This Week of Adventure

This week was full of adventure for us.

Monday was Christmas morning, in which we woke up before dawn and drove for 4 hours south and west to find Edo Wonderland in Tochigi prefecture. It's essentially a samurai amusement park, which was more fun than it probably sounds to anyone not that enthusiastic about Japanese history. I was thrilled that they offered a female sword-master dress up option, as I would much rather carry a sword than deal with everything that goes with trying to look like a small Japanese woman.
And wearing the male-style kimono (with fake hakama pants) was SOOOOOO comfortable. Instead of covering my entire waist and bulking it out to match the rest of my curves then trying to force a flatness upon a rounded shape, they wrapped my lower waist and left it at that, essentially giving me a back brace for the day. It wasn't bad.
Also, my daughter is the cutest ninja ever.
And other tourists took pictures of my husband, believing him to be part of the entertainment. He blends in that way. I mean, it makes sense for a Japanese guy to look kinda normal in a kimono. This doesn't explain why he also looks normal in a cowboy hat, nor why I always look like a tourist in my hometown or anywhere else. Meh.

We planned to spend half a day running around the old-style fake-town but wound up only getting back to the costume place 15 minutes before it closed, so it was a pretty full day. Then we drove to our hotel, which was nice and comfortable near a farm in the countryside. Then came the onsen, which I didn't have energy for but made happen anyway. They had a small sauna room, so Julia tried the sauna for the first time ever. She has a natural fear of the glowing hot stones. If only she were so naturally wary of drinking onsen water.

The next day, boxing day, we enjoyed the hotel's morning breakfast buffet, which I would call continental but I don't know if that applies on this continent. They offered a small assortment of Japanese and western food options, and it was pretty delicious. We bought cheese at their farm shop, even though we were warned that the cheese would be bad before we could ship it home "to Tokyo" the woman suggested, and when we corrected, a short conversation about sushi restaurants in Shiogama ensued, which was relatively surprising.

Then came the alpaca farm, which I demanded and enjoyed. I even stood up to Trump, who happened to be a fluffy and aggressive brown alpaca in the alpaca petting pen. Then came the monkey park, where menstruation, the resilient tail-end of a migraine, and crazy monkey noises combined to make me more stressed out than necessary. Julia enjoyed it though. She got to hold a bottle to feed a tiny monkey, as well as feeding veggies to rabbits and guinea pigs. We watched the monkey show and had a good time overall.

Next we tried to make a run for Lake View, a board-walk amusement park built alongside a municipal overflow pond. We were out of the car, walking between shops near the entrance ticket booth when we realized the paddle boats Tomo had so wanted to share with our daughter were land bound. We weren't looking at Lakeview after all. The lake had been drained during winter for whatever reason. This was Swamp View, and we were not paying to ride a carousel next to a mud pit.

Instead we ran off to the Teddy Bear Museum, which had a huge Ghibli section, with a neko-bus mock up so kids could climb aboard for a photo op and a practically life-sized Totoro as well. There were also vignettes from the movie done up with dolls, some of which moved at the press of a button. It was lovely. Then we headed home.

The next day, Julia and I took it easy and spent some time at home before running up to Sendai to enjoy the Pageant of Lights or whatever they call the fairy-lights adorning all the trees on Jozenji Street. This time, Julia could shate a baked sweet potato with me while we walked. It was lovely.

Yesterday came next, and we woke early for a run toward toe cat island with a friend from Sendai. We got there, and I learned what I had done wrong before. I know where the cats of cat island hide when construction takes over the port side. We ran around, fed and took pictures of many cats, and enjoyed the lot of it. It was exhausting but good. Julia was so tired by the time we got on the ferry that she fell asleep on me and would not walk off of the ferry, meaning I had to carry the 4 year old off of the boat, meaning I could not see my feet nor the position of the board connecting the boat to land.

So I tripped, and smashed my kid into the metal slats of the board, and bruised myself most terribly. Julia appears to be fine, but I'll have background fear of a subdural hematoma for the next few days. I now also have scabs in unfortunate places on my palms and fingers, limiting my manual ability for the time being. I cannot even uncork my wine, but we're making things work. We even went shopping today, not that I wanted to but that we needed to.

Today, we slept and talked to family in Michigan. If we can get through a week without another reminder that I am a terrible failure as a parent, I'll probably find a way to forgive myself for dropping her.
I mean logically, I can't fault myself for not seeing something I could not see, and not predicting the placement nor height of the thing I tripped over/onto. Still, none of it matters if Julia is hurt. If she died of a brain bruise I had a part in causing, even by accident, I do not know how I could survive that.

So now, to rapid GISHMAS and running about like mad, changing what we can of the world for the better if we can manage it.
In the meantime, relax. Count down to the end of 2017. Try to find a way to overthrow the godawful in power in 2018.
And sleep.

Things and Happenings

Things are looking up, overall.
I did get to 50,000 words in my NaNoWriMo manuscript, though around 5,000 of that is blog posts. Still, spending more than 40,000 words with Turing and Tesla was kind of awesome. There are some great scenes in there I think, though I am entirely unsure about my characterizations right now.
Also, I would like to further condemn my high school physics teacher for being slightly pervy and scaring me away from physics as a subject. Now I feel really stupid trying to write about two geniuses explaining the mechanics of time travel to each other when I barely have a grasp of a lot of the basics there, but I think it's okay. I did NOT do the stupid make-a-loop-with-paper-to-show-overlapping-timelines thing, which has just been overused in scifi. None of that crap at least.

Honestly, I am kind of proud of it, and I think it is the most editable of my manuscripts.
That also means that I need to get on that soon if I am going to and turn it around while I still care.

I might do it that way-- work backward from this year, doing each NaNo novel until I get back to Occupational Hazard and finally get it sorted. Next November, that unedited manuscript will be a decade old.

I made a self-promotion post in a facebook group and wanted to share it here, in case anyone is asking themselves what I am up to when I am not teaching.

Want a care package of weirdness from Japan on a monthly basis? I've got a Patreon for that, starting from just $10, shipping included: 
https://www.patreon.com/JapanBox

Want the chance to win a creature-of-the-month that I make myself? Check out my other Patreon! One patron a couple months back won a sock-cloth-geisha. I'm actually super proud of that one.
https://www.patreon.com/geekcraftsjapan

My mom has some cool Stranger-Things themed Christmas things, as a printable from her patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/user/posts?u=2832535
They are also available on some website, but I forgot the address. Message me or her for details.

Also, I blog about my life in Japan here:
https://www.city-cost.com/blogs/JTsuzuki
And my normal whine-of-the-month posts wind up here:
http://jessicatsuzuki.blogspot.jp/

Follow me wherever! And if things are sucking for you right now and you would like a holiday card from a random stranger abroad (me),PM me an address and I will make it happen.
The card offer stands for anyone who wants one, not just the random people I don't know in that Facebook group. Anyway, in other excitement, each of my patreons gained at least one patron last month, which is nice after I had lost a few and was starting to feel like I wasn't doing anything too productive.

This month's goals include getting all the holiday stuff for people outside of Japan done and sent before the 14th, taking out the fake tree on the 10th, taking a holiday trip with husband and child at some point when each of them have a 2 day vacay (which happens twice but we lack the funds for 2 trips, and honestly the energy), getting ready for Julia's 2 week holiday from school, writing around 14 blog posts on my other blog, and figuring out what to get my husband. Also figuring out one of a number of fairly complex card games that I am excited to play and finding a way onto one of Tohoku's Joyful Trains. Alas, my husband and I still have to go and get our anniversary present, which may well wait for the New Year's Sales.
What is it supposed to be, for your 6th wedding anniversary and your 9th year together? I don't care. We're buying a washing machine and going halfsies.

I might have married a man who went to boarding school in England, but his wife and budget are firmly middle class or below, so we're sticking with the basics this year.

But we are making it work.
And I am writing.
But for now I am watching old episodes of QI. Old for anyone in the UK. New to me as I only discovered the quiz show a few weeks ago. Sometimes, one needs the joy of randomness and comedy presented in a quiz-style series.

Also, FIGHT THE FCC! Net Neutrality must be a thing! I need to call my senators and everyone I am supposed to call, like the chairman of the FCC. Also, if you're out there and reading this and can find a way to do it, lodge complaints with your congress people over the ridiculous budget they concocted. Somehow in the year since the election, I have managed to stop fighting fascism and started instead to just get by. I also had a tough couple of months in there, so it is what it is. Now it's winter, and I am going to fight my hatred of everything due to cold by actively fighting the crap going down in Washington and sending out holiday cards and packages.

Whatever you are out there doing, do it well.
Adios Muchachos.
(my daughter thinks muchacho = "cho cho s" with chocho being the Japanese word for butterfly, with English pluralization rules.)

NaNoWriMo and Such

I am so very tired.

Yesterday was my birthday and things went well. I didn't do anything big but I did meet up on Thursday with some friends in Sendai for cake at a new place that I thought would have nice cakes. They did. We had fun.
I got spoiled with gifts even though people did not have to do so. Even my daughter gave me a little letter saying the Japanese version of Happy Birthday, love Julia, which she wrote herself (no doubt at the behest/coaching of my mother-in-law). It was kind of magical.

My husband managed to freak out a bunch on the one day off he had before my birthday, going back and forth about what we should do and where we should go until it was too late to do anything but go to Sendai and check out the Pokemon store, which we did. He did later figure his stuff out and get me an electric blanket (my first ever) so that I can stay cozy and warm while writing, which I will admit was a thoughtful gift.

