Why the hell....

(a.k.a. "some MIL gems from the weekend away")

Why the hell does she
* ignore the kids... until *I* go to them to hold their hand/pick them up/ whatever, then all of a sudden she rushes in.

* then ignore the kids a few seconds later when she thinks of something else (e.g. "ooh, look, a pretty flower") meanwhile the kid is left tottering on the edge of the stairs, or in the middle of the road or something.

* spend the entire dinner time asking K if she will eat some x, y z from HER plate. K has a plate of her own, let her eat her own stuff FIRST!

* spend the last half of the dinner telling K "If you don't finnish your dinner up, yaddi-yaddi-yah" when it turns out that BEFORE dinner, she plied same kid with a packet of chips (without telling me), but still expects her to eat all her meal?!?!

* then go and buy a dessert for the same kid she had just told off at dinner for not finishing it!

* pick up a happy baby from downstairs where I am, take him upstairs, then promptly leave him on the floor in the living room (where there are a set of stairs with no gate on them) while she fluffs about in the kitchen doing not much at all.

* sneak food to the kids - she seriously gives it to them only when I am not around, really sneaky like, esp when I catch her out. She never tells me she has given them anything, so when L comes up to me munching, of course I get worried that he has swallowed something he shouldn't have/picked up off the ground etc.

* get all offensive when, after she picks L up and shows him the strawberries for dessert, I say "please dont feed him strawberries as he hasn't had them yet". she says "I wasn't gonna GIVE him any". (yeah, right)

* insist on giving me those bloody uht milks for my tea. I DRINK REAL MILK IN MY TEA. (Lots of it, so one of those piddly creamers doesnt even whet the spot!)

aaah, nothing major, I know, but geez it annoys me, lol!

more bullets

I reckon I've got a good, oh, 2 mins to update before L decides to let me know that it is "all about him", haha. For now, at least, he sleeps, so I will try:

L had his first trip to a shrine today, at 3 weeks old. We went sightseeing in Kamakura. He also had his first BF at a shrine, lol. I remember we took K out sightseeing with my parents to Asakusa when she was about 2 or 3 weeks old, and I was BFing her outside the main shrine there too. Too funny.

J rang up 4:30pm on Friday afternoon - on the home phone (bcoz I have a habit of leaving my mobile on manner mode so never hear it ring, oops). Was a bit worried why he was ringing at that time of day, thought something might have happened.....turned out he had just got a phone call from his boss (who himself was o/s on a bus. trip) with a decree to go to Indonesia for a trade fair. From Monday. So he leaves tomorrow morning, for a week. Gets back the day my folks leave, next Saturday. (sigh)

Made the trek out to playgroup during the week - was great to catch up with everyone, and show off L ☺
After playgroup, we walked around the shops for a bit too, so it was a long day in the end, but worth it! Although I passed out that night, and had trouble waking up Fri morning too (was actually woken by FIL's 100 or so phone calls - he was ringing to ask if it was convenient for him to come over and do some plumbing work here, (he is fixing up the outdoor garden hose connections etc).Granted, it was 9am or so, so any normal person would be awake, but I wonder why he thought after me not answering the first 5 calls to my mobile OR the call to the home phone that it might be convenient?? He just kept calling until he got me anyway, and came over anyway, so we were stuck in the house Fri while he did all the work. DOn't want to sound ungrateful as he has done a fab job of insalling hoses on the balcony, and in the backyard, but it is never at our convenience.....(see below)

RANT starts here:
On Sat the PIL both came over - was supposed to be the last time to see my parents, so we were gonna have lunch. Also a kind of late mother's day, since they were away last weekend. When I spoke face to face to FIL on Fri, I said that it would be better to do lunch, as L gets a bit fussy in the evenings, and also he wants to be nursed more often. I suggested a bbq at home, as going out for lunch is a bit 面倒くさい too, but he said that I should discuss with J when he gets home from work and get back to him (Why can things never be decided, always takes 4 or 5 times to get anything decided argh!)

