Like a little girl.....

I get ready to go to my 3rd job of the day on Tuesday around 5pm.
This typhoon was gusting up to be a real doozy, and it had already started to rain in a pretty serious manner.  Last week, I had a really bad case of Noro virus, and the nausea seems to have kept lurking around,  hiding behind  bouts of feel-good normalcy,  to jump out and ambush me with a sickly rush of spinney woe.

Just before I left for work I started to feel ill again.  Two or three blocks from the bus stop,  I was fighting with my umbrella, and having the storm come up underneath it, to  smack me around the chops.  I suddenly doubled over in pain, and dry retched right there in the pouring rain.  After a minute or so of hurling,  I decided to call my classes,  and tell them it had all gone pear-shaped, and it was all off for this evening, I was still feeling ill.  I spent an eternity searching in my bag, trying to hold onto my umbrella, and not spew in my back pack.

I discovered  two things,

1.  I had left my bloody phone at home, and I was exactly half way to the bus stop, and
2.  I felt better for the little hurl and I had enough time to still make it to the bus, because I could hear the bell ringing for 5:30.

I had no choice but to soldier on.
Worst case?  I would make it to class, they would be so freaked out by my ghost-like visage and possible projectile-vomit incidents,  that they would pay me, and still send me home to be sick at my own house.

I lurched towards the Little Rainbow shopping bus,  getting soaked,  no matter how hard  I tried to hold on to my brolly.  Rain in Japan is tricky.  It doesn't just fall down,  it comes at you sideways,  paired up with it's little mate  the wind, it seizes your umbrella, and then leaps up from underneath to splatter you in the face, and show you who is the boss.  You don't just get a bit damp.  Typhoons here are seriously about making everything in Japan soggy, and they go on for days.

I sloshed my way on to the bus,  and dripped,  miserable and sick, packed in with other soggy members of the community.
In the steamy confines of the Little Shopping Bus,  I was pressure cooked for 20 minutes until my hair was all frizzy and I had dead man's fingers.  The Little Bus disgorged me again into the pouring rain,  an I did the Umbrella Dance all the way to the community centre, a 1-2-3, 1-2-3 dip!

Inside,  I was given a nice comfy chair,  a towel, and a glass of ice water.  I started to feel better.

Two and a half hours later,  I was on the mend. My classes had gone well,  they handed the money over, there was no accidental vomit at all, and it was time to go home.

The buses finish at 7pm here ,  so it's a fair walk home for me  (but I probably need the exercise)  and I thought that the worst of the storm might have been over, with any luck.

I am not a lucky person, as such.  I got downstairs, and some one had thoughtfully dried off my umbrella for me,  and I took a look out the window.  Hmmm,  blowing a bit of a gale.

My older students came down the stairs to look fearfully out the glass doors at the front.  Just as I am about to step outside, the wind picks up a plastic lawn chair from some unfortunate persons front garden,  and smashes it at head height violently against the glass.  After a beat,  I say ,
"Well,  lucky it was only plastic, hey?"  and make my way to the front door, to the horrified stares of students and staff.

Mr.  Y.  followed me out, and said ,
"  Are you  SURE  you will be alright on the way home, Sensei?"

I assure him this is just a little soggy inconvenience,  and I am fully drip dry.  He looks unconvinced.  I go to step off the front stairs, and  look down to see a deep water fall,  of about 10 centimetres off each step.  I decide I will use the wheelchair ramp, instead.

Now, my city is full to the brim with old people.  EVERYWHERE needs a ramp.  It's not just wheelchairs, it's walkers,  walking sticks,  and quite a few blind people, who find stairs a pain.

