An old vacuum cleaner reminded me about an old lamp. Well, actually, a commercial about one.

There’s a great Ikea commercial (directed by Spike Jonze) about a woman throwing out a lamp. We then see the lamp on the street as it watches, through the window, the life of the woman and her new lamp. It all leads to a nice punch line in the rain.

I bring this up because today we replaced a vacuum cleaner that’s older than both our daughters. When we replace something that old (for example, we recently replaced a coffee maker that was older than our youngest daughter) we usually hold a mock ceremony where we salute and make a really bad trumpet fanfare as a send off for the old item before we dispose of it.

We don’t really feel bad about replacing the vacuum cleaner, but we were kind of bummed by replacing the coffee maker.

This all refers to a Japanese concept called “Mono no aware” (“aware” is three syllables ah wah ray) or “The pathos of things / an empathy toward things”.

It describes the odd sadness you feel when you get rid of something you’ve had for a long time. I’ve seen people who claim to be non-materialistic cry when they left their first houses. Actually, i kind of did that, too, when we left our house in Colorado. I also remember my parents being kind of sad when we left our trailer for that new house as the trailer was the first home we’d (well, THEY’D) ever owned.

In our case, there wasn’t much pathos for the vacuum cleaner as we’d worn it out and it was long past due for being replaced. The same thing happened with our old kerosene heater last winter which was also, I believe, older than our oldest.

The coffee maker, though, was different. We both were disappointed when it broke. Some of it was the surprise when the power button suddenly stopped working but the rest, rather than being pathos, was the concern that it would be difficult to replace for less than the cost of a small car. Also, because it was old, I’d had to replace the plug when the cord began to wear out which mean I had some personal investment in it.

However, the new  coffee maker, as with the lamp in the Ikea commercial, is much better than the old one and I’m crazy to feel sorry for it.

That said, I’m kind of sad it’s gone.

Sweet Sixteen it ain’t.

There isn’t much love for the 16th wedding anniversary. Even we didn’t do that much for it–I neglected to add it to our calendar as I was more concerned about national holidays–although, in our defense, we did, technically, celebrate it twice.

Even tradition isn’t a big fan of the 16th. The lists of traditional anniversary gifts are fairly detailed until the 15th wedding anniversary (lace, ivory, crystal, very small rocks), and then they skip to the 20th as if they are so shocked you’ve made it that far they don’t know what to say for a few years.

(Note the librarians at the Chicago Public Library seem to have recommended gravy boats as gifts but, well, yeah. Well.)

In our case, we already had a few bottles of wine on hand and She Who Must Be Obeyed stocked up on French bread and cheese, beer, and a few other side dishes.

However, our natural laziness resulted in an anniversary dinner of chicken nuggets, bread, cheese, beer and potato chips. (She Who Must Be Obeyed counted our beer festival trip as our wedding dinner.)

Because I felt we should do a little more I offered to cook pork steaks tonight. However, once again we opted for cheese, bread and potato chips as side dishes (which means, technically, I served mean and potatoes) along side wine and Guinness beer.

(Note: in our family, beer and wine count as vegetables.)

It turned out well. The pork steak was just at the edge of over-cooked (which means I over-cooked it) but the girls snarfed it down rather quickly.

She Who Must Be Obeyed also broke out a secret cache of cheese made from Yuzu and jalepenos–A near perfect beef food–and we enjoyed some quiet time together.

Next year is our 17th anniversary. Unfortunately, tradition won’t care for a few more years, which means I’ll need to start thinking of some original ideas.

One of the problems you have in the Japanese National Health Insurance scheme is that you eventually have to balance your own skepticism versus the doctor’s knowledge. This is especially true when the doctor is paid by the visit and not by the procedure.

The main effects of the latter are that doctors keep you coming back again and again for follow up appointments. Dentists have been known, for example, to clean a few teeth and then dismiss you whilst setting up an appointment to get a few more teeth cleaned. I’ve recommended that She Who Must Be Obeyed get a little more skeptical after a few dentist visits.

In my case, I’m balancing x-rays that even I think are scary versus the sense that I’m being milked for cash. I’m also weighing the amount of time I spend in the lobby waiting for five minutes of procedure and consultation.

A couple weeks ago, I ran out of patience with the wait, but this week I got in quickly and I was the only weakness in the system. I ran my hospital card through the machine, got the receipt and walked to the correct part of the hospital. It’s only when the receptionist asked me for a document and I gave her the wrong one and then someone brought the correct one that I realized I was in such a hurry I hadn’t waited for my hospital card to be spat out.

I only went to the appointment because the x-ray two weeks before had been obviously wore than the first one after I broke my toe. The recent x-ray, though,  looked much better than the last one but even I could see the unhealed part of the break. When the doctor scheduled another appointment I must have sighed in a knowing way and he assured me I only needed two more visits.

I didn’t tell him that he might only get one. And he’d only get that because seeing the bone worse off than it had been before scared me into doing more follow up than I’d planned.

Now I have to deal with glowing in the dark. Five x-rays in two months will do that to you.

In a very rare occurrence, I actually left the house at a time when I didn’t actually need to.

The plan was to meet up with some friends and have lunch but as I approached the end of my journey, I discovered that plans had been cancelled because of some misinformation.

(Important safety tip, kids: Verify plans BEFORE you travel, not as you’re travelling.)

I therefore changed plans on the fly. My new plans involved looking for ink (and at pens) and then going to a foreign food store to stock up on pasta and booze because, well, yeah. After that I had a lunch at a place I hadn’t been to in a very long time and the lunch reminded me of why I hadn’t been there in a long time. (More on that, and Japanese fast food in another post.)

After that, because our oldest was home sick, i decided to get back early before she woke up from her long nap. Her being a teenager, the odds were ever in my favor except that a train derailed on my main train line. Luckily no one was injured, but I had two switch to a different line which only partially solved my problem. It took me underground past the accident but then dumped me on the same train line.

Eventually, I managed to get home where all I did was scribble out one or two things that made me go sure, fine, whatever, and then I distracted myself with games and television. (Three different season finales all in one day. Aka, the day productivity died.)

As I watched the finales, I managed to scribble a few more things which finally put me over my daily quota, but it was a day where there seemed to be a lot of movement and a lot of spent energy, but in which very little was accomplished.

I could actually use a couple more days like this before June.

Last week, in both of my high school classes at the school where I work, the students and I disagreed on Saturday and Sunday.

The statement was “Saturday is more relaxing than Sunday” and the students, to a young man, all disagreed with that. They said Sunday was more relaxing.

This is because, for reasons only understood by the powers what are at the school where I work, the school implemented a six day week (five and a half, actually) on the same day that the rest of Japan switched to a five day week. This means the students have class most Saturdays and that’s why they don’t see it as a relaxing day.

However, I have both Saturday and Sunday off and get to enjoy, perhaps too much, Saturday.

What makes Saturday better than Sunday in my reckoning is that, in my schedule, Saturday is followed by a day off and Sunday is followed by a work day. To me it’s easier to relax knowing that the next day I’ll still be relaxing. However, when the next day is a work day, it’s a lot harder to relax.

The main problem with that schedule, for me at least, is that because I know I have another day of rest, I tend to put off until Sunday doing things I could be doing on Saturday.

This is all partly because I’ve always resisted scripting my Saturdays. I’ve tried scheduling things but more often than not those things get done on Sunday. I’ve even done this after taking out the things I planned to work on, only to shove them aside in favor of a distraction and the promise to do them on Sunday.

Of course, once Sunday rolls around, those projects can be put off again because, well, I have to save my energy because the next day is a work day.