Wow, it has been a long time. Sorry about that. Days are long and tedious and mad. I'm doing my best. The reason this blog isn't updated often is mainly that it isn't incentivized. My other blog pays me in monthly Amazon gift cards. While that isn't exactly enough to pay a bill, it is at least something. This blog is instead reserved for rants or times when I have more to say that should fit in an easily digestible social media post.
Earlier this week, I shared on facebook a status regarding Biden's historical support of the conservative talking points regarding RoeVWade in contrast to Bernie's support even in the 1970s of a woman's right to choose. Two old men, one of whom happens to be one of my most beloved teachers, swarmed in for the kill, throwing insults and berating me while insisting that I must at once only focus on Biden's history as it concerns being a great statesman and ignore all the conservative stuff, trusting him to have improved on everything else. He's the only candidate, they're sure, and how dare I dislike him.
And it brought me back to ninth grade, when we were asked to deliver our political opinions in class, and my non-republican perspective was only listened to for all of 20 seconds, long enough for everyone to realize it wasn't going to be OMIGOD-SO-BUSH-CUZ-JESUS-YES, before they all began speaking over me. They weren't talking to me, just among themselves at a loud enough volume that I could not even hear myself by the end of it. The teacher, a conservative republican herself, did nothing to stop them, instead sitting and smiling to herself. These were her people. These were her clones in miniature, and I was not even allowed to be heard in their presence.
Thanks to CoVid19, my daughter has been home for the last 2 weeks and we haven't been getting out. On the contrary, we're staying in and teaching here and there when we can because the alternative is not having money for food. Otherwise everything is great but my nerves are frazzles. My non-clone who is definitely in miniature is only six and every other minute we're having a breakdown over something I would have been able to manage if I had enough time to collect my thoughts. i no longer have that time. I have extended periods of hiding in the bathroom and listening to audiobooks, but not enough time to relax the mind and come back to the problem, and every single problem is the end of the world.
But I'm trying to take my daughter seriously and help her through these things when I can. I'm not shouting over her. I'm not ignoring her. The tantrums don't always make sense to me but I care about her feeling heard in a way that those kids, that teacher, and the old men on my facebook post just do not share. They're not my parents of course, but I consider this more an act of courtesy that I feel isn't afforded to me.
I didn't shout down the kids in the classroom and I didn't bother to engage with the old men until I had a little energy to spare, at which point I skimmed their ranting comments and supplied my own succinct one: Congrats guys. You win. I won't be sharing any more political things. I let it hang there for a couple of hours, long enough for the less endeared of the two men to untag himself from the comment, and then deleted the entire status.
What I didn't note there is that I also won't be voting. In addition to the likelihood of foreign interference in the next election, I can't be sure that my vote from abroad even gets counted anyway. There are ways to make sure your ballot is received but half of the times I have tried to vote from here have gone awry anyway, once with the ballot being returned to me, uncounted, in the mail after the election ended. It's a lot of fuss to go through to try to be heard in a situation where I won't be heard anyway.
I will not vote for Biden or Trump, not just to spite these two other old men I know on social media, but because Biden is a bad candidate and Trump is worse. My vote for Hillary didn't count for much either. I'd rather not compromise my morals this time to vote for a man who doesn't mind making young women uncomfortable in the way of a creepy uncle you're forced to sit next to during a family reunion. Being a woman who has actually been sexually assaulted, I don't dig folks in power who think women are put there as non-consensual potpourri. He's never been accused of rape the way trump has, but that does not make him a good choice. Not-A-Rapist is not the same as Good Candidate.
I was going to vote blue, no matter who. Now, I'm just not going to bother. I was informed once again that my opinions just do not matter, reminded that the things that put me off are utterly inconsequential, and I think that's enough for me to be done with the whole process. If Bernie pulls of a miracle and winds up on the ticket, I've still for months to register and apply for my ballot before any deadlines are due. Last time, I compromised and went forward with a candidate I had little faith in and it meant nothing. This time, I am at least going to have my dignity at the end, maybe.
Friday, March 13, 2020
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Belated Update
It's been just short of five months since I wrote anything here and I am sorry. I think of things to write or things I need to get out of my head, and then life happens, and instead I play hide-and-seek with my anxiety and somehow I wind up here.
Since it isn't worth your time as a reader or mine as a writer to jot down every dang thing that has happened, I'm going to do a top 5 list. Or two.
The Best 5 Things to Happen Since May
1. We all got to the states safe and sound, had a wonderful time, and got back just as safely.
2. We all enjoyed playing with my baby niece and family drama was minimal.
3. I got to do GISH with my family, which meant cosplaying with my mom, which was fantastic.
4. We've had an observation day, orientation day and interview day at Julia's potential new school (in the rich Sendai Suburb of Izumi, made of and for the fancy, which I am not) and I haven't had an anxiety attack about it. Yet. Julia seems genuinely excited about this private school and it does honestly seem like a good fit for her (not because she's fancy, but because she's outgoing and kind <and fancy>).