NaNoWriMo is going well. Not as well as years past, most of which I won before this point in the month where today I am limping along at 41,700, not sure where that extra 9 thousand is going to come from but determined to put it into the current story somewhere.

Other than that I have small whining that should not be necessary yet kind of is. The morning of my birthday included classes at the kindergarten where I teach a few weeks a year. It is seriously like 9 lessons a year or something similar. Not a lot. There is a Japanese teacher who picks me up and drives me there. Then we go in and use whatever materials she brought. We differ on a few points but usually get along well enough. After the last class before this (2 weeks ago), she told me that we were getting there too early and should meet at 10:10 instead of 10:00. I agreed and set my scheduled alarms accordingly. This week a wander around an extra five minutes before going out to meet her right around 10:07. She gets us there, saying that we will get there just barely on time, but when we get there, she still sits in the car and chats with me instead of charging into the school, so I am completely confused. I don't really know what she wants and Japan does not lend itself well to being understood in this way, so I am just going to show up at 10:00 from now on. We only have a few classes left for the year anyway.

I also was annoyed about trying to have a meetup with my fellow NaNoWriMo writers in this area. I wasn't going to do anything because I've tried a few times over the years (before Julia) to hold write-ins and I can honestly say that I have had 2 that went moderately well. My last one had a group of 4ish people as I recall at a Starbucks in Sendai. The last successful one before that was when one preacher-guy showed up at a different Starbucks in Sendai a year or two before. That said, I have held a couple of "events" where literally no one showed up and it bothers me a lot to put time and energy into trying to see people who aren't going to be there anyway. So I don't just post on the NaNo forums that I will have an event, because I cannot personally handle the stress of waiting in a public space with my daughter for hours on people who will never arrive. I need assurance that people are genuinely interested and willing to come to the event.
Apparently, all the people doing this in major urban areas just make events and hope for the best, so when I posted to see if anyone could do anything on the last 2 Sundays of the month, the mod for the area posts that I need to put my event in the proper format, indicating factors she thinks are key so she can share them easily. She doesn't know me, or that I've done this before, or that I have been doing this in this area for 7 years, or that I have just enough social anxiety that even posting the suggestion that a meetup might be possible feels like a taxing commitment. All she knows is that she needs facts and figures, which I deliver to her when two other people say they will come and we have a time and date nailed down.
And she shortens the meeting time and location, which probably wouldn't suck in other metropolitan areas, but means something to me. Saying to meet at Shibuya station-- everyone knows you mean to meet at Hachiko, the dog statue. If that is Shibuya? Like I would know. I do not live near Tokyo and never have, but if you're meeting at the station with the dog statue, that's where you meet people.
If you're in Nagoya, you meet at the big golden clock, but if you have only been living in the central Japanese countryside for a year and don't usually meet people in Nagoya, how would you know?
You wouldn't. And this woman is taking for granted that of course everyone in the surrounding area totally knows where to meet in Sendai, which is a smaller station, but not so small that you are likely to know all of the foreigners in the station at any given time. So instead of "Meet at the stained glass windows in Sendai Station and move to the AER building" we get "Sendai Station and AER" which basically means "Good luck, idiots in Tohoku. You don't matter enough. Other cities can have half a sentence for their locations. More than a sentence sometimes. They deserve it. They're in 'real' Japan. You're not."

And the day after I got all of that as sorted as it would go on Monday, my husband freaked out on Tuesday over having Sunday off, so I canceled all the plans including that on Wednesday, only for his Sunday off to be canceled that evening upon his return.
So here we are. I could go to the thing tomorrow, but I will not go to the thing. It is not worth my energy at this point. It would not be bad to meet other writers in the area, but they aren't really in the area. They both have to drive or ride in from other towns, not too close to Sendai. Further from Sendai than I am. Maybe I would like them, and we would get along and be friends, or maybe they would see me for the slightly off-kilter weirdo that I am and reject me outright. Or maybe they would latch on and get clingy and scare me half to death.

I don't care. I mean, obviously I do care or I wouldn't be whining about it, and I feel bad about letting them down in a way, but I cannot do this thing now. And I am unlikely to bother attempting to host another one again.

Oh, also, this is likely the most homesick I have felt on Thanksgiving. I bought frozen ground turkey meat on Amazon and made a meat loaf. It was alright. We had it Friday as on Thursday we had retained an extra pizza from the night before.

So that's most of what's happening with me.
Now back to writing my increasingly wacky science history fan fiction adventure!

My Vague-ish #MeToo Response

Lots of little things have happened and I legitimately did not write anything longer than an email, paid or unpaid, in the better part of a month. now I am back into it though, churning out content on city-cost and gearing up for NaNoWriMo. This year, for the first time ever, I am using actual historical figures instead of people I make up. It's essentially science-history-fan-fiction and I am excited about starting this bizarre journey. Let's see where November takes us!

In the meantime, the #MeToo thing happened, and I found it awe-inspiring to see so many people coming out of the woodwork and sharing stories, bringing light to the fact that these things are a problem and far too frequent occurrence, but I also think it's hard to find a grown woman who has never been sexually harassed or never had an experience that anyone else might classify as harassment even if the would-be victim may not see it that way.
That said, shit has gone down in my life by more hands than I want to count, and while it sucks that those thing happened, and I wouldn't wish them on people, I'm still alive, and that's pretty awesome.

But when I shared my #MeToo tweet, it was only that, the hashtag, because there are stories, plural, more horrific than the asshole on the train in Nagoya who shoved his hand onto my upper thigh while feigning sleep and did not move it or "wake up"even when I shoved a cold soda can on top of his hand and pushed down with significant weight. A woman sitting across from me looked at me with disgust, which I still don't need to understand. The best thing that happened was that I got to steal her seat when she left and Mr. Grabby McAsshole was left alone. I stopped exploring Nagoya as much after that, staying in my little mountain town where no one tried to touch me. I took a sharpie with me so the next time something like that happened, I could draw on the face of the fucker, telling all the world what a dickhead he was. I never had to use it, though, which is probably good because I imagine the train-cops would probably have fined me for assault and told the asshole in question that groping is totally okay and would he like to press charges to send me packing. These things are different when you're an immigrant in a politely xenophobic country.

That story alone is hard to describe in 140 characters or less. The public is not owed more of my horror stories than that.

But I do want to add, just as a side-point for other survivors of serious shit, that there is a special hellish quality to abuse at the hands of people with whom you share a family resemblance. What do you do when your mirror is a trigger, eh? Well, if you're like me, you apparently get fat and keep your hair long to distinguish the reflection from anything that might repulse you. You wear glasses even though your eyesight isn't that bad. You pledge to dye the living shit out of your hair the moment it starts going patchy gray because fuck off are you not going to look like someone who doesn't understand how to not traumatize others with their libido.

And then you swear a lot and rejoice in the fact that you found someone with whom you actually want an intimate physical relationship, and that they felt the same, and that they married you.
And despite your partner and your adorable offspring and your fancy digs (that you've hoarded into chaos), you battle depression, which isn't new and didn't start with being slightly destroyed by a person sharing a significant part of your genetic structure, but still. It didn't help.
And you move on. And you don't. And it comes back to you.
And it's been more than a decade. And it wasn't the first or last fucked up thing to occur, but to this day I can't stand anyone breathing on my neck. It brings it all back, and I have to force my mind clear of the physical sensation of revulsion.

These experiences are extremely awful and unfortunately not rare, not even in the alleged land of the free. I don't know that Japan is better. In fact, I know in a lot of ways it is more backward and strange about the progress of women's roles. But at least here I am 6,000 miles away from the only person to cause me that much trauma whom I still have to know.
That's not why I stay here, mind you. It's also got free healthcare for my kid till she's 12 and a number of jobs I can do with skills I've already acquired and without the desire to set my workplace on fire.
I cannot say the same for Linens N Things, which of course no longer exists, but when it did...man...it was not an awesome place to work.

But really the point is that finding solidarity with the MeToo thing was cathartic in a way, and I needed to share part of that. Maybe it's a weird thing, but I needed it out.

I also really thought Jim Beaver (Uncle Bobby from Supernatural) had a great response, which was to share his own story but alter the tag. I think anyone could be sexually harassed or assaulted and limiting it to women isn't necessary. Limiting perpetrators to men is also unfair.

There's also a meme going around about that scene at the end of Moana that makes basically a lot of people cry, including me, when the heroine brings the heart of Te Fiti to the island only to find that the island turned into the lava monster when its heart was stolen, so calming the lava monster, saying basically, "I see you. Your pain does not define you." allows her to get close enough to put the small stone heart back in its place and restore things to their natural order.
The meme says that the important part was the genders of those involved-- that only a woman like Moana could understand a fellow female's suffering and help them overcome. If that works for you, awesome. Good for you. Happy to hear it.
But it doesn't work for me at all. Every time shit has hit the fan with these fucked up situations in my life, it's been the men in my life I could turn to, even if it was just the fellow weird kid who happened to have the only phone number I knew at the time, or a family friend and counselor, or whatever. For me, getting help had less to do with the gender of the person and more to do with their ability to listen and attempt to help.
That's not to say that those traumatized by men must seek male assistance. Hell no. Seek the assistance that works for you, whatever that looks like, but telling me that only a woman can help heal a woman is garbage.

And honestly, in the end, you have to choose to heal yourself, and take the steps to make that happen, no matter who is around you.

