Finally completed and framed - a piece of Australia

What do you think of this? It was in the planning for ten years and it is finally completed. Most of my cross-stitch I give away, but this one is for our Japan home - a reminder of our passport country. The verse is the first verse of the Australian national anthem and the flowers are many of the best loved flowers in Australia.

North Korean Testimony | The Lausanne Global Conversation

Wow, this one has me in tears. An inspiring and emotional testimony from a young North Korean student. Truth - North Korean Testimony | The Lausanne Global Conversation

Identifying with Margaret Houlihan

We've been watching M*ASH recently. It provides a much needed comic relief some evenings and a good excuse to sit down and do nothing for a bit. My apologies if you've never seen it, I'll assume today that you know what I'm talking about. If you don't, then I do recommend that you get your hands on an episode and try it out, it is timeless.

The other night we watched an interesting episode where the 4077 did an exchange with another unit. Hawkeye and a nurse switched places for a few days with another doctor and nurse. The nurse turned out to be Lorraine, a good childhood friend of Margaret Houlihan. It is a bit shocking when first Margaret "loves" Lorraine, then turns on her and "hates" her. Lorraine confronts Margaret, asking why she's changed from the fun-loving girl she knew. Margaret finally confesses her dilemma. That she is head nurse and has forced herself to be professional and in control in order to fulfil the responsibilities on her shoulders. She says she's forgotten how to be anything else and has no friends in camp. 

I understand how Margaret felt. How hard it is to change from being responsible to having fun. I find it hard as a mum to do this. Our boys get out of control too easily when the responsible ones (i.e. parents) join in the fun. It can really drain the joy out of you.

On another realm I understand the challenge to figure out what it is to be a 'professional'. The other day I was chatting with a friend/colleague about my recent OT volunteer work. I expressed a little surprise at the positive responses to my assessment reports on children I've seen. My colleague, said, "But of course, they are the opinion of a professional."

Sometimes is it hard to view myself as a professional. I guess that comes partly from being out of the profession for so long. I remember feeling like this as a student. Like I had to put on a different 'persona' to go to work. I think that feeling faded as I got used to it, but it is back, just a little.
I love it that this comedy has such a depth to it that I can identify with some of the struggles of the characters.

Our Japanese Christmas

Today I made this wreath. It is a bit rough, but I don't have the patience to spend hours on things like this.

It did cause me to think about how we've developed our own family 'traditions' that are intrinsically linked with Japan. Since we've had children (11 1/2 years) we've only spent three Christmases in Australia, all the rest have been Japanese-Christmases.

In Australia we don't have a Christmas tree amongst our possessions and precious few Christmas decorations. We've simply not been there to collect them. And when we are, we spend the whole season driving between family who live up to 10 hours away from our home base in Brisbane.

But in Japan, it is a celebration that is mostly just the five of us. On the weekend we put up our tree and unpacked all our Christmas 'stuff' - including books, videos etc. We found decorations that the boys made when they were very young.  Some of those have amazing memories, like the snowy December in Sapporo with an active 5 y.o. who had the flu and during his convalescence we made many Christmas decorations to keep him busy and inside. We found presents given to us a long time ago (that were also decorations). This wreath was amongst the spoils. 

I would never have entered into the yearly wreath-making business except for this wreath base which was given to me by my best Japanese friend. One year at my middle son's Japanese kindergarten a mum ran an all-day wreath making workshop. (All day!!!) At that time I had a toddler and it wasn't possible to attend, however my friend did and she made an extra wreath and gave it to me! So now it has a history and connects me to my friend. Somehow making a wreath like this doesn't work so well in Australia. These pine trees are everywhere here. In our last house we had our own and just trimmed them to when we needed their branches. I wondered what we'd do this year as we have none, however a neighbour down the street had their trees trimmed the other day and these cuttings were just destined for the rubbish. My husband kindly snaffled some (with permission).

