"Yoparatte imasu!"
I'm drunk!
(Warning: the following post was written while under the influence of alcohol.)
Today my brother in law (the Pumpkin Daddy's younger brother) and his family came for a short visit before driving with us to the Pumpkin Daddy's mother's.
My brother in law's wife is the person my best friend and I would like to be if we were ever reborn. She used to be an assistant to execs in the company where b-i-l works (that is how they met), a very big company whose name is extremely well known in this country. I don't know how it is in your country, but in Japan, assistants to execs are known for their beauty as well as their intelligence. B-i-l's wife is no exception. However, since there is a somewhat girlish quailty to her beauty, she was never subject to the sexual harrassment thing common among women in her line of work (a sad truth, but true). I think the execs felt like they would be harrassing their daughters' former classmate or something. Anyway, she met b-i-l, they got married, and she quit her job when she got pregnant with my nephew. She does the full time homemaker gig thing now, looking after her husband, her brilliant 5 year-old son (he ponders arithmetic series while singing the theme to the latest Power Rangers show. I know my s-i-l wishes sometimes that I were making this up, but it is 100% true, cross my heart, hope to die, stick a Fermat prime in my eye. Or something) and adorable 2 year-old daughter. The Pumpkin Family had a really great time when we were invited to their house last year, and we hope we were at least partially able to return the favor.
So anyway, we went to my m-i-l's place and had dinner and the three children ran around the living room and ran around their grandparents and ran over their grandparents and ran under their grandparents and ran through their grandparents while their parents got drunk (except for me, because I was going to drive everyone home after the festivities). And a drunk Pumpkin Daddy said a few things he shouldn't have.
1) "I started drinking yesterday at around eight in the morning." Not something to say when your mother is in the room.
2) "So I just kept drinking and I really didn't do much housework other than bring the laundry in from the clothesline and fold it and put it all away." Not something to say when your brother, who doesn't do much housework, and your s-i-l, who wishes your brother did more housework, are in the room.
3) "(Ayako) is something of a Gatchaman freak. She's even written a book on the subject." OK, never, repeat, NEVER tell your family that your wife is a big fan and quasi-authority of a very old anime that few people remember. And do not, repeat, NOT tell them that she has written a book on the subject. It wasn't a book, it was just a chapter in a book that someone else was writing. Plus, in Japan, you might give peole the idea that your wife is writing doujinshi. Which I actually did, once. Make that twice. But the first time was when I was in high school and it was only because my friend, who was producing a book about the anime version of The Three Musketeers, asked me to, and the story I wrote wasn't sexual at all, just silly. And the second time was when one of the Gatchaman people asked me to, and again it was just silly, reconstructing a chapter in a junior high school English textbook using the names of characters in Gatchaman for sample English sentences. So it doesn't count. Not really, anyway.
Plus, when I wrote that book chapter, it took me nearly two months, and what I got paid for all that writing and research was only about as much as I get paid for working two full days at my day job. I'm never doing it again.
4) "So let's meet at the mall tomorrow at 10." Um, tomorrow is January 3rd. The mall will be packed. It's like trying to go to the mall on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in the US.
OK, that's all for now. I have to go to bed because we have to leave the house by 9:30 in order to get to the mall by 10.
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