On Your Back You Bitch.

Titled inspired by what passed for a chat up line in Yorkshire circa 1980.
Of course I`d hestitate to call myself a bitch, ( though others might not), I`ve been flat on my back since Monday.
I, obviously over strenuously, put my knickers on on Monday morning and my back went out. For anyone who has this happen from time to time, you`ll know, there is a moment, a brief moment, when you think it went, but you`re not sure, because as long as you stay very very still, there is no pain.
the pain doesn`t come until you move a fraction in any direction. as luck would have it, my back brace was right in front of me, so I put it on quickly and thought maybe I could save the day. I walked around a little, very gently.
It was a national holiday and in keeping with my, live life on the edge theme, I was meeting my friend in Starbucks and very much looking forward to it. So I took baby steps around the room in my brace and declared myself `fit for travel`.
I got there without too much pain, got very gently out of my car and into Starbucks. We sat, we chatted, we laughed, I was careful, the slightest movement was a bit painful. Then my friend went to the loo, and I decided to go outside for a fag.
Catastrophe! Couldn`t stand up straight. My back had locked into a sitting position. Couldn`t go up, couldn`t get back down. Decided to shuffle to door. I got myself outside but then could not move, was stuck in a hunched back position with my nose pressed up against the class door.
Eventually my friend came back from the loo and I was able to motion her to come outside and get me.
She gets me back in but I realise I can`t sit back down, so at 8 months pregnant she gets me, my bag, her bag and a large bag of books she was returning, out of the shop and into my car, giving a whole new meaning to `baby steps`.
Many thanks to my soy latte loving friend.
It took a while but I could get out of the car and go upstairs on my hands and knees. Young Jim was home so I press-ganged him into bringing up The Man`s lightweight laptop and a glass of water, laid flat on my back and moreorless stayed there for the next three days.
Tuesday morning was quite liberating when I realised that going into work, shuffling or crawling was simply not an option and I cancelled all my classes. The first time I have cancelled since opening my school, 5 years ago.
Aunty Ritzy made dinner and sent it over with Uncle Brick, and much to my surprise a number of my students popped by and left cooked food in the genkan for us. People are good! Lots of good folk around here and I thank you.
I managed to put my time to good use, and I watched an entire season of Teen Mom, and trust me the message came through loud and clear, safe-sex or no sex, I will not become a Teen Mom.I forced the girls to come and lie down a while with me and watch some of it too.
Then season 9 of Spooks, a documentary about heroin addiction, season 4 of Outnumbered and finally Switched at Birth.
Now, here I am right as rain, standing tall, well as tall as 5`2″ will let me be. Hoping we are going to the Apple shop in Osaka to get me one of these fabulous lightweight laptops.

Yesterday I managed to shuffle to the post office to post off Jim`s passport application which my fine friend Janette Rotund, counter-signed for me. Thank you for doing that.
Obviously that is an alias, due to the confidential and secure nature of the process I feel I must keep her identity secret, might also be post Spooks paranoia 😉

