Not Read This Post While Eating

This is a really gross nature story.

The garage in our new abode, as one would expect of a house in a ditch, is damp. It has a drain in the center of the floor, and has been known to flood after heavy rains. All of our stuff stored there is either inside plastic tubs, or off the floor, or both.

A few nights ago, I was bringing the trash out to the big barrels, which are in the garage. I didn`t bother turning on the light, because I knew the floor was bare. I also didn`t bother putting on any shoes.

Through my socks, I felt something go SQUISH.

I turned on the light. It was one of these, the biggest one I`d ever seen, all fat and moist and squishy.

EEEEEEEEEWWWWWWW!

I peeled off my sock, which was wet with slug slime on the bottom, threw it into the laundry basket, and went inside to wash my foot.

Later, I went out to clean up the squished slug`s corpse, before it attracted ants (or worse).

It was gone.

I followed its trail of slime, that led from the giant SPLAT mark where I had stepped on it, and saw that it led to the drain. And there I found the slug, apprently uninjured and trying to fit its fat body through one of the small drain holes.

The amazing thing was, it was succeeeding. I guess that`s one big advantage of being an invertabrate -- that you can squeeze your fat body through tiny openings. And I suppose another big advantage is that even when an overweight human steps on you, it doesn`t always kill you.

I stood there watching as the slug slowly disappeared into the drain. Yeah, I know -- my life is so exciting. Come and party with me.

Today, I did laundry. I was sorting my socks, and found the one that I`d been wearing when I squished the slug.

It was really weird --- the slug slime hadn`t washed out of the sock at all. Instead, it hardened, as if I`d stepped in waterproof glue.

I threw the sock away, totally freaked out by this. What the hell was in that slug slime?

I apologize for this post, but I just had to share.

Same Old, Same Old

I wish I had a buck for every time I`ve had a variation of the following conversation:

"So your husband is Chinese?"

"No -- he`s Japanese."

"Oh, whatever!" (...said with shrug and eye roll, as if the distinction was just too fine for them to bother with.)

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

This morning, I experienced the flip side of that.

"Oh no," I said, "look at the weather. I hope it doesn`t rain on our friends marching in the parade today."

Hub said, "Ah, right -- it`s that Scottish holiday today, isn`t it?"

"Um....Irish."

"Whatever!" (...said with shrug and eye roll.)

Best-Dressed for Less-Than-Success

Well, it`s official -- I didn`t get the fulltime job for which I had applied. They want me to keep working parttime, which makes sense for them --- I mean, why not have a fulltime person AND a parttime person, right? Since I already got hints to this effect, the revelation did not come as a shock, nor even much of a disappointment.

The Big Boss called me into his office to let me know about this, and he did so in the most polite, considerate way possible, with asssurances that something else would be found for me sooner or later.

It`s funny -- perhaps sensing something was afoot, I had dressed up really nicely today. I wore a skirt for the first time, in, oh.....two years or so. I also wore my old black pointy-toed cowboy boots, the ones I used to wear to work in Tokyo almost every day in the winter, that I always feel give me the extra strength to kick the shit out of anything that needs kicking.

Our office is very casual to begin with, as most news organizations are, and Fridays are the most casual of all. I`ve noticed that the middle-aged people with stable, staid lives tend to wear jeans and scruffy clothing on Friday, while the hot young single people dress up for their interesting after-work social lives.

So, not wanting to look any more middle-aged than I already am, I got dressed up today, entirely in black. Whenever people commented that I looked nice, I said, "I`m going to a party after work."

In fact, I was going to a party, so it was a completely honest gesture -- although it was a 10-year old`s birthday party in our neighborhood, and I was sort of, um....crashing it, hoping that the girl`s mother would open a bottle of wine and talk to me......but I was not obliged to share all those details, right?

The bottom line is, it`s always better to receive bad news when you know you look good.

Amanda Marcotte, Don`t Fear the Knot

We`re approaching two anniversaries here -- a big one in my life, and an interesting tiny one on my blog.

The first is our wedding anniversary. Hub and I were married at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo on March 22, 1991. Our formal wedding ceremony in Kyoto with the church, families, dress and party followed in November -- I can`t recall the exact date now, because it`s not the date we celebrate.

