September 11, 2025

Thursday - Warm and cloudy,slightly cooler than usual.

I didn’t wake up early this morning. I was very surprised about that! I woke up when my first alarm went off. I went downstairs and then came back to bed. I watched one or two videos and then had another snooze, but did get myself out of bed in a goodly time. 

I got dressed, had a quick breakfast and found my backpack and got it ready. Then, I left the house around 11:30 and walked quickly to the bus stop. I checked how soon the bus was going to be today and it was only two minutes late. Not bad at all. 

It arrived and I got on. I rode the bus all the way to S-Mall. I took some money out of the bank machine and then went into the hotel. I had decided I’d have the hotel’s daily lunch if it was still available. Well, before I went to the washroom it was but when i came out, it was sold out!

I ended up going to Pizza Hut Express and having their Hut Melts, the bacon and cheese one. It doesn’t have any tomato sauce on it. It was quite nice if a little small. After my lunch I did a quick tour of the hundred yen shop. I didn’t buy anything there, and then when it got closer to my appointment time, I walked over to my hair stylist’s salon and had my hair cut. 

As usual, my stylist did a great job and soon the floor of the salon was covered in white hair! I enjoyed seeing her again and after having my hair washed and dried, I happily paid for my haircut. My head feels so much lighter now!

I went to the nearby grocery store and picked up a few things for myself. I went back to the mall and visited the hundred yen shop again. This time I did buy a few things, but not too much! I got another pair of knitting needles and a pair of mitts to use with hand cream. I’ve had gloves before, but mitts seem like a better idea in a way.

I went downstairs and decided to have an ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. They gave me a sample of one and I thought I’d try it with my usual favourite, Jamoca Almond Fudge. It was a nice combo.  While I was eating my ice cream, I sent F a message and asked if he’d pick me up after work. If he couldn’t, I could still catch a bus back. He texted me and said that he didn’t have to work late and then that he could pick me up. 

A bit later, I went to Doutor and bought myself a nice big iced coffee and had a seat to wait for F. However, when he phoned me to say he was finished work, he said he wasn’t finished work and he couldn’t pick me up as he had an emergency trip to Yamagata city. Oops. He asked me if I could still take the bus and of course I couldn’t. There weren’t any more buses that went near our house. 

I told him I could take a taxi but he asked me to wait a few minutes. I was fine as I hadn’t finished my coffee yet anyway. He suggested I wait a few minutes and he’d try to work something out.

He called me back and said that he’d pick me up on his way to Yamagata and drop me at the house. Yay. He said that he’d be about 15-20 minutes so I finished my drink and then went outside to the mall’s door. 

Sure enough, F showed up and picked me up. He drove me to the house and dropped me off. The roads were very busy as it was rush hour as well. He dropped me and then went on his way. 

I went into the house and came upstairs. I changed and then went downstairs again and into the kitchen. I got started on dinner. Dinner was hamburgers and fries with some salad, and potato salad. I had to make two plates tonight. I needed plates for F (I made two, one for hot food and one for cold) and one for K’s lunch tomorrow. 

When dinner was nearly ready, I called K and got her up. She came to eat dinner but I had to try and tell her that F was still working. I told her that he would be back around 10 pm. We ate our dinner and it was quite nice I think.

I did dishes after we ate, but I didn’t wash my air fryer. I thought I’d use that to heat up F’s dinner. 

When I finished the dishes, I put them away and let K know that I was going upstairs. I think she stayed downstairs watching TV the whole time! 

I went upstairs and relaxed. I played some games on my computer and tried to watch the news from earlier in the way. However, I hadn’t recorded it. I had recorded curling. ACK! I may be Canadian, but I don’t like curling at all.

F called around 9:30 and was on his way to the grocery store. I had asked him to pick up a few things for tomorrow. He called to find out what I wanted. He also said he’d call me from the grocery store if he forgot anything. He did.

He picked up some salad for dinner and a protein source. Yay. He got something for his and K’s breakfast and a treat or two for himself. 

I went downstairs and started heating up his food. I did use my air fryer and it worked really well. It made the fries super crispy.  

F arrived and it was lovely to see him again. I brought out the food for him and he ate his dinner. K had a drink with him and I popped between the living room and the kitchen as well. I washed the newest dishes and then went upstairs to watch The Rookie.

F came upstairs a while later and went to bed fairly soon afterwards. Not a bad thing. 

