First Day of Preschool! September 5, 2008

Our 3 year old has started Preschool this week.  She was so excited about going for the past week that we used Preschool as a tool for repremanding her now.  “You won’t be able to go to school if you don’t listen…”  It’s been working very well.

So she took off this past Tuesday, with her uniform hat, badge, princess lunch bag and back pack my grandmother made for her.  Very excited that she was going with daddy.  Although we were half an hour late, I had to stop and take pictures. 
I was so happy that she actually made the school year.  She couldn’t go if she wasn’t properly potty trained.  Loads of photo’s and excitement later.  I was FREE!  No kid to watch all day.  Wow…  This was an exciting day.  Or was it?

I’ve decided to occupy my time by working at my cousins restaurant.  The extra cash & awesome Japanese lunches they give us was a plus too.  I’ve never waited tables before, but it’s not too bad.  I’m such a slow pace person, I have to get used to the fast paced 3 hours.  I’ll get a hang of it I hope… It was so busy, from time in to time out, I didn’t even get a chance to think of what Zu was doing.

After work it’s time to pick up the munchkin.  This preschool is 10 miles away from my cousins restaurant.  A lot of driving…  (Is it worth it?)  Any who, on the way there on my 30 min. drive, it dawned on me.  It’s such a strange feeling to be this far from my child, and on top of that this is the first time that I have no idea what she’s been doing!  Did she eat all of her lunch, did she get to the bathroom OK, is she getting along with others, is she lonely without me…?  I don’t know if I can get used to this.
Now I have to depend on what Zu tells me and the one sentence the teacher writes on a little piece of paper, “She played house and didn’t cry even though it was her first day.”  That’s it!?  Who did she play with?  Was she alone?  Did she make friends?  Was she listening to the teachers?  Was she ALL BY HER SELF!? Alone???

Her lunch box was empty and she seemed fine.  Did she really eat all the food or did they dump what was left over, or did she spill all her food, or did some other kid eat her lunch?  I don’t know if I like not knowing…

I asked her how school was and she seems to not remember anything…  This really sucks.

Obentou

Day #2

New bento (lunch), and off she goes.

I guess this time letting go was hard for Zu and daddy.  Daddy was dropping her off with the teacher, she grabbed on and didn’t want to let go.  “Don’t go daddy. (sob)”  Teacher tears her away and daddy bolts away without looking back.  He said it was very sad.  Poor daddy…

So, my 2nd day at work.  Busier than before, it was over in a flash!  Grab my bento from the chef, and off to pick up the Zu-meister.  This day was “Everybody get in my way and drive super super slow day.”  It took me 35 min. to get there.  (IS it worth it?)

I walk in, she sees me, runs to me, “MAMA!”  All smiles, seconds later, crying.  “I want to go on the bus with my friends!”  There’s a school bus for this preschool, but it costs more to put her on the bus, and it doesn’t stop anywhere near our side of town so we are not using it.  I tell her, “If you go on the bus, you can’t go home with mama.”  She sais, “I want to go on the bus with you… (sob)”  I say, “That bus is for little people and not for mama’s.”  She stops crying and just starts walking towards the car.

Buckled in with her snack in hand, we are off.  Bus passes by, and cue the water works.  “My friends are leaving me~!!”  A minute of crying and 2 minutes later, “I LOVE MAMA, DADDY, AND OTIS, AND SIMON, AND I MISSED YOU!  YOU WERE WITHOUT ME!!”  Niagara Falls.  Poor baby, she was so tired and lonely she just couldn’t controll herself anymore.  I had to stop the car and calm her down.  2 minutes later, she passed out.  Poor thing…  I was so sad, I thought maybe we can wait a little longer for her to go to school?  She doesn’t really have to go yet.  Preschool is not a requirement…

But then I remembered why she’s going to that preschool that is 30 minutes from our house and is a full day.  It’s for her language skills, mainly.  This is a Japanese speaking preschool.  A full day of playing and communicating in Japanese.  We thought it was important for her to grow up knowing 2 languages.  I’ve been raising her speaking only Japanese to her, and her daddy only speaking English to her.  Living in the US, surrounded by English most of the time, you start losing the secondary language.  She was actually starting to lose some of her Japanese recently, so I really wanted her to go to a Japanese speaking school to be able to keep her heritage.

It was the same for me, my parents spoke Japanese, but I learned English anyway because we lived in the States.  Eventually we moved to Japan and I learned the language very quickly after we moved, but Zu may never live in Japan.  We’ll visit, but living there may never happen.
They say that if a child learns a 2nd language (conversational) perfectly by the age of 7, they will carry that with them forever.  I really am counting on this.  So up till the point that she goes on to 1st grade, I am going to try very hard for her to learn Japanese.  It is very important for her to learn Japanese now, at her age, or she may lose it forever.

