ruthful

I am enjoying the perfect dog nap. Cozy and furry with that friendly dog aroma settling around me like a blanket. Breathe in. Breathe out.

For a long drowsy moment it does not matter that I seem to have lost my life’s focus, or that I am desperately trying to knit the future together before I fall into it. For now, my canine friend is content to lie with his back to my belly and his warm muzzle on my forearm. Breathe in. Breathe out.

The rain falls. The refrigerator hums. The clock ticks. The list of things that must get done has worked its way down between the cushions of the couch. Breathe in. Breathe out.

The cool air reaches my nose through the filter of fur. Reality must first make its way through the beast protecting me, lying across my threshold. My friend softens the onslaught and guards the door. Gazing in, and finally gazing out, I leave the warmth, find the list and begin.

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So we’ve lived here in Tokyo for almost a year… hasn’t it been a year yet? Sometimes it feels like a lifetime. I guess I’m in a contrary mood, grumping about this inconvenience or that, although, to be sure, we don’t have it so bad. Food, shelter, chocolate; we have all the neccessities of life here. And now, to add to our luxuries, we have a toaster to boot. We did without a toaster for ten months and now we have one. A salvage item from another family relocating back to the States. And now, we no longer have to sing for our toast.

Up to this time, we toasted the bread slices in the little oven grill under the gas burners built into our tiny kitchen countertop… and if you didn’t sing while those bread slices were toasting, it was inevitable that during the hurly-burly of morning scamperings, you would forget the bread was in there and before you knew it, your breakfast was toast. Carbonized toast, that no amount of butter or jam could possibly save. The singing reminded you, and anyone else who had the misfortune to be listening, that you were attempting to make toast and you didn’t want to forget what you were dong.

Now, when we open up our pathetically small loaves of presliced-six-slices-to-a-bag-no-heel bread and pop one of those slices into our toaster, it actually reappears a decent shade of brown instead of black as volcanic soil. And we don’t have to put up with someone’s butchered version of a Broadway musical number… “I’m sing’in for my toast, Just sing’in for my toast, ‘Cause carbonized bread ain’t what I love the most…” There are worse ones, believe me. Although it was sort of nice hearing any kind of singing in the morning.

So convenient, those toasters. Now, I suppose I can more easily put up with the other inconveniences… no central heating, no car, no shoes in my size, biking in the rain and frequently intense wind, sleeping on the floor and, the most heart-breaking inconvenience of all… never being able to find decent cheese. Mmmm… cheese. I miss my cheese. Guess it’s getting late. Time to curl up on the floor in a little furry ball and go to sleep. Next year is the Year of the Rat. Maybe then we’ll get some decent cheese.

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If I were to ask anyone, “Which do you consider to be more dangerous, a spider or an earthquake?” they would most probably answer, “An earthquake.” Then they would avoid any further conversation with me because only a loopy person would ask such a silly question.

Yesterday, my ten-year old daughter, (the bug-loving, future herpetologist), found a dead spider. (I believe it was the one I had previously dispatched of with a fly swatter.) She came waltzing into the kitchen with the spider carefully tied onto the end of a thin string. “It’s a dead Jumping Spider!” she happily announces. Even though it is dead and all curled up, she can still indentify one of her beloved arachnids.

Later, as I head upstairs, I see her on a chair in her big sister’s room, the string in her hand, reaching up to the top of the door frame. “What are you up to?” I ask. She explains that she is doing something fun with the spider. Hmm. Fun for her; maybe not so fun for her sister. Still, practical jokes are an old family tradition, so I let her be.

Later, sister Laura gets home and heads up to her room. We hear a shriek and Elsa giggles triumphantly. Big sister pummels little sister who is still laughing, but she is forced to remove her offending critter from the doorway. It later appears inside her sister’s computer. Another pounding. This time the spider has to go.

Spiders are anathema to my fifteen year old. Even if the spider is the size of an ant, the reaction is always the same; revulsion, fear and an inability to deal with this unspeakable danger. She simply cannot abide spiders.

About an hour after the spider incident, an earthquake struck. The house shivered and rolled a bit and then it stopped. “Earthquakes are fun,” muses Laura. “I like to sit on my bed and feel them rolling me around.” I’m thinking, “Um, earthquakes are much more dangerous than spiders,” but I know it’s useless to point out such an obvious thing to a teen who is terrified off her tuffet whenever she sees eight legs.

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