I slosh down the ramp,  and it's pitch dark. The lights on the street are out, and the clouds are so low they are almost touching the top of the building.  My shoe touches something solid, and I look down to see a dirty great rock,  right in the middle of the wheelchair ramp.  Can't think how it got there, as it's all concrete all around.  I mumble under my breath,

"  That's a  dangerous thing to be putting here"  and I reach down  to pick it up,  when it suddenly leaps onto my sandal, and I let out a blood curdling scream,

"KIIIyyyyaaaaAAAHHH!"  like a little girl.
It's a bloody huge toad.

I have just given the entire community centre the shock of their lives, and 24 students and two staff rushed out into the wild gale and pouring rain,  just to see me dance away from a toad.  I was told the next day the centre manager was so worried I had been struck by lightening, he was just about to call the ambulance,  until he heard Mr. Y.  call out

"It's OK, she just touched a frog".

The window to your soul.....

Last Thursday I had  the whole day off.
I was considering just staying in bed, in my jammies, or getting some gift shopping done and doing the packing and mailing  (I would probably have to get dressed for that).  I considered all this from under the covers, with the pillow over my head, pretending to be asleep.
I play possum on Thursday, because it's really my only full day off, and so I have decided it's easier for The Daddy to properly feel his responsibility of getting the kids off to school, and getting himself to work on time, if I  just stay out of the way,  and ignore the pleas of "can you find my socks?'  "I need more jam on my toast"  "I can't find my music book, Daddy said to ask you".  Sometimes I fake snore, just to press my point.

My Mr. normally won't let anyone stay home from school or work, unless they have lost a limb that morning, or have barfed up a lung.  Thursday, he decided  to let The Boy stay home because he apparently has a headache (didn't do all his homework, was going  be late for school, and of course Mummee is home to look after him) it's now 10:30,  The Daddy has a late start, and both Boy and Daddy have been salting my day-off holiday-type vibe by Bogarting the TV playing Mario, and generally getting under foot. 

There's  no room in the lounge, I have to eat my breaky sitting on a stack of dirty laundry in the kitchen.  My cup of tea balanced on my knee, I am mumbling obscenities under my breath as I am perched on the washing.  I am not a happy camper.


11am, and The Daddy has finally toddled off to work, leaving the lounge, kitchen, bathroom and balcony totally destroyed. The washing up has overflowed, and he has used every cup, plate and bowl in the place.
The Boy (his headache miraculously gone) is already complaining that he is bored. He keeps asking when lunch is (@.@)  About half an hour later,  his magically restored health is really getting on my nerves.  I say it's too early for lunch, you just had breakfast.  He says Mario makes him hungry, and he flounces off to make his own lunch (using the only clean pot,  and he had to put himself inside the cupboards bodily to retrieve it).


While he bangs around in the kitchen, exclaiming over the mess, and trying his very best to make it worse, I am waiting for something I ordered  through the post. Thought I heard the Bastard Extra Postman (not the regular one, but the stupid guy who is afraid of anything written in English, so he jams it in our tiny post box, because he is too scared to come and knock on the frikken door).


It's raining ( it usually is on my day off.  Boy swears I have magical rain making abilities) and I don't want my packages to get wet.  I make the choice to leave the house.  I go downstairs in pyjama pants and a T-shirt, no bra. Note to self: do not do this again. Even though my packages were saved a horrible soggy fate, Extra Postman believes that your boobs are the window to your soul.

The LIttle People

This always happens.
My house is not at all like those you would see in 'Better Homes and Gardens'.  Not even slightly.
Think more along the lines of 'Pygmy wars, where books, underwear and toy trains were the main projectiles'

The fact we both work,  have little boys,  and are a bit lax with any kind of really serious cleaning, means that  the peanut butter DELIBERATELY hides from me when I need it.

Two nights ago,  dragged myself home form work late, and  made dinner for everyone. I served Boy and Duck first, left mine in the pan,  The Daddy was at work.

Then, I  went to do some other stuff before it got too late  (read "before I got too tired to be arsed to do it), got in from bringing in the washing, pan is empty. Boy and Duck have served themselves seconds, and also eaten my ice-cream.

