My daughter attended at the art club. It is one of the club activities after school. The club instructors are volunteers from the school teachers.

This is her third year to attend the club. The art teacher really likes my daughter not only for her kind and polite personality but also for her artistic talent.

Today was the first club day of this school year. On the first club day, they always have a meeting with everybody to discuss what kind of art project they want to try.

This year the club became a huge group as they had as many as 30 attendees.

Before the meeting, the art teacher asked my daughter to become her secretary. My daughter was asked to stand up in front of the group with the teacher. Whenever somebody spoke up his/her request of art project, my daughter wrote it down on the white board.

When she came back home, she told me how proud she felt being as a secretary. Since my daughter’s dream career is to become a teacher, she liked her new experience very much. I am glad she enjoyed being a secretary.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

Today my new macrobiotics online course has started. This course continues for one year. Each class will be published online each month, I think.

In the first class, the instructor shared the technique to check our blood flow and lymphatic flow.

You can check your blood flow by using your palms. Place your palms together. With keeping your four fingers (except for your thumb) attached, try to separate your lower bottom hands. If you can bend your fingers and your lower bottom palms at 90 degree angle, your blood flows smoothly. If you can’t, you will need to work on cleansing your blood.

As for checking your lymphatic flow, pull your thumb downward toward your inner forearm by using your other sided thumb. If you can attach your thumb to your inner forearm, your lymphatic system is fine. If you can’t, you should focus on cleansing your lymphatic system.

I could not pass both of these tests. Thus, I need to work on cleansing both of my blood system and lymphatic system.

On the other hand, my daughter passed these tests easily. I praised her for her good health.

I think she was very happy to be praised by me. She kept on showing her hands doing these tests to me, so many times until she fell asleep in the night.  

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

As I mentioned earlier, I have been studying macrobiotics. In addition to the online course, I have started reading several books about macrobiotics.

I thought it interesting that the people who had contributed to spread the teaching of macrobiotics are Japanese, but they are known as their different names in foreign countries.

Macrobiotics is introduced to many people by a Japanese man, Yukikazu Sakurazawa. He contributed to introduce the theory not only in Japan but also in foreign countries. He is well known as George Osawa for foreigners.

One of his successors is Michio Kushi. He and his wife Aveline Kushi moved to America and they contributed educating it in America. At first I thought Aveline was an American woman, but today I found out she was a Japanese woman. She was born with the name Tomoko Yokoyama in Japan. After she moved to America, she changed her name as Aveline.

Now that makes sense to me. I am reading her recipe book. In the book, she uses s variety of Japanese vegetables and ingredients. She also introduces the recipe of ohagi and kinpira, which are the traditional Japanese foods.

All her recipes are very simple. Her simple recipes reminded me of my late-aunt who used to cook foods for us in my childhood days. I wish I could have eaten her homemade foods again.

I guess the situation in their ages should be different from that of my age. Although the major Japanese foods such as soy sauce and miso are available at the local grocery stores nowadays, the other vegetables and ingredients are still not available. I wonder how she could get Japanese vegetables and ingredients such as daikon, shiitake mushrooms, burdock, mochi, kombu, and kuzu in America in her ages.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

At the school bus stop, there are some parents waiting for the bus with their children and grandchildren. The adults love chatting. They are always chatting with the other adults. I never saw any adults waiting for the bus quietly.

On the other hand, my daughter and I like to be quiet. We usually wait for the bus, slightly away from them, so that I don’t need to join them chat.

This morning one old man came close to me and started chatting with me. It was rare for him to do so. I have talked with him from time to time. He is a grandpa of two granddaughters. Since his daughter (their mother) has a job, it is his duty to escort his granddaughters to the bus stop every morning and afternoon.

He started talking about the owner of the property next to the bus stop. There is a huge property which becomes a huge junkyard. There are so many junks such as cars, trucks, trailer houses, kitchen sinks, gas tanks, and bed mattresses. They have been there, being abandoned, for many years.

The huge junkyard makes the area dangerous. The area can be a good place to hide for wild animals, criminals, or illegals. In addition to that, the area makes the neighborhood look poor. It lowers the land cost of the entire town.

The neighbors are mad at the owner and warned him to clean up the area, but the owner did not listen to their warning. Thus, the neighbors sued the owner. I have heard about the lawsuit several years ago.

The old man roughly reminded me about this case. Then he informed me of the owner’s death of two weeks ago.

I was listening to him talking on and on. Nothing bothered me, until he spat out with his contempt about the owner. He said “That Indian!”         

