Precocious?

Today Little Son asked me, "Can I sleep over my girlfriend's house?"

I said, "ABSOLUTELY NOT. Who's your girlfriend?"

"K.'s sister."

Goddamn it.......K., the eighth grader on whom he has a crush, does have a little sister in kindergarten. (Maybe he just wants to sleep over there to gain access to K.? Hmmmm.....)

So I said, "ABSOLUTELY NOT. Boys have sleepovers with boys and girls have sleepovers with girls."

"When I'm really big, then can I sleep over my girlfriend's house?"

Well, of course you can, I thought.

But I said, "ABSOLUTELY NOT," just to be consistent.

He's five years old, and he already wants to sleep with his girlfriend-- should I be worried here?

Martyr

I am dog tired, because I woke up at 3:00 am, worried about my two-block walk to the BART station in less than three hours.

I have to leave the house when it's still dark, deserted and spooky. This was a little scary before, and after the crime described below, it is A LOT scarier.

I am also still freaked out by the fact that I believe I actually uttered casual greetings to the perpetrators, and that they know where I live. So I begged Hub to walk me the two blocks to the station, and he told me I was being silly.

He's right -- I am being silly. I simply can't have sleep-deprived, unproductive days at work because I'm losing sleep over something beyond my control.

I had better force myself to get over this.

The title of this post doesn't refer to me worrying, though. It refers to something else, described herewith:

My mother-in-law called last night, and guess what?

SHE ASKED HUB TO PUT ME ON THE PHONE -- SHE WANTED TO TALK TO ME!

This is a first. And all she wanted to say was hello, and complain that she still hasn't seen Hub's younger brother's baby yet. Apparently the other daughter-in-law (the BAD one!) is still resting at her mother's house in Kyushu.

Hub's mother said, "She said she's having a harder recovery because she had a c-section, but I told her that you had THREE c-sections! And I told her that just a few days after your third one in Tokyo, even though you were in a lot of pain, you were home cooking and doing laundry and taking care of all of your kids, with no help from anyone!"

Wow -- it's funny that she understands the "no help" part, since Hub himself was home after Little Son was born and he was supposed to be helping me. (HAHAHAHAhahahahaha!)

So should I be proud that my mother-in-law used me as an example of upholding the Japanese tradition of masochistic maternal sacrifice?

If there's anything I can't stand, it's a martyr -- so, um....NO!

Quotable

Read the post below this one, if you haven't already.

..........................................


Our neighbor from two doors down told me she's also seen the couple sitting on the grass in the afternoon -- it's not just my imagination. Hub is convinced I'm making it up, even though he has no reason to doubt me. I'm not one of those people who goes around recognizing the people on "America's Most Wanted" -- I can honestly say this is the first time I recognized someone from a police sketch. I did leave a message for the police, but I doubt my information was much help, because all I could say was that this couple would sit on the grass on sunny afternoons, between 3:00 and 3:30.

Our neighbor's house went on the market just before the news report -- talk about timing. I guess all the local networks ran the story, too, complete with a map of our cross streets.

I didn't want to scare the kids with the details, but I told them we needed to be extra vigilant because there were some bad people in our neighborhood.

"Don't worry, Mama -- I'll protect you," said my 5-year old man, with the most serious, earnest expression I had ever seen on his face.

I want to remember that expression forever.

Scared

I thought of them as The Creepy Couple.

There they are again, I would think to myself, whenever I saw them sitting on the grass. They were always around the same area, in an empty lot near our house: a black man and a much lighter-skinned woman.

They were younger than me. The woman was always wearing really unfortunately chosen makeup -- weird eyebrows and pale lipstick.

What made them creepy? Well, mainly, it was the way they stared at me as I walked past them, on my way home from work in the early afternoon.

I look at people. When they stare, I tend to stare back -- I can't help it. Maybe this comes from living in Japan for so long?

I also think they made an impression on me because they were clearly an interracial couple, as my husband and I are. I know in most places in America these days, it's no big deal for a white woman to date an Asian man, but in Tokyo, it's still very much the exception, so I tend to make a mental note of other interracial couples whenever I see them.

I would make eye contact with the woman, and say hello. Sometimes she nodded -- usually, though, she just kept staring at me, with an unfriendly scowl on her face. I wondered if they were my neighbors, or if one of them worked nearby.

Once they were sitting in the shade, in a place where they could watch me as I walked to my door. As I fished my key out of my bag, I turned around to see if they were still watching me.