5. In preparation for my trip stateside, I inadvertently convinced my family to take the Mensa admissions test with me. Due to some extra drama, we almost didn't make it, but in the end we did and I got in. I paid my (half-price, for half a year) dues the other day and am considering the next 6 months my trial period with the organization. American Mensa has a large online following and many subgroups that I did not expect, including paranormal researchers and doomsday preppers. I'm going to see if I can find some smart and/or interesting friends from far away.
The Weirdest 5 Things to Happen Since May
1. I got an in-person apology from one of the women who triggered my anxiety attack last year. Maybe my departure helped them understand what little weight they had to throw around or maybe she just thought that was what she was supposed to say. It is possible she genuinely feels bad for triggering not just a terrible physical and emotional event in my life but also my immediate departure from her company. I do not know why. I do not especially care.
2. Last week, a friend from middle school unfriended me on facebook after I responded negatively to a few shared posts of hers that I found in spectacularly poor taste. One was just a transphobic article, rampantly misgendering trans-athletes that they did not have the decency to name. The other was joking about how naive the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki must have been when greeted with atomic bombs during World War II. I did respond especially negatively to the second one, though I did provide alternative reading for the first. She apparently took my comments very personally and it may have helped trigger a mental health scare. I applaud her for unfriending me. Either the mental health situation is serious and my calling her out for sharing garbage will really hurt her, which neither of us want, or she's making it up to manipulate her other liberal friend into staying by her side, in which case she should still stay away from me as I have no time for those games.
3. Today my brain mis-interpreted the back of a minivan in a partially shaded tiny parking lot (half obscured by a building) as a random guy in a large brown cardigan, sitting in a strange "man in his study smoking a pipe" sort of position.
4. I have somehow begun managing to run through dissecting traumatic past experiences and filing them away in record time. Last night, my husband and I watched show in which the plot involved a coercive sex act, and I spent a few hours remembering how much I resent some past relationships and all they stood for. It's not made better by the fact that now we're all grown up and have families and children, at least not when we still have mutual friends who praise them for their current skills at whatever it is they are doing. Not when I am still pissed off about ever having been with them. But if not for that awful relationship, I would have been less picky going forward. Also, I am very very happy that I got the chance to grow up before I had to latch myself to another person long-term. I'm actually really happy with my husband.
5. I have come to realize that despite a terrible lack of studying I have managed to come to a Japanese fluency level for average conversation being around 50%, given that they aren't intentionally using fancy words I don't know. That's not to say that I speak adult-level Japanese. I just understand more than I have any right to considering that I do. not. study. Also my husband's English is about the same level as my Japanese, but with a wider vocabulary and fancy accent.
Also, this week we survived a typhoon. It did wash out some roads and damage some areas near us, but we were fine. I did stop cooking dinner when the sound of the wind coming through our cooking vent started making me nervous. Otherwise, most things have been fine. I'm just tired. I'm always tired. We're reached the falling-asleep-watching-TV-on-the-couch-after-dinner phase of my life.
Still trying to clean my house. And edit my novels. And write a new one next month. Wish me luck?
Since it isn't worth your time as a reader or mine as a writer to jot down every dang thing that has happened, I'm going to do a top 5 list. Or two.
The Best 5 Things to Happen Since May
1. We all got to the states safe and sound, had a wonderful time, and got back just as safely.
2. We all enjoyed playing with my baby niece and family drama was minimal.
3. I got to do GISH with my family, which meant cosplaying with my mom, which was fantastic.
4. We've had an observation day, orientation day and interview day at Julia's potential new school (in the rich Sendai Suburb of Izumi, made of and for the fancy, which I am not) and I haven't had an anxiety attack about it. Yet. Julia seems genuinely excited about this private school and it does honestly seem like a good fit for her (not because she's fancy, but because she's outgoing and kind <and fancy>).
5. In preparation for my trip stateside, I inadvertently convinced my family to take the Mensa admissions test with me. Due to some extra drama, we almost didn't make it, but in the end we did and I got in. I paid my (half-price, for half a year) dues the other day and am considering the next 6 months my trial period with the organization. American Mensa has a large online following and many subgroups that I did not expect, including paranormal researchers and doomsday preppers. I'm going to see if I can find some smart and/or interesting friends from far away.
The Weirdest 5 Things to Happen Since May
1. I got an in-person apology from one of the women who triggered my anxiety attack last year. Maybe my departure helped them understand what little weight they had to throw around or maybe she just thought that was what she was supposed to say. It is possible she genuinely feels bad for triggering not just a terrible physical and emotional event in my life but also my immediate departure from her company. I do not know why. I do not especially care.
2. Last week, a friend from middle school unfriended me on facebook after I responded negatively to a few shared posts of hers that I found in spectacularly poor taste. One was just a transphobic article, rampantly misgendering trans-athletes that they did not have the decency to name. The other was joking about how naive the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki must have been when greeted with atomic bombs during World War II. I did respond especially negatively to the second one, though I did provide alternative reading for the first. She apparently took my comments very personally and it may have helped trigger a mental health scare. I applaud her for unfriending me. Either the mental health situation is serious and my calling her out for sharing garbage will really hurt her, which neither of us want, or she's making it up to manipulate her other liberal friend into staying by her side, in which case she should still stay away from me as I have no time for those games.
