Skip to main content

Forward Roll

Kenzo got home from school and upon entering the front door announced that his friend Hidekazu was coming to play.

Obviously we need to set some expectations and rules. Even though Eri and I are of differing opinions and levels of excitement about the boys' friends coming over, them making plans without checking with mama and papa is not kosher.

Within minutes Hidekazu rang the doorbell. I opened the front door and he stepped in with his umbrella and asked where to put it, and when I took it and leaned it against the other umbrellas he politely announced a Japanese salutation that means please excuse me for entering and Kenzo came in and the play time began.

The rest of the afternoon is a blur with work and the boys and pick-ups and drop-offs. At some point Eri and Osamu went to Costco to get gas and do a little shopping and they came home with four boxes of boxed pinot noir. I noticed them stacked in the front hall and I gotta admit I was more than pleased.

While everyone was out I went down to the kitchen to grab a few Doritos and have a drink of water. I noticed there was a pan on the stove with something still simmering. Eri apparently had made an eggplant and pork stir fry for dinner. I grabbed a spoon and lifted the lid and had a taste. Or two.

Turns out that wasn't dinner. Dinner was curry rice. Eri made the stir fry because some stuff in the fridge was about to expire. I should've had more.

When Osamu got back he ran up to my office to show me what he learned at kindergarten sports club today.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

lookin tired/feelin good

I can't even read the clock right. Eri: "You're going to soccer, right? Aren't you a bit early?" Me: "Yeah! We usually leave at this time and get there right on time. We gotta go! Let's go guys!" Soccer club starts at 10 a.m. The boys know that when the long hand on the clock gets to the 8 (9:40) it's time to go to the bathroom and get our socks and shoes on and head down to the car. The big hand was on 8. The problem that Eri saw was the short hand. It was 8:40, not 9:40. I'm going nuts. Slowly . Rapidly. An hour later, after I slowly enjoyed my coffee and disposed of the last beetle (yes, all four beetles have now gone back to the earth) and cleaned his bug box to make room for new bug acquisitions and the boys chilled out on the sofa watching TV, we set off. While the boys played soccer I headed across the parking lot to grab them some juice boxes for a job well done. This is not standard procedure, but Kenzo made his comeback today after ...

Experiences I Will Never Know About

Eri and I were checking out one of Kenzo's school notebooks tonight. This page has so much going on, and I love all of it. It made me realize something that I can easily forget - he's a person. He has a life separate from mine, lives each day having experiences that I will never know about, and has thoughts and ideas that I can't nor should get in the way of. "Thank you for doing everything," she said. Eri walked with me this morning as I went around the neighborhood and delivered planter box maintenance information and schedules to various folks.  We stopped at the first house and I rang the doorbell and handed the old lady the three-page information sheet I had made and copied and we exchanged greetings and then I realized this is going to take forever if I ring every single person’s doorbell and chit-chat with them. I’ve got 20+ more of these to hand out.  So we started just sticking them in people's mailboxes and made better time. Most folks aren’t home an...

Certain Luxuries

I work from home. My office is in Osamu's future bedroom, though he doesn't know it yet. At some point a few years down the line he will probably start to yearn for his own space. For the time being he and Kenzo share the room next door and sleep in a bunk bed and have a grand time playing, roughhousing, and quarreling. As brothers are prone to do. I started the day with a two-hour meeting with an esteemed co-worker who is based in a city far away. He manages a team associated with mine, and I value our developing relationship. We're both in management positions where people depend on us, and for my part as a relatively new manager I respect and try as often as possible to seek out his advice and perspectives.  We're very different, though. We dance around the topic, but it's pretty clear that one of our differences is that I embrace ambiguity and he does not. I think that it's okay if meetings don't end with a clear solution, as long as the relationship be...