Avoided her this morning - which is easy because she usually sits in her room with the TV while we go about the morning routine and leave for work.
But I spitefully dumped all her washed/dried underpants and stuff on the kitchen table and left it there for her. Usually I'd sneak in while she was out and scatter them artfully round her room to keep up the Great Pretense that "Yes! You are doing all your own laundry! Horray for elderly independence!".
This morning I just dumped it on the kitchen table and left her to find it and think whatever she liked.
If challenged about this my response will be brutal: "Yes, I come into your room to collect dirty laundry because you can't keep up with all the washing of it...and it smells."
Went off to work. Met Yujiro for a mammoth shop - COSTCO has Halloween AND Christmas decorations in August!!!! - and we came home to face....the horror...oh the horror...Family Dinner After a Fight.
I hate having to do this: be all grown up about it. Have to be nice cos we have to keep Okaasan sweet and happy otherwise she'll be baying at the moon and creating havoc in the shops and restaurants of Sapporo.
But....I'm British. Generations of genetic programming into stiff upper lips and being polite in adversity.
So I smiled and served salad and soup and pizza, and chilled water etc etc.
I gave Okaasan two slices of pizza on her plate - and she sweetly said it was too much and would I like one instead....and passed it over the table to me....
and so it all went....civility. Nothing like Japanese people and British people to fake civility....
Kept my eyes down on the food as we ate and joined Yujiro's conversational attempts in the OH! so interesting conversations about the weather/the sauce bottle/how chips are made/tomato types/Brazilian food...
And then it was over and I could escape.
Sadly missed the postman because we were out doing the mammoth shopping (COSTCO doesn't stock mammoth steak for some reason, they should), so I still don't know the full story of the postbox and the obstructive flowers.
*** :-(( But poignant moment today in class: I handed back one student (Hi Atsuko!!!) her English diary and glanced down at the writing I'd checked and marked 10 days ago before the summer break.
She'd written about her wonderful Morning Glory plants and included a photograph. And I'd written a little note back to her at the bottom of the page...with a cute diagram...detailing MY Morning Glory planter with the mail box etc etc....
Oh poignant.
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| Last year's Morning Glory show at the front door.... |
Gutted :( hope you catch the postman and that perhaps he said something that perhaps Okaasan took in a different way and thought she was doing you a favor.
ReplyDeletewould have looked so pretty next month too.