Frogs and trees...

I felt like something sweet after dinner.

j remembered the "Country ma'am" biscuit stash in his bag from when we went camping months ago and kindly offered them up for us to eat, as long as I hadn't already gotten in to them. Lucky for me I am good at keeping my hands off what I perceive to be other people's chocolates/sweets so I hadnt touched them:)

He brought them downstairs and we dished out one each. K, L and I ate ours in a flash. J's was still sitting on the table, the rest of us eying it off....when he finally went to eat it, the three of us were just like pavlov's mutt. J just laughed and said "蛙の子は蛙ね"

I nodded, yep, "the leaves never fall far from the tree" ??

I rephrased....." the acorn never falls far from the tree" ?????

So I googled "The APPLE never falls far from the tree"

Hahaha, at least I knew it was something to do with trees;-)

advance apologies to everyone I see this summer.

I bought some deoderant at costco, a three pack, "Lady Speed" or some other crack name like that.

I don't really like the american stuff, ttyt, but desperate times (kuso-atsui days) call for desperate measures.

I was on skype to my mum in the afternoon after we got back from costcos.

L was trying to climb the stairs, getting into EVERYTHING as he (and K still) do whenever I am on the phone/skype.

L got into my deoderant three pack.

I have vague memories of taking the deoderant off him before he bolted for the stairs (I of course followed and saved him from a bad superman impersonation attempt)

I can't remember what I did with said deoderant though.

I have searched the house high and low, and can't find the three pack ;(

I wont be buying another pack, coz J insists it must be SOMEWHERE (he is right)

But until I find it (going on 4 days now aarrggh) I am a stinky sweaty mess.

So apologies to anyone I pass by or meet this summer -- I won't be offended if you stay your distance and hold your nose.

eeewwwww!

now I am really loosing it

Just realised that I am now posting my recipes and daily dinners here rather than on my food blog.

ooops.

Sorry for the boring interlude of "we ate this". Will return to regular programming soon with the post about my 33week check up that has been sitting as a draft all week.....

last minute ingredients

just wasting a few minutes while Miitsuketa! is on and K is happy watching. Once it is finished I am going to drag her out to the shop 3mins up the road to grab some atsu-age for our Zucchini Champuru tonight. I am soooooo bad, always forgetting half the ingredients, so we are lucky that within 5 mins walk, there are 3 supermarkets that I can go to (ranging in size). I usually end up going to the closest one which is like a small conbini type. Pretty soon they will know me by name. The other day I had to use up all 3 supermarkets as I forgot stuff 2 times, and another time went back to get ice blocks after dinner!!

I took K out on a lunch date today, just the 2 of us!! We had to take the car down for a service in the morning, and it wasn't finished until 11:30am, so I thought it would be much easier just to swing past ye ol' family restaurant for lunch than go home and bother making anything. K was really good, we sat at opposite sides of the table - usually I sit beside her, so I think she felt really grown up (she made me sit on the other side of the table btw! lol)It has been ages since I have been to Saizeria, and I have to say this time may be the last for a while.. very average (although super cheap) but too greasy - I felt a bit blaaa afterwards.

Tonight's dinner is going to be "wa":
salmon
rice
wakame miso soup (K's favourite)
niku-jaga and
zucchini champuru.

Last night J had drinks after work, so K and I had a quiet easy dinner (mine was baked beans on toast! hers was vege soup with potatos) and monday night was left over quiche from when lunch (had friend over) so this is the first meal I am cooking all week, lol!

Right, tv is about to finish (sings at top of voice...."Ai no tamago!") so gotta get K in some pants (she is nappy only) and go for our mini walk.

buttons

This morning has been spent with K pulling out EVERY piece of clothing she owns and putting them on, and taking them off 100times. I can't see the floor anymore.

K is now intently doing up her buttons - a little trick she picked up around Monday this week.Seems she has a favourite jumper to practise on - must be easy buttons.

too cute.

We skipped playgroup today because I have been feeling very hayfevery....I thought it had gone away, as I hadn't had a bad time with it since I got pregnant with K, but it seems to be back with a vengance this year. The mornings and nights are still quite cool, so I think that makes it worse for me too. So far I have spent the morning watching Season 4 Grey's Anatomy online....maybe just one more after this....

