Mowing for Sanity.

Here I am with my new gadget!
A smart, very yellow electric lawn mower.
Yes folks, my lovingly SEEDED lawn is now so healthy that mere trimmers aren't enough (and are bad for my back and leg).

SO! Went to HOMAC and did some Retail Therapy.

I came home with 90 minutes between classes today. And NO rain.

So I got out there and hacked through the jungle.

I expect polo games and royal garden parties will follow. Gnomes maybe? Oh gawd.....

The mowing was just another Small Pleasure in Life to Keep Me Sane.

I drove to work this morning getting bluer and bluer about life and its trials. The parents, the man and his non-job, the Okaasan, the sick cat, the knee, the weight...the weather...

I even toyed with the idea of driving straight on and going off to Lake Toya for the day to a hot spring. Just escape it all. Felt pretty grim to be honest. I had to shout to myself and sing a song loudly in the car to make myself snap out of it and get back to Monday morning and work (actually one of my favorite classes is 10 am on Monday, a really nice bunch of intelligent people who like meeting eachother, all happens to be in English.)

Wouldn't be surprising if I was grappling a bit with potential depression. I know the signs.
I have to:

* Connect with people and talk about it.
* Eat healthy food.
* Exercise as much as I can.
* Enjoy the small pleasures of every day.
* Not wallow.

My actual large worry in the background to all of this is that the past 18 months will have left some lasting stress in my body and that I'm opening myself up to something like cancer. I am thinking of having a complete medical checkup sometime this autumn. I'm not on the Japanese medical insurance system, so it'll be costly...but it would lay a few worries to rest.

Anyway. One more day of work. And then time to throw together the carry-on bag, get the phone numbers and computer passwords I need - and head across the world to slip into Daughter Mode.

I shall probably land at Heathrow and eat a Cadbury's Toffee Chocolate Egg even before they've offloaded the suitcases.