Daily News?

At least online dating sites worry about you when you fail to keep in touch.

There may be a problem with your profile read the ominous caption. Oh no! If memory serves me, I didn't say anything inappropriate, was careful to keep the ugliest truths about myself pretty well buried. Maybe I had been hacked. Only a day earlier I had received an email, supposedly sent by a friend, alerting me to an article about how to eliminate belly fat. Fairly certain he does not have a death wish, I believed him when he said he had not sent it.

Assuming I would once again need to change my email password, I opened the email. Maybe you should change your pictures. Oh dear; the dating site was calling me ugly. Maybe you should complete or edit your responses. Oh dear; not just ugly, but dull. And all this time I had been thinking there was something wrong with the guys!

Well, since I really have no interest in trying to optimize my online dating appeal, I'm back to the drawing board (or should I say keyboard) on search engine optimization for my blog. Earlier this week, a discreet "pussy" in the title and "beef jerky" in the text had nominal effect on my readership statistics, so it's time to explore new strategies.

I pondered this the other day, my fingers dancing idly over the keys -- a writers version of air guitar -- while I half listened to the morning news (and I use the term news very loosely -- it took me a week to learn that Yosemite was burning but I knew Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones had split within thirty seconds of the door slamming behind her). Anyway, like manna from heaven came the teaser and then the story about the woman who decided to have sex with her husband every day for a year and then write about it. Seriously. For this, she lands on the morning news. I was thinking I could do that, and I bet I could write about it better than she could. Yes, I could have sex every day for a year with her husband, especially since she admitted right there on television that she's cutting him off. Well, so I thought, until an excerpt of the interview with him came on, and he said something so grammatically incorrect any interest I might have had pretty much dried up.

  
Bad idea anyway. If my kids already find my writing humiliating, I can only imagine how they'd feel if I wrote that I had sex at all much less for three hundred sixty-five straight days and had told them to stay out of the room because we were having a "Santa meeting." Yes, the entire world knows these kids believed that mom and dad were meeting with Santa in their bedroom. Every day for a year, mom came out with her hair looking like it had been in the Cuisinart and dad's fly was always open and the kids think they were meeting with Santa? Forget about the humiliation; how about the years of therapy? Going forward, on December 24th, while all the other kids in the neighborhood are trying to figure out where their parents hid the presents, this mom and dad will be trying to find their kids, who are hiding under beds, trembling, praying that weird Santa dude can't fit down the chimney.

Maybe I should shift my focus back to the dating site. New pictures, new responses, maybe even a link to my blog. It may not optimize any engines, but it could stir up a little activity, let the online dating folks know they don't need to worry about me.

Routine Maintenance

On an occasional summer evening, my father would carry one of our small television sets out onto the postage stamp that was our fifth floor terrace -- our grounds -- and settle in to watch the Mets game.

Maybe it happened a few times a year, maybe only once. I can't remember. But I can still see the flickering light of the screen, my father looking as if he had won the lottery as he sat in a folding chair with his trademark cigar hanging out of his mouth. It was a rare and glorious tweak in his evening routine.

Last night, I sat alone on my deck watching the flickering lights of passing cars flash through the narrow gaps between slats in the fence. The air was still, the sun was down, and the night was making those sounds it makes that are just loud enough to remind you your ears work. If I listened carefully I could almost hear the din of the spotty reception on my father's portable television, the rich thwack of a bat connecting with a ball, an announcer's voice escalating with the excitement of a line drive, a crowd collectively holding its breath as a fly ball sailed toward the fence.  The simple pleasures of baseball and a summer evening. The sheer exhilaration of monotony.

He was a master of simple pleasures, my father. Humble and hard working, he came home every evening tired but content. He would drop his keys on the piano bench, give me a hug, wash up before dinner. Once in a blue moon he would defy my mother, push back her tight schedule for fifteen minutes so he could have a Scotch on the rocks. Usually not, though. She was not a fan of tweaks in the routine.

It was the time after dinner he enjoyed most, when he would sit in his chair in the living room and light up his cigar and unfold his New York Times. The television was always on for background noise, and I would often sit with him. That's when he taught me how to do the crossword puzzle. In pen. How to fold the newspaper just right, how to pick a section and just go at it. How to make sure you had a few solid across words and down words figured out before you inked anything in. Somehow, the answers would come.

This weekend was all about simple pleasures for me. Lazy afternoons in Midwestern lake water finally warm enough to swim in, a stint at "stand up paddle boarding" -- the closest I'll ever come to surfing, nasty food at a beach concession stand, and an afternoon wandering through the local annual art fair in punishing heat. I watched couples holding hands and young families bickering, chatted with artists trying to keep cool in their stalls, kept my eyes out for something extraordinary, a work of art that didn't remind me of something I had seen the other day at Target. My friend and I each settled on wearable art, pieces we could hang around our necks rather than on our walls. More bang for our buck.

It was a tweak in my routine, this weekend. Time spent outside, away from chores that beckon from every corner at home (whether I do them or not), watching the flicker of people passing by and listening to noises that seem to have no purpose other than to remind us that our ears work. Less monotonous than exhilarating, I suppose. I felt as if I had won the lottery.

This would have been a perfect weekend to unplug the television and take it outside, fiddle with the rabbit ears, watch the flickering lights of the Mets game. Or, if they were not playing, to sit in the living room doing the Sunday puzzle and listening to the white noise of my mother banging around in the kitchen. To inhale the delicious aroma of my father's cigar and enjoy the simple pleasure of a routine tweaked only because it's summer, and summer doesn't last very long.

SEO is Not an Airport in Southeast Asia (So What Else is New, Pussy Cat?)

Recently, I applied for a job that required both writing and marketing skills. I thought I could easily fake the writing skills (though apparently I could not) but I knew from the get go the marketing thing would be an uphill battle.

