This is my fifth year doing the GISHWHES, this year known only as GISH: the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt. It's an awesome, amazing fun time. It's also a little stressful and chaotic as everyone tries their best to make something out of the one-week-long, 200+ item scavenger-hunt-a-palooza.
And I have exhausted my friends' list. Even with the couple of relatives that should be signing up in the next few days, we'll only have 7. Minimum group size is 9, and as much as I hated my first year doing GISH with resentful, angry strangers, it looks like I am back to that state of waiting for the GISH gnomes to grant us some random weirdos who may or may not choose to participate at all.
Is that better than known people who choose not to participate at all?
I have no idea, but anything is better than the stress of trying to get more people interested. I think there are more reasons to be bogged down this year comparing to years before, and more reasons to be semi-permanently exhausted. At least that's what I am shouting back over my natural paranoia, which is running through its thousandth chorus of hateful-schoolyard-brat singing: "No one wants to play with you."
So, if you read this and think: what is that GISH thing? Would I maybe like to participate?
Here's the info:
1. Entry fee is about $20, excess to running costs paid to Random Acts charity.
2. List items include the wacky, the wild, the kind, the fun. Not everything is fun for everyone. That's why there's 200 items. If you look through an old list and can find 3-5 things you could easily do and would want to do within a few days using materials you have or people you know, you should sign up.
3. Item submissions take the form of photos or videos you shoot, edit if necessary (but there are rules on the usage of Photoshop) and upload, now to the app unless otherwise stated in the item. Some things wind up on social media as part of the task but otherwise nothing gets shared publicly until after the end of the hunt. Videos usually go to Youtube, unlisted or public.
4. It's a lot of fun. You should try it.
5. Winning team gets a trip to New Zealand. We're not going to win. We're going to enjoy ourselves. But if you look at the lists of old and only shake your head, perhaps it's not your game.
6. But really, try it out.
Sunday, July 1, 2018
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
Mental State Much Improved: Thank You!
This is a bit of a shout out to anyone who messaged, replied, commented or liked my post from last week when I was in the middle of a new eating crisis.
I am fine now, by the way. I am taking it a little easier on myself and encouraging myself to at least have a protein shake or piece of fruit at meal times, even if I am not especially hungry or enthusiastic. I realize that, as a 200 pound, 5.5 foot woman, I am not what most would call an ideal weight, but I think my current shape, while a bit flabby, is manageable. Starving myself (literally) to cause thin-ness is more likely to have dire ramifications later in life. I am not currently in a state of morbid obesity and even if I was, just not eating for days is not a healthy answer.
The thing is that this eating issue I have isn't really usually driven by the need to be thin. My senior year of high school was not plagued by my own fatness. I was quite thin and what US society considered a healthy shape. I also did not enjoy the consumption of food. Not because I would gain weight but because it gave me no joy. Even things I liked to eat didn't make me happy. When eating is joyless, life is a bit sad, but up to that point, that was all I had known.
Last week, I got a couple of days off with my husband, during which we both relaxed and regrouped and I remembered how I came to be overweight. Something about him, and don't ask em what because I do not care to identify it, makes me feel calm in such a way that my stomach ceases to rumble and my appetite awakens. When we started dating, I suddenly realized that I could eat all of the food. So I did. And now I am a bit on the heavy and less-firm side of things, but this is survivable.
That's part of what worries me when my appetite disappears though. Is this a warning sign of impending depression? Is it just nerves? What am I so nervous about anyway? What has changed to cause this? And worrying about the answers to these questions causes more tension that drives the appetite further away and suddenly I am skipping 4 meals in 2 days. So...yes. I am choosing life today. And it's an easier choice today than it was last week.
Depression the way it works in my head is sometimes like someone's controlling all the color in the world with a dimmer switch. When it kicks into high gear, the world is a dismal grey-scale and numbness overwhelms. When things are okay, it can still get toggled slightly, but being aware that the switch is in play helps me to fight back against that instead of just watching everything fade away and then wondering where it went.
I am not currently suffering though. I am working on self-care and making better choices for myself and my mental health.
In other news, part of my brain is totally ready to get started on having another baby. The rest of my life? Not so much. We don't have the money saved to offset me being out of work for about a year (at least 6 months of stupid cervix bed-rest and the rest of tiny baby time). Nor do we have a clean house, nor any of my books, edited and ready to be sent toward publication. All the goals I had for Julia's first year of school and my first year of getting to work on the house are shot, but hey, I am still doing this living thing, and that is a hell of a lot better than it could be.
I am fine now, by the way. I am taking it a little easier on myself and encouraging myself to at least have a protein shake or piece of fruit at meal times, even if I am not especially hungry or enthusiastic. I realize that, as a 200 pound, 5.5 foot woman, I am not what most would call an ideal weight, but I think my current shape, while a bit flabby, is manageable. Starving myself (literally) to cause thin-ness is more likely to have dire ramifications later in life. I am not currently in a state of morbid obesity and even if I was, just not eating for days is not a healthy answer.
The thing is that this eating issue I have isn't really usually driven by the need to be thin. My senior year of high school was not plagued by my own fatness. I was quite thin and what US society considered a healthy shape. I also did not enjoy the consumption of food. Not because I would gain weight but because it gave me no joy. Even things I liked to eat didn't make me happy. When eating is joyless, life is a bit sad, but up to that point, that was all I had known.
