A week in April

The cherry blossoms are making petal drifts in the street these days and for some reason the dandelions are taking over the empty lots and abandoned corners along the streets.  I spent yesterday putting away my winter clothes (it might be a little too early....  it  was cold this morning!) and Tetsu has plans to have his snow tires replaced with normal ones this week too.  

I saw M-san last week to finish up 6 of our On Williams Street blocks but I think we have decided we want to make three more each so that we will each have a total of 9.  Unfortunately that project has been put on hold because M-san is helping her father prepare for rice planting, and also because Leiya and Luka will be here soon and I need extra time to get things put away and cleaned up for their stay.  I think we have decided to move a single bed (that Tetsu uses) into the room that we use for storage for Leiya and Luka, and Tetsu will sleep on a futon on the floor of our bedroom.  That storage room needs some devoted dusting and scrubbing!  A lot of that excess is going to have to be moved into my sewing room...  thus my sewing with M-san is in a holding pattern...  Though I'm hoping to have M-san visit while Leiya is here as they have never met.  The above photo was one M-san took of Tetsu and me (and John) in our backyard.

I had a meeting to attend at the City Hall because I am one of the board members of the Traffic Safety Committee.  Would you believe I'm actually one of two vice presidents!  They were scraping the bottom of the barrel when they assigned me that title!!!  I can barely keep my place on the documents being reviewed let alone add much to the discussions...  We have a general meeting in May and the different yearly reports that have to be announced... budget, planning, changes in ruling etc were assigned to us committee members for making announcements.  I was gratefully only given the job of formally announcing the beginning and end of the general meeting.

"From now, we will hold the Nikko City Traffic Instructor Liaison Council General Meeting in 2023." 

Take my word for it, in Japanese this and a similar formal ending announcement are tongue twisters!   But really, there isn't much more that I'm useful for at these meetings...

Why the tea bottle painting above?  At the committee meeting we were given our choice of bottled drinks and I chose the peach tea just because I thought it looked pretty to draw!  

I really like artwork that is loose a bit a crazy and so I tried my hand at sketching and painting Marlene's house which had a slope covered with Pink Moss flowers.  I can't decide if I like this type of scribble when I do it though or if it is just that...  scribble...

I saw Mrs. N twice this week because she is gung-ho to be making more quilts.  Thank you Rosa for the suggestion of the Paws and Pins quilt because Mrs. N jumped at that one and it was easy enough for me to use the instructions on the Missouri Star website and convert the inches into centimeters for Mrs. N to follow.  She got those blocks made in no time and I helped her put on a border and choose a quilting pattern.  Mrs. N is overjoyed with her progress and is thinking maybe she'll make this quilt again as this one is destined as a gift to someone...

Even the vet is relieved to hear that we didn't have any problems with John last week...  John has one very sweet behavior of letting Mi go first when drinking milk.  John sits and waits with his body wiggling because it takes him so much will power not to get to milk first.  You can just hear him thinking.

"Hurry up...  Hurry up.  Don't drink it all.  Save some for me."

And Mi just takes her sweet time and ignores the tail thumping and sighing behind her.

I went to the doctor's yesterday to pick up my monthly medication supply and I was surprised to find that acrylic dividers that have been set up between the reception desk and the waiting room have been removed after three years of the pandemic.  We are also no longer required to wear masks everywhere (and though my doodle tells a different story, the nurses and I were still wearing masks in the clinic).  I've also been going to church again after three years of online worship.  Just wonderful!  Happy Easter!

And thus has gone this past week of April.