These cookies were baked in the US and posted to us to decorate!

Other 'traditions' that have entered our family, but probably wouldn't have except for where we live and what we do, are:

• the receiving of parcels from Australia
• baking and decorating Christmas cookies (a US, not Australian tradition)
• hot Christmas dinner
• holidays in the mountains, including snow play
• staying home on Christmas day (not with family) but phone calls all day to our family
• making a video for our family of the year just past

And probably others that I've forgotten. 

People may think we are sad at this time, that we cannot be with family. However, after doing eight of these in Japan, it is more familiar to celebrate this way than to celebrate in t-shirts and shorts in Australia.

Seize the Day

I love this song. The video clip isn't so great, but the song is fantastic. About three years ago it inspired me to cease looking at what I couldn't do and pursue something new.

An old favourite

Today I visited to an old favourite. Craft Heart Tokai was part of my earliest days in Japan. There was a branch between our apartment and the language school we attended in Sapporo from 2000-2003, so I walked past it twice a day for two years. Back in those days I had approximately an hour free in the day - only an hour, where I could do something outside the house. My time, otherwise, was totally spoken for. Learning Japanese ranks as one of the hardest things I have ever attempted so those years weren't fun. Tokai represented an oasis where I could escape and dream of what one day might be (if I ever had any time). 

I've always been drawn to crafting and this is close to the perfect Japanese crafting shop. Not too big and overwhelming, not too small and crowded; a very tastefully laid out shop.

So you can understand that when we moved to Tokyo five years ago I was thrilled to find a branch of Craft Heart Tokai close by.

Unfortunately today they didn't completely satisfy my needs. Their cross-stitch supplies leave a little to be desired. But then so did most craft shops when I was in Australia last year. The biggest issue surrounded my carefully prepared list of must-have thread numbers. The pattern I'm using uses DMC categorised threads. Tokai only had Olympus threads (I can't figure out if that was the case before because I cannot remember having this trouble before). They also didn't have any conversion charts, so I had to ask for help. And typically Japan - help was very forthcoming. The shop assistant dug around somewhere and found a conversion chart. The only problem was it was an Olympus to DMC chart - numerically ordered by Olympus numbers, not DMC numbers. So for all 10 of my must-have thread numbers she had to go through the entire list and she did so with considerable patience. But they didn't have three of my must-have threads. So now I'm back to the drawing board - I'll have to check those numbers and see if I have anything close to them, I may be able to substitute.

Overall though, it was, as usual, a very soothing activity to browse in this shop and remember and dream.

How'd today go?

I guess I probably owe you a follow-up on yesterday's post. All the kids were back at school in the first "normal" school day in ten days. In fact our eldest had basketball practise from 6.40 and I didn't even see him before he left. Our middle son left at 7.55. We're letting him walk to school on his own these days and he seems to be motivated. So I hardly saw them. Then I walked to school with our youngest at 8.25 and then I had the day to myself. After the long weekend - joy! 

I guess I'll get used to it, but I find the micro-transition from having children around all the time to not having any at all a bit hard. When I came home, even though I had a list of things to do, I felt a bit at a loose end.

But just to tie up some other loose ends, yes, everyone except me got sick last week with a tummy bug. By Friday night all was well again and our youngest had the spark back in his eye (that took a remarkable length of time to arrive). Thursday and Friday were Thanksgiving holidays from school, so we had a long weekend. We didn't get too much done because we were still recovering from being sick. We did go to Costco again and David helped another missionary move on Saturday.

In terms of behaviour, our middle child was still giving me curry tonight. I don't know why he is being particularly difficult at the moment. We're hoping that a more regular schedule this week will help him and everyone else to settle down a bit.

Oh yes, and I finally got my haircut - two weeks after I felt I desperately needed one. And yet again my hair was blow-dried until it lay limp and flat against my head. Very sad.

I need to go and sort out some cross-stitch threads now, to start my next project.