Aliveness, Gratitude, and Contentment

"I wanna go see dinosaur bones. Dinosaur boooooooooones..." Followed by intense sobbing, followed by intense waterworks.

I kinda get it. Eri often advises me to avoid telling the boys about what I'm planning. I like promoting an attitude of looking forward to special things with a dusting of delayed gratification, but it's Kenzo and Osamu. They're little boys. If things don't go according to their expectations it destroys them most times.

Osamu was feeling the intense disappointment I caused by announcing last week and writing on the family wall calendar that we would be going to see the dinosaur bone exhibit at the the Sendai Science Museum.

In the end it turned out to be a stormy day, Osamu had to go to the doctor because he had a bad cough and runny nose, and Kenzo and I were fully exhausted from a crazy week and held down the fort on the sofa all morning watching Harry Potter movies.

Dinosaur bones was not happening today.

I was thinking of something I read a long time ago.

"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures."

Eri made one of her specialties tonight. Slow cooked pork chops.

Every day I am consciously trying to acknowledge and cherish my treasures in order to cultivate a deeper sense of aliveness, gratitude, and contentment.

The boys got summertime haircuts tonight. Eri wanted to put a little space between their haircuts and our big trip in case she totally messed up.

They look great.

Comments

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...

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...

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...

This'll Just Take a Minute

Search This Blog