Thursday 14 January 2010

Escape from lunches.

Don't have to make and chat over lunch for Okaasan on my day off!
YEAH!
Escaped that duty.

While I was away and Yujiro was ski teaching, he ordered a lunch box company to deliver a lunch to Okaasan - it costs Y600 and arrives about 12 o'clock. He pays for it via bank transfer every month. All she has to do is open the door and the delivery staff stamp a paper.
Simple.
And I can escape the lunch cooking, serving and chat that was giving me stress at the start of the holidays. Of course if I am here and in the kitchen I'll chat to her - but I don't have to plan my day off around being here in the kitchen by 10.45 am to make and dish up lunch.

A BIG improvement on life.
I am sure Okaasan would qualify for the city meals-on-wheels service but Yujiro said he couldn't find out about that. Y600 isn't much anyway.

So. Life starts again.
Trying to get a diet regime jacked up. I walked to the gym yesterday and swam for 20 minutes..and walked home again. The leg was tired after that. I gotta be careful about overdoing it.
But I'm 64 kg now - usually 57 kg...so something's got to happen, 7 kg extra is dangerous because hard to shift.
I've told friends that I'll get 5kg off by Golden Week.....

Home life is back on track.
Yujiro is away almost every day ski teaching. He gets home late afternoon or evening.
I cooked dinner yesterday. Attempted chawamushi - a sort of pot of savory custard with bits of meat, fish and veggies in it - added too much soy sauce, so it came out brown and not yellow. But they said the taste was good. I think actually for Okaasan, if I just throw in lots of soy sauce she thinks the taste is fine!

Had a little ripple of anger just as dinner was finishing though: Okaasan made a comment to Yujiro (while I'm there in the kitchen) about how I'd put one dirty plate on top of another....this is their family is a Terrible Deed because it means you have to wash the bottom of the plate on top...thereby wasting valuable time.
Get a Life!
I think I did it knowingly - just to provoke.
It's such a petty thing. But Yujiro's always gone on at me about it.
I hate him telling me this kind of petty stuff. And now I've got Okaasan on my case too.
It makes me angry that a) she comments on this and b) she comments on this in front of me. How rude! And of course she doesn't say it TO me. She says it to him, while I am standing about 1 meter away.
This is just the older-Japanese person to younger family-member rudeness. Me and my life have no value.

When I've cooked and served dinner, and she's just sat in front of the TV all day doing nothing it's a bit rich to comment on how I clear the table.
I didn't say that of course. I just gaily commented: "well, it's not wrong, it's just different!" and left it at that.

There is some gene in Japanese people, particularly older people: the Handing Out Unwanted Advice Gene.
Why oh why do they do it?

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