I could not ignore the word.

Without knowing, I instantly asked him back raising my voice, “what did you say? Did you mean Asian Indian or Native American?”

Then the bus came, so that our conversation was interrupted. He didn’t answer my question. He is an old man, so he didn’t notice that I raised my voice.

We wished each other to have a nice day and departed to our own houses.

While I was walking back home, I started laughing quietly by myself.

I thought to myself “oh my god, I still react to White people calling us Indians!“ I am glad I didn’t punch him in the face, which I almost did. It is my natural reaction.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

A couple months ago, our neighbor started having three puppies in their back yard. Since their house is located on the street, on the way to the bus stop, all the children started petting them. My daughter and I are one of them.

All the three puppies are friendly. They are always happily wagging their tails and come to us. All of them look like always smiling.  

The three puppies are two Miniature Pinscher, a black one and a brown one, and one white Golden Retriever. My favorite is the Golden Retriever. I cannot tell the exact reason, but I am drawn to this puppy.

Every time when I see their golden retriever puppy, it looks glowing to me. It is like one movie scene where a boy meets his ideal girl whose hair blowing in the wind.  

***

This evening while I was taking a walk with my family, we run into the neighbor with the puppies. We started chatting on the street.

The neighbor started talking about the puppies. The two miniature pinschers belong to his daughter. She got them for her birthday gifts. As for the golden retriever, he got it from his friend for free of charge. According to him, the friend still has some more puppies at home and is looking for somebody who can raise them.

The neighbor knows I love the golden retriever puppy, because I always pet him on the way to the bus stop everyday. He turned to me, and asked me “you want him?”

I knew he was not teasing me. I knew he was seriously asking me if I want to take him.

My heart started pounding. I thought to myself, “Of course I want him!!!”

I looked at my husband and my daughter. I knew they also wanted to have the puppy as much as I do.

But we are still renting a house. The lease contract says “no pets”. Besides, once we have a dog, it will restricts our vacation. We are still a young family and want to go to vacation freely. For a long vacation, especially a vacation with an airplane, we will need to find somebody to take care of our dog. I know it will be sad from my experience. We had our dog for 11 years in Japan. Every summer when we went for a family vacation, we needed to bring our dog to the pet hotel. It was sad for everybody.

These thoughts run through my mind. I answered to the neighbor that I would love to, but we can’t have him at this moment. I mentioned him the reasons. He understood.

Just thinking about having a dog made me happy, even though it was just a thought. We will eventually have our dogs once we bought our house. Later years in my life. I look forward to it.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

I have studying macrobiotics through the online course. The first materials that had arrived to me contained 12 DVDs, one textbook, and one recipe book. They were all interesting to learn. I finished watching all the DVDs and reading the two books, very quickly.

I really like their course. I like how the instructor teaches her students.

So, today I purchased another online course of theirs. It is the Child Reading Basic course.

The instructor is a mother of three children. Their youngest daughter just turned to two years old when creating the class. Just looking at the youngest daughter, I can tell the instructor (the mom) is raising her daughter without any stress. She has accumulated lots of experiences in raising children for her first two children, so that she is more relaxed than before (I think).

I sometimes think of an “if” situation. If I had my second or third child, I would be able to raise them without stress, more relaxed than my first one.

I already have many regrets on taking care of my daughter when she was a baby.

That being said, the optimistic myself thinks about the future. With my experiences and mistakes, I definitely will be able to help my daughter when she raise her children in the future. For that purpose, I will keep on studying anything I can learn.

Everything we learn is the most trustworthy investments for ourselves. All the knowledge and experiences will be stored in our soul. One day we will thank for our efforts we did in the past. The day might be in the future in this lifetime, or even in the future lifetime.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

In these past two weeks, my daughter attended at the basic electric club. It is sponsored by the local library. Since the librarian is the volunteered instructor, they don’t charge any fee. The children of the third grade and up are qualified to attend.

On the first club, they taught the logic of the basic electricity. On the second club, they taught how to make a battery from a scratch. They let the attendees to demonstrate the procedure. There were two groups. One group used a lemon juice, and the other group used a vinegar, to make a battery.

My daughter loves the club. She made a new friend who is two years older than her.

I always love to hear my daughter has a new and fun experience. The club activity offers a great opportunity to make friends with different age group. My daughter is mentally well matured, so she tends to make friends with older kids.

Her new friend invited my daughter to the coding club. The coding club is under the same condition. It is held in the library, taught by the volunteered instructor, and free of charge to attendees. I believe the coding deals with a robot. I am sure she will enjoy the club with her new friend.

