Giggling our way thru the week ;-)

Goin' strong.


Okaasan and Me.


Lunch on the table in the flasks and gave her Y1,000 spending money before I set out on my day yesterday.

Interesting day for me: helped a friend take her two cats to the vets, then went downtown to attend a seminar about Foreigners and Inheritence in Japan (two wills? do the siblings get anything? what happens if you aren't married and thus NOT on the Family Register?) and then to meet a young woman who contacted me thru Couch Surfing - she is thinking of marrying her Japanese guy and wonders what life as a foreign wife is like in Japan!!!!!!! oh wow....WHERE to start on that topic!!!!!!
I did tell her - check his family arrangements - who is likely to be caring for the aging parents in a few years??? Are there lots of helpful siblings living near eachother who can take turns? Will it be you alone???? Important stuff like that which you don't consider when you are just concerned with the romance of it all.....I am now VERY concerned about Foreign Oyomesans of the Future!


Home about 5 pm.
Okaasan just heading out. Another gorgeous autumnal day missed.


Easy dinner: freshly made soup for her, with a piece of fried fish, broccoli, rice, pickles. Leftover veggie soup and cheese for me.


She was back about 6.15 pm. She really doesn't go far or stay out long these days.

Okaasan got to the table, saw the fish and started giggling. At the fish! Hand to her mouth, rocking back and forth. Giggling.
"Oh! It's so small! This is so cute! So small!...usually bigger than this...." giggle giggle giggle.


This over-reaction to something is an Okaasan point I've become more aware of recently. This year maybe. A joke or a funny situation sends her into ratures of giggles/hand to mouth/whole body rocking in delight, something just a bit strange or if she feels a bit guilty - more and more giggles. She often comes home and walks thru the kitchen door - and giggles at us...
The other day I found her giggling at the kitchen wipe cloth that I'd left scrunched up in the sink, instead of hanging carefully on the dish drying rack.


Giggling. At a wash cloth!  :-))


One of the dementia videos I watched the other day mentioned this too - loss of control of emotions. Of course working both ways - happiness AND anger. Luckily - oh so luckily - at the moment we see Okaasan's over-happiness about life. I absolutely intend to keep it that way.
Okaasan is basically a positive, happy, out-going person. Like mother, like son. She's always enjoyed life and seen the funny side of things and been open to new experiences (joined a hula dance class within weeks of her husband's death and signed on for the class trip to Hawaii immediatly).


So we are starting with a basically happy person here. It's my mission to make sure she stays that way and that we don't tip into darkness and anger and confusion and paranoia.


So. Giggling at the little, fried fish. Fine.

And then. I produced my trump card for this weekend.
The Glenn Miller Orchestra concert.
These are tickets I bought ages ago. Thought it would be a good thing for Okaasan and I to go and do and enjoy together. We do so little a deux that I thought it would be a good opportunity. Oyomesan and Okaasan bonding time.


So I told her I'd got concert tickets for this big band sound concert today - she and I will go.
Oh ! Such happiness. She poured over the concert flyer, read and reread all the list of songs endless times and went on and on about the music and post-war Japan and music.


A very successful dinner.
Thanks to a bit of fried fish and Glenn Miller.


Onwards.