Am I a pink girl or not?

It is funny how the image you have of yourself changes as you age and those around you age. Now, that sounds like I've having a mid-life crisis in my 30s! But no, that isn't it. Here are some examples:

I used to buy very dull colours and never red. Red, though, has made it into my wardrobe. Primarily because a good friend whose judgement I trust told me I look good in red. I now love to wear it.

As a teenager I considered myself on the chunky side. I was never model-thin. However as I've aged and despite having had three babies my weight has remained fairly stable. Now I'm smaller than many others of similar age and experience. Getting regular exercise in the gym has helped too.

I wore dresses/skirts to school for twelve years, but rarely in my leisure hours.

I considered myself an introvert for a long time. Primarily because I am shy and because I compared myself to very extroverted people. But then had a psychology assessment and found out that I actually come out on the extroverted side of things, despite my shyness and a fairly strong introvert shadow!

Oh, and in university I was a non-coffee drinker. That changed pretty early on in my working life. How it did is a story for another day.

I used to hate jeans, but after the experience of being so large in pregnancy, I began to love jeans. They made me feel so thin!

There is one bastion that hasn't totally broken down yet. As a teenager I cast myself as a non-pink girl. In fact a non-girly girl. No lace, no pink, few dresses etc. 

Last year the skirt/dresses thing was challenged by a doctor (something I don't want to go into here). And now the pink thing is being challenged. I've had family members give me pink clothes as gifts. Last year I was given a pink night gown as a gift (when I spoke somewhere). I really needed it, though I wouldn't have chosen the colour. Swimwear shopping in Australia found me buying a pair of magenta swimming shorts (again, I would have chosen another colour, but these fitted me like nothing else did). Everyone in my family was shocked! I found it hard to find non-pink socks in Australia and underwear, well this isn't the place, but there have been pink changes there too. Not mentioning a couple of washing machine accidents . . . Then this book arrived in the mail:

From time to time you will have seen book reviews here for Book Sneeze. The deal is that they will send me a free book and I have to publish a book review for it. A cool way to get free books (no postage either). I get to choose the books and I chose this one, but I wasn't prepared for how pink it was. I'm almost embarrassed to get it out of the packet, that is how strongly I disassociate myself with pink. My boys know I don't like pink things for myself (don't mind it on others, especially a deep pink), so they tease me when we are shopping! 

What things have did you believe about yourself that have changed as you've aged?

How young is too young for kids to travel alone?

Those of you from Queensland will probably know about the current drama going on there in the news with a missing teenager's case. He's been missing since 2004. Last seen waiting on his own for a bus to take him Christmas shopping. I believe at least one bus drove past him without picking him up. The case is in the media's vision now because they've finally charged someone with his murder.

Add to that the story, this week, of a six year old who was catching a public bus to his mother's work after school, alone. The newspaper tells us he didn't hit that "please stop" button in time to get his stop. When he told the bus drive, he was yelled at him, put him off the bus 400m past his stop and kept going. At least that is how the media reported it (acknowledging that they often don't tell us all the facts). The controversy is of course at a bad time for the driver in the context of the above case. Thankfully for the family involved, his mum picked up on the situation quickly and was able to go and meet her son before any harm came to him.

Many questions arise, but one that caught my attention was, "How young is too young for kids to travel alone?"

I think that was the shocking thing about the teenager's disappearance. He was 13. Too old to be coddled by his mum accompanying him on the bus, one would think.

But how old is too young? And when do you stop accompanying them? Here in Japan we see lots of little kids travelling alone on trains and buses. And walking to and from school on their own. Something we'd never see in Australia.

Some kids at CAJ travel a long way to school on trains each day. I think that some Grade ones may travel 45 minutes or more on trains on their own. I remember speaking to one mum after the March 11 disasters about this. She was so glad the earthquake happened before school finished for the day or her kids might have been stuck on the trains on their own for a long time. The trains didn't start running again until the next day. I don't know what responsibility anyone took for any school kids who were on the trains. The "security" that parents purchase here is mobile phones. We assume we can contact them at any time to check where they are. However people got a big shock after the March 11 earthquake. Mobile phone networks went down and landline phones also weren't working for a while either. Scary!

We live very close to our kids' school, so it isn't a huge issue for us. A 300m walk is all they need to do. However there are few footpaths (US=side walks, UK=pavements – I think). And one intersection to cross that can be a bit tricky if you aren't paying attention. Nevertheless, we are going to allow our six y.o. walk to school on his own this year. His older brothers did last year. I'll probably still have to go and root them out of the playground after 4pm (kids stay and play as long as they can there), but it is going to be very strange to not go anywhere at 8.20 in the morning. Just say goodbye to them all at the front door. Strange indeed.

As for the dilemmas facing other parents about their kids walking, riding, or catching public transport alone to and from school. I'm glad I'm not in their shoes having to make these decisions. It is really challenging knowing where the line is. How do we start to let them go, know when to let them have more freedom? How can you decide when you don't know what dangers they may face? And you don't know what kind of adults they will meet. And you aren't sure how they'll react in various situations.