Well, hopefully she will do better next week.  I’m sure it has a lot getting used to for her and for us.  This is a big step, and a good one.  Everything will work out at the end, I know it.

Movie Madness July 18, 2008

So Hollywood came to Michigan.

The State where I am living, is giving a 40% tax break to Hollywood to film here. This is great for our economy. Hopefully it will drive different businesses to our state, because we really need it right now…

They are filming a Clint Eastwood movie, some TV series from the makers of “Lost”, and they are filming on our street, basically right in front of my house for some Indi production.
It was exciting at first, annoying after a while, and now I can’t wait for them to be gone tomorrow.

They started shooting last week, for this movie called “Youth in Revolt” directed by Miguel Arteta, and starring Michael Cera (Juno’s boyfriend), Steve Buscemi, Ray Liotta, Jean Smart, etc. Story is “While his trailer trash parents teeter on the edge of divorce, 14-year-old Nick (Michael Cera) sets his sights on dream girl Sheeni Saunders, hoping that she’ll be the one to take away his virginity.” It’s supposedly a comedy. I feel that they are stretching it a bit to make a 20 year old as a 14 year old character. Maybe make him at least 16 for the sake of putting too much pressure on all the 14 year olds about loosing their virginity out there. (I know, having a child as a teenager is so Hollywood right now…)
Yeah, anyway we were not happy that we were made into the trailer trash neighborhood at first, but we heard that they are shooting not the trash part here so… (We’ll see, once the movie comes out.)
Any who, we saw Fred Willard, Zach Galifianakis, Michael Cera, and Jean Smart, so far in person. Jean Smart seems to be a very nice lady. Tall, and very pretty. I guess she hurt her leg so she is walking with a cane right now. I feel bad… I only got to see Fred Willard from afar, and Zach Galifianakis sat in front of our house on the steps talking on his cell phone.
I tried to get my friend an autograph by Michael Cera, on the “Super Bad” DVD that we borrowed from him, and failed the first attempt.

There have been so many people, that I have never seen before, on our street ” On Their Walks”, that it started to get a bit annoying. My dog was going nuts from all the traffic we were getting in front of our house. (I seriously think he was freaking out.)
I can’t just walk up and down the street with my daughter because they are shooting. I have to go around the block to get out of my neighborhood now, not the simple drive down the street. And the waiting in my car or side walk for them to call “CUT”. 2 weeks is more than enough.
Our street has never been so lively, more so than Gay Day and the Dream Cruse. Which is a big deal around here. It’s just a little too much now though…

So today is the final day of shooting in front of my house, and I cannot be happier. I just had one mission to get done. Have Michael Cera sign the DVD.
We were across the street today at our neighbors, when we spotted him. He was coming down the side walk to come to the Craft Services truck for some snacks. We spotted that opportunity, and we took it. We had my 3 year old daughter take the “Super Bad (Unrated Extended Edition)” down the drive way to the truck where Michael Cera was standing. She looks up to hand him the DVD. My cute little daughter in her night gown, who can resist that!? It was too cute! Then it happened. Michael Cera gave us the “What the #$%& look”. I’m a little pissed. You don’t do that in front of my daughter! I don’t care who the funk you are. She is awesome and cute and is doing this for me (and a bag of chips). But seriously, who does that in front of a 3 year old!? To make her feel like she was doing something wrong for even a second. That’s upsetting. He just acted like a spoiled Hollywood kid that didn’t want anyone in his space. He didn’t even see any of the cuteness in that. And look at the body guard, looking all tough, intimidating my little princess. Michael Cera’s not that cool, kind of strange, he seems to be the same person he is in the movies. Does that mean he’s not really acting…?
Well, I am going to wait for the movie to come out on On Demand anyways.

I don’t care about him, Zu did a great job! She is awesome. Very ballsy, just like her mother. She also got some chips out of the deal. Thank you Reva from Craft Services!

Well, the mac guy is supposed to be coming to my friends block next week, so I would like to go see that from her front porch. Maybe… Maybe he’ll sign my iBook for me.

26 hours, 1 hour of sleep ~ Part 2 April 21, 2008

4:30 in the morning we are dropped off at the air port with 3 bags to check, 2 carry on bags, 2 personal bags and a stroller. 3 check in bags are on wheels. 1 carry on is on wheels, 1 is a duffel bag, and we had the stroller… Wait a minute. We have 2 adults, and a 2 year old. Who is going to pull the 5 things on wheels and carry the half asleep toddler? We should of listened to Johns friend and got one of those carts to put all the bags.
Oh well, so I push the stroller with the toddler, carrying 1 personal bag, the duffel bag, while pulling the other carry on and John tried to push and pull 3 big bags on rollers. That’s my man. (hee hee hee)
We get to the check in counter. All of our bags check in at under 40 pounds. Oooooh, I’m good…

On to the next hurdle, “Going through Security”.