Also, from next week the art club will start at the school. My daughter will attend the club too to brush up her artistic skills. It will be her third year to attend the art club.

These are one of the benefits living in a small town. We are thankful for these benefits.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

This morning after I saw my daughter off at the bus stop, I was about to do my routine. The routine is to greet at other parents, wish them to have a nice day, and run back home.

This morning was different from my routine. One neighbor mom quickly run after me and asked me if she could join me walking. I said okay to her, and we started waking together.

While walking, she asked me if I would come to the bus stop this evening after school. I was not planning to do so, because my daughter had a club activity after school. The mom mentioned she had an appointment of surgery on her leg today. She was wondering if I could walk with her sons back to their home this evening, in case she could not make it until then. I told her I could help her for that.

***

My neighbor could not come back home in the evening. So, I waited for her two boys at the bus stop on behalf of her. Other kids were curious where my daughter was and why I was with the two boys. After I roughly explained to other kids, I started walking with the two boys. The brothers were one year apart. The younger boy was the classmate with my daughter.

They recently moved to this area, so that it was our first time to have a conversation together. I started our conversation by asking them how their day was. They talked a lot. They talked about what they learned in the class, about their teachers, and their classmates. We enjoyed exchanging our opinions about the certain movie. Their house is further than our house, about 10 minutes longer than my usual route. We had enough time to get to know about each other.

I walked to their house, saw them enter the house safely, and called their mom letting her know they were safely back home.

***

Walking with two boys made me think the simulation situation as if I had two sons. Since I have only one daughter in the real life, the simulation was a totally new experience for me. It was fun.

***

P.S.) On the next day, my daughter told me her conversation with her classmate, the younger boy. The boy told my daughter that he really enjoyed walking with me. According to the boy, I am pretty, kind, smart, and fun to talk with. He also said I am his type, and he likes me a lot.

It was a nice complement for a 9-years-old boy to an old woman. He made my day.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

Recently I have been studying Macrobiotics through the online course. While I was watching their classroom, I noticed one thing. It is about how the students participate in the class.

I have teaching experiences in both Japan and America.

In Japan, I taught various aged students from kindergarteners to high schoolers at Kumon, junior high schoolers at the private cram school, and junior high schoolers and high schoolers at their house as a private tutor. My students seldom asked questions during the class. Some of them waited until the class was ended, then they came to me and asked questions privately.

While I was watching the Macrobiotics class, I noticed the students were similar to my students. They quietly listened to the instructors. They never disturbed the class by abruptly asking questions. They asked the questions only the instructor asked if they had any questions.

In America, I taught Reiki class. My students were never quiet during the class. Rather, they participated the class by freely asking a whole bunch of questions during the class.

I am not talking about which is good or bad. Both habits simply show the personality and tendency of the country. I thought it interesting to know the difference.

This is my 11th year living in America. I might have incorporated some habits of American students without noticing by myself.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

I had a panicky dream this morning.

In my dream, my family and I were in England for vacation. On our departure day back to our home, we were late leaving for the airport. It would take two hours from the hotel to the airport, but we left the hotel just one hour before the departure.

On the way, we run into many local people. Their accent was too strong to understand for us. We knew they were trying to help us or to cheer us up, but since we didn’t understand what they were saying, we got frustrated. My husband and I started fighting by punching each other (remember, it was only in my dream. We don’t punch each other in the reality).

My daughter stopped us. With her calm voice, she told me like this.

You know what? People usually have a hard time on manifesting their preferable reality in the real world. But for you, you have been doing very well on manifest the reality as you like in the real world. Why can’t you use your manifestation ability right now, in the dream world?

I agreed with her. I understood what she meant.

I tried to manifest the reality where we arrive at the airport before the departure so that we can catch the airplane. My daughter laughed, saying “why do we have to take an airplane? Why do we have to go through the detailed process?”

Then she showed me her preferable reality. It was the reality where we are already back home from our vacation to England. She skipped the detailed process to the goal.

She told me “in our preferable reality, we can cut any unnecessary scenes to reach at the goal.”

In this scenario, our goals are to have fun on our vacation to England and to come back home safely. We can skip the detailed processes such as going to the airport, going through the security check, and being in the airplane for many hours.

***

When I woke up, I thought it a good reminder.

When we think of our preferable reality, we tend to concern about the process. But we don’t need to focus on the process. Because we will naturally be guided to the process. Instead, all we need to do is to focus on the goal.    

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