Today's Little Weirdnesses (and then I swear a lot)

Today was my kid's second day off from school due to illness. As of right now, I am not sure if she's going to the kindergarten tomorrow either, even for the special parents-and-grandparents observation day which I have been somewhat afraid of, mostly because I'm not fluent and don't always know what's going on and my husband/translator will be working at the time.

Many good things happened today. We talked for a bit to a couple of my longest-lasting friends (and their adorable offspring) before I got lunch together for everyone, gave the kid her medicine, and went shopping for dinner stuff. I also scoured all nearby potential sources for eco-safe water-based textile ink, as I REALLLLLLLY want to print stuff from Japanese grating, in the style of the pirate printer of Europe. So damn cool! But alas, no ink. Instead, I ran into a former student from back when  I worked in Sendai. This one took exactly one trial lesson post-baby from me and told me she had some other family medical trouble that she needed to spend her time on at the time. She stopped me to ask if my family was okay in Kentucky. So far as I know, I don't have any family whatsoever in Kentucky. "Actually, it's Texas, but yeah, they're all fine. We're far from the water," I said. She said she had to run as she was on her way to her English class now. We parted ways.

And part of my wonders if I could have done something to make her choose me as her English teacher, but the rest of me is so damned tired that it cannot fathom why that would matter. I haven't been able to keep any pre-baby students because my mind post-baby is not as dedicated to the art of teaching. I still care a lot, but not to the same extent. She would have inevitably been disappointed by this. Good that she didn't lead me on.

I took over a Pokemon Go gym, which got retaken, so I retook it again and put an even-higher-level creature in it. I also managed to smash 5 guys out of another gym and plant one of mine in their place with seconds left before a legendary raid began at that location. That was pretty exciting for me.

I came home to a husband playing video games and a daughter napping on the couch, so I put away the groceries and started again into Fallout New Vegas, which I have been playing for too long and am really ready to get to the end of. I'm in the Dead Money expansion, almost at the end. I die a lot. Oh well.

Then, after about a week's worth of thought, I un-followed a friend on Facebook. It was the least harmful (also least interactive) of potential options. Part of me had wanted to talk to her about a recent share-- a declaration of mental health awareness. It was basically a memo stating the half a dozen reasonable reasons she would cancel plans with people she otherwise enjoys the company of. This isn't a bad thing to let people know-- I'm over-peopled, exhausted, whatever today. Sorry I can't meetup.

Here's the thing though. We've known each other for almost 20 years. I can probably count the number of times we have seen each other since starting college on one hand. That was more than a decade ago. The last time I saw her was at my wedding, where we didn't have time to speak. I've been stateside since then, and even bought tickets to a play she had interest in (I had a group of friends going) when she went suddenly incommunicado. Never had an explanation for that. I don't know if there was an apology because after not getting to see her or talk to her at all the one week I was in Texas for likely a decade, I was too disappointed to notice. I do know that she never paid me back for the non-refundable ticket to the play (that she didn't ask me to buy, but fell off the face of the Earth instead of telling me she couldn't go, so it's a small thing and on me, but still shitty...)

Most of our communication in the last 6 years has been her occasionally posting "Let's Skype soon!" as a comment and then never getting online or arranging anything. I can keep asking, inquiring, giving times and options, but it's just me talking to myself. She will just ignore me until I go away.

At one point (pre-2011) she actually gave her cell phone (that I had arranged to call her on at a certain time) to a random friend who apparently had no phone at some point when they had to be apart or some crap. It doesn't matter if their weird story was accurate or utter shit. No apologies. No re-working of times. Nothing but "Oh, I'm girl-you-met-once, not the person you were intending on speaking to, and she isn't anywhere near me..."
And it's just such crap.

The bottom line here is that there are limits to my patience with long-distance, low-interaction relationships. I accept that anxiety problems may get in the way of maintaining contact. That buys you six months of 0 contact, no questions asked. After that, assuming you're not in a mental hospital, I expect a few words of "Hey, sorry talking sucks for me, but I give a shit!" or it isn't really a friendship. I also get that there is some issue with her manipulative roommate, which is part of something completely different and beyond my need to explain to the internet. As an adult above 30, that gets you a few missed chats and forgotten responses, but not 6 years worth of goddamn silence. That's not a friendship.

If it's been 6 years and we have had fewer than 3 conversations outside of "Let's chat!" "When?" "..........." it isn't a friendship anymore.

I hate that this kind of thing is painful and I hate that I am whining about it on my blog. Makes me feel like I'm back on livejournal, being a whiny film-major.

But I think college is part of it. I think she is likely re-initiating her narrative, telling her life story from a happier beginning, which I can't blame her for. I know enough of what went on under the roof of her childhood home to know that shutting that door may well be necessary for sustained happiness or even just non-despair.

The shitty thing is that her narrative seems to now begin after she moved away to college. After we stopped being close. It erases one of the most important early friendships of my life.
And that fucking sucks.

But I guess that's life.

Hell, I'm lucky to have the friends I do, because the ones who do think I am worth more than 12 seconds of their time every couple of years? They are amazing.

If you read this, you're probably one of them.

So thank you for being you.


The other major thing on my mind these days is a few frustrations with an employer that doesn't seem to share my concept of professional behavior. If things don't work out, that's that. We won't starve for it, but I also can't bend over backward to please people who seem to think that I am a simple, uneducated and unskilled house-woman with all the free time and nothing to do but wait for them to summon me on an hour-long journey each way in the hopes that perhaps this time they will elect to be present for the agreed-upon meeting time. This summons also came with no apologies or mentions of our previous (missed) meeting time, for which I scheduled and emailed and prepared and arrived to find no managers present.

I don't think it's professional to whine about this shit on a blog either, or to swear so much when you do, but fuck it man. I worked for GEOS, which gave us a bullshit video-chat-meeting where the woman talking to us couldn't remember what camera we were on and wound up showing us her butt for 20 minutes. This was a day before the meeting where they told us that we didn't have jobs anymore and our last paychecks were toast, eaten by the great corporate machine.

When people can't be bothered to treat me with respect, I start looking for the door. I've been through too many eikaiwa gigs to do otherwise.

Also, as of last month I've been teaching for 10 years. That's right. A decade ago I walked into several classrooms at Southwest High School as Ms. Fleming, the SAT prep teacher, 6 periods a day. I worked my ass off, and every once in a while, I miss those kids. I am happy that I came to Japan and have had the ensuing adventures, but there was something particularly bad ass about teaching kids at my high school. So weird, but pretty damn cool.

Glad I don't have to wear suits anymore though.

Belated High School Drama in Houston

GISHWHES was amazing, as usual, though even this morning I was reminded that I am kind of glad that this was the last big thing. I need these to be smaller more frequent events. That's what I am hoping for anyway.

In other and more current news, Hurricane Harvey (which downgraded and dissipated and disappeared, leaving flooding and off-shot tornadoes in its wake) struck the Gulf Coast region of Texas this week and I was reminded of 2011. Pretty strongly.

While I have lots of sympathy for those who lacked the means to evacuate and will be giving a fair sum of my Patreon money for the month to whatever charity in the affected areas I can find that accepts Paypal, I find my emotions turning in a less altruistic perspective.

In March of 2011, a friend from high school was taking a vacation with his then-boyfriend now-husband to Las Vegas. When news of the shit going down in the country where I'd been residing for several years at that point came to light and made international headlines, I do not know how he felt or what he did. All I do know is that he never contacted me. Not that weekend. Not the week after. At no point did he even give my potential destruction at the hands of something unfathomable more attention than a like on a facebook post. Literally. That is all he did. No comment. No message.

People I hadn't seen in over a decade were finding me on facebook and messaging me to see if I was okay. My mom's boyfriend sent me almost harassing emails, encouraging my communication with her as if I were some wayward teen and not a grown ass woman in an area that just lost all access to electricity and phone lines.

People I hardly knew were coming out of the woodwork to ask if I was okay or say they were happy to hear I hadn't died.

Yet an uncaring jackass with whom I shared my first non-familial home couldn't give me more than a thumbs up. I did hear that at some point he texted a mutual friend for news. Does anyone else get how weird that is as for communication? He did the same thing a few months later when he decided 2 weeks before my wedding that he no longer wanted to play to role of groomsman even though he had agreed to it 6 months previous. Again, he could not bring himself to contact me but instead whined at a mutual friend. Was this for hope of her brokering a better deal? No idea.

I came up with 2 answers for this scenario. Either he cared but was afraid to show me that he cared so he used the intermediary to be able to pretend to be aloof or he never cared in the first place and was using the intermediary to make sure our mutual friends still believed him to be something other than an unfeeling jackass. Option 1 is more likely I believe, even now, but kit doesn't matter. We're grown ass adults. If you need an intermediary to communicate with me, we aren't friends. We may never have been.

Well, the shoe is on the other foot now, Jeffery. Shit's going down in H-town and I've got to say, even now, 6 years after I blocked you from my Facebook and stopped having any kind of contact with you, I give more of a shit about your survival than you may have ever given about mine.

Because I'm fucking writing about it, even though I should really not even care. If anyone who knows him is reading this, know that I still hope he and his people are okay, though I know they all have connections to other folks further north. I do hope they got out okay.

Which is more than they ever said to me.

What I learned This Week

This week has had some ups and downs.

Ups like my slight bout of insomnia the other day combined with some awesome Facebook friends helped get all my mom's cats re-homed in the nick of time. I also reconnected with a bunch of awesome people in the Metroplex while searching for someone who could help with the cats. I may have alienated some people who don't want that level of interaction with me, but that's alright with me overall really.

But the downs, oh man.