 I was now tired, hungry and without the prospect of dessert.  The Ice Cream Wars have continued here for some time.  I say it's an after dinner food, if everyone has been good, and both homework and dinner are finished.  The Daddy and The Boys seem to think Ice cream is a casual snack, and sometimes breakfast.  I am outnumbered.

 I hide it under the broccoli in the freezer.  I have secreted it in a boxed marked 'Spinach Pies' and I even hid it surrounded by frozen carrots and corn.  It still gets found.  I am fond of Green Tea Haagen Daaz.  It comes in teeny tiny little tubs.  Costs a bomb.  Any time  you take your eyes either off The Boys or off the freezer,  the crime of ice cream theft may have already been committed.  They have been known to serve themselves ice cream  in the middle of dinner, like a second course. 

 I said fuckit, I am having a banana and peanut butter sandwich for dinner then  (and I would have put some chips on it, if there were any around as well). We have THREE peanut butters. The small smooth (bought because I had no money to go to Costco, but no peanut butter) the 3 kilo tub of smooth (because I got paid, we went to Costco) and the small  crunchy, because Boy is aberrant  (if I wanted crunchy peanut butter, I would just eat the peanuts.  It's just wrong). ALL the peanut butters are lost to me  in this tiny bloody apartment.  It's essentially two rooms.  One must contain a black hole, or the lost Kodaira corner of the Bermuda Triangle


 I went berserk in the kitchen, and started ranting that it hides from me (I was REALLY hungry by this point) tearing the place apart, looking under my desk and bed (Duck sometimes goes under there with a jar and spoon).

Duck has been sent scurrying into the lounge to hide under the Kotatsu,  Mummee is stomping, shouting and flinging her arms about in hunger and despair.


 Boy has a head ache and a fever, and suddenly a stomach ache (too much dinner, fatty?? Hmmm?) but from his sick bed, he whispers "The little people took it. They went 'washoi washoi' because they haaaate you"

The Illusion of Professionalism.

I sometimes wonder if I am just a bit unlucky, or actually completely uncoordinated, and only just able to maintain a bare  illusion of professionalism .

I say this because just last week, I thought I had my life pretty much under control.

The day was going along fine.  It was massively busy, the schedule was a bit tight, there was some rushing around, but overall, I was on top of things.

Then, I had to work through lunch.  No problemo!  I found some chocolate in my desk.  Looking up at the clock, it was 22seconds to the bell.  I surveyed the size of the chocolate.  Hmmm,  not really big enough for two bites, best shove it all in my gob now, and by the time I walk down the hall to my classroom, it'll be the perfect crime.

Fast forward to  three hours later, my two classes and lecture are now finished, and I am  about knackered from a long day.

While I am cleaning the board, a student comes up to hit me with grammar questions.  I stick out my tongue when I have to think hard.  Then I taste chocolate.  I turn surreptitiously around to face the board. My tongue does a little more searching, and I taste more chocolate.  Uh oh.  I turn my back to the students, and face the window, and do a full tongue-sweep of my lips and mouth.

Oh.    Dear.

I have had it on my face for  THE WHOLE THREE HOURS.  I taught a lecture and two classes like that.  Not one person said a word.  Christ.

At the end of winter here,  for three months I was sent off to Kashiwa, in Chiba.  The classes were twice a week.  I have to be on the 5:37 train to be there just before 8am.  It's alarmingly early.  I am not naturally an early riser, but I really need the money, and it's a lovely place (pity it's more than two hours away, three trains and a bus).

I live in a tiny Japanese apartment, where everyone sleeps in the same room.  Getting up at  5, I don't want to wake them.  So I get dressed in the dark, I don't use the hair dryer, I sneak out and close the door softly.  It's priceless to see the faces of sleeping Boy and Duck, up to no mischief.

The real price of not waking them up is getting dressed in the dark, though.  It's really not a good look to travel all that way, on all that very PUBLIC transport, looking like you were dressed by blind circus clowns with only one hand.

