I want to share the story about my in-law’s dog.

My in-laws have many dogs, approximately ten dogs. Most of them stay outside. They survive the hotness in summer and the coldness in winter of severe weather, outside.

Unlike the outside dogs, there is only one dog that my in-laws allow to come into the house. The dog is their only house dog.

The house dog is treated specially by my in-laws. The house dog sleeps with, eat with, and go shopping with my in-laws. Once in a while my in-laws even take the house dog to a pet’s salon. The house dog had her body shampooed, body hair cut, and even her nails polished. She is decorated with a diamond-looking collar around her neck.

Dogs are very smart animals. It is very natural for the outside dogs to be jealous to the house dog. Every time when the house dog needs to go bathroom outside, my in-laws need to watch over the house dog. Because of the jealous, the outside dogs pick the house dog on.

Before this current house dog, my in-laws had another house dog. When the previous house dog was outside to do her bathroom, the outside dogs jumped on the house dog. The poor house dog was killed by the outside dogs due to jealousy.

The current house dog came to their house after this sad incident. My in-laws told the current house dog to come back straight after she is done with bathroom.

Now, the current house dog is extremely smart. She never does bathroom inside the house. She listens to my in-laws. She is just like a well behaved human child. She understands English very well. Perhaps, this dog understands English even better than I do.

***

During our visiting my in-laws last time, the house dog wanted to follow us to walk to the hill. We always enjoy the short walk to the hill. When we were about to leave the house, some dogs from their neighbors came to my in-law’s property. By the way, the res dogs are not leashed. They are all free to go everywhere.

The neighbor’s dogs and my in-laws’ outside dogs were about to fight.

It was a scary scene. They would fight hard on each other. Sometimes some dogs get injured or killed in the fight. I don’t know exact reasons why they fight that hard. Maybe it’s their hobby, or it’s their training to build their muscle. Or, they are simply bored.

***

When their fight started, the house dog started running toward the fight. We all yelled to the house dog not to join the fight.

The house dog, though, didn’t join the fight as we concerned. She run very fast, went straightback home. I never saw her running so fast.  

Once the house dog entered the house safely, we got relieved. It was smart of her to run back home without joining the fight.

The house dog knows that she is loved very much by my in-laws. She knows her safety is the number onepriority for them.

When I saw her action, running away from trouble, I told my husband and daughter to do the same as the house dog did. I told them their safety is the number one priority for me, so don’t join any fight or danger. Just come back home straight, safely.

As the old proverb goes, Discretion is the better part of valor.  -– Always stay away from danger. Stay safe for the sake of your loved one.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

Today I want to share the story about my former neighbor. They moved out one month ago.

I moved to this area nine years ago. They had lived there before us. The previous house owner used to have a pest-control company spray the weed killer medicine all over their property. 

The pest-control company workers appeared like the characters of Ghostbusters (1984). They carry a tank on their back and wear a mask on their face. They spray the toxic chemicals their property.

After their weed killing treatment, their property would be covered by dull light blue paint-look liquid. It was unnatural appearance, compared with natural dirt.

The weed killing treatment worked. I never saw any weeds on their property. 

***

Now, it has been one month for the land to recover. With the help of rain of Monsoon, it has been recovering their own natural status, getting healthy-looking weeds back on. Among the weeds, in the areas next to the street, there was a family of flowers. They are beautiful orange flowers. These flowers attract a bunch of beautiful butterflies. It is a healthy and happy appearance.

They brighten my day up every time when I pass by them.

Don’t you think it amazing?

Their land had sucked up the toxin for years, but deep inside, their vital natural energy never died. Now they are showing their original state to us.

I took this as a precious message. Human bodies are the same.

Even if we had taken some unnecessary toxins in the past, our vital energy never dies. It is never too late for us to recover our natural good health.

When we change our lifestyle or diet, listening to your own intuition on what is good for our body, we can recover our good health.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

In my dream this morning, I fought with a huge pink snake. The snake was way bigger than me in size. It was like a whale versus a human. Still, I didn’t have any tools or weapons to fight. In fact, I fought with my bare hands. All I had was my great muscle in my entire body. I could jump high like a super ninja. I could kick like a professional kick boxer. My high jumping karate chop was my final move. I won the fight.

When I came back to conscious world, even though it was in the dream, I was out of breath from the tough fighting. I enjoyed an immeasurable sense of accomplishment for a while.

I don’t know what the message from this dream was. I don’t need to know. All I can say is I had a great time with this experience.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

My husband received an automated phone call from the school. It was the announcement about some of their school buses. Due to the Hazmat influence, the certain roads were closed so that the buses on that route would not go through.