The amount of wisdom you need as a parent is immense and the amount of self-forgiveness you need if things go wrong has to be immense too.

Japan photo #16 solved

Yesterday I posted this photo, asking for guesses about it's usage. Many people came very close. Thanks for all the guesses!

It is a watermelon transporter. Given free to me by the checkout operator when I bought a watermelon last week. Many people ride or walk to buy groceries, so chucking the melon in the back of the car isn't an option. This makes it much easier to carry.

Japan photo #16

It's been a while since I gave you a photo mystery to solve. Can you guess what this is? Again, if you've lived here, please hold back and see what others suggest.

Impulse buying

We went impulse buying the other day. Furniture, actually. Unusual behaviour for missionaries. It is probably more in character was that we did it in one of our favourite second-hand furniture stores. And it wasn't totally impulsive. The problems we were trying to solve had been hanging around for a while, but the solutions were new.

Old bed

Firstly our two younger boys' bunk bed has been very rickety for a long time. They are at least 20 or more years old. We on the end of a long line of missionaries who've used it, and even a boarding school. We were fearful that the boy on top would topple through to the bottom one night as the base under the top mattress was breaking.

Add to that the growing amount of stuff that our middle son has been storing on his bed. He's been asking for his own room for some time and this is his solution to the "not possible" answer that he receives. All "important" stuff, including his current book, Bible and devotionals, stuffed toys, special Lego etc. Really a child just trying to have a space to call his own. It was rearranged at night time down one side of the bed, reducing the space he had for sleeping by about a third! He regularly thumped the wall with his feet at night-time. We've been thinking and talking about solutions to this, but none seemed ideal.

New bed, with adjacent shelves.

The idea of an adjacent tall shelf to the bed came up at morning tea on Friday, then we looked at how we could rearrange the bedroom (for about the fourth time since we moved in 13 months ago). It was a logical step to think about a new bed too. 

Opposite corner to above.

We found a much studier bed that has a greater space between the bunks plus a ladder that the previous bed didn't have. And a tall shelf. And the price wasn't too bad, as compared to what you'd pay for something new. And an adjacent tall shelf as something of a bedside table to keep special stuff on that you can access from bed. The boys are happy and we are too.

The rearranged room looks great and there is even room for a desk for our middle son in the future.

So our "impulse" buying went extremely well. And now we're starting to feel ready to start a new school year.

Complicated bad guy

I hooked the boys the other day when I revealed that I was reading a book that had a bad guy with amazing "powers". They kept checking back in with me to hear the latest adventures, and wondering how the bad guy would be "got" in the end.

This morning I was able to tell them that the bad guy got "got" last night. It turns out his vulnerability was silver. Ordinary weapons didn't hurt him a bit, but the silver bullet did it.

This isn't really the usual sort of story line in a book I'd be likely to read. That's partly why the boys were so intrigued. Why would mum read such an interesting book?

That was until they started to ask more and more questions about the book and realised that it was about more than just catching a bad guy. The book is called "The Eyre Affair" by Jasper Fforde and is actually very complex. Wikipedia says it is a '"genre-busting"^[5] novel spans numerous types of literature, with critics identifying aspects of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, satire, romance, and thriller.' I won't tell you the whole plot, you can check out a summary here.

And the boys are right, it isn't my usual type of book. I don't generally read fantasy or science fiction or satire. Neither do I read romance, but almost every mystery/thriller novel these days seems to have some romance in it somewhere. But I do find this author engaging. I've read some of his other books too. "The Fourth Bear" and "The Big Over Easy"

The book is set in 1985, but has an alternative history that includes wars never fought and political decisions that were never made (such as to not make jet air planes). It involves a lot of reference to classical literature such as Shakespeare, Austen and, of course, Jane Eyre. If I'd done a literature major I'd have understood a lot more of the references, but the story was good enough to carry me along regardless. Add to that a main character whose father popped in and out of her life in a time-travelling kind of way, who owned an early clone of a dodo bird, and had an uncle who invented a machine whereby you could be transported into a novel. It was a strange, but interesting mix.

The boys were shocked that the bad guy wasn't the focus of the novel, also that there was romance and three weddings (Jane's first attempt to marry Mr Rochester, being one). They had trouble understanding that I didn't know an awful lot about the bad guy, that I didn't know how he'd received his "powers".

Ah, I'm still ahead of the pack. I can still read books that they don't understand. Somehow that is very satisfying!

Our second camping adventure Part 2

Yesterday I told you of our first afternoon camping. We had a good night, our new air beds are great! The only issue was the plink plinking of water still dripping from the trees above. I'd also hoped that they'd turn out some of the "street lights" that illuminated the camp site, but it wasn't to be. It was so bright that we didn't need torches to go to the loo. We were all pretty tired, however, so it didn't take too long to drop off (I stuck a t-shirt over my eyes and was fine). The temperature was perfect, cool enough to enjoy the sleeping bags.

The next morning we awoke to a beautiful clear day and enjoyed bacon, eggs and charcoal BBQ toasted muffins. It was delicious. The camp site was much more level than our previous one, so it was less tiring to get around.

