Ongoing Oyomesaning

Just doing it.
Days and days of it.
Ski season is in full thing here, so he is working like crazy and away at different ski areas.
He works for a ski instructor agency, they supply staff to different ski areas as needed. He works two or three days, then appears here at home for a night or an afternoon...and then gone again.
Sometimes with the car.


So. I am The Decider. The Shopper. The Cooker. Usually The Washer-Upper too. The Okaasan Bank. The Okaasan Chat Machine. etc etc etc.


My friend has moved in down the road, which is SO strange...to think that she is here in the same city, and not hundreds of miles away in another part of the country. It'll be a new stage in our friendship, to be near neighbors at a different part of our lives. Once upon a time we shared an apartment, when we were single. Now she has a husband and child. And I have a ski bum and his mother.
Sapporo put out the welcome mat for her by having a week of minus temperatures.....how far can it go???? Tomorrow might be "Warm", only minus two daytime. We'll all break out the spring clothes.


Okaasan is ok.
I feed her. Chat her. Make my escape.
She has got out most days, and come home again on time.


I notice she is watching a lot of TV shopping now. Most people would find this boring and switch channels after a few minutes. She doesn't. Maybe she doesn't realise it IS TV shopping, with the same slogans and videos of amazing results and bargain prices - repeated and repeated.


Saturday night I couldn't face a dinner alone with Okaasan, so I slipped away and took myself out for a huge plate of spare ribs, a beer and a movie (Dominic Cooper throwing off all the Mamma Mia! traces by playing a psychopath and the body double - Saddam Husein's crazy son Uday. Good movie.)


Sunday morning Okaasan caught me in the kitchen and told me that somebody had rung the doorbell at 4 am. She'd gone to the entrance hall, but the mystery person didn't say our family name...and had gone away. She thought that was a bit scary.


I don't know. She might have imagined it. She sleeps with the TV on, so a doorbell on the TV and her in a half-awake state. Who knows? Yujiro was away with the car, so the house may have looked empty...but Okaasan's TV blaring can be heard outside. Was somebody trying the door?


But it WAS interesting that she actually TOLD me about it. Usually Okaasan hardly ever volunteers some information into a conversation. She doesn't relate incidents from her day, or something she's seen on TV. It's what makes conversations with her such hard work - because we have to do all the input.
But this time she, maybe, remembered something that had happened to her. And told us about it later. That doesn't happen much.


* Did anyone else in Japan see the Tv advert about dementia? I caught it last week I think. A family sitting round a table for lunch with a big tray of sushi. The man reaches for one of the sushi, and his elderly mother stops him saying "No! No! Don't eat that one, my son likes that. It's his favorite"...and the man and his wife exchanging rueful, heart-warming smiles about that.
Did anyone else see it?
I was surprised to see dementia used in a TV ad. Even in this warm, fuzzy way.


Anyway...off to relax a bit. Newspapers, the end of the beer, some TV and then bed with two cats.