And that’s about it for my day. It was good, but I think I need a day off to recover! Oh, and F let me know that he’s taken Tuesday off work. Sigh. I hope he makes some plans for it because I’m not sure what we’ll end up doing!

Come back later if you like and hear all about my Friday. Until tomorrow…. 

September 10, 2025

Wednesday - Cloudy, warm, then rainy at night

This morning I woke up again around 7am. F wasn’t in the room, but I thought it was a little early for him to have left the house. I was right. He was downstairs. I got up and went downstairs and then came back upstairs to the room. F left a few minutes later, but I called him back to grab his breakfast sandwich. 

I went back to bed, watched a few videos and then went to sleep again. I did wake up a bit early and went downstairs. I made my breakfast and brought it upstairs. I enjoyed it a lot!

I had a quiet morning and early afternoon. I actually got very tired and went and had a nap. I was only asleep for an hour or so. I went downstairs around 2 and then I went into the kitchen and marinated the meat for dinner. I also set up the onion for an onion boil as well. It takes a bit of time to cook so I wanted to get it prepped in advance. 

I went upstairs for a few minutes and then went downstairs and made my lunch. I brought it back to the room and ate while I watched another episode of Buffy. It is surprising how much better it is now that it’s going to be taken away from me!

F called me around 5:30 and said he was on his way. I went downstairs a little later and started to get ready for dinner. Tonight I was a bit busy. I got the onion boil in the air fryer and later on I prepared some okra and some eringi mushrooms. I roasted them in my toaster oven. So, we had a nice meal when it was all ready. We had coro-coro steak, plus the onion, okra and eringi. F had made rice, so there was that, plus we had salad from baby leaf lettuces and some macaroni salad. 

I did the dishes afterwards and then I had to do up the kitchen garbage. I got a bunch of gomi from K and then put the bag in the entryway for F to take out. 

I came upstairs and did my gomi up in the room and left my bag for F to put his stuff in as well.  I watched some YouTube and then I went downstairs to take a shower.

After the shower, Grey’s Anatomy was the TV programme de jour. It was an okay episode.

F stayed up quite late again, I’m not sure what he’s doing. He makes me want to stay up later just to have enough quiet time to myself.

Anyway, tomorrow I have to get myself up and out of the house before 11:30 so that I can go and get my hair cut. I’ll likely have lunch out, so I’m looking forward to that too. 

Come back later if you like and hear all about my day. Until tomorrow….

September 7, 2025

Sunday - Cloudy, rainy and cooler

I went to bed a bit late last night and then I slept in a bit late today too. I went downstairs then went back to bed. F came upstairs and started listening to something on his phone loudly and I was so annoyed that I got up and was angry at him. I was trying to sleep longer and he was listening to something without headphones. Nasty.

I grumped over at my computer and had a cup of tea before going downstairs and grabbing my breakfast. I ate and then I was a bit less grumpy. 

I went downstairs in time to meet up with K’s Care Worker but she didn’t come at 1pm. F then told me that she had called him and rescheduled for 1:30. He didn’t bother to tell me until after 1 pm?! I was less than impressed with both of them.

She finally showed up and it went fine. She basically is just checking on K and seeing if we have any problems with the day service or if we want to book the short term stay service. I do, but F doesn’t so it doesn’t matter what I want. I had suggested last month that we book it for his birthday but he said no. 

After the Care Worker left, F and I discussed what to do and decided to go and get our lunch.Since it was after 2 and pouring I suggested Gusto and F was okayish with that. We did think about another place, but the distance from the parking to the restaurant would mean we’d be soaked, even with umbrellas.

We went to Gusto and had a decent lunch. I had my favourite pasta there, the creamy lemony, avocado,ham,shrimp fresh pasta. I liked it and have it quite often. We both had the drink bar and shared an order of fries. F had the curry with a pork cutlet and added on a fried fish. 

After lunch we stopped at a bank machine for F and then we came back to the house. I spent some quality time with my computer and after a bit F made dinner for K. When he finished, he came upstairs and we talked about our dinner. Although I wasn’t very hungry yet, we decided we should eat as Sunday night’s don’t give us many options. 

F suggested Udonichi and I was okay with that. I did say to him that I thought they closed early so if he wanted to go we should leave right away. He did, so we did.

We were able to get into Udonichi and had a nice meal. F had tempura on rice and I had meat soup with hot udon that I dipped into it. It was really nice. It’s a little hard for me to eat noodles without making a huge mess, but I mostly managed. 

