Ends With a Bang

I filling Sundays up with fun stuff with the kids, AWAY from the house and its housework!

Today we started the day with a visit to Katy and the kids in Kumini. It's a long drive but it was fun, we had the iPod on and were dancing and singing in the car, aka floating disco aka mobile karaoke box. After a morning of balls and bubbles and bread and babies we left them to the unenviable job of getting all those infants off to sleep and took off to the beach.

Official Beach Season doesn't start until July, which means a)free parking (yay) b)no showers (boo) and c)no ice cream stand (hmm). Despite the absolutely perfect beach weather there were only a few other families there, serious beach-goers with suntans and no flotation devices. Frequency of beach visits seems to be in inverse proportion to the amount of STUFF deemed necessary for a beach visit - those who go once a year take a van-load of gear, including a whole barbecue set, ten-course meal, shade tent, blow-up boat, several changes of clothes and obligatory watermelon to smash to bits. Regulars bring themselves and togs.

I'm aiming this year to fall somewhere in-between, leaning towards regularity, although I've already missed several fine weekends. I loved every bit of it and vowed to come back every weekend, with a snorkel, one towel between us, no food, bottled water, no money, no cameras or other valuables, a few rings, a mat but no tent, and DECENT SHOES. (see below)

Erica slept on the way home, as expected. She was out like a light before we even got out of the carpark. We drove to a nearby soba stand and had an ice-cream each, then I stopped for a coffee and took the kids to a park for a play. Erica woke up just in time.

It was on the way back from the park heading towards home that I rear-ended the car ahead at the lights. We were practically motionless, so no injuries (despite Lena not being properly in her seat-belt). The light went green, and I began to move forward, then saw that the car ahead was not moving or had stopped again, so I went to stop, but I seem to have slipped off the break onto the accelerator with the stupid 100yen shop JANDALS that I was still wearing.

It's amazing how much damage you can do to a bumper at 5kmph and 50m. Of course we had to stop, and apologize and fluff around. I wish I could just take their number and swan off home, honestly I have every intention of paying! But we had to wait for the Police Emergency Response Vehicle (PERV) to arrive, and show our licences, and say what happened, and go back to the road and do a full reconstruction. I called Kanji, who called Jiichan, who called Aunty Toyoko. You see, the car belongs to the service station company, so it's their insurance company who is involved, so Jiichan came and Toyoko came, and we all stood by the road dotting i's and crossing t's, while the kids grew increasingly impatient and Erica started to cry.

Once it was all over and we were allowed to go, Amy has a little bit of an existential anxiety attack. Why, she asked, did something bad always have to happen? Should she make something bad happen at the beginning of a good day, just to get it over and done with, so she wouldn't have to spend all of her good day anticipating the inevitable bad thing? What do you say to a statement like that?? I said to not mess with fate by inventing more bad stuff to happen, cos fate might throw the bad stuff it had in mind for us at us anyway, then we'd have double bad stuff. I also tried to teach her 'glass half full/half empty' lesson, and let's look at what went right today!

So I went and bought hamburger fixings at the supermarket, and we went home and watched the American Idol final while eating hamburgers and home-made ice cream. Amy was going for Kris, and Lena and I were going for Adam, but she changed her mind after watching my supremely dorky 'Go Adam' cheer. Good. I already knew Kris was going to win, so I wanted her on Team Kris! They were so thrilled when he won! We finally got to bed, happy again after a hectic day!