OKAY! Here!

Climbed out from under a mountain of pink, dirty underpants!!


I'm here!!! Daylight! Fresh air!!!


Yay!!!!!!


No. Actually....I switched on the computer this morning at home - and 10 minutes later it died on me. Nothing on the screen. Awful silence from the box-thing under the desk.
Computer engineer isn't back till Feb. 4th.....


So, had to wait until I could carry the laptop home from my classroom. Laptop or daikon raddish? Which is more essential to bring home.....??? both heavy. Computer won.


My God! A morning without a computer!! I READ a newspaper! I watched TV for more than 5 minutes. I Played with grateful cats. I even...made a sandwich for my lunch. Ran Okaasan's bath. Prepped my classes and left the house so early that I got to the classroom with the first student just-taking off his coat...instead of sneaking in an unfashionably-in-Japan...."just in time".
Like that awful weekend of March 12-13 last year....earthquake and tsunami weekend...oh...and my 50th birthday. Our home computer server was down and out (probably all the staff were sleeping at Tokyo Station) - that weekend we didn't have a computer at home and it really changed HOW we used our time. Mostly sat staring shocked at the Tv of course....




So. Here we are.


Okaasan and Me.


Day 1 ok - I came home late afternoon to find her boiling an egg and with a roaring heater because her room window was wide open to let in fresh air...probably since morning.
I had an evening class - so I faffed around and left her soup, tofu/raddish, rice, veggies and so on....apologised for being out...but she seemed ok with that...but a little impatient to get money from me for shopping.
Tried to get some laundry out of her room again...but she said "no I don't have anything" and I didn't march quickly enough into her side room to get stuff out of the laundry boxes.
In between meeting me in the kitchen at 4 pm and meeting me again in the kitchen at 5.30 pm she forgot...and asked me if I'd just come home from work. Amazing this - no memory of the egg cooking/open window conversation.


Came home later and she's only slightly burned the pan...and had left plates and stuff for me to wash. But all OK.




This morning she came out of to the kitchen to say Goodmorning...which is encouraging.
I got home at 4 pm - just in time to see baseball star Yu Darvish's farewell press conference in Sapporo Dome - and Okaasan was heading out.


Gave me a chance to get into her room, where the "no, I don't have anything" in laundry seemed to actually be 37 pairs of pants, 2 sets of pajamas and a pair of slacks. Meanwhile ONE pair of pants were lolling around in a bowl in the bathroom on their own....where Okaasan had half-washed them during her morning bath.


And so. Onwards into dinner......