Nope -- instead, we observe the anniversary of the day we went down in the rain, huddled under one umbrella, and waited in line with all the other couples at the Embassy. We wanted to get the legal part over with, so that Hub could apply for a subsidized apartment in his government organization`s family housing complex, and so I could apply for my spouse visa in New York, where I was still a grad student. (I was back in Tokyo for spring break, and had been told that I could get a longer visa if I applied at an overseas Japanese consulate, and this proved to be true: many of my friends got only one-year or even six-month spouse visas when they applied locally, whereas I got one for three years on my first application.)

I also suspect that Hub was in a hurry to get hitched because he realized what a blast I was having in New York that year, and was worried that I wouldn`t come back to Tokyo and go through with the elaborate Kyoto wedding he was planning. Yeah, he planned our whole wedding -- all I did was show up in a dress.

Hub even found a Catholic priest willing to marry us, and went to all the required pre-marital Catholic classes -- alone, since I was still in New York. He did this not for me, since I was not a practicing Catholic at the time, but for my grandmother. How could I NOT love a man who went through all that just to make my beloved grandmother happy?

(Note: Hub didn`t quite pull off the "Catholic" part, because perilously close to the ceremony date, he flat-out told the priest that our future children would be Buddhists like him, which was of course the wroooooong answer. So we didn`t get the special dispensation required when a Catholic marries a non-baptized person, meaning our marriage is considered invalid in the Church. The priest still married us, but wouldn`t give us a mass or communion, which really didn`t matter to us -- all that mattered was my grandmother`s happiness when she watched the video of us getting married in a bona fide Catholic church by a bona fide Catholic priest.)

I hadn`t wanted to get married -- I was terrified of it. It seemed so scary and final, and I wanted to just keep living together, indefinitely. Perhaps if it weren`t for my need of a visa, and the chance to live in cheap government housing, I wouldn`t have been able to rationalize my decision to go through with the marriage. Or perhaps I would have given in to the wishes of the traditional guy with whom I had fallen in love, and married him no matter what.

Hub and I, despite many common interests, are a classic case of opposites attracting. I always say that his Kyoto family makes my repressed New England Catholic family look like a hippy commune in the Summer of Love. I mean, at least my family yells a lot, and communicates on that level -- his family communicates in gestures and whispers and subtle nuances, and sometimes, I swear, by telepathy. When I visit my in-laws in Kyoto, I feel as if I`ve been dropped into one of Hub`s old samurai movies, and I often long for subtitles.

But if I had a chance to do it all again....I would. The same way. Okay, okay, I wouldn`t have wasted so many of our newlywed years arguing, and there are a lot of little things I would do differently, but the bottom line is, I still would have married the guy.

I remember him once saying to me, "You`re not the perfect person for me, but I don`t want the perfect person -- I want you." I felt the same way, and years later, I still do.

Now, for the tiny anniversary. Next week will mark the one-year anniversary of my 15 minutes of fame, when my response to MIM`s "False Advertising" post, about weight gain in a marriage got tens of thousands of hits.

I`m not going to link my post or MIM`s -- enough has been said about the whole subject already. In short, MIM said women owed it not just to themselves but to their husbands to make an effort to stay attractive. Personally, I think it would be unfair to Husband if I gained a bunch of weight and did nothing about it, she wrote. I wrote a post strongly disagreeing with her, in which I said, never in my life have I thought about my body weight in terms of being "fair" to my husband.

Nothing brings out everyone`s inner cattiness like women obsessing about the issue of weight, body image, sexual attractiveness, and marriage. Several famous bloggers linked to me. As I`ve written before, it made me change my whole attitude toward blogging, and my role in the blogging world.

I had completely forgotten until recently that those famous bloggers included Amanda Marcotte.

Does everyone know who Amanda Marcotte is? Wow -- I just realized she has her own Wikipedia entry. She is the blogger who writes Pandagon, and early this year she was hired by John Edwards 2008 presidential campaign to be his official blogmaster. But some organizations including the Catholic League called for her ouster because of some of the opinions she`s expressed on her blog, and she ended up resigning from the campaign last month.

Last year, Amanda linked to my post and to MIM`s original, and in a post entitled, "Pass on Dessert and Grab the Ammunition," she concluded this:

This post and the ones that are linked in it made me terrified of the very idea of marriage. That is all I can really say on that.

Amanda posted that on mine and Hub`s 15th wedding anniversary, which made me feel a pang of guilt about false representation. I had pulled out one little issue that made my marriage look grotesque -- hell, in her words, she was terrified. But there we were, eating our anniversary sushi and thinking about all the happy times we`d had in those 15 years and what a great family we`d made together, and all our plans for the future.

I felt like one of those wicked old women who regale young women with childbirth horror stories, telling them about the scary things that will happen to their bodies and leaving out all the joy that the babies will bring.

