Have lofty goals

Mokuhyou ha takaku

Feeling better, even though I've totally slacked off on the exercise. Meditation is...on and off. I keep falling asleep before the YouTube video ends, which I've decided is perfectly acceptable. Journaling is going well. I started mid-March and I'm on page 42. I think I'm having slightly fewer "OMG TOTALLY FORGOT" moments, but I'm also having longer periods of "OMG I HAVE TO DO XYZ AND I TOTALLY DON'T WANT TO BUT I HAVE TO AND I REALLY REALLY DON'T WANT TO BECAUSE IT'S HARD AND I DON'T WANT TO CALL THAT PERSON AND GET THAT THING THAT I NEED TO DO XYZ AND OMG I HAVE TO DO XYZ" so I'm not sure if I'm actually any more efficient.

Here is this year's overly ambitious to-do list, to be accomplished sometime between April 28th and May 6th (but I am working and the kids have school on May 1st and 2nd).

1. Wash cashmere knits: From November to February (and sometimes March) I live in Uniqlo cashmere over Heat Tech thermals (with or without a button up shirt or blouse layered between the two). I have four long sleeved pullovers, a short sleeved turtleneck, and a sweater set. I'll hand wash them with detergent for delicates. (There's just something not quite right about dry cleaning something that cost less than $100.) The laundry net will let me only dry two at a time, so I'll have to do two a day.

2. Gardening: We had landscaping done and so I don't have nearly as much space to make overly ambitious plans only to let the yard fall to a weed jungle garden. Still, I want to have nice flower pots in front of the front entrance and maybe the new shed. So, I need to:

Empty old soil from flower pots, sieve, place in black trash bags
Get new potting soil and cute plants
plant flower pots with fresh plants to last for a couple of months

3. Run at least three times: I've totally lapsed in the exercise department. Shock therapy might be necessary.

4. Color hair and pedicure: I've already bought the box hair color. Haven't decided if I'll paint my toenails my usual navy blue, or something more understated.

5. Get a repair estimate on my work bag: I bought the thing about eight years ago. It now has small rips and the edges are badly worn. I did some googling, and the company does repairs for a price, so I want to take pictures and drop them a line and see if repairs would be worth the time and money. I think the cutoff would be half of what I paid for the bag in the first place.

6. Tiny Vader photoshoot: because I want to tell the story of what became of the rose/ silky red boxers.

Meditation

Meisou

I felt really crappy this past month, so I'm trying different things to get myself out of the funk. I tried journaling again, and it's kind of good. I'm trying to get back into exercising. It's pollen season and kind of windy, so YouTube exercise videos are good.

I'm also trying meditation. I don't mean meditation like the religion I married into. That would be much too intense, plus, I can't do the lotus position (I think it's because my legs are too short).

No, I mean what the self-help people are calling "mindfulness." Before bed, I listen to one of the online guided meditations available on YouTube. I'm not sure if it actually helps me relax or sleep well, but it isn't hurting, and it's only about 10 minutes I would otherwise spend fooling around on the internet.

I'm not a religion expert, but mindfulness and meditation as defined by my (husband's) religion seem different. I can't imagine myself heading to my husband's family temple and sitting in the lotus position while the resident monk hovers over me with a bamboo sword. Mindfulness seems much more accessible with smartphone apps and YouTube and FB pages. While conclusive evidence of efficacy is debatable, it can't hurt, and it's only 10 or so minutes. Worth a shot. We'll see how it goes.

If it works

Umaku iku nara

I decided I would try journaling again. I tried it once, and it made me depressed, so I stopped, but I kept on hearing about it, so I decided to give it another try. I watched the You Tube on bullet journaling and went to the page and read all the information on it.

I know you're supposed to use a nice notebook with good paper, but I'm on a budget so I got a notebook with a vinyl cover at the 100 yen shop. I saved three pages for the index and used three pages for a "future log" and additional notes, and two facing pages for the monthly log for the month of March. Then I dove in and wrote whatever I felt like. I logged things I had to do and did and other stuff that I thought was cool that I came across during the day, and whenever a question popped into my head at work, I wrote it down, and when I had a minute googled it or looked it up in the books we have at work and wrote down the answers.