They were.

I'm trying to remember the last time I saw them -- I think it was a few weeks ago. After that, it got colder and wetter, and sitting on the grass probably lost its appeal.

I remember they didn't stare at me the last time I saw them. They were talking, and I could tell it wasn't English, though I couldn't really hear it as I hurried past.

I remember that day I wondered if that's why they never said hello -- maybe they weren't native English speakers, and were shy about talking to people they didn't know? I try not to judge people too much, because some people thought my grandmother was unfriendly, when really she was just painfully shy.

Then I read this in the paper.

The article was obviously written from the police report, because the reporter got a few minor details about the neighborhood wrong.

The woman was described as "Latina and in her 20s, 5-foot-3 and 140 pounds, with drawn-on 'high-brows' and pink lipstick" -- and the police sketch of her scowling face made my heart skip a beat.

I tried to remember what I was doing at 5:30 pm on Saturday, Nov. 10. I was driving home from mass, with my daughter and a friend of hers.

If you read the article, you will know the San Francisco neighborhood in which we live -- something I've never revealed on this blog before.

But I feel a little silly now, worrying that someone in my tiny blog readership would turn out to be a cyberstalker, when in fact I was going about my life in a cheerful state of oblivion, as real-life criminals lurked literally right outside our door.

And I might even have said hello to them.

Multitasking

The setting: my desk at work, late morning. I can hear the ching-ching-ching of the cable car bells on California Street, 13 floors below me.

I am trying to work on a story about the Persian Gulf states' dollar peg.

I am having a back-and-forth email conversation with a wsj.com editor who is telling me I have a typo in my story, which they used on their site -- I wrote "site" when I meant "sight." Thank god, that's not a typo that will require me to file a correction.

Just then the Fed minutes come out, and the Fed's economic forecasts, and the dollar tanks, so I start updating my daily market report.

Riiiing, goes my cell phone.

"Hi! What are you doing?" asks my best friend in Boston.

"Um....working."

"Oh, yeah -- right! Guess what! I have GOT to tell you, I almost jumped this really hot plumber who came to fix the pipes!"

[She proceeds to share details of his appearance and what she wanted to do with him.]

I interrupt her unmentionable reverie.

"......can I call you back later.....?"

"Okay! Bye!" ...click...

So I updated my market report, continued my email conversation with the editor, and finally finished my dollar peg story -- -all the while picturing my friend's hot plumber.

In fact, I am still picturing the hot plumber.

And I am wanting a hot plumber of my own.

I think maybe Hub needs to be at home a little more, and at work a little less?

Actual Conversation

Little Son: "Mama? Don't tell anyone, but I want K. to be my girlfriend." [K. is an eighth grader.]

Me: "Okay." [...with my fingers crossed behind my back, because obviously that was just so cute that I have to tell everyone.]

Rant

I'd almost rather Hub was having an affair -- at least it would be human, and understandable.

He is married to his job first, and I am but a second-string concubine. After all these years, I still have a hard time accepting this.

I thought after a day of work-related golf, he would hang out at home today --- but nope. He hung out in the morning for a few hours, but he just left for work.

And I know he's really working, so please, no one suggest in the comments that maybe he really is having his affair. I will call him later at his desk and he'll answer the phone, or send him an email and he'll reply immediately. I might even hear the voices of his co-workers in the background, because I know Hub isn't the only Japanese employee who works on Sunday afternoons.

In a couple of years, we'll all return to Tokyo, and Hub will continue to work on weekends. And when I try to complain to my Japanese friends about it, they'll just roll their eyes, because their husbands are working, too -- why am I wasting my time complaining about it?

Two recent posts got me thinking about the life that lies ahead for me in Japan.

This post isn't even about Japan -- it's about transnational/transracial adoption. But it contains this part:

You may live in New York or San Francisco, but if you are the white adoptive parent of a child of another race, you better accept the fact that your choice to adopt is going to have an impact on your child. You need to accept and acknowledge that as a white person, you will receive white privilege your child will not.

This struck me because in Japan, as the white biological parent of three Japanese citizens, I long ago faced the fact that they were going to have Japanese privileges that I never would -- and that in fact someday they might even face difficulties because they weren't "pure Japanese." No matter how many years I live in Japan, I will always be the perpetual outsider in the country and culture they identify as home.

I thought, at least Japanese society seems to be getting better about these things. And then this post reminded me that....well, no, it's really not.

