Sprinting long-term

Saying "no" and admitting I need to rest: these things are sometimes easy for me, but sometimes I really struggle to tell them to others. 

I can't believe that just this morning I struggled to admit in an email to colleagues that I needed schedule some rest time on the weekend (our usual time-off as we don't work in a church). It was in relation to drawing boundaries about how much time I could interact with one of them in my house.

I also struggled with the pull on Saturday, on the way home from the athletics meet, to socialise vs not socialise. The trains I took home from the track meet also held friends who I could have travelled with, but I deliberately rode on my own. I wasn't snubbing them, but I was so tired I just didn't feel up to talking for 1 ½ hrs on the trains. However I couldn't tell them to their faces that I didn't want to travel with them, instead I deviously avoided them and hid in the crowds.

All these things are hard for me, at times:

• first recognising that I need to pull back,
• deciding what to say no to,
• actually doing it,

and, when necessary,

• telling people that I have to do it.

Perhaps I'm better than some at this, but I still don't find it easy. I'm someone who has a pretty high capacity for work or at least can get a lot done in less time than other people. But because I live life pretty intensely, I need to schedule in a fair bit of down-time. Or at least it feels like a lot. I often question if it is too much, but then when I ignore my inner voice and push too hard, I find myself really worn out or even sick and unable to fulfil my responsibilities to my family.

I'm much more of a sprinter in this life, and I'm married to a long-distance "runner" who frequently has much more endurance than me, but moves at a slower pace. My lifelong challenge is, how can I sprint, yet stay the long course?

From Saturday, the next fortnight is very full and I know I'll be exhausted, come the 30th of April. Add to that the knowledge that during those two weeks I'll be almost unable to get to my computer for any length of time, so before Saturday I'm trying to get ahead on my editing and other desk-work. Yes, I'm feeling the pressure. Thankfully this week is very light on outside commitments, so I'm working hard and and intensely.

But if you see me, do ask me if I'm taking time to relax!

I feel like I've been bad

One thing I hate about parenting is how little control you end up having. My main gripe at present is regards to school. 

When I was at school I could control (for the most part) if I got in trouble, whether or not I got sent to the principal. And as a conscientious student, I rarely pushed things so far that I was the attention of the principal (not that I was a perfect student by any means, but I had this fear of crossing authority figures that helped a lot). 

As a parent I have little control over whether I get called into meeting with the classroom teacher or principal. It doesn't matter if I've been "good" or not. Although my tendency is to feel that when I am called in, that my parenting skills are being called into question and that I have indeed been a "bad" parent. That is my visceral reaction when I get one of "those" emails or phone calls. Grrr. Why can't my kids just toe the line?

Feeling as I am, I'm not looking forward to the meeting we have later this week. I'm scared that I'm going to embarrass myself by bursting into tears or running out of the room. It doesn't help that the teachers involved are also our friends. Thankfully my teacher-husband will be by my side. 

I just need to keep reminding myself that I am not a bad parent, over and over again.

Back to School Day

8th grade maths.

I embarrassed my 13 y.o. son in front of his classmates today. Not too hard to do for a teenager!

He was in maths and it was an open class, so there were a whole lot of parents there. The teacher was struggling to get responses out of the kids (who were all embarrassed to even have their parents in the room). So when she asked a question that no one answered, she opened it out to the parents and I put my hand up (or maybe I put my hand up earlier than that, I can't remember). Anyway, she then asked my son if it was okay to ask his mum for the answer and he shook his head. She asked him if he knew the answer and he shook his head, so I got to answer it anyway. I got it right too!

Today was Back to School Day at CAJ. Sounds a bit strange, 3 1/2 weeks after they actually went back to school. But, as I explained here last year, it is a day when the parents go "back to school". We meet teachers, learn about what our kids will be doing this year, and get an opportunity to walk in the footsteps of our kids a little bit too.

This year they structured it differently, one of the big changes was actually some time of "open classroom" time. Where the kids had class, and the parents were allowed to be in the classroom.

This was kind-of fun (especially when I answered that question about scatter graphs). It was interesting to see the kids that our kids are with every day and some of the interaction. Watching the eighth grade boys do PE wasn't quite so fun. It was hot (they were smelly) and then it started to rain!