Last week, I got a couple of days off with my husband, during which we both relaxed and regrouped and I remembered how I came to be overweight. Something about him, and don't ask em what because I do not care to identify it, makes me feel calm in such a way that my stomach ceases to rumble and my appetite awakens. When we started dating, I suddenly realized that I could eat all of the food. So I did. And now I am a bit on the heavy and less-firm side of things, but this is survivable.
That's part of what worries me when my appetite disappears though. Is this a warning sign of impending depression? Is it just nerves? What am I so nervous about anyway? What has changed to cause this? And worrying about the answers to these questions causes more tension that drives the appetite further away and suddenly I am skipping 4 meals in 2 days. So...yes. I am choosing life today. And it's an easier choice today than it was last week.
Depression the way it works in my head is sometimes like someone's controlling all the color in the world with a dimmer switch. When it kicks into high gear, the world is a dismal grey-scale and numbness overwhelms. When things are okay, it can still get toggled slightly, but being aware that the switch is in play helps me to fight back against that instead of just watching everything fade away and then wondering where it went.
I am not currently suffering though. I am working on self-care and making better choices for myself and my mental health.
In other news, part of my brain is totally ready to get started on having another baby. The rest of my life? Not so much. We don't have the money saved to offset me being out of work for about a year (at least 6 months of stupid cervix bed-rest and the rest of tiny baby time). Nor do we have a clean house, nor any of my books, edited and ready to be sent toward publication. All the goals I had for Julia's first year of school and my first year of getting to work on the house are shot, but hey, I am still doing this living thing, and that is a hell of a lot better than it could be.
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Mental-State: No Food, Just Sleep
I'll be honest. I'm having a rough week. It's not a direct causal thing, not even really a lot of little things either. Just stuff. Just me. Just muck.
My appetite is gone. I actually do not care about eating. Hunger pains are fleeting nuisances that I can't be bothered to handle properly. It's not as severe as it was when I was in my late teens and the intensity of my stress destroyed all appetite and induced nausea. I'm not feeling like eating, and I am not forcing myself to eat, but I am also not feeling like I might vomit, so I guess that's good? Better than it could be.
This is the first time in ten years I have completely lost enthusiasm for food of any kind outside of physical illness. Even if I'm skipping meals, I am still eating popcorn and other snacks with my daughter in the afternoon, and I am not a small woman, so it's not as if I'll waste away anytime soon.
I had half a mind to post this on twitter as: "I just discovered this new diet-- Depression!" but thought it might be too glib.
Still it isn't a good sign, I know that, and it's usually something I would keep to myself and suffer through alone, but I think I have a good enough, respectful enough support network these days to hear it, be concerned, know to be careful with me, but not force feed me or try to take the place of a savior. I do not need that. I have had those friends/frenemies before, the ones who are so insecure that they see any weakness of mine as an opportunity to force help upon me, but without any regard for my personal needs, wants, or comfort. I may be a mentally ill person, but I am still a person.
So I am still alive. I haven't felt this drained in months and haven't had these depression symptoms since high school, but I am okay. I am still here. Luckily I have 10 years worth of eating more than necessary than balance things out for however long this specific thing lasts.
In the meantime, I am going to run self-care via sleep because it is something the rest of me actually wants to do.
I really need to write more, clean more, do more, be more...and instead I think I am just going to sleep. It is what I can do.
Until next time, here I am on the far side of the world, continuing to exist.
My appetite is gone. I actually do not care about eating. Hunger pains are fleeting nuisances that I can't be bothered to handle properly. It's not as severe as it was when I was in my late teens and the intensity of my stress destroyed all appetite and induced nausea. I'm not feeling like eating, and I am not forcing myself to eat, but I am also not feeling like I might vomit, so I guess that's good? Better than it could be.
This is the first time in ten years I have completely lost enthusiasm for food of any kind outside of physical illness. Even if I'm skipping meals, I am still eating popcorn and other snacks with my daughter in the afternoon, and I am not a small woman, so it's not as if I'll waste away anytime soon.
I had half a mind to post this on twitter as: "I just discovered this new diet-- Depression!" but thought it might be too glib.
Still it isn't a good sign, I know that, and it's usually something I would keep to myself and suffer through alone, but I think I have a good enough, respectful enough support network these days to hear it, be concerned, know to be careful with me, but not force feed me or try to take the place of a savior. I do not need that. I have had those friends/frenemies before, the ones who are so insecure that they see any weakness of mine as an opportunity to force help upon me, but without any regard for my personal needs, wants, or comfort. I may be a mentally ill person, but I am still a person.
So I am still alive. I haven't felt this drained in months and haven't had these depression symptoms since high school, but I am okay. I am still here. Luckily I have 10 years worth of eating more than necessary than balance things out for however long this specific thing lasts.
In the meantime, I am going to run self-care via sleep because it is something the rest of me actually wants to do.
I really need to write more, clean more, do more, be more...and instead I think I am just going to sleep. It is what I can do.
Until next time, here I am on the far side of the world, continuing to exist.
Sunday, April 8, 2018
Clumsy, Etc.
