Please look out for us this year as well.

Kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu

The Pumpkin Daddy is big on holidays and traditions. One of his traditions that I don't like is that we must houseclean at the end of the year. It's a tradition like spring/ fall housecleaning, only it's done at the busiest and coldest time of year, and it just doesn't make sense to me, but it doesn't seem quite right for me to be checking blogs working on the computer while he scrubs dust and mold, so I usually help him or clean somewhere else. Today, I scrubbed the kitchen fan grates and the counters. Since I don't do much frying at home, the grease and dust coating the grates weren't too bad. I managed to get the worst of the mess off, and decided that it didn't have to be absolutely perfect. The kitchen counters look whiter than they've looked in ages. I'm glad I went through with it. The Pumpkin Daddy did a few windows with the Pumpkin Princess, and cleaned the ventilation fans in the 1st floor toilet and the bathroom (note to my American friends: it's a Japanese house, so the toilet and the bathtub are in different rooms).

Another one of his traditions that I don't like is his insistence that New Year's Day must be spent well saturated in alcohol. He's bought a special bottle of sake (rice wine) for the occasion (he hardly ever drinks sake the rest of the year) in addition to his usual beer, and expects certain munchies hors d'ouvres to be prepared by yours truly. I guess if you spent $50+ on a bottle of alcohol, you'd want good food to go with it. If it were just the alcohol, I would grit my teeth and pretend I were a single parent for just one day, but I have to fix food. He doesn't ask much of me the rest of the year, so I guess I will humor him one day out of 356.

Well, the date has changed here. Since I don't think any of you are traditional Japanese, Happy New Year (I am not supposed to say that to you if you are Japanese, because we're in mourning since my grandmother died a while back).