Year of the Dragon, that's me!

Year of the Dragon, that's Me!

Year of the Dragon:  Notice the growing out first-time cellophaned, but fading red hair and the grey roots poking out?  See the tiny wrinkles?  Actually, my eyes are open.  I am literally (I can't say literally without thinking of Rob Lowe on Parks and Recreation, a show I am enjoying nightly on Netflix at the moment) serious that my eyes are open in this picture.  Anyways, I am getting a Metro TAP card for the train/bus pass and I needed a picture.  I think that me, Maiya and several coworkers tried to take pictures of me, dozens over the last few days for me to submit, and they all turned out goofy.  This one, has got to be the goofiest, and no, this one won't be on the train pass.

Anyways, as usual, I digress, again.  It is Year of the Dragon, and no, sweet and naive of you to guess that I am 36, but yes, as of today, I am 48 years old.  When I talk about childhood friends, then we start saying, "oh yeah, we've been friends for 40 something years."  Anyways, I'm in much better health than I was at 46 (Blog Post Forty-sicks!) and for that I am extremely grateful.  Grateful to my dear friend Victor Shibata, who passed away earlier this year, who helped me with health and energy issues ranging from fertility to asthma and many other ailments over the last 15 years or so.  I miss you Victor.

Picture taken with the Iha's, a Cuban Japanese family we visited in Cuba in 2001
 (me far left, Tony seated, and Victor far right)

So on my birthday, one of my "wishes" and my "hopes," is that I can stay healthy and be lucky enough to keep watching my beautiful, funny, spunky, smart kid grow up.

Peace, out.
NaBloPoMo12 #2

February 2012 Update

February was a busy month.  I participated in a march and rally around LAUSD Headquarters supporting Adult Education and calling against the closing of 30 Adult Education sites with 300,000 adult learners, including the mommies in our Family Literacy program who attend 68 hours a month of English classes, parenting classes and parent/child literacy activities with their preschool children.  We were among 1,000 others that day. Furlough days continued for Maiya, and we were thrilled that my cousin Jackie came and brought her grandbaby Harper over to visit and have lunch.

Also this month, I started volunteering with Meghan Sahli-Wells' campaign for City Council, attending fundraisers, helping on a phone bank, walking precincts, assembling and putting up lawn signs in the neighborhood with Maiya, writing a support letter that was published in 3 or 4 news blogs, and making some new friends.  After losing by 32 votes in 2010 on an eco-friendly campaign I could get behind, I had decided if she ever ran again, I would volunteer for her campaign.

New York Knick Jeremy Lin hit the big time, and we got the last Linsanity t-shirt at the mall (a gift for Kevin's bday), which the kids celebrated at the gymnastics center, where I tried to pull some old tricks on the equipment, reliving my old gymnastics glory days #FAIL.

LTSC Family Literacy supports ADULT EDUCATION at LAUSD Headquarters

Cousin Jackie and Baby Harper visit on Maiya's Furlough Day

Supporting Meghan Sahli-Wells for City Council!

Superstars #6 has the ball!  Playing against WLA boys

Linsanity goes full force in February!

Maiya & Eve

Kevin's 7th Birthday at the Gymnastics Center

Peace Out... that's February 2012
#activism #baby #bball #birthday #cousins #literacy #monthlyupdate
(Posted 10/27/12)

Maiya's 7th Bday Mottainai Party

We celebrated Maiya's 7th Bday Party again at the park by our house.  Seems like every year gets bigger, this year about 75 people came, having invited the basketball team, friends from school, old preschool friends, and extensions of family.  I'm thinking that this might be the last year of a party of this size.  Big as it was, we still managed to do a fairly green low-waste party.  Plastic utensils and reusable party chopsticks go in the bucket, Grandpa Larry's coffee mugs, no single-use drink containers, cloth tablecloths, recycled paper plates, hot pots for tea and coffee.  I'm always amazed at how little trash is in the trash can at the end of the day.  The main thing we take home to recycle is the 1/2 gallon juice and 2 liter bottle sodas.

 During arts and crafts time, the kids made Tenegui towels... which they later needed for learning the Mottainai dance from Auntie Nobuko, who came and did a little obon dance workshop, teaching the kids the dance.  It was a lot of fun to watch the kids and parents joining in.

 Then afterwards, we went back home and celebrated Grandpa's birthday at our house.  The kids always bring out the yogurt cups every time they come over.  We just can't get rid of them.

Until next bday, peace out!

(Posted on: 10/25/12)

Backblogging January 2012

We'll ignore the fact that it's the middle of October 2012, and that I never finished last year's November NaBloPoMo which was supposed to backblog 2011.  So I still need to catch up on June-December for 2011. I may never get there.  Or, these dates might look a little funky.  Anyways, here are some photos from January 2012, Maiya's last month of being 6 years old.