Two blog posts in one day? What is going on with me?
I know. It's weird, but my brain wants things to be known, so I'm letting things be known.
So I was listening to Clumsy by Our Lady Peace in honor of today being the 21st anniversary of its release, and lots of things made sense to me in ways that they didn't when I was younger and listening to the song and memorizing every frame of the music video and such.
Now I know several things I didn't know then. 1) I am not attracted to many people, so when I am attracted to people, I am not great at discerning their actual talents. For instance, I am aware that David Tennant is likely a fine actor. I can't tell you for sure. I just know he's terribly attractive.
As such, several lines from these songs that were just words from Canadian rock stars when I was 14 are now more...startling? I want to tell my pubescent self that some guy singing, "I'm watching you!" loudly in a video that closes up on his huge eyes at the same time is a bit creepy. You should be a little creeped out, girl-person. The words and images are important.
2) I know that you cannot save everyone. You can't really save anyone, but you can provide outside assistance and counsel. Bottom line, you can't fight the battle for them. In the song, the main refrain starts with, "I'll be waving my hand, watching you drown..." which I heard many times explained as one of these moments when you have to watch someone battle one of these things you can't fight for them, so you stand by and wave, letting them know you support them as much as you can. I didn't really get it then, and that line stood out as something I wasn't quite sure of before. The complexity of these situations escaped me, and the fine details have only recently become fully formed for me. Sometimes, you can only wave.
And sometimes people are clumsy-- clumsy with words, with situations and such. Anyone who knew my teenage variation would immediately remind me of the thousand or so things that got simplified incorrectly in my head before they came out of my mouth dead-wrong. More embarrassing than pain-inducing, but regrettable all the same.
I've recently, after a poorly worded altercation, come to a certain conclusion. I endure to be kind, accurate, or both as much as possible in my words and to some degree I expect the same. I know some of my friends will be more accurate than kind, and occasionally neither but very rarely or I wouldn't call them friends. When someone chooses to be neither, I choose not to be around them.
But maybe I should be more forgiving. Sometimes. We can all be clumsy sometimes.
I know. It's weird, but my brain wants things to be known, so I'm letting things be known.
So I was listening to Clumsy by Our Lady Peace in honor of today being the 21st anniversary of its release, and lots of things made sense to me in ways that they didn't when I was younger and listening to the song and memorizing every frame of the music video and such.
Now I know several things I didn't know then. 1) I am not attracted to many people, so when I am attracted to people, I am not great at discerning their actual talents. For instance, I am aware that David Tennant is likely a fine actor. I can't tell you for sure. I just know he's terribly attractive.
As such, several lines from these songs that were just words from Canadian rock stars when I was 14 are now more...startling? I want to tell my pubescent self that some guy singing, "I'm watching you!" loudly in a video that closes up on his huge eyes at the same time is a bit creepy. You should be a little creeped out, girl-person. The words and images are important.
2) I know that you cannot save everyone. You can't really save anyone, but you can provide outside assistance and counsel. Bottom line, you can't fight the battle for them. In the song, the main refrain starts with, "I'll be waving my hand, watching you drown..." which I heard many times explained as one of these moments when you have to watch someone battle one of these things you can't fight for them, so you stand by and wave, letting them know you support them as much as you can. I didn't really get it then, and that line stood out as something I wasn't quite sure of before. The complexity of these situations escaped me, and the fine details have only recently become fully formed for me. Sometimes, you can only wave.
And sometimes people are clumsy-- clumsy with words, with situations and such. Anyone who knew my teenage variation would immediately remind me of the thousand or so things that got simplified incorrectly in my head before they came out of my mouth dead-wrong. More embarrassing than pain-inducing, but regrettable all the same.
I've recently, after a poorly worded altercation, come to a certain conclusion. I endure to be kind, accurate, or both as much as possible in my words and to some degree I expect the same. I know some of my friends will be more accurate than kind, and occasionally neither but very rarely or I wouldn't call them friends. When someone chooses to be neither, I choose not to be around them.
But maybe I should be more forgiving. Sometimes. We can all be clumsy sometimes.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Ready for the End of Spring Break
There are about a million things I need to do right now, mostly having to do with cleaning my house so my friend can come crash on my couch for a few days without feeling terribly uncomfortable. The up side? This is someone I've known for almost a decade, and she's lived in japan before (it's where we met) and we talk weekly, so she has some idea what's really going on in my life and brain.
The down side? I still have a lot of little cleaning to do and Julia is uniquely skilled at destroying it, and my sense of calm, and the last of my patience. Yay for school.
I do love my kid. I also need a little me time to be the mom I want to be and didn't get a lot of that during her 2 week vacay.
One thing I love to pieces right now is the social norm of kids her age going to school in Japan. I have a feeling that, if we were doing this whole little family thing in my homeland, I would feel social pressure from every person I encounter regarding something I may be doing wrong. If she's home with me, I'm a drain on the economy for not going back to work, and I'm wasting my abilities and life away being a stay at home layabout instead of a contributing member of society. If she's in daycare, I'm a horrible parent who did not put my family first, and maybe they're all child molesters or abusive or whatever and I'm paying to let them to have access to my kid. Either way, a parent is somehow wrong. There is no right answer accept the right answer for you and your family. I know that, but it is easier to know that without people talking at me.
