toby of the day, teacher, mother, secret lover

Toby has discovered television. ok, I guess technically that’s not entirely true because we don’t actually have a TV. and some would even argue that the TV we used to have, the one Jon brought from Japan, circa 1981 that finally emitted the last electrons from its cathode ray tube in January, didn't really count as a TV. In any case, we do watch things on our laptop, and now toby likes to do the same. He started with an online cartoon called making fiends, or “MEANDS!” as he calls it. And then we introduced him to the movie Totoro, in particular a few 5 minutes chunks introducing the totoros and the nekobus. For a while he would ask me to sing him to sleep with strange songs about concrete shoes or by mumbling through Japanese Totoro lyrics. All was good. But, while I am weirdly capable of watching the same 2 minute video clip over and over and over (and over and over and over) again, Jon is not, and in some respects, neither is Toby. So after going to youtube one day to show toby the totoro movie trailer, there was no turning back for either of them. Toby soon moved on to demanding to see a video of a girl singing the song from the new Miyazaki movie “Ponyo”. He could watch her do her little choreographed arm movements for hours. Then came the discovery that a search merging his love of robots and his love of balls results in a number of videos of knee high Japanese robots competing in some sort of robot world cup and for a couple of weeks, robot soccer was all he could talk about. Until the past few days, when the main topic of conversation became bouncy balls after jon stumbled on a sony bravia commercial from a couple years ago. As a consequence of all this, he has almost no interest in television. I'm not even sure he knows what a television is, since when he sees pictures of cassette players in his books he points to them and says “TV?” And even if we come across an enormous television, while it is playing the sony bravia commercial, he will turn to Jon, point to the laptop, and say "bouncy balls?" then wait patiently until Jon can pull it up on the screen. I’m not really sure what any of this means, except that I must admit I'm kind of happy about it, at least until he learns to type “elmo”.

toby of the day, how do you even spell borscht?

We recently had to find a new daycare. Mostly because our current daycaretaker is weak and hateful and seems to think it’s acceptable behavior not only to have a second child, but to use that procreation as an excuse to stop being our daycaretaker. Of course, she’s really not weak and hateful, because if she were it would be incredibly easy to find a new daycare. No, instead it is the fact that she is so very very awesome that makes the task of searching for a replacement, well, terrifying. So we started looking at daycares and preschools only to discover they were all either full or frightening. Panicked that one or both of us would have to stay home until a preschool spot opened up in September, we briefly considered finding a nanny to share with another family. This plan was very short lived. I cannot convey to you how entirely out of our league we were in this enterprise. It was as though after managing to make 3 of 5 shots into the toy box from the other side of our living room, I joined an NBA basketball team. And just so you know, I almost never make 3 of 5 shots into the toy basket. We quickly realized that finding our own nanny and a family to share her with would take the better part of 2009, and then after a couple of meetings with existing nanny share families, we even more quickly we discovered that we are not, and may never be, the kind of people that have a nanny. For example, the first mother we met works at home, and yet not only was she not dressed in pajamas when we stopped by to meet her, she was wearing make-up and had her hair styled. On the other hand, during our ride over on the bus, I had remarked to jon about how pleased I was that my pants had only a small quantity of food on them, and that the color of his t-shirt made the thumb sized hole in his sweater almost unnoticeable. I most certainly was not wearing makeup. This same woman explained to Jon that she stored all her daughters toys in a leather ottoman in the living room so as not to disrupt the rooms decor. That living room was also outfitted with a cream colored sofa and two glass lamps that I was pretty sure toby could shatter just by looking at them too long. Jon smiled and looked understanding, even though in our living room we keep toys in a bookcase (laid on it’s side for safety reasons of course) that we found on the street. At the second home, the family seemed a little more down to earth. But the nanny, well, let’s just say that given the look in her eyes when she snatched a telephone from Toby’s chubby little fingers, I was pretty sure he would end up in some gulag labor camp before the end of his second week with her.
But through a combination of luck and, well, luck, a spot opened up at the one daycare that we actually liked. It’s no denise, but at the same time there are a lot of equally important things that it is not. For example, it does not smell like a dreadful mix of borscht and poop, it is not the sort of place where infants get pushed around in strollers all day while inside the house, the owner did not spend much of her time staring wistfully and tearfully at a wall of photos of former attendees trying to convey to us how much she loves her kids, and I’m pretty sure that it is not the sort of place that will look down on me when I show up with food in my hair. In all, the owner, kids, and teachers all seem nice. And it was recommended to us by a woman I work with, a woman who is perhaps the most cautious and, dare I say, overprotective mother I’ve ever met, a woman whose standards could not be higher. She sent her daughter there, and still raves about it. I think it will be good. We’ll keep you posted.

toby of the day, shaken, stirred, and very dirty

At the gym where I swim, there are two showering options. There is a large, kind of open area with showerheads lining 3 of the walls, and then along the fourth wall there are a handful of shower stalls. On the door of each of the stalls is a sign that reads “stalls are for adults only, thank you for your cooperation”. Ever since they put up the signs, I have been surveying the stalls during my shower to try to determine what adult only activities I can and should be participating in but have somehow been missing out on, like a small martini bar, stash of porn, or even an accountant eager to chide me for not having done my taxes yet. But so far, I’ve come up empty handed. Then this morning it occurred to me that maybe there are no special adult activities available within the stall, but instead that it’s a metaphor, that adulthood is a cold, gray stall where you stand alone waiting for the water to warm up. I think I much preferred the hope of encountering a nice martini, with extra olives, you know, as a reward for having gone swimming. It would certainly convince me to swim more often. Perhaps I’ll write up a little comment card for the suggestion box.

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.