Although I am aware I haven’t yet got around to explaining why we were in the forest with a priest in his boxers, it must wait.
My head is not working well, I have a cold. Let’s all say “ aaah”.
Yesterday started off with two chicklets down with a cold. Kev’s feet were also hurting and he couldn’t walk properly. They’ve been hurting on and off for a month or so, which we thought was probably due to growing pains.
Despite repeated requests to go to the doctor and have them checked out, he refused, but yesterday he finally agreed so I said I’d take him yesterday evening.
Strange things going on with the boy, he has been quite calm of late. He’s probably knackered from all the handball practice, and the heat also I signed him up for a summer course in cram school. He claims he is happy with the handball, the heat and the summer course.
So off we went. Now sometime in the afternoon my throat started hurting and then my joints so I figured I was probably getting whatever had felled my chicks in the morning. Kev had made a remarkable recovery by lunchtime, but Doris had slept most of the day and had no appetite.
While we sat and waited for Kev’s x-rays to come back, I did wonder why I wasn’t killing two birds with one stone and seeing the doc myself to get a drip. I wouldn’t normally bother but I have a lot of classes this week and if I can’t do them re-scheduling will be a nightmare with everyone’s summer commitments.
Anyway, didn’t really get past the wondering stage so I am definitely under par today.
Doc says the problem is Kev’s achilies tendon, the combination of sudden intense sports and his recent growth spurt have left the tendons behind.
Nothing to be done but compresses, not to force it when they hurt and to stretch a lot before and after handball.
Off we go. I thought this would be a good time to insist that Kev gets some new shoes. His toes are poking out of the ones he has but he has been refusing. He didn’t really want to but the shop was near the hospital and I was quite insistent. It is almost impossible to buy him any clothes. I can’t just chose something because it will be wrong and he will not go in a clothes shop with me.
So we get to the shop and he says he doesn’t want to go in, ‘too many people’ ( so now we have issues with crowds? Is this new?) and I should just get some and bring them out. I point out that I don’t know what size he is, so how about he comes in, gets the shoes and then leaves immediately, while I go and grab something from the bookshop. He agreed to this, oh how very flexible he is.
So we get to the shoe shop and he says ‘ those” to the very first pair of shoes he sees. So I say, don’t you want to look around a bit more, see what else they have. No, he doesn’t he wants those, and he is going back to the car now, can I just get them.
I say, hang on buddy, let’s measure your feet, make sure we get the right size. Okay, we pick up the box, I say, look they have the same ones with green or black on them too… no, he wants the blue ones, the first ones. We get to the cashier and she suggests he tries them on, he isn’t into that and says he can’t he hasn’t got any socks on.
She says we can borrow some socks. The boy is persuaded. They fit. We pay. He leaves.
I say, hey look, there is a sports outlet there, shall we get some T-shirts and shorts? No thank you. He stares at the ground and exits the building.
I dash to the bookshop and on my way in I spy oh the finest, the very finest notebook I ever did see.
Hard cover, spiral, squared paper. I bought similar ones earlier in the year, but this size was new, B5, yum, in turquoise or pale purple, not a pale purple fan but am working on stepping out of my comfort zone.
I know that notebook would have changed my life, transformed me into an organized, go-getting, achieving, dynamo, possibly even world domination, but I let it go. I was strong. I visualized my bookshelf, ( the very set of shelves that was supposed to change my life a year or so ago), crammed with all the other notebooks that failed in their mission to transform me, surround by pots of pens and pencils that failed me when I needed them most, and I let that perfect notebook go.
Oh how I’ve grown.

I can always go back and get it tomorrow…

A Smorgasbord of Field Trips.

Doris went off on Tuesday to Nagasaki for 3 days. They were supposed to go to Okinawa but it was changed apparently due to cost.
They said flights were too expensive so the bullet train to Nagasaki plan was implemented. Having paid for the trip a couple of months ago I fail to see how it could possibly have been more expensive but never mind. She’ll be back tonight and she has been much missed.
Kev and Jim both have day trips today and dawn’s first crack was a bento making frenzy. Jim looked at the clock and read it an hour out and flew into a bit of a panic, but order was restored. He is going to a museum in Hyogo Ken.
Kev is going to a farm in Mie Ken. A pig farm. According to the letter it’s a huge place where pigs frolic happily. There are 100s of piglets right now and the kids can feed and hold them. Then there are pig races, where the older pigs run around a track with little coloured jersies on. ( I doubt that betting is allowed). They’ll eat their lunch in the sprawling natural environs watching pigs at play, then, then , they’ll make sausages.
I do not make these things up.

All Hail The New Queen.

The newly created Queen award goes to the fabulous Ailsa for recommending I get thee to a home centre and purchase some UTAMARO soap. Such is my life right now, I’m celebrating that I got a true DAZ blue-white on my kids’ P.E. kids.
Only 138 yen, and it worked like a charm. even on a really old PE shirt I found in a drawer that was going to be chucked out it was so stained and horrible, it is born again, a whole new lease on, life, blindingly white. Such outstanding results spurred me on to try the soap out on Jim’s 1000 wash-grey Tae Kwon Dou dougi. AMAZING!! He thought I’d bought him a new set!
I have never seen nor heard of this magic potion before, you live and learn hey?
So Aisla, you rock and there is a sparkly crown waiting for you at mine and I’ll kiss the hem of your dress.

Golden Week Not So Golden.