Take off the shoes, take off the jackets, take out the 2 lap tops and put them on separate trays, fold the stroller down, take out both of the 7.5 by 8 baggies with our 3.4 ounces or less liquids, and the other zip lock bag for the toddler with all of her 2 packs of 8 oz Organic Milk and 1 pack of 8 oz Soy Dream + 2 fruit cups (which may be allowed on board but must be declared to the TSA at the security checkpoint for screening.), have toddler put stuffed animal to be screened as well.
We got our bag on rollers checked because of our camera, but everything else went surprisingly smooth.

Before getting on the flight I get a mocha and a bagel and take my echinacea. The flight from Detroit to Newark was very rocky. I got air sick for the very first time in 31 years of traveling. I’m regretting the Mocha I decided to get before I got on the plane. Thank GOD it was a short flight.

Newark Air Port is HUGE. We got out, started to walk, John calling T-Mobile to tell them to unlock our phones for the ???teen time before we leave the country and end up not having a phone. Yes, they can unlock your phone and you can buy a pre-paid SIM card in the other country and use your PHONE!! (I do recommend you on doing this maybe a month ahead of time to avoid what we went through. We just found out that Japanese cel phones don’t use sim cards though… So can’t use the phone anyway for other countries that do have sim cards.)
Any who, we had to walk a bit and then catch the little People Mover to go to the next terminal, where our plane was taking off from. We had to go through security again. (ugh) This time the TSA stopped me and told me that I couldn’t bring in that much milk. I told him that I knew that you could bring that amount for my Toddler as long as I declared it, do to the information on their web site, he let us go. And he thought I had no clue… (But just in case they give you a hard time, make sure you bring a print out of the airline carry on restrictions so that you have proof.)

It was about 11 am, so we decided to get some subs before we board onto our 13 hour flight. As some of you may know, I thought we were only going to get a lunch on this 13 hour flight so I thought about eating and packing as much food as I can before I got onto this plane… Turns out I was a bit wrong.
During this 13 hour flight we got lunch, a snack of pretzels, dinner, breakfast and even ice cream. I’ve always hated food on the plane, especially the meat and fish are gross! So I called ahead of time and ordered a special needs meal for Zu and myself. We are vegetarian for this flight and Zu, because of her chronic constipation, is Vegan. Our meal turned out to be surprisingly good, but one of the bad things was, is that they only got Zu’s special needs order, and not mine… (sob) That’s okay though, Zu ended up sleeping through the Palak Paneer dinner, which was pretty good, except for the fact that Continental doesn’t know what Vegan means, or they don’t know that Paneer is cheese. And during lunch, she wanted the chicken nugget like patty that was in my Chicken sandwich, that the flight attendant said, “Sorry for not having your Vegetarian meal, but we have chicken or fish, would you like that instead?” Vegetarian…, chicken…? fish…? I had no idea those were vegetables. Well, I went for the, vegetarian meal substitute, Chicken and Zu liked it. Breakfast was a more curry like dish. Zu was sleeping so I ate it for her. Apparently all vegetarians are Indian, or Indian lovers to have some sort of curry in all 3 meals of the day. Oh, did I forget to mention that the veggie burger served for lunch had a hint of curry and coriander to it?

So in honor of my pretty good Vegan (Indian) flight menu, here’s a recipe for the Continental Vegan.

Chicken Tomato Curry:

• 400g of Boneless Skinless Chicken Thigh Meat
• 1 onion
• 1~2 carrots
• 1 can of black beans (drained)
• 1~2 knobs of garlic (minced)
• 1 knob of ginger (grated)
• 2 tbsp butter
• 3 tbsp curry powder
• 1 large can of crushed tomato
• 1 cube of chicken bullon
• 1/4 tsp galam masala (if available)
• 1 tbsp oregano
• 1 tbsp basil
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 a lemon
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• a dollop of plain yogurt for garnishment

In a large Le Creuset pot (or large pot with lid), on medium heat, brown the chicken with 1 tbsp of the butter. To the same pan, add the vegetables with the rest of the butter and saute until tender. Add all other ingredients except the yogurt and mix well. Cover and turn heat down to simmer. Cook for about an hour. That’s all! Serve with a dollop of yogurt or sour cream and eat it with your favorite Nan or rice.

Not sleeping yet…