3. Today my brain mis-interpreted the back of a minivan in a partially shaded tiny parking lot (half obscured by a building) as a random guy in a large brown cardigan, sitting in a strange "man in his study smoking a pipe" sort of position.
4. I have somehow begun managing to run through dissecting traumatic past experiences and filing them away in record time. Last night, my husband and I watched show in which the plot involved a coercive sex act, and I spent a few hours remembering how much I resent some past relationships and all they stood for. It's not made better by the fact that now we're all grown up and have families and children, at least not when we still have mutual friends who praise them for their current skills at whatever it is they are doing. Not when I am still pissed off about ever having been with them. But if not for that awful relationship, I would have been less picky going forward. Also, I am very very happy that I got the chance to grow up before I had to latch myself to another person long-term. I'm actually really happy with my husband.
5. I have come to realize that despite a terrible lack of studying I have managed to come to a Japanese fluency level for average conversation being around 50%, given that they aren't intentionally using fancy words I don't know. That's not to say that I speak adult-level Japanese. I just understand more than I have any right to considering that I do. not. study. Also my husband's English is about the same level as my Japanese, but with a wider vocabulary and fancy accent.
Also, this week we survived a typhoon. It did wash out some roads and damage some areas near us, but we were fine. I did stop cooking dinner when the sound of the wind coming through our cooking vent started making me nervous. Otherwise, most things have been fine. I'm just tired. I'm always tired. We're reached the falling-asleep-watching-TV-on-the-couch-after-dinner phase of my life.
Still trying to clean my house. And edit my novels. And write a new one next month. Wish me luck?
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Everything I Think About Abortion
This is another post of things that keep circling around in my head and in order to not accidentally pour a whole essay into the comment on some pro-forced-birth post, I'm putting it all here. That way it's more likely to be articulate if I am forced to use it later.
I have never had an abortion and am unlikely to ever have one, but I believe firmly that they should be legal, safe, and available to anyone with a uterus.
In some states, there are exceptions for rape or incest, but this means someone who had pregnancy inflicted upon them in these ways must stand up and publicly accuse the perpetrator in order to not be forced to carry to term a pregnancy she had no choice in making. This includes anyone old enough to menstruate, which can start as early as the age of 8 in some cases. So the idea is that yes, the 8 year old carrying the fetus forced upon her by her pedophile uncle/father/neighbor/whatever must stand up and accuse said grown man of this, an act requiring courage that even grown adults frequently lack.
I want that child to be able to get an abortion. It won't be a picnic, but it will be better than letting pregnancy shift everything her brain and body could become permanently.
And if letting that girl get to retain some tiny amount of her childhood means a few grown women who enjoyed the sex they had and just don't want to have children get out of pregnancy without the hell of childbirth, I don't mind. I don't care at all. I'd rather they had the option if they so chose. There are still women who will carry their children to term and give them up for adoption and other who will put everything on hold to parent the little offspring growing inside them.
And if you're pro-forced birth, you may be thinking, "But Jessica, you have a child! How could you be pro-choice?"
And the answer is that because I am a mother, I am ardently pro-choice. Parenthood is a struggle. Sometimes it flows like magic. Sometimes it burns you to cinders. It should in no way be forced upon you. Not everyone was meant to do this job, and those who don't want to or aren't ready to surely shouldn't be forced to. Ever.
Not having forced-birth means having options, even if you're poor or broke or in an abusive relationship or whatever. Not being forced to carry anything that happens in your body for 9 months and then surrender the result to an over-crowded orphanage (for they will be in the land of forced-birth) gives the owner of the uterus options and hope.
But I'm super-religious!
Good for you. Even if so, 1)why should your religious have anything to do with how someone else lives their lives and 2) don't you believe the owner of the uterus will burn in hell for this anyway? Why not let your god have his vengeance on them later, as planned, as your faith dictates, and leave them the hell alone now? Or send thoughts and prayers, like you do for gun control.
Saying fetuses aren't people is like saying Jews aren't people. You're a Nazi!
Except no. You do know that Anne Frank wasn't hiding because she literally could not live outside of an attic, right? Pro-choice does not mean forcing abortion upon people who do not want it. It does mean allowing those who want it to have an option. Fetuses change their hosts' bodies and brains in ways that cannot be undone. Fetuses cannot be transplanted once implantation occurred. That means the ones that wind up in the Fallopian tubes must be aborted or kill their host from rupturing said tube. That means the only options are carrying it to term or removing it. Nazis weren't about options. Pro-choice is all about options. I don't want all pregnancies ended. I want people trapped in an unplanned/unwelcome/unviable/un-whatever pregnancy to have an option other than going through hell.
