This week has been somewhat exhausting but I'm in better spirits than I have been recently. Part of that is because my body and the weather are not attacking me quite as fruitfully as they were earlier in the month. Last week was unpleasant.
Rainy season + menstruation - (cartilage + estrogen) = Crappy Week.
I wanted to put in the subnotation "of a 20 year old" on the parenthetical but have no idea how to do that on this or any computer, so instead I write an equation in which I lack all cartilage and estrogen and leave it there. Meh.
I wrote about it on my Japan blog and some of the other ladies there had similar troubles, so at least I had some solidarity. I don't know how much good solidarity against the weather and aging works, but I did feel a bit better to know it was not just me.
The behavior of the US government terrifies and frustrates me. We're heading out in just over a week to spend a couple of weeks with my dad and I am so excited but also more nervous than I've ever been about going home. I know my kid has a US passport and would likely be returned to Japan if necessary and we're not entering illegally or attempting to claim asylum so we're likely safe, but I'm going to be nervous until it's over.
That said, we're pretty excited, too, but my nervousness about taking a nearly-5 year old all the way to Tokyo, then all the way to Detroit, then getting us all back here in one piece may be what is triggering the same lack of appetite I was scared about a few weeks ago. Even so, I have developed a better battle plan for this problem and am now more or less enjoying a morning protein shake because I can. Despite my lack of enthusiasm regarding food, this shake is nutritious enough to keep me going without my stomach trying to shut it out. Nice and easy. And I get to live. Woohoo!
In other news, last night I was laying next to my slumbering daughter, reading a book to myself. She's apparently grown out of wanting me to read her to sleep, which is fine. Saves me energy.
Suddenly I was summoned tot he living room by a resounding chorus of God Save the Queen and I emerged to find my husband eagerly singing the national anthem of the country where he spent puberty.
My dude is not much of a sports nut, but in his boarding school he was co-opted into the junior varsity soccer team despite not knowing the rules and not having played the game previously. The same thing apparently happened with rugby, but that we don't usually get to watch and I really do not understand that sport. So my quiet husband spent a good portion of the game telling me how he cheated at soccer, smashing the other boys in the knees when he could and aiming at their heads when he tried to pass around them. I couldn't blame him. Being a skinny, short, 13 year old Asian kid, the only Asian kid on the team or in his classes....yeah, cheating makes more sense than trying to play fair against boys who have been playing this game and working on their skills for at least three to five years previous.
My soccer experiences were different, of course. Girls' soccer in high school in the late 90s, early 2000s was alright, but I've never been good with people. I didn't mind running to death though so I wound up at midfield, passing up to the forwards so they could score, running back to help out the defense, occasionally marking a player and just annoying the crap out of the other team. Hey, at least I could explain off-sides to my husband. It was actually really wonderful to spend 90 minutes sitting with my overworked and exhausted husband, half-reminiscing and half-cheering.
Watching England win their quarterfinal bout against Sweden was really great. The Swedish team swarmed well, coming together really quick when needed, but it wasn't enough to stop the Brits. It was clearly a great level of play, though that didn't stop the drama of injuries (real or fake?) nor our desire to watch the team from the country we were more familiar with win.
I also realized something else. I have the natural tendency to trash talk the other team, wanting to shout things like, "Stop those rotten-fish eating bastards!" or "If you're all the vikings have to show for their progeny, all their raping and pillaging was for nothing!" which gets more and more weirdly xenophobic and offensive during international games.
I'm not xenophobic and I actually have nothing against the Swedish team or their heritage or whatever, but the more important thing here is what it says to me about Trump supporters.
Because they see "the game" as God-fearing, red-neck, working-class republicans versus rich, well-educated, hippy communists and this just is not true. Those aren't even the teams, and it's not a two team structure or at least it shouldn't be. Decency is on the line, and all we can say for ourselves as humankind, and they are blindly following their leader as if he were Christ-incarnate. That's an issue I have had with the reasoning skills of the uber-religious for some time though. There is a tendency to see exclusively as us vs them, with "us" being easily limited to one branch of one church against the rest of the world. It's also hard for them to accept that their chosen leaders are not as theoretically perfect as their chosen religious figures.
And they cheer their side on with the blind fervor of any adamant sports fan, never speaking ill of their own side while attacking the other with anything they can think of, mostly ad hominem nonsequitors, but that's what they know. And for 90 minutes I could be the same, against a team of well-trained professional athletes from a proud and noble country. But then the game ended and I went back to being sane and collected and realized that maligning the other team's goalie for have a vaguely neanderthal-like brow was not kind, polite, or justified.
So when is the game over for the trumpsters? How much damage has to ensue to show them this isn't a game anymore? How do we wake them up? What has to happen for working-class America to figure out that the powers that be as they are today are not benefiting them and are in fact turning what was a wonderful country into something unimaginable? How do we break the cognitive dissonance? How do we get them to see that it doesn't matter if a kid was brought down by a UFO, it does not belong in a cage?
