Monday 21 March 2011

Never mind the nuclear...what about the knickers.

Nuclear crises ongoing.
Daily/Hourly earthquakes in Tokyo and Tohoku.

In this home in Sapporo: Oyomesan duties.
Chat, dirty knickers and cooking.....................when the end comes I will be found clutching an armful of pink knickers belonging to Okaasan.

Yujiro went ski teaching yesterday.
I stayed home and sorted out my brain.
Got Okaasan chatty at lunchtime, all about the kind of flowering bush outside her house in Saitama. I got her to tell that story about eight times. She got lost in the telling several times, grasping around for the ideas. But she was chatting.
Then I gave her some money and encouraged her to go out walking.
And I blitzed her room: found 35 pairs of knickers, 3 soiled pajamas, an old can of fish, three stale rice balls, something oily in a plastic food pack....dead flowers...a week of newspapers and stuff.
I sprayed the room with Fabreeze to get rid of the smell.


And today Monday. National Holiday...but Okaasan had hula dance. So Yujiro got her off to that and we spent the day giving to an local NPO that is taking stuff to Iwate, with me trying to track down the Couch Surfing website people in the US, and TV, and cats, and ice breaking in the street, and cooking the most DELICIOUS roll of roast pork in the oven I got from Uni Spagetti when she left Japan.
Oh...and sneaking the clean knickers and things BACK into Okaasan's room...maintaining the fallacy that she does all her own laundry...I leave enough dirty knickers in the laundry basket in her backroom so she thinks she is doing it. But I do the bulk.

So. Nuclear crises ongoing.
Operation Knickers - Mission Accomplished.

3 comments:

  1. that's cool if you can get one thing accomplished. trying to get back to real life, all while keeping one eye on the news and twitter....

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  2. God you're a saint with okaasan and her knickers! Pork Roast? A real one? yum yum. Crackling, gravy....
    When you put 'she got lost in the telling several times' I instantly thought about mum. She's started getting slightly like that :(

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  3. You are a good daughter in law to let her think she is still independant,listening to her stories even when she forgets things. I hope mine can do the same with me someday. Hopefully a long time in the future though!! LoL Mimi

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