No I Did Not Fall of the Face of the Planet

Ohisashi-buri desu ne!

Our Precious Carnivora

Waiting for command & hand signal, "Okay Sadie, eat." That is Cinnabun, still in the oven there.

SuicideGirl, as many of you know, is our precious grey baby who loves her diet of unadulterated raw meat. I truly mean raw everything--from the bones out to the feather, fur, scales and skin and everything in between. She has been on a this diet without break for nearly two years and before that off and on over the five and a half years we have had her. I give her everything I can find that was once living would be something she would eat as a prey based diet.

Another Day, They're Still Away

Sitting with a hot bowl of cream of wheat, Gypsy Kings "Roots," playing in the back ground, SuicideGirl well fed and sleep, and Little Cinnabun--out like a flickering light on the couch; I feel a call to write.

ALL HAIL, UNFORTUNATE THE THIRD: CINNABUN!

Cinnabun (So dubbed by Eldest before her anticipated arrival) decided bring it on in the, Who's Daddy's Best Princess; or Who Loves Daddy the Best; or I'm Daddy's Favorite, unoffical contest; she decided to come on the Friday of Father's Day weekend and worked a bit of her ju-ju on the pediatric doctor who didn't finish the paperwork to discharge from the hospital till after dinner that Saturday... So, with that bit of a hold up, we weren't discharged till 11:40 am, Sunday--Father's Day; just in time to stop home, drop off some stuff and go out to eat at Chili's on base. 

The Fourth and Our Eleventh

(picture taken of wedding picture: photo has beem stuck to glass for years & can't find negitives)
I am in an obliging mood and felt the call to update this place in an uncharacteristic, remotely timely manner.
This past Fourth of July was not only the celebration of the US's birthday but of the 11th wedding anniversary of SailorStudMan and I.

Our Spring

"Ring-a-ding-ding, Spring is here!" So said Rolly Polly Ollie; Eldest's once favorite cartoon. That comes to mind as I click through the photos of our Spring here in Japan--I am reminded that we have passed our first anniversary of retuning to Japan: April 27. A few days after that would be the anniversary of when we first set foot here in The Land Of The Rising Sun: five years now of living in Japan.

Cleaned Up 'n Shook a Tail Feather

The Girl Scout group of CFAY sponsored the base's Father Daughter Dance and the ship ACTUALLY was in. The Steel Mistress was gracious enough to allow SailorMan and his bodyguards to enjoy an event together without interuption. This was a rare and precious moment to be had.

Halloween

This year Halloween was not as frantically chaotic, full of last minute sewing going on into the wee small hours of the morning, and the driven hunt for accessories--that final touch to make the outfit complete. I absolutely love sewing and making costumes and one day I will have a sewing space--perhaps even a sewing room. However that is neither here nor now and let me show you what we concocted this year for costumes. We have the Egyptian Princess, with a near to true Egyptian costume. I spent many hours looking up Egyptian clothing--they were simply dressed folk, so it was an easy get-up to sew up. The Mystic Hippy was nothing but taking the Eldest out for shopping spree on SailorMan's pay. We hit up the mega-chic, reasonably priced, hippy store in the multi-floor (10 in fact) shopping mall called More's City. She put the outfit together herself and I picked out the accessories to make her look more the part instead of just a commune living girl.

SailorMan dressed up as a 90's metal roadie, complete with mullet. He was called away to the ship at the end of trick-or-treating and keeping his costume on, freaked out his MPA that was waiting for him, causing him to nearly be taken down by the poor unsuspecting man who was just waiting for his CHENG to arrive. SailorMan truly looked like he didn't belong, so the upset was understandable, lol! I wished I could have been there for that one. I dressed as a belly dancing gypsy of some sort and didn't have time to do makeup for it--wish I did, that's the other fun part of costuming: makeup. This time pictures were not taken as prolifically as normal since I was trying to get peoples r'et ta'go. Tick-or-Treating officially started on base at 17:00, but with people escorting JN Nationals onto base the whole shindig started pounding on our door at 16:10. While the girls were eating dinner and getting ready.
Out the door finally 10min after 17:00.
The loot take was severely small compared to previous excursions years past. The amount of guests that were brought on base truly made a difference everyone's night. Folks ran out of candy in 45min while other were trying to ration out their treats to last at least 1.5hrs. We had fun. This was SailorMan's third time since 10yrs of marriage, that he was home for Halloween. Hopefully we can do Halloween together and go as a theme as I have been dreaming for years. The theme I have been entertaining has been childhood story book characters: Little Bo Peep and sheep; Little Red Ridding Hood complete with lumberjack, wolf, and granny; Alice in Wonderland; you get the idea. Now the touch that will set it all of will be that SaiorStudMan will be the fair maiden in the theme that requires one, or the meek creature in the theme that has one. Oh, this will be fun!!!

I am going to leave you for a bit. Hope you like a few of the photos I found of past Halloween. In The Wild Things picture, Eldest forgot to put on her mits; In the Clown Posse picture, the CrazyOne is getting over a cold--so her snot s clear not atomic green like for days prior. I have 8yrs of costumes packed away here and there in our house. This year is the second year ever that I have not made the costumes. The first year I didn't sew, the Eldest was infatuated with cowhands and went in full real leather chaps, vest, lasso with a real felt red stetson. The CrazyOne was the cow and I was the chuck wagon cook. I have yet to find those pictures. I will once I start to develop the 14 years worth 35 millimeter film rolls I have been ashamedly hording.

"Love is in Air...

... Everywhere I look around
Love is in the air every sight and every sound"

To the happy couple,
Congratulations!
ご結婚おめでとうございます!
Félicitations en ce jour de votre mariage!
You two looked great and we send you our love.