I did enjoy year 8 maths and English. I especially enjoyed the opportunity I had to embarrass my son.

Elementary was pretty good too. Especially the fact that my husband could help me out. Otherwise I would have been shuffling between two classes and would have missed 50% of what was going on. Usually my husband is working at the same time as any school day event for parents, so I'm the sole representative of of our family, but today he got to go to 2nd grade and I did 4th grade. That made for a calmer experience!

I'm glad I didn't have to stay for the 2-4pm high school segment, I'm exhausted! I got to come home at 2 with my younger boys. Next year I get to do both elementary and high school, but skip middle school. Two years after that I get to do all three! What fun!

I think the reason I find it so exhausting is that there is a lot of people around and I have so many different "hats" that  it is challenging every time I meet a new person to remember how I know them and come up with appropriate conversation! I think some must wonder why I look permanently spacey! I also had to stand up a lot through the day and now my knee is aching. Thankfully I put the slow cooker on this morning!

A Japanese man who holds some embarrassing world records

Continuing on today's chicken theme, I don't know what you think, but I think this particular aspect of record breaking is at best shocking, at worst incredibly wasteful in the light of the many in the world who don't have enough to eat. And it is embarrassing that it is a Japanese man who is the world champion at incredibly fast eating.

Embarrassment at the gym

I finally found time to get back to the gym. Since David started work last week it's been very difficult to get away. But I have to tell you about the funniest thing that happened there today.

I was exercising away, minding my own business. At Curves you do about 14 machines in rotation, 30 seconds per machine and 30 seconds at a recovery station between machines. On the recovery station you are supposed to keep moving. Everyone interprets that differently. In Japan they seem to interpret it at a much more sedate level than in Australia. In Australia the gym instructors encouraged us to do all sorts of "moves" at these places. In Japan mostly people walk or slowly jog. I figure, I'm paying to come here, I may as well have a good workout, so I usually go at it pretty hard. Jogging and interspersing that with other "moves". Like opposite hand to foot, or twisting at the waist.

Occasionally I spend one of the 30 seconds kicking my feet out in front of me up as high as I can and clapping my hands underneath my legs. I love this one, but it freaks other people out. Sometimes I get remarks, but today the response was over the top. A few ladies started talking about me and then one said, "You're so young, you aren't 30 yet are you?" I assured her I was on my way to 40 and her response was basically: "No way!!!" She then immediately went to all her neighbours and spread the word. That must have convinced these ladies that they weren't so old after all (I'm guessing they were in their 50s or 60s) and they started to try to kick their legs up too. It was both embarrassing and hilarious. However I am pretty happy with the "age" compliment.

One year anniversary

This is now our bedroom.

Last week I missed an anniversary here. The one year anniversary of moving into this house! We remain so thankful for the convenient location of this house. It is fantastic. It is also just the right size for us. With room for visitors on occasion too!

If you want to, you could look back at a couple of posts around the time we moved in last year here and here. But I've replicated my favourite embarrassing story of the move here:

My first grocery shop was the first day we arrived in our house. Of course - there was absolutely nothing besides our water bottles in our marvellous fridge. Especially nothing for breakfast the next day. Thankfully I'm already fairly familiar with the area and didn't have much trouble finding the shop I wanted. It was not much trouble shopping, either, because it is a smallish shop of a chain that I shopped at two or three times a week for four years, so I know what they stock (very unlike Woolworths or Coles in Australia). There is very little choice of brand, but that is fine - I get through fast!

The trouble came when I got to the cash register and realised that in Japan you pay in cash, not with your plastic card (as I always did for the groceries in Australia). And I only had 7 000 yen on me (less than AU$100. So, red-faced, I explained in a halting-just-returned-from-a-year-without-speaking-Japanese way that I had to go and get some money. He was very kind and held aside the rest of the groceries while I rushed home with what I'd managed to buy and asked my husband for more from his wallet (Japanese ATMs are still too scary for me).

