i don't know if i'll post much more, but i do hope i can. i cannot share any photos, this computer has very little memory. i tried to get a memory stick, or flash drive, or, whatever, but as you can probably guess (since i don't even know what i'm trying to talk about) that didn't work out. i think i can blog from my iphone, and might be able to share pictures from there from time to time, but it's a real PITA to type on the phone.

i can't tell if rainy season is over yet. we've had a pretty cloudy, but not very rainy, tsuyu. the past couple of weeks have had more rain than the previous how many ever there were....i think rainy season was officially declared for kyushu on june 2nd this year. still waiting for it to end....there are/were a few typhoons south of us making the weather very interesting here for us for the past few days. but, i'm ready for a sunny summer!

i was going to title this, 'adventure in motherhood', but maybe that's too cliche.  eh, what do i know about cliche??

anyway, this morning a friend called me to offer suggestions about how to get hiro to do his homework.  while talking with her i found that i have a very strong opinion (philosophy??) about homework for small children.  i'm not the only one with these struggles, either!  but i also realized something during our conversation:  i'm a crap mother!  i just want him to do it, get it done, don't complain about it, just fucking do it already!!  where i should probably spend more time with him, find out what he's doing, keep him on track.  the problem with this is it's BORING, and also he expects me to just tell him the answers, and i can't do that!

anyway, i was left with googling solutions, which just told me that i fucked up forever and i'll be lucky he graduates junior high, forget high school!  and adulthood is gonna be HARD.  *sigh*  so, i did what any sane person would, i goofed off on facebook.  heh.  i was lying on the floor with the macbook air (as you do.  you mean you don't?  must be me, then) when i noticed a musty odor.  hm.  rainy season was declared here in northern kyushu, maybe last week, but it has yet to rain since then.  but, i know the most humid and moldy time is coming and that musty smell told me something.  it told me to clean all the things!  this is my biggest problem.  i will do the absolute bare minimum until one day WHAM!, i start cleaning and can't seem to stop.  however, i really don't want a moldy, smelly house, so it's better to get these things done, anyway.

so, i started vacuuming, and started in the genkan because that's where you start.  i noticed that the floor needed to be mopped, so i took up the hallway carpet, and the little carpet mats (aside:  the dog was (most likely) hit by a car before he was found, and he will have an injury to his shoulder all his life.  little running dog plus wooden floors do not mix, esp. if the dog has an injured leg.  so, yoshi bought a lot of little carpet mats, but they don't quite do the job so we have a few runners and a big carpet-like mat in the living room.  aside finished.)  i put the mats in the bathroom and the hall carpet on the laundry poles outside.  i finished vacuuming and then mopped the genkan and front hall.  then it was on to the living room.

vacuum vacuum vacuum.  put mats in the bath, runners outside.  the big carpet mat thing is washable, but our washing machine is from yoshi's bachelor days and just isn't big enough, so i took it upstairs and kinda waved it around weakly, then hung it over the balcony.  i tried to get as much of the surface facing the sun, then anchored it with the futon clamps.  back downstairs i vacuumed some more, then started washing carpet mats.  i had to take off my shirt to keep it from getting wet (sexay!) and washed them all by hand.  so dirty.  and i can't tell you how much crap was under the main carpet mat thing, i don't think we've properly vacuumed under it since it was put down last winter!  ew.

so, i finished the mats and put my shirt on, and then hung most of them outside.  a few were hung in the bathroom and then i mopped again.  i'm pretty sure the moldy smell was coming from a mat underneath the bookshelf that holds all our dvds, so i pulled that out and threw it in the wash with a bunch of towels (with chlorine bleach!) and hopefully that will be taken care of.

by the time i finished, it was after 1 and i had to figure out lunch.  and what to do with myself before the bus came back.  i should have gone swimming, but i was planning on taking hiro to the pool for a swimming lesson.  instead i went out to get a few things for dinner and got myself a cheeseburger, then went home just in time for the bus.

i had one english lesson today, and then i made up a schedule for the kids (and me).  i really hope this will help with the homework problem.  i am also going to go to the school tomorrow morning, with hiro, to talk to his teacher so she can tell me what his homework usually is.  tonight he was confused and didn't know what to do!  the problem was, there were 10 kanji 'sentences' in the drill book, but only 8 columns on his homework worksheet!  ugh!  so, anyway, i am going to work on this so hiro won't be a failure in life.

i have recently been composing blog posts in my head (not something i've been doing for the past few months), but once i get to the computer i find that i have nothing to say. there's nothing like driving to get the creative juices flowing, i guess. or wrassling with three small children in the shower. (see what i mean?! that just sounds all wrong, bur really, it's not!! just regular bath time trying to get reluctant children to wash their hair.) i really haven't been doing much (as per usual) although i did take advantage to the unexpected sunny morning yesterday and emptied the dirty laundry basket. everything got washed and dried (though not put away. yes, we have the laundry mountain of doom. even frodo wouldn't take this thing on. i think i need to sail away to the west...or maybe east, that would be better....) the kids and i went to visit kuri and her pinglet on sunday, leaving yoshi alone on father's day. lucky him. well, he also had a neighborhood meeting to go to so, yeah. i made a chocolate cake which worked really well as a threat on the way, but sadly not so much on the way home. two out of three kids fell asleep, though, and that's always a bonus.

on monday blah blah blah (that actually means i can't remember monday and can't be bothered to). yesterday i made chocolate chip cookies and once again they fell flat. i am feeling flat. stupid rainy season. except for the sunny day yesterday, thanks for that. but my hydrangea out front is wilting, that's how much rain we've had in our part of japan. i know that people enjoy sunny weather (i do too!!) but the rain is important and if you think about it, most of the rain in rainy season fills up lakes and reservoirs and we need those, yeah. plus all the rain supposedly washes away suzumebatchi newly formed nests and thus predicts less in the fall, which is good for me because they scare the hell out of me *and* i have three small children to worry about.

i will be going to osaka next month for a meeting. sadly it's the same day as the kindergarten's music festival but that's why cameras and video cameras were invented! hopefully i'll be able to teach yoshi how to use the video setting on my camera....

ok, tommy is rolling on the floor repeating, 'mommy, why we not going?!' and it's only going to get louder and louder, so i had better go to the store.

it rained really hard today. good thing we went to the mall with friends. fun day, but i'm very tired now.

yesterday it didn't rain at all. that was a lovely break! i do like rain, but a whole day without it is nice.

last night it started raining again, so we know we're still in the middle of rainy season. keep it coming! it looks like it will rain for the next five days or so. already hiro was out splashing in puddles this morning, so we'll see if all the rain will drive us crazy! and the laundry! that part sucks.