A First Interview!

Okay I am LMAO!
Firstly, when I got in form work tonight, and checked the old blog out and saw the comments about games and sleeping 15 hours, I sort of psyched myself up for a *personal* post.
I have these two fabulous daughters who could not be too different, one of them once had an horrific road accident and now the other has a broken thumb. The injuries cannot be compared, but I was preparing in my mind this whole post about how much more devastating on the victims life the broken thumb has turned out to be, than the life threatening injuries of the accident victim.

THEN, home comes Sunshine form her interview, her first ever.
She had needed to take a CV, it being Japan , you don’t just make one up, there is a pre-designed form you have to go out and buy.
Apart from the obvious fact that she is 16 and has nothing noteworthy to record, except perhaps achieving level 1 of the National English assessment test at the age of 12. ( but she had help!).
So she basically just had to fill in that she did indeed go to elementary schol and then JHS and is now in HS.
Then there was a strengths/weaknesses section.
For strengths she put that she treats everyone fairly, she is Ms Equal Opportunities. for weaknesses she put that she trusts too easily, she feels she is gullible.
The guy ask her for evidence. ( because it’s important to know when employing someone to take tickets for 3 quid an hour)
She said, ( LMFAO) that when she was young she ate some camembert cheese from Hokkaido and commented that it tasted a little metallic, like batteries.
So she says she told me, and I said. ‘ don’t worry,eat it up, they feed Hokkaido cows batteries, that’s why we have to separate them in the rubbish.’
I did, I said that, thinking it was a joke, which it was until 3 weeks later when they were studying Japanese industry and agriculture,the teacher actually asked, ‘what do Hokkaido cows eat?’
And you know who put her hand up.

Doris ‘likes this’.

Our first broken bone.
We have had our share of trips to the hospital, we’ve covered pretty much all the basic measles, mumps, poxes, we even threw in scarlet fever and meningitis for good measure. Concussions, dislocations, stitches, but today we got out first broken bone.
Doris broke her thumb playing softball.
It is being supported with a lovely shiny silver splint and she looks like she could be the poster child for
‘likes this’ on Facebook.
She is tired of me asking her if she ‘likes this’ though. Sometimes my children don’t see the funny side of things as I do.
So no softball or Tae Kwon Dou for 3 weeks, then we are away for 3 , so she is, shall we say ‘glum’.
She’s a glum gal right now, that and her raging hormones and we could say she’s downright pissy.
Strangely Sunshine and I are getting on like a house on a fire.

Speaking of Sunshine, she has her very first job interview tomorrow. She is hoping to get a part-time job at the amusement park on top of the mountain.
It has taken her forever to get her act into gear. Partly because her school has a policy against part-time jobs, and partly because she has been looking for a well paid easy to do job, despite me explaining there aren’t any for high school students, the whole point is that it’s crappy, hard work and under-paid, but a valuable character building exercise, plus how ever little, it feels really good to get paid for a job you’ve done ( at that age of course, ‘however little doesn’t fly with me anymore, the more I get paid the better I feel about the job well done .
I think a part-time job, particularly a crappy job, thats hard work for low pay is a rite of passage and at almost 17 ( I had my first job at 12) it’s high time. I told her if the school finds out I’ll go to bat for her.
I agree that kids ( and some do) working in restaurants untiul late on school nights and then sleeping through classes is not a good thing, but this is a summer gig, which if they like her and she likes them, she can do one weekend day, when school goes back, and in the winter I doubt there’ll be much work anyway.
At her own suggestion, she is going on an intensive study course for 4 days starting next week. they go to school, they study 10 hours a day, sleep in a dorm, get their meals.
Then there is another one for 3 days in August.
So I can go off to Canada knowing where she’ll be and what she’ll be doing for at least 3 days of my trip. Hopefully between school work, work work and her knack of sleeping 15 hours a day, she shouldn’t be able to get into too much trouble. Should she?

