Those are great suggestions - thank you - for romance at a distance. The mint ice cream in the freezer idea is wonderful - travelling in Japan can be challenging tastebudwise - so she will probably appreciate some favorite comfort foods. We have a bunch of swiss chard in the garden that needs to be used up, so I'll make and freeze a spinach/chard lasagna, which she also likes, for her to use when I am gone (the chard bed might become the secret tulip bed then...) We'll put fresh flowers in her office to say welcome back. Other small items - perhaps a neat book for her to find - will be planted also, as well as having cleaned the house.
She gets in Friday evening at the airport, where we will meet her, ideally both the kids and I (to lighten things up on the drive home). Hopefully the 36 hours we then spend together until I leave will be short and sweet, a sort of reversed familiarity breeds contempt thing. She has lots to clean up here and I'll need to pack, so that short interlude will be mostly a hopefully comforting, homebody experience for all.
I am then back here for maybe 10 days after Thanksgiving before having to go back again to the States. Those ten days will likely be very busy, as we would like to have a Christmas party, which will probably have to be jammed into then, and possibly combined with my birthday (which is the day after I need to leave again); hopefully a date can be fitted into the whole business. Do you have any feelings for how to shape that time? Home should be a place she likes; not one she is bored by (she once told my D that, reversing a Swedish saying, "home is good, but away is best").
Christmas is then not too far off - and I have been accumulating gifts for a while for her. She loves tempura, so we have a mix and sauce to make that, I have an expensive two volume set on Japanese book design, maybe too heavy (in both senses of the word) a gift? and have been playing with the idea of giving her a clothing shopping spree at a fancy department store in Stockholm. Do you have any suggestions on what sort of gifts might be good for Chistmas? My instincts say to keep it light, not too expensive, and funny if possible. Do you think it would be good to have people over during the holidays?
Anyway, thanks again for all your ideas - you are a real champion coach in teaching me how to roll with the punches - Luke
M58, xW54 S22, D18 M 1984, D 2016 Living a new life.