Maiya took over 100 pictures on this day of her animals.  Each one has a name, age and gender assigned to it. 

One of Maiya's vintage art projects with Daddy.
Making pizza out of cardboard.

Maiya took some Saturday Karate classes to prep
for her Yellow Belt test at Jewish Workman's Center .

Maiya has been here before... for 2005 Jewish Seder (her 3 month bday).

Took Maiya to JANM for their Oshogatsu Festival.
Here we made handprints with our wishes for 2012.

Musubi Making Contest at JANM

Grandma with Grandkids on her 74th Bday

Celebrating Grandma Machi, Kevin and Uncle Shag's Birthday.

 ** Still to come for January 2012, our trip to Santa Barbara for MLK weekend.

Maiya Turns 6 (in Feb!)

SIX:  So Maiya turned 6 in February.  We had the party at a park walking distance from our house.  Mista Cookie Jar came and performed some great music for the kids.  We had seen him perform at a couple of community events and Maiya loves his CDs.  I have always wanted to do a concert for a birthday party, but Joe Reilly and Chic Street Man don't live in town and we don't really know Ice Cream Man (reggae kids performer that we've seen at the Farmer's Market).  You know that thing about invite 6 kids for a 6th bday?  Well we times'd it by 10, and over 60 people came, including 4 kids from Kindergarten.

GAMES:  The theme was not Barbie or Bakugan, it was FRUIT!  So my friend Mickie gave me some suggestions (via Skype from Japan) for games.  You'll see in the pictures we did relay race games with orange on a spoon, banana on your neck, and oranges between your legs. Oh my goodness, how fun is that?  The cake was fruit, and the party favor was reusable shopping bags that fold up into fruits.  

ECO-PARTY:  We did another ECO-party.  It's easy to use dishes and real utensils when you have a party at home, but when you do it elsewhere, you have to lug the stuff back and forth.  I got paper plates made of bamboo and recycled materials.  We brought a bucket so that the nice plastic cutlery and hashi (used at several parties including her 5th bday) could be tossed in, taken home, and rewashed.   I re-used some plastic tablecloths from past parties, and also now have 4 cloth tablecloths that can be washed and used again.  We brought real mugs for drinks. Drinks were by the half gallon (no throwaway one-time use plastic bottles or juice boxes), and since it was cold, I made pots of coffee (not enough though) and brought them in the hot pots.  The nice thing is that we didn't even fill one trash barrel at the park; although I did have to fish out a few forks and hashi.

Here's around 20 pictures to share.  I know it's a lot, but we took about 130 pictures and filled up a video card, so you get the gist.  (If you were there, and you want individual pics of your kids, we have almost all the kids with either a piece of fruit between their legs or behind their neck.)

Happy 6th Bday.  At the time of this writing, Maiya is almost 7.   Oh, the time goes by so quickly.  Peace. Out.  (NaBloPoMo#5)

February 2011 Happenings

NaBloPoMo#4 is going to be the recap of February 2011. I honestly don't know if I'm going to have the time and energy to update a whole year, but we'll see where this goes.  On the 1st of the month, Maiya turned SIX years old.  That crept up pretty quickly.  We forgot to take a picture until after shower time, thus the robes with wet hair.  Notice the candle in the manjuu, her favorite treat.

My Dad turned 80 years old, so we had a surprise party and Roast for him at my sister's house.  We invited a bunch of his old gang, plus some golf friends.  

We also celebrated Maiya and her friend Eve's 6th bday party at school.  We've been friends with Eve's parents since 15+ years ago, so it's been nice that they're in the same class, and have birthdays in the same month.  I brought chocolate manjuu, as I did the two previous years at Maiya's preschool bdays. (Class photo removed)

Our friends, Scott, Emily and Tula (Maiya's sistahfriend) came to visit from Detroit.  We manage to see them about 3-4 times a year.  Scott and Grace Lee Boggs published a book of Grace's speeches, writings and ideas.  That led to a sleepover for Maiya and Tula.

 

Of course, being on the Board for Great Leap (where I worked from 1997 to 2004), means our annual fundraising event.  This year instead of the LA Marathon, we participated in the Chinatown Firecracker 5K.  Maiya actually walked the 5K with us, and did the 1K for kids by herself.  Me and Maiya raised about $1,500 for Great Leap from generous friends/family sponsors.

At the end of Maiya's first basketball season playing bball, her team went to the year end event where they handed out trophies for all the teams.  Afterwards, we invited the whole team and their families over for a potluck.  It was a lot of fun.

Peace. Out.