I am unlikely to choose abortion in the future unless there are serious and unexpected quality-of-life issues (like the fetus's brain is not contained in a skull and I would be forced to go through the hell of unmedicated childbirth in Japan just to see a genetic anomaly that literally cannot survive outside incubation) but I want every uterus-holding human in the world to have the option of safe, inexpensive abortion. Children should be wanted. Parenthood should be wanted. Neither should every be forced upon the unwilling, regardless of their "sins" otherwise.
I have never had an abortion and am unlikely to ever have one, but I believe firmly that they should be legal, safe, and available to anyone with a uterus.
In some states, there are exceptions for rape or incest, but this means someone who had pregnancy inflicted upon them in these ways must stand up and publicly accuse the perpetrator in order to not be forced to carry to term a pregnancy she had no choice in making. This includes anyone old enough to menstruate, which can start as early as the age of 8 in some cases. So the idea is that yes, the 8 year old carrying the fetus forced upon her by her pedophile uncle/father/neighbor/whatever must stand up and accuse said grown man of this, an act requiring courage that even grown adults frequently lack.
I want that child to be able to get an abortion. It won't be a picnic, but it will be better than letting pregnancy shift everything her brain and body could become permanently.
And if letting that girl get to retain some tiny amount of her childhood means a few grown women who enjoyed the sex they had and just don't want to have children get out of pregnancy without the hell of childbirth, I don't mind. I don't care at all. I'd rather they had the option if they so chose. There are still women who will carry their children to term and give them up for adoption and other who will put everything on hold to parent the little offspring growing inside them.
And if you're pro-forced birth, you may be thinking, "But Jessica, you have a child! How could you be pro-choice?"
And the answer is that because I am a mother, I am ardently pro-choice. Parenthood is a struggle. Sometimes it flows like magic. Sometimes it burns you to cinders. It should in no way be forced upon you. Not everyone was meant to do this job, and those who don't want to or aren't ready to surely shouldn't be forced to. Ever.
Not having forced-birth means having options, even if you're poor or broke or in an abusive relationship or whatever. Not being forced to carry anything that happens in your body for 9 months and then surrender the result to an over-crowded orphanage (for they will be in the land of forced-birth) gives the owner of the uterus options and hope.
But I'm super-religious!
Good for you. Even if so, 1)why should your religious have anything to do with how someone else lives their lives and 2) don't you believe the owner of the uterus will burn in hell for this anyway? Why not let your god have his vengeance on them later, as planned, as your faith dictates, and leave them the hell alone now? Or send thoughts and prayers, like you do for gun control.
Saying fetuses aren't people is like saying Jews aren't people. You're a Nazi!
Except no. You do know that Anne Frank wasn't hiding because she literally could not live outside of an attic, right? Pro-choice does not mean forcing abortion upon people who do not want it. It does mean allowing those who want it to have an option. Fetuses change their hosts' bodies and brains in ways that cannot be undone. Fetuses cannot be transplanted once implantation occurred. That means the ones that wind up in the Fallopian tubes must be aborted or kill their host from rupturing said tube. That means the only options are carrying it to term or removing it. Nazis weren't about options. Pro-choice is all about options. I don't want all pregnancies ended. I want people trapped in an unplanned/unwelcome/unviable/un-whatever pregnancy to have an option other than going through hell.
I am unlikely to choose abortion in the future unless there are serious and unexpected quality-of-life issues (like the fetus's brain is not contained in a skull and I would be forced to go through the hell of unmedicated childbirth in Japan just to see a genetic anomaly that literally cannot survive outside incubation) but I want every uterus-holding human in the world to have the option of safe, inexpensive abortion. Children should be wanted. Parenthood should be wanted. Neither should every be forced upon the unwilling, regardless of their "sins" otherwise.
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Stuff that has Happened
I do mean to write here more frequently, and usually get distracted by a dozen other things. Parenting and teaching eat a lot of energy. Suffice it to say I am surviving.
Complaints of the day:
Tuesday I noticed my appetite had vanished. This for me is a cause for alarm as it's usually the sign of a major depressive episode coming up and I don't want it. I couldn't point to any direct causes so instead I started trying to take better care of myself. It turns out teaching small children for an hour is great cardio and mental stimulation. I felt better afterward, until I got home and felt slightly nauseated for the rest of the day. That feeling dissipates now only when I am thoroughly distracted by teaching or sleeping. At least I have a job I like.
It wasn't until Wednesday night that it occurred to me that I might be anxious about my sister-in-law giving birth. I chatted with my mom, who is in the middle of the induction affair currently underway and that alone managed to calm me to the point of getting to sleep.
Being this worked up over a baby on the other side of the world in a time when I can offer nothing but text if they happen to be looking at a phone or computer isn't entirely logical but is also in its way just desserts. What exactly did my family and friends go through 5 years ago, when I was confined to Japanese hospitalized bed-rest for half the pregnancy? I didn't even get to tell them when I went into labor because I gave my purse to my mother-in-law who wouldn't have been able to a) use an app on my smartphone or b) do so in English to communicate with my family. They had to be nervous for me, too, and they had to, as I have to now, put some level of faith and trust in the decisions already made and the help they are already receiving. It's scary, but it will be okay.
