Skip to main content

In Spite of It All

Most mornings I'm in charge of hanging laundry. I'm not good at it. Apparently there's a strategy to hanging laundry so it dries efficiently, especially on days like today when the sun isn't especially direct. Plus, I'm slow and methodical, which is not great when time is of the essence on a Tuesday morning and we gotta get the boys to the bus stop and take out plastic trash and generally get the day going.

Sendai is also a place where the weather changes without warning. Today my weather app said partly cloudy in the morning and sun later. Just a cool, bright, breezy autumn day.

About thirty minutes after I meticulously hung the laundry it started to rain.

It was short, and I was at my desk and didn't even notice, but Eri came back from sending the boys off on the kindergarten bus and quickly brought in my precious laundry and hung it inside for a bit before the sun came out again and then she re-hung it outside in less than half the time it took me.

As the seasons change, Eri loves to accent our house with decorations. We have a seasonal wreath on the front door all year, and this morning as I set off on my walk I noticed the new one.


Eri picks up the boys from the bus stop at 14:15 every day and has to leave for her web design class by 14:50, but in the hours before all that she's busy at home. She got another order for handmade school bags that she's been sewing. I have a feeling she's got a full-time online business in her future, which is why I fully support her career education endeavor even though it's a major strain on all of us for the time being. 

I know she's got more to offer the world than just what she's been settling for. 

And in spite of all the craziness she still cooks us lunch. 


Today was yakisoba, and man it hit the spot. I love my lunch breaks with Eri.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr. Blue Sky

Man, I conked out so hard on the living room floor tonight. Right after bath time, before story time. I barely remember. Completely exhausted. Big adventure day. Another in a long series I hope the boys will remember when they’re older... our first IMAX movie, a downtown city outing, and some life lessons in the game center. We left the house at 9:15 a.m. and didn’t get back until nearly 6 p.m., totally spent but full of pizza and memories. The Wild Robot in IMAX was totally stunning. The scale, the colors, the sound. We could feel every gust of wind and rustle of leaves. I made sure we had prime seats, row G, right in the center. Two big buckets of popcorn too, which, according to Kenzo and Osamu, I  absolutely should not  be sharing. “You should get your own!” they kept saying. I think a little bit of popcorn thievery is well within my rights as the papa. After the movie, we headed through the cold and wind across to the game center on the other side of Sendai Station. Being...
Post a Comment
Read more

Not About Baseball

I stayed up past my bedtime again last night. I almost made it. I watched a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso and came to a good stopping point where I was satisfied with myself for enjoying some quiet TV time with my favorite show and even though it was after midnight, I was confident I could still get a pretty good night's sleep.  But no. For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to just lay on the living room carpet and put on a movie. I saw the first seven or eight minutes of Goodfellas and then I woke up when the end credits were rolling with Sid Vicious' is cover of My Way . I brush my teeth and I can see the light of day already shining in through the bathroom window. "It’s almost the longest day of the year," I told myself, to at least rationalize why I'm brushing my teeth and crawling into bed at this hour. I was trying to minimize the mental anguish I regularly put on myself for not just going to bed like I should. I told Eri that I was thinking a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sendai vs. Tokushima

Osamu said he had to go pee, and I make it a habit to believe him most of the time. Another habit I have is taking him to go pee, much of the time.  When we came out of the restroom I decided it was time for a beer, so with Osamu holding my hand we waltzed over to the food concession and I was checking out the selection, and the prices. Seven hundred yen for a draft beer. I had a feeling. It was only 500 for a whiskey cocktail (whiskey with water on the rocks) but I wasn't about to be that much of a derelict this early with my four-year-old son in tow. The tickets were free, the seats aren't bad, might as well spend seven bucks on a beer. The problem was that the dude next to us with his little boy about the same age as Mumu-chan loudly and with braggadocio you don't often see in these parts ordered a Blue Hawaii snow cone for his kid. I heard this and panicked. Last weekend at Michinoku Park I got a Blue Hawaii snow cone for Osamu and he loved it.  I looked down at my l...
1 comment
Read more