Damn... Its Payday Already?

Another payday is on the deck and I am hit with a brick on how well paced this summer has really been--at least for us. Now why do I say pay day? We get paid every two weeks, therefore life bits like; bills, commissary, clothing, allowances (at least Sailorman's... the Unfortunates know their mother is as faithfully fickeled as the sea when it comes to doling out fundage), trips, eating out... you get the gist; and because so much of that part of life depends on payday, it has become a way of keeping track of the days when dug deep into the trenches of monotony. Well, with life being as it is, I haven't been as faithful to the blog as I would have preferred. My choices for bringing you up to speed on our life would be to just BLAM!--post a whole host of separate posts like a spammer to a hotmail account, or just do it all in one "swift" stroke... kind of like my favorite way of pulling off a band-aid. Hopefully this won't be as painful

Fourth of July came and went dragging along with it (kicking and screaming...or was that me?) the anniversary of the union of two minority MASTERMINDS!!! Sailor-Studman and Me of course--who else were you thinking of? Don't go doin' that guy thing and tell me, "Ooo, he gives you fireworks every year!" It is older than old by now, yet I thank you for your envy. Studman and I were talking of whose going to do what for the other and I said I was going to let him take the car with him to work the day before and when he gets off, he'll find a note on the car saying, 'its been a great 9 baby, see ya around.' he comes home and my stuff's gone along with the Good set of pans I got from him this past Christmas. Studman was thinking more along the lines of conning good friends to take the Unfortunates for a day and letting us get away to a nice restaurant--Latin, Jazz or Blues club in Yokohama or Tokyo. That would be the Latin Lover coming out of the dirty Sailor, and I found I was game for it... then life happened and we never got around to it. My advice, try hard not to have a very important private day occur on a national family holiday. We feel guilty anytime we want to actually contemplate celebrating our anniversary by ourselves on the actual day since we have kids.

We did celebrate the day of our nation's birth with family and had a great time! 07:30, Studman and Eldest were out the door to run the 4th July 5K run. The fastest Eldest ran, Studman retells, is when she spotted the refreshment stand at the halfway point. After being dragged away by her big papa, cramps ensued as she shuffled to the finish--MY BABY DID IT, she ran her first race, finished and has the t-shirt to prove it. After that we went to the MWR (moral, welfare and recreation) pool party and were fed for free, then we walked home and prepared to be fed extra well at the Vandy (USS Vandegrift our very first ship here in Japan in 2001) gathering that occurs so far every 4th. That was much different than before... very different. Sailorman is now a sober man... and the song, "What do you do with a drunken sailor," happily isn't sung by me anymore; but we do have to contend with the most vexing aspect of this new path for Sailorman, the male need to badger and cajole another who is improving his life while the others are not. It was only one guy, yet it did leave a sour taste in the mouth while watching others quickly get hammered. Thankfully 8pm came and we crossed the street from the party to view the Navy's fireworks out on the bay. Studman felt the whole family should be together for this and since we are in Japan, fireworks last FOREVER, and he had time to run home and bring Suicide-girl. She was not exactly cool, but she sure was calm despite being obviously nervous with the cannon-fire. We all walked home using the dog as the excuse for getting home. We were all tired too.

The next day, after leisurely waking up, we made our way to the docks--where you can rent boats and kayaks--and met-up with Suzi-Q, the great friend of Stuman who got him running and slim again. She has a motorboat license and took us out on the water. It was a great hazy day, so the day was not as hot the week had been. Oh, we had a blast! all of us got to drive and now Suzi-Q is on the totally cool list for the Unfortunates.






It was great getting out on water again in a small boat. I really miss that from my childhood and always wanted the girls to have a few moments on a small motorboat too. Of course the bay around the shore is disgusting and the girls loved commenting on all the crap along with the jelly fish that were in the water. We headed between Mikasa Park and Sarushima (Monkey) Island, then swung around the back side between the sea lane and land. I throughly recommend getting out on the bay for some recreation.








Besides a few more pictures of us on the water, I'll wrap this up and give a preview of the three or so post that are coming up; Family Day Cruise aboard Sailorman's USS Goodship Lollipop. That was terrific! Then some musings of the imaginary friends in our lives... or at least the discovery of them; and finally, confessions of this Aikidoka. Hope you enjoyed the pictures and see ya around soon!