CitizenSE Refuses to Offer Excuses

So, I already missed a day of Hawthorne blogging. I could invent a retroactive policy of no Sunday blogging, even though no one in the household is Christian. Or I could make a case that an early morning post should count towards the night before. Or I could explain in interminable detail how our successful shopping trip to Kashii to buy some of the winter gear we decided not to ship over to Fukuoka and even more successful "get the girls to bed early" operation failed to lead to a free evening together for the parents, much less a blogging opportunity for the dad. Or I could change the subject by complaining at length about the double jeopardy brought about by a lack of insulation in concrete-block-style Japanese apartments and a lack of central heating (either you turn on the space heater and slowly have all the moisture sucked out of your body or you freeze, even though the lows here would be nice highs back in Dunkirk this time of year).

But, not quite heroically, I will do none of that. I'll just point out that the "citizen of somewhere else" line was, like a purloined letter, mockingly staring me in the face while I looked all over "The Custom-House" for it, until I came across it earlier this morning (in the middle of tsuma's and my romantic date, after we woke up in the middle of the morning after spending most of the night repeatedly helping clingy and maybe-getting-sick girls get back to sleep)--right there on the last page. On the bright side, I'm teaching The Scarlet Letter and Beloved the rest of the semester in my Postcolonial Hawthorne course, so I'll be able to explain the blog title and prep for class at the same time, hopefully later this afternoon, after we visit a potential day care for onechan and take my wife to the doctor (it is nice to live in a place with a national health insurance system, especially given how tough the microorganisms seem to be in this corner of the world).