Month: December 2020

What are you doin’ New Year’s Eve?

First off, I love the little video (from almost ten years ago!) and version of this from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. It is adorable and beautiful, and they are both adorable and beautiful in it. Anyway, to answer the question, I will be staying with my mother in a little beach-front-ish hotel on the main little island about an hour southeast of Houston: Galveston. Many people complain about it being dirty or something of the sort, but it is merely the clay soil we have that makes the water not-clear and brown most of the time. The sand is also brown, but it is much softer than any white sand I have ever crossed. All-in-all, I really like Galveston. It is a wonderful connection to the ocean for us here in Houston, and my mother and I tend to remember it and visit it and appreciate it greatly often. New Year’s Eve will be yet another of those many occasions.

The reason we are going is that 1) I like to watch the first sunrise of the year, as is customary in Japanese culture, and 2) my mom wanted to go do something adventure-y somewhere not-at-home recently, and wasn’t able to go do that. So, I offered for us to combine the two things, and handle both our goals, and together. I booked the hotel room this morning, and I even got a little extra discount, because I had signed up for a rewards program thing back when I lived in Japan, and I was getting a hotel in Korea for the weekend I attended a dance even there. (Fun fact: I had to change the currency from Korean ₩ won to US $ dollars when I logged into it. [Double fun fact: The $ is technically the Mexican peso symbol. The US dollar symbol has two vertical lines through the S.])

So, that’s what I’ll be doing. I also may or may not be going to bed around 8pm… like I am right now… 😛

Post-a-day 2020

Morning life

My cousin is pregnant. Her body wakes her up at approximately 5:34 every morning these days. After my workout this morning (5:15 class), I sent her a message to see if she was up and about. “Indeed,” she replied. So, I called her.

It was a bit weird to grasp, when I considered it all after the fact. Another person and I were chatting lively on the phone about various things, almost as though it were a lunchtime visit. Yet, it was completely dark outside.

After I arrived back home and went inside, I cooked some warm food for breakfast – same as yesterday, but possibly more delicious this time! – and chowed down while I sat next to the gas heater on the floor, still chatting with my cousin. (She was having a nutty cereal for her breakfast, but didn’t know the name… just that it was nutty.)

And none of it felt weird to me. In fact, it all felt really great. When we got off the phone after an hour, at about 7:40, I was washing my dishes and cleaning up after eating my breakfast. I went upstairs, used the bathroom and showered, tutored for almost two hours, then relaxed on my bed for a while. And it all felt completely good. It felt like this was real life as I want it, although I haven’t been living it much lately.

I usually get up around 9:00 to an alarm, unrested (because I actually wake up around 4:30-5:00, and struggle to fall back asleep fully before I have to get up for the day). I start eating somewhere between ten and one pm, and finish any eating by approximately eight hours later (6:00pm-9:00pm).

On the schedule these past two days, however, I’m finishing eating by three and four pm. I’m taking a nap mid-late morning, and feeling very alive for work in the afternoon and evening, despite not eating anymore while there. I go to bed tired – well, exhausted, really – and in a very good way. My body hurts in all the right ways (from the exercise). And I’m eating really quite well. Even the few cookies I ate seem like nothing compared to all the super-healthy stuff I’ve had otherwise. And my body doesn’t even seem to notice that I’ve had them either, it all ha balanced so well.

Basically, once again, I am contemplating a shift in my life to earlier in the day. Period. We shall see what happens next…

Post-a-day 2020

Slightly a mess

I don’t do well with “storing things”. Winter sweaters or not-so-often-used items that usually are stored away, perhaps in a closet or the back of a shelf, usually end up staying in the back of that closet or shelf for me. Even when I need them, want them, the hassle of pulling them out and finding a new, daily use spot for them is usually too great for me to make the effort. Plus, I tend to forget about them. I meander around my clothes, bummed and uncomprehending why I cannot seem to find clothes that I love for the current weather. I notice that I need the heavy sweater as I am on my way out. at that point in time, I am ready to leave, and do not mentally or physically want to spend the time to pull out the big sweaters. So, I find the easiest-to-reach one that will get me by in the day, and head out the door. If I remember later – and that’s a big “if” – when I am back home and not busy, I might rearrange to put the heavy sweater box into an easily accessed spot. But it usually takes me a couple months of needing them consistently to do that.

