i was feeling virtuous the other night, having finally stepped into the swimming pool for actual swimming, as opposed to paddling or splashing about or pushing the baby and her floaty-seat-ring from one end of the pool to the other. i set my ambitions low; after all it had been a ghastly 20 months or so since i had the pleasure of doing laps. but after i’d done five, i thought maybe i could get to ten, and then when i reached ten, it didn’t seem so hard to get to fifteen, and by twenty-two i thought i could probably get to thirty… but i didn’t stick around to find out.

instead i came home, and made myself a celebratory mini kaiseki: miso soup with spinach and wheat cakes (the spinach and wheat cakes come freezedried in a silver sachet!), steamed beans, pumpkin and potato in a sesame-mirin-dressing, some bits of chinatown chicken and duck, and because we like carbohydrates around here, a bowl of white rice.

how pleasant, this tingly feeling in one’s muscles.