Since I didn’t receive the phone announcement, I was not sure exactly what I should do, on either picking my daughter up at the school right away or at the bus stop at the normal time.

So I called the school.

As soon as I mentioned my name, the receptionist gave me the exact information I needed to hear.

To my surprise, she knew the street name where my daughter’s regular bus stops. She also told me my daughter’s bus would be able to drive normally. She answered right away. She didn’t need to check any information paper or anything.

I thanked her and hang up the phone.

That was amazing. The school has approximately 500 students. I wonder how the receptionist can memorize the street name of my daughter’s bus stop. It is still mystery to me.  

It is definitely one of our great benefits living in a small town.    

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In my dream, I was a mother eagle. Right next to me, there were my three eggs. I was watching the very moment when each egg being hatched.

Each of my baby eagle smiled at me. I knew they were all safe and healthy.

***

When I woke up from my dream, I felt great. I felt something good was coming in to me.

Recently I found an online class of macrobiotic. The instructor is a Japanese woman who is around my age. When I saw the sample video of the instructor, I liked her personality and the way she talked. I decided to register at her class right away.

I have communicated with the husband of the instructor via email. This married couple is the owner and the founder of this macrobiotic organization. They seem to be trustworthy.

My eagle dream might be the sign from my family spirits. They are happy for me to be connected with them. I look forward learning from their online courses.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

Today was my daughter’s first day of the new school year. She was nervous about her new class. I told her everything would be fine for her. After I saw her off at the school bus stop, I already had good feeling about her. I had confidence in her to have a great day at school. She is very lovable. Her family spirits and angels always support her.

***

After I came back home from the bus stop, I went to my fifth acupuncture treatment appointment.

Before the treatment, the acupuncturist always starts asking me some questions about my recent life on both my physical health and mental health.

I feel my physical body is on the healing way. When I thought of my mental health, for some reasons I started feeling anger to my husband.

I was not intending to complain about my husband to anybody else, but when I started explaining the reasons why I am mad about my husband, I found myself getting madder about him.

I am mad at my husband for not communicating with me about important things such as unexpected invoice issue. His unexpected invoice will affect our family money, and so, it is my issue too. I need to be updated. Every time when I ask him about the update, he automatically shows attitude to me. That prevents me from having a casual conversation.

I asked him many times to make efforts to learn Japanese language for me and my daughter. I haven’t seen any of his efforts recently.

I was surprised by myself, that I had a whole bunch of complains about him. 

The more I spoke up about the reasons why I am mad at my husband, the more I got upset about him.

***

The acupuncture suggested two actions.

First, I should sit down with my husband and talk about my feeling.

Second, I should get some jobs. Being independent financially will open up the door for me. I will gain more confidence in me and more resource on what I should do, than now.

— Get some jobs.

This phrase resonated with me deeply.

Maybe, this is the main message I needed to hear today.  

I would like to get some jobs that I love to do. I love translating and I had worked for 10 years in Japan. Another thing I would like to try is to get a part time job on cooking at a restaurant.

Maybe I should start searching around the part time worker’s opportunities, which fits my desire and available time frame.

My acupuncturist might be right. Once I get my favorite jobs, it will for sure open my social world. I might spend less time on getting mad at my husband.

Thus, it might be my issue, not his. He might stay as he is, but changing my world will change me. Changing me might be beneficial for both of me and my husband.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

Since last night, our swamp cooler has not been working properly. Even though they replaced the water pump for the cooler into a new one two years ago, the pump gets out of order already.

In the late afternoon, around 3 pm, we were having the uncomfortable hot temperature inside the house. We were all sweating, even though all the ceiling fans were working.

In such uncomfortable heat, we heard rain sounds outside. When we opened the entrance door, the nice and cool air came into the house. We felt so good and enjoyed the cool air for a while.

After our body cooled off from the cool moisture air from outside, we satisfactory closed the entrance door.

When I turned back to inside the house, I was frozen at the sight of the living room. Something was flying around in circles.

At first I thought it was a little bird. On my close look though, I figured out it was a small bat.

Three of us screamed. Even though it was small, a bat is a bat. The close look of a bat was nothing but gross. Gross enough to make even adults scream.

I didn’t want the bat flying into the kitchen, so I chased it to the back room, which is the master bedroom. The master bedroom has a wide sliding door to the back yard.

We opened the sliding door and tried to navigate the bat to go through the door. But the bat looked like being panicky and kept on flying in circles.

