Prairie View

Monday, October 10, 2016

One Good Thing

I decided that one good thing about having Hiromi gone almost two weeks is that my morning routine is simplified by not having to creep about quietly in the dark so as not to disturb him.  The alarm goes off at 5:30 and I reach up and turn on the lamp beside the bed immediately.  Then I walk to the wall switch and flood the whole bedroom with light.  I bang around at will in the kitchen as I find and swallow my thyroid pills and then thump along on my way to my devotions chair, turning on lights everywhere I go.

I can start the Vita-Mix any old time and have my ever-so-healthful breakfast smoothie ready as soon as my hot miso soup is ready.

I'm making a big deal of this ONE GOOD THING to keep from thinking too much about many bad things about having him gone.  Hiromi seldom shows up at school, but I'm learning that I depend a great deal on his help to make teaching possible for me.  One way or another, I always seem to end up with at least one class that requires gathering many supplies from home.  This year it's the Expotitions that have me scrambling to round up this and that from the shop, the yard, or the utility room.  Rather, it has Hiromi scrambling to do these things.  He's wonderful that way.  Last week I had to find the sledge hammer and Hiromi's goggles myself--to allow students to break up rocks safely.

At my suggestion, Hiromi cut his work day one hour shorter so that we could eat supper together before the evening was gone.  As it turns out, I didn't anticipate how long my work day would be, and Hiromi usually arrives home before I do.  If I plan ahead and remember to communicate with him, he can help get the meal underway before I get here.

Hiromi helps me keep track of the time.  I needed this the morning I panicked and thought it was an hour later than it actually was and I was way late for school and my comp class had already gathered and I wasn't there.  Except that I wasn't late at all.  Right on schedule, in fact.

Hiromi also gives me many safety warnings, most of which seem unnecessary to me.  There's one thing though that I won't ever be able to complain about again.  I realized this the day I got home from school and discovered a completely empty tiny cooking kettle on a burner that had been left turned on all day.  Hiromi has several times discovered a situation just like this within minutes of my placing the empty kettle back on the burner, and made many sad and solemn noises whenever it happened.  I'm not proud of it, of course, but it's not like I've ever done it on purpose.  This time he wasn't here to save me from my own mistakes.  But the Lord was.  I turned off the burner as soon as I spied the low flame and left the kettle to cool.  Then I added plain water and let it soak.  The next time I washed dishes, I swished it in soapy water and it looked completely unscathed.  No extra scrubbing was needed.

On another point, I'll need to concede that Hiromi's "uber" caution has its positive aspects.  One night before I retired I reminded myself that before I leave for school the next day I'll need to unplug the phone line from the wall since there is a chance of severe thunderstorms.  We had something like a 10% change of overnight rain, but no mention of severe night-time storms.  I woke up around 3:00 to hear wild wind and lots of thunder.  Lightening lit up the windows repeatedly.  As soon as I could bestir myself I headed for the study where the phone line is plugged in.  On my way there, there were two tremendous crashes overhead.  I unplugged things and went back to bed.  The next morning I had no internet access when I plugged things in again.

I sent an email to Joel from school, and he called me later and walked me through what I could try to see if I could isolate the problem.  Apparently the surge protector had gotten fried in the storm, but when I plugged the phone line directly into the wall I had internet service again.  Then Joel had Amazon ship me a new surge protector.  It arrived today.  In the meantime, I've been doing a lot of plugging/unplugging cables in the study.  I'm ever-so-glad to let Hiromi take care of the electronics department again.

I forgot to put out the recycling bin on the once-a-month pickup day.  I also forgot to put out the trash bin--twice.  The garbage pail is fuller now than Hiromi ever lets it become.  The water for the chickens will probably last through tomorrow, but if Hiromi were here, it would be nearly full.  I'm afraid the birds may have given up on finding feed in the feeders.  I thought I was keeping tabs from the house, and didn't realize till Saturday that the seed I saw was just a very thin layer on top of a small board near the glass-wall front of the feeder.  I thought I was seeing the top of the pile covering the bottom section of the feeder.

The grass in the driveway tickles the belly of the car when I drive over it.  I didn't think Hiromi's final mowing before he left would be the last one of the season, but he was hopeful on that point.

All in all, I'm very ready for my world to be set right again when Hiromi arrives home tomorrow evening, Lord willing.

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I have waited a prudent length of time--till all the approvals were secured and the arrangements made--to talk about my upcoming trip to BD to see our eldest son and his family.  Departure is planned for near the end of this month and return about two weeks later.  My ticket was purchased with air miles offered to me by J.  I will accompany my niece who plans to stay in the country to work as a teacher for a family who lives there now.

One expected highlight is being able to accompany several families on a river cruise to the Sunderbans, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It's the largest mangrove forest in the world, and the home of the Bengal tiger, alligators, many other animals, and a great deal of lush vegetation.  I've watched some Sunderbans features on youtube.  I think I'll be glad for the safety of the boat, but the prospect of seeing this exotic part of the natural world pleases me greatly.

Seeing the world of my loved ones makes my heart sing too.

*********************

Neither Hiromi nor I do a lot of traveling, so this traveling we're both doing within a month's time is quite a switch from the usual.  If I didn't think it was a gift from the Lord it wouldn't make much sense to compress these events into such a small sliver of time.

In the meantime, I'll need to keep my head down and my shoulder to the wheel to make things manageable at school for those who teach in my place, and for the remainder of the semester after I get back.  

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