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 |  The misadventures of a full-time working/ housekeeping parent! Quill nominee. |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** So that's the Wife and the Kid in the photo. Not the Better Wife -- that's me. Or at least who I'm forced to be, and try to keep being, most of the time. I've never blogged before, and never felt inclined to do so. Before I got married, I was too busy gaming.  World of Warcraft demands a great deal of your time, devotion, and sanity, especially if you're in an end-game raiding guild. After I got married, I was too busy being married. It turns out that being a husband, a father, a homemaker, and a professional rent-maker is even more demanding than being a guildmaster! Now who could have imagined that? Well, certainly not me.  When I started this blog a few months ago, I had kind of reached a boiling point. I was stressed out juggling all my commitments and responsibilities, and had hit the Mariana Trench in my career. I'm still mired in the deeps, and during this period I needed something else in my life to haul me out. It turned out that poverty is not conducive to creating a healthy and supportive home environment. To add to my depressing financial straits, Lynx's (the Kid) health started deteriorating. From one epileptic fit a month, he started suffering up to three times, sometimes within a single day. Numerous hospital visits and specialist consultations ensued, forcing me to take unpaid leave from a minimum wage job that paid me less than half of what I made as a fresh graduate -- twenty years ago. Silent blame from the Wife began to seep out through resentful tones and then blatant accusations. In this era of 'empowered females', somehow men are expected to earn more and do more at home as well. Ironic, isn't it? What I'm going through is similar to what many women go through every day, and only a tiny fraction of what my mother and the working women of her generation endured. But one thing I am denied which most women enjoy is a group of confidantes they can open up to. Most men I know aren't comfortable talking about, or listening to another guy talk about their emotions and struggles. Maybe it's an ego thing, or machismo speaking. Maybe I need to grow out my hair and a pair of boobs, slap on some makeup before a guy would at least pretend to listen and commiserate. Anyway that's when the blog started, and I started pouring out bits and pieces of my frustrations and elations into the nether of digital space. Beyond the Cloud9   was one of my first few readers, and I enjoyed chatting with her through blog comments tremendously. She's helped me so much by providing perspective and sharing her own stories and experiences with her own family and children.That's what this is -- a little space where I occasionally come in and rant or share odd, interesting, or exciting events in my never-mundane life. A space I hope will attract a few others to come in sometimes, look around and share some words. Enjoy sharing my life with me! ![Merit Badge in Music
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Thank you for your participation in the 48-HOUR CHALLENGE: "Return To Innocence by Enigma" Media Prompt hosted by [Link To User support] ! We appreciate that you tackled this challenge... *^*Smile*^* *^*Thumbsupl*^*](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/genre-Music-1050.gif) ![Merit Badge in Queen of Comedy
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I wanted to send you a little something to thank you for your humor! Your blog entry: [Link to Book Entry #936771] made me laugh so much that I spit my coffee everywhere, so thank you very much! *^*Laugh*^* ~Lornda A.K.A. The Queen of Comedy *^*Crown*^* Refer to for more details on how hard it is to make me laugh. *^*Wink*^*](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Queen_of_Comedy-1875103_14.gif) A big thanks to Lornda  for the magnificent merit badge above! ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Nominated for Best Family/ Parenting ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Nominated for Best Blog Featured in "Comedy Newsletter (August 1, 2018)"  |
| "Watch! I want watch!" The sudden cry woke me up. I glance over at the thrashing body next to me, moaning with eyes closed. "Okay, what do you want to watch? Or do you just want a hug?" There was no reply, just gentle snoring. This happens pretty much every night. Lynx would 'wake up' calling out for something completely random. "Grandpa! Grandpa!"... "Car! Car! Yellow car!" or "Drive! I want drive!"... Sometimes it's "Apple juice!" but his eyes would be tightly closed, as his half-awake body strains to get the other half up as well. Sometimes he actually wakes up fully and sits up in bed, insisting on one thing or another. The trick is not to refuse him for that triggers his stubborn response, which usually leads to tears, tantrums and full wakefulness. Instead I force myself up and carry him outside towards the kitchen, patting him comfortingly on the back and promising him whatever it is he wants. He's usually asleep again before I reach the fridge. Given that he sometimes develops a fever suddenly and goes into seizures even when he's sleeping, you can imagine how chronically sleep-deprived the wife and I are. Don't have pandas at your zoo? Come pay us a visit instead. So my questions for today's blog are: What's the most interesting sleepwalking or sleeptalking experience you've had? How have you managed to cure yourself or someone in your family of somnambulism (sleepwalking)? |