While tackling with the flying bat, an idea popped into my mind. It was to call the police department.

In this area, when we see a rattle snake in our property, the police would come and pick it for us.

We called the local police department. A nice woman answered the phone. According to her, a bat is considered as a wild animal and they don’t deal with a wild animal. I thought to myself “what about a rattle snake? Isn’t it also a wild animal?”

The nice police dispatcher woman gave us a number of the different police department that they might be able to help us.

We called the number but only found out they could not help us neither. The man who answered our phone gave us some other numbers of pest exterminators. We called the numbers, but of course nobody picked up the phone on Sunday afternoon.

We decided to deal with it by ourselves.

My husband went to the store in the neighbor bigger city to get some necessary items such as a mask, rubber gloves, and a net.

It takes 20 minutes one way to the store. I stayed in the master bedroom and kept staring at the bat. The waiting time for my husband to come back seemed to be very long. After one hour or so, he came back with the fish net.

With the net, he successfully navigated the bat to outside. When it went outside, it happily flew away somewhere.

***

After the uninvited visitor was gone, we started cleaning the master bedroom. The police officer recommended us to clean the room thoroughly because the bat might have brought nasty germs into the room.

We wiped off the area where the bat touched with the disinfectant sheets, vacuumed the walls and bottoms of the entire room, and washed all the sheets and blankets on the bed.

What a hectic Sunday afternoon we had! I am grateful it was over.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

Today we visited the local canyon. It has been one year since we visited this area. It takes 30 minutes’ drive from our house.

We found some upgrades here and there while hiking. There were new many benches. The sponsors’ names are curved on each backrest. Also we found some newly made wooden handrails.

Since this city is called a retired people’s city, there are many old aged residences. These new upgrades are definitely helpful for old aged visitors.

I like visiting the nature in the monsoon season. All the vegetation turned to vivid light green. The air gets flesh and moisten.

We enjoyed watching the gentle sunlight that filtered through the leaves of trees. It was the solemn contrast between the sun light and the leaves’ light green.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

This evening we attended the school open house. At the entrance of the school building, there were announcement papers of each class of each grade, the names of the teachers and the students, and the classroom building information.

My daughter will be the third grader in this school year. The third graders have two classes. One is for third graders only, and the other class is the combine class of the second graders and the third graders.

As I have written in my previous article, the school has incorporated this workaround of the combined class since the previous school year.

In the previous year, the combined class consisted of 10 first graders and 15 second graders. This year though, the combined class consisted of 5 second graders and 25 third graders. There is other class of second graders only, which consists of 25 second graders.

In my personal opinion, the school should squeeze the 5 second graders into the second graders only class. That being said, I don’t know the school rule. Maybe the maximum student number of one class cannot be over 25 students.

According to the teacher, the 5 second graders in the combined class will study with the third graders. The school selected the 5 students who will be able to catch up with one year older students. They will keep proceeding with one year older students. Therefore, they are academically talented students who already have skipped grade at their very young age.

I personally envied them. I think it cool that they can proceed one year ahead of their same aged students.

My personal opinion does not apply to all the people. I heard some parents would like their children proceed with the normal speed, rather than skipping grade.

***

I am surprised at the layout of the classroom. In Japan, we have a big blackboard in front of the classroom. All the students face toward the blackboard in one way.

On the other hand, in this school, the classroom is spacious. There are some small round tables in one area. Three or four students can sit in each table. In other area, there is a carpet where students can sit on the room ground. There is also other area where equipped with a huge couch, where students can sit and relax. There are three white boards on the different three walls. Based on the activity, students will move the area. There is no assigned seat. Students share seat, table, and space to sit.

I never attended the actual class in America. So, there are still lots of mysteries about American school system.   

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

This morning I needed to go to the store to get some more school supplies. With the supported items we received at the back to school fair last night, all I needed to buy was the remainder half more items to complete the list. At the school supplies area in the store, there were many parents with holding the school supply list, doing the same as I did.

This is the routine at the end of summer in America for parents with school aged kids.  

In the afternoon, I took my daughter to the local swimming pool. The town previously decided to close the pool at the end of last month, July, but they changed their mind to extend the pool opening days until the end of this week. I was lucky to get this new information from one of the life guards.

It seemed most people didn’t know about it. From the begging to the end, we were the only visitors at the pool.

Since I have started getting rush in the swimming pool, I didn’t swim today. My daughter was the only one in the pool. The pool was all to herself. It seemed that we had our own private spacious swimming pool with a life guard.

This is also one of the common scenes at the end of summer. 

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