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Poetic

The long holiday starts tomorrow, so I took today off for good measure.

I had originally decided to take an overnight motorcycle trip but ended up cutting that down to a one day ride due to my work schedule and then in the end I was having crazy anxiety this morning so I waited until it calmed a bit and just went tooling around. If I take my anxiety medication it's not good to operate a motor vehicle. 

The boys still had school, and Eri was busy and out and about running errands. The house was quiet. The sunlight was warming up the front of the house in spite of the slightly chilly wind. I took in the calm of the house.

The last tadpole died poetically. Kenzo put a daisy-like flower and some other detritus in the tadpole's water hoping he would get some nourishment since he didn't eat the fish flakes we put in for him. When I checked on him this morning he was curled up inside the flower, floating just below the surface of the water.

In a move that surprised me, Eri suggested having a barbecue today. So that we did.


One stop on my motorcycle ride today was this relatively new market in a renovated home center in Ichinazaka. My neighbor told me they had great deals on meat for barbecues. He was right, and a lot of other folks also heard that news. I was pretty pleased with the selection and the prices, but not so pleased with the clientele. The people in this place were like Costco customers, but somehow worse since there was less space and instead of obnoxiously enormous shopping carts everyone had these obnoxious yellow handbaskets on rolling carts. These were Costco rejects.

If you're gonna shop for anything north of 500 grams of meat and you're on a motorcycle you gotta be prepared. There's no impulse buying a shortcake when your ride home is on two wheels. I planned ahead and had my backpack and extra plastic bags to securely get this bounty home.


Around 16:30 the zen of charcoal began. The boys were still napping. They were particularly tired after their respective school days. 


Osamu took my chair, so I sat on a ceramic elephant. It caved in, so I kneeled to cook and eat because I'm too stubborn to go down to the shed and get another chair.

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