I also realized two days ago that one of my back molars has partially shattered, leaving a gaping hole in the enamel that seemed to occur literally overnight. Chewing on that side isn't as painful as I would have expected and the tooth isn't stabbing into anything else, as a wisdom tooth on the other side did when I was teaching high school 11 years ago. While I know adulting for me in this position is sucking up the nausea and walking over to the dental clinic to make an appointment today, I don't think I will. Not until my niece is out and my sister-in-law is safe and well. Not until I can guarantee that this issue is anxiety and not something more contagious. Not until I know I won't accidentally vomit on the one dentist I trust in this country to do the job well, kindly, quickly, and while treating me like a person.
So today I am writing and relaxing as much as I can. Hopefully that helps distract and relax me until everything else settles down.
Other things I did recently:
During Golden Week I visited a haunted-looking abandoned amusement park with a friend and took creepy pictures for fun. I also moved all the furnishing's from Julia's then-bedroom (former nursery/tatami room) to her new bedroom, and moved everything from that "spare" room into the tatami room. With the last day of Japan's week-long holiday, Tomo, Julia and I went to Yamagata where we climbed the 1,050 steps of Yamadera (a temple on a mountain) and I saw wild Japanese monkeys for the first time in my nearly 11 years here. Then we went to Lina World, a tiny amusement park that was practically vacant and therefor a lot of fun. No lines, lots of little rides that Julia could enjoy, even a 2 story Hello-Kitty-themed carousel that was playing an orchestration of a Gackt song.
So we had a good break, and things have been mostly well, aside from the anxiety and nausea and all that.
Complaints of the day:
Tuesday I noticed my appetite had vanished. This for me is a cause for alarm as it's usually the sign of a major depressive episode coming up and I don't want it. I couldn't point to any direct causes so instead I started trying to take better care of myself. It turns out teaching small children for an hour is great cardio and mental stimulation. I felt better afterward, until I got home and felt slightly nauseated for the rest of the day. That feeling dissipates now only when I am thoroughly distracted by teaching or sleeping. At least I have a job I like.
It wasn't until Wednesday night that it occurred to me that I might be anxious about my sister-in-law giving birth. I chatted with my mom, who is in the middle of the induction affair currently underway and that alone managed to calm me to the point of getting to sleep.
Being this worked up over a baby on the other side of the world in a time when I can offer nothing but text if they happen to be looking at a phone or computer isn't entirely logical but is also in its way just desserts. What exactly did my family and friends go through 5 years ago, when I was confined to Japanese hospitalized bed-rest for half the pregnancy? I didn't even get to tell them when I went into labor because I gave my purse to my mother-in-law who wouldn't have been able to a) use an app on my smartphone or b) do so in English to communicate with my family. They had to be nervous for me, too, and they had to, as I have to now, put some level of faith and trust in the decisions already made and the help they are already receiving. It's scary, but it will be okay.
I also realized two days ago that one of my back molars has partially shattered, leaving a gaping hole in the enamel that seemed to occur literally overnight. Chewing on that side isn't as painful as I would have expected and the tooth isn't stabbing into anything else, as a wisdom tooth on the other side did when I was teaching high school 11 years ago. While I know adulting for me in this position is sucking up the nausea and walking over to the dental clinic to make an appointment today, I don't think I will. Not until my niece is out and my sister-in-law is safe and well. Not until I can guarantee that this issue is anxiety and not something more contagious. Not until I know I won't accidentally vomit on the one dentist I trust in this country to do the job well, kindly, quickly, and while treating me like a person.
So today I am writing and relaxing as much as I can. Hopefully that helps distract and relax me until everything else settles down.
Other things I did recently:
During Golden Week I visited a haunted-looking abandoned amusement park with a friend and took creepy pictures for fun. I also moved all the furnishing's from Julia's then-bedroom (former nursery/tatami room) to her new bedroom, and moved everything from that "spare" room into the tatami room. With the last day of Japan's week-long holiday, Tomo, Julia and I went to Yamagata where we climbed the 1,050 steps of Yamadera (a temple on a mountain) and I saw wild Japanese monkeys for the first time in my nearly 11 years here. Then we went to Lina World, a tiny amusement park that was practically vacant and therefor a lot of fun. No lines, lots of little rides that Julia could enjoy, even a 2 story Hello-Kitty-themed carousel that was playing an orchestration of a Gackt song.
So we had a good break, and things have been mostly well, aside from the anxiety and nausea and all that.
Monday, March 18, 2019
Long Time No See
Sorry for the several-month hiatus.
I am okay. Solidly okay right now. My mental health is well enough that I can look back at the last few months and appreciate the difference between the two. February always hits me hard. It's the tail end of a season I've never been fully prepared for and despite planning and prepping for more this past season than any winter before, I still had some hard moments, but briefer this time, and I had ammunition to fight back.
I've been playing a lot of Skyrim. I know. I am late to every game. I like it that way. My daughter and I always beat Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime the other day. On easy mode. She's five. It was a surprising amount of fun and we both learned a little more about not panicking when things are scary.
