It's been exactly three weeks since we arrived back in NH. Rachel is in school. All basic systems are up and functioning. We even bought a car on eBay (1998 Subaru Forester. It's kind of like our old Honda HRV on steriods) that we will probably go pick up this weekend. I know I said I was going to stay at home and be the point person for a couple of months to help get everyone settled here, but when I went into Tuttle's this morning to do a little shopping I couldn't help but notice the big HELP WANTED sign out front. Tuttle's is ultimately cool to me. It is the oldest family farm and family business in America, established 1632. They have a nice gourmet market, a flower shop and a garden center. I went in and cruised around the garden center to see what they had going since they are just starting up for the growing season. Did my shopping-- veggies, some Piscataqua Coffee beans ("Made in Dover"), 8 day-old bagels for $2.68 (what a score!), fuji apples and some lemon-lime candy fruit slices-- and on the way out stopped at the flower shop desk and asked for an application. The guy said they may still be looking for someone part time.
I came home and filled out the application but it's kind of ridiculous when you get to the prior employment section. I listed phone numbers but I really doubt they would call Japan to verify my job performance with my former bosses. Well, maybe my "past" will help me stand out from the pack. On the 4.5 lines I had to describe my special skills and qualification I wrote about how my teaching experience has left me with good interpersonal communication skills and attention to detail and that as a returned area native I really want to work for a local business.
What I really wanted to write was-- "I want to work here because you guys have been around since 1632. You sell fresh local produce and all kinds of gourmet products, with an emphasis on local companies, and have an awesome garden center. This place is totally cool!"-- but I figure that would look kind of unprofessional and provide them with absolutely no insight into why they should hire me, aside from the fact that I am enthusiastic about their business.

This is going to sound weird, but I love all the little physical interactions I have with the house everyday. Waking up in the morning, walking downstairs (my heart leaps at the thought of stairs) and opening the kitchen blinds. If it's sunny I open the door between the kitchen and the porch to catch the light and warm air from the rising sun. After coffee is set in motion I make my way through the rooms. Open curtains always and windows weather permitting. And then in the evening reversing it.
The beauty of this place flat out floors me. Aside from a little morning "rush hour" with folks leaving for work and people coming to drop off their kids at the schools down the street , this place is remarkably quiet. What my friend Jim would have have termed "pathologically mellow" 15 years ago. People walk by with dogs and babies and friends. Some jog by and others bike by. The sun is shining. The field across the street is really greening up and the birds are singing. If I burst into song it would be quite a Disney moment.
Rachel started school today. Her teacher seems great and so does basically everyone else I've dealt with at the school. They have the desks in groups of four students in her classroom, the same as in Japan. Everyone shares school supplies, no need to bring your own. What a change from the micromanagement of Japanese school and the "5 pencils with pencil caps, two erasers, 12 color craypas, one shitajiki (does anyone have a neat description for that?) and the right kind of pencil case, ideally all coordinated in a Sanrio character motif" situation. And you wonder why people in Japan become shinkeishitsu (tempermentally nervous). No school uniform here and nh is a pretty casual place so the de facto uniform is t-shirts, jeans and sneakers. Hey, that's my de facto uniform too!
I fulfilled my lawn care obligation this morning. Now I think I'm going to go see about all those flower seeds I bought yesterday.

Nice Bolt practice today. It's our third practice since I've been back and we already have a full new song with Mat on vocals. The working title is Shoelace. That reference is to me because for some unknown reason my shoes are always untied. On average I'd say I have to stop and tie my shoe three or four times a day. I have been told this is not normal. Well fine, it's not normal for most people but it's perfectly normal for me. My sister (and bandmate. seems I haven't mentioned that fact before) says I have been like this since I was a little kid. She suspects that I don't tie them right but I really can't believe that I could have been doing it wrong for the past 31 years. It generally doesn't take me that long to pick up on how to do things.