Before I learned one of life's most basic truths, i.e. that in matters of love it's all about pleasant facial features, buoyant breasts, and perky butt cheeks, or, for purposes of this blog that will become clearer later, it's all about tits and ass, my mother taught me to rationalize away my unpopularity with boys by reassuring myself that I was simply too intimidating. As a matter of self preservation, I've fallen back on a bit of that kind of thinking each time I fail to land a job, but with age comes at least some wisdom and I know, deep down, it's not true. Frankly, this whole job search experience is starting to make me feel fat.

Still, I persevere, and continue to look inward so I may identify my shortcomings and, maybe one day soon, get the equivalent of a fat envelope in the mail from a prospective employer. My writing, I think, is as much a part of me as my crooked nose and my double jointed thumbs, and absent surgical intervention, it's not going to change any time soon. But marketing, that's something I can learn. I am no longer as behind the eight ball as I was when I first applied for the writing/marketing job; I at least know now that S.E.O. refers to search engine optimization, and not the airport in South Korea. I even sort of know what a search engine is, and I can guess what optimization is all about.

Which brings me to this blog post, which is really nothing more than a computer science experiment. It's not just my job search that's been making me feel fat; my blog stats are doing more than their fair share to make me feel like an ugly duckling. I can tell myself my prose is intimidating all I want, but, really, is that what keeps thousands of folks from stopping by for a quick read as they cruise through the blogosphere? I think not. It is time for some soul searching.

Well, not really soul searching so much as careful research, or at least a bit of scrolling. I scanned my list of posts, looking for the ones that, oddly, have thousands of hits (as opposed to the more typical two or three). The key to S.E.O. had to be buried somewhere within those posts. Not buried at all, as it turns out. The answers jumped out at me before I even needed to squeeze my eyes together and concentrate really hard. Genitals. Boobs. Vagina. Dick. Beef jerky. S.E.O. is all about key words, and the words that are most key are all about sex. Okay, I'm not sure about beef jerky, but I think the rest of examples are pretty solid.

Yes, back to the experiment. I want to see if peppering my prose with sex words will increase my readership. I thought calling the post something like Girl on Girl Sex or World's Largest Penis would be inappropriate, not to mention slightly misleading. So I took a more subtle approach with key words in the title (do the math, folks, I'm not going to discuss it further) and I'm hoping the tossing in of a laundry list of body parts throughout the body of the post will add some further optimization. And I'm going to wait and see whether I suddenly become popular, or whether no amount of S.E.O. can save me from the ugly truth about why nobody likes me.

No worries, loyal fans. I remain armed with rationalizations, like the quote one of you just sent my way:

“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.” -William Gibson

Yep. Thousands and thousands of them. 

Amazing Grace. Kind of.

A young friend posted some advice I really like on Facebook. "If you work really hard and are kind, amazing things will happen." I like it, but it sounds like an awful lot of effort.

I'm not saying I don't buy into the hard work and kindness thing, but let's get real; sometimes no matter how committed you are to busting your butt and smiling your way through it you just end up banging your head against the wall and that can take the wind out of your sails, to put it mildly. Although, come to think of it, it's true that amazing things usually happen. Amazing as in wtf? Amazing just isn't always good.

So I think I'm going to ease into my new found (or maybe newly rediscovered) philosophy and aim for kind of hard work and trying hard to be kind. Same words, different order, more or less indistinguishable. It's like Tokyo and Kyoto; same letters, different order. Both capitals of Japan at one time or another, more or less indistinguishable. (I wonder if there's any such correlation when they're spelled out in Japanese.) Anyway, compared to sitting around on my ass and watching mold grow in my bread drawer -- watching the grass grow requires dragging my ass outside, which, these last few days, seems like an awful lot of effort -- just about anything I do will more than qualify as kind of hard work. And compared to snarling at anyone who attempts to talk to me, just about anything I do will more than qualify as trying hard to be kind. 

This morning, I have already begun my quest for the good kind of amazing. I resisted the temptation to roll over and play dead when the dog woke me at four, and instead not only got out of bed but made it. I overcame the urge to step around the growing pile of clothes on my bathroom floor and sorted through it all. I've even replaced some light bulbs, and it's not yet six o'clock. If that's not working hard, at least kind of, I don't know what is.

As for trying hard to be nice, most normal people aren't awake yet, but I said please and thank you when I got my coffee in Starbucks and didn't growl at anybody when they unlocked the doors forty-five seconds past five o'clock. A Herculean effort, if you ask me. And I got plans. I'm going to respond to emails I've ignored and texts I've forgotten, and I'm going to give a thumbs up sign to just about everything that shows up on my Facebook news feed. If that's not kindness, I don't know what is.

We'll see how all this pans out. If anything quasi amazing in a good way happens, I'll kick things up a notch and start putting in some real effort. Maybe stop job hunting in my underwear and actually get dressed and pay attention. Make things happen instead of hoping for a miracle. Hmm. It's a concept.

The kindness thing might be a bit more of a challenge. A fellow Starbucks morning regular just told me the forecast for tomorrow is something nobody has ever attributed to me: pleasant. Ouch. And he sees me at my best time of day.

I'm just not going to let stuff like that get to me. I'm committed to kind of hard work and trying hard to be kind, and I'm remaining optimistic about the good kind of amazing. I told him to go screw himself, but I said it with a smile.

Walk of Shame

For years, I had been certain that I would always be a runner. I would never become one of those old ladies in a matchy matchy sweatsuit walking through the neighborhood for exercise. At least I still don't own a sweat suit. Heck, my socks don't even match.

So I walk, except when I'm feeling particularly irrational and decide to take a half hour run that will no doubt incapacitate me for days. This morning, with my jet lag about half cured and my sanity (such as it is) half restored, I set out on a walk and noticed almost immediately that the face of the neighborhood has changed. Today is the first full day of elementary school here in deep dark suburbia, and everywhere I looked children were walking. Not just elementary age children, but larger children. The streets had been overtaken by a new demographic; there was not an adult in sight.

When I realized an inordinate number of the female children appeared to be pregnant, it occurred to me that even though I have yet to purchase a matchy matchy sweat suit I am indeed old. Young mothers and fathers in their thirties are looking prepubescent to me. These children smiling politely at me as we passed each other on the sidewalk were really just being smug. I knew exactly what they were thinking. How quaint that she is still trying to take care of herself. That will never happen to me. Where is her matchy matchy sweatsuit, and what the heck is the deal with her socks?