Her 2-3 week long spring break is about to begin.
Today we bought tickets for our America trip in summer this year, a previously unexpected voyage to visit my mom, brother, sister-in-law, and tiny little niece who is expected to be joining us in the breathing world here in about 2 months. My mom is betting on sooner, but there's no telling. My dad will also be joining us for the festivities and was the one generous enough to ensure our ability to come. There is no way we could afford those tickets otherwise.
Now the little one is preparing popcorn so we can play video games. It's going to be a fun afternoon.
I am trying to take things as they come and actually enjoy a little more instead of forcing myself to do as much as I can in the hopes of feeling worthy of having time off. Instead, I'm having my time while I can. Soon my kid will eat all of it. At least for a few weeks.
I am okay. Solidly okay right now. My mental health is well enough that I can look back at the last few months and appreciate the difference between the two. February always hits me hard. It's the tail end of a season I've never been fully prepared for and despite planning and prepping for more this past season than any winter before, I still had some hard moments, but briefer this time, and I had ammunition to fight back.
I've been playing a lot of Skyrim. I know. I am late to every game. I like it that way. My daughter and I always beat Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime the other day. On easy mode. She's five. It was a surprising amount of fun and we both learned a little more about not panicking when things are scary.
Her 2-3 week long spring break is about to begin.
Today we bought tickets for our America trip in summer this year, a previously unexpected voyage to visit my mom, brother, sister-in-law, and tiny little niece who is expected to be joining us in the breathing world here in about 2 months. My mom is betting on sooner, but there's no telling. My dad will also be joining us for the festivities and was the one generous enough to ensure our ability to come. There is no way we could afford those tickets otherwise.
Now the little one is preparing popcorn so we can play video games. It's going to be a fun afternoon.
I am trying to take things as they come and actually enjoy a little more instead of forcing myself to do as much as I can in the hopes of feeling worthy of having time off. Instead, I'm having my time while I can. Soon my kid will eat all of it. At least for a few weeks.
Thursday, November 1, 2018
I Survived October. Now Nano
October was challenging, guys. Not every hour of every day, but overall, pretty damned challenging.
While I should have been working on Halloween Party things like costumes and fun, I was instead having an anxiety attack some of my least-favorite my part-time employers pushed me into and were shocked to find that I wasn't willing to call them back afterward. I waited a few days and quit the job. it only happened 9 times a year anyway. As much as I love teaching little people, if having to work with the people to teach the class leaves me too wounded to care for my own little person, it just isn't worth it.
So I am doing my other jobs and enjoying them. I've been more sensitive to stress since the anxiety attack though and I didn't realize how stressful living here is.
It's great, too. Don't get me wrong. I am all about the free health care for my kid and fantastic gun control. I love not wondering if some unstable person murdered my husband on his way home.
But I am more aware of the staring these days, and of the pressure to fit into molds that were not built for me. I can't clean this home perfectly nor speak this language well. I can't read the forms that come home from my daughter's school nor all the instructions on any of the seasoning packets. There's a lot I don't know, but I am always learning something new and I am actually excited about things like making art, so I'm just going to keep going and it is going to be okay.
I'm excited/terrified for the election this week. There's a pop song on the airwaves in Japan these days that goes like this:
And my brain keeps making up new lyrics.
C'mon baby America. Choose something other than fascism.
In other news, I am making the executive decision not to try to host/set up a write-in this year for NaNoWriMo as just getting the first day's words into my computer (while my daughter watched Umizoomi loudly in the same room) exhausted me to a point that I fell asleep while typing...and kept typing. I have no idea what this book is going to look like in the long run and I don't think I did enough researching but I'll be damned if I read more about skinwalkers now.
The sad thing is that there are 3 people interested in trying to have a get together near Sendai, but one only wants to do it on Thursday evenings, an hour's train ride from where I live. It isn't doable with a five-year-old. The other two want to meet up on the weekend, but the first one hasn't responded to those requests.
But this isn't something I can master. All these people seem to be young, single and childless. Free time is their thing. I got nothing there.
In addition, a surprise trip from one of my high school friends is happening in about 2 weeks, so I've got enough going on.
But I did get my word count for today, so yay!!
While I should have been working on Halloween Party things like costumes and fun, I was instead having an anxiety attack some of my least-favorite my part-time employers pushed me into and were shocked to find that I wasn't willing to call them back afterward. I waited a few days and quit the job. it only happened 9 times a year anyway. As much as I love teaching little people, if having to work with the people to teach the class leaves me too wounded to care for my own little person, it just isn't worth it.
So I am doing my other jobs and enjoying them. I've been more sensitive to stress since the anxiety attack though and I didn't realize how stressful living here is.
It's great, too. Don't get me wrong. I am all about the free health care for my kid and fantastic gun control. I love not wondering if some unstable person murdered my husband on his way home.
But I am more aware of the staring these days, and of the pressure to fit into molds that were not built for me. I can't clean this home perfectly nor speak this language well. I can't read the forms that come home from my daughter's school nor all the instructions on any of the seasoning packets. There's a lot I don't know, but I am always learning something new and I am actually excited about things like making art, so I'm just going to keep going and it is going to be okay.