Here, kids usually go to daycare or kindergarten around age 3. Some moms go back to work. Others don't. Many engage in the full-time job that it is to maintain a Japanese home. I don't. Some go back to work earlier and there are daycare centers that accept kids as young as 6 months old. It's not as normal here for moms to work at all, but it is becoming more normal. I chose to stay home with my kid and work part time as a means of making ends meet, so I guess on some level I am comfortable here because my choices fit in somewhat with the societal standards.
Really, I like living here because I am an automatic outcast and don't have to try to fit in. I don't feel compelled to listen to someone enthusiastically lecture me about Jesus in a Walmart parking lot because I am not quite irritated enough to scream at them or storm off. No one thinks I'm just as "normal" as they are here, in whatever that means to them. The standard "normal" for someone who looked like me in Texas when I was young involved a lot of labels I do not subscribe to and drove a lot of my adolescent pretentiousness into overdrive, trying to find the most effective ways of showing them before they talk to me that maybe they should not bother, but doing it in such a way to not provoke worse or put myself in a position of constant discomfort. I failed at all of that, mind you, but I tried.
Here it is different. They do not know what to make of me. I'm alright with that. At least they are quiet about it.
So I don't get too-friendly advice from everyone-under-the-sun regarding my child-rearing or our choice of school, though a neighbor was surprised that we weren't sending out little one to the Catholic kindergarten in town (long story short: Buddhism is normal and I'm more than okay with that ) and weirdly this schooling thing wound up being the way we got the one confrontational religious group to leave me alone. I cannot remember what they were now, but it wasn't the Mormons, though they shared a fear of medicine. One lady from the group kept happening upon me in town and talking at me, and I was the same as I was back home, only with less confidence in my verbiage and without a way to accurately express my thoughts in a way I found satisfactory. So I smiled and nodded and ran away. That was all that happened, literally over the course of years, with the woman calling me by a number of western names, a different one every time she saw me, and once running into me at my apartment lobby, which was the most terrifying.
Then the most amazing thing happened. She ran into me shortly before Julia started school and asked what day care we had chosen (since obviously no one following her cult-like pseudo-Christianity would be able to tolerate Catholic or Buddhist kindergartens) and recoiled when I told her the name of the school we had chosen. "But it's Buddhist!"
"Yes, I know."
And that was the end of that.
So maybe the rest of the society still has the same judgmental ideas that I'm hiding from and it is only that I am not engaging with it. Maybe that's all of it. I don't know but I also do not have more time to worry about it today.
I'm currently listening to A Handmaid's Tale. I'm almost done. I really want to finish it. An emotional book, and a good adult-level vacation from the chaotic child-land of the vacay living room.
Also kinda scary. Not great to pair with Malala unless you're wanting to freak out over the modern state of American politics and what it could mean for our future generations for a while. I guess you could get the same effect by watching any major news channel these days, though.
The down side? I still have a lot of little cleaning to do and Julia is uniquely skilled at destroying it, and my sense of calm, and the last of my patience. Yay for school.
I do love my kid. I also need a little me time to be the mom I want to be and didn't get a lot of that during her 2 week vacay.
One thing I love to pieces right now is the social norm of kids her age going to school in Japan. I have a feeling that, if we were doing this whole little family thing in my homeland, I would feel social pressure from every person I encounter regarding something I may be doing wrong. If she's home with me, I'm a drain on the economy for not going back to work, and I'm wasting my abilities and life away being a stay at home layabout instead of a contributing member of society. If she's in daycare, I'm a horrible parent who did not put my family first, and maybe they're all child molesters or abusive or whatever and I'm paying to let them to have access to my kid. Either way, a parent is somehow wrong. There is no right answer accept the right answer for you and your family. I know that, but it is easier to know that without people talking at me.
Here, kids usually go to daycare or kindergarten around age 3. Some moms go back to work. Others don't. Many engage in the full-time job that it is to maintain a Japanese home. I don't. Some go back to work earlier and there are daycare centers that accept kids as young as 6 months old. It's not as normal here for moms to work at all, but it is becoming more normal. I chose to stay home with my kid and work part time as a means of making ends meet, so I guess on some level I am comfortable here because my choices fit in somewhat with the societal standards.
Really, I like living here because I am an automatic outcast and don't have to try to fit in. I don't feel compelled to listen to someone enthusiastically lecture me about Jesus in a Walmart parking lot because I am not quite irritated enough to scream at them or storm off. No one thinks I'm just as "normal" as they are here, in whatever that means to them. The standard "normal" for someone who looked like me in Texas when I was young involved a lot of labels I do not subscribe to and drove a lot of my adolescent pretentiousness into overdrive, trying to find the most effective ways of showing them before they talk to me that maybe they should not bother, but doing it in such a way to not provoke worse or put myself in a position of constant discomfort. I failed at all of that, mind you, but I tried.
Here it is different. They do not know what to make of me. I'm alright with that. At least they are quiet about it.