Insolent little brats. I had half a mind to bend down and have a little chat with some of the smaller children, let them in on their parents' dirty little secret. Luckily, my knees were feeling a little to stiff for bending. Otherwise I would have told the little tykes how excited mom and dad were that the first full day of school had finally arrived. Those hugs at the school house doors might be sincere, but the murmured I miss you's, well, not so much. Trust me kids, mom and dad have big plans for the day that do not include you, and if you want to know how to make them cry, just whisper three o'clock in their ears.

At least those thirty somethings who still look like children will soon have their comeuppance, sooner than they can possibly imagine. One day they will know what it feels like on the day their youngest child sets off, in her own car, on the first day of her last year in high school. They will know what it feels like to go out for a walk (because it hurts too much to run) before their child leaves the house in the morning just so they can resist the temptation to leap across the kitchen floor and grab her by the ankles and beg her not to go.

On the back end of my walk there were still a few large children straggling home, smiling broadly, looking nauseatingly happy. I'll let them have their fun, and I'll comfort myself with the knowledge that when the clock strikes three, their lives will be hell and I'll be the one doing a victory dance.

Maybe I'll buy myself a comfy matchy matchy sweatsuit today, and when three o'clock rolls around I'll throw it on and do what nature intended for us to do at that hour -- take a nap.

Umbrella Policies

My father, a master of the silly one-liner -- which can only be appreciated when repeated zillions of times -- used to love to pose this question: What do they do in China when it rains? 

My long anticipated Japan visit is over, and I could certainly use some ancient secret Chinese wisdom to figure out not only what to do when it rains but when things in general just seem crappy. Returning from a trip is always difficult. My re-entry this time around -- to quote a friend who put it better than I could ever hope to -- feels a bit like landing in a shit storm without an umbrella. Unfortunately, my father may have clued me in on garden variety rain, but he never told me what they do in China -- or anywhere, for that matter -- when there's a shit storm and no umbrellas.

As with most things, I am left to figure it out for myself. For starters, if I am being blown around in a shit storm, I'd just as soon take a pass on the umbrella. Odds are, if everything else is going south, the umbrella will be blown inside out, and I have yet to see anybody win a battle with an inverted umbrella. It's a waste of energy, you end up getting drenched anyway, and you inevitably make a complete ass out of yourself in the process. Shit storms don't scare me; umbrellas do. I'll just take my chances walking between the rain drops and and dodging puddles and staying a safe distance from the curb.

Reality check! To slip between rain drops and avoid puddles and tuck yourself a safe distance away from splashing vehicles you have to be little, particularly your feet. On a good day, my feet are disproportionately large for someone of my small stature. Add in long plane rides and lots of salt and my feet look like flippers. Shoe shopping in Japan was demoralizing; I watched with envy as my daughter, whose feet are each about the size of my big toe, struggled to fit into the larger sizes. I looked at the size conversion chart; they don't even make shoes big enough for me in Japan. Now I know why Cinderella's stepsisters were so bitchy. I can do without umbrellas but not without shoes. Winter would really be a bitch.

Plan B. If I cannot make my feet -- or the rest of me -- smaller, maybe I can just disappear. I could become invisible, out of reach of the storm, and what better place to start than with my blog. I messed around with the settings until I figured out how to remove it from view, and with just a couple of mouse clicks, my ramblings went underground. They were there, somewhere, but nobody would be able to find them. A few disgruntled emails from my loyal followers confirmed it; they could gain access by invitation only, and I had clearly not invited them. Good riddance to everybody, I thought, no more positive reinforcement, to be sure, but no more negative comments to rain on my parade. All well and good, until I realized how much I rely on my writing to get me through my most confusing moments. It's much sturdier than an umbrella, something I can actually rely upon in a shit storm. A couple of mouse clicks later, I was up and running.

What do they do in China when it rains? They let it rain. They don't fight it, they just go about their business and let it rain. Makes perfect sense. Storms move, and like all dark clouds, this too shall pass.

La Belle Japan

For our last dinner in Japan -- at least this time around -- we chose an Indian restaurant in Kobe. Nothing puts a smile on my daughter's face (or mine) faster than the sight of a single loaf of naan so big it hangs off all the edges of your plate. Knowing you don't have to share it makes it all the sweeter.

We have yet to eat a bad meal here. Our choices have run the gamut -- from Japanese to Chinese to Mexican to Spanish to Italian to Nepalese to Indian -- not to mention all the baked goods and ice cream. There have been a few service snafus which seem to have nothing to do with language barriers (my son is sufficiently fluent to articulate accurate orders) and everything to do with cultural differences. Like yesterday, when the item I ordered for lunch was, as it turned out, only available for dinner. Apparently, when our waiter discovered this, he chose not to make waves, just resigned himself to the fact that I would not be eating lunch. Don't even get me started on the shaved ice and noodles incident. Let's just say if my my son had not been there to remind me to be polite, a Japanese waitress at the top of a sacred temple mountain might have been wearing a syrupy ice cap on her head. A Shinto temple does nothing to ward off a Jewish mother's unholy thoughts.

We have discovered it is often helpful to a have a native Japanese person with us at meals, someone who can reassure the staff that though we look like typically American boors, we are essentially decent people and worthy of solicitous service. My son brought a Japanese friend last night to the Indian restaurant last night, so we had our buffer. Folks from the Asian sub-continent living in the Far East are generally less suspicious of us than the Japanese natives seem to be, but still, our guest helped us to let down our guard. And, much to our delight, she had the capacity to be as boorish and rude as we can be, which gave us a pretty wide berth. The food was great, and dinner was a blast.

Visiting Japan can be a lot trickier than popping into your average European country. Yes, there's more than enough preconception about the "ugly American" to go around the world over, but when East meets West it all escalates. We look different. Different in a far more fundamental way than the way I'd look different standing next to a six foot tall blond beauty in Iceland. Babies and young children stare at us, our Caucasian features not something they see every day. We behave differently. We hug instead of bow. We complain when something bothers us. We put our feet up on coffee tables, our elbows on dinner tables. The differences are superficial, but the superficial is often what gets noticed the most.