Mob mentality is such a drag. It seems that in Japan a lot of the social construct is based on the premise that an individual really wants to know they belong to and are under the protection of a group. So punishment for someone with those beliefs is to be excluded from their group. It's the same mentality that filters down to the school yard bullying level in Japan, which is usually not one strong kid against a weaker or "different" one, but can often be more like everyone pretending the bullied kid doesn't or shouldn't even exist.
Some of the reasons behind this extreme bent for cliques and membership and the agony of being left out started to come clear when someone explained to me about mura hachibu. Back in the old days in Japan, if someone went against the rules of the village everyone agreed not to interact with that person. But hachibu means 8 parts, or 80%. I just found an explanation online in Japanese that explains that the 80% refers to the fact that the rule breakers or other assorted weirdos were not completely banished from the village but they were denied in eight of ten categories that comprised the village. Others interacted with them in case of fires and funerals, but the outcasts were denied assistance with or involvement in coming of age celebrations, marriage, construction, (treatment of ill) health, natural disasters, travel, childbirth, and protection against "bad luck years" (yakudoshi).
As for me, if I was offered a deal like that I'd just leave town and start over somewhere else rather than think all that ostracism was worth dealing with because if I died or had a fire they were going to take care of me. Screw begging for crumbs. I'd rather take care of myself.
It's all a tariki/jiriki issue at heart. Those are some terms I learned from a class on Japanese Buddhism at UH. Tariki means "other power" and jiriki means "self power". I think ultimately a balance of both is the best way to go, but not being able to be part of the crowd has never (since around the end of high school anyway) bogged me down. I am a native of a state whose motto is Live Free or Die-- now that seems like damn good common sense to me.

Since I am in a not-too-pissed-off state of mind right now I'm going to take the opportunity to write about the people who are pissing me off lately and why. First on the list is Dennis French (hey, this is my blog-- may as well name names) for occupying my house for months and never paying me any rent, lying to me about calling people in to do unnecessary work and then never telling me about it or paying them, leaving the house dirty and with 2 broken window panes, a broken porch door, a huge dent in the shower wall, a broken toilet, a Christmas tree on the back porch, huge piles of rotting leaves from last fall in the yard and a Christmas tree on the back porch. So much for trying to help someone out and believing that most people I know are honest.
Second on my list is Brian Russell, who did a really great job putting in a new furnace for us a couple of years ago but never came back to take the old one away. I call every once in a while and leave a message, but my calls are never returned. You'd think that the $5000 I paid for the furnace would include disposal of the old one, wouldn't you?
Third and last on my list is John. Don't know his last name but know he backstabbed my brother in law in a band situation and probably ripped off my sister when he installed carpet for her new store.
Sometimes people suck. If you happen to know or run across any of these people, feel free to let them know I think they are jerks. Now that I have gotten that all out of my system it's on to enjoy the rest of the day.

Sometimes I feel like I have dropped through a wormhole. My life here is so different in almost every way from my life in Japan. We got our new mattress. box spring and bed frame yesterday and for the first time slept upstairs in our bedroom. I slept on Japanese futons (which are completely unlike American futons) on the floor for 7 years in Japan. I like being able to swing my legs over the side of the bed to get up rather than crawling up off the floor every morning. I've been waking up before the other two most days and have been doing a half hour of yoga before they get up. I used to try to do the same thing in Japan, but our apartment was so cramped that it was hard to find a spot where I could fully extend my arms or legs to the side without knocking stuff over or hitting something.
Here I go shopping for food just a couple of times a week and if I have the time and the inclination I can go to Tuttles ("America's oldest family farm. Established 1623") or The Broken Pushcart for fresh local produce, Janetos, a local market with a great butcher shop, for meat, the fish market for fish and then a regular supermarket for everything else. If I don't have time to run around to all those places, I can also just go to the supermarket. In Japan, we bought almost all our food at Super Queen, which was 1.5 blocks away, and shopped there almost everyday.
I suffer lawn guilt here, which is something I never needed to worry about in Japan. Went to Home Depot on Sunday and got lawn care stuff just in time for 3 days of rain. I still need to finish raking up the lawn so I can apply the stuff and I also need to smooth out the spots that got all pushed around by an overzealous snow plow. The crocuses are almost done. The daffodils are blooming and the tulips are on the way. I need to start some seeds for late spring/early summer flowers now. Still in the 40s almost everyday so I think there's time.

Which tarot card are you?

It figures, doesn't it?

The heating pipes in this house almost sound like Balinese percussion at times. Some of the tones are off, but it's a cool sound effect because the pings and bangs come from different parts of the house and give it dimension.
I know in a globally conscious, environmentally aware sort of way I shouldn't say this but, damn, am I glad to be back in a country that believes in central heating.