Social Whirl

Have you been holding your breath and drumming your fingers in anticipation of the Anpanman tree? It turns out those little figures are solid rubber and it's taken me three days to coax, shove, and hammer a needle through one little noggin.

Hearing of my plight, Dr. T gifted me with a surgical needle but don't look for any progress on this project until mid-month. Bear in mind I am living on a military base where the holiday social whirl is compressed into the first 13 days of December. This is so all the Sailors who are taking leave during the holidays can have their fudge and eat it too.

Seasoned runners load up on carbohydrates before a marathon, so it makes sense mothers need to store up energy before the holidays by waffle loading. To test my newest theory, Jen O and the extremely pregnant (and remarkably loquacious) Monika have now been officially introduced to the waffle restaurant in Kamakura. Jen's command of Japanese never fails to heighten a restaurant experience - "We would like to try everything on your menu, please, and with ice cream when that's an option" - and Monika's talkativeness gave me a chance to eat way more than my fair share of the waffles. When it dawns on her that I nabbed most of her portion perhaps she'll remember that I also introduced her to that nifty parking lot with the helpful attendants.

I got back from Kamakura in time to stick a ham in the oven and whip up a couple of potato casseroles before the Knitwits and their families arrived to trim our tree. Whoever invented the expression "infectious enthusiasm" must have had people like our Japanese guests of honor in mind; you could not be within 10 feet of these people without grinning from ear to ear. This was the first time we've thrown a party where the house looked better when the guests were leaving than when they arrived. For my next trick, I think I'll invent a "Let's Take the Decorations Down and Put Them Away" party.

Tuesday the Oakleaf Explorers (all two of us) dragged our new friend Mary Beth to Tokyo to view maples. We followed the directions in my trusty guidebook to the Gotoh Museum garden but the gate was locked and the gardener made an X with his arms so Sherlock here deduced we would not be viewing maples in the Gotoh Museum garden. We wandered through the Kaminoge neighborhood instead, exploring a park and two cemeteries and a charming garden shop with a rooftop restaurant.

I took a lot of cemetery pictures because (a) that's what I do in cemeteries, and (b) my companions were both serious photographers, the sort who contort themselves to find the best angle, so I had time on my hands while they were snapping the only maple tree we saw all day. I'll post those pictures separately because (a) you might enjoy them, and (b) I can't imagine ever having another opportunity to use the headline "Killing Time in a Cemetery".

Tomorrow is the Seventh Fleet Spouse Association holiday party (not to be confused with the Seventh Fleet holiday party Mike and I will attend next week) and Friday is the Japanese and American Wives (JAW) holiday party (not to be confused with next week's JAW Conversation Group holiday party). Many of the same people will attend these events. This is why I am frantically inventing a Holiday Sweater Rotation Chart when I ought to be making fudge, mailing packages, and stabbing rubber dolls.