I have found that the discomfort and the suspicion can be mutual, no matter how unwarranted. And it often is, in fact, unwarranted. In my two visits to Japan, I have spent time with more than a few of my son's Japanese friends, and their friends, and so on. Like our dinner guest last night, they have been, as a rule -- after some initial awkwardness -- as goofy and flawed and as possessed of unique personalities as anybody. Maybe not as impolite, but I suppose that's not such a bad thing. It is my hope that they see the uniqueness in us as well. Lord knows my children would not want the Japanese thinking they have anything in common with me.

As we left the Indian restaurant last night, our waiter invited us each to ring a giant bell hanging over the bar. It would bring us good luck, he told us, something to do with the Hindu elephant faced deity Ganesh. I'm all about good luck, and I'll take it wherever I can get it. And I'm a yogini, which theoretically makes me all about Ganesh. I wheeled back and gave the heavy bell a good whack. The chiming seemed endless; it sounded like a royal baby had just been born or something. My children and our dinner guest were far more gentle and polite. I didn't really get that. If ringing the bell brings you luck, why not ring the crap out of it?

I apologized for offending, but I really didn't mean it. I have a feeling Ganesh, protector and supreme guard against obstacles, heard me loud and clear. There was no cultural divide, no suspicion, no misunderstanding. When I rang the crap out of that bell, there was nothing lost in translation.

Peaks and Valleys

Can a visit to Japan be complete if one does not catch a glimpse of Mount Fuji? Or, as my son asked, after realizing overcast skies had obscured the view of the fabled volcano from the window of our Shinkansen, "can I interest you in some of our other peaks?" He's a great tour guide, always ready with a "Plan B."

Even if I had been crushed by my failure to get a real life glimpse of Mount Fuji, I would be comforted by the fact that I have more than made up for the void by experiencing some of Japan's more exotic natural wonders, namely squatting toilets and karaoke. 

Yes, squatting toilets. You haven't lived until you've really had to pee like nobody's business and you get to the rest room and the one "Western style" toilet is occupied and you have no choice but to tiptoe onto the glistening moist rubber mat surrounding what looks like a urinal planted into the floor and assume the position. For sanity's sake, I tell myself the glistening is merely condensation, though we all know better. But you do what you gotta do, and time is of the essence; when your bladder is about to burst after the six bottles of water you've sucked down so you don't die of dehydration in the hundred degree heat you can't waste a second contemplating what kind of muck you're stepping in because you have to devote all your time and energy to gingerly removing your shorts and your underwear without getting them caught on your now wet shoes so when you squat down you don't end up peeing all over them. It's gross. Simply gross.

Suffice it to say the squatting toilets are a sight to see; I have no pictures but trust me, the wonder of it all is permanently etched in my psyche. Karaoke, on the other hand, is a different story. I do have pictures, because, mercifully, alcohol and sheer exhaustion managed to keep the episode from permanently etching itself on my memory. But after getting this far along in life without even considering karaoke, I actually held a microphone to my mouth in some seedy establishment and belted out some Elvis, Beatles, Abba (no karaoke experience is complete without "Dancing Queen") and, because my son said it was necessary, "Bohemian Rhapsody." Bismillah no, I will not let you go (let you go).... Bismillah? Really? I had never seen the lyrics spelled out. Thankfully, this all happened in a private room for our little party of five, but still. Note to self: delete the pictures.

The alternative to squatting toilets here in Japan is their version of a Western style toilet, which, for some reason, includes a warmed seat and piped in sea noises to drown out the sound of peeing. None of this makes sense to me, particularly the warmed seat, which always makes me feel as if I've sat down too soon after somebody else's butt was there. Ick. The alternative to karaoke, I suppose, is just going with my instincts, saying I'm too tired and taking a pass. Truth be told, though, it felt pretty good -- somehow even more satisfying than singing in the shower. Maybe it was the microphone. The alternative to Mount Fuji? Well, I've seen plenty of pictures, and that's good enough for me. And, as my son suggested, there are always other peaks.

And valleys.

Life's Journeys

"Who's going to tell her?"

Both my children looked at me as I stumbled down the last few steps of what had to have been the tenth set of stairs we'd gone either up or down within seven minutes, afraid the latest bit of bad news might kill me. "Well," my son began, falling on the grenade for his sister. "The good news is we're staying at the Ritz Carlton."

Okay, good news maybe, but old news. I'd known that since before we even stepped on the train for Tokyo. It's nice to have a daughter who travels a lot. I waited, even though I had a pretty good inkling of what they were going to tell me.

"We kind of went the wrong way." Of course we did. Which meant at least ten more sets of stairs, half of which would be going up. Thank God we all have our health, I thought, summoning up the wisdom of my grandmother. What else matters, really?

Traveling around Japan is easy and convenient in the sense that there are lots of trains heading to just about everywhere. And there are lots of signs, many even with English translations, particularly in the larger cities. And when you find the relevant signs (no easy feat, sometimes) they even tell you how long it will take you to travel from point A to point B. At first glance, the times all seem padded -- kind of the way airlines calculate arrival times just so they can guarantee themselves lots of on time arrivals. I don't think that's the reason for the padding on the Japanese subway; the truth is, when you factor in all the walking and climbing time in the stations at both ends, the counterintuitively long estimates actually add up. Japan may look small on your average map, but it's an awfully big and crowded place. If life really is about the journey, here in Japan that can be a royal pain in the ass.

We were all testy yesterday, my two older children and I. Their dad's companion of over three years finally succumbed to cancer, and we all occasionally got swept into our own eddy of thoughts. She had become a family member, for my daughters at least. My son had not gotten to know her as well as his sisters had -- Japan is a bit of a trek -- but he feels the loss keenly as well. It hit me harder even than I had expected. I had only met her a few times, but my daughters adored her, she made my ex happy, and I still can't, for the life of me, figure out why God would snatch away a fifty-two year old woman who appreciated all that she had in life and had always taken such good care of herself. Sometimes people simply fall through the cracks, I suppose, for no apparent reason, and the rest of us just need to keep moving.

