Sitting On a Rock

Eri texted me 水に流しますね. Mizu ni nagashimasune. 

She got a little irritated at me this morning. After she left to take the boys to the kindergarten bus stop I made coffee, ate some natto with a raw egg yolk, did a 20-minute walk and stopped by Lawson to grab a protein bar since I was about to hit the ground running at work, and arrived home with about eight minutes to spare.

I decided to play the part of an awesome husband and grab the stuff out of the washing machine and hang it out to dry on the veranda. The high temperature today was set to be 16 degrees and it was gonna be sunny so Eri took the opportunity to do an extra load of laundry this morning consisting of mattress covers and pillow cases and stuff that doesn't usually make it into the usual laundry circuit enough.

So I carried the wet laundry upstairs. No basket. No time for that. I dropped everything on the floor and grabbed pinches and started hanging. It was taking longer than I had anticipated due to the fact that there was already a previous load of laundry hanging out and I am terrible at simple things like "rearranging" and "overcoming adversity."

I had to be in a meeting at 9:00 and it was 8:58 so I had to leave some laundry on the floor. Not the first time and not the last I think. Certainly Eri would swoop in and take care of it when she got back from grocery shopping, or else I would hang it up after my morning meetings.

No problem.

Eri got back soon after but didn't realize I had left a pile of wet laundry on the floor upstairs. My meetings went long and I couldn't hang the stuff up. Eventually around 10:30 Eri headed upstairs and discovered the laundry and was audibly annoyed. I could hear frustrated sighing from the next room as I was talking with a co-worker on Teams. As luck would have it this happened precisely 3 minutes before my meeting ended, so I was able to enjoy the full experience of Eri being annoyed when I ran in to help.

I apologized and sorta made the excuse that I tried to hang up everything but I ran out of time, which was true. She said I should've let her know. I had to agree that would've been a good move. I could've just texted her from my desk, even during a work meeting, so she would know about it.

Later in the morning she texted me from downstairs. I was wrapping up the last of three back-to-back meetings. She used the phrase 水に流しますね. Mizu ni nagashimasune. 

I was not familiar with that phrase, but within the context of what she wrote and the way Japanese idioms are I kinda had a feeling what it meant.

After a bit I headed downstairs to wash my coffee cup and take a quick break. I said to Eri, "Mizu ni nagashimasune." 

She nodded and apologized for getting annoyed about the laundry and thanked me for helping with what I could. Then there was an pause. Eri said, "You don't don't know what mizu ni nagasu means? That might be on your next Japanese exam!"

I was looking it up as she was talking and it turns out my take on the context was correct. It basically just means "forget about it." The thing I love is that the phrase literally translates as "washed away by water." Water under the bridge as we would say. Japanese idioms and sayings pretty much always reference nature. Like 石の上にも三年. Ishi no ue ni mo san nen. Three years on a stone, meaning sitting for a long time on a rock will make you warm, like any hard work or perseverance will be rewarded. 

The boys spent the evening flying paper airplanes they got at the doctor. Eri's ears are inflamed so she went to get them checked out, and Osamu has had a constant runny nose for a few weeks. Turns out he has a pollen allergy.