| So Lynx had another seizure in the middle of last night - the second within a week since the one at school. The wife and I both woke up at 2am, as the hot bod glowing between us was radiating at an uncomfortable 39.3 degrees Celsius. That's the worst fever we've ever recorded him having, and even a low temperature of 37.5 is sometimes enough to send him into shutdown mode. Shoving one of those capsules up his a** didn't help much (they're supposed to bring the temperature down to a safer level), because 20 minutes later he was convulsing on the bed. Maybe it was better that it was too dark to see the whites of his eyes as they rolled back into his head. 20 counts later, he relaxed and returned to sleep. We cold-sponged his still steaming body, and I thought about all those times when I was still a child that my mum did the same for me. Back then I never realised how exhausting it was for her to stay up when her body and mind screamed SLEEP!, wracked with vigilant anxiety and heartache. I was only cognisant of how good the sponge felt in kissing away the horrid heat. That's why I'm here writing this blog with brain still half-zombified from half a night's sleep, and watching Wallace & Gromit with a bottom-naked Lynx prancing about with a diaper over his head. Well, it's actually more peaceful with him than with my screaming 8-year olds at school. So is he epileptic or just having really really really bad febrile seizures that'll disappear when he reaches 5 or 6? I'll only know in a few years time, since the tests he's undergone so far all came back normal. In almost all respects, he's a healthy, bubbly, exuberant child. But this one thing could rob him of the life I'd hoped for him to have. Sometimes I wonder if our lax parenting or questionable lifestyle habits rubbed off on him the wrong way. After all, which 6-month old is allowed to drink a cup of Starbucks coffee by himself? (Okay, the wife thought he'd hate it but didn't expect him to finish it!) He also somehow enjoys black coffee with no sugar! and downs entire 500ml bottles of Coke (this one's my fault, since I need my soda fix and he won't let me have it without a hefty tax). He never eats vegetables or fruit (except bananas and juice), and the only nutritious food he eats are fish, tofu, and fermented beans. We try to sneak in multi-vitamins, chewy candy supplements whenever we can, but he sniffs everything and inspects carefully for signs of tampering... So my questions for today's blog are: What is something about your kids (nieces and nephews count if you don't have any of your own) you feel guilty about, even if it isn't really your fault? How do you make peace with yourself about it?  "It's not about being good, it's about becoming better."  |
| There is no spring in Okinawa. Straight from the chills of winter we go to the insufferable heat and humidity of pre-summer. If you have air-conditioning on all the time, it's not such a big deal, but we're scrimping, remember? But more importantly, with the heat and humidity come the pests. Ants that crawl everywhere, mosquitoes that sting through your clothes, garden snails that contrive to take a nap right under your sole, and the cockroaches... This is the time I hate being the 'guy' most. Bugs bug me. I loathe them. I scream like a little girl when one flutters its wings at me like fly-you-fools eyelashes. When my wife's standing beside me looking even more terrified, I keep the screaming inside my clenching heart. Our AirBnB guest Rachel for the next 3 months comes from the American countryside. I thought that meant she would be handy with pest control, but no, she decides she's just a princess-to-be-rescued too when it comes to the creepy-crawlies. So I gotta be the 'guy', even when I just want to cry and jump into the arms of a brave shining knight too. So on Friday, I had the misfortune of encountering not one, but two of the disgusting black things with long twitchy feelers and bristly legs. The first one was sneaking about in Lynx's room and scuttled out to the doorway of our shared bedroom when it was noticed. The wife was surfing on her iPhone inside, as usual. "Don't move. There's a cockroach by the door." She pulled the blanket over her head and hid inside. I secretly wish that it would crawl inside with her in the time it takes for me to scrounge up something to turn into a Club of Death. Magazines are the sturdiest but because of their glossy pages, the splatter is grossest and the AOE is greater. One whack could send a dismembered leg flying half a room away. Newspapers are flimsy, but put a few sheets together and you get something good for up to 3-4 whacks before it starts bending all out of shape, or flopping over like a tired dick. They also soak up the mess better. I didn't find any of those so I just used 2 sheets of A3 paper Lynx had doodled on and rolled them into my weapon of messy destruction. The cockroach was still in the doorway, planning its route to the blanket probably. One whack flipped it over in shock, two took it out for good and three turned it into pancake no one would ever eat. I carefully swept it onto another sheet of paper and deposited the squished remains into the trash, together with the murder weapon. Mission accomplished. I felt like a man, eyes rolled all the way