Weather pretty crappy, The Man and Jim went camping, they come back today. I got mail from young Jim last night said the weather was good there yesterday, it’s all looking pretty grey and drizzly hear now at camp ‘bugger-all going on’.
I’ve taken pains to continue with my laughing themed life, and my laughs yesterday came courtesy of a lovely lass called Clare, who posted this on FB yesterday.
‘ Pippa’s arse is like a J.K. Rowling book, you know Harry’s gonna be in it’.
Had me in stitches all day, almost crashed into the car in front of me at one point. I think only one of the gamillion people I told it to found it as hysterical as me, but each to his/her own hey, we can’t all like the same things can we, or we’d be fighting over them constantly.
Also chortling as I read ‘Teenage Revolution’ by Alan Davies, lots of the self-deprecating humour I’m so fond of.
He’s only 2 years younger than me, so there are many similarities in our childhoods and teen years, obviously the same pop culture, he uses the vernacular of the day, so loads of words and expressions I’d completely forgotten about.
He even had to watch Songs of Praise on Sunday evenings.
My fabulous, massively achieving, well adjusted chicklets are never home these days, thus my blog is rendered fodderless.
Kev has thrown himself whole heartedly into his new handball endeavours, and possibly whole heartedly around the pitch on his belly, judging by the colour of his P.E. kit, and I’m left again to wonder why? for the love of all things good, why? are P.E. shirts white?
I soaked them all in a tub of oxyclean, but once in the washing machine a stray sock, or hanky, or bottle of green fabric dye must have slipped in and now everything is very badly tie-dyed a mottled moldy-mildew meets mint sauce green.
What a lot of ‘m’s, might have the students say that 10 times for pronounciation practice.
Onward and upward, off to Starbucks for a cup of java with my gal pal and then home to greet my returning heroes.
Be well all.

Let’s Have a Parade For Comedy.

As days go, not my best ever. Had an appointment in the a.m. over in Osaka, so it was a Bright Lights, Big City time for me. It fell through and a lot of time and energy were wasted.

I picked myself up by book buying at the big book shop. There isn’t one near me that carries a lot of English language books, I usually order from Amazon, but there isn’t anything quite like time to kill and money to spend in a book shop. It’s good if you’re constipated too, because I find it all ways makes me want to go. Among others I bought “Teenage Revolution” by Alan Davies, about being a teenager in the 80s, because if there is one thing I don’t do enough of, it’s dwelling on the past.

Got back, not in the greatest of moods and watched a couple of intense episodes of Criminal Minds, mass murder on a rural pig farm, gripping stuff, that surprisingly did not lift my battered spirits.

Then I remembered, my dear friend Wuthering sent me a dvd a little while ago. A comedy from the BBC.
Maybe that would do the trick, maybe a little British comedy would be good medicine.
So I cracked open “ Miranda”.
I have to say, it’s funny, it is so bloody funny. I laughed out loud.

LOL is so over worked and under paid. LOL works harder and longer than a Japanese salaryman.
LOL needs 3 months of sangria and shagging at Club Med just to get the kinks out of it’s neck.
But I did. I Laughed.Out.Loud.
I laughed so hard and so long, it wasn’t pretty, I had tears and snot all over my face. For anyone who actually knows me it was the funniest TV laugh since Margaret Cho’s “ My name is Gwen and I’m here to waaaarsh your vagina.’
I recommend anyone having a down day to watch this. In fact I recommend they show it in hospital waiting rooms around the globe. Weekend community watch-a-thons.
Give comedy a raise, praise it from the highest tower, it has magic restorative powers.

How Bored Would You Have To Be?

Sunday dawned fine and sunny. Big plans to rearrange some furniture, bring a massive table down very narrow stairs, re-locate the computer so that if I was actually paying attention I’d be able to see what was going on.
It became quite a palaver, as A could only move to B if B was moved to C, which couldn’t be done in a hurry because C was a total mess and needed sorted. Had to employ the 15 minute method and chase the jobs with some Criminal Minds.
In the morning Jim claimed he was bored, bored, bored, bored. His friend couldn’t play until after lunch.
So Jim-the-wierdo decided to clean the toilet? Even put on some little plastic disposable gloves. Attacked the U bend with great gusto, scrubbed the floor, washed the shells in the little cistern sink, changed the hand towels, picked all the books up off the floor and put them on the shelf, stacked the magazines neatly, alphabetized the tampons.
When he’d finished he peeled off his plastic gloves with a flourish, like Dr Shepherd finishing brain surgery, dumped them in the rubbish and took the rubbish out.
Kev sat around honing his obnoxious skills until club started at 1.
Evening came and miracle of miracles, we all sat around the table and ate together, even laughing, joking and conversing. No one cried, no one slammed off. A casual observer, peering through the window, might, before we had them arrested, be forgiven for thinking we were a family.
So, all in all, weekend not too shabby.

Fudging All Recent Blether into One Post.