So I don't get too-friendly advice from everyone-under-the-sun regarding my child-rearing or our choice of school, though a neighbor was surprised that we weren't sending out little one to the Catholic kindergarten in town (long story short: Buddhism is normal and I'm more than okay with that ) and weirdly this schooling thing wound up being the way we got the one confrontational religious group to leave me alone. I cannot remember what they were now, but it wasn't the Mormons, though they shared a fear of medicine. One lady from the group kept happening upon me in town and talking at me, and I was the same as I was back home, only with less confidence in my verbiage and without a way to accurately express my thoughts in a way I found satisfactory. So I smiled and nodded and ran away. That was all that happened, literally over the course of years, with the woman calling me by a number of western names, a different one every time she saw me, and once running into me at my apartment lobby, which was the most terrifying.
Then the most amazing thing happened. She ran into me shortly before Julia started school and asked what day care we had chosen (since obviously no one following her cult-like pseudo-Christianity would be able to tolerate Catholic or Buddhist kindergartens) and recoiled when I told her the name of the school we had chosen. "But it's Buddhist!"
"Yes, I know."
And that was the end of that.
So maybe the rest of the society still has the same judgmental ideas that I'm hiding from and it is only that I am not engaging with it. Maybe that's all of it. I don't know but I also do not have more time to worry about it today.
I'm currently listening to A Handmaid's Tale. I'm almost done. I really want to finish it. An emotional book, and a good adult-level vacation from the chaotic child-land of the vacay living room.
Also kinda scary. Not great to pair with Malala unless you're wanting to freak out over the modern state of American politics and what it could mean for our future generations for a while. I guess you could get the same effect by watching any major news channel these days, though.
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
March Musings
This is my attempt to feel accomplished today. It's almost 9PM and I feel like I have done nothing.
Logically, I know that isn't completely accurate. I fed myself and my daughter. I coordinated a long chat via internet video with some of my friends back home. Our kids squealed at each other. Lunch was had, as was a massive and necessary on the part of both my daughter and myself.
We didn't clean the house, which is the one thing we should be doing and I wanted to get done early this week, before I am so exhausted by my lacking alone time that I cannot focus enough to clean. We didn't make it happen, and I'm annoyed with myself. I gave in to exhaustion and let us rest instead, which we needed to do, and the hints of a narrowly avoided migraine attest to this being the right course of action. But I still feel like nothing is happening.
After our nap, we did run to the grocery store, and while we were there, Julia wandered around a little, occasionally getting in the way of other customers, most of whom were happy to smile at my four-year-old, perhaps remembering their own little people at the same age. There were two professionally dressed people who thought casting me a dirty look was a better option, and whether those looks were meant to indicate a need for my kid to be tethered or dismay at our nearly-6PM shopping trip, I'll never know.
As a teen, I spent a lot of time at some friends' house (They're twins. They're both my friends. I'm not just being clumsy with my apostrophes or noun agreement.) and their dad tended to point out parents with children at Walmart after 6PM, if we happened to be there at that time, saying that it was practically child abuse to have a kid out so late and that those kids should be in bed. At the time, I agreed, but now I see it in a little bit different light. What if the only parent works a job that doesn't allow for them to hit the grocery before/during work hours and with shifts that don't end immediately at 5? What if they can't afford a babysitter for something like a trip to the store, or they need to get that kid new sneakers or supplies for some last minute school project they only found out that evening? I can come up with a dozen reasons that don't involve people just being unreliable or horrible, and that's with my brain half-exhausted. I think it's a bit judgmental.
And that's not just because I get a lot of side-eye when my kid and I make a grocery stop after 5PM. But I do live in a country of quiet bigotry and low-level English understanding, so I get to pull my daughter to me and advise her to stay close so the mean old bats stop staring at us. And I can say this loudly. And if they understand me, they are far too restrained to take it up with me. I'll have to nip that in the bud before our trip to Michigan this summer. I need to not instigate crap.
Otherwise, this month has been a lot better than last month. I blogged on city-cost a bit, bought a bunch of random Chinese knock-offs at Wish.com instead of the 100 yen store, and generally had an OK time.
I have become obsessed with audiobooks and listening to one or another while I wash the dishes or do some basic chores is how I am making the lack of alone time up to myself. Ready Player One was a lot of fun, Old Man's War interesting, and Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology compelling. Now I am listening to Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts, which is interesting and a bit creepy. Also more compelling than I thought it would be. I've got three hours left in it and can't wait.
The other day, Julia had her first over-eating induced tummy ache ever, and her response to this new sensation was to cry, "Mommy! I want to go to the doctor!" to which I wanted to immediately compliment her on proper sentence structure but instead had to focus on trying to help her. I explained to her (three times) that there were no emergency pediatrics in the area (there aren't) and going to the hospital wouldn't mean that we could see a doctor who could help with this anyway. Slowly, I convinced her to calm down and wait it out, and within an hour she was back to normal and happy to be feeling better.
So now the big challenge is figuring out how to get her to eat enough to be full without giving herself a stomachache. I'm mostly just limited snacks and stressing meals as eating time.
As for me and this evening, I am happy to report that writing this blog update has helped me feel more accomplished.
9PM. Next, bed time! As I found out yesterday, letting Julia sleep in leads to evening craziness, as the excitement of the later hour propels her over the threshold between exhaustion and nutball. Then it's all chaos and anarchy and headaches. So better to go with an earlier bed time.
Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy wealthy and wise. I can't attest to all that but kid in bed keeps pain from my head, so we're going this way.
