Dropping in...

Like a frog in hot water...I'm obviously adapting to my lot in life ....10 days since the last posting.

Life with Okaasan trundling along. No huge exciting, and blogworthy, dramas.

The weather has been awful, rain rain rain - kept her inside for days. I was also working a lot - got a whole rush of new and returning students recently - so not home for many evening family dinner-time. Dear Son did his duty. Planning, shopping and cooking for his mother. He is a good man - I am so lucky in this - that he is rare breed in this country of Men Who Do Stuff in Kitchens.

And coming up?
Our trip to Brazil for the final weekend of the World Cup.
We started getting into the mood for it all - with a 5 am Viewing Party in a Latin music bar downtown....got on Tv again - met various Brazilians and crazy fellow-fans.

Japanese newspapers are full of horror stories about crime in Brazil, I'm trying to balance that image (for both of us) with plenty of TV images of happy, friendly Brazilian street scenes.

Starting the preparations for escaping.

He's contacted day service minders for Okaasan's care. It'll be 3 people, who will take turns to come late every afternoon and stay for about two hours.
They will come the day before we leave for a meeting....and he isn't planning on telling Okaasan that we are going away until then....
Poor woman. Suddenly she will hear that a big change is about to happen and THREE women will come and sit in the kitchen for a meeting about looking after her. I think they should have a meeting away from home - at the city office maybe - and not in front of Okaasan. Although I understand they all need to meet her. But still, it seems it'll be stressful for her to be the subject of a meeting with 3 people.
We have to make a list of info about Okaasan and her routines and what we want the carers to do.
Basically: shop, cook, serve, chat and clean a bit. Help her to have a bath once or twice. Keep the laundry under control.
But we have to give a map of where Okaasan goes walking and her routines. Easy to do as she is always at the same places.

This is the longest time we have left her. Before this it was 2 nights. This time it will be 9 nights.

And cats: have booked them into animal hospital for cat hotel hell. ;-( 10 nights...poor little buggers. But, it WILL be air conditioned....which is better than home.

And. A big, scary AND.
A friend sent me a UK newspaper link last week - there is a massive passport office crisis now unfolding, with the governemnt admitting that recent changes in the system have led to a long backlog of unprocessed passport applications.
My passport is somewhere there: in a box in the passport office.
It went 6 weeks ago for renewal. And nothing has come.
3 1/2 weeks till we leave.....
The British Embassy in Tokyo told me "keep checking our website, and we are waiting to hear from London ourselves, but there is a chance of an emergency passport 48 hours before travel...."

Just adding to the pre-trip nervous excitement :-)