I am very glad that Monday was a big clean up day - a friend invited themselves over yesterday for lunch and since I had spent Mon and then Tues cleaning the house, all I needed to do on Wed morning was a quick sink shine and everything was a-o-k for visitors. Made up a lasagna, and added about 2 carrots and an onion and some kidney beans to the mix too (you know, some nutrition for K!?) and it actually turned out very yummy if I do say so myself. I think it may become my new family recipe.

Silly mummy moment- after a quick trip to the supermarket yesterday morning to get some stuff to make a side salad, I now have a whole cabbage to somehow use up today/tomorrow! Soooooo thought it was a lettuce I grabbed, lol!

Right, one more more GA then some clean up and cabbage cooking!

random ramblings

found my keitai. had lost it for about, oh, 4 days. I had it on manner mode, the one that doesn't even vibrate when it rings or emails come in, as I sometimes get 1-giri calls in the middle of the night, or e-mails from donkey hote with their daily specials (signed up for it when we lived across the road from a donkey, and used to do our daily bread and milk shop there....can't remember how to un-subscribe, haha). so the phone was on total silent mode. So I couldnt find it anywhere...until I went to do a fleecy jumper load in the wash, and there is was in the pocket!

we are very lucky we didn't burn the entire apartment block down. when K goes to bed, we use a bed lamp, and turn it off after reading time is over, but before she is asleep. the lamp always gets really hot, so I am pretty careful about it, but somehow the other night it must have gotten moved so that it was facing the curtains. actually, it must have been touching the curtains. because we now have gaping hole in the curtain where the light bulb burnt through. I didn't even realise until the NEXT NIGHT!! we are just SO SO SO lucky that it didn't start a fire. J says its because we bought curtains that are fire-resistant. I am just sick to the stomach thinking about how close we were to a serious disaster.

J is away for work, so I gave myself a designated day off today (I think Monday's are going to become the new Sunday for me!) and slobbed around most of the day. Dinner for me was a quick stir fry of all the left over veges, that turned out a bit champuru like. It was SO nice, and simple! K's dinner was a vege pasta, with pumpkin, carrot and tofu puree for the sauce, with chopped up eggplant, asparagus, zucchini and sweet potato. She lapped it up too.

I realised that lately I have been neglecting R. We haven't had the one-on-one time so much,. So I have decided that we are going to designate at least one time each day for R-chan play. K loves plying with her, so it will be good for both of them, and me too I think.

set myself a few mini-goals of things to do this week, while J is away. K's naps are all over the place at the mo, and it takes an hour to get her settled down (we have started "quiet time" as lead up to her sleeping, but it still takes her an hour to get quiet, before she blows her top, screams for a few mins then falls asleep in sheer exhaustion. this is usually about 2:30pm if we are home. so even if I only let her sleep for an hour, then it means that she is not ready for bed again until after 9pm. tonight it was after 10pm when she finally closed those little eyes. no screaming or anything, just.....awake until then. sigh. so on a normal day. it really means that the only time I have to do things without interruption are the 1hour she is asleep during the day (that is OBVIOUSLY Grey's Anatomy time) or after she goes to sleep, which is the only time I get to see my husband. so while he is away, Ithought I could catch up on some outstanding projects, but it seems I am blogging instead (which is only really to try to stop myself from watching more GA). Now I can't be arsed doing anything of consequence, since Ainori starts toon too....so I eat a piece of cake* and drink a cuppa instead. oh well, will get onto that stuff tomorrow night I guess...

cake, mentioned in * above. I shouldn't be eating any more cake. somehow the 2 or 3 extra kilos that managed to fly back with me from Oz have morphed into another 2 or 3. they must go. they need to go. If only there wasn't all this yummy sweet stuff waiting for me to eat it. but I have taken a small step - I am now drinking my tea SUGARFREE!! I used to take it white with 2 (TWO!!) now I am only white. gotta start somewhere. yay for me.