After we finished our meals, we paid and then left. We went over to Mina and I did the grocery shopping. F had bought some stuff earlier so I didn’t need to get things for their breakfasts tomorrow. I got things to make dinner and for my lunch for the next couple of days.

We came back to the house and I put away the groceries. I went upstairs and F stayed downstairs for a bit. He was going to do laundry.

I realized I had a lot of time tonight so I decided to watch a movie from the Fire Stick and decided to watch The Accountant 2. I liked it, but I still prefer the first movie as it was a lot more intelligent at first. Still, it was fun for a Sunday night with nothing else on. 

F went downstairs around the same time that I did. He took a shower and I went downstairs and washed my cereal bowl and filled up a bottle of water for the room upstairs. K was hiding in the living room so I motioned to her to go ahead and use the toilet. F was in the shower and she had to wash her hands in the kitchen. No big deal, but she couldn’t quite work out who was where! 

I came back upstairs and hit up YouTube for some entertainment and F came back upstairs and went to bed after a bit.

That’s about it for today. I’m not really sure what I’m going to get up to on Monday. I really need to contact my hairdresser to see if I can go in and get my hair cut, but this week the weather is supposed to be horrible. Still, I’d like to have my hair look good in any anniversary photos next weekend so that would be nice to get it done.

Come back later if you like and read all about my Monday. Until tomorrow…. 

August 18, 2025

Monday - Sunny and hot

I woke up this morning when F was getting ready for work. I think I asked him to turn on the air conditioner! It was hot in our room.

I woke up when my alarm went off. I went downstairs and then came back to the room. I’m afraid that I went back to bed and had a snooze again. 

I got up later, dressed and went downstairs and grabbed my very late breakfast! I brought it upstairs to eat. I had a quiet afternoon upstairs. I finally got a little start on my column and even started doing some research for it. I need to watch another movie or two to be honest. Sigh.

I was late going downstairs to get my lunch so I was late for everything else! I watched another episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. This was okay actually. It was the second part of one where there was another slayer with a pretty bad Jamaican-style accent. 

I watched a bit of the news and then turned off the TV. F called around 5:30 to say he was on his way back to the house. 

I went downstairs and did my dishes. When F came in the house, he brought some mini-tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden. Wow! The cucumber was nice. I added it to the salad that I put out tonight.

I’m not sure why but I felt really panicky in the kitchen tonight. Dinner wasn’t anything too special, but I was feeling a lot of pressure to get it done soon. F was fine when I told him I might be late so it really didn’t matter. I washed some baby leaf lettuce and cut up one of the cucumbers to add to it. I peeled, cut up and microwaved some potatoes which after they were soft I air-fryed to roast them. We also had some chicken roasted in the toaster oven. Everything was very nice and K even finished the potatoes on the table! That was a surprise. 

I did the dishes afterwards but I couldn’t get myself to get motivated to do them. I did finally get them done. I went upstairs after I finished and relaxed for a while. 

I went back downstairs around 10:30 to take a shower. I really felt like I needed it! When I came back to the room I had a little talk with F. I had bought a couple of hand towels for K. She won’t use the towel in the bathroom. Instead, she uses one that is in the shower room. The towel doesn’t get washed often and is horrid. I bought a couple of cheap towels that I hoped we could replace the towel with and then rotate them out so that I could wash them occasionally. F told me that the towels weren’t big enough and was really unhelpful about the whole thing. I told him that I haven’t had the chance to do any decent shopping for ages so it was the best I could do. 

I was quite upset about the whole thing. I thought I was doing something nice and F just stomped on it. I saw that F was upset afterwards and I tried to talk to him about it a bit, but I’m not sure if anything was resolved or if I made it better or worse. 

I watched an episode of The Big Door Prize. It was good. I really should watch the rest of it soon. I think it is quite a knowing show. I heard that it didn’t get renewed which is unfortunate. 

And that’s about it. Tomorrow I need to work on my column. If I can, I might watch a movie or do some more writing. 

Come back later if you like and hear all about my day. Until tomorrow….

August 14, 2025

Thursday - Hot and sunny

I got up this morning when my alarm went off. I went downstairs and then came back to the room and went back to bed with a few alarms set on my phone. I watched a couple of videos and then snoozed. 