Logically, I know that isn't completely accurate. I fed myself and my daughter. I coordinated a long chat via internet video with some of my friends back home. Our kids squealed at each other. Lunch was had, as was a massive and necessary on the part of both my daughter and myself.
We didn't clean the house, which is the one thing we should be doing and I wanted to get done early this week, before I am so exhausted by my lacking alone time that I cannot focus enough to clean. We didn't make it happen, and I'm annoyed with myself. I gave in to exhaustion and let us rest instead, which we needed to do, and the hints of a narrowly avoided migraine attest to this being the right course of action. But I still feel like nothing is happening.
After our nap, we did run to the grocery store, and while we were there, Julia wandered around a little, occasionally getting in the way of other customers, most of whom were happy to smile at my four-year-old, perhaps remembering their own little people at the same age. There were two professionally dressed people who thought casting me a dirty look was a better option, and whether those looks were meant to indicate a need for my kid to be tethered or dismay at our nearly-6PM shopping trip, I'll never know.
As a teen, I spent a lot of time at some friends' house (They're twins. They're both my friends. I'm not just being clumsy with my apostrophes or noun agreement.) and their dad tended to point out parents with children at Walmart after 6PM, if we happened to be there at that time, saying that it was practically child abuse to have a kid out so late and that those kids should be in bed. At the time, I agreed, but now I see it in a little bit different light. What if the only parent works a job that doesn't allow for them to hit the grocery before/during work hours and with shifts that don't end immediately at 5? What if they can't afford a babysitter for something like a trip to the store, or they need to get that kid new sneakers or supplies for some last minute school project they only found out that evening? I can come up with a dozen reasons that don't involve people just being unreliable or horrible, and that's with my brain half-exhausted. I think it's a bit judgmental.
And that's not just because I get a lot of side-eye when my kid and I make a grocery stop after 5PM. But I do live in a country of quiet bigotry and low-level English understanding, so I get to pull my daughter to me and advise her to stay close so the mean old bats stop staring at us. And I can say this loudly. And if they understand me, they are far too restrained to take it up with me. I'll have to nip that in the bud before our trip to Michigan this summer. I need to not instigate crap.
Otherwise, this month has been a lot better than last month. I blogged on city-cost a bit, bought a bunch of random Chinese knock-offs at Wish.com instead of the 100 yen store, and generally had an OK time.
I have become obsessed with audiobooks and listening to one or another while I wash the dishes or do some basic chores is how I am making the lack of alone time up to myself. Ready Player One was a lot of fun, Old Man's War interesting, and Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology compelling. Now I am listening to Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts, which is interesting and a bit creepy. Also more compelling than I thought it would be. I've got three hours left in it and can't wait.
The other day, Julia had her first over-eating induced tummy ache ever, and her response to this new sensation was to cry, "Mommy! I want to go to the doctor!" to which I wanted to immediately compliment her on proper sentence structure but instead had to focus on trying to help her. I explained to her (three times) that there were no emergency pediatrics in the area (there aren't) and going to the hospital wouldn't mean that we could see a doctor who could help with this anyway. Slowly, I convinced her to calm down and wait it out, and within an hour she was back to normal and happy to be feeling better.
So now the big challenge is figuring out how to get her to eat enough to be full without giving herself a stomachache. I'm mostly just limited snacks and stressing meals as eating time.
As for me and this evening, I am happy to report that writing this blog update has helped me feel more accomplished.
9PM. Next, bed time! As I found out yesterday, letting Julia sleep in leads to evening craziness, as the excitement of the later hour propels her over the threshold between exhaustion and nutball. Then it's all chaos and anarchy and headaches. So better to go with an earlier bed time.
Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy wealthy and wise. I can't attest to all that but kid in bed keeps pain from my head, so we're going this way.
Friday, February 2, 2018
Exhaustion and Foreign Opinions: A Rambling
My kid is sick, but it is just a cold with a bit of a fever. It will be okay. We already got a checkup and medication yesterday, so at least that is taken care of for now. We'll see how it shapes the coming week. On the upside, I did get to work yesterday so my paycheck won't be quite as screwed as otherwise.
Also, this gives a better reason for our delay in setting up the Girl's Day dolls, a yearly Japanese tradition that I suck at preparing for as it requires an entire house deep cleaning session and I am a hoarder.
I've been working toward the clean house goal over the last few weeks but failed to take out the recycling this week so I am still staring at a large box filled with compacted cardboard boxes. I know I am supposed to see a pile of garbage or at best a pile of recycling waiting to go out. Instead, I see raw materials for any number of great projects, and just looking at it, my mind starts to wander. If I could get my hands on a small jigsaw, wood glue, dowels, and appropriate fabric coverings, I could build a massive, wall-sized dragon-shaped shelving unit and it. would. be. beautiful!
And the good thing now is that I have been around long enough to know that the vast majority of these massive project ideas are not possible for me to realistically accomplish. I do not have the time or space required for this task, much less the rest of the materials. In the end, this would wind up being yet another box of rubbish taking up more space than it should be allowed to in the back room of my apartment until one day I get fed up and take it out finally or die and someone else takes it and everything else to the curb.