SEVERAL times I have just glanced down at the LAST SECOND before entering the lecture hall to see my shirt done up crooked, and inside out.  I had apparently been dressed like that all morning.  Thank goodness for long trench coats in cold weather, allowing me to do the magic trick of getting my shirt off, turned right side out, and buttoned up, all without showing the public my underwear.


Not that the general public on the way to Kashiwa hasn't seen my underwear.....

My Nanna always said "Wear clean underwear, you never know when you might be hit by a bus!"

I puzzled for years over the wisdom of this.

I finally decided it means you would be really embarrassed if you were dead or injured and the ambulance men said,
 "My God, what ratty drawers she had."

So apart from making sure I am wearing clean undies at ALL times, I also make extra sure I wear the NICE under wear when I travel to work.   Just to be on the safe side, because you never know.

It was almost my last class, and so my last morning dragging my white arse out of the futon before dawn.  I miraculously get a seat on the third train.   I am listening to the soothing tones of Gorillaz on the way to KashiwaNohaCampus via the Tsukuba Express.  Very Luxe train.

I look up to see people staring.  Not the usual Stare Bears,  this is really hard staring, and it's EVERYBODY.

I turn my head to the side, crank up my ipod and mouth the words to FeelGood Inc.  and feel a strange breeze.  The train is sealed, and the heaters are on, so why does my décolletage feel draughty??
I look up to see a smarmy smirky old Salary man, and he is blowing into the hole in my shirt, between the first and the third buttons.

Seems about one or two trains ago, I lost a shirt button, RIGHT in the middle of my cleavage.  Usually I am wearing an undershirt, so it's no big whoop, but today was a little warmer, and I felt I could go to work with only three layers instead of my usual four.

It got worse, as there was a flash storm, I had no umbrella , and I was soaking wet, freezing cold, my shirt went see-through and my headlights were on for the rest of the commute.

Lucky for me, apart from being the unwitting burlesque and peep show performer on two morning trains (I did my trench coat up to my neck on the bus) I was saved by the fact that most of my students are some one's Mum.  Thank goodness for old ladies in Chiba.

When I got to University, they whisked me away to the tea room, where I was clad in aprons and towels  (My boobs are waaay too big to go into just one apron and not look porn) , while one of them  sewed on a button for me , one of them made me a cup of tea, biscuits were found and arranged prettily on a plate, and at the end I got an Easter egg.

My class of Mums and families are now safely living in California USA, probably talking to people in Torrence with my broad Australian accent.

In the dark, dark night...

Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night,  I am starving hungry.

 

The midnight munchies strike a lot.  Even if I have taken a sleeping pill, I might wake up like a zombie if The Daddy disturbs me, and make my way to the fridge, mumbling "Foooooood, muuuuust haaaave foooood".

 

The Mr. gets home at around 2am,  and wakes me up with his rummaging and door slamming, TV watching and loud slurping beer drinking sounds.  He also washes up like a cement mixer.  He just isn't one of natures Ninjas, Yknow?

 

I really don't want to get up and wake up the whole house.  I know I shouldn't  eat something that will upset my stomach (like cold fried chicken from the fridge, or greasy pork curry, tastes good at the time, but trust me, I regret it in the morning, sour stomach and all). 

Sometimes I wake up with a filthy migraine or I can't breathe because of allergies.  The middle of the dark night is something I see a lot.  I have terrible insomnia, but I KNOW it's a bad idea to eat at that time of the evening.

 

 I have to take medicine, and all my meds have "take with food" written on them. For these instances, I have tiny little packets of crackers secreted around my desk, and I sleep next to a glass of water. 

 

 

 We have no heat at the moment, so I piled both little boys and two hot water bottles into bed at nine last night, and covered us with all the blankets.   I snuggled down as far as I could, fending off kicking Duck, and trying to ignore Snoring Boy.