Given how things have gone, I am a bit relieved that this year is the last big GISHWHES. I don't think I want to try to make 15 person teams anymore. Every year, every player has a friend or two they'd love to drag along. The problem is I don't know any of these new people. The problem is that a lot of the names on Facebook do not match the names on the GISHWHES site. The problem is I don't know anyone anymore and trying to untangle the mass of named from one site to the other bothers me.

In my attempt to be open and inviting, back when we had space on the team, I offered one of our remaining spaces to a woman I had just met online, named A for this retelling. She seemed really cool-- in her 40s, living in Canada, studying abroad in Japan but moving back to be with her family. She's excited and wants to participate. I give her the sign up info. Spaces get filled. Days pass.

2 hours before the end of registration, she informs me that she cannot participate this year. I spend 20 minutes scrambling to replace her only to find that no one has left the team. There are two people from the province she lives in that I don't know, X and Y. Y was the most recent signup, so I kick Y off the team and get on a friend I begged to join at the last minute.

Registration ends. I think everything is settled. Nothing really is.

A few hours later, one of my friends on the team asks why her friend was kicked off the team. I freak out, race home, email GISHWHES, and it takes us 2 days of email exchanges to boot X instead and get Y back on the list.

And I think it's settled. I breathe a sigh of relief. It isn't.

Days later, I get a message from X, who was actually a genuine member of the team and not A at all, saying that she doesn't get why she isn't on the team anymore.


I think other people are better at accepting failure than I am. That's a skill I need to learn. I suck at it.


So I explain so confused X about the whole A situation. I went nuts trying to replace someone who I had understood to be signed up when in reality apparently she had done nothing of the sort. I spazzed and freaked and alienated even more people searching for help before finding it when in reality, I did not need a damned thing.

And then I had to cancel an online pre-gish get-together, and by cancel I mean just not show up and feel like crap. Just getting my mojo back up after this is going to take more energy and time than I have before GISH starts. It's probably kinda screwed up that I get that much psychic pain from what many around me are calling an honest mistake.

Even X is saying that shit happens and it's okay.


Now do you see why I'm a Hufflepuff? I mean of course I am! When a mistake I make hurts anyone, especially by excluding them unjustly from something I love so much, I fucking ache.

I've gotta figure out how to bandage that shit up and get it healed before Saturday night, when the big event begins.


So what did we learn from this?

1) Do not trust people you just met on the internet.
2) Instead of guessing, ask what email they used to sign up with when people quit your GISHWHES team.
3) Get to know everyone on the team and double check before doing anything rash.
4) Forgive yourself. You are human. Get over it.
5) Watch for PMS. It's out there, waiting to screw with your hormones and make you crazier than normal.


So this week I used the internet for good and screwing things up.

But no one died. I didn't start any revolutions. I'm ready to do something different. Probably.

I don't think it helps that the next 2 days are crammed full of crap that needs to be done, including feeding a cat in Sendai and walking out to a school to change out books.

Somehow, Saturday afternoon, when the work week is done, I need to heal and recharge in like no time. Good luck, future self.

Take A Cat PLEASE!

So today I did something crazy/brave for me.

I'm not actually good with people, as most people who know me probably know. I get anxious and awkward easily with people I don't have a chance to communicate with relatively frequently. I go quickly from just wanting to say hi to just wanting to run and hide for fear that I might bother them.

Today I shoved that all out the window and messaged literally every person I know in DFW on my Facebook friends list. Why? My mom has 2 cats that need homes right now as she is moving out of her current home TODAY and will leave the continental US in about a week. She's beeing using social media and I have shared her posts and ....not a lot of anything. One of her three has found a home with a friend and GISHWHES teammate. The others? Nada.

Is it the social networking algorithms, making the posts invisible to the people who might be able to help, or the apathy or inability of the people we connect with? Is it just that no one needs a cat right now?

I don't know, and the why is less important than the how, as in how do we fix this?

Of course, the back of my mind has been screaming that I must be alienating everyone I know and no one wants to help and no one cares and I'm just pissing them off and you know what? If my saying Hi and asking if you know anyone who could take in a cat is that offensive, I am so okay with being unfriended by you. I love having Facebook friends but what I love most is people who are more than acquaintances.

You can't help with the cat? No worries! Thanks for getting back to me and letting me know. Also, really, how are you?

You have a lead on another sheltering company or provider? Awesome! Maybe they can help and thanks!

Dead silence? Whatever! Maybe you didn't see it or know what to say. I've been there. I don't mind and it was worth a shot. Good day to you regardless!

And honestly, if you are that offended by my attempts to keep my mom from having to hand over her fur-babies to people who will kill them (or the elements, which in the Texas heat will do the same), then you should not be on my friend's list, in my news feed, or even kept at a base acquaintance level.

If I am offending you, I am sorry, but do delete me.

Honestly having 300 friend-links who aren't actually friends but someone I met once who doesn't know me or want to know me anymore isn't beneficial to me. Having 5 badasses who really try to help me? That is all I need in the world sometimes. Having all these connections can be helpful, especially for things like GISHWHES, but if I would offend someone so much with the messages I sent out today, they would never have been helpful for GISHWHES anyway. With this being the final year of the hunt, it really isn't worth it in my opinion to maintain hundreds of acquaintance-ships with folks who want nothing to do with me.

So I do apologize if my abrupt and strange message of the day disturbed anyone who doesn't usually chat with me, but it was for a good cause and I don't see myself needing to do that literally ever again. But if it really bugged you, make sure I can't bug you again.

The great thing that came out of this? A number of neat little conversations with people I haven't talked to in ages. Because that is why this is not spam. If you respond, we talk, and I'm not just a robot trying to sell you my mom's cat.

The squeamish part of me that's still a bit pretentious thinks that last sentence is in questionable sanity. The rest of me feels that people in my life know that I saw weird things when I'm sleep-deprived, but they are usually interesting/entertaining.

But the point is that I chatted with a bunch of people, all separately, all interestingly. Not all people I know that well or have seen in years. Some were even people I don't know if I would jump at the chance to talk to if I saw them on the street in DFW (because I'll talk to anyone I know when they're in Japan, but back home, that's not something I'd do), but still, conversations were had.

2 of the cats still need homes. They go wherever they go tomorrow.
It's super depressing.
I woke up at 2AM and spent 2.5 hours trying to track down new homes for them.
I have done my part. For now.


EDIT: Within a couple of hours of this post, thanks in no small part to the assistance of a friend and patron, the cats have been re-homed in foster care. All the cats have homes, at least for now, and we can all relax a bit more now.
Thank you, all and any of you.

Current Thought Soup or You might say I'm a failure, but I'm not the only one...

So, as I embroider details into a felt model of Jupiter that will complete a project I've been working on for months, my mind is fighting itself over fairly inane things.

Like maybe all of my friends from high school seriously doubt my parenting abilities. But 1) they probably don't and 2) what does that even matter? I'm on the other side of the world from literally all of them, no one is coming to visit me from that group any time soon if ever...who cares?
This really relates back to this snarky perspective that keeps coming up in my mental stew and really needs to be put into character form in a novel so I can be done with it. Being insecure about things we've already found the logic to and know there's no reason to be hurt by is a waste of time and emotional energy.
Yet I still get that every once in a while, and it still doesn't matter. Thanks, brain.

Then there's thoughts regarding the project, ranging from how proud I am of the texturing I've achieved on the swirling clouds of the gas giant to how imperfect it all is and how no one would ever want this junk so what is wrong with me for continuing to put effort into projects like this when it is obvious I cannot ever make them work the way I want them to.

On the upside, Julia's asleep and the week is over, save for teaching and Julia's music class tomorrow. This week I didn't realize there was an event that required her sports uniform Tuesday, so she went out in the wrong uniform. Wednesday was extremely busy for me (run to Sendai for a private lesson, then take the train halfway home and stop to refresh the book selection for a private family lesson, then home in time for Julia to come home followed by a private lesson that had to be moved from Thursday to accommodate a fancy dinner with my in-laws) so I goofed and sent her out in the sports uniform for Thursday, which was of course wrong. Then Thursday came and my husband had the day off and I was so distracted by him and all the other stuff that had to be done to prepare for the dinner that I put her in the regular uniform instead of the sports uniform and my husband did not understand why I didn't make a bus of children wait 10 minutes while I brought her up to change instead of just sending her off on the bus in the wrong outfit as I had.

This morning, Friday morning, we had the right outfit, save for the hat which I completely forgot. But hey, fitting end I'd say. I then treated myself to a little coffee and Greek yogurt from the grocery store before meeting up to go to teach at a different kindergarten as part of yet another part-time job.

Thursday night's dinner went really well. It was meant to commemorate the death of my grandmother-in-law, who passed last year. We had to go get Julia a new dress and shoes for the affair, since we were meant to be in formal black attire.

The restaurant was an upscale place in Izumi, the rich suburb of Sendai, and offered Kyoto-style food served by kimono-clad staff in fancy separate dining rooms. This was nice, but I don't know what the staff are thinking in regards to dish placement.
Traditional or fancy Japanese meals tend to use a bunch of different tiny dishes, and we arrived 5 minutes late, so everyone was already seated, with our spaces open on the other side. My daughter sat between my husband and I with my in-laws, including Grandpa, on the other side. It is important to note here that Grandpa is from my mother-in-law's side, not the husband of the deceased. His wife is also deceased, but that's a different story from some time ago. As I recall from 2011, when we all shared a living space for a few weeks, the two of them did not get along too well. They didn't fight like anyone in my family, but things sometimes came out with a snarky tone, not that I could understand everything but I have been around enough family drama in my time to be able to get the idea of what's going down to some extent.
At Thursday night's dinner, Grandpa made a point of reading a little something (that I understood none of but seemed heart-felt and somber) regarding the deceased before we ate, and I felt that was really special.