During our trek through Tokyo, we visited an outdoor market, where my daughter decided to buy a sake set for her father. She was leaning toward a set with two cups, and I tried to steer her toward one with four. The thought of giving someone recently uncoupled a two cup set struck me as painful. My kids both thought I was being ridiculous. That happens a lot.

We are back in Kobe, now, home base. Today, though, we set out again on another series of train rides -- another journey -- this time to Kyoto and Nara. Armed with my first good night's sleep since we've arrived and more than twenty-four hours of reflection on our family's latest crisis, I am looking forward to the trip. It will be arduous at times, at least the parts when we're wandering through train stations trying to transfer. And it is still hot as hell here, but today we won't be carrying around excess baggage. No metaphor intended; I refer to the actual overnight bag we shlepped around Tokyo all day yesterday after leaving our posh room at the Ritz. The other excess baggage? Well, that's a bit difficult to unload.

If there is good news today, it is not that we are staying at the Ritz, so my kids will have to come up with something else if they find themselves needing to soften any blows. We are back at the Sheraton, more than adequate, but a veritable fleabag compared to our digs in Tokyo. Thoughts of it will be little consolation at, say, three in the afternoon when they inform me I have to retrace my steps and drag my ass up even more stairs.

There is plenty of good news, though. It's a new day, we have our health, and we are lucky enough to be able to spend all this time together in this place halfway around the world from what I call home. We grieve because our family, which had expanded for a time, has shrunk again. But, knowing us the way I know us, I am guessing that, like the home where we had dinner several nights ago, the small home that seemed always to have room for one more guest, our hearts will never run out of space.

Forks on the Road

I had no idea whose house we were heading to for dinner the other day. All I knew was I was way too tired and sweaty and, well, disgusting to be a guest at anybody's table, much less socialize.

We walked for what seemed like forever through the narrow and hilly (mostly up-hilly as far as I could tell, both ways) streets in the neighborhood where my son lives in Kobe. He and his friend chatted non-stop, alternating between Japanese and English. Show offs! My daughter and I trailed behind, wondering how we would survive the evening. She held my hand at times, not, mind you, out of any great affection but because she is certain I will either wander off or trip and she just hasn't gotten around to purchasing the leash she keeps threatening. I was too tired to mind, actually enjoyed being pulled along so I could salvage whatever energy I had left for the pleasantries I would need to muster up when we arrived at dinner. 

At the risk of making what seems to be a race based overgeneralization, even in oppressive heat and humidity -- I don't think the temperature has dipped below ninety-five since we've arrived -- the Japanese people seem to possess superhuman amounts of energy. I say this without a hint of racism, though, and only with awe. Our dinner hosts did not disappoint. They greeted us with an enthusiasm that could not help but pull us out of our dour moods, flitting around us and fawning over us as we removed our stinky shoes in the front hallway, welcoming us in through the narrow doorway as if our arrival had truly enriched their day. Our shirts were soaked with sweat, our hair matted to our dripping faces, yet they did not seem to notice as they beckoned us to sit at a table already set with what looked like an imperial feast.

There was not an inch of space to spare in the dining area, although new guests continued to trickle in and there always seemed to be enough room for everybody. Our hosts worried that we would not like the food (as if it were unusual for us to sit at dinner and prepare our own sushi), that we would struggle with chopsticks (I think they purchased forks that day just in case), and appeared so interested in everything we had to say I almost started to believe we were nowhere near as lackluster as I had thought. They think my son is a genius, with all the languages he speaks. He pointed out that his sister is the genius. They all turned to me, wondering if I had anything to do with all this brain power. "What do you do?" our hostess asked me. I was stymied, could not figure out the answer. My son prodded me, encouraged me to tell them what I used to do. For a moment I could not even remember, but I stumbled through an answer and they seemed satisfied that all this genius was indeed hereditary. 

It was heady stuff. After managing to construct and devour a few sushi rolls without dropping so much as a grain of sticky rice on the floor I started to believe they had a point. Maybe we were all that impressive. I was starting to get comfortable with the idea, that is until they decided to clear off the piano and dust off some music books and perform for us. Our hostess was an accomplished pianist, her sister a singer, her daughter a bit of both. The two granddaughters  -- ages three and one -- were as well behaved as any children I had ever seen, and they snacked on seaweed for goodness sake. If that's not gifted, I don't know what is.

The next day, visiting the memorials and museum in Hiroshima, I could not stop thinking about these gracious and humble people in the deceptively small and modest home, a space filled with food and warmth and endless hidden talents. I thought about all the families just like these who woke on a sunny and hot morning almost exactly sixty-eight years ago just a short distance away to witness the beginning of what must have seemed like the end of the world. Entire families, already weary from war, were obliterated; the survivors, some not even born yet, were plagued by a lifetime of illness. It would be easy -- irrational, maybe, but certainly easy -- for people here to hold onto hatred after all this time. Kind of like some otherwise intelligent Jews I know who still wouldn't be caught dead in a Volkswagen.

There is no evidence of hatred in Hiroshima, though. No finger pointing at Americans, or even at the Japanese government, the guys that put them through so many wars in the first place. The museum there is honest and heart wrenching, filled with pictures and stories that cannot help but make you wonder about humanity. And there is lots of science, too, lots of detailed information about the birth of the atomic bomb and all its lethal relatives. Reading about the decisions that led up to that day, the series of, to say the least, unfortunate events that made Hiroshima the target, I felt a little self-conscious about my skin, my American heritage.

But the captions on the walls of the museum were unambiguous the atrocities of war from all sides. The Japan that found itself in ruins in August 1945 had been led astray for years by an aggressive government. Japan invaded, Japan caused death and destruction, Japan started the war in the Pacific with a secret attack on Pearl Harbor. None of this justified dropping an atomic bomb on a city, but, nevertheless, Americans wiped out an entire city, killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of civilians in an instant. It was a classic case, I suppose, of everyone behaving badly (to put it mildly). The museum offers up a comprehensive and unbiased account.