I'm excited/terrified for the election this week. There's a pop song on the airwaves in Japan these days that goes like this:
And my brain keeps making up new lyrics.
C'mon baby America. Choose something other than fascism.
In other news, I am making the executive decision not to try to host/set up a write-in this year for NaNoWriMo as just getting the first day's words into my computer (while my daughter watched Umizoomi loudly in the same room) exhausted me to a point that I fell asleep while typing...and kept typing. I have no idea what this book is going to look like in the long run and I don't think I did enough researching but I'll be damned if I read more about skinwalkers now.
The sad thing is that there are 3 people interested in trying to have a get together near Sendai, but one only wants to do it on Thursday evenings, an hour's train ride from where I live. It isn't doable with a five-year-old. The other two want to meet up on the weekend, but the first one hasn't responded to those requests.
But this isn't something I can master. All these people seem to be young, single and childless. Free time is their thing. I got nothing there.
In addition, a surprise trip from one of my high school friends is happening in about 2 weeks, so I've got enough going on.
But I did get my word count for today, so yay!!
Saturday, September 8, 2018
All of the September Things from This Week
September! Yay! Temperatures are starting to ease up. The problem with summer up here isn't the heat (it barely hits the 80s!) but the humidity, which makes anything over 70 feel like you might be trapped on the underside of a dead animal decomposing in the bright sunlight.
No really, that is how it makes me feel. I realized in Michigan that the humidity is why my hair is always in a pony tail now. It used to fly free almost always, but this is not doable when a walk from my front door to the elevator of my building causes neck sweat.
We got a great mattress pad after I found out how badly we needed one, and now I just never want to get up. I do, because someone has to and giving everyone else a chance to wake up on their own means my kid misses school, my husband misses work, and I'll have to do some stupid thing to balance the household finances like going back to full-time teaching which at this point would be soul crushing.
Don't get me wrong, I like teaching an I like my students. I specifically like the control I get to have over the situation. If a student and I don't get on, we don't have to. Waiting for people to ignore me because it's better for the company at large is not the name of the game anymore and I am really okay with that not being my life again anytime soon.
I recently realized that one of the reasons I was so unhappy with my in-laws' choice to chop off all my daughter's hair is based on being harassed in public school with I was a six-year-old girl that no one knew with short hair and boys hand-me-downs from my older brother and even older cousins. The girls in that elementary school thought opening the stall door on what must have been a boy was completely excusable. So yeah, on some level deep down, they not only lopped off one of the very few traits that was obviously from me but also made her more vulnerable to the embarrassment I suffered as a kid.
That said, it doesn't really matter. My kid likes her hair short, mostly because grandma likes it, and maybe someday I'll find a tactful way of letting my mother-in-law know that she helped to trigger a fairly major depressive episode, but for now, none of it matters enough.
Last night, my daughter said she was sick and asked for a forehead cooling sheet, which is a weird Japanese thing. Here, they fight fever with ice, which always makes me less comfortable when sick but whatever. Her fever was low-grade so we went to bed and when we woke up, she was a lot hotter. Luckily, since they are also parents, my bosses for today's classes understood why I needed to cancel lessons. We went to the hospital, got seen to by a doctor, got medicine for the next five days next door, and did not even have to pay for parking.
The rest of the day was split between sleeping and trying to get my kid to eat and take medicine. She's better at the later than the former.
I'm not entirely sure if I'm exhausted or depressed. More likely exhausted, but who knows. I just need this kid to get well so that she can enjoy school this week and I don't have to cancel more classes during the final weeks heading up to my first decent paycheck since we left for Michigan.
The most exciting thing that I can talk about publicly that happened recently was a woman in one of my facebook groups asking broadly about a framed piece of calligraphy she had found. Was it Chinese? Japanese? What did it mean?
It looked...complicated. 4 characters, two of them each easily more than 20 strokes, and only one of them really recognizable to me. So I took apart the stroke order for the least understandable one and entered it into a dictionary, finding out quickly that it was a character of traditional Chinese that had been replaced and simplified in the 1930s. I went on to look up the remaining characters and by googling the lot together found the text the framed excerpt had been taken from. It was the poem Summer Breeze by the eighth emperor of the Song Dynasty, who was known more as a poet and artist than a politician. He abdicated and his progeny lost the dynasty, but he's still known as having been great with calligraphy. The excerpt was taken by someone who didn't really know what they were looking at, so they chose a few pretty or interesting looking characters, not unlike someone quoting Shakespeare in a tapestry by choosing any 4 words that happen to be in a line together and look nice. Only if you did that in Latin, since traditional Chinese is to simplified Chinese as Latin is to English.
(See Dr. Worthing? I remembered something!)
((Oh yeah, that TCU education is really coming in handy these days.))