So anyway, back to the dishes. They bring in drinks- orange juice for everyone in tall glasses with fluted mouths, and proceed to place them at the very corners of the table, so mine is right off of my right elbow. Then they place a bunch of smaller dishes around. Then they bring the children's bento for my daughter and ask that my husband and I move all the shit they just put into the place in front of my daughter so that they might place the bento box down. There isn't space and as my mind decides I am troubling the poor waitress, I rush a little in moving all of the things. I barely feel a nudge at my elbow and turn to see the fluted glass falling in slow motion, knowing I'm powerless to stop it as it empties its contents on the floor. Lucky, the room was not carpeted and my mother-in-law apologized as I was too embarrassed to speak while also being pissed off at whoever's stupid idea it was to place the glasses at the damn corners and then ask us to move all the shit they put out.

So I spent about 10 minutes feeling like a massive failure, but I did not cry. Instead I focused on the messed up task of trying to feed the fussy child while she climbs out of the chair and attempts to play with everything she can find before spitting rice directly onto my made-up face. I never wear make-up, so this was especially unpleasant for me.

The food was beautiful and some of it quite delicious. Everything was made better by a few small interactions. No one freaked out when I scooped the tiny fish from my rice bowl onto my husband's portion or when I openly handed him the chunk of iced tofu they served in the first course. In fact, my father-in-law made it a point to give me the au gratin dish from his specialty meal so that I could enjoy something they knew I could eat. Also, there was laughter.
They served a soup, and like many fancy places that do this, the soup served in a bowl over a candle, which you were to then ladle into your own separate service-ware despite everyone having their own soup-and-candle thing. After serving myself, I was unsure of the temperature and checked by licking a large chunk from the soup. My tongue darted back in as the soup was too hot, and then my father-in-law started laughing. I laughed too, acknowledging it was a little bit of a silly gesture, licking the soup. He then said that he had done the exact same thing, and suddenly I didn't feel like such a failure.


So this week was long and tricky and my brain is trying to jump in a dozen different directions, but for now I am going to sit back and relax.

And maybe finish Jupiter.
Finally.

Thanks for listening.

And it ALL SUCKS again. But I'm Still Here.

Golden week is over, and we mostly just relaxed at home, sometimes with friends. We also went out to Sendai once and watched all the Marvel movies we missed courtesy of Amazon streaming with Tomo on his one day off during the week.

Then came today, a day I was so looking forward to. I've noticed that a lack of time spent alone makes me somewhat more irritable than usual. I don't like snapping at my toddler for little reason, so I was really happy about having time to recharge...
And then she was sick,

She had a bit of a fever, so Tomo called off the school bus and I surrendered my plans for the day, keeping an eye on her temperature.
I also needed a walk. I also needed to relax somehow. I also needed a bit of time away from the hyper-yet-feverish kid, and in the end I screwed everything up by not alerting my in-laws the second her temp was over 38 (it oscillated between 37.5 and 38.1, making me wary of our equipment's readings) and rushing to the hospital. In Japan, this visit is free and the medicine is free, but everything must be done before 10:30 AM, which it wasn't.

Around 11, Tomo came home, called his parents, got us picked up and went back to work. Julia was right at 39. We went off to the hospital, which told us we were too late, then to the clinic where we got flu shots before. The doc fit us in just before lunch and took a nose swab, which came back in a few minutes confirming 1) a viral presence and 2) not the flu. He wrote us a little prescription and we went across the street to get it filled.

Because it was our first time at that pharmacy, we had to fill out a questionnaire and I discovered something new: My Mother-in-law is apparently tired of my shit.
Tomo fills out all the paperwork for everything we do. He chose the complex kanji for our daughter's name. I can't even read the questions on this form, and my mother-in-law is just looking at me, asking why I can't fill it out on my own.
I tell her I don't know Julia's kanji. I don't tell her that I spent the weekend filling out submission forms to the grocery store's seasonal write-in contest, where my kanji for my fairly complex address has improved greatly, but is still awkward. I did not explain how little time there is for study when I am trying to do all the other things they want me to do (lose 80 pounds, clean the house, maintain sanity) and take care of the three-year-old. I still don't even know where she caught this stupid virus.
My MIL, exasperated, writes the form in sloppy kanji. She read and tried to simplify the form for me to circle the answers on. A lot of it was not actually understandable to me. By this point, my embarrassment was verging toward self-loathing.
There was a question about allergies.
According to a recent blood test, Julia is not allergic to anything. This is in spite of the fact that she breaks out in hives every time she eats anything with the tiniest amount of peaches in it. Apparently that's not an allergic reaction in this case, and apparently this isn't weird in Japan. Some kids have immune systems that have to get used to certain things (egg whites and some kinds of fruit) which usually happens after a few years. The most you can do is treat the symptoms by having some medicine (not over-the-counter) on hand for those times. All of Julia's medicine for her peach-related attacks has been used.
We marked "No" on the allergy form and went on. We got the medicine, my MIL spent $6 on that and some cool packs for my daughter's head and the back of her neck, and we went on our way.
Under the guise of assistance, my MIL brought the 2 extremely light bags of things up to the apartment where she got to peek into my messy living room and appraise my lack-luster cleaning skills.

In my defense, I couldn't get crap done with Julia home all week and did actually manage to clean well enough to have a decent gathering for Star Wars Day, so I did my best. This was not a hell-hole.

Still I know she would never let anyone she loved live in such a place.

And I am trying my best.

But it just isn't good enough.


I never felt this way in school. Ever. Like seriously, even when I barely studied for Hellenistic Greek at 8AM, I felt more confident walking into that mid-term and final than I have ever felt in this hard-core Japanese Housewife Skills Test that is my everyday life and that I so thoroughly suck at.

And it doesn't really matter what I do, see? If I think we need a walk and we take a walk then obviously we should have stayed home and called everyone we know to discuss the readings on the thermometer. Whatever the situation is, I should assess the answer choices and immediately eliminate anything that makes sense to me, choosing only the most stressful or peculiar option.

I started having time to myself last month, so I started walking a lot and trying to jump-start this weight loss thing, acknowledging that it is probably the longest process in the multi-pronged list that is left between my current position and the expectations I am failing to meet.
Cleaning and organizing has also begun, including finally cleaning off the dining table and building a small book shelf with Hana's help. More salads, fewer carbs, constantly checking my daughter's uniform for spots to clean...I'm not exactly drowning in actual free time. I am trying to do all of the things.

And I am failing.


So, while Julia ate her lunch and I washed the dishes in the sink, I battled through some dark contemplation. I pulled myself back to the present long enough to get Julia to take her medicine and deliver her a tiny ice cream from the fridge as a reward.
I rinsed and de-labeled the plastic recycling while by brain dove back into less pleasant topics. When the recycling in the house was done, a tiny surge of accomplishment stirred within. Coming out the other side of internalized-garbage-land, I elected to write down some things I would like to see/do before I die. For this I chose the front page of my schedule book, where I will see this list every time I open the book. The biggest and boldest item there is USING THE WHOLE HOARD, which I later realized would of course take more than an afternoon. I hoard crafting supplies and fabric. This is not a short-term goal, but it should be done before I am incapacitated, pregnant again, or dead-- I would be saddling someone else with sorting through or trashing all that junk otherwise and I would rather have it all used.
The goal is to make stuff people actually want or need out of all the things without replacing the hoard.

Julia fell asleep on the couch after finishing her late lunch. I also chose to take a nap, which ended abruptly when Julia woke up after an hour. My mood had improved a bit.
I got Julia to drink more fluids and noticed that her wrist was covered with hives. Thankfully we still have medicated cream and after using it on the splotches, Julia appears to be free of the itchy bumps. Around this point, I decided finally that I could eat something, so I had a bowl of granola. The only way I thought I could even attempt to do what all they want in the time frame they have in mind is through starvation, but with more logic alive in my mind, I know that way lies madness. And fever. Whatever virus Julia caught will kick my ass if I don't keep myself fed and healthy.


So now we're here and I am talking online about things I don't really want everyone knowing but at the same time, if this helps anyone else re-assess and choose life, then it deserves a place in cyberspace.

Amazing.

This month has been amazing.

First it was the sprint of kindergarten preparation, the last of which occurred only in the midnight hours before the entrance ceremony as I finally got to watch the episode of Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders in which James Kyson appears.

Then it was the first week of school, which meant getting used to the time schedule for the kindergarten's school bus, which is not a public bus-- essentially a long van specific to this kindergarten. Every school in the area has one.
Then Julia wasn't eating lunch so I started waking her up even earlier and setting a time limit for our breakfast so she would be done by 7:30AM, therefor hopefully hungry by noon. Seems to be working somewhat.
Also, when she gets home, I check her silverware for signs of usage (bits of food, etc) and if it comes back pristine, she gets a lecture instead of a snack. And then a snack, too. I'm not a monster.

So then it was Easter and the event I'd been planning for months finally got to occur-- slightly wonky in delivery but fun for all involved and that is the most important part. A friend from college even came up here from her home closer to Tokyo to be part of the festivities, which meant so very much to me.

She is, genuinely, the first person from my college life to see me in this part of Japan. I have had other friends visit, but none from my days at TCU. And truth be told, I wouldn't be here without her and her sister's influence in my college life. Previous to our friendship, I knew nothing of Japanese pop culture. I would never have known the attractiveness of certain male pop stars had they not intervened. Tomo should really send them a thank you letter.