Speaking of love, our dear SailorStudMan has had a good bit of love from the Steal Mistress. She brought him home a little over two weeks ago, let'im enjoy 36hr at home and then like a true high-maintenance bitch, she demanded the rest of the seven days he had in port with her, only letting him go five hours at a time--relinquishing him late into the night only to reclaim him within the early hours of dawn. My poor SailorMan's shame and plight was known all across the waterfront and beyond. He was known as, "oh, that guy."
At the moment I am trying to gracefully tamp down the giggle that wants to follow my grin, 'cause truly, it really did suck to be SailorMan. His CO rode him hard and just as I said when I first began this blog, the gods of SW (Surface Warfare) truly hold SailorMan dear to their hearts. After very intense labor, with specialists brought in, the Steal Mistress was able to sail again. I tell ya, the man lives for pain. If his job was simple and a 9-5 he wouldn't appreciate the act of working at all, and would once again drive me to my whit's end, with thoughts of putting him out of his misery and me manically laughing with insanity at the sweet prospect of peace in a lovely padded cell all to myself.
Back to the heart of the matter... since life was loving our SailorStudMan a bit too much, and we were once again going to be parted; 22hr before the Steal Mistress took him again, me and the girls decided to make a comfort food that is somewhat healthy for him to take away on his deployment. We call it: Daddy CHENG's Love Mix.
It is all the snacks he loves:
Toffee,
Chocolate,
Banana Chips,
Pecans,
Coconut.

The only toffee to be found was a package of milk chocolate and toffee bits. That is the Eldest picking out the toffee from the chocolate... we wasted half the bag and the penny pinching side of me nearly kept silent with only occasionally grumbling once in while the idiocy of putting chocolate and toffee together; if you want chocolate, wouldn't you just add it yourself?! The coconut was already sweetened and complemented the semi-sweet chocolate bits we put in. The banana chips were plain and the pecans were plain too. The Unfortunates discovered banana chips quite tasty, toffee is up there with chocolate; coconut is just as gross as before while pecans aren't all that, and Mommy only likes the pecans (sort-of) and the chocolate. We had fun covering up the bananas and pecans with parchment paper and breaking them up with the smooth side of the meat tenderizer and later by hand. I didn't measure out anything, I did everything by looks, however since the coconut--as its nature--was quite potent, I think there are only about 3 tablespoons worth of the stuff in the entire mix, which by the way was housed in a plastic container that is suppose to house a bag of coffee for freshness. It was fun to make, easy and somewhat expensive due to the pecans and organic banana chips. Yes, the Commissary constantly surprises me with what it continually adds to the shelves in regards to organic and environmentally friendly products. It was well worth every penny and more when SailorMan came through the door at 21:30, before the Unfortunates were put to bed (nice thing with homeschooling, we can change our schedule to fit life at large). I had to threaten with violence and the promise of a good crock-pot dinner to keep him from eating the mix. I know, the violence part is very un-aiki, but I haven't professed perfection.

Who's That Guy?

Is it bird? Is it a plane? No, kids; it is Sailorman! (a.k.a.: Sailor-Studman, Studman, and Manthing-Loveslave) Yes, folks he is home and early at that too. Navy deemed his ship worthy to come back to home port early, yea!!! So Monday, 30 June, me and the girls--after being called twice by two different friends whose menfolk are also on the ship, regarding the ship's return that morning--got all gussied up quick like, downed breakfast, then went trolling for that sailor to bring home for mamma! Granted it did take good 15mins of constant driving around the piers before finding a spot (I tried keep my cursing under the breath about just parking at the Fleet Rec parking garage and made it to the far-fetched pier) Fortunately for Sailorman, we found one first before getting the chance to spot some sweet looking thing--I ment before being momentarily distracted by some-other so-called sailor who looked as if he needed a ride; 'cause by then, I was ready to chuck the whole meeting the ship out the window. And here is the rest of it. The Gods of SW must have sensed that I was about to bail and low and behold there was a spot, not quite legal, yet not exactly illegal.

By time we make it to the pier, everyone is inside the tin cup (a.k.a. The Other Woman, the ship) and we are escorted inside to the messdeck on board. We waited, and waited, and waited; then realization dawned on me that I never told anyone on board that we were there. Sailorman, thankx to the job he has, is one of the last to get off the ship; which is somewhat of a repeat of his last job while here, so we often didn't meet up with him till he called us to pick him up from the pier; however, due to this being the first time since being here the ship has pulled in... so this was a big day for us all and Studman came looking for us. Spotting him first I tell the girls, "look there's Daddy!" They look right at the man, "Right there... he's walking right this way." They still stare, then finally it registers--THAT is Daddy! Yes, they have never seen the man in coveralls and they are still getting use to seeing him 50+lbs less. For when he left us last year for the east coast--while we stayed on the west--he dropped those pounds by becoming a running man, and giving up drinking... he still runs AND he is still sober. How cool is that!?!
Anyway, Unfortunates finally register that it is Studman and with lots of squealing and squeezes we found our Sailor, we are no more a beach det (beach detachment is a group of ship personnel left behind).. but a full ship once again. Yea!!!
The pictures are from my cell phone, I forgot to bring my camera.

Photo Testing

I am trying out posting photos, now that I have given you the run down on how we got here, now I can conscience post what is happening now. That will include photos when possible, So here are a few and hope it all goes well.

The first one is of our Dear Sailor Studman, who left us mid July '07 pushing into a 40 waist, and came back to us a 32 waist. Mad Luv to you Baby!!!

Second is of what Sailorman has dubbed Suicide-girl, due to all the things our mutt has eaten and not died of.

To those lazy dog days; May they back come soon!