The big positive note today is that after a 2 week hiatus, Chapter 6 of Strange Fangs is up and running at Jukepop Serials.
Otherwise, my husband and I have both come down with a strain of the stomach flu. It hit my husband like a truck, actually. Luckily, our infant daughter is just fine and we're taking precautions to ensure that she stays that way.
I'm just about healed now, but spent the better part of the last two weeks being stressed about Julia's 7 month checkup and then being depressed because of the outcome. These check-ups are not merely medical checkups as we would have in the states, but take into account various socioeconomic facets in order to ensure that you properly fit into what can be considered "Normal."
Which, of course, we don't. Why would we? The mother of the family is not fluent in Japanese, bad at housework, mediocre at cooking, and not going to cook anything for the family that she herself can't or won't eat, meaning mainstays of the Japanese diet like tofu and mushrooms are right out.
The father is "normal" in that he is a full-Japanese over-worked, under-paid sort of guy. The kicker here is that he is a funeral director who may get home from work any time between 6PM and 10PM with no discernible pattern and he does not get even one regularly occurring day off. This means that we can't just have Sunday for example be family day as he won't have every Sunday off, or even many Sundays off. It usually depends more on what's going down at his office and his schedule can change any day.
I want my daughter to have a strong bond with her father. I also don't want my fumbles in the kitchen to result in injury to my child. This means that food is prepared for dinner after my husband comes home, whenever that is. Then we feed the baby, bathe the baby, feed the baby again, and go to sleep. My goal is to have everyone in bed by midnight. This doesn't always happen, but it's my plan.
Of course, this falls way outside normal parameters. The chart they gave us to illustrate our normal feeding schedule doesn't even cover an option like this. At the checkup, we had to wait through 2 separate lectures on the topic of how we, specifically, were failing in this right. In order to properly shame us in true slow-grade-school-student fashion, we were made to wait for all the successfully normal Japanese families to leave so that we could enjoy our second elongated lecture.
Admittedly, I tuned out once they started telling us that the way we were doing it is wrong, partially because I don't have the most fluent grasp of the language. There's a part of me though that was always an overachiever, looking to ace any test I could, but I never can here. I can't even pass their tests here because what they are looking for I can never be. A "normal" Japanese housewife isn't even something I can strive to be. Not me.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing to be. I've known quite a few amazing women who happened to be Japanese housewives and they were all sharp, funny, and sweet people. It just isn't for me. I don't enjoy housework and honestly cannot clean as well as they would want. I can't abide putting that much energy into the presentation of dinner. I'd rather spend it writing. I can't even get my daughter to nap somewhere other than my lap long enough for me to regularly update this blog or write in general, which are things I genuinely enjoy doing.
My husband and friends admit that my system isn't crazy. Neither me nor Julia have any pressing business before 9AM on any given day. There is no one who needs to get ready for school or any such stuff yet. While I agree that over time this tradition will have to change, that we will have to have her in bed earlier to help her internal clocks adjust and ensure she has enough rest for the day, right now it's just not necessary, regardless of what other babies are doing.
I'm aiming to change this, of course. One day, we'll be waking up bright and early so that we might have a family breakfast with Daddy before we run off to school or wherever. On those days, we will have an earlier bedtime and an earlier wake-up time.
But not yet.
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