Focus today, too

Kyou mo chuumoku

A half dozen of my co-workers are gone for a conference in Vienna. Bastards.

This weekend, I managed to:

Cook dinner both nights (lasagna on Saturday, nikujaga on Sunday)

Purchase and plant flowers in the pots outside the front door

Put away the Hinamatsuri dolls

Change the filter in the goldfish tank

Get the Pumpkin Princess to practice the piano and do her piano homework (I never said she did it well, I just said it got done)

Get 7 hours of sleep both nights

Write a blog entry containing an image



I managed not to:

Eat potato chips or snack food along those lines after 9 pm on Saturday (but not Friday)

Bring on the workweek! And my co-workers come back on Wednesday. I think they should bring me something nice, don't you?

Focus on success

Seikou ni chuumoku

1. Cleared off shoe closet

2. Got the hinamatsuri dolls out

3. Planted hyacinth bulbs, which finished blooming a while back, in the garden

4. Pulled out and bagged the tomato plants

And do not, under any circumstances, focus on how hyacinths had been sitting on top of the shoe closet for about a month, going from fragrant to wilted to dried, or how there had still been tomato plants standing in the garden in late February. The point is not about how having dead tomato plants standing in my garden puts me in the same category as people who still have their Christmas tree out in April. The point is that these things all got done. In about two hours.

It's all about accomplishments, right?

Salty!

Shoppai!

One thing we did in Guam that we could never do in Pumpkin City was go to the beach.



"Yaaaaaaaaaaay!"



"Wait for me!"



The Pumpkin Prince seemed entirely at ease in the water. I later caught him licking the seawater.

Sand in Guam is mostly eroded coral, hence its white color.



By the way, it's swimwear I'm wearing under my microfiber T-shirt. At least, that's what it said in the Land's End catalog.

Actually, we could go to the beach from Pumpkin City, but it would take a few hours just to get there.



And the sand would not be this white.

Landing in America

Amerika jouriku

OK, not the mainland US, but Guam. But it's a US territory.

Come New Year holidays, the A-listers go to Hawaii. The B-listers go to Guam. So if the Pumpkin Clan heads for Guam for some fun in the sun in mid-February, what does that make us?



We went to the mall,



ate at the food court,



went swimming in the pool,



rented a car and drove around the island,





stopping at a store to buy juice.

Which is, when you think about it, is exactly what we do on weekends in Pumpkin City. We probably should have stayed at home :P

While driving around, we found this obelisk, which stood on a small bay.



Check out this inscription.



"Magellan landed here. Or it might have been on the other side of that river. Or closer to the elementary school up there, since the coastline looked a bit different in the 16th century. Anyway, it was near this place. And the island was never the same."

I have always maintained that a simple approximation is often more useful than a complicated accuracy.

Motomoto chigau.

So I saw this group of a half dozen girls, maybe legal, maybe not, looking absolutely adorable in frilly pink bikinis of various shades and patterns. They were all slender and pretty, and the only male eyes not looking at them were gay.

I found myself envying them for their youth, and depressed at my bulging parts. Then I remembered that I was never the girl in the frilly pink bikini, and that I always had bulging parts, only slightly less so, and a lot less saggy. I was the girl in the wetsuit, and a black one at that. I was never the hot girl. I was the dumpy Asian girl with thick glasses. I am now the dumpy woman with glasses (though no longer thick, since I can afford high end, thinner lenses, and cute frames). So if I envy them, it would be for their beauty, which comes partly from their youth, but also from who they are to begin with.

I wonder, though, what it must be like for the ex-hot girls. I mean, I am sure they are still hot, but it would probably be in a different way. Do they miss youth more than I do, because there is more to miss?

My friend came over to play.

Tomodachi ga asobi ni kita.



The Pumpkin Princess's friend from day care came over for a playdate and brought the most adorable gift. She and her mom made these eggs. They're Jewelpets. The faces are painted, and the ears and hair are cut out of felt.

Could decorated eggs possibly be any cuter?

Eye of the beholder

Miru hito shidai

Back in the late 80s/ early 90s, newspaper print patterns were the trend. Recreating English newspaper pages as a pattern was cool. There were newspaper print pattern pants, newspaper print pattern curtains, and, of course, newspaper print pattern wrapping paper. I had a friend who said "one of these days, I would love to get an armful of Baby's breath (another early 90s trend) wrapped in English newspaper. I would often start reading what was printed and find it riddled with grammatical errors at best. At worst, it would be jibberish. I once wrapped a gift to a friend in sheets torn out from Time magazine and taped a cheap silk flower I found lying around in the house on the ribbon (also found lying around in the house). My friend thought I was Martha Stewart. Or at least, she would have thought I was Martha Stewart if she'd known about Martha Stewart.

So I was amused to find this on marthastewart.com

Coolness is in the eye of the beholder.