Back Atcha!

Hub was going to have a big brunch party tomorrow, in honor of a guest visiting from Japan who is a good friend of his. He wanted to invite most of his office.

I love having parties as much as Hub hates them, but lately weekends have been really busy, with the kids' fall sports and my new fulltime job and all.

Plus, Hub's parties aren't as fun as the ones I have myself. He invites only his fellow Japanese people to his parties, meaning I really can't invite any of my friends because they wouldn't mingle well, with everyone speaking Japanese around them. Plus, I would have to speak Japanese myself -- polite, party Japanese. This is quite different from the nagging-and-yelling-at-Hub Japanese I usually speak around the house.

Last week I was planning the menu and looking for our good wine glasses and dishes, when Hub asked me, "You know, maybe I could just take the guest golfing on Saturday instead. How about that?"

"Yes! Please go golfing!" I said.

And I realized, Hub used one of my own favorite tactics on me. He got ME to actually ASK HIM to go golfing, by first presenting me with a less appealing option that would inconvenience me even more.

So whenever I complained that he's taking all day today to go golfing, leaving me to drive to Little Son's soccer game and pick up the older kids at their Saturday Japanese school, Hub could say, "Well, isn't it better than having a big party at our house Sunday?"

I don't know whether or not he used this tactic on purpose. Maybe it was just a coincidence?

Or maybe after more than two decades, he's finally on to me.

Ouch, ouch, ouch....

How was MY day? Thanks for asking!

Due to a data error, a previous version of this story contained incorrect prices and yields for two-year, 10-year and 30-year Treasurys. The story has been corrected.

I gullibly believed my data -- I wondered why bonds were rallying when stocks were higher. In fact, I wondered so much that I called a trader, and asked, "So why are bond prices up? What's going on?" He obviously didn't even listen to my question before he started blathering about short-covering -- no doubt referring to shortcovering in the stock market, I realized later as I looked over my notes. Oh, it's all so clear in retrospect.

For a market reporter, it doesn't get much worse than that.

And how did I find out that my data were bad? A reader emailed me to let me know my report was a ridiculous piece of crap. Oh, I should have saved the message. And he was right.

My bizarre flu shot reaction is getting much better, though. It was really weird -- last night my legs hurt so much I was having trouble going up and down the stairs. Has that ever happened to anyone? Or am I a freak?

Okay, I'm off to a school meeting -- we're trying to have a bowling fundraiser for a girl who has leukemia. It's forcing me to realize that there are more important things in life than my petty sources of stress.

Then I will come home and kiss my healthy children goodnight, and prepare for another day following the bouncing market balls up and down, up and down, up and down.....

Still Here

I think I must be subconsciously trying to drive away my entire readership.

First, I left that sparsely-commented-upon post about a saint on top of my blog for so long -- but I confess, I was just loving some of the ads Google sent me for it. I kept seeing one for SEXY PANTIES. What was Joan of Arc wearing under her armor, anyway?

Then I screwed with my template and it got all wonky -- does it look okay now? Something weird is happening with my BizRate ads, and you might notice, they are gone. They were mighty nice while they lasted.

Work has been busy. I am proud to say, I did NOT write the supermodel dollar story last week, but I am not so proud to admit, I wish I had. I tried to come up with some original angle, but I just couldn't think of a way to make it newsworthy. Once again, I wished I was one of the lucky, blessed people at my company who are paid to write blogs, instead of one of the people paid to come in at the crack of dawn to write market reports --- but while I'm wasting my time on wishes, I might as well wish I was a supermodel, because it's probably about as likely to happen.

Anyway....another reason I haven't been posting so much is that it's Na-Blow-Me-Month or whatever, when people try to post every day for a month. Some of my favorite blogs are now updated every day, and I can barely keep up with my reading, let alone posting.

Some unrelated thoughts:

I got a flu shot on Saturday, because Cow Bones gave out free vouchers for them. Soon afterward, I developed a splitting headache, and now every muscle in my body aches as if I've been doing hard labor. This has never happened to me before after a flu shot -- I must be getting old.

Little Son wrote his first word all by himself, that wasn't his name. At school, his class learned to write BOO for Halloween, and Little Son added a few letters to it and wrote, BOOBS -- and illustrated his drawing with a picture that made it very clear he understood the word he had just written.