playgroup tomorrow. this time I have bread in the house (how is THAT for planning) so we can make sandwhiches to take for lunch, rather than the usual last minute buy up at the conbini on the way to the car. yes, am still going by car. We have been on the train, and K has been suprisingly good, but I am enjoying the ease of the car for now. I think that the main thing that is stopping me from training it is that when I change trains, I have to lug the pram up and over the overhead pass to get to the other side of the train line. nope, can't be arsed with that one yet. and I am worried that if I go by train, I will end up shopping before we head home, and buy more crap I don't need, just because K is (should be) asleep in the stroller so I have time to LOOK, haha!

playdate and mummy's purse

I managed to get a teeeeny-tiny amount of housework done this morning before we were out the door on our way to a play date. K was packed up with salmon and tuna/mayo sushi rolls (one of each) that I whipped up with a pack of microwave rice (naughty mummy!?!?). Forgot to take anything for me (oops). So came home to make a bit of cheese on toast, only to find the cheese sorta mouldy (that white furry type, only on some of it)...ssssh, don't tell the fridge police (a.k.a. J) about that one.

So, back to this morning....a bit of a struggle trying to get K into the stroller to go to the train station, but I even left home 5mins earlier than needed to account for this! So we made the train, and arrived at our playdate on time. After some playing and some lunch, K was relatively easily bribed back into the stroller with a drink of milk (loves her milk, this one). She was getting sleepy, so I thought I would spend a bit of time looking at the shops, and maybe even get something different for dinner at the nice supermarket with some foreign stuff in it. I loaded up my basket with taglatelli and ravioli, Time-outs (which I was craving last night, but J came back from local 7-11 with a "crunky", which did the job, I admit, and some pumpkin kit-kats, for Halloween I guess - they even taste nicer than it sounds, too!) and a few other carefully thought out items and just as I put the basket down at the checkout and reached into my bag, I realised that I had forgotten my purse!!!! Nooooooooooooo! So I had to leave all my precious goodies at the checkout (I waved them goodbye, seriously!) and come home empty handed. Then when I scanned through the ticket gate at my train station, I saw that I had only 40yen left on my passmo!! And my keitai had died before I even got ON the train this morning. I wonder what would have happened if my passmo had run out before I got home? I had no money, and no keitai. Would we have ever gotten home????

So now I am gonna sit on the sofa for a bit and reflect on just how lucky I am to be back in my own house.....and chomp through a few pumpkin kit-kats, while dreaming of time-outs.

This is my first post from my computer for a while - after our busy week last week, I have hardly been on the computer to check (or reply to) e-mails, let alone blogs. And both J and I crashed early over the weekend.....actually, an afternoon nap would be nice too...shame K woke up as soon as we got home this afternoon.

just me then?

so, am I the only one on the planet who didn't know (think about it) that putting boiled up tomatoes in 90deg water in blender is not a good idea? The kitchen looks like I just took part in a massacre, and am blending up the body pieces. Hope we don't have any visitors today.... I may be taken away in the back of a paddy van if I can't get this cleaned up - it's ALL over the place, hehe.

so guess what K's lunch is today..... tomato sauce pasta (scraped off the walls, floors, sink, my ear, R's tail....)

I've got gas

I was just about to ring the gas company to abuse them, after finding a postcard in the letter box today reminding me to pay for the last 2 months worth of gas bills. I was going to abuse them and say "but how can I pay when I never got the bills in the first place"....luckily I did a quick flick through the bills folder before I rang them. I found not only 2 outstanding gas bills, but also an electricity bill just waiting for it's turn too. Oops. I thought it was strange that I didn't have to pay many bills last month - turns out it was only coz I was hiding the unpaid bills in amongst the paid ones. Must have been when I was overzealously cleaning for my 2 visitors. haha.