Anyway, so that was pretty wonderful. We got to sit under the cherry blossoms and enjoy Shiogama Shrine with kids and giant plastic Easter eggs (thanks to Hana and Taiyo, who hid them for Julia), and I spent way too long trying to make steampunk outfits for tiny people, but we all for to play dress up for a minute and have a great time, so it was all worth it.

That was Sunday.
Monday was windy and cold by comparison, but I went to bid farewell to my friend and her daughter in Sendai. That visit really means more to me than I can properly explain. The profoundness of the event coupled with my current mental state (mucus) leaves me inadequate to describe the feeling. Grateful is too small a word.

My plan had been to go find some sakura to sit under and read poetry in Sendai that afternoon, but the chill in the wind and my growing head-cold sent me home, though I still read poetry on the train, so it was still a good day for reading.

Today is Tuesday and I had several plans earlier but they had mostly gone to pot under the coughing fits occasionally attacking me now-- the last bits of this head cold thing-- so I elected to stay home and chat with friends. As that finished in the morning, the weather was so nice outside, I couldn't help but go for a walk, and it turned out that Hana was free, too. I put on a mask and we started walking and wound up on an adventure! I hatched two Pokemon eggs, we walked so far!

Good times. Amazing times.

I find the political world terrifying right now, the threat of nuclear war and other disasters imminent as the man-child-monster in power keeps his psychotic tirade going, but every once in a while I have a few of these amazing days and really feel like life has value, that the world can survive whatever is going on out there.
Maybe it can. Maybe it can't. Either way, we've got to enjoy what we can while we can.
And fight fascism. Always.

Julia's Kindergarten Entrance Ceremony

My laziness in preparation was astounding. We bought the uniform months ago, and all other materials needed a few weeks later. My mother-in-law even gifted us a fantastic name-stamp set in with Julia's name in hiragana in 7 different sizes with fast-drying ink, as if she heard the voice inside me freaking out beyond reason about the possibilities when it came to labeling the materials. (Hiragana, right? But it could be kanji, I mean, she has kanji so... Would they accept romanji? No, that would make her look foreign. Family name first, of course...right? Or am I overthinking it? What if I choose the wrong pen? The ink could bleed or wash off! What if it ruins her uniform and we have to spend more money that we have on getting replacements?! What if I bankrupt us over a sharpie!)

Yeah, that's me. Nice to know I didn't lose all the neurotic behavior of my youth when I gave birth, I guess.

So I got these stamps and all the materials, and did nothing about any of it, instead throwing myself into 3 or 4 other projects in the meantime, making baby pants out of socks and sweaters, turning second hand clothing with muted tones in to steampunk-toddler wear, and planning out a solar system themed mobile for my friend's new born...

And not Julia's clothing. Not even a little. Just, like, no.

Friday night, my in-laws drove us back from my evening class and dropped us off at our place, congratulating Julia on the next day's actiuvities and that was when it coccurred to me...

I had not labelled the things. At all.

For those uninitiated to the Japanese kindergarten material labeling system, every single thing your kid brings to school has to be labelled with their first and last name (also which class they are in, if the school is big enough. Luckily ours is not) and I do mean everything. Every crayon, and the crayon carrying case. Every marker, too. Every piece of their uniform, from the bow-tie to the blouse, jacket and skirt. Every utensil in their lunch kit. Each chopstick.

Not every grain of rice, thankfully, but we're also going to a school that provides the food, so yay, no bento stuff for me to learn just yet.

So it is kind of a big deal and I spent more than an hour with that stamping kit out, figuring out what to stamp and where and which size stamp to use. I then had to iron some name labels onto some things that didn't have them.

Then it came to the shoes and I couldn't remember where the indoor school-shoes got labelled. I asked my husband. "Across the strap." he said, and I was sure I hadn't seen that but decided I didn't care enough to fight at the point and labeled them across the front strap.
No one else at the school has their name labeled there. Many do on the back strap- the tiny cloth bit that juts up from the very back of the shoe. Oh well.

So I did all of this and fell asleep holding Julia while reading Dr. Seuss in our bed at 11.

My body woke up to freak out about ironing at 4:30AM. So it began.

I ironed and ironed and finally it all seemed okay. Julia got up and I got her to eat something and use the bathroom. We finally got Tomo up to check what the worksheets said we needed and to label a few things I somehow missed the previous evening.

Then we got ready and went.

It was refreshing to see how much variation there was in the dress and behavior of the moms. Some were on top of their kids and wearing the white suits I was told were standard verging on mandatory for this sort of event. Many were more relaxed in gray and black ensembles. One of the dads even collapsed his fat butt on the tatami in the play room, reclining like he was at an izakaya (traditional style bar/pub), which made me feel a little more presentable as I wasn't lounging around and neither was my husband.

Though my husband tried to listen to the teacher and translate for me, he only got excited enough to bother translating stuff I found obvious and already understood. 

The teacher holds up a small clear plastic bag and says "kusuri" which means medicine. Yeah, this is for medicine. She goes on to explain that you needn't put a whole bottle of any medication in there. A couple of doses will do fine (obviously in some tiny bottle-container you can probably get at the 100 yen store).

My husband turned to me, excited. "This is for medicine."

"Yeah, I know kusuri." I said.

"Fine then. I won't translate anything for you."

He says this right after I asked him about some notebooks that I didn't understand the purpose of that the teacher just described, that he did not explain at all.

Whatever, dude. More reason for me to start studying in earnest, when I finally have time to focus starting this coming week.

This was all after the actual ceremony, when all the entering students were made to sit in small chairs in the middle of the gymnasium/auditorium and listen to the principal introduce his staff and give a short speech. 

Some kids cried and ran. A couple had to sit with their parents instead of with the group, while others had their moms right by them, sitting at the edge of the crowd of children.

Mine was okay, in the very middle, until she realized that she wanted to blow her nose. Then she got up and ran out of the group, all the way to the back to get a tissue from me. Then she went back.

Then she did it again.

And again.

And again.

She was by far the kid most in-and-out of her chair in the whole group, but at least she was mostly quiet and as I have learned from our foray into music class last year, this is better than it could be.

At the end, she was held by the son of the principal, who looked after her a bunch and seems a really decent guy. I totally thought he was a kindergarten teacher and was happily surprised to see a male in the role, which is super-rare in Japan. He even walked her over to get tissues from atop the piano while his father talked.

I felt embarrassed and awkward, but not to the extent I would have expected. I also felt like this is a place where they are unlikely to cause Julia physical harm, even when she's being a total jerk, the way spoiled toddlers often are.

I know the staff was on their best behavior, but it still seems like they were nicer than they had to be, but maybe that is also me in this culture of extreme politeness.

But that is a problem we may have for a while. The Japanese idea of killing it with kindness and mild guilt-tripping into conformity may not work well on my spoiled little person. She may not learn anything from that other than who she can exploit the most before they get ticked off. That's what she did later that day at my in-laws house, where we had a lovely lunch with my in-laws and Grandpa Nakamura, after which Julia unwrapped and handed out chocolates to everyone individually, except for Grandma, who is by far the nicest to her. I told Julia she should also give one to Grandma and she responded by handing her one, wrapped, so she had to be goaded into it and still did not give the same respect (unwrapping) as she did for the others in the group.

That's a problem we might have, that this method of instruction may not do much to tame my kid, but then again, maybe the staff are more strict sometimes. Maybe they do have ways of making her conform.

I'm not saying I want her to be a mindless Japanese robot child, but I have accepted that tomorrow she starts a journey into becoming more Japanese than she is American. I am going to have to fight to keep the English up at home, and to keep the American thought process going, too, but there is a lot I have no control over. She is going to be a little Japanese girl. Maybe one with American tendencies.

So now, I need to: Wash the already dirty uniform, finish another project, exhaust Julia so she goes to sleep and wakes up early enough to get on the bus, try to enjoy my last day with my daughter before she begins assimilation into a culture I will always be outside of...

And now I'm sad.

And laughing.

Parenting is a maddening process, isn't it?

All the Upcoming Shenanigans

So many things going on! Here's a rundown:

Tomorrow I teachmy normal classes, then run off to Sendai for the last class with one of my private students.

The next day I take Julia and Hana to the park at Tsutsujugaoka to hand out free tea bags and cookies for our E4K-- Random Acts yearly fundraiser (for which I have received only one donation) and
I will not be collecting donations as I have no way of putting the donated money into the crowdrise situation-- no debit card or credit card here, only Paypal and not much in my paypal.

If you would like to contribute to some awesome projects, donate here.

Monday I have one lesson and one skype-date with my mom.

Tuesday I have a full afternoon of classes at a student's house and this will be the first time I have taught these lessons this way. It will be interesting.

Wednesday I actually have a day off and might trek down to Ogawara with Julia to see 1000 sakura trees...maybe not. We'll see.

Thursday we have a class in Sendai in the afternoon.

Friday things go back to normal with my evening class.

Saturday will be Julia's kindergarten entrance ceremony.

That Sunday might be a day off, I have no idea.

That Monday, Julia starts kindergarten and I finally get to clean my house in addition to trying to make costumes and other fun things for Steampunk Hanami: Easter Edition which we will be having on Easter Sunday, April 16th.

Fun times!

Too many things to do....

So here I go, off to do the things!

A Fairly Excellent Day

Today was pretty awesome.

It's Wednesday, which means I have no classes and since Julia hasn't started school yet, it was one of our last chances for a day-long adventure without weekend crowds.