Morning Sun, Morning Son

My fine young son is not doing well in the mornings lately.
My consumption is getting me up at dawn’s first crack and I am enjoying a little quiet time from about 4-5.30 a.m. Sipping on my twig tea with ginger.
I have eliminated all dairy, all animal products, all caffeine, I am living on twigs and lentils. Any minute now I will stop smoking. To be fair I have cut back my daily intake by over half. I am on 8 cigarettes a day, it’s amazing how gasping for breath like it’s your last will motivate one to giving up bad habits.
Anyway, onto my young son.
He just wakes up pissed off. I have tried talking to him about it over and over, but every morning is the same, this terminal bad mood, though he no longer eats his clothes, that has to be a good sign right?
Nothing goes right for him, he claims he prepares his clean socks the night before and then thieves break in and steal them. While I will admit, there isn’t much to steal here, and most theives would probably take pity and have a whip round before they left, taking his gnarly socks would be just silly, and pointless, it’s not like they’d fit, unless they are midget thieves, vertically challenged robbers.
This morning his breakfast of choice was a seaweed sandwich. I do not judge him. I like piccalili in my oxtail soup, I am partial to a Seabrook crisp sandwich, I eat marmite on my finger out of the jar, he was destined to eat weird, it’s genetic.
He was eating his ( lovingly prepared) sandwich and the great sock debacle began again.
I said, ‘Do not fear oh precious one, your socks are here, tightly wound into a little ball, just like every nerve in your body.’
Then I said ‘catch’, or maybe I didn’t. maybe I threw before I said catch. Either way, without warning, the socks landed on the sandwich.
By this time the Man was up as was Jim, four people in the room.
Three of us thought it was quite funny. One of us did not. Shall I start a quiz?
Who did not find the humour in the situation?

He had been up about 18 minutes by this point and already had boiled over.
Right! I’m not eating my sandwich, in fact I am not wearing my socks, I don’t need my socks because I’m not going to school, not today, not tomorrow, not ever, I am never wearing socks and never going to school again……’
I need more than twigs for this.
Am rethinking my whole non-violent strategy, am wondering at the wisdom of a bit of a smacked bottom, am rethinking the whole parenting thing……………

Not All People Are Nice.

Had a scary day Monday.
I called the travel agent to find out why I hadn’t yet received my tickets for my trip, tickets that she had promised to send me a month ago.
It goes like this.
Hello, this is cheap crappy travel Ltd, how may I help you?

Can I speak to Ms Forest Hill please?

Miss Forest Hill doesn’t work here anymore, can I help you?

I sure hope so, I am waiting for Ms FH to send me my tickets to Canada.

Can I have your name and departure date please.

Mrs Samurai Inside, July 29th to Vancouver.

One moment please.
lala la la lalala
Did you say Mrs Samurai Inside, July 19th to Vancouver?

I did.

One moment please.

It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small world afterall, it’s a small, small world.
It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small, small world.
It’s a small……
Get my drift.
10 minutes later she comes back on the phone and says, I’m sorry we have no record of you in our system.

That’s a worry. She said she would check it out and call me back asap.

3 hours pass, I realise I am feeling the stress of the possibility that Ms Forest Hill has embezzled my money and left the company and even if the reimburse me they’ll be no seats left on the plane, and we have stuff booked when we get over there, I watched The Amazing Race and had a bit of a weep, when the people I like came in first in that leg. I don’t usually cry at TAR.

Clearly she isn’t going to call me back. So I call and ask for the woman, but hey ho she is unavailable right now, so I explain my situation to a man, and said, don’t tell me you’ll call me back, stay on the line. I asked him his name.
He said he was Mr Flat Mountain ( ?) I said, you organised my trip to the US in January.
He said, ‘right I remember, you went to DC’.
I said, ” you were fabulous, when I called to book for Canada I asked for you and they said you don’t work there anymore.’
He said’ well I do, and what’s more so does Ms Forest Hill, she sits at the desk behind me.”
I said ” Why was I told she doesn’t work there anymore’, he said, ‘She works for a different division of the company now.’
I said, ” I want my tickets!’
He said, ‘ Okay, hang on a second.’

lalala la la lala.

‘ Hello, is that Mrs Samurai Inside?’
‘ It is.”
” thank you so much for calling, this is Ms Forest Hill, how can I help you?”

You can send me my frickin tickets today!!!!