Ater J's phone call that he was going on a sudden business trip, I knew that he would be late home Fri night, so rang FIL after dinner to say that we would just do lunch on Sat, prob go out somewhere as not enough time to prepare anything now, and that they should come by around 10:30am or so.

So come Sat morning, and they don't turn up until nearly 11:30am, with 2 boxes of donuts...Give them about 10mins here, and then FIL "suggests" that we go out for DINNER instead and just have something light (perhaps donuts?) for lunch.

I lost it. What is the fricken point of me sitting there the day before telling him that evenings are not so good, so lets do lunch, when they arrive and want to change the whole thing to suit themselves anyway????? If we go out for dinner, it means getting home late too, so K doesnt get to bed until too late, L being fussy, and someone having to prob hold him the whole time at the restaurant, and the biggest fear I had was that it would mean that PIL would stay o/night too. I am just not ready to have them stay over here, with my parents too, and me up half the night with L, and then have PIL up at 4am (coz they dont sleep) fart-arsing around the house, AND I would have had to get the futons out for them, and there is nowhere for them to sleep as I am in the spare room with L at the moment anyway. Just everything that prob doesnt seem like much now I have written it down, but man it pissed me off. They are nice people, and the do a lot for us, but it is often unwanted help. Take the backyard for example. They NEVER listen to how J wants it done. FIL just does it the way he wants to. Then they get upset and say we don't like the way they have done it - but they won't listen to our requests or opinions anyway.

I worked out the problem with them is that they don't OFFER to help/do things, they TELL US that they are doing the things for us. You can't politely turn them down, as they just won't listen. It is the same thing with going to their house and being GIVEN a cup of green tea/tea/coffee...as opposed to going to someone's house and being offered a cuppa "would you like a tea or coffee?". With PIL we just don't get a choice.

Anyway, the whole "lets go out for dinner instead" pissed me off, I got the shits, had a blow-out with J, yaddi-yaddah, you know the score. In the end we went out for lunch anyway (I guess I got my way, right?) and they left early evening to go home. I felt bad after having lost my stack with them, but man they get to me sometimes.

Oh and the best thing - as they were leaving yesterday afternoon, they turn around to TELL me that they will come back Sat morning (the day J gets back at 11am from Indonesia, and my parents leave around 4pm to go to Narita) to say good bye to my folks and bring presents for them. Oh, and that we should "DO LUNCH" then too. ARRRRGGHHH.

END RANT

L has woken up while I am writing this and is now asleep again on my chest. Cuddly little koala that he is ♥] but now I am getting tired and want to lie down....might try it in case I can get a whole 10mins in before it is boobie time again. The fun!!

talking about boobies, after nearly a whole week of pumping and resting, managed to get back to BF from Tues this week, and have been nursing at all but one feed a day (still get Nanna to give him a bottle of ebm around dinner time so I can get the prep done). Phew it has all settled down and we are back on track with that.

Dont even know if this post is gonna make any sense. Have some serious mumy brain going on at the mo. J asked me to get the bath ready for him and K while he went to the shop to buy some milk (which we had fully run out of) and onions for the curry he was making for dinner (thanks j, yum!), I nodded and said "sure" then promptly forgot about it, so he came home expecting a bath drawn, but instead had to clean out the tub himself, oops. Not to mention my lack of focus/concentration for anything/everything.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

On a bit of a spur of the moment decision, we ended up at:
(cue Wada Akiko voice)
"FUJI
Safari Pa-----ku"
on Saturday with PILs. The ad for this is one of the most annoying in the world! It totally sticks in your head,


needless to say we were all singing "honto ni, honto ni, honto ni, honto ni lion da" all day.