So we got ready and headed out to Sendai. We started with a pizza buffet lunch (at a place I had read about but never been to) which was pretty great actually. The pizzas were small and few offerings that I really enjoyed, but the tomato-moz-basil option and the basic cheese were both totally delectable. After picking up a slice of something green (too excited/hungry to bother reading the Japanese-only description written on a short note near the pizza) that I realized later was zunda (mashed raw soybean with sugar--a Sendai-specific sweet) I decided I had been adventurous enough and went with salad instead. The zunda wasn't bad, just not what I wanted on pizza.
Julia was free, but does not have any affinity for pizza, so I brought her some items from the small salad bar, all of which she rejected. I spied fruit-filled yogurt in the dessert area and brought it along, and she ate it-- or at least the yogurt. She carefully dodged each mango and pineapple chunk, carefully partaking only in the yogurt.
I later brought her more of just the yogurt and finished off her remaining fruit. I would later get her something she actually liked for lunch elsewhere.
There was also a free juice bar, and as I'm still harboring some post-nasal drip, I made the most of my $10/45minute beverage festival.
It was actually pretty great. A lot better than I thought it would be.

Then we walked through the arcade, with me trying desperately to catch the Farfetch'd Pokemon for my mom, and failing again. Again! The little blighter will not show himself.
I charged my phone at 3 different restaurants/coffee shops during the day trying to catch him. Could not make it work.
Oh well.
In the mean time, we went to the Owl Cafe, surprised to find it now the home of a meerkat and several rabbits in addition to the now adolescent miniature pigs and the same owls as before. I got to pet a fluffy owl.
And the meerkat.
And the marmoset.
Julia was freaked out a little because the meerkat was very curious about the smell of her slightly-wet pants. It was awkward, but not traumatic, so yay! They also have a twice-daily flying session, in which they put all the owl-prey away in cages and have three of their best trained owls fly across the room to perch on the gloved hand of an owl-cafe employee, only to have volunteers from the audience join the action afterward for the same interval. The barn owl perched on my left index finger, and I thought of David Bowie, and it was a good day.

Then it had been an hour and Julia was getting tired so we went for a little walk, still chasing and not finding the Pokemon. I found some pokestops that were lured, so I gravitated toward them but still couldn't catch my guy. In the process, I found a new favorite coffee shop, under an AU shop in a building that may have housed Zara back in 2011. I'm not really sure, but it was super convenient, with tablets at the same seating area as the outlets, so I could charge my phone while Julia played with ice and watched a few trial episodes of random innocuous anime.
It was rather excellent.

I kept stopping for lures, but never did find the guy. Instead I spent a little bit at a few places, buying coffee so my phone could charge while my daughter made small talk with every person who would look at her for more than 2 seconds. She is just that way. She stayed close to me today though, with no running off in random directions, so overall it was good.

Now we're home, and about to head out for some last minute groceries (and a last-ditch poke-walk of desperation...)

But the day had actually begun with me telling the Amanda Palmer facebook group that I was happy to be the unofficial Japan-guru but that I could not plan any more trips, and directing people who were interested in coming here to my previous blog post on the subject.
This may seem like me saying the same thing over and over to strangers who don't care, but in that group, anytime Japan is mentioned, someone seems to tag me, and most of the time it is no big deal. Yes, they have crazy chocolates. No, the fixing-broken-things-with-gold thing isn't really common these days and most people throw perfectly good electronics in the garbage when they get new ones. Yes, some people are pervs and the rate of harassment committed upon young women in this country (myself included-- in Nagoya, once) is appallingly high.
Anyway, most of this isn't a problem but as I said in the post before, I can't keep doing the planning craziness, and since I will put myself into that position, it is better if anyone planning a trip like that looks at my blog post and only bugs me if they want to head up this way.

I posted this to a group of 4000 people, only a handful of whom I know online and none have I met in person. I posted this with more than an inkling of trepidation, as I was sure, just like the Engrish discussion, someone would decide I was being an asshole for something that didn't seem asshole-y to me at all.

On the train back to Shiogama, I checked Facebook only to find a number of comments to my post, all positive. Some were people asking if they could meet me for coffee if they did get out to Sendai, to which I replied of course. Some were just celebrating the attempt to do something for my mental health. None were negative or strained or weird.
We'll see if that holds out, but it's nice to not feel like I cannot be understood.

Also, my city-cost blog post about lolita/punk/vk fashion in Sendai (with 2 pictures of your truly) has been posted.
See it here.
So...things went well. Yay!

So You're Coming to Japan...

I'm prefacing this by acknowledging the mucus content of my sinuses is screwing with my intellectual capabilities.

But my feelings keep getting hurt for no real reason and I'm going to put a stop to this.

So let's assume you're seeing the post as a response to the following situation:
"Oh  my god. I'm coming to Japan at some unknown point in the future and know nothing of where/when/how to go/do anything, HALP!"

This has come up too many times with friends and acquaintances and people I don't even know who somehow get referred to me for this solution. Being me, I then put hours into trying to help these people plan their adventure, providing lots of details and recommendations, offering frequently to personally guide people around Tohoku completely for free.

And then the same damn thing happens every time. They think about it and make the same damn decision that everyone else does. They see Tokyo, Kyoto, maybe Osaka, occassionally Nagoya. They will go and see the same things everyone else goes and sees and since no one goes to Tohoku, no one ever will.

Then I get to find out this information months later, if ever, and I always feel slightly trampled. I know they weren't solid plans, but I keep fucking offering my heart and soul to people who really just want to have the DisneyLand-Japan experience. Not Tokyo Disney, which is an actual theme park, but the theme-park style tourist experiences that EVERY TOURIST seems to have, because having your own authentic experience in this "exotic" country is verboten. Your experiences are only worthwhile if they are exactly the same as the ones everyone else has.

You went to Japan, huh? Did you see Sky Tree? Tokyo Tower? This one thing I saw in Tokyo? Did you go only to the places that I also went? Awesome.

And there are tons of people out there willing to provide their experiences that corroborate this trend. A friend (who did actually come up here for a couple of days in addition to seeing Tokyo and other places) posted on facebook that she was headed this way and several of her friends had places to recommend....all in Tokyo. "Oh, I've been there-- all the way from Akihabara to Asakusa..."

And I'm out here thinking, "Yeah, that's ALL JUST in Tokyo. Hmm. Kinda like there's not a country out here...Guess I don't live in Japan after all...Since I don't live in Tokyo..."

So, if you're asking me for advice, here's my advice. 

1.   Get a Japan Rail Pass (you have to arrange it and pay for it before you get here, but it's totally worth it for the days when you're travelling a lot)

2. Check Trip Advisor, Japan guide, or just freaking google whatever cities you are actually interested in. You could even check City-Cost, where I sometimes blog about Tohoku, for information from other foreign residence and reviews of places nearby.

3. If you actually really want to come to Tohoku and have worked that into your finalized plans, hit me up. I'm still happy to show people around and be a free guide, but only when that's not getting my hopes up before someone says, "Oh, well we decided we'd just go wherever everyone goes after all. Screw Sendai."


So good luck guys, and enjoy your vacation wherever it takes you, but leave me out of it unless you actually give a crap about seeing me or Tohoku.

Thanks.

Happy Hina Matsuri Day!

So it is girls' day here in Japan and we had lunch with my in-laws to celebrate. They wanted to set up the dolls at our house but we didn't ever have time (or space) so they set up the top tier (emperor and empress only, plus flowers and lanterns) at their home atop the piano.

What we didn't count on was Grandpa Nakamura, who we love very much, being there in the house as well. Of course no one minds spending time with Grandpa Nakamura-- my mother-in-law's father-- as he's always happy to greet everyone with a warm smile and even uses a few words of English now and again. This time, we found him sitting at the dining table, shying away from our glances and speaking so softly as to barely be heard. He tried to be polite, but was a little scared and a little shy.

I've always liked Grandpa Nakamura partially because he is where my husband gets the ability to smile with his whole face (an uncommon trait in this country) and because he tends to speak plainly, but with a warm tone, so I can usually get the gist of what he's saying.

Grandpa celebrated his 90th birthday a few weeks ago and we all went out and had a great dinner where Julia actually ate something and only spent half of the evening rolling on the floor. That's an improvement, sadly enough.

Well, today we found out that Grandpa has been having memory issues, and is now living with his daughter and her husband so they can help take care of him.

My mother-in-law whispered the new sad stories of his current progress to my husband while we waited to wash our hands at the sink by the shower room before eating. I caught 50%, I'd like to say, but not a useful 50. Tomo had to clarify.
Then he tried to walk away.

I know they're good  at the whole face-hiding thing and I am bad at that, even for an American. There are people I know from my home country (hell, from my hometown) who can lie to your face and make you believe it while they hold every emotion back, showing you only an almost Vulcan face of emotionlessness.

And I can't do that. At all. I started crying and made him come back and hold me. I thought I would get it together after that but couldn't make it work for a few minutes.

On the upside, I could let the tears roll silently, which I couldn't do 10 years ago. I couldn't stop, though. And Tomo and his mom were perfectly together, and I admire their strength so much. 5 years ago, I would have felt stupid and angry at myself for not being able to hold it together better while my mother-in-law is oscillating between happy and normal on the outside.

I guess I don't really have an outside. I have me. This molten core of burbling emotion, that's me.

On the upside, my husband and in-laws don't have to worry about who I am inside. They see me. They can't not. I'm right there, heart exposed, every second of every day.
Like an idiot.
An almost brave but also terrified idiot.