Sure that’s not a problem, you’ll have them by tomorrow, thanks so much for your call, goodbye.

It took me, 3 calls I think it was to my friend in Nagasaki, TAR, CSI and House, to get me through the morning, it was annoying to say the least.
I got my tickets the next day, all is well, what a waste of a day off.

People Are Nice.

I just got in from work tonight, to find a huge piles of stuff in the garden from my neighbour.
Not the neighbour who helped build the chicken coop, she was here earlier with some roofing and a staple gun though, this stuff was from a neighbour I used to refer to as ‘ psycho neighbour’.
We have really had some ups and downs with this woman, but recently the ice began to thaw, and then today, while I was at work she has left a huge pile of stuff that she has obviously gone out and bought, for the chick.
There is a big bag of straw, some sacks of sand, bags of chicken feed, some kind of stones that help keep mosquitoes at bay ( might put them in my bedroom), bags of fresh leaves that apparently chucks love and various other bits and pieces.
I’m really quite verklempt.
She has not been nice to us in the past, she is, I think, a lonely person, but here she is now, gone out of her way to help us out, to be involved.
I’m loving people right now, people are good, we should always have people around.

Title Inspires Post.

So using the old days of the week schoolyard rhyme ( because I was creatively challenged at the time) got me thinking about the days my kids were born on. I was born on The Sabbath, so obviously that’s why I am so ‘bonny, blythe, good and gay’, young ‘bonny,blythe, good and gay ( and waaay too much into Dancing Queen) Jim was also born on a Sunday.
To be precise he was born at 5.16 a.m.
The other kids were all born on a Wednesday afternoon ( hence the endless woe) BUT at 3.16, 3.26 and 5.26 respectively.
Not that I am saying it means anything, it doesn’t, and I’m not saying I had any hand in it, but it is quite freaky don’t you think?

Chicken Love

Back to the chicken. Now, lovely as its coop is, and we are not calling it ‘he’ because we are now considering the possibility that it is female. We were originally assured it was male but the info I have gleaned via the internet implies that it should be full grown by now, and it doesn’t have much of a crest to speak of and no wattle either, so maybe we’ll have eggs, who knows, and be honest who cares?
My point being the wonderful coop Tiktiki and I constructed out of my now unused Little Tykes garden table, that we had so much fun making in our accidentally identical black tank tops and our henna tattoos, the photos of which have failed to be uploaded, turned out it was a total pain in the arse to clean out.
So the old lady who lives up the road, not to be confused with Tanaka san next door who inspired The Tanaka San rule of yesteryear, (see April 2007), but sprightly 70 year old Mrs. N, has taken a real shine to the chicken and has been popping in regularly with food for it, has been concerned about the cleaning out malarkey.
So she turned up today with some fencing and suggested we make
another coop.
I’ll be honest, having spent the night coughing up my lungs, and the morning back at the hospital being told I probably have fricking asthma, and having to go to work for most of the day, I was not really in the mood to start a rebuilding project, but she is nothing if not persistent.
So a huge executive decision was made to start rebuilding on a little spot of land under the trees, so to have a natural floor, where young chicken can forage for food.
So we erected the frame, and put some wire over the top to protect from the cats and tanukis that invade our garden, but the cleaning and the feeding still had to be considered.
She says, “I’ll go get some wood.’ And trotted back up the steep hill to her house, returning with a weighty piece of trellis, which she secured to the wire and which opens like a trap door.
Much as I loved our first one, I must say, this one is fab, the natural floor, the door contraption, airy, light, easy to access, easy to keep clean.

Meanwhile we also had to clean up the debris from the old one, so lots of soggy egg cartons and chicken shit to go in the compost.
The Little Tykes table had gunk and shit embedded in crevices so I turned the hose onto a straight jet to force it out. It worked, it forced it out and all over my face, in my eyes, in my hair.
Sleep deprived, chicken shit covered, consumptive, very attractive.
The day just gets better and better.

We may have to rethink things come the end of autumn when it turns cold, but for the foreseeable future, this coop is fantastic.
Thank you Mrs. N, I hope for half your energy, half your creativity, and half your get-up-and-go when I am your age.

