Skip to main content

Traditions

Day two of no TV for the boys was a success. I think. I was mostly distracted. 

Technically I had taken the day off from work but I spent the morning working on a report translation that was a little time sensitive. Eri was out all morning running errands so I worked downstairs at the dining table and made a second cup of Aeropress coffee. I've been watching videos on how to make better coffee with that thing. I almost have it down. I am yearning for the skills to make a consistently satisfying cup of coffee every day.

After Eri and the boys left for the kindergarten bus stop I headed back inside shivering. It was cold today. And really windy. Icy wind. Before starting my work I had to take care of some obsessive tasks. Since I wasn't technically on the clock today I played it kinda loose. Usually I hustle to get my morning walk in and try to do a few household things before 9. Today, though, I scratched my clean-freak itch and vacuumed the whole house and it was incredibly satisfying. I sipped coffee the entire time and generally felt very good about life. I have a serious thing about clean floors. If you ask Eri I'm sure she'll say it's extreme. She will readily admit, however, that while it's crazy to be around me when I obsess over things, it really is nice to have clean floors all the time.

She would also be the first to chime in with the fact that while I do vacuum all the time she's the one who steam cleans the floors. She did the whole house the other day while I was downtown.

When I was upstairs vacuuming and straightening up the boys' room I stopped to admire Kenzo's top bunk area. He's customized it to his liking and adds new artwork almost daily.


Since it's Christmas Eve Eve I decided it was now or never for the second year of my new tradition: homemade eggnog. Last year I got a real hankering for some eggnog. It had been many years since I had any. At least a decade. Probably that time in Michigan and Chicago back in 2011 was the last time I was in the U.S. for the holidays. If I wanna get a carton of eggnog here it's gonna run upwards of 15 bucks and only online. I've never seen eggnog in a supermarket here, and I don't think I ever will. Just like you will never ever see packs of shirako in the deli section of an American grocery store. Never. And I only just thought of shirako because we went for sushi tonight and shirako was all over the menu. I've had it before and I like it, but tonight I kept it simple; tuna, squid, mackerel.

The boys love going to the sushi place. Even Osamu actually gets sushi now instead of the curry rice plate for little kids.


He tried using chopsticks to eat his sushi dinner but failed miserably, announcing, "I can't do it."

Which was immediately preceded by, "Papa, give me chopsticks please."


The point of all this is I made eggnog before going out for sushi. It's in the fridge cooling right now and I can't wait to try it. Osamu too. He loved my eggnog last year and he was so excited to help me make it tonight.




I just love having a tradition now. I'd like to collect a few of those and pass them on to the boys.

Kenzo probably won't be carrying on the eggnog tradition, but I think Osamu will.


Location: Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

Overpriced Highball for the Big Guy

I keep falling asleep at my desk and waking up all groggy and surly in the middle of night, stumbling downstairs to brush my teeth without waking anyone, and slinking back up the steps and into bed. So I was the last one up again this morning, but I made up for it by quickly getting ready and taking the boys out on a Sunday morning walk to look for bugs. Kenzo has been particularly keen on capturing another lizard. He doesn't understand that lizard season is ending and those guys are becoming more and more rare. He got his hopes up when we came across a little one walking up some woodsy steps. After that we took a break. Eri's sister and her husband stopped by to grab the car seats that the boys just graduated from. Their little girl Emika is just now big enough to start using one and next spring she's gonna have a brand new baby brother or sister who will also need a car seat, so the timing worked out nice for all of us. Emika apparently loves Thomas the Tank Engine (who d...
Post a Comment
Read more