I did finally stop the tears from falling. It kind of helped that my father in law also had to wipe his face and blow his nose after I came out and couldn't stop wiping the tears from my face.

After a few minutes, Tomo and his parents began talking about silly things that were happening and Julia was wandering around talking to everyone. Grandpa Nakamura laughed, and for a few minutes he really was his old self again.

This is the beginning of a long and very depressing road.
But at least we're on it together.

For the Love of Engrish...

So I recently got into a debate on Facebook....I never really get into debates on facebook. Do you? It's mostly one side saying what they thing, another side not listening but disagreeing on principle, the first side following the same method and so on. Very little listening or learning, which is why I usually choose not to engage.

Then someone called me a bigot.

Well it didn't start that way, did it? Let me back up.

I run an account on Patreon (like kickstarter but ongoing for artist support) that is called Weird Box of Japan and specializes in Engrish goods as well as other weird semi-uniquely Japanese things. People give me money, I send them a monthly box of weirdness that usually makes people happy. One of my patrons posted on one of the Amanda Palmer facebook fan groups about the contents of her recent package, which met mostly with responses like "What is that?" and "Why haven't I heard of this?"
The one vocal Chinese member of the group (ethnically and globally. Like she really lives in China and is Chinese. She is the only one who meets that criteria and regularly posts anything.) even mentioned that she could read the label and knew what the mystery item was but wouldn't tell anyone.

But there was also a negative response that got a couple of likes, which was something along the lines of "I don't see how Engrish is anything but bigotry."
And I wasn't the only one to be taken aback by the offended tone, especially when we're having fun at our own expense.
There were a few comments present when I checked this out (at 5:30 AM after a road trip) which basically when along the lines of "What?" and "Let Jessica explain. She probably knows."

So I explained, via an essay written on my phone using my thumbs while I lay in bed next to my slumbering family. I mentioned that I thought I knew where the girl was coming from and if anyone were using the term against people I would agree that it is racist and awful, but we are only using it to describe commercially produced products coming out of companies that didn't bother to have their copy checked by a native speaker. We're laughing at companies that either believe that whatever they put on a shirt/cup/whatever will do since it has those western letters or that it will sell better for its flaws.
I went on to explain that my Japanese husband thinks Engrish is the appropriate term and is hysterical.

The girl responded in one sentence paragraphs racked with errant commas that the word Engrish is racist because it mocks phonemes present in several Asian languages and I should use "comical translation error" or something similar instead. She then compared me to a schoolyard bully and insisted that the companies producing these things are victims of my racist labeling practices.


Here's the thing. I have said many stupid things in my life, from when I once told the hispanic boy I had a crush on in 3rd grade to "speak American" (because I was embarrassed to not know Spanish) to when I kept insisted on calling America "my country" when having dinner with several international  folks in Minneapolis last December, despite the fact that one of them was born in the states. I didn't mean any harm and still think these were stupid things to say.

Calling these products Engrish is not racist, because people of any race could be making these mistakes and anyone can laugh at them. I am not condoning telling people they "speak engrish" because Engrish is not a spoken thing. Spoken language is different and more difficult. Even having someone read over everything you plan to say is not a full-proof way to avoid errors. Written things,  especially words and phrases that wind up on products, are different in that there is room for editing. Someone can check your work and make sure it goes out right most of the time.

That's why it's funny and not mean. That's why we can call it Engrish.

The fight with the girl went on a few more volleys, with me dissecting her one analogy and her confessing it wasn't even an analogy but a reflection of something she once saw in her job. She's calling me a bully because she has seen bullying once.

Then she called me a biggot, though "not in a character defining sort of way." which was really the icing on the cake.

I did respond by pointing out some errors and trying to add guidance and positive feedback to the mix. She acted like I farted in her face.

The saddest thing is that I have been there, trying to relate the vast realm of human experience to whatever I knew at 16 or 18 or 22 and being offended on behalf of races and cultures I don't belong to for imagined injustices as much as real ones.

But I've grown up since then.

I used to think no one should use the n word. Then we wouldn't have to keep reminding non-black people to avoid it. It took some time and growth for me to understand that a maligned group has the right to reclaim words used against them if they so choose, and that choice doesn't even go for every member of that group. Bottom line, white girl from suburbia doesn't get to be offended on behalf of anyone unless there's actually someone saying "I am offended by this."

This is also why it is good to have friends of many cultures and races. You can ask, "Is this offensive?" and they can tell you.

So that's what I did. In a comment anyone could see, I asked the only vocal Asian in the group, and she said that the way the term was being used was not offensive at all. If it were being used against the way an actual person was speaking, then it would be. I agreed.

I then wrote my last paragraph to the offended girl and hid the post. Then I laughed. And laughed. And had a beer. And told my friends. And told my grandmother.
And laughed.

And I am still laughing.


But there were some interesting thoughts in this whole affair for me. The first was the realization that the nut jobs are not all on the right wing. Sorry conservative friends, I've heard enough hollering for crazy crap from my youth in Texas, and I've seen scores of people who can only believe in a politicians the way they believe in Jesus which is so wrong on so many levels, but that is people. I never knew we had (just as many perhaps) people plugging their ears to discourse and screaming offense about things that the potentially maligned group has judged as OK.

The next interesting thought was the debate in communication between being concise and being politically correct. I could write out a longer, potentially less offensive phrase (that I don't have the brain power to come up with now) every time I want to say "engrish" but definitely won't since I don't know anyone who is both Asian and offended by this term. The real heart of the debate lies more with words like Korean to describe the language of Korea. Koreans call the writing system hangul and take offense at calling it anything else, but if a friend of mine shows me a picture of some Asian writing they found and says, "Hey, what's this say?" the best answer is "I can;t read it. That's Korean."
Otherwise I have to have a whole conversation about hangul every single time I get asked about Asian writing, which isn't that often but still would be a waste of my time. We should all call it hangul and one day we will all know this, but for now, it saves me time and patience to use the less delicate term.

The last interesting thing...has been forgotten unfortunately. Such is life when this was what I did with the break I took when cleaning for several hours straight made me woozy.

Onward to other things!

Dr Seuss and Politics Part 1: Mayzie the Lazy Welfare Queen?

I've got this beautiful 3 year old daughter who is in love with Dr. Seuss. Her favorite character is Horton, which makes me very happy. Mind you, I had never read a Horton book before 2016 but now I can quote all of his who-hearing and egg-hatching adventures almost word-for-word.

And as we were reading through the aviary based tome, I came across an interesting thought.

And it is, weirdly, about my grandmother.

My paternal grandmother, like most of her 6 kids, is conservative. My dad alone seems to be the liberal mountain man of the group, which probably doesn't make sense to most people, but I'm not trying to tell our family history here. Suffice it to say I was raised by 2 liberals in conservative state (that used to be blue) only to be confronted with a family from up north living essentially the opposite existence.

When discussing the then-upcoming 2016 presidential election, my grandmother made use of terms more common among the right to far-right, like "welfare queen", which was something I'd only heard of briefly (probably because I avoid media from a perspective I can't fully understand) and had trouble wrapping my head around.

The fact is that the cost of living is higher today than it was twenty years ago in the US, and the pay at minimum wage jobs has not increased to match this. The assumption I am prone to make is that the same people who hired my Caucasian grandmother (about sixty years ago)when she was a teenager with several mouths to feed would be less likely to hire a woman of a different skin color to do the same job then or now, but even if they did, the money made wouldn't go nearly as far.
So this image of some destitute whore popping out babies so she can stay home living on barely-enough-to-eat is something I can't really imagine. Maybe that's me not being imaginative enough, but we lived in the ghetto (ghetto adjacent, really) and even if it was only for a few years, I don't remember anyone being excited to be on food stamps or anyone saying their parents refused to work so they could live off of the government instead.
Then again, I was 6. People don't tell 6-year-old children stories like that. Not when everyone's poor.

So I was reading my kid the story, and that lazy bird begs a passing elephant to sit on her egg so that she can take a break, only to have that break take most of the rest of the book because she would rather be relaxing in Palm Springs than doing her job as a mom. Instead, Horton (who is obviously a Hufflepuff) sits on the egg and keeps it safe and warm for 51 weeks through many hardships including treacherous weather, public mockery, hunters with guns, and becoming a side-show attraction.

And I think that lazy bird very much fits the idea of the "welfare queen" in that she does not take responsibility for her actions or job and wants only to relax at the expense of others.

I find that a more honest portrayal of the current head of the government than I do of an impoverished person. Poor people have problems, some self-made and many thrust upon them, but the vast majority, it seems to me at least, are more screwed over than lazy.

I know I'm lucky and privileged. Neither of my parents were ever in jail or deported. My dad's job paid for the necessities plus plenty of perks in addition to supplying us with medical insurance for our young lives. My mom is hard-working, still, trying to make things function when they otherwise would not. We didn't grow up in a mansion, but we always had food and water and electricity. There was no question of us going to school and getting jobs. We had examples of people who made stuff work. We were told that we were smart and capable and raised in a supportive household.

I've come to realize, the more people I meet in the world, that not everyone had that. There were difficulties for us, too, of course, but there's a lot worse off you can be (and survive better and more capable for it) than we ever were.

So, while I now can almost understand the idea behind the "welfare queen" characterization, I still believe it is unlikely to hold much truth. That said, I'm not a social worker nor a government employee in charge of investigating such things. Just a mom with a heart and a brain.
And just enough experience and empathy to deduce this.

But hey, it's just my two cents.