So there's that. Despite being in a bit of a slump, I managed to get 5 blog posts written last month and will work toward getting nine out this coming month. I'm already toying with ideas for this month's incentivized posts on my Japan blog over at City-Cost.
The other thought I had today with some level of interest was in regards to whether or not we're "allowed" to have opinions about foreign cultures and customs and how our unique position changes that. Specifically, someone mentioned how weird Groundhog Day is and I responded with the weirdness that is Setsubun, which happens this week in Japan. Today actually. Then someone told me that that was why we should respect foreign cultures and that she thought my custom was interesting.
That was a fine reaction, and there was nothing wrong with that except that it isn't my custom. It's my husband's and his culture's and just really not mine. In Japan, I am essentially Jack Skellington in Christmas town, if he'd decided to just live there after he passed through the tree in the forest. Nothing here is really allowed to be mine and yet it is. It isn't my culture but it is my life and the course of my experience.
And this goes back to a debate from ages ago that isn't really worth commenting on except to get it out of my head. I was told by some random-internet-white-chick that I was a bigot for using the term Engrish to describe mass-produced products with English errors. The point she had was it sounded racist to her, having visited some parts of Asia a few times in her short life, and Asian languages are hard so we shouldn't make fun of others for not knowing English. I agreed that we shouldn't make fun of people for not knowing English and further explained that as an English teacher and expat living in Japan, I have to say that companies that employ copywriters can easily get these things checked by a native English speaker for a small fee. Instead of doing that, they assume their grasp of a language they refuse to note the complexity of must be good enough to forego that small charge. Then we wind up with weird bits that I think everyone should have a chance to laugh at. I'm not knocking down the doors of the copywriting office, accusing people of speaking "Engrish" but instead buying the products and sending them to people who will enjoy them all over the world. So the companies are still getting paid for their sub-par work and the patrons of my second Patreon get to enjoy silliness. Me calling it Engrish doesn't seem to hurt anyone's feelings, not even those of my Japanese husband.
What bugs me most about this interaction is probably that the woman refused to listen to me and just kept calling me a bigot. Her methods were flawed but when I tried to work with her to better our mutual understanding anyway, she revealed that she wasn't capable of operating at that level. I thought she was giving a corresponding theoretical analogy. She was actually just trying to accuse me of being a bully like some real-life bullies she once knew. When I pointed to the errors in her logic, her responses became even less logical. That was the day I learned that it isn't just the conservatives who plug their ears and ignore whatever makes them uncomfortable. Liberals do it too.
I'm not saying we should all engage in hate speech or that Engrish itself is a universally OK term. It is in a gray area, as it could conceivably be used to hurt others, so it depends on how it is used. The way I use it is not racist, as confirmed by my Japanese husband and multiple Asian and Asian-American friends. The companies that produce these products have a chance to fix these errors and not assume lingual superiority despite their inadequacy. They do not. Either they do not understand the nuances of language, as almost any foreign language media should be checked my a native speaker to ensure quality, or they do not care. Either way, it is their failing, and an easily correctable failing, so we get to laugh at the results. They still get paid for making the silly things. Who is losing here?
But this also speaks to my time abroad. I no longer consider anything that could theoretically in some way be considered somewhat racist as definitely racist and unusable. There is more to it than that and at the end of the day, any Caucasian American person deciding what other cultures and races can consider offensive is inherently wrong. We don't get to say what they must or must not consider offensive. Some terms are patently offensive while others are currently considered innocuous, and those definitions do change over time.
One must have an informed opinion, and no one speaks for an entire race, but calling someone in an interracial marriage with an Asian man racist against Asians shows a level of willful ignorance I am not comfortable with engaging. And I shouldn't feel bad about leaving the conversation after the one Asian person in the conversation confirmed that Engrish as it is used by me is NOT racist.
Some part of me keeps bringing this back up though, like I need to feel constantly under attack by strangers who know nothing about me. I think it's the inner-teacher-brain, wanting to have better taught this person about the realities of the world around her despite the fact that she would never have been able to understand them without living them.
But that leads me back to my point for today, which was along the lines of this: Living in Japan means I get to have an opinion about some Japanese things. I'm not a tourist, fresh of a plane, gawking at the maid cafes. Nor am I an expert, fluent in the language and well versed in the content of every newspaper. I know some things from classes I took in college and some things from my personal experiences in living here long term. In a few months, I'll have been living in Japan for a decade. Ten years of watching these seemingly bizarre cultural elements and figuring out some while others continue to baffle me; ten years of changing inside and out while struggling to find comfort in a country where I will never be allowed to own property or become a citizen; ten solid years of studying this culture from the inner outside and analyzing the living hell out of it...Yeah, I'd say I get to have an opinion.
And those are my thoughts for today.
Also, this gives a better reason for our delay in setting up the Girl's Day dolls, a yearly Japanese tradition that I suck at preparing for as it requires an entire house deep cleaning session and I am a hoarder.
I've been working toward the clean house goal over the last few weeks but failed to take out the recycling this week so I am still staring at a large box filled with compacted cardboard boxes. I know I am supposed to see a pile of garbage or at best a pile of recycling waiting to go out. Instead, I see raw materials for any number of great projects, and just looking at it, my mind starts to wander. If I could get my hands on a small jigsaw, wood glue, dowels, and appropriate fabric coverings, I could build a massive, wall-sized dragon-shaped shelving unit and it. would. be. beautiful!
