Just a weekend.

All's well.

I haven't blogged cos:
a) Nothing much to say.
b) I've spent hours trying to redesign my English classroom website myself - and I can't bear to look at a computer screen any longer!!!

Okaasan stayed home for 2 days and then went out in slightly icy conditions yesterday.
While she was out we did a big clean out of her room. Usual stuff of dirty underwear (she seems to be storing it in 3 different baskets now), paper trash, magazines.
SO much easier to do a clean now we have two years worth of magazines off the floor and onto a bookcase. I usually take out stuff from the bottom of the pile of stuff so that the top looks the same to her...

For some mysterious reason she is screwing up newspaper pages and wrapping them in other bits of paper....neither of us know WHAT that is about.....firelighters maybe? Or shoe stuffing? Something from long ago Japan. But we found lots of them all over her room.

I watched a documentary on CNN about Alzheimer's and special research in Columbia where a small town has high incidences of Alzheimer's and scientists are trying to identify the gene mutation that causes it in people in their 30s and 40s.
One woman had cared for her father 10 years ago...then he died. Now her brother and her sister are suffering. Awful. Just awful.

Dinner last night I cooked up the great spinach and cheese ravioli that I got from COSTCO. Trouble is Okaasan always says she doesn't like cheese (but loves pizza...). I did big bowls of pasta for us and a smaller bowl for her, served with rice, soup, vegetables and pickles.
Yujiro and I chatted in manic fashion about all sorts of stuff to keep Okaasan's attention OFF the pasta and what the white stuff inside it might be...and it worked...she listened and responded to the chat and ate it all - even had seconds!

And on into another week.

Mother and Son Day Out.

Okaasan and Yujiro went out for a day downtown - shopping, eating, chatting....
And I safely stayed away from that by working and meeting my accountant.

Mother/Son day all went well: they walked a lot and bought the hula dress and new gloves. Then they started looking for trousers, but Okaasan kept asking people in the department store: "Where are the gloves? I want to buy gloves"...and he had to keep reminding her that she just HAD bought gloves...next was trousers.

Anyway. They were out for about 4 hours together and came home without drama. Okaasan looked tired, but happy. Her dinnertime conversation was a bit random, I noticed she mixed up the experience of going to the Sapporo Sweets Cafe with eating Mexican food in Mexico years ago...somehow the two experience merged into one sentence...and she got momentarily excited about accounts and accountants: "I worked in a the accounts office! I can do accounts!".

Yikes. THAT doesn't bear thinking about.
Okaasan and my accounts.

I fully expect Sapporo City to give me back large wads of money. In 2010-11 I spent so much on air tickets to England, car rental in the UK, 3 years of contributions to the Japanese Health Insurance system, an operation on my ovaries...never mind the laptop computer for work. Oh....and bringing 15 boxes from the Uk to Japan.

Surely they'll take pity on me?
In 2011-12 the coffers will need replenishing.

Staying well out of it.

Hasn't BEEN much Okaasan and Me this week because Yujiro is home and not working - so I just have to turn up at the kitchen table for 45 mins in the evening and make polite sounds, rescue dirty underwear secretly and do incidental chat.

Nice.

There is some Okaasan Confusion over something to do with hula dance class/teacher/Y5,000/new dress/dress shop/hula......which Yujiro is dealing with luckily. I am staying well out of that.
It's so good that, at the moment anyway, Okaasan basically trusts him over money affairs. When she doesn't understand/remember she eventually asks him and mostly believes what he tells her - you hear the horror stories of dementia sufferers accusing family members of stealing their money etc.
But at the moment she trusts him to sort out the endless confusions.
"I'm senile aren't I?" I heard Okaasan ask him as they discussed the confusions...."Yes" he replied, "but it's ok, I know what the hula teacher said, I'll go with you to the shop."
Okaasan is lucky that she is living with a family member who will sort out life's problems.

So today - Mr Cool Ski Instructor is going shopping with his mother to the hula dance dress shop.....

Good week otherwise: Okaasan went to hula on Monday. he and I went and had a great and really cheap dinner on Tuesday because Yujiro had got a deal on an internet coupon site (Y4,000 for two people, 8 courses PLUS all-you-can-drink....), the cats are eating and playing again and my taxes are maybe in order for the accountant when she comes today.

And so. Onwards.

Mwwwggghhhhhh.....maybe finished.

Do we look sick? Are we going to go......mmmwwwwgggghhhhh.....again?

Maybe no. Maybe.

We have both started eating again and keeping it down. We have both started purring again.

Apologies if you are eating while reading this: but the vet said it was roundworm. I found one culprit - measuring about 4 cm - on one of the many, many vomitty carpet tiles. 

The vet impressed us with his Open Sesame Technique for popping pills in a cat's jaw, and then we came home to watch away the weekend and detect signs of recovery in our babies.

Popo was so sick he even curled up on Yujiro's knee, so obviously delusional.

Sunday morning early we escaped for a while and went skiing on the city ski area just 20 minutes from home. Beautiful blue sky and great views. Just did the easy course and came back through the forest area. It was enough for my knee. Came home to do family lunch with Okaasan.

Spent the rest of Sunday cat watching and trying to get them to eat something. We shopped for better-than-usual cat food and came home with an array of cans and pouches with which to tempt Popo into eating again. Seafood flavored "Crispy Kiss" finally broke him.

Okaasan is fine, chatting on about losing gloves or something. After my success the other day at getting magazines onto the bookshelf she has managed to cover up the freed-up carpet spaces with more stuff. And Yujiro found a few semi-important letters from the bank and investment companies under supermarket flyers.

In the evening we left her sushi on the table and went to a jazz show! VERY good amateurs (are there any BAD amateurs in Japan?). One of my students is a jazz pianist and she was performing in a show by local music teachers and their students at the Yamaha complex.

She was great. The Japanese cooking teacher from my gym who was also there was great. They were all wonderful...even the few who made mistakes, and the poor guy who forgot the end of his number...he tried to get up from the piano stool and leave the stage but the bass player nodded him sternly back into action - it's jazz...so work it out....

After each performance they had a few words of interview by one of the teachers holding a microphone. Out of 23 people....maybe only 5 actually spoke like adults...the rest were alarmingly incoherent.

Not just bashful about public speaking, modest-cos-I'm-Japanese - but really unable to string two words together or make eye contact! AMAZING! Yet they poured all the passion and soul into great jazz piano performances.

How? Why? How can people get to be 30, 40, 50 years old and be still so socially inept? It isn't just jazz, which has its fair share of eccentrics, it's Japan...so many adult Japanese are just barely operate in relation to others.

I loved the jazz. Made me determined to get along to the jazz festivals this summer in Sapporo. But so sad to see these people unable to communicate verbally.

Anyway. Cats are eating again. There are still two boxes of chocolate to be eaten. The sun is shining and it's time to start a new week.