The characters wound up reading, according to the work of an awesome history-enthusiast and calligraphy geek, something along the lines of "Lost along the fragrant path, fluttering" which is a weird bit of writing to have in your home without any context, but unless you invite lots of Chinese scholars to dinner, it's more likely that no one will ever be the wiser. Just pretty words in a frame. Just strokes of black on gold.
I do almost want to print and frame this bit now, as a trophy regarding the brain work necessary to decode the message of strange, old characters. But where to put it? Being lost and fluttering with fragrance cannot go down in or near my bathroom. It wouldn't look bad in the hallway though...
That was such a fun puzzle to solve and I was so lucky that there was a blog post by Hyatt Carter about the original poem scroll in its connection to the greater works of the poet-emperor.
But now I have been awake for too long so at least I have some confirmation for mood. I still might be depressed, or not, but I am definitely exhausted.
Yay! Time to go back to bed!
No really, that is how it makes me feel. I realized in Michigan that the humidity is why my hair is always in a pony tail now. It used to fly free almost always, but this is not doable when a walk from my front door to the elevator of my building causes neck sweat.
We got a great mattress pad after I found out how badly we needed one, and now I just never want to get up. I do, because someone has to and giving everyone else a chance to wake up on their own means my kid misses school, my husband misses work, and I'll have to do some stupid thing to balance the household finances like going back to full-time teaching which at this point would be soul crushing.
Don't get me wrong, I like teaching an I like my students. I specifically like the control I get to have over the situation. If a student and I don't get on, we don't have to. Waiting for people to ignore me because it's better for the company at large is not the name of the game anymore and I am really okay with that not being my life again anytime soon.
I recently realized that one of the reasons I was so unhappy with my in-laws' choice to chop off all my daughter's hair is based on being harassed in public school with I was a six-year-old girl that no one knew with short hair and boys hand-me-downs from my older brother and even older cousins. The girls in that elementary school thought opening the stall door on what must have been a boy was completely excusable. So yeah, on some level deep down, they not only lopped off one of the very few traits that was obviously from me but also made her more vulnerable to the embarrassment I suffered as a kid.
That said, it doesn't really matter. My kid likes her hair short, mostly because grandma likes it, and maybe someday I'll find a tactful way of letting my mother-in-law know that she helped to trigger a fairly major depressive episode, but for now, none of it matters enough.
Last night, my daughter said she was sick and asked for a forehead cooling sheet, which is a weird Japanese thing. Here, they fight fever with ice, which always makes me less comfortable when sick but whatever. Her fever was low-grade so we went to bed and when we woke up, she was a lot hotter. Luckily, since they are also parents, my bosses for today's classes understood why I needed to cancel lessons. We went to the hospital, got seen to by a doctor, got medicine for the next five days next door, and did not even have to pay for parking.
The rest of the day was split between sleeping and trying to get my kid to eat and take medicine. She's better at the later than the former.
I'm not entirely sure if I'm exhausted or depressed. More likely exhausted, but who knows. I just need this kid to get well so that she can enjoy school this week and I don't have to cancel more classes during the final weeks heading up to my first decent paycheck since we left for Michigan.
The most exciting thing that I can talk about publicly that happened recently was a woman in one of my facebook groups asking broadly about a framed piece of calligraphy she had found. Was it Chinese? Japanese? What did it mean?
It looked...complicated. 4 characters, two of them each easily more than 20 strokes, and only one of them really recognizable to me. So I took apart the stroke order for the least understandable one and entered it into a dictionary, finding out quickly that it was a character of traditional Chinese that had been replaced and simplified in the 1930s. I went on to look up the remaining characters and by googling the lot together found the text the framed excerpt had been taken from. It was the poem Summer Breeze by the eighth emperor of the Song Dynasty, who was known more as a poet and artist than a politician. He abdicated and his progeny lost the dynasty, but he's still known as having been great with calligraphy. The excerpt was taken by someone who didn't really know what they were looking at, so they chose a few pretty or interesting looking characters, not unlike someone quoting Shakespeare in a tapestry by choosing any 4 words that happen to be in a line together and look nice. Only if you did that in Latin, since traditional Chinese is to simplified Chinese as Latin is to English.
(See Dr. Worthing? I remembered something!)
((Oh yeah, that TCU education is really coming in handy these days.))
The characters wound up reading, according to the work of an awesome history-enthusiast and calligraphy geek, something along the lines of "Lost along the fragrant path, fluttering" which is a weird bit of writing to have in your home without any context, but unless you invite lots of Chinese scholars to dinner, it's more likely that no one will ever be the wiser. Just pretty words in a frame. Just strokes of black on gold.
I do almost want to print and frame this bit now, as a trophy regarding the brain work necessary to decode the message of strange, old characters. But where to put it? Being lost and fluttering with fragrance cannot go down in or near my bathroom. It wouldn't look bad in the hallway though...
That was such a fun puzzle to solve and I was so lucky that there was a blog post by Hyatt Carter about the original poem scroll in its connection to the greater works of the poet-emperor.
But now I have been awake for too long so at least I have some confirmation for mood. I still might be depressed, or not, but I am definitely exhausted.
Yay! Time to go back to bed!
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