Monday, May 19, 2008

Irony

It's spring and like every spring I suddenly get the overwhelming urge to diet. Exercise more, eat better. I start thinking about the beach and the rivers up in the mountains and camps and how wonderful it would be if I could wear some of my cute little outfits that astonishingly no longer fit. So Saturday I'm going through closets for inspiration while my son is in school.

Now, there's a lot to moan about with Japanese junior high school, mostly the long hours which I'm not used to. I mean, home at six thirty? What IS that? Going to school on the occasional Saturday and Sunday? And summer vacation? Come on. However, last weekend's Saturday class was a cute idea.


All the seventh graders had a Study With People in the Neighborhood Day. The school gathered up a bunch of volunteers to teach stuff to the kids. Some of the courses were origami, flower arranging, various sports, and wood working to name a few. It's really nice when the elderly go to teach games and past times that they participated in as children that kids nowadays can hardly fathom. The parents are also encouraged to go to the school and walk around, observe classes, take pictures, whatever. The classes last from nine to noon.

J ended up in a cooking class. He digs cooking so that was fine. I wander over for a few minutes to see what's up. Here the kids are all duded up for their class. Aprons, kerchiefs on their heads...


A little after lunch J comes home with this! And they were amazingly good. I'm like okay...diet starts tomorrow.


Next day, nine thirty at night the guy across the street comes over and is in a tizzy. He works at a trade company and for some reason their online recipe for grilled eel was wrong. Someone wrote in and told them and offered a new version. Since no one in the company actually speaks (reads or writes) English he brought it over to me to check. I did so and we said goodnight.

Day after that his wife brings over a big container of eel bits.



Okay, I can put off the diet another day.


Last week one of the moms from school called me saying she got an ipod and didn't know how to put music on it, could I help. Sure, I say. So today I went over and between playing with her dog and talking about the bullying problem I taught her how to put music on her ipod. As I was leaving...yep, you see this coming...She handed me this:




A box of cookies. Well, dayum.

Conclusion: Someone up there likes fat people or Someone up there like F$%&ing with fat people.

Either way I conclude that today cream puffs are going to rain down from the skies and when I turn on my facet a nice dark chocoalte sauce will flow.