toby of the day, it was the blurst of times

Toby is talking a lot these days. Often, it’s fairly easy to piece together what he’s trying to tell us. Mostly because every other word is phone, ball, robot or truck. But sometimes, it’s a little harder. Today, he was rambling on about ‘juice owls’ and ‘walrus hats’. At least I think he was anyway. It’s kind of like our own version of the infinite monkey theorem, I just need to go back and read some Shakespeare so I know when we’ve hit on something big. For example, I’m pretty sure there isn’t a mention of walrus hats in either Hamlet or King Lear, but it’s been a while since I’ve read Henry IV part 2, so maybe I’ll start there.

toby of the day, sayonara bacon

So after months of negotiating, stalling, and waffling, and a couple of late night calls to our house, we decided to decline the job offer from Kyoto. Yes, essentially I brought home the bacon, and we never ate it. We just left it in the refrigerator until it had grown moldy and, to drop the metaphor for just a moment, rather irritable, and then we threw it into the compost. There are lots of reasons why it wasn’t for us, though top among them was that the only job offer for jon was for him to be my one and only postdoc, which isn't really an offer at all. Of course, in my mind, the entire enterprise would be nothing but rainbows. It would be like petting a family of puppies, for four glorious years. Jon and I would be a crackpot team of scientists, spending our days collecting data, publishing one Nature paper after another. We would become the favorite customers at the oyakodonburi place and discover all their secrets. Toby would learn Japanese. I would learn Japanese. We would travel around the country every weekend, and visit kiyomizudera each time the seasons changed. But of course the reality would be that Jon would be my only employee, overqualified, underpaid, and very grumpy. We would work together all day in a tiny tiny room. Then we would go pick up toby at the crazy Japanese daycare where they would change his diaper every hour, on the hour, whether he needed it or not. And we would have to bow our heads with shame as they berated us because he had only napped for 40 minutes. Then we would all head home to our miniscule apartment with mites living in the tatami floor and no furniture because our furniture would still be in transit on a very slow boat, the kind of slow boat that would most likely be taken over by pirates well before it reached us. And since pirates love beaten up wood furniture and framed indie rock posters, they would certainly keep all of our belongings, perhaps leaving us with some plastic blocks and maybe some mismatched dishes. Then we would try to sleep, but Jon would lie awake, stressed and bitter at his pain in the ass boss, aka me. and I would know he was lying awake because I too would be lying awake, panicked about how I would get tenure, or better yet, a job back in the states, when my Kyoto gig was up in exactly 34,112 hours and I hadn’t published enough. and toby would know that both Jon and I were awake because we would all be sleeping together on futons in our one room apato. Only the cats would be oblivious to our collective middle of the night insomnia, but only because they would still be trapped in quarantine in Osaka. Anyway, so we declined. Which means that we have at least another year here in our favorite city, which we’re pretty pleased about. And I only have to watch toby chase the cats around the room, or see jon sleeping soundly, or sit in the park with our friends, playing boggle in english and having a beer, to know that we made the right choice.

toby of the day, you clearly have no idea

8pm, Tuesday, our downstairs neighbor has a friendly chat with Jon:

“I understand he’s an active kid and all, but it’s just that it’s kind of loud.”

“uh-huh.

“I mean, I totally understand but if there’s anything you can do. . .”

“right”

“It’s just that, well, it almost sounds like he’s jumping”

“yeah, well, I guess that’s because he is”

“he is?”

“jumping”

“oh”

toby of the day, red shoe diaries

We keep our shoes lined up at the top of our stairs. While I have tried to winnow down the number of pairs of shoes that I keep there, inevitably my shoes somehow sneak out of the closet and back into the nice little row by the banister. This is always surprising since while I was pregnant I became addicted to a bland and boring but so very practical and comfortable pair of leather clogs and am pretty much currently unable to wear any other shoes. Toby has two pairs of shoes in the line. However, when asked to get a pair of shoes to put on, he usually stomps back into the living room wearing some of mine. He’s currently partial a pair of red mary jane’s, though he too is often seduced by the bland but functional black clogs. He’s amazingly deft at walking in them, even shoes with heels. Which is more than I can say for myself. I can only hope that I don’t have to interview for too many jobs, since my chances of teetering over on those heels are dangerously high. I guess I could always have toby give me some lessons. Or better yet, I’ll just borrow some of his shoes. Maybe the ones shaped like alligators.