So much going on here, so much of nothing really, just the start of the school year with both my kids and the kids I work with, schedules to adjust, new timetables, new classes, new books, just loads of unexciting things to do.
After 12 years of dodging the bullet, my name came up for the dreaded yakuin, no idea how that is going to go, I’m just going to try to go with the flow and try not to let it put me off the edge.
Kev claims he is loving his new school and all that comes with it, and indeed he is up at dawn’s first crack putting on his brand new uniform which already somehow has curry spilled all over it. Much to my surprise he has joined the handball team. On the plus side he will get physically very fit, he’ll be busy, he’ll need to eat even more than he does already and he’ll be exhausted at the end of every day, not to mention, gone all weekend. The down side of this is that joining ‘club’ does fill every spare waking moment and I find it difficult to hang onto a sense of family. I know they have to grow up and do their own thing and life marches on, but I feel club just demands too much time of them, it takes them away form the home for too long, too soon.
That said, despite Kev’s claims of loving school life his behaviour at home has been a little ‘taxing’ shall we say, he clearly feels comfortable enough at home to release all of his tensions, on me, and I’m left relaxing in a cold acid bath just to relieve my own stresses of the day.
Meanwhile Sunshine has eased into her uni schedule, her suddenly expansive social life, and greater freedoms, like an old pro. Although she hasn’t actually gone to any yet, it seems there are a number of ‘all you can drink’ social events coming up and I anticipate a post entitled, ‘when teens start drinking’. some readers may find it a radical plan, but The Man and I may go back to our original idea of just locking her up in her room until she’s 50, a plan we concocted when she was just a few years old and never out of our sight.
Doris has only a few short months of softball left and we need to come up with a high school plan for her, and quite quickly really. yesterday I had the new school year visit from her teacher, who confirmed what I already knew, that Doris is a wonderful gal, possessing all the major qualities one would hope for in one’s off-spring, but that she needs ( rather we, collectively need) to be setting sights in some sort of direction and forming a plan on how she’ll get there.
Young Jim, is in year 5 and a fairly joyous kid when not in hand-to-hand combat with his brother. A re-shifting of bedrooms that did not please him, so he has taken to sleeping in a cupboard, I kid you not, it’s a big cupboard, a spacious cupboard, but a cupboard nonetheless, claims it’s HIS cupboard and he has every right to sleep there is he wants. Then kid who wore nothing but a think windbreaker over a T-shirt throughout the sub-zero winter, has now, now that spring is here and the sun is high in the sky, taken to wearing a down jacket two sizes to small. I’m beginning to notice an oddness in the lad. He also broke his toe at Tae Kwon Dou, milked it for all was worth, begged a lift to school on the grounds he could barely put his foot to the ground, but went to the TKD tournament and won trophies in 3 categories, so I think he is healing nicely.
So Saturday it is. After club Doris is going to Kyoto with my lovely friend Noren to watch women’s pro softball, Kev has handball until early evening and the lad with the broken toe and I are off to work.
American Idol at 9!!
Have a good weekend all.

Joy and Spring and other Pleasantness

There has been a lot of feelings of heaviness, not just around my arse but in general these past weeks.
Concern for people in the North East, my friends still experiencing after shocks, the instability at the reactor, it’s all just mulling over all the time, hanging around on the periphery of my mind, and then comes The Sunshine.
It’s amazes me every year, how after months of grey and grim, bright sunny days can lift the spirits. the problems don’t go away, they’re still there, but a joy comes to the fore front of the mind, the future looks good, the garden must be and will be planted, kids back in school, new starts all round. back to work. I’m fortunate, I love my job and it pays me a decent wage. just brining in the dry washing feels good, thinking about what foods the new season offers is exciting. I feel many different mojos kick starting, coming back to life. It won’t last, but I’ll enjoy it while it’s here, I’ll try to harness it and make good things come of it.
Cherry blossoms every where, this year’s hanami felt more telling than previous years. It’s about how transient things are, that moments are fleeting and we have to take them as and when they come, nothing lasts.

Up Up and Away

You would really think, that having known I was going away ( somewhere) for these past months, that I would be a little more on the ball about things, but no.
I was pretty much shit for brains all day yesterday, running around looking for things,
Couldn’t find my camera battery and charging gizmo, couldn’t find the red rucksack, couldn’t find anyone to help find these things until I pointed out to 2 young boys that I also couldn’t find all the DS software that I have appropriated.
That lit the necessary fire under them. Then I remembered that the software and the camera thing are all in a zip-lock bag together. They were here on this shelf, or maybe they were in the kitchen drawer, then I vaguely remember seeing them on the desk upstairs. Sadly, just as in Elvis’ case, none of these sightings panned out and we came to the conclusion in the end that the zip lock bag must be in the red rucksack and that someone must have broken in and stolen it as we slept.
Never mind, the camera will just be one less things that needs cranking up everyday, and my photos are all pretty crap, the camera on my phone will have to suffice for any magic kodak moments we might have.

So I’m off in about 40 minutes, best wake the lads and keep repeating, ‘tickets, passport,money’.
You know I will try to update from the road, others manage to do that, I know there is away….
meanwhile, be good everyone, play nicely, and there is always Twitter.
xxxxx