Now, I don`t know Amanda, except through her blog (which I should say, I read regularly and greatly enjoy). And I`m sure that she didn`t think too deeply about anything I wrote in my post, and has probably long forgotten it. I was unable to resist the rhyming title of this post, but I somehow doubt Amanda looks to me and my blog for advice in forming her opinion of modern marriage.

But for the record, Hub and I are living proof that marriage is......well, anything but terrifying. It`s not necessarily for everyone, and even mostly happy marriages like ours have their episodes of genuine ugliness. But sometimes it can be....oh, this is so cheesey, but it can be beautiful.

Two people so wrong for each other in so many ways got married, and figured out a way to make it right.

Bid on My Teapot!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&Item=120097123852

The "Sell it on eBay" store will get 35% of whatever it goes for -- that`s the price of keeping Hub happy. Even if I sent up my own eBay account, he would no doubt worry about us having the same IP address or something. This way, he has absolutely nothing to complain about.

It`s a perfectly lovely teapot, just not quite my taste. I hope it finds a good home, and someone loves it and uses it.

Does anyone notice, this ad doesn`t mention the tape mark on the box that Hub got all bent out of shape about?

What surprised me was that they described it as, "NEAR MINT," and say, "There are some extremely tiny specs of dirt/discoloration towards the top of the pot, probably from age."

Dirt? Discoloration? I never took it out of the box, for God`s sake.

Maybe the teapot represents my soul -- like The Picture of Dorian Gray, it would have grown dirtier and more discolored in its box, as I lived out my years.....?

Good thing I`m selling the damn thing.

Should I Be Worried?

I am finally going through stacks of paper left from our recent move -- I can finally see the floor in some rooms, and was able to vacuum the new house this weekend, which felt great. I sense a turning point in the battle of Me vs. The Dust Bunnies.

In one of the paper stacks, I found this essay that Big Son wrote back in October, reproduced below in its entirety:

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

Do You Think Teachers Should Carry Guns?

As students get violent, like bringing guns to school, people think teachers should carry guns, to protect themselves and their innocent students. Carrying guns has some risks. For example, a bad student could take the gun from the teacher when the teacher is not paying attention to the gun.

Personally, I don`t think teachers should carry guns, because a crazy teacher might overreact and shoot a student. Of course, I`m still in sixth grade. I might re-think when I`m in high school.

I`ve heard that high school is very dangerous. Sometimes kids hurt other kids, but I don`t really know because I`ve never went to high school, but I still don`t think teachers should carry guns, because of the risks.

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

The teacher`s comments in red say only, "Here you should state your opinion and then use the examples in the body of the essay," and "You need a bit more in your body." I don`t recognize the handwriting, but it looks feminine (in my amateur opinion), so I`m guessing it`s the Puritan Maiden`s, and not the cool young English teacher`s (whom I believe would have noted the grammatical mistakes). But who knows.

What I want to know is, did Big Son pick this topic himself? I asked him, and he doesn`t even remember writing this.

So I may never find out.

I earned my salary today.

At work, at my copyediting gig at the unit of the news organization that rhymes with Cow Bones, I caught this lovely typo before it went out in a headline:

FUND INVESTORS DUMP SOCKS AFTER PULLBACK

It makes perfect sense, though, doesn`t it? Who wants to wear socks that pull back? Dump `em!

Words Worth 1/1000th of a Photo

Well, the photos Mr. D.`s girlfriend took of Big Son and his origami on Monday came out great -- I wish I posted photos on my blog, so I could share them. She really managed to capture my goofy kid.

Hub is our family`s official photographer, and somehow, his photos are always serious. That playful element is usually missing.

I`m thinking a lot about this post by Dutch over at Sweet Juniper, about how everyone always thinks that his/her spouse/child is "the best one:"

Logic dictates that not every husband, or wife, or child can be the best one. Yet in the face of that terrible logic, belief persists. That belief drives us to document it, to photograph the object as proof. It may drive us to share those photographs with strangers.

The year Big Son was born, I couldn`t relate to the sentiment expressed in that post -- Big Son screamed all day and night, and my life was living hell. I wondered, how did I end up with the worst baby ever? I loved him, yes, but....my misery was undeniable. I blamed myself for a lot of it (and also my post-partum hormones, and sleep deprivation), but part of it was just who Big Son was, in his infant personality. Of course, my marriage to Hub suffered that year, too.