There is a single purpose there, in Hiroshima, where every year on the anniversary of the bombing the mayor -- and school children -- make impassioned pleas for world peace and nuclear disarmament. The museum was designed to show visitors that war and aggression, generally, are bad, and that nuclear weaponry, in particular, is inconsistent with the survival of the human race. It is a museum with a clear mission: world peace and the elimination of nuclear weapons from our planet. I wish them luck.

It would be nice to know that life everywhere, for everybody, could be about piling into each others' living rooms and sharing ideas, dreams, talents, and, maybe most importantly, good meals. Unrealistic, I think, but nice. The best we can do is enjoy those opportunities when they arise, and cut each other some slack on the small stuff. Whether we eat sushi with a fork or french fries with chop sticks, whether we sweat like pigs in unbearable heat or barely seem to notice, we can only hope that the folks in charge, the ones with the power to pull the triggers, will learn from history's darkest lessons. 

Kimonos and Cankles

This is my second visit to Japan, and I still find myself surprised by some of the unfamiliar customs. Like the absence of real chairs in restaurants.

Usually, I find the customs exotic, or at least quaint. Usually, that is, except when I am sitting cross legged on a cushion propped on a ledge at dinner and I start to doze because I am exhausted from all the travel and the large beer I just sucked down and I just barely catch myself from falling backwards onto the cold hard tile. I tremble to think of the permanent psychological damage that could have caused my children, particularly my son; not so much because of the serious head injury but by the sight of mom upside down at the table, chopsticks still in hand, her dress falling over her head and her brand new cankles and swollen clown feet kicking wildly in the air. We narrowly escaped complete disaster, but I'm guessing he'll think twice about bringing friends next time to meet the family for a meal.

Somehow we got through dinner with my son's psyche still relatively unscathed and my vertebrae all still intact. It's now the very wee hours of my first morning here in Japan, and I am sitting in the hotel lobby pondering those cankles and clown feet I acquired on the plane ride over here. Wondering who on earth will ever love someone who can store enough water in her ankles to hydrate a small nation on a hot summer day, I could not believe my good fortune when I checked my email.

Every once in a while, I find something in my inbox from an old dating site, trying to woo me back. Usually it's very helpful articles about what not to do on dates (apparently it's bad form to ask someone why his marriage failed, at least on the first date), but sometimes it's a little teaser message from some suitor to whom I can only respond if I re-up. 

You have a great profile, said the note from Mr. Potentially Right. I assume he was referring to the stuff I made up about myself (lies like I laugh in the face of adversity -- yeah, right) and not the side view of my face, and I always have a soft spot for guys who at least pretend to have read what I wrote. This particular guy didn't include a picture of himself or, if he did, that was a carrot being dangled by the dating site. I decided to read on. To be honest, I am only interested in casual sex and some good laughter and conversation. Hmm. That was new -- and, I have to say, more than a teensy bit refreshing. So many guys announce in their profiles that they are honest, which I always take to mean they are pathological liars, but this guy was putting his money where his mouth is, and kudos to him for his forthrightness. If it weren't for my past experiences with folks who don't offer up a picture right away, I might have taken him up on his offer. But then I remembered the faceless guy with loads of personality back in the day who finally sent me a picture of himself and his dog; the guy looked like Shrek on a bad day, but the dog was really cute -- especially by comparison -- and at least that gave me something nice to say.

Back to reality, such as it is here on the other side of the planet. Where a guy would never have the gall to send an email to a woman he's never met and tell her all he wanted was casual sex and a few laughs. Where everybody is exceedingly polite. I sat between two Japanese nationals on the plane; when one of us got up to pee, we all went to pee, so nobody would have to bother the others at a different time or make anyone feel bad for getting up. It was an odd sort of buddy system but really very sweet. And my neck still hurts from all the bowing good night in the hotel elevator last night. (The bowing is a really nice custom, but if you bow back then they keep bowing and then you need to bow again and you just want to yell please stop! but you don't because you should appreciate the fact that people here smile and bow rather than either looking the other way or looking you in the eye and flipping you the bird.)

Ah, but beware of stereotypes, even the nice ones. Here, where we assume everybody is exceedingly polite, there are now "women only" cars on the trains. At first I thought it was some kind of "red tent" thing; maybe menstruating women need a place of their own, maybe there are pads on the seats and tampons hanging from the straps. My son straightened me out. Apparently, here in Japan, where everybody at least seems exceedingly polite, there is a groping problem. Just like in the real world I guess, men on crowded train cars cannot resist the urge to use their free hand to grab some unsuspecting woman's ass. Oh dear, more illusions, shattered. Next he's going to tell me that while folks are bowing and smiling and muttering in Japanese to me in the hotel elevator what they're really saying to me is get the hell out of my way. 

I am feeling a bit demoralized and shaken. By my cankles and clown feet, by faceless men emailing with requests for casual sex, by the thought of neatly dressed Japanese men grabbing asses on subways.  But the good news is I made it through the first evening without a concussion and without adding to any psychological damage I have already caused my children. A good grope on the train might not be such a bad thing, and I'm no stranger to bloat.

Tonight, though, I'm going to have to insist on a real chair at dinner.

Look Out Below!

Everyone knows when a bird poops on your head it’s good luck. What few people know is when a nightingale shits on your face it’s like winning the lottery.

At the very least it will save you a few yen on a Japanese nightingale poop beauty treatment. Yes, blog fans, it’s a feces facial, and you don’t even have to travel all the way to Japan to get one. You can shell out a few hundred U.S. dollars right here in America – the exact amount, I assume, depends on the pedigree of the poop – to have someone rub dried bird excrement on your face while someone in the next room is trying to enjoy some good old fashioned aromatherapy.

And here I thought the biggest hardship I was going to face next week after I wing my way over the International Date Line to the land of the rising sun was figuring out what day it is. (It’s enough of a challenge to keep track when I stay home!). Now, every time I see a geisha shuffling by with skin as soft as a baby’s behind I’m going to have to resist the temptation to plant some extra strength laxatives in a birds’ nest and remind myself to keep my mouth closed as I lie on the ground below and wait for things to metabolize.

