die with zero - bill perkins (2020)

i plow through six-and-a-half chapters before i give up the ghost. 

his tantalizing premise is lost in too much enthusiastic americospeak typical of single-idea self-help books. 

which is a total pity, because my friend is number 161 on the wait-list for the book and i score a skip-the-line copy. it shall have to skip back to the line. life is too short and i am too old for unsatisfying reads.

tantrum

impulse trip across the causeway to celebrate the restoration of the empty nest. we have coffee at the usual location and hear a child's angry scream somewhere out there. HOM and i look at each other in supreme insouciance. after two weeks of babysitting this is clearly someone else's kiddo.

incoherence

someone's wedding today where the officiant justice of the peace is inexplicably flippant and really tries much too hard to be entertaining. it's a wedding, sir! surely we can forgo the stand-up act?

the miracles at the namiya general store - higashino (2012)

slice-of-life meets bildungsroman meets time travel meets spare japanese esthetic in a series of interconnected entangled threads. refreshing and enchanting.

shoes

here's me twinning with A!

favorite bird

thankful for the friends to share this with. strange how we have wholeheartedly and gladly embraced this celebration which is as foreign to us as halloween.

and ten thousand beside

feeling just a tad weepy thinking about the stalled renovation up-ended schedules and tussles with the unhappy management committee and then remembering that:

• J2 and A are here! and A likes us!
• J1 and Y are here soon!
• we've entered the season of dinners to renew friendships and fellowship!
• we have the resources to have dinners and friends to rejoice with!

reno woes meet sweater-weather-autumn-feels.

the passengers on the hankyu line - arikawa (2025, trans.)

delightful and gentle slice-of-life vignettes to unwind each day with. as with the rest of this restful genre.

looking after baby

i babysit A for a couple hours all by my own self.

here is what we do on a loop:

totter up the steps and come down the slide

look for the turtles who are stubbornly hiding in the crevice

roll the ball to each other

fling the wine glass tokens and gather them back

all in 15 minutes.

the rest of the hours pass by verrrrry slowly.

i begin to realize that baby A is the impish tornado of thermodynamic energy that God sends to keep me from becoming fossilized in neatness and order.

word of the day

"no"

"no-no"

observations 2

the prevailing philosophy, it appears, is let-the-child-feed-herself.

unfortunately HOM and i subscribe to the keep-the-food-off-the-floor-and-the-grease-off-the-furniture school. our nerves forbearance and fortitude are tested. 

fortunately the perpetrator is charming.

paraphernalia & observations

baby A arrives with her portable high chair and foldable toilet seat. as mothers go, J2 is pretty chill. she doesn't frazzle about dirt she and speaks in a normal tone to the kiddo. it makes me wonder why some people use a higher tone double their words and idiotify their syntax with a child. he-lloooo! you see bird bird?

the journal of best practices - david finch (2012)

fascinating insight into the mind of a person with asperger's. with useful observations that apply to non-atypical relationships too. self-deprecating and kind and hopeful and clean. although he ultimately does border on pedantry, which is not unexpected considering the asperger's.

i find myself rooting for finch as the book progresses and i really hope he and his amazingly long suffering wife are still building their family together thirteen years after the book.

i also realize that we are all just on a continuum. he may have the diagnostic label but i have his quirks too, just perhaps not so incapacitatingly.

getting ready for A

here, meet our dinky lightweight single-hand foldable stroller, courtesy of another family on the used goods circuit carousell. as you can see, i am all for reusing and recycling. preferably cheaply.

the next step is to move all breakables above her estimated height.

around the table

communion service today, and i look around the sanctuary at the dear faces of the people. we were young lithe and strong together, as we are thickened and heavier and slower together now. our children were babies together, and they have babies of their own now. how deep is the father's love for us.

annual job

ze ol' fruit cake gets the first of his rum baths today. eventual yums.

halloween's over

and so the christmas music begins.

today we hear the strains of a jazzed up jingle bells adorning our grocery run at cold storage. it's enough to make you think of snow covered sidewalks and skaters on the pond. if this is not clockwork scheduling i don't know what is.