He also wrote "Mama's BOOBS" on a paper, and gave it to me to hang on the refrigerator, because, as he explained, "You have BIG BOOBS, Mama!"

I love that kid.

Disappointlingly Freaky

Big Son's essay on saints got me thinking.

Several decades ago, everyone in my 8th grade catechism class had to pick a saint for confirmation, and I chose St. Clare of Assisi.

At first I was leaning toward Joan of Arc, because I really loved the idea of a teenage girl leading grown men into battle -- I mean, you have to admit, that sounds pretty cool (though the burned-at-the-stake part....not so much).

But then when I read up on Joan, I found out all that stuff about her hearing voices, and....oh, I don't know, it just seemed too freaky. I didn't want to pick any mystical, voice-hearing saint.

So I went in search of a more down-to-earth saint, and came up with St. Clare.

The born-wealthy Clare cast aside her rich dress, cut off her hair, put on a rough tunic and a thick veil, and devoted her life to following St. Francis (not coincidentally, the saint chosen by a guy I liked at the time). She founded an order dedicated to prayer and manual labor -- perfectly down to earth. Wow, I really liked that.

I haven't thought about St. Clare in a long time, and I was recently surprised to learn that she is the patron saint of television.

WTF??? So I Googled around and I found this site, with this explanation:

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In 1958, Pope Pius XII named St. Clare patron of television. He based his decision on the testimony of one of the witnesses in Clare's canonization proceedings.

One Christmas Eve, Clare was so ill she could not leave her bed to attend Midnight Mass. After all the nuns had left for the chapel, Clare sighed and said, "Look, Lord God, I have been left here alone with you." At that moment, she had a vision of the Mass. Not only could she see what was happening in the distant church, but she could also hear the organ music and the singing as clearly as if she were present.

Pope Pius interpreted this miracle as the first live broadcast.
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Um....that is really freaky. And NOT in a good way.

I would probably not have picked a saint who heard live broadcasts in her head, you know?

And then Clare's Wikipedia entry yielded this gem:

Although her body is no longer incorrupt, her skeleton was found to be in a perfect state of preservation and is displayed in Assisi.

Ew --is that gross, or what?

Trick

Last night, Big Son declared himself too old for trick-or-treating. Wow -- I remember I was several years older than him, and still shamelessly begging for candy. In fact, even now, I am not above shamelessly begging for candy in certain situations, when the chance arises.

Anyway, he wanted to go pass out candy at a friend's house. Daughter wanted to go trick-or-treating with one of her classmates. Little Son was sitting by the door, looking quite adorable in his monkey costume, patiently waiting to be taken out trick-or-treating.

So I told Hub, "Wait for me, and pass out the candy while I'm gone -- I'm going to drive Big Son and Daughter. I'll be right back."

Hub nodded, but I realized later it was not a nod that meant, "I understand and affirm what you just said," it was one that meant, "I realize you just said something and I feel compelled to respond to it in some way even though I didn't care enough to listen to you."

I got home and Hub and Little Son were gone.

And.....I had left my house keys and cell phone at home, not bothering to grab them because I expected Hub to wait for me.

And of course the house was now locked, with my keys and phone inside.

One of our neighbors, answering her door to trick-or-treaters, realized my predicament and offered to let me come in and hang out at her place.

"We're done for the night, anyway -- we just ran out of candy," she said.

"Nah, I'm fine," I said, knowing her kids go to bed early and not wanting to bother her.

Thirty seconds later, I realized I should have asked to use her phone to call Hub -- but it was too late. She had just closed her door and switched the outside light off. She didn't answer when I rang her bell, no doubt thinking it was a trick-or-treater.

So for about 45 minutes, I sat on our front steps, and said to all the cute little kids in costumes who came by, "Sorry, I can't give you any candy -- I'm locked out of my house."

I passed the time muttering to myself and wondering why I married such a penis head.

When Hub and Little Son finally got home, instead of screaming and crying, as my inner hysterical instincts told me to, I just sighed. I'm getting old -- I don't have the energy to listen to my inner hysterical instincts these days.

"I asked you to wait for me," I said.

"You should have taken your keys," Hub said, unwilling to accept even the tiniest iota of guilt for locking me out.

But the funny thing was, today when I told all my friends about this, they all said the same thing he did: "You should have taken your keys."

They're all right.

"How long have you been married to the guy? You should know by now that he's going to do whatever he wants, and not what you want him to do," said one.

She's right. I should have known better.

I guess that makes ME the penis head.