So let's start with some new information. First off, I'm writing this using Dragon dictation software which I bought at a 50% discount following Nanowrimo. In January, I finished editing the first decent draft of a novel and submitted it to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards. We'll see if I made the cut in the coming week. The first cut that is.
As of May 17, I will have been in Japan for five years. The next day marks the day I met my husband five years previous. A little over six months after that will be our two year wedding anniversary which, if the fates allow, we will be celebrating with our infant offspring.
As of today, February 11, I am eight weeks pregnant, semi – full-time employed (by Japanese employment standards), and generally quite happy. I spend my free time using the bathroom constantly, eating as much as I think I need to (and even sometimes a little more), reading books I need to return to students, and learning how to take things slow.
I'm not good at taking things slow. It is not a skill I have ever had a need to develop. Part of how my brain wants to behave is more similar to a tank than a ballerina. I am more likely to just keep going and run over anything in my path than to stop, slow down, and carefully tiptoe around a difficulty. I don't like it. It requires taking more care of myself, and for some reason that's really hard for me to do.
But I am learning. And I am finding ways to be more generally appreciative of the things I have. A lot of the plans that I had as a child have actually worked out pretty well. I wanted to get married at twenty-seven to someone I had known for some time, and we did that. I wanted to be married for one year before we got pregnant, so my partner and I would have time to adjust our roles within marriage before adding parenthood to the mix. On that note, so far so good.
So now I'm a large pregnant foreigner living in Japan with the Japanese husband in a Japanese apartment in Japanese in-laws, physicians, taxes, food prices and all else that makes this place so special and at times so strange.
By the end of next month, we will be at the end of the first trimester, and I will be able to tell my students. A month later, I won't be their teacher anymore. The wonderful thing is the date when we can stop worrying as much and I can let the news out overlaps just about perfectly the blooming of the cherry blossoms in this area. A great time for great news!
I am so excited.
And for now, that is all.
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