Thursday and Friday, Saturday and Sunday's poor cousins
by Wendy Elizabeth Horikoshi on Sunday, 09 October 2011 at 12:25
I'm a teacher, and I work on the weekends. This has the advantage of having a couple of days during the week off, but it really has it's down sides, as well.
Yesterday was Duck's Undo kai (sports day in Japan). I work from 9am till just before 11:30 on Saturday, and completely missed my little Duck's first sports day. They get to dress up (he went as a cowboy) and there is a parade and games. He won a medal (I think everyone did) and I only know this because I raced from work to see the last part of the parade stop, and the end notes of the songs dying away. I got to see the photo's. It sucks on days like this to be the one who never has weekends off.
I am always racing at top speed on my bicycle or telling a taxi driver to Go! Go! Go! trying to get somewhere fast on these occasions. Graduation speeches, school festivals, sports day, Kindy picnic, I am always the one who arrives late, puffed out, not dressed properly (I wear a suit, and sometimes a dress, as I teach in colleges and businesses, it's hard to play soccer in a dress, and dig sweet potatoes in a suit with no gardening gloves.) I am pretty sure my dry cleaner hates me.
I try to make up for all this missing time by being a sporadic June Cleaver Mum. You know? Leave it to Beavers Mum?
She always had cookies just from the oven, perfect dinner on the table, sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Her kids seemed never to have last nights pizza for breakfast while on the back of the bicycle as she raced them to school before the gates shut. I don't think she ever sent her kids to daycare in their pyjamas with the breakfast in a sealy bag, or put a sleeping child on the bicycle kiddy seat to go out, because she didn't have the heart to wake them up when they'd had a late night. I bet her kids never had late nights.
I suffer from working mothers guilt.
And probably unreasonable expectations of real life, due to excess TV watching in my younger days.
I have five jobs.
Both of us work, and we play relay races with the kids. When I come home, my Mr. hands over the baton to me, and picks up his bag, and is out the door before I can even say goodbye, have a good day. Most of our parental conversations are on our mobile phones, at toilet breaks or in between classes. If I don't hear his voice all echoing because he is hiding out in a bathroom cubicle when he talks to me, I think something must be wrong. He finishes at midnight, and I occasionally see him in person, around two in the morning. Or maybe it's just a dream. I see him asleep, he sees me asleep. It's not an ideal situation, Y'know?
I am the queen of stealth conversations. I live in a town in Tokyo that has very strict rules about talking on your phone in public. Kodaira is about 80% old people. The will glare, spit, and tell you off for having a whispered conversation on a bus or train, and more times than I care to remember, have I been berated publicly over the bus loudspeaker by the driver for answering my phone's buzz (because it's my husband or the kid's school calling) and "upsetting" the other passengers with my one-sided English conversation. I'm really rude like that, how I disrupt Japan, with all my talking, breathing, and basically just not being Japanese.
I was at Costco the other day, and they had tiny Blue Tooth headsets for 25 bucks. I bought one, and wear it as an earring constantly. I put a book up to my face when it rings in my ear, and now the worst that people think of me, is that I am a bit thick, so I must read out loud.
Yesterday, as I got to Undo Kai at the end, we went to lunch Viking (smorgasbord). Boy and Duck noted that they have never seen Toffee Apples in Japan. In one of my finer June Cleaver moments, I nipped out to buy apples and sugar, and whipped them up five of these yummy Autumn things.
June Cleaver probably wouldn't have let them eat Toffee Apples for dinner, though. Hey, they had a big lunch right? ;)
It's what's for dinner!
MMMM shiny!
Yesterday was Duck's Undo kai (sports day in Japan). I work from 9am till just before 11:30 on Saturday, and completely missed my little Duck's first sports day. They get to dress up (he went as a cowboy) and there is a parade and games. He won a medal (I think everyone did) and I only know this because I raced from work to see the last part of the parade stop, and the end notes of the songs dying away. I got to see the photo's. It sucks on days like this to be the one who never has weekends off.
I am always racing at top speed on my bicycle or telling a taxi driver to Go! Go! Go! trying to get somewhere fast on these occasions. Graduation speeches, school festivals, sports day, Kindy picnic, I am always the one who arrives late, puffed out, not dressed properly (I wear a suit, and sometimes a dress, as I teach in colleges and businesses, it's hard to play soccer in a dress, and dig sweet potatoes in a suit with no gardening gloves.) I am pretty sure my dry cleaner hates me.
I try to make up for all this missing time by being a sporadic June Cleaver Mum. You know? Leave it to Beavers Mum?
She always had cookies just from the oven, perfect dinner on the table, sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Her kids seemed never to have last nights pizza for breakfast while on the back of the bicycle as she raced them to school before the gates shut. I don't think she ever sent her kids to daycare in their pyjamas with the breakfast in a sealy bag, or put a sleeping child on the bicycle kiddy seat to go out, because she didn't have the heart to wake them up when they'd had a late night. I bet her kids never had late nights.
I suffer from working mothers guilt.
And probably unreasonable expectations of real life, due to excess TV watching in my younger days.
I have five jobs.
Both of us work, and we play relay races with the kids. When I come home, my Mr. hands over the baton to me, and picks up his bag, and is out the door before I can even say goodbye, have a good day. Most of our parental conversations are on our mobile phones, at toilet breaks or in between classes. If I don't hear his voice all echoing because he is hiding out in a bathroom cubicle when he talks to me, I think something must be wrong. He finishes at midnight, and I occasionally see him in person, around two in the morning. Or maybe it's just a dream. I see him asleep, he sees me asleep. It's not an ideal situation, Y'know?
I am the queen of stealth conversations. I live in a town in Tokyo that has very strict rules about talking on your phone in public. Kodaira is about 80% old people. The will glare, spit, and tell you off for having a whispered conversation on a bus or train, and more times than I care to remember, have I been berated publicly over the bus loudspeaker by the driver for answering my phone's buzz (because it's my husband or the kid's school calling) and "upsetting" the other passengers with my one-sided English conversation. I'm really rude like that, how I disrupt Japan, with all my talking, breathing, and basically just not being Japanese.
I was at Costco the other day, and they had tiny Blue Tooth headsets for 25 bucks. I bought one, and wear it as an earring constantly. I put a book up to my face when it rings in my ear, and now the worst that people think of me, is that I am a bit thick, so I must read out loud.
Yesterday, as I got to Undo Kai at the end, we went to lunch Viking (smorgasbord). Boy and Duck noted that they have never seen Toffee Apples in Japan. In one of my finer June Cleaver moments, I nipped out to buy apples and sugar, and whipped them up five of these yummy Autumn things.
June Cleaver probably wouldn't have let them eat Toffee Apples for dinner, though. Hey, they had a big lunch right? ;)
It's what's for dinner!MMMM shiny!
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