I know, I know: it is rather ridiculous. But I’m not doing it intentionally, necessarily. It kind of just happens that way, and I am noticing it right now as I contemplate why I never seem to wear all my cool sweaters in Fall and Winter (aside from the fact that our temperatures change constantly from cold to hot to cool, even on a single day, here in Houston).

But I also notice it with other things. If my guitar is in a case, I will pull it out rarely. If it is sitting out on a stand, I will grab it and play it regularly, and often. Basically, I guess I just use what is out, easily accessed. If it is put away or hard to reach, I tend not to use it unless using it is a necessity.

Keeping that in mind, I think a sort of room organization overhaul is coming soon…

Especially considering that I will be getting back an awesome chair and ottoman that I had lent to my cousin year ago, when I moved to Japan for a while. I would like to have a functional space that includes the chair and ottoman, anyway, so some rearranging needs to happen for that already. And the sewing machine and its table… forgot about that again… haha

Post-a-day 2020

Birthdays and bad days

I remember attending my childhood best friend’s birthday party at Skate Central, an indoor roller skating rink, own time when we were little. I had gotten her a Bop-It (probably a Bop-It Extreme). As is usual for my family – my mom is very good at thinking things through practically, and so trained us even as young children to do the same – we had taped the necessary batteries (the ones “not included” with the toy itself) to the present. Therefore, whenever the recipient – in this case, my best friend – wanted to get set up with playing with the toy, all the necessary tools were on hand. And no, it didn’t require any other tools, or we likely would have brought them along, too.

Anyway, that was the present that I was very excited to give to her. Someone else at the party also have her a Bop-It. The same kind, yes. That person did not include batteries in her gift-giving.

So, what happens? My friend and her mom take the batteries from my Bop-It and open up the other friend’s Bop-It to use. Mine will be given away at a later time to someone else, but the batteries were nonetheless useful.

…..

I am not sure that I can appropriately express how distraught and useless I felt at that moment. I only saw myself as useful in filling in where others had failed. I was no main focus in any way. I was merely there to fill in the gaps, as needed… to provide the batteries that no one ha smothered to remember or would consider again until they ran out of power and needed replacing. I was forgetful and a convenient helping hand. Nothing else.

Can you believe I got all that from a single event like that? Yes, it was ridiculous what they did. And yes, they did it without even thinking – they needed batteries to open this other one, and saw batteries on the first Bop-It – problem solved.

This is now something for me to contemplate and consider for a bit. I imagine I have some strong opinions about myself deep down because of that incident. It really hurt me at the time, and we human beings tend to do rash things when we are hurt unexpectedly.

Yeah…

By the way, I loved playing Bop-It Extreme as a kid. I would spend hours walking around – pacing around – my dad’s house upstairs, playing on my own. Everyone said the sound-only game was the hardest. (Psychologically speaking, it’s actually easier, but whatever…) Most people, even with practice, never made it far past the twenties and thirties. I grew accustomed to challenging myself with that one, and ended up with a ridiculous high score of around three hundred something. I averaged a hundred or so for any given play. And that started after only a matter of days of playing it. It was just very natural for me, and also quite fun. I truly enjoyed it, and I loved spending my time playing Bop-It Extreme.

My mom found my one from her house recently. I had gotten a second one, because I missed it when I wasn’t at my dad’s house, which was the majority of the time. When she found it, she replaced the batteries in preparation of showing it to me. I convinced her to play a few rounds with me in the multiplayer version, and we had a blast. When I did the solo player version, I ended up stopping because I wanted to get back to what I had been doing beforehand, not because I made an error. In other words, it was still easy peasy for me, and I was awesome at it.

I really loved playing Bop-It Extreme. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Working it out…?