If I could only get past the idea of poop seeping into my pores (especially the ones close to my nose) I would pretty much turn all my future sightseeing excursions into spa trips – get a little more bang for my buck. In Rome, I’d take a dip in the Trevi fountain, maybe even dive for some spare euros while I exfoliate gratis in pigeon dung. (Supposedly, the Japanese steer clear of pigeon poop because pigeons eat all sorts of trash, not just seeds, but frankly, if I’m at the point where I can soak my skin in shit I don’t really care if it comes from a vegetarian.) I can’t even imagine how far the savings in spa treatments could go to offset the costs of my bucket list fantasy trip to the Galapagos!

If anything, I am open minded. If there’s a bluebird of happiness and wellness out there willing to do a fly by and crap out a good luck facial and shampoo on me for free, bring it on. All I know is I will never turn my nose up at a mud wrap again.

When Life Gives You Lemonade, Drink It

Future Fortune 500 Company

I love supporting small local businesses. The really small and really local ones. There's nothing better than the smile on a child's face when you buy a cup of his rancid lemonade and give him what he knows is way more than twenty five cents (although he's not sure how much) and then you tell him to keep the change. The smile, no doubt, is some combination of relief at not having to do the math and elation at earning some coin.

Lately, I have become fascinated by the notion of entrepreneurial spirit. I've become, in some ways, an accidental student of the ones who make it big. I have learned a lot in my short foray into the world of business acumen, most notably that merely going on line to have thousands of cheap business cards printed up does not automatically lead to a pot of gold. Or even a small Tupperware container of aluminum alloy. Apparently there's some financing and a little bit of marketing involved. You can dream big all you want, but livin' the big dream requires a bit more ingenuity than a stack of two by nothing cards.

Knowing myself pretty well -- and my lifelong tendency to sit back and hope good things will somehow come my way -- I have balked when well meaning friends suggest I advertise, promote, put myself out there. My business ideas have been plentiful, but few have come to fruition. I decided recently it would take less drive and ingenuity to simply look for a job rather than start my own gig from scratch. Drafting several versions of a resume was time consuming, but dispensing them with a mere click of a mouse was far easier than building a business from the bottom up. Why reinvent the wheel when there are already so many of them spinning out there, and you never even have to lick a stamp?

All good, until rejection starts rolling in. Flat out lack of interest in your piece of paper is one thing; the realization that they met you and somebody else and actually wanted the somebody else more is utterly demoralizing, no matter how many rationalizations you come up with to assuage your ego. I am at the very beginning of the process and I am already considering throwing in the towel. I have taken to  counting imminent rejections -- those inevitable turn downs I assume are about to come my way when a prospective employer fails to respond with great love and enthusiasm (or at all) within two minutes -- as official nays. I have worked myself into a frenzy of dejection, wondering why I even bother.

I confessed this to a teenager I know yesterday. (I am being vague because I have promised this particular teenager I would not write about her anymore; she seems to think I exaggerate.) Anyway, I told this person I was feeling like a bit of a fraud. For years, I have encouraged my children to make the effort, to stay with it, not to give up even when the going gets tough. I have quoted all the quotes about not letting failure get you down. Yet even the slightest disappointment gets to me these days, and I just want to crawl under the covers, stop trying. If I don't put myself out there, I may not find anything, but at least I won't get rejected. I poured it out, told this teenager I either needed a therapist or a good smacking around.

She provided both. After giving me a gentle whack on the side of the head -- with an option for more if I thought it necessary -- she offered up her own hard earned wisdom (and here, I may be paraphrasing but in no way exaggerating): In my experience, not trying lands you in an even bigger shit hole. 

This seventeen year old may have been raised by a blithering idiot, but she certainly has a few things figured out. I thought about the lemonade entrepreneurs in the neighborhood. Not only the novices at the end of my street who are probably still trying to figure out how much extra coin they got from me, but the diehards a few blocks away who have been out on their corner almost every day this summer, rain or shine. They shout as you go by, sometimes chase your car. The wise seventeen year old quoted earlier has admitted to purchasing many lemonades from these kids this summer. She admires their determination and, on a hot day, the stuff tastes pretty good.

The other day, one of the diehards ran after me as I rode by on my bike. Thirsty? Thirsty? Thirsty? I kept pedaling as his shouts faded to a whisper. I wasn't thirsty, and had no money on me anyway, but I felt kind of bad about not stopping. For his effort alone, he deserved better than the sight of my back speeding away from him. He's made of strong stuff, though, and I have no doubt he will be out again, chasing people's backs, not giving up on a sale. I will stop next time, if only to ask him how he does it.

Years ago, I used to joke with a friend at work about how nobody ever came up to us with a pat on the back and a hearty atta girl (or atta boy). A few years of raising kids made that workplace seem like a hotbed of positive reinforcement; job hunting at fifty-three makes just about everything else seem like a warm embrace, a virtual lifetime's worth of atta girls. But I will force myself to crawl out from under the covers and keep at it, if only because I have no desire to end up in a bigger shit hole.

Finishing Touches

Life is full of surprises.

I had thought the only down side of running a race at my age when I know full well that every time I attempt to run my left hip goes kerplewy would be that my left hip would go kerplewy. The good news is my left hip is fine, or at least no worse than it was before I trotted with a false and utterly unwarranted sense of confidence out of the starting gate. The bad news is that my right calf has been pulled so tightly I am pretty sure the muscle has turned to stone.

An adrenalin rush had conspired with a late arrival (which placed us toward the back of the pack, with the slowpokes) and basic stupidity to propel me forward much too quickly, causing me to lose my daughter and her friends in my dust almost immediately. Luckily, I at least got to enjoy my short lived exhilaration since I never bothered to look back to see the utter disdain (and horror) on my daughter's face as I weaved in and out of the packs of leisurely joggers and walkers in my way. This was, after all, the "Biggest Loser" race, and I was determined to be the biggest loser of them all. As if there was ever a contest.