And the good thing now is that I have been around long enough to know that the vast majority of these massive project ideas are not possible for me to realistically accomplish. I do not have the time or space required for this task, much less the rest of the materials. In the end, this would wind up being yet another box of rubbish taking up more space than it should be allowed to in the back room of my apartment until one day I get fed up and take it out finally or die and someone else takes it and everything else to the curb.
So there's that. Despite being in a bit of a slump, I managed to get 5 blog posts written last month and will work toward getting nine out this coming month. I'm already toying with ideas for this month's incentivized posts on my Japan blog over at City-Cost.
The other thought I had today with some level of interest was in regards to whether or not we're "allowed" to have opinions about foreign cultures and customs and how our unique position changes that. Specifically, someone mentioned how weird Groundhog Day is and I responded with the weirdness that is Setsubun, which happens this week in Japan. Today actually. Then someone told me that that was why we should respect foreign cultures and that she thought my custom was interesting.
That was a fine reaction, and there was nothing wrong with that except that it isn't my custom. It's my husband's and his culture's and just really not mine. In Japan, I am essentially Jack Skellington in Christmas town, if he'd decided to just live there after he passed through the tree in the forest. Nothing here is really allowed to be mine and yet it is. It isn't my culture but it is my life and the course of my experience.
And this goes back to a debate from ages ago that isn't really worth commenting on except to get it out of my head. I was told by some random-internet-white-chick that I was a bigot for using the term Engrish to describe mass-produced products with English errors. The point she had was it sounded racist to her, having visited some parts of Asia a few times in her short life, and Asian languages are hard so we shouldn't make fun of others for not knowing English. I agreed that we shouldn't make fun of people for not knowing English and further explained that as an English teacher and expat living in Japan, I have to say that companies that employ copywriters can easily get these things checked by a native English speaker for a small fee. Instead of doing that, they assume their grasp of a language they refuse to note the complexity of must be good enough to forego that small charge. Then we wind up with weird bits that I think everyone should have a chance to laugh at. I'm not knocking down the doors of the copywriting office, accusing people of speaking "Engrish" but instead buying the products and sending them to people who will enjoy them all over the world. So the companies are still getting paid for their sub-par work and the patrons of my second Patreon get to enjoy silliness. Me calling it Engrish doesn't seem to hurt anyone's feelings, not even those of my Japanese husband.
What bugs me most about this interaction is probably that the woman refused to listen to me and just kept calling me a bigot. Her methods were flawed but when I tried to work with her to better our mutual understanding anyway, she revealed that she wasn't capable of operating at that level. I thought she was giving a corresponding theoretical analogy. She was actually just trying to accuse me of being a bully like some real-life bullies she once knew. When I pointed to the errors in her logic, her responses became even less logical. That was the day I learned that it isn't just the conservatives who plug their ears and ignore whatever makes them uncomfortable. Liberals do it too.
I'm not saying we should all engage in hate speech or that Engrish itself is a universally OK term. It is in a gray area, as it could conceivably be used to hurt others, so it depends on how it is used. The way I use it is not racist, as confirmed by my Japanese husband and multiple Asian and Asian-American friends. The companies that produce these products have a chance to fix these errors and not assume lingual superiority despite their inadequacy. They do not. Either they do not understand the nuances of language, as almost any foreign language media should be checked my a native speaker to ensure quality, or they do not care. Either way, it is their failing, and an easily correctable failing, so we get to laugh at the results. They still get paid for making the silly things. Who is losing here?
But this also speaks to my time abroad. I no longer consider anything that could theoretically in some way be considered somewhat racist as definitely racist and unusable. There is more to it than that and at the end of the day, any Caucasian American person deciding what other cultures and races can consider offensive is inherently wrong. We don't get to say what they must or must not consider offensive. Some terms are patently offensive while others are currently considered innocuous, and those definitions do change over time.
One must have an informed opinion, and no one speaks for an entire race, but calling someone in an interracial marriage with an Asian man racist against Asians shows a level of willful ignorance I am not comfortable with engaging. And I shouldn't feel bad about leaving the conversation after the one Asian person in the conversation confirmed that Engrish as it is used by me is NOT racist.
Some part of me keeps bringing this back up though, like I need to feel constantly under attack by strangers who know nothing about me. I think it's the inner-teacher-brain, wanting to have better taught this person about the realities of the world around her despite the fact that she would never have been able to understand them without living them.
But that leads me back to my point for today, which was along the lines of this: Living in Japan means I get to have an opinion about some Japanese things. I'm not a tourist, fresh of a plane, gawking at the maid cafes. Nor am I an expert, fluent in the language and well versed in the content of every newspaper. I know some things from classes I took in college and some things from my personal experiences in living here long term. In a few months, I'll have been living in Japan for a decade. Ten years of watching these seemingly bizarre cultural elements and figuring out some while others continue to baffle me; ten years of changing inside and out while struggling to find comfort in a country where I will never be allowed to own property or become a citizen; ten solid years of studying this culture from the inner outside and analyzing the living hell out of it...Yeah, I'd say I get to have an opinion.
And those are my thoughts for today.
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