8:35 p.m.

The husband called to let me know that he would be very late tonight as opposed to "normal" late. I appreciated the call and I hurried the kids home from Grandma and Grandpa's just in time to watch the last two episodes of Anpanman (Bean Paste Bun Man). I fed them a delicious meal of leftover rice, nori, apple, kiwi, Grandma's fried chicken. I watched the four year-old melt down from sheer exhaustion. I scrubbed the bath tub and hit the auto-fill button. I listened to the cheery chime telling me the bath tub was filled and took stock of my children.

Oldest one is passed out in his preschool uniform on the couch. Youngest one is lining up every train, truck, automobile, etc. on the hot carpet. I asked him if he wanted to take a bath. He said no. I didn't argue, I just put the cover on the tub and I figure I'll ask again in another 10 minutes. I looked at the clock, 8:35. The little one took a late nap and will probably resist sleep for at least another hour. The big one is still passed out in spite of the fact that Tak keeps hitting the sound buttons on the trains and fire truck.

Cell phone rings at 8:45. Husband on the way home, only late, not very late. Tak now wants to take a bath. And I've successfully added to my blog. Not bad for a Tuesday evening in our happy home.

Smog

After my whirlwind tour of all shopping spots in Seattle, I'm back home in Hikari. I'm proud to say that my two bags were just under the 50 lb per piece limit. This is an accomplishment since I bought books, clothes, honey, candy, Emer-gen-c, decaf tea, etc.

Why honey? Because, in Japan, most honey comes from China, and therefore must be avoided. Yes, I have adopted the Japanese dislike for all Chinese food items. Maybe I do this because of the recent potsticker/pesticide scandal that sickened over 100 people. Maybe I do this because I look out my window and can't see the islands one mile away because of the smog from China. I could blame the local factories, but even they can't be responsible for a haze that thick.

So, I lugged back two bottles of 100% American honey. Along with half-price Valentine's candy to rot the teeth of my son's preschool classmates. Long live American capitalism.

Hi Jack...

Okay, I'm a slacker writer. Now that I've confessed, this particular blog is for Jack. Blogging is not writing practice. It does not go deep or go quick. It is too easy to delete and edit and patch over the ugly imperfections of my thoughts and actions. It's too easy to spend five minutes fretting over a word and in the end still hating the word you chose.

So without backing up or fixing my typing mistakes here is five minutes of going deep while typing: I'm not sure I like my lifew right now. I feel like some sort of exotic lollipop that stays in a candy shop waiting for someone to buy her. I'm sure there is something freudian in that. The image of meing licked and all that. I 'm just so frustrated and i can't even begin to put into sords all of my frustrations. My husband's work hours, my gaijinity my becoming the local ambassador for all things foreihn in this city. The fact that I like the attention of being different but I hate all the kids at my sons preschool who yell at me to speak english to them like some kind of trained monkey. I 'm also worried that Tak is becoming more attached to grandma than me. On tht eother hand, i'm worried that this doesn't bother me all that much which mieans that I'm a bad mother? I really do want someone to tell me what i'm supposed to be when I grow up and it's already 2008. Whree the hell did 2000- 2007 go? I'm turning 40 this month and i have nothing to show for it. Times' up.

Thanks Jack for all the encouragement. It means a lot.

I had a house in Seattle...

In my best Karen Von Blixen, or at least Meryl Streep's version of her, I find myself saying, "I had a house in Seattle." It comes to me at the weirdest times, this vague mourning of my former life and lifestyle. I can be brushing my teeth and I'll look up at the circular fluorescent light and think, "wow, that is so, NOT, a skylight." Of course, since we live on the fifth floor of a ten floor condominium, it would be quite disconcerting if I suddenly could see the full moon through a bathroom skylight.

I also just thought I heard our hot water heating system clicking on. We had radiant wall heat in our house in Seattle and one wall would make a clicking sound as the hot water started pumping through it. It startled me to hear the same sound and at the same time I was nostalgic for central heating since I sleep in a room that is 52 degrees these nights.

Time for me to go brush my teeth and shiver under the covers and dream of American style comforts.

Sad

Do you ever have one of those painful, poignant, lost in the moment kind of days? Tak is sleeping on my lap as I type this and even though I only want two kids, I'm so sad that his baby days are over. He's a hefty 11 kgs and his hair is starting to get fuller. He's developed a sense of humor and imitates other people, especially when they fart. He's also developed a sense of rage and has been known to whack people in the face when things aren't going his way.

Does everyone have this sense of regret when it comes to their last child? With Kai, I couldn't wait to send him to preschool and for him to be more independent. Even now, I get impatient with him when he says he can't do something that I know he can. He has the power to push my buttons and get me so angry. With Tak, I'm more patient. He's still my baby and I have a hard time getting angry with him when he pulls stunts that I know are age appropriate.

Everything they say about birth order is probably true. Poor Kai bears the brunt of my parenting mistakes. Whereas Tak gets way more freedom than Kai ever did at that age. And lately, I've been a pretty awful parent. I've been caught up in my own frustration over our new lifestyle that I've forgotten how tough it is to be four. I don't want to give Kai any sympathy over his petty frustrations when I have a plate full of bigger ones. Sigh.......

And so I'm sad. Not Heath Ledger kind of sad, but disappointed and deflated sad. And now I need to go pick my first born up from preschool. Maybe this is why some days my mom made us pudding, to assuage the mama guilt. Can't say I blame her. I really only remember the wonderful things she did for us, the pudding must've worked.

Work Avoidance

Tak is napping in our frigid back bedroom and I'm avoiding housework. All told, an excellent reason to blog. I could be watching the Jim Lehrer news hour on BS1, but instead I've been reading all the posts on my "married to a #@$*! Japanese" group. Misery loves company, and women married to Japanese men seem to be especially miserable. That's not really fair, but it seems that the latent lump of Japanese masculinity surfaces when the husband is living in his own country. Which is a nice way of saying I have a sink full of dishes, since my husband no longer even pretends that we share housekeeping duties. After all, he works 12 hour days and I'm a pampered housewife.

I'm chipping away at the boxes of stuff we moved from Seattle. We now have cookbooks, children's books and videos, and office supplies. Now if I could just get art up on my walls. Speaking of walls, I've hit one with the particular post, so I'm going to go take my chapped hands and wash some dishes.

Mind like pudding...

Started the new year off thinking that I will embrace my spirituality and cultivate a mind like water. You know, the whole "if a lake is still, you can see everything in it and reflected upon it."
Instead, I've embraced the "mind like pudding." I see nothing and my thoughts are a mindless confectionery goop.

I've taken to wallowing in self-pity from time to time. Okay, I admit it, quite frequently these days. We have the condo, but I still have no husband in the evenings and I still have way too many boxes to unpack and no place to put things when I unpack them. I want furniture. Of course, I got a free couch from my aunt-in-law, and the best thing I can say about it is that it was free. If I were truly zen, I would stop here and not slander the couch and the taste of the person who picked it out, but I can't resist a good snark. It is an army green pleather sectional couch from the late 80's. It also smells like incense and mildew. I must remind myself, "gift horse, gift horse..."

My mother-in-law is also trying to help with the decorating. If she had her way, everything would be flowers and puppies. I've taken to stereotyping my whole country and telling her that Americans don't like cute things. So far I've limited the design damage to a calendar with puppies and kittens, a bath mat shaped like a small dog and a flowered kitchen mat. I'm hoping that one of my sons will destroy one or all of these things so that I can remove them from my home.