Today I started off in a terrible mood. So I decided that I would go to an art museum. I took the two younger kids. In all I walked .09 short of 9 miles today. The museum was nice. It was a very baby-centric visit; I didn’t get to see most of the exhibits. But it cost a whopping $1.80 so I really don’t feel bad. Mostly she got to color and crawl around in a space that wasn’t our apartment. I did get to see some art though. I was not able to take notes about the artists so I can’t cite some of the geniuses I saw today.

One of the painters was very reminiscent (to me) of John Pringle, my favorite painter (a Glaswegian I saw at the Kelvingrove) and both of these fantastic painters make me want to buy some oil paints and go to town. TEXTURE. ALL THE TEXTURE. I WANTS IT.

Some day I think we will have an art studio and it will be really awesome. I think everyone in my family will use it and that… makes my heart soar.

When did this become my life? When did this become what Noah and I are going to share with our kids? I don’t know. But we all do a lot of art stuff. We draw, paint, sometimes sculpt (not much), I love my mosaics… we all love to create. We don’t watch tv. We make shit.

The walk was truly wonderful. Middle Child and I had a really fun conversation. It just went on and on. We talked about books we love to read; we talked about what living in a multi-cultural society means (both positive and negative aspects). We talked about equilibrium and disequilibrium and who we want to be.

He told me that he would really like it if I could learn from this experience in Japan and yell less in the future. He is really appreciating how calm I am here.

That’s both fair and a really cool observation.

And now Noah is reading a silly comic book to the kids and everyone is feeling pretty good.

We even started the day with sex. And Noah had a good work day to prepare for his conference Thurs-Sat. (He presents on Friday.)

Eldest Child’s knee is feeling better, but still not quite up for a lot of walking. She wants to make sure she doesn’t re-injure herself before we have to go through the airport. She’s being conservative, and frankly wise.

Her Sweetness had a really fun day and it was neat to watch her have so much fun. She’s getting really clear about communicating about food and that’s really excellent.

Today was so nice.

We got a (larger than truly planned) bouquet of flowers for our host here. We also got a bag of fruits and veggies that we used to grow in California. I wrote a thank you note telling them about the food; I said that growing and eating it brought us a lot of happiness and health and I hope it brings the same to them.

Today was a good day.