 

 About 5am I woke up from having a terrible dream.

 

 

Some huge monster with hundreds of sharp teeth, in rows and rows and rows was munching through the floor, getting closer and closer. It was horrible and relentless. The noise of the floor munching was getting louder and louder.

The more I tried to scurry away, and put some distance between me and it, the more floor it ate, and the louder and faster  it got.

 

 I woke up, gasping for help clinging to the blanket. 

 

 RIGHT next to my ear hole was Duck, having made himself a nest of all the bed covers, (apart from the thin blanket I was under, and the sleeping bag his brother was in),  eating crackers in my bed.

 

I have spent the morning vacuuming the bed.  My GOD he is a loud eater.....

• • 
    

It's a poo emergency !

It's a poo emergency Mummee!

by Wendyon Sunday, 5 February 2012 at 12:28 ·

Last night we had a terrible poo emergency.

We never seem to have poo or spew emergencies when The Daddy is here.  Only happens to me. 

It was so bad, that I just shut the dunny door not being up to facing the task of cleaning it , and told everyone to take a wee down the bathroom  drain until I sort it out.  (they are all boys, it's not like they don't do this in the shower already).  So I put them to bed, rubber gloved up, and got down on my hands and knees to clean the walls, floor, door and toilet seat and bowl.  Yes, it was THAT heinous.  I gagged about 10 times, I fcuking hate cleaning the toilet, it's  always soooo disgusting.

I make my Mr.  do it, usually.  I don't piss on the floor, or miss the dunny altogether when I am drunk, so he has to do it.  I also make him take out the stinky garbage.  I can't stand the smell, and I won't tolerate the interrogation from the old lady brigade about what's in our garbage bags.

Last time he made me do the rubbish, I told one of the old hags it was the severed body parts of the last crusty old bitch who hassled me on my way to take out the trash, that's why they were in a bag marked "burnable".  I am now serving a double life time ban from the rubbish collection site for that little number.  Suits me fine, my Mr.  can deal with the withered old crones and their obsession over our garbage.

Anyway, about an hour and a half later, I had cleaned and disinfected the walls, floor, seat, bowl, door and buttons, used a whole bottle of bleach and half a roll of dunny paper.

Seems I let Duck have too much juice yesterday, and it gave him the Cadbury Squirts, he made it to the toilet, but he is so little, he has to balance his tiny arse over the seat, clinging on for dear life, while he does his business.
Then he slipped.  In Mid-Poo.   Oh the humanity.

It was a total shit explosion.  Witnessed by his brother who tried to help him up, and also got pooed on.  I was on the phone.  I couldn't tell the person I was talking to why I had to go.  People wouldn't understand.

I made them both get in the shower.  I cleaned up little poo hand prints.  I hope I got them all.

I thought it was a perfect crime, as I had scrubbed the dunny, the floor, the walls the door, washed the clothes, showered the kids, and made it all smell nice and look sparkling clean again.  Then I disinfected the bejesus out of my hands.  Twice.

I went to bed.  Heard The Daddy enter the apaahtoh around 3am, safe in the knowledge all evidence of the massive poo explosion that had occurred earlier in the evening had been flushed away, leaving a nice bleachy clean smell, and nothing else.

This morning, my Mr.  decided to go and take a long bath, and give himself a facial (because he is a vain bastard),
and while he was reclining in the bath, Duck came and dropped his dacks, and took a piss up against the bath, while he talked to his (probably shocked) father, then went to wash his hands.

The Daddy quizzed me as to why The Duck told him Mummee has instructed everyone to piss down the drain...

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You Might Be Lucky

Because you might be lucky.

by Wendy Elizabeth Horikoshi on Sunday, 16 October 2011 at 12:44

A couple of days ago, I had to head off to a painful interview with immigration, out in Shinagawa, on Gilligan's Island.  They have a jail conveniently located at the top of the building, for Gaijin who are in violation of any kind of visa law.  No trial or jury. If they find any mistakes in your visa, your mistakes or theirs, you have a good chance of being incarcerated, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, or have time to tell your nearest and dearest.