And I was telling J that he was loosing it (after the key incident last weekend). I need to be more on-the-ball myself, it seems - and more careful with sorting the mail (flash back to the Losing Kei saga too!!) How long can you blame it all on mummy-brain again?

silly mummy returns

we have had a few silly mummy moments this week

this morning K, R and I (that's me, not someone named "I") went for a big walk down by the river. It's a lovely day, and since we were all up and about early, I thought a nice walk would do us wonders. I do feel energized now, I must say. I really should be more active in the mornings. anyway, after our walk, we took R home while K and I hit the shops (just the supermarket) and the bank. I grabbed a 5000yen note that was sitting by the phone and popped it into my pocket as I ran out the door. K was in the stroller, so I carried her down the stairs (1 flight only) and we set off down the street. I was a block away from home when I put my hand in my pocket - and realised there was nothing in there. I checked the other pockets - but no dosh. OMG. I tried to think back - did I actually grab the note or not? Did I put it in my purse? But no,I definitely put it in my pocket. We turned back for home, my eyes peeled to the ground for a flying 5-thou note. We were only a block away, if I dropped it somewhere, it would still be there, surely? I hoped. As luck would have it, I found it sitting happily on the middle stair outside our apartment. It must have fallen out when I was carrying K in the stroller down the stairs. Man what a big relief! Thank goodness that was just a little "silly mummy".

The best silly mummy moment I had this week, was on Tuesday. The PILs were on their way to the airport, leaving for a holiday in Hawaii, when I got a phone call to say that their neighbours rang them to tell them that the garage door had been left open! So I drove over (about 1.5hours) to close their garage door. FIL left a message on my phone to go in and say thank you to the neighbours for letting us know, and if possible give them a small gift. No worries. So I rock up to the nextdoor neighbours, N-san. They haven't seen K for a while, so they are all goo-gaa over her for a bit, then I say "thanks for letting us know about the garage and here is some biccies for you". N-san asks if I am sure it was them that told about the garage - I tell her, "yes, I got a message from FIL. It was probably your mother who rang him" She didn't sound convinced, but took the biccies anyway. We chat some more, then as I turn to go, she asks once more "are you sure it was us? We were all up pretty late this morning" so I check the message on my phone, just to assure her.......and wouldn't you know it, IT WASNT THEM! FIL's message goes "The neighbours, N-san, no, not N-san, but M-san rang us!"

I was mortified! I had to take back the biscuits, apologise and then go to the next house to say thank you. I haven't told J about this little faux pax - I think this one can probably remain our little secret, lol! How embarrassing.

P.S. I just remembered another bit of a moment - we had some friends drop over unexpectedly on Sunday afternoon. We had been away all weekend, and were eating at sushi-ro (sushi train) when they rang to ask if they could drop over, they only live about 20mins away by bike, so we said, sure! and rushed home and tried to clean up a bit (thank goodness it wasn't too bad) and in my cleaning frenzy, I shoved the potatoes, onions and garlic all into a tuperware container, out of the way. Well, the other night I pulled out the potatoes to make K some mashed potatoes, and when I tried a bite, I thought it tasted a bit wierd - I think the garlic had seeped into the potatoes with them all sitting in the same tupperware! hehe.
So I made fried potatoes for my dinner last night (man they were delish and very garlicy!!) But tonight I wanted to make niku-jaga. I wonder if the garlic flavoured potatoes will be ok to use or not? hmm? silly mummy!lol.

silly mummy

went for a morning walk to the local park so K could have a play before heading off to the supermarket/department store about 30mins walk away, just for something to do!! (we have other super/depato about 5mins walk away)

probably couldn't have picked a hotter day for it, lol. anyway, K fell asleep in the stroller on the walk over there, and woke up after I had been shopping around for new socks (for me), t-shirts for K and some other random stuff that I didn't need, but ended up throwing in the shopping basket anyway. When she woke up, she tried to take her teevas off, so I took them off her, gave her a drink and a senbei to keep her occupied while I finished shopping. Went to go change her nappy after we had paid, and when I went to pull the nappy out of her bag, I realised that there were no teevas anywhere!! She only had the teevas for 2 days and I had lost them already?!?! man! but I thought calmly through what I had done, and went back to where I took the shoes off her and gave her a drink ,and there they were, sitting in the middle of one of the aisles waiting for me!! "silly mummy"!!

then I got home to fing a letter from the gas company, hand addressed. thought I was in the sh*t again...opened it to find a letter telling me that I had paid the SAME BILL twice, so they were going to refund the money. Again, "silly mummy"!!

I thought I had lost it when I had pregnancy brain, but I seem to be getting much much worse every day. .... however, I now know all the words for several Japanese kids songs!