April 9, 2023

Sunday - Rainy, cloudy and cool

I went to bed a little late and still in a bad mood. I slept pretty well if I’m honest, but did hear F this morning when he got up. He left and I assumed that he was taking his mother to vote and then probably for lunch. 

I got up a little before 11.  I heard the doorbell and ran downstairs. It was a woman with some kind of paper in her hand. I offered to take it for F, but she put it back in her bag and went away. Okay then. A little later, the doorbell went again and I was halfway down the stairs when F’s sister came in the house. I am REALLY getting annoyed with that. I told her I didn’t think that her mother was here, but she was! She was still in bed though. F’s sister said she was going to take her mother out for the day. That was fine with me!

F came back a bit after 12. Apparently, he’d gone off for a massage, which was fine. He came back into the room and said hello. I said hello back and we were okay. I was so angry with him last night, I just didn’t want to fight anymore. I gave him a cup of coffee and later a hug. 

We talked about lunch and I suggested going to Arpeggio. We haven’t been there in ages. F was okay with that. 

We drove over to the restaurant, were able to find a decent parking space and then walked to the restaurant. F had fish and to be honest, I was sorely tempted to have it too, but ended up getting the bacon-don. It feels like breakfast! It’s bacon and egg on rice.  We enjoyed our meal there and then left.

We stopped at the post office to grab my parcel. F didn’t know that I was picking up a parcel, he thought I was mailing something. He did the thing where he went to the wrong side of the post office. I don’t know why he does that. He always whines about “too many cars” in that space, but today there weren’t. He just missed it. To be fair, he did turn around and come back to the correct door.

After this, we talked about going to the Aquarium or I suggested finding a place where we could see the cherry trees but wouldn’t have to walk too much. He had suggested Oyama so we drove out there. The park was busy and I didn’t really want to walk around too much. The sky was really dark and it was cold. We went to a parking area near the bird sanctuary and walked a little bit around the pond. We turned back before it was too difficult for F. It was lovely to get out and about though. I’ve been missing it a lot lately. 

Oyama Shimo-Ike
A waterfowl wetland

We stopped at a bakery in Oyama and had coffee and cake. The bakery had stopped their cafe during the worst of Covid so it was nice to see it open again. 

My happy chocolate/strawberry shortcake.

We came back to Tsuruoka and I did the grocery shopping. I’m going to do chicken for at least one of the nights, the other night I’ll do a sausage/veggie bake I think. We came back to the house for a while and I put the groceries away. I gave F his choice of breakfast foods and took charge of stuff for his mother. While I was downstairs I threw out some of the old food in the fridge. This last week K didn’t eat a lot of the stuff that I put aside for her. It annoyed me because I would have had it for my lunch if I had known!

I went upstairs and had some hot drinks and watched a bit of YouTube. F relaxed which is good. He dozed a little I think. K came back and disappeared as usual. She didn’t need dinner as she had eaten already.

A little after 7 I asked F if he was going to go and vote. He hemmed and hawed for a bit and then decided that he would, but wouldn’t take his mother because it is difficult for him to explain the ballot to her. She has to write the person she is voting for and F didn’t think she would be able to do that. 

We drove over to the voting place and F went in. I don’t know anything about the election so I have no idea who he voted for. Apparently, it was a Yamagata Prefecture vote.

I had suggested going to Cocos for dinner and to do him credit, F said it was okay. We went and actually had a good meal. I had ordered a new carbonara dish but sad to say they were out of it. I changed to some chicken instead. We ordered some fries since my meal was cheaper. F had fish, basically a Japanese-style meal and didn’t complain about it. He even grudgingly said it was good later!

We had a good meal and then came back to the house. I did a few rows on my blanket, I think I need to stop soon, and also watched some AppleTV+. I watched the new Chris O’Dowd show, another episode of Shrinking and one of The Reluctant Traveller. The last one was set in South Africa this time and was quite interesting. F watched stuff on his phone I think. 

So, today turned out to be a much better day than yesterday. It’s sad that the cherry blossoms are on their way out and we didn’t get a great look at them, but with F’s condition, it couldn’t really be helped. 

I’m not sure what I’ll get up to tomorrow. Come on back and find out. Until tomorrow….