Go directly to jail.

The place creeps me out.  I am not a criminal, have never been in jail, I have always been employed and I pay my taxes.  Just being non Japanese inside this building gives you a highly elevated sense of how much the Japanese government hates you being here.

As I got off the bus, there was a very loud, very obstructive protest going on in front of the building.  The place was saturated with noise.  It was ear splitting, and I could not for the life of me understand just what they were saying, or even what the protest was about.

They screamed through mega phones, they waved hand made signs in our faces, they blocked most or the front entrance off.  The cops were not seen to be in attendance.

I remember thinking if it was a bunch of Gaijin making that much noise, the cops would be all over us like ants on a jam sandwich.  The protesters were all young Japanese people.  They were very angry about something.  I am pretty sure it didn't concern me.

It's a few days later now, and I have had a think about that protest.  They were left in peace to shout their anger and outrage against something that clearly affected their lives.  They were not called idiots, or insulted or arrested, or manhandled.  They were not corralled by the cops, tasered or tear gassed.

It just so happens, that for the most part here in Japan, people have the right to protest things they don't like, or don't agree with, and want to register their discontent about.  Protest is a potent social outlet of anger and a sign of public disharmony.

So, I feel kind of lucky to live here, in a place where you have a good chance of NOT being beaten or jailed for making a public statement about your feelings in the form of protest marches and rallies.

I may never know exactly what those people were protesting.

That's OK, as I said, it probably didn't really concern me.  Even if I don't agree with whatever it was, I still support their right to show their disgruntlement.  I notice in today's news, and on lots of peoples twitter and Facebook feeds, that calling the protesters names, trying to make out that one whole group of people that they disagree with are stupid, or uneducated or crazy and do not deserve anyone's attention seems to be a new sport.

Journalists, who are supposed to be unbiased, have lowered themselves to a level of name calling and character assassination.  They either have no shame in showing their vast political bias, or they tow the company line to a sycophantic level.

It amazes me how in the year 2011 people seemed to have stopped trying to think for themselves, and that's a worry.


I have seen it when people speak out about the Tea party.  If that many people are alarmed at the political direction of a country, then why are they not given any respect? I have seen just as many people want everyone to dismiss and ignore the Occupy Wall street rally.  The police have turned violent at that one.

Why ?

ALL of these people felt so strongly about their concerns, that they went out to protest.  They organized friends and family to register their worry publicly.  Yet the ridicule they have received in the media is astonishing.  Authorities have been very strict in trying to shut down the Wall Street rally in particular.

Protests in the past few years, about things like gay marriage (for or against) abortion, the ordination of gay priests and female clergy, prayers and hot lunches in schools, bullying, freedom for Tibet, and internet censorship by Governments, have all been given media coverage and people refrained from personal attacks on the protesters themselves.  No one called them names in the networked news shows, or insulted them to their faces in interviews.  People debated the issues in question.  This seems to have gone right out the window.  Insults and name calling does not equal calm debate.  Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. The best reply to unseemly behavior and insult  is patience and moderation.  But that dosen't make ratings, it seems.

If you live in a place where you have a right to protest, then you are lucky.  Many don't.
I regret not finding out what those people were protesting about outside of Immigration.
If you see a protest about something, take the time to ask the people about it.

Question yourself everyday.

Make sure you think for yourself, and  KNOW why you have the convictions you do.  The only way to do that, is to listen to another side of the story, even if it isn't one you agree with.  ESPECIALLY if it isn't one you agree with.

If you are surrounded by like-minded friends and Yes-Men all the time, how will you know your arguments for your beliefs will endure logical debate?

Put away your generalizations and your petty insults.  Turn off the network news programs.

Have your opinions been challenged lately? Or do you sit behind your PC/TV in your own little comfort zone?