But you know what? I don`t feel that way anymore. I now think my family is the best one. And Big Son is the best oldest son. And looking at this young woman`s photos of him really drives this home.

I wish I could post them here, but I`ll have to be happy with simply framing one and hanging it over the desk at which I blog.

Random Bits

Anyone else having trouble commenting on my blog? Okay, okay -- that was a dumb question, along the lines of, "Who`s not listening?" But Blogger has really been acting up lately.

Today`s unrelated vignettes:

There`s a meeting tonight at school, about the contentious issue of changing the schedule for the sacrament of Confirmation from eighth to seventh grade for Big Son`s class. Since Big Son has already told me, alternately, that he doesn`t want to be confimed, that he`s a Buddhist, that he`s an athiest, that he prays to monkey spirits, and that he doesn`t pray at all --- I`m staying out of the whole matter. It might not concern our family.

---

Hub put away his blow dryer and his mousse. I think his fuzzy ping-pong ball head is here to stay for a while.

---

Omegamom tagged me for a meme a while back, to answer the question, why do I blog? Simple, boring answer: to stay in touch with friends, both my old ones back in Tokyo and elsewhere, as well as all of my new ones in San Francisco (a few of whom have started reading this) and in blog land, too.

---

Daughter still can`t get over how pretty the girlfriend is, of Mr. D., who is the cool young English teacher who plays the guitar for the children`s choir and whose girlfriend came to school Monday. Up until yesterday, I suspected Daughter had a puppy-love crush on Mr. D., who seems very popular with the fourth-grade girls, but now I`m not so sure.

"His girlfriend is really beautiful! But he`s not, at all," noted Daughter yesterday.

"Don`t you like the way he looks?" I asked, curious, as to my what my 10-year old considered attractive.

"No, he doesn`t look so good on the outside," she said, but then added, "Maybe he`s beautiful on the inside."

When Daughter was in second grade in Tokyo, she told me she liked a boy in her class because "he`s smart and he makes me laugh all the time."

I was surprised, because this particular boy was an overweight Philippino kid. His name was Tamayo, but everyone called him "Tamago," which means "egg" in Japanese, because he was so round.

I was very happy at the time that Daughter based her choice of men on intelligence and sense of humor, and not appearance. And her latest, "Maybe he`s beautiful on the inside" comment made me happy in the same way.

Of course, then I remembered that she is only 10, and has no sex drive yet, and that is going to be the terrifying wild card in her eventual choice of dates.

And the way she went on about how beautiful Mr. D.`s girlfriend is, it`s possible she has a puppy-love crush on his girlfriend. That would be just fine with me -- hey, we`re in the right city for it, too.

"Foot, meet Mouth. Mouth, meet Foot."

I was talking to one of our new neighbors today,

She`s very beautiful -- and skinny, too, as Hub loves to point out (and I will let him ogle other women to his heart`s content without hasseling him, now that his head truly resembles a cute fuzzy-wuzzy ping-pong ball).

She and her husband have two preschool boys. I asked her what they planned to do for elementary school in a few years, and she said, "Catholic," so I started telling her all about our
school, and how happy we`ve been with it, overall --- nuns notwithstanding.

She asked what other Catholic schools we looked at, and without thinking, I said, "St. C., but....it was too white for us."

The beautiful, skinny neighbor is white, as lily white as they come. And me -- I`m a very pale white girl, too, also as white as they come.

I thought, Did I really just say that out loud?

It was one of those moments that had me longing for spontaneous human combustion.

Fortunately, the beautiful skinny neighbor sighed and said, "Oh, I know exactly what you mean -- we`re not considering St. C. for that reason! We want a more diverse school."

Phew! Saved by San Francisco. If I had said something like that in the Connecticut `burb where I grew up, the neighbors would have stopped speaking to my parents -- not that my anti-social parents would have noticed, or minded.

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

On an unrelated note, the girlfriend of Mr. D., the cool young English teacher at our Catholic school, came to the school today to take photos of Big Son and his origami creations for her photography class.

Daughter, whom I believe has a secret puppy-love crush on Mr. D., pronounced his girlfriend "beautiful."

I asked Big Son if he had thought she was beautiful, too.

"I don`t know. I don`t care," he said. Then he thought about it for a minute.

"I didn`t like her nose."

"What about it?"

"The shiny thing stuck in it!"

I had barely noticed -- she had a small piercing, come to think of it. It didn`t even register, until Big Son mentioned it.

I must say, I was surprised to hear my son express a strong opinion against pierced noses.