I woke up about half an hour before I was due to leave! Yikes. I hurriedly got up and dressed. I did a couple of things around the room and then went downstairs. I got to the bus stop about 5 minutes early. It was a little funny because I was wearing a big sunhat and I was looking at my phone while I was waiting. I never looked up so I was surprised when the bus stopped right in front of me!

I was the only person on the bus for quite a while. I rode the bus until the end of the line, S-Mall. I got out, bought a couple of things at the Daiso on the second floor, then went downstairs. I decided to buy lunch at Pizza Hut, but they told me it would take about 30 minutes. Yikes. I didn’t have that much time. Instead, I ended up at the bakery and bought a few things. I ate in the back of the bakery.

I caught the bus back to Sanno-machi and first up went to the post office and made a deposit. Yay! More coins in my account! Then, I toddled over to the drugstore and bought a few things for the house and myself. I walked back to the cinema and went in. 

I bought my ticket and a few minutes later I was in my seat and watching Bridget Jones’s Diary. The Digital Remaster was being shown in my local cinema for a week for the 25th anniversary…or maybe the 24th since it came out in 2001. It was great to see it again on the big screen. It’s been ages since I watched it and I had forgotten just how funny it really is. And…how gorgeous Colin Firth and Hugh Grant were….Oh and tonight when I was trying to explain about the movie to F, he couldn’t remember who Hugh Grant was and kept getting him confused with Hugh Jackman! When I figured out who he was talking about it was very funny!

After the movie, I wrote up a quick movie note for the board at the cinema and then left for my bus stop. I should have waited in the cinema for a few more minutes, but I got to the stop about 10 minutes too early. 

The bus came to the stop, I got on and had a lovely ride until I got to my stop. I got off the bus and walked back to the house. Just outside the yard, I remembered that there were some overhanging branches and weeds that were just waiting for a person on a bicycle to run into them. I opened the house and put my backpack inside, then grabbed a pair of shears from the garage and cut down the offending branches that I could reach. I gathered up the branches carefully as one of them had thorns and disposed of them. 

I went into the house. I saw K and she looked okay. I was a tad worried about her as she’s old and doesn’t always look after herself on hot days. 

I went upstairs and basically stripped. It was 32 degrees in my room. I got it cooled down and I relaxed in front of my computer for a while. F called around 5:30 and I reminded him to get some bentos for us. He was surprised that I wanted bentos for all of us, but with me being out today I thought it was a good thing to spend some time with K. 

He came back to the house around 6 pm. I was in the kitchen and when he arrived I heated up the bentos. He had got two smallish bentos for me and K. They had a tempura shrimp, bamboo shoots and mushroom and bamboo rice. I wasn’t sure that I’d like it, but it was okay. I wouldn’t pick it for myself, but I did eat it. F got himself a big one with fish that he complained about being too thin. The fish, not him!

After we finished eating, I washed the bento boxes and left them to dry. We had to wait a while for K, F’s sister to come over and drop off some food for us, but then we got ready to go out. 

F and I drove to PAL and went to the drugstore there. We bought a couple of drinks for the road and then drove off to Yunohama to see the fireworks. We were supposed to leave Tsuruoka a whole lot earlier so when we arrived in Yunohama, all of the good parking spots were taken. Finally F found one and we walked a bit towards the beach. 

It's hard to get a good picture of fireworks on an iPhone!

The fireworks show was supposed to last for 10 minutes, but was really only six! Still, it was nice. We haven’t planned to go and see the big hanami in Tsuruoka this year, we might watch it from the windows upstairs if we feel like it this year. 

We drove back to Tsuruoka and stopped at a grocery store. We needed something for K’s lunch since I hadn’t cooked tonight (no leftovers) and also, ended up getting a couple of treats as well. 

Then, we went through a gyudon shop’s drive through and got some food. The bentos earlier seemed small to me! I got a cheese gyudon and F just got a regular one. 

We came back to the house and ate. I watched some YouTube and then The Rookie. It’s been on so long that The Rookie isn’t the rookie anymore! I quite like it anyway. 

F fell asleep while I was watching my show and only woke up a little when I went downstairs around midnight to take down K’s breakfast. (I can’t leave it in the kitchen too early or K will find it and eat it and then have nothing for breakfast.)

So that’s about it for my day. It was so good to get out of the house. It was so hot though, it was quite horrible to be out, but I’m glad that I finally did it. I had wanted to go out yesterday, but I think going out today was the right choice. I was tired when I came back and having to cook on top of that would have been too much. 

Come back later if you like and hear all about my day. Until tomorrow….