I ended up with over a page and a half of notations just for today.

Somehow, I don't think it's how bullet journaling is supposed to work.

But I felt like I was getting stuff done, and I looked over the notations before going to bed, and felt really good about my day, so whatever works, right? And I felt so good that I exercised for the first time in over a month, and now I'm sore all over but I'm feeling good about it, so it's all good, right?

Lying is one answer

Uso mo houben

The other day, I took the day off to get a breast biopsy. Yes, a breast biopsy, you know, what you do when you get an abnormal breast exam and/ or mammogram and the surgeon does to make sure it isn't cancer? Yes, that. But I didn't want to deal with explaining to my husband what a Category 3 breast lesion was, and how stabbing it with a needle and sucking out some cells involved a blood-draw-caliber needle was more a precaution than anything. I don't know if he would have been "oh, ok" like he was supposed to, or if he would have freaked out like I was afraid he would. I wasn't ready for the latter. So that morning, I packed a lunch just like almost every other day the past two weeks, and left the house when I usually did. The procedure was done by 10:30, so I drove to the mall and ate the lunch I packed in the parking lot and bought a T shirt at Uniqlo (last year's shirts were on sale at 50% off and I found the discontinued color I liked) and walked around until it was time for my consultant gig. After I finished that gig, I went to Costco and the adjacent home improvement store, and then I went to Starbucks (and remembered to NOT get a decaf latte)
and did some English proofreading and fooled around on the internet until it was the usual time for me to go home.

So technically, I've lied to my husband. Oh what a tangled web we weave. At least it was a cheap web (500 yen for the T-shirt, 380 yen for the Starbucks sakura latte).

(And it was good.)

Note to self

Bibouroku

A blog post from a year ago reminded me that I was depressed this time last year. Maybe next year I'll remember this and take steps to prevent it (or at least catch it early).

So here's another reminder to myself:

Finishing a consultation gig early but not wanting to drive back to your office even though you have work to do is perfectly fine. Spending 500 yen on a Starbucks latte so you can sit in a sofa for an hour or so to get that work done was great idea. It was smart of you to remember that you'd probably never get it done at home (kids/ housework/ miscellaneous distractions, you know the drill). That's why you've packed lunches the past couple of weeks, so that you can spend that 500 yen you aren't spending on overpriced convenience store lunches on something more useful. Like sofa space away from home. Oh, and coffee.

However, in the future, try to remember you don't like Starbucks decaf lattes. Deal with the insomnia and go for the regular latte, or order one of those cutesy seasonal sweet frothy things in interesting colors. 

Oh well. At least the cup was cute.

Bare minimum requirement

Hitsuyou saiteigen



The week's make-ahead is six dishes, and one of them is steamed broccoli...I also have my usual soy eggs and shredded carrot salad. The one on the bottom left is ground pork with ginger and mushrooms stir fried in sesame oil and soy sauce. I could add a little broth and tofu to it, or maybe put it on toast with cheese for a quick breakfast sandwich.

My mom has the flu. She didn't want to go to the doctor's, which I get and would have respected if I hadn't been so sure it was the flu and I was afraid of my dad getting it. Managed to convince her let me take her to the local clinic open Saturday afternoons and have the test done and get the Relenza inhaler. The pharmacist was super nice and counseled her on how to do it and asked if she wanted to do it right there, and she did. The whole process took about an hour and a half at the local clinic and pharmacy. Mom paid 20%.

You can pry universal health care from my cold, dead fingers.

