Day 159: Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Three of Ian's friends from America have taken over the first floor of our house since they are visiting for Ian and Yuki’s upcoming wedding… Upstairs in our office, Yuki was at Ian’s desk while Ian had to work sitting on the floor between us. Taking a break, Ian opened their wedding present from his mom that he had gotten in the mail this morning, which was a digital picture frame full of photos of him as a kid. It was my first time seeing him with hair.

A few hours later, Ian left to meet his parents at the airport. When I went to the bathroom downstairs, I saw Willy sitting on the sofa looking at me, which was a nice surprise. After she had abandoned us for a month, she has now been stopping by again to say hello for the past few days, but only for a short time. Last night on the veranda, I petted her for thirty minutes, so she would remember how much I loved her; and after I went to the bathroom, I dedicated another thirty minutes to her before going back to work. When it was time to get up, I carried her to the office and surprisingly she sat on my lap for ten whole minutes, which was a new record.

Later Yuki’s parents arrived to town as well, but they didn’t want to bother her because they knew she was busy so they told her to go ahead and meet Ian’s parents for dinner. When Yuki left, I finally had the house to myself. In the evening, I went to the supermarket and bought instant curry (170 yen) and some shoukoushu (a Chinese alcohol that the girl and I drank at the Taiwanese restaurant the other night). I was planning on surprising her with it later in the evening after she had gotten off work since we had to get together to do some more planning for my exhibition.

While I was eating dinner, I watched the Dawson’s Creek Thanksgiving episode where Jen’s mom, who after throwing Jen out of the house and shipping her off to the countryside to live with her grandma, finally shows up at her door unexpectedly without a word for two whole years on Thanksgiving Day… and even though this was a cheesy Thanksgiving episode about family- the kind you have no choice about being apart of and the kind you make on your own- it was still pretty good.

Afterwards everyone came home and it was a crowded house again. While I waited for the girl to get off work, I made her a mix CD since she told me she didn’t know much about music. On the jacket cover, I drew a narwhal with a black Sharpie and was quite proud when I was finished. I thought that if this didn’t win her over then I didn’t know what would.

She got home around 1:30 and we worked till 3:00. When we were done, I gave her the CD. She seemed to really like it, but it turned out she thought my drawing was of a dolphin getting speared in the face since she had never heard of a narwhal before… I googled some pictures and showed it to her, and even though she said it was disgusting, I could tell she was fascinated as well.

The next morning while I was in the shower, I finally realized that like in the Thanksgiving episode of Dawson’s Creek, everyone was gathering together, even our cat Willy, for Ian and Yuki’s big day.