Once we'd finished eating and teeth cleaning we headed off for an exploratory hike up the river. Hoping that we'd be able to follow along the river bank. It wasn't to be, however. The river was deeper and had a stronger current than we thought. It also had steep banks on most of its journey. We stopped at a spot close to camp and tossed some rocks, then decided to explore a very vertical track up from the riverside. It went up a fair way, past some abandoned huts that were about to fall off the mountainside to the river below. I tried not to think about what would happen to any of us if we stumbled or fell. Compared to the tracks we climbed two weeks earlier, this was a dangerous goat track with nothing between us and and very steep incline. 

For some reason unknown to anyone, our middle son decided he didn't want to go anywhere except back to camp. He didn't immediately follow us up the track, but stayed on the rocks next to the river. I was hoping he'd change his mind soon and join us, but he is a stubborn lad and could easily derail our exploration. If there was a reason, it was possibly that he didn't like it that we didn't really know where we were going. Uncertainty is an issue for him. But soon he became very certain that he wanted to be with us afterall. He spotted a black snake. I've rarely seen him change his mind so quickly. I'd not be surprised if that weren't a divine intervention, either!

Sleepy village with high electric fences protecting their crops!

Not too long into our climb we found a road. This presented us with a number of options to proceed and none seemed clear. In fact that was the pattern for the next couple of hours. We knew approximately where we were and where we wanted to go, but there just didn't seem to be an optimal route to get there. Following the river was out, the only other option involved going up steep inclines! 

We soon stumbled on a small sleepy village. And, after several mis-turns, we ended up at the riverside again, a little bit upstream. It turned out to be a great place to wade and our boys enjoyed watching two people start a kayak journey down river.

From there we decided to walk back to camp along the road, which, unfortunately was a long way above the river. To get "home" we had to walk up to the road, along it a short way and then down the path we'd arrived on. One bonus of this was being able to pick up one thing we'd accidentally left in the car – the second cricket bat. 

Compare the river level with the road we had to climb back up to to get back to camp, which was at the river level!

On our way back into camp we ran into someone who I know from CAJ. His daughter is in our eldest son's class. He works for Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC - though I think they've recently changed their name). He was at the camp site with a bunch of Tokyo uni students. We were to see more of them later in the day.

Back at the tent we all kind-of collapsed a little bit. Unfortunately the boys ended up being way too silly inside the tent and I sent the 12 y.o. away. He'd set a goal to memorise a few verses for his 1 John memorisation, so I sent him away with his Bible. It turns out he found a great spot to work. He sat next to the river and had some lovely down-time. Not only did he get the verses memorised, he came back recharged after some time alone.

CCC students

After lunch we had some SQUIRT time, reading on our beds (or in his chair, in the case of David) and then headed off to the river again. This time in a more quiet spot close to camp, where the boys could stand waist/thigh deep in the current fairly safely. What made it more fun was that the CCC group beat us there and were having water fights.

It started raining not too long after we'd arrived, but that wasn't too bad because the water was cool enough to be difficult to play in for any length of time. The rain didn't last long and when we got back to the tent we decided to play cricket. Something we ended up doing on and off for the rest of the afternoon! One huge pro for this camp site was having a level open area next to our tent for playing on.

A huge social event was getting the fire going again (something that worked more smoothly this time, David is really getting the hang of it). Whenever the boys got bored, another round of cricket erupted. When that got boring, we taught them French cricket. Occasionally the frisbee, but cricket really reigned over the day.

Dinner was hot dogs (cooked on skewers, so fun!), followed by Doughboys/Twisties (whatever you call them: a dough-type mixture on skewers) and marshmallows. The whole meal took hours to cook and eat. One thing about camping, it is difficult to keep left-overs. And I've realised that I rarely cook just enough for five. I think we usually we have enough for seven-nine people. Anyway, we ended up eating more than we usually would!

After dinner we all went and took our Japanese baths and nearly had the boys in bed when we realised that there was going to be a bonfire in the cleared area. An extra bonus! So the boys came out of the tent and we sat around and watched the live entertainment. It was the CCC group, who played games, then sang and had a short devotional time. Our boys gradually drifted off to bed; leaving David and I with time to sit in the dimness and listen to our Japanese Christian brothers and sisters sing praises to God. It's a wonderful memory.

The next morning we packed up our tent. We'd promised the boys another quick game of cricket, but found that we'd been going slower than we did last time at packing up. Maybe we'd relaxed into camping-time! So, they missed out on that one. 

All the kids must have been quite tired. We had some nasty behaviour during packing-up and the first half of our drive home. Then, mercifully, two of them fell asleep and the other one put away his troubles and sat quietly, humming along to the Lion King soundtrack we had playing. 

It needs to be noted here that very rarely will our 12 y.o. fall asleep during the day these days. But he has done so at the end of both camping trips. Maybe we've got something here? A way to really wear him out? That elusive "something" is what we've been searching for all his life and it becomes more and more elusive as he gets older.

Now we're back. All the camping gear is packed away and we're looking at where our adventures will take us next time. The next window of opportunity is in November, when CAJ has a long weekend for Thanksgiving. It'll be too cool to play in rivers, so what will we do?