This is a different kind of zoo, where you lock yourselves in your car, and drive around the bears, tigers, giraffes, etc who are all out in the open. The coolest part was when a giraffe walked past our car. Man they are big fellas.It wasn't cheap (2700yen per adult, kids under 4 or 6 free to drive in your own car, an extra 1500yen each to go in the safari bus!!), but it was cool seeing the animals right up close like that. And all of K's favourite animals were there - elephants, giraffes and zebras. There was also a small patting zoo, with pigs, kangaroos and some very sad looking wallabies with their ears all eaten away, possibly by one nasty boss wallaby. We had a good day, but K has had a bit of a persistant cough for a few weeks now, and it seems to get worse when she runs around. So of course she got so excited at the petting zoo and ran all the way to the restaurant where we were gonna have lunch, so that as soon as we got into the restaurant, she coughed so much she up-chucked, everywhere. All over herself and of course me. So everyone else ordered lunch while I got her cleaned up. Then J said they would watch her while I ordered at the counter. There should have been 3 sets of eyes on her, so I still can't work out why she ended up in the men's toilets, with MIL standing at the door trying to bribe her out. Once they got her out, PIL and J were then too busy in some stupid conversation about where that door leads to, that no one was watching K. Even me at the counter ordering had an eye on her, but not them. I stuck it up them - 3 sets of eyes and not one of them on her!! Am sure I hav been labeled psycho gaijin mum now. At least it might give them a kick up the butt to be more vigilant in watching her, if only to stay out of my wrath, lol。

cherry picking, new cars and old hags

it is wierd, i keep on "writing" posts in my head, but when it comes around to sitting in front of the computer, I can't be bothered to actually get them out of my head and onto the screen! hehe. This post has been "in draft" for over a week now!
So probably time to put it all together in another round up of events, maybe

July 12-13
We went cherry picking (not cherry blossom picking as I might have got confused with and told mum, coz she was asking when we got back how the cherry blossoms were, hehe) in Numata, Gunma, with the PILs. We went two years ago, on the first weekend in July. This time, we were already well into July, so the cherry season was pretty much over. Last time we got to try 4 or 5 different types of Japanese cherries, but this time only Satonishiki (nice, sweet) and Napolean (relatively tasteless) cherries were still around. And only a third of the cherry fields/farms/orchards?? (not sure what you call them) were still open, the ones at slightly higher altitude. So we got a discount - 1000yen each for 15mins of all you can pick-and-eat cherries, but they actually said we could stay for as long as we want. Truthfully, though, there is only so much cherry you can eat at one sitting (or picking! hehe). It was fun, and hot! The nicest cherries were to be found at the top of the trees, the branches closest to the top of the greenhouse roof, so it sort of felt like we were eating cherries straight out of the oven!

We stayed overnight in a small hotel at Shima Onsen - the hotel was dissapointing, the food average and the onsen really small and poky. PILs were not impressed. No brownie points for us this time (boo-hoo).
let me take you through the dinner conversation:

MIL - "what do you think the "main" item for dinner is?"
FIL - "there is no main"
MIL - "don't you think these pickles taste wierd."
FIL - "this (insert every single food item that was on the tray) is tasteless"
etc,etc.
as I said, though, the food was VERY AVERAGE. Especially for the price of the hotel. Ok, so we only paid about 13000yen per person, as we booked at the last minute and go a discount, but the usual fee is like 19000yen or so. We *so* thought we were going to get better food and hotel by going up a rank (we usually go for the 10000-12000yen range hotels.)

The onsen at the hotel was pretty dissapointing too, very small (and mouldy! ugh! cos it was all wooden - gotta do that right or else it is a bad result)

Dinner was served in a private room, with little trays, we sit on the floor on zabuton. This was, obviously, a menu for disaster with K - she didn't want to sit down (I think she was high from an overload of cherries) so I spent the whole time running around trying to keep her away from the mini fires on our trays (shabu-shabu on the menu, and rice cooking in the small pots on our trays too, sigh!). But she was an angel again at breakfast which was in the big room with all the guests, again with the small trays, so I can't be too upset with her.