About halfway through the race, I was pretty sure I might die if I didn't stop soon, although, naturally, I didn't stop, at least not immediately. No, it wasn't my calf. I was too busy struggling to breathe through the hyperventilation attack that seemed to have resulted from my explosion out of the gate to notice that my calf was screaming. After the turn, I trotted through the gasps and the sharp pains in my lungs just so I could experience the thrill of passing my daughter and her friend and giving them a superior smirk. They ignored me.

I don't know if it was good sense or an instinctive will to live that made me give up and start walking, but within less than a minute I could actually hear my heart sigh with relief and I congratulated myself for being a grown up and listening to my body. That is until the kids came up behind me and asked if I was okay. Little snots. Naturally, I pretended I had only been waiting for them to catch up, and started running alongside them, which is when I noticed the muscle in my lower leg was about to pop. I thought about telling them I was going to hang back just so as not to intrude on their fun, but I think the look of agony on my face may have given me away.

Eventually my daughter's friend who was racing on a not yet fully healed ankle injury caught up to me as I limped along, and, together, as we turned the corner and saw the balloon festooned archway of the finish line, we dug deep and mustered up all the resolve we had and ran the rest of the way. (I had wanted to save face, not let my daughter see me limp across the finish line, but by the time I arrived she had long given up waiting, and was relaxing on the grass eating energy bars and bananas; frankly, for all I know, she had been home for a shower and back, but she didn't let on.)

I learned a lot from "The Biggest Loser" race, though, and not just that it's dumb to peak too soon or that living another day is more important than running the whole way. The theme of the day was accomplishment. The crowd was atypical. Folks of all shapes and sizes -- not only the ultra-fit --  showed up to do their best. Not to win, not to beat anybody, not necessarily to even run the whole way. A recent "Biggest Loser" winner stood like a goddess at the start and finish, shouting encouragement to everyone, inspiring people who want more than anything to know what it feels like to stand in her shoes. She has lost more pounds than I can count, gained more muscle than I can imagine, but that's just the stuff on the outside. For whatever constitutes a television season, she pushed her own envelope, challenged herself, succeeded in ways she never imagined she could. The woman literally glowed, and, best of all, she is paying it forward. It's about the effort, it's about all the little setbacks along the way but staying with it. It's about accomplishment, big or small.

The pictures I posted on my Facebook page inspired a lot of congratulatory comments; it occurred to me that a lot of folks must have thought I had run a marathon, and not simply run and then limped my way through a measly little 5K. I thought about posting a clarification. This was nothing, friends I wanted to say. I couldn't even run the whole way. 

But then I thought better of it. For me, at my age, in the shape I'm in, the measly little 5K was a big deal. And, the limp and the near death experience notwithstanding, the day inspired me. I appreciated the sunshine, the time with my daughter and her friends, and the feeling I got from dragging myself down there in the first place. I limped instead of calling a taxi (yay me), and I managed that two minute sprint (everything's relative; for me, it was a sprint) at the finish. And I loved the looks on the faces of people of all shapes and sizes coming in after me, the looks of pride and accomplishment and optimism.

Of course  I am still reveling in the surprising good news that my left hip remains relatively intact. And I am proud to say my racing career -- in its new, hopefully gentler, form -- is far from over. Kudos to "The Biggest Loser" and all it has done for participants and viewers alike. And, by the way, you have not lived until you've seen Dolvett Quince up close and, um, in the flesh.

Hip (and Sanity) Check

At about seven thirty yesterday morning I announced, with my trainer, my daughter, and a handful of weekend warriors at the gym as my witnesses, that I was going to do a twenty-eight day cleanse. Well, at least for seven days. I was trying to be realistic. Still, my audience appeared skeptical.

I guess I wasn't technically lying even though two hours later I was noshing on leftover Thai food in the car on my way downtown for lunch. I'm pretty sure Thai food (much less two meals before lunch) is not part of the regimen, but I can still make good on my promise. I said seven days but I never said which ones. Or even whether they would be consecutive.

Nobody would expect me -- or anyone else for that matter -- to start anything as rash as a cleanse on a Sunday, so I won't feel too guilty about the non-whole-grain bagel I am about to eat for breakfast. Notwithstanding the whole Creation story, which is grandfathered in as an exception for some, Sunday just cannot be Day One. It can, however, be a perfect day for administrative matters, the kinds of things that will psych me up for the challenge ahead. Which probably explains why yesterday, determined to recapture the resolve to get healthy that had lasted all of two hours earlier in the day -- and that long, mind you, only because I was busy working out and showering and hiding messes in closets for an upcoming house showing -- I decided to sign up for a 5K race in the morning. My daughters pleaded with me not to do it. They claim to be concerned about the inevitable crippling hip pain; I'm guessing they just don't want to hear me whining about it. Me? Whine?

Who knows? Maybe I signed up to spite them. But Sunday morning has arrived and I am pretty sure they're over it, while I am sitting here wondering what the heck I was thinking. Unlike the cleanse, though, I can't fudge this one. I can't really decide to do just a quarter of the 5K (too humiliating) and I can't decide to do it on a different day. More compelling still, the race is sponsored by The Biggest Loser. I can't quit. They'll yell at me. They'll make me cry. For all I know they'll make me dress up in spandex and weigh me on national television. There is no turning back. I just need to gulp down a healthy handful of Advil with my coffee loaded with cream, savor my non-whole-grain bagel slathered in butter, and suck it up.

When I picked up my race packet yesterday, I got myself a refrigerator magnet that says something like the person who starts the race isn't the same person as the one who finishes. (I'd go get it from my car to give the exact quote, but I'm conserving energy.) A different person? No shit! Right now, I am filled with toxins and about to stuff a bagel down my throat, but I am feeling pretty spry. In a few hours, I will -- as my daughters have predicted -- feel like a cripple. And, to add to my misery, I will know there is very little standing between me and the seven day cleanse I have vowed to complete except a really big post-race brunch.

And, of course, the inevitable decision to start on some other, distant Monday. There is always that.