I am going to test out my old gym this coming week, and see how it goes, how I like it all. I am nervous both that I will like it and that I will not like it. If I like it, I still will have to figure out whether I want to find a way to make it work to go there again, despite the super high price now. If I don’t like it, I will have to get myself sorted in entirely doing workouts at home for the future. While I trust that I can do that, I do not want to do that. That’s a lot of alone time for something I prefer to have as a social situation.

So, we shall see… fingers crossed that, no matter the experience this next week, I am complete about how it goes and about how to move forward with and from the experience.

And now, I must sleep, as my alarm will be going off at five, because sign-ups open 24 hours before the start of the class… and they have very limited capacities…, and I need to attend the 5:15am class. Ugh. So, I’m getting up at five not even for a workout, but to sign up for a workout. Totally ridiculous, I agree. 😛

Post-a-day 2020

Christmas Day? No way

It seems that today has been Christmas Day. It felt very much like an average Thursday for the books, and my mother agrees.

Turns out that it has actually been a Friday, and it didn’t even feel like that. Suffice it to say that this has been probably my oddest Christmas ever. And I lived in Japan for a while, where KFC and drinking parties where most people wear (slutty?) Santa costumes are the norm for Christmas Day night.

We saw road signs from Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT) yesterday and today, and they were kind of hilarious. They read, “He sees you when you’re speeding. He knows when you drive baked.”* One of the best holiday lights setups I’ve seen this year, for sure!

Well, it’s 7:30pm, and I’m exhausted, so I’m going to do my stretches and reading now, and get to sleep. Merry Christmas, folks!

*If you do not get the reference here, it is a play with the words from “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, the song.

Post-a-day 2020

Value in being valued

On a walk the other day with my mom, we met these nice old people who live on her street, just after we picked up some ujukitsu off the ground in their backyard/the abandoned small golf course. Turns out that they met one another while teaching for a year in Japan on a military base (that is no longer in existence) near Tokyo. I am familiar with the train line that led to it, according to them. Before Japan, they each had taught a year or two in Hawai (he) and the Philippines (she), and then they met and married and moved to teach on a base in Germany together. They were part of the foreign service teaching for 14 years altogether, I believe they had said. Then they moved to Houston and taught in elementary schools here until they retired. It was adorable to hear.

Considering my frustrations in this part-time job I am now working, I have wondered if something in school teaching is still calling to me. I miss having classes of kids, and teaching something – and something valuable – each and every day I go to work, and being loved and trusted and valued by those around me, in immediate interaction with me every day. Though, perhaps it is less about the classroom and more about the respect and valuing and love that comes to me in a classroom, but that has seemed nearly nonexistent in this position. I have even felt disrespected and incredibly undervalued and unappreciated here.

I wonder what there is for me to do about that.

I know one thing for sure: I’m tired of relying on the way I am told things work. Word-of-mouth information is faulty, and it has proven itself to be so over and over again in this job. I am tired of it. I will do my research for all of my questions, and clock the hours and expect no pay for them, and I will be prepared for all the stuff at this job that will pop up at some time or other – the crazy situations all seem to be inevitable, and I prefer to be prepared and to know what on Earth is going on. So, I will prepare myself, and I will not rely any longer on anyone else to teach me what I need to know or what they all think I need to know – that has been terrible so far, and I am done with it.

In doing that, I will be prepared as I want to be prepared, and as I always prepare myself when I care about something. The system is faulty, and I do not have to follow it – I can do better than it, and I shall, especially in this part of it.

Separately, I am doing more photos tomorrow morning, and I am nervous. I have been doubting and stressed since that bad photo shoot where I didn’t trust myself the other week. I know I need to take photos to move past this, but that doesn’t make it less scary for me. Someone will be relying on me, and I will be relying on a camera… and myself. Now, I just need to trust myself, and do what is needed to be done. Even if that seems like a ridiculous something. You can do this, Banana. Trust yourself and have faith in yourself – Jishin to Kokoro.

Post-a-day 2020