In a few years, if he ever comes home with a face full of his own embellishments, I will remind him of that.

The Hair of the Dog that Bit Him (UPDATED)

Hub got a bad haircut yesterday morning -- a really bad haircut. He came home and I barely recognized him. At first glance, I mistook him for one of the guys outside working on the roof.

How bad was it? It was so bad that in the afternoon, he got out his clippers and did a Britney Spears. For all of my readers outside America -- believe it or not, Britney`s scalp is one of the few issues this country takes seriously these days.

I never realized it before, but Hub`s head is perfectly round from the front (and a little flat in the back, from being placed on his back on tatami mats when he was a baby). Some guys look really sexy with shorn scalps -- in fact, the SF Chron has an article about this very trend today.

But Hub looks a lot like a fuzzy ping-pong ball with a goatee and glasses.

At first the kids hated it, and ran away from him screaming. Now they`re warming up to it a bit, and laughing at it, and calling him "Hage-papa."*
(*Japanese for bald papa)

This morning I awoke with a start because at first I didn`t recognize the ping-pong ball-headed dude on the pillow next to me.

I am not sure about what I think of this startling new development in our household. I`m trying to come up with a perfect nickname.

But in the meantime, yes, of course I am calling him,"Britney."

UPDATED to add that when a man is insecure about his appearance, it does not comfort him at all to tell him, "You look cute."

(But he does! And it`s really soft, like a baby`s head. Telling him that doesn`t comfort him, either.)

Overheard

Daughter, speaking on the phone to my parents: "Guess what -- I`m the loudest one in the choir!"

The "Home Alone" Issue

Follow-up on yesterday`s post --- for the record, I have no qualms about leaving my kids home alone for short periods of time. I have done it since they were about 6 years old.

People in Japan leave tiny babies unattended, and it is both socially acceptable and perfectly legal there. However, I waited until my kids were school-age before I did it, and some Japanese friends considered me overprotective. Imagine, being considered overprotective for not leaving a preschooler unattended! Yeah, it was a different world. The older kids had trouble giving up this freedom when we moved here.

Some of you will remember, I left the big kids home alone last summer, when I had that very strange property management job (the one that got Hub in trouble with the Japanese Consul General). That "home alone" time was just for a few hours for one week, before their school started. They did fine.

There is no set age at which it is legal to leave a child unatttended at home. Not wanting CPS to come knocking on the door, I asked a local cop about it before I did it last summer, to make sure it would be okay. Conventional wisdom says some kids are mature enough at a younger age, and some kids are never responsible enough, and it depends on the situation.

But rather than have my kids sit around the house with no supervision or organized activities, I would much prefer to get them out of the house everyday, and give them something to do, and an adult to watch over them. "Home alone" is fine -- but not ideal.

Does anyone know anything about the SF Parks and Rec summer Latchkey program? Little Son is too young and would have to go to the babysitter`s house, but I`m wondering if it`s a good option for Big Son and Daughter.

An Informal Poll

Pretend you were working only two-half days a week at a job you liked, and hoping to go fulltime as soon as possible.

Now, pretend you just unofficially found out today that you will not be getting a fulltime job there anytime soon. -- Pause for brief pity party here. --

Then pretend your au pair (I still call her that, even though she`s a fulltime student now and not an au pair anymore) will be going home to Taiwan for most of the summer.

You know that fulltime summer day camp for three kids (including one preschooler, which narrows down the options considerably) costs approxmately three times what you are making at your two half-days-a-week job. You are having no luck finding part-time summer camp.

Do you:

1) Spend beyond your means to send the kids to camp;

2) Quit your part-time job, even though that means you will never get a fulltime job there;

3) Leave the kids unattended while you work?

I am leaning toward number 3. I might spring for the home daycare place for Little Son, and leave Daughter and Big Son on their own, and hope for the best.

This raises a dilemma in that my employers say they would like to give me more hours. But since two of my kids will be unattended while I`m working, and my income would still fall short of the "able to afford camp" level, I don`t think I want any more hours until school starts.

What would you do?

This situation has actually triggered a major attack of homesickness for Tokyo, where I never had any trouble finding either fulltime work in my field or daycare/babysitting whenever I needed it.

Hub, for the record, just shrugged when I asked him, and said, "Do whatever you want" --- his classic passive-aggressive response.

So I think I`ll shave off one of his eyebrows while he`s asleep tonight.

Quoted

Me: "I lost eight pounds last month, from all the stress of moving to the new house!"

Good Friend: "Wow....you should move two or three more times."