Planning

Keikaku

The Pumpkin Princess didn't get into that competitive six-year college prep school she wanted. I'm glad she tried. She writes better than I did at her age. I'm also kind of glad she didn't get in. She would have been blown away and gotten depressed or something. She isn't naturally smart enough to get by in that school without major effort. I think she is smart enough to get by in the best schools with major effort, but she doesn't make major effort on her own. She only makes enough effort to get by. Which is one way to live, except she seems to think she's making major effort. I am torn between trying to let her figure this out on her own, or calling her on it. I didn't while she was preparing (or not preparing, depending on how you look at it) for the entrance exam.

The local JHS where I went and she's headed is kind of boring and depressing (see also: Year of Requirement) but there aren't any major issues like violence and crime. It'll do. The area private schools are not worth the time and money. (Don't get me wrong. They're good schools. I have friends who went there. It's just that they lived a lot closer to said schools when they did, and are not worth commutes of an hour or more.)

We're talking about choosing extracurriculars that will help her get her into the school were the cool, smart kids go (i.e. the same high school as her mom.) I want to get back into teaching her English, if she'll let me. We'll see if she wants to make a major effort to get the things she wants. And if she doesn't, that's all right too. She can work on being happy with what she can get with the effort she wants to make.

Because I think in the end, that's what life is about. Being happy with the things you can get, and the things you can give people, with the effort you are willing to make.

Yuukyuu

Paid vacation

I took the day off. I got my mammogram, which should have been annual but hasn’t been (hush!). I already know I’m going to get called back, but the breast surgeon said that it was highly unlikely to be cancer. The way the system works, I’m going to get the official phone call in about a month or two, and then I’ll go back and have it biopsied and (hopefully) get the all-clear (until next year). On the way home, I stopped at a secondhand store to see if I could find stuff for Tiny Vader. I didn’t, but I saw an actual Petite Blythe doll  for the first time, and now I understand why it took so many tries (and I essentially ended up drafting a new pattern) to make jeans for Tiny Vader. Those things have gigantic heads and stick arms and legs! They’re still cute, though.

The Pumpkin Daddy said he wanted to go to this new steak chain. I got the fleet and the Pumpkin Daddy got the sirloin. They were…all right. Nothing to write home about. I think I like Korean barbecue better than steak. Used to be the other way around. Maybe this change in preference is age-associated?

Then the Pumpkin Daddy decided he wanted us to go to the pet store and then to Costco and then Starbucks. I’d been thinking of doing stuff with Tiny Storm Trooper and Darth Vader, but then I thought it was kind of sweet that he wanted me to hang out with him even after all these years, and decided to play with dolls another day. We ooohed and ahhed at kittens and puppies. The Pumpkin Daddy wants a puppy or a kitten. I think it’s a mid-life crisis, and he misses having cute babies who think he is the coolest dad in the whole universe. We went to Costco and bought coffee and bacon and butter and mixed nuts and a plastic storage container. We ran out of time to hit Starbucks and ended up getting coffee at 7-eleven, which is all right. I’m addicted to their new lattes. They cost less than a third of a Starbucks latte, but they’re almost as good.

I went to a parents' event at the Pumpkin Princess's test prep class, and the Pumpkin Daddy cooked dinner.

Then it's back to the grind.

I didn't run

Hashiranakatta

I think this is the first New Year's holiday since I started running that...I didn't run. Of course, I could say that it's a calendar glitch that the holiday is over so soon and that the holiday isn't actually over until Coming of Age Day (which will be next Monday) and go running by then and call it good.

Other than that...

I cleaned the kitchen fan. This is the one thing I have done consistently during the New Year Holiday the past several years.

I cooked (prepped?) datemaki (kind of a fish stock containing omelette type dish) and koh-haku namasu (halfway between a salad and pickle containing daikon radish and carrots) and char-shiu (Chinese style roast pork, which isn't traditionally a part of osechi). I also made ikura in fish cake (made meaning assembled).

I cooked dinner on the 29th and 30th and the 1st and the 3rd. We went to my parents' the night of the 31st and the Pumpkin Daddy's parents' the night of the 2nd.