Wednesday’s Child is Full of Woe

Perhaps not woe exactly in Kev’s case, I’d call it unbridled anger, but that’s neither here nor there.
These days he gets up each morning in the foulest of moods and Wednesday was no different.

7.00a.m.
When I asked him, yet again, why he was so pissed off he said it’s because I won’t let him do DS before school.
Too right Buster.
So he said ‘Do you want me to die?’

I said, ‘Indeed I do not, nothing could be further from the truth.”
So he said, ‘Without DS I’ll die.”
I said, ‘No I don’t think that no DS can actually kill you, but I will Google it after breakfast to make sure.”
He said, “I’m not eating breakfast, then I’ll die, if I don’t have any food I’ll die.”
I said, ‘You will indeed so eat up please.”
He said, ‘No! I’m going to school with no breakfast.”
I said, “Well it’s right there in front of you, you can eat it or leave it, your decision.”
He said, “I’ll leave it then, I’ve DECIDED, because it’s my DECISION, I’m going to die, GOODBYE!!”

4pm
KEV “Hi Mum, I’m home.”

ME “Hi honey, you’re alive then?”

Kev, “Yeah, can I have a banana?”

ME, “Yeah sure.”

Kev, “I’m off out to play, bye…”

Tuesday’s Child is Full of Grace

Graceful is not how I felt as I hobbled off to the hospital to get the manky foot and the consumptive chest checked out.

Manky foot first, he took some scrapings and said he didn’t know what it was, but here, try this cream and come back next week.

Next stop chest guy who sent me off for a blood test, an EEG and a chest X-ray.
It was all easy run of the mill routine stuff, oh except for the part where the radiologist is my student’s husband, bet when he picked his wife up from her lesson he never thought the next time he saw me he’d be asking me to take off my clothes, life is so full of surprises.
Results came in, in both foot and chest departments I am a medical mystery. He doesn’t know what is causing my cough. I thought it might possibly be caused by whatever the huge shadow on my X-ray was. Doc skimmed over it, obviously not sure how to break the news to me. He prescribed an anti-biotic, as white cell count was indicating infection and told me to come back in a week.
I tried to make things easy for him by bringing it up, I said,

‘Sorry’ (standard way to start a sentence in Japanese) ‘I know I’m not a doctor, but I am worried about that huge shadow across my lungs in the X-ray. Do you know what that is?”

He said, “I do indeed (because I AM a doctor) it’s your heart.”

ME, “Well good, that’s good isn’t it, I have a heart.”

HIM “Yes it is indeed good.”

Excellent then, I and my mysteries will come back next week.

Monday’s Child is Fair of Face ( but not of foot)

Day off yay!! Had big plans again to get organized but ended up printing out assessment materials for work. I am taking a month off so need to prepare lots of homework.
While waiting for the printer to crank out hundreds of copies I found myself lying on the sofa watching ‘Confessions of a Shopaholic’, I can safely say it’s one of the worst films I have ever ever seen and anyone who thinks it is as good as, or remotely nearly as good as, or can even be mentioned in the same breath as The Devil Wears Prada, is just wrong wrong wrong and doesn’t deserve to watch films, should in fact banned from watching films.

While marveling at what a truly appalling mess they made of the film, despite a few big names scattered throughout it, I noticed an unsightly lumpy growth hanging off my foot.

By lunchtime it was 2 lumps. By late afternoon it was 4.
Terrified that Liza won’t let me in the hot tub when I get to Canada I decided to go to the chemist and get something for it.
The chemist couldn’t help from my description so I whipped my sock off before she had time to protest. She recoiled in horror at the alien emerging from the sole of my foot and said, ‘that is very very nasty shit, get thee to a dermatologist.’

Dermatologist not available until tomorrow so will kill two birds with one stone at the big hospital and get my seasonal hacking cough checked out.
Every rainy season for the past six years I get a terrible hacking cough in the night. Only at night. I have changed the futons, checked the mold, cleaned dust, moved rooms, nothing helps.
Maybe doctors are there for a reason and I should just go and ask them what the problem is. Perhaps this is the very thing they can help with. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.