How do we help?
That I do not know.
Rainy season + menstruation - (cartilage + estrogen) = Crappy Week.
I wanted to put in the subnotation "of a 20 year old" on the parenthetical but have no idea how to do that on this or any computer, so instead I write an equation in which I lack all cartilage and estrogen and leave it there. Meh.
I wrote about it on my Japan blog and some of the other ladies there had similar troubles, so at least I had some solidarity. I don't know how much good solidarity against the weather and aging works, but I did feel a bit better to know it was not just me.
The behavior of the US government terrifies and frustrates me. We're heading out in just over a week to spend a couple of weeks with my dad and I am so excited but also more nervous than I've ever been about going home. I know my kid has a US passport and would likely be returned to Japan if necessary and we're not entering illegally or attempting to claim asylum so we're likely safe, but I'm going to be nervous until it's over.
That said, we're pretty excited, too, but my nervousness about taking a nearly-5 year old all the way to Tokyo, then all the way to Detroit, then getting us all back here in one piece may be what is triggering the same lack of appetite I was scared about a few weeks ago. Even so, I have developed a better battle plan for this problem and am now more or less enjoying a morning protein shake because I can. Despite my lack of enthusiasm regarding food, this shake is nutritious enough to keep me going without my stomach trying to shut it out. Nice and easy. And I get to live. Woohoo!
In other news, last night I was laying next to my slumbering daughter, reading a book to myself. She's apparently grown out of wanting me to read her to sleep, which is fine. Saves me energy.
Suddenly I was summoned tot he living room by a resounding chorus of God Save the Queen and I emerged to find my husband eagerly singing the national anthem of the country where he spent puberty.
My dude is not much of a sports nut, but in his boarding school he was co-opted into the junior varsity soccer team despite not knowing the rules and not having played the game previously. The same thing apparently happened with rugby, but that we don't usually get to watch and I really do not understand that sport. So my quiet husband spent a good portion of the game telling me how he cheated at soccer, smashing the other boys in the knees when he could and aiming at their heads when he tried to pass around them. I couldn't blame him. Being a skinny, short, 13 year old Asian kid, the only Asian kid on the team or in his classes....yeah, cheating makes more sense than trying to play fair against boys who have been playing this game and working on their skills for at least three to five years previous.
My soccer experiences were different, of course. Girls' soccer in high school in the late 90s, early 2000s was alright, but I've never been good with people. I didn't mind running to death though so I wound up at midfield, passing up to the forwards so they could score, running back to help out the defense, occasionally marking a player and just annoying the crap out of the other team. Hey, at least I could explain off-sides to my husband. It was actually really wonderful to spend 90 minutes sitting with my overworked and exhausted husband, half-reminiscing and half-cheering.
Watching England win their quarterfinal bout against Sweden was really great. The Swedish team swarmed well, coming together really quick when needed, but it wasn't enough to stop the Brits. It was clearly a great level of play, though that didn't stop the drama of injuries (real or fake?) nor our desire to watch the team from the country we were more familiar with win.
I also realized something else. I have the natural tendency to trash talk the other team, wanting to shout things like, "Stop those rotten-fish eating bastards!" or "If you're all the vikings have to show for their progeny, all their raping and pillaging was for nothing!" which gets more and more weirdly xenophobic and offensive during international games.
I'm not xenophobic and I actually have nothing against the Swedish team or their heritage or whatever, but the more important thing here is what it says to me about Trump supporters.
Because they see "the game" as God-fearing, red-neck, working-class republicans versus rich, well-educated, hippy communists and this just is not true. Those aren't even the teams, and it's not a two team structure or at least it shouldn't be. Decency is on the line, and all we can say for ourselves as humankind, and they are blindly following their leader as if he were Christ-incarnate. That's an issue I have had with the reasoning skills of the uber-religious for some time though. There is a tendency to see exclusively as us vs them, with "us" being easily limited to one branch of one church against the rest of the world. It's also hard for them to accept that their chosen leaders are not as theoretically perfect as their chosen religious figures.
And they cheer their side on with the blind fervor of any adamant sports fan, never speaking ill of their own side while attacking the other with anything they can think of, mostly ad hominem nonsequitors, but that's what they know. And for 90 minutes I could be the same, against a team of well-trained professional athletes from a proud and noble country. But then the game ended and I went back to being sane and collected and realized that maligning the other team's goalie for have a vaguely neanderthal-like brow was not kind, polite, or justified.
So when is the game over for the trumpsters? How much damage has to ensue to show them this isn't a game anymore? How do we wake them up? What has to happen for working-class America to figure out that the powers that be as they are today are not benefiting them and are in fact turning what was a wonderful country into something unimaginable? How do we break the cognitive dissonance? How do we get them to see that it doesn't matter if a kid was brought down by a UFO, it does not belong in a cage?
How do we help?
That I do not know.
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