I made jeans and a sweater for Tiny Vader. This needs a lot of explaining depending on your level of interest and familiarity with doll clothes and Tiny Vader. For now I'll just say I cut up a pair of jeans the Pumpkin Princess outgrew and got yarn and needles from the 100 yen shop. I made a photo studio for Tiny Vader with the cardboard boxes Amazon and Uniqlo sends my stuff in, and some 100 yen shop stuff (battery powered LED lights, plastic sheets, construction paper, paper clips, and wallpaper paste).  In terms of cost performance, both the studio and the clothing are successes, although the jeans took a few tries (and could still stand some improvement).

And now it's back to the daily grind...which I do not really look forward to. But how else am I going to be able to pay Amazon and Uniqlo?

Remember me sometimes

Tokidoki omoidashite

I didn’t want to post this on 9-11, because even though it’s kind of a 9-11 story, it’s petty and mean spirited and probably not the kind of thing that most people want to read that day. So, I’ve set this to go online later when it’s all less raw for everyone.

Back in the day, there was a boy. Of all the boyfriends I’ve had, he was the most beautiful, outwardly anyway. He had light brown hair and green eyes and boyband good looks. We both liked coffee and Thai food and big hamburgers and chocolate and reading and art museums. He told me I was pretty and I told him he was smart and we laughed at each other’s jokes. It was meant to be, right?

Except it wasn’t. He started ghosting me after a while. I called him on it, and sent him strongly worded emails when he didn’t change the way he did things, and dumped him in June when he still wouldn’t stop. (Except, is it really dumping if he was the one ghosting you?)

We called and texted every so often even after that. Or, rather, I called and texted every so often, and he replied when it suited him. Because I was stupid.

I must have gotten home early that night, because I was sitting at home watching TV when the newsflash about the Twin Towers came on. I picked up my phone and called him.

“Turn on the television.”

“What?”

“Turn on the television.”

He turned on the television.

Then he hung up on me.

We met once in person after that, on friendly terms. We drunk dialed each other a few times. I think the last drunk dial was his, but I’m not sure. I think it was in March of 2002.

I haven’t heard from him since.

I still think of him sometimes. When I do, most of the time I end up feeling angry. It isn’t so much what happened, but that I still think him worth getting angry over. He shouldn’t matter that much. But he does. Because I am stupid.

But I’ve got my revenge. I am living well. And he is forced to remember me at least once a year for the rest of his life.

First half of holiday

renkyuu zenhan

Day 1

Went to bed at around 11 pm and slept straight through until 5:30. I woke up and checked blogs and insta and FB for about an hour and then I…

Slapped on some sunscreen, pulled on the rubber boots, and weeded for about half an hour. I did another half-hour of weeding later in the day.

Sorted and culled a container of clothes (including two windbreakers that belonged to the Pumpkin Daddy but somehow found their way into my drawer). Found other stuff that had gone AWOL and I’d missed so much I was considering buying new ones. I also realized I hadn’t worn the waist alteration debut pants in over a year, partly because it’s a lint magnet and also because they’re flared. I also found a pair of flared chinos from about 10 years ago that still fit, so those two pairs will be getting the leg alteration sometime soon.

Washed two of my Uniqlo cashmere sweaters.

Mended the lining of my navy blue blazer. It took all of five minutes once I got the sewing box out and found black sewing thread.

Day 2

Less spectacularly...

Weeded for half an hour

Folded my two sweaters and put them away, and washed two additional sweaters

Fid the craft my kids wanted to try, which was cut out pretty candy wrappers and coat them with UV activated resin to make little charms. We used 100 yen-shop UV resin. Check out my super high-tech bug, dust, and wind resistant, UV ray permeable activation box (a plastic food container strapped to a brick with a rubber band)! 

Tiny Vader and co. did a photo shoot for SW day.

Decluttered some more closet drawers.

Day 3

Ran 6k (first run of the holiday…) and took a long bath afterward. 

Washed the last of my cashmere knits (an olive brown sweater set) and put away the sweaters washed the day before.

...and that was it for today because some relatives came to visit.

Not as much as I wanted to do, but still, not bad at all.