In my rush I had to try and find our house. I got close. Our neighbour's houses all look pretty similar to ours. They're all close to the road, close to each other and have covered garages next to the front doors. With my car blocking half the narrow street, I climbed out and dashed into the most likely door (which was unlocked) - shouting, "David, where's your wallet?" Too late I saw that the entry hall was not jammed with boxes...I left as fast as I could. I still haven't met our neighbour (coming up soon - another Japanese custom we must adhere to). I don't know if anyone heard me or not. I hope not.

Too many embarrassments for one afternoon! It is a good thing that someone brought us some pizza for dinner. 

To this day I don't know whether our elderly neighbours know about that "house invasion". These are the same neighbours who have given us advice about gardening and gutter sweeping. The wife occasionally sweeps our gutters when we don't get around to it fast enough and are always amazed when I have one or more of the boys helping me sweep.

But again, I have to say how thankful we are to be able to live here. We hope we'll be able to live here a lot longer! Just today we had to clear out the top of our china cabinet so that it could be shifted temporarily so that a new air conditioning unit can be installed (to replace a geriatric one). Just the removal of those things threw me back to bad memories of moving. But for now we don't have to think of moving and I am so thankful!

The rest of my week

Today after lunch I'm driving a bunch of ladies to Karuizawa, north-west of here. Yesterday they had 50+cm of snow. Yes, Karuizawa is in the mountains.

Our venue: we visited Megumi Chalet in Karuizawa at Christmas time.

We're going to a women's retreat. It is run by the Japan Evangelical Missions Association (JEMA), the same group who publish the magazine I work on as an editor. This is the third time I've been to this event down here. I also went to a mini version in Hokkaido for four years. It is almost always a wonderfully encouraging time and I'm certain it will be this time. We have a great speaker: Jane Rubietta. She spoke last time I went to this retreat and it was fantastic. A speaker who's willing to be transparent and even joke about herself. And who urges you to pursue Jesus with all your heart. Wonderful.

However I'm feeling nervous. I haven't been behind the steering wheel on this drive without my husband next to me giving me directions. Even though we've been to Karuizawa a number of times, I'm still liable to get lost, especially between our house and the expressway. Thankfully I'm following someone.

Then there is the small matter of snow. I'm hoping the roads are well cleared! But I know that I'll have to put the chains on the van between here and there. Even if the roads are cleared, I'll need the chains to get up the hill at the retreat centre. I've never put chains on before and being a women's retreat - there are no men to lean on. My husband gave me a hands-on tutorial last night in our living room. It was too wet and cold to do it outside and I was in my jammies. It looked easy enough. In fact they were sold to my husband by a tiny sales woman who said she could put them on. It seems that no matter what I conquer - there is always a new challenge around the corner!

Karen putting together gift bags.

The event doesn't actually start until tomorrow, but I have a small responsibility as one of the the gift bag coordinators. My friend Karen and I have been working on assembling small bags of goodies to give to each of the attendees. We have a little more work to do before everyone arrives tomorrow.

I also designed the programme for the event. The printing of that hasn't gone as I'd hoped, so I'm a bit disappointed and embarrassed, but everyone reassures me that no one will know that it isn't as I'd envisaged it. I'm hoping so, but it doesn't change that cringe factor inside me that will not be happy carrying around the program that doesn't quite look like this:

Nonetheless, I hope and pray that it will be a good time away regardless of the practical details that might not be perfect. 

So, lots of things to pray about: safety, that my family will manage while I'm away, practical details will be okay and especially that the Holy Spirit will be there - blessing abundantly all who come.

This is embarrassing

We received a booklet of number stories written by our 8 y.o. son and his classmates. The students have to solve the number stories for homework. It all sounded good until I got to this story:

"I punched 40 bully's and my little brother punched 10 bully's. My big brother puched 49 bully's. How many bully's did we punch in all?" (sic)

How shocking! 

And then I looked at the name of the author - even more shocking, this was my son's contribution! While other stories were about cookies, apples and soccer goals, my son chooses to write about punching bullies? And then it gets photocopied and sent around to all the families in the class. Ouch. 

I guess at least he is anti-bullying. But anti-violence? Maybe not. By the way this kid is generally so well behaved at school that I rarely hear a bad word about him. Wish I could say the same about his behaviour at home. But I've never seen him punch anyone!

His teacher sometimes reads this blog. Be assured Jean, I'll recover.