On the Sunday, we drove via Haruna Lake. We tried to park, but the carparks lining the lake are all taken by the little mini old time stores, who come running out to say "you can park here IF you buy something from our shop". Now we are not so bad that we wouldn't buy anything, but we were looking for milk for K, and of course none of these shops had it, so we decided to drive on to see the Haruna Shrine first (which the nice old lady at the shop said was just up the hill...) 3km later we arrived at the shrine (more comments that we should have seen the lake first, now we have come so far away,blah blah blah). And the sign at the entrance said it was a 15min walk to the shrine (PIL - "15mins?? well I guess we should go we have come this far")

But you know what, the saving grace of the weekend was that Haruna Jinja was really cool!! There are some pictures here. It was a beautiful walk up to the shrine, along side the river. The shrine and area had character. (small amount of brownie points for us! lol!)

J and I had a good weekend anyway, and it was cool to see that K is now quite comfortable with the PILs - she runs up to them and gives them hugs! So all good.

Other news.....our new car came! yay! I have been test-driving it every day this week so far. Gotta look out for those new-car bugs; catch any problems asap (lol).

Oh, yeh, one more thing, I think that when I was upset a few weeks ago, and I went to local supermarket and the staff were almost cursing me for being in the road in the ailes, well I am starting to think that they are just actually really rude. See, I went back there yesterday, when I was 100% rational and no hormonal issues, and the old hag, uh, I mean lady on the checkout didn't even say "Irashaimase" or "Arigato Gozaimasu" to me. Thinking it was just me, I listened as the next customer was served, but yet again, there was no niceties. Hmmm. I feel better it's not just me that they are rude too, anyway!

Right, the chu-hai has hit maximum effect. must go before I write about my deepest darkest secrets (lol).....have to get K's dinner ready anyway.

singing in the rain

R is back from her week away with the PILs, who, I many have mentioned before, even in the rain feel the need to take her out by car down to the local park or whatever so she can do her business, despite the fact that I have told them numerous times that R is actually toilet trained - you know, we have little doggy toilet sheets here that we put in her house and IF she has to be home alone or IF it is like the middle of rainy season or something, then she can have a widdle there without having to hold it and suffer.

But NO, PILs somehow think that it isn't necessary, and are always crooning about how they didn't need to use any of the toilet sheets when R stays with them - they think they are like super good or something. But in actual fact, they are *+%ing with R's mind!! (lol). After a few days with them, she thinks it is bad to use her toilet, so she "gamans"* until we take her outside. Now since it was pouring all day yesterday, we didnt take her out, because 1) it was pouring!! 2) R is only a small dog - close to the ground. All that water lying on the ground soaks her belly!! 3) we couldn't be bothered going out in the rain!! So she gamaned and gamaned until she exploded all over her house (not on the toilet sheet) and left the biggest puddle of piddle.

So we have to start toilet training again,*sigh* This happens everytime she stays over there. I am grateful that they look after her, especially when I had my friends here, but man I wish they at least let her piddle!!

So anyway, this morning there was a little lull in the rain, so we headed out for a quick walk, to relieve some of R's tension (and built up waz).
We used to have a raincoat for her, but I can't find it, so I did the next best thing - put a plastic bag over her! lol!

it may be a bit hard to tell, but there she is, "wrapped in plastic" lol!
And I am out and about with K on my back, and holding an umbrella (it was misty rain)

and I was in my bright red crocs, which I did take a photo of, but I couldn't save it to my mobile phone for some reason. No wonder people look at us strangely when we go out, lol!


*gaman - this strange fascination Japanese people have of suffering through it. Can be applied to nearly anything I whinge about to J.... (apparently I need to "gaman" more when there is something that pisses me off, as opposed to complaining to J about it.)but is surprisingly "forgotten" whenever a Japanese male in particular has the slightest sore thoat or cough, in which case the never "gaman" and run down to the docs asap to get some meds or have a vitamin drip (rolls eyes).