Long Weekend

Just spent a long weekend in the company of my lovely daughters, and, with just a little bit of 'encouragement', the house is actually tidier now than it was at the start. And THIS time, the desks are going to stay tidy! Amy will learn to put a project away before starting on another one. Lena will learn to dispose of, or find a new home for the items she decides she doesn't need, instead of simply putting them on the piano table or the windowsill.

Saturday we were going to go to a picnic at the castle, but it got cancelled. I got picnic in my head though and made a bacon and egg pie for lunch anyway. We popped down to the castle to see if anyone else had turned up and found Amy and Lena's new English teacher, Will, being shown around by the other Kiwi at Keio, Andre.

Saturday night we went to the Kagura and Raffle festival at the shrine out the back of Baachan's childhood home, where her nephew and niece now live. Coming along for the party also were his Chinese factory staff, who hadn't seen me since I waddled in hugely pregnant this time last year. Cue round of cheers for little Erica, who would have been the star of the show if she wasn't in a dreadful mood caused by lack of sleep. Lena happily took up the baton and became chief pet of the young Chinese ladies.

Sunday we went to another festival to see a friend of Kanji's perform in his band. Or rather, THEY went to watch the show while I waited in the car with sleeping Erica, reading a magazine. I honestly didn't get out of the car once. Acutally it wasn't that bad - I haven't had as long an uninterrupted reading time for quite a while. I normally fall asleep over the pages at night now. I made up for it with an ice cream on the way home and a girls only trip to the onsen. I have been hanging out for an onsen trip, but haven't been able to go because of Erica's hand.

Kanji meanwhile went to band practice. It's a Sex Pistols cover band called Nakatsu Sex Pistols Metabo 37, Metabo meaning metabolic syndrome, a buzz word in Japan this year, referring to their middle-age spread, though it's a bit of a humble misnomer as they are all very lean. Kanji plays bass, which makes him Sid...and me Nancy Spungeon. After that he went to the radio station to do his radio show. He played Metallica.

The girls are back at school today, and quite happy. Amy is back in with her gang, and making plays and designing costumes and teaching everyone how to do the splits. School work is definitely a side issue. Lena seems to be happy too, but she doesn't talk about it much. She went swimming with Maia yesterday and was very happy to meet up with that friend again, and asked this morning for a promise that Maia will come on Friday as usual.

Erica is talking and dancing and singing! Constantly saying something, she's currently practicing high and low notes, so it's like she's singing. And she dances whenever any music starts up, head-banger style, plus air guitar - she must be taking cues from her father.

She's starting to use her hand after having the big bandage off for several days. She still points at it and stares at it when the small bandage is off. The main part of her palm and the fingers are pretty much healed, but still very pinky-red. The articles I read said that burns that heal within three weeks are usually fine, ones that take longer have complications. So the parts that healed fairly swiftly are okay, and that area to the left side is still problematic. There's a V-shaped scar running from her thumb onto her palm and up onto her index finger. This would have been the part of her hand that touched the iron with the greatest force, so perhaps it was more badly burned. In two areas (the point where the thumb pad meets the finger pad, and a point at the base of the thumb) the scar seems to have contracted, limiting her from fully extending her finger and thumb back, but all in all it's not too bad, she's using it well enough.

Well then I'm off to do my chores for the day - I've got to get a new licence, and get Erica's booster DPT, a head cleaner for the video camera, and get dinner cooked EARLY today so I can get Erica to bed and she won't fall asleep on the sofa again.