into the back of my head. Sometime after midnight, I was up playing Battle Brothers in the dark, trying to get that elusive magic shield that would earn me an accomplishment. Something fluttered loudly and landed on my shoulder, and when I twitched with EW! it flew off. I knew what it was, of course. Karma in the form of what I had killed earlier come back to haunt and torment me. I turned on the lights and spied the little black creature scurrying around the wall over to the dining area. Quickly I rolled up another 2 sheets of doodles and tracked it down. It stared at me from the top of the dining table, questioning me 'You gonna kill me too, huh?' You bet. Two smacks did it this time, with the second exploding it. One leg splattered and stuck itself to the wall, crooked. I wiped the cockroach juice off the table and went back to killing digital bandits and ghouls. So my questions for today's blog are: How do you feel about bugs and pests? What freaks you out, if these don't? Who takes care of these problems in your house? |
| Golden Week in Japan is the single most important time of the year. Every year in early May, three public holidays align themselves in a row, tempting all working parents to take two days of leave to earn themselves a nine-day break from work. First comes Constitution Day, followed by Children's Day, and then... I can't remember, and most people probably don't care to either. It's a holiday - who needs to know what it's for? It could be Smelly Socks Day and everyone would still happily take it. Anyway during this period, all prices go through the roof. Air ticket prices triple, weekday and regular specials at shops and restaurants quietly disappear from posters and menus - basically, it's Christmas in the middle of the year for businesses. Since our family is in a financial pinch, there's been absolutely no budget for travel at all for the past two years, not to mention during this inflationary period. So while other families take off to the mainland, mainland families hop over to get some Okinawan sunshine, and the wealthier jet off to further, more exotic (and expensive) locations, we dig in and take what is now euphemistically known as a staycation. That basically means you hotel at home. When I was a teenage gamer geek, this would be a dream come true. No work, no school - just stay at home all day with a computer and internet? WOOT! As a husband, father, housekeeper and AirBnB host, this situation now teeters closer towards nightmare than sweet dream. 24 hours a day 'at work' without school to escape to? Oh hell! This is compounded by my still-recuperating shoulder, which remains sore and in pain. Stretching and sleeping (which entails lying down on it) only makes it worse. It feels like I have a row of teeth lining the underside of my right shoulderblade, and every single one of them has got cavities down to the nerve. Things inexplicably fall off from my fingers, jumping out of my grasp as if worried about getting infected from proximity. I would be holding chopsticks one second, and then next they would be on the floor. It was in this condition that I tackled Golden Week. Just as any other parent would know, it's all about the kid once you have one. So on the first day (Wednesday), it was off to the zoo, for which we had bought annual passes. The wife had to wheel Lynx around in the stroller when he got tired, since my shoulder protested even at this slight labor. Lynx loves seeing all the animals, and knows exactly where they're all located. So he'd scream out, "Wook, wook! Elephant! Giraffe, let's go! This way!" And he'd tear down the path towards the next enclosure, while we slowly catch up with the stroller. So we were all having a good time. We'd packed chicken and sweet inarizushi for a picnic lunch, and I'd indulged Lynx with a small pet bottle of Coke all to himself. He was learning new names like 'raccoon dog', ''capuchin monkey', 'anteater', and 'deer' which he hadn't yet come across in his books. Then we came across the holiday additions... There were all these bouncing castles and mazes set up right smack in the middle of the zoo, charging $4-5 for 5 minutes of happy jumping. Lynx went crazy screaming, "Play, play! I want play! Let's go - this way! Kochi, kochi (over here) - come!" Cue excuses for why we could not afford to splurge on mad hops when we were trying to scrimp by staying put. "Oh I left my wallet in the car!" - this earned a suspicious frown, as he seemed to recall me pulling out said wallet for a Coke earlier. Then we resorted to distractions, "Oh let's go see the fish!" Of course right next to the fish pond a stall was cleverly set up with cheap plastic toys to be caught. $5 for 5 tries to catch your favorite toy! the sign read. I knew for a fact those toys came in a bag of maybe half a dozen at the dollar shop. The sign might as well have read R-I-P-O-F-F. But Lynx had to scream, "Nemo! Wook, wook! I want Nemo! Let's go!" Argh. There was simply no escape from the capitalist madness surrounding us. And Lynx refused to accept or try to understand why we simply could not afford to spend on such frivolity. He threw tantrum after tantrum, and had to be dragged out kicking and screaming. Needless to say, my shoulder only got worse from all that dragging... So my questions for today's blog are: How did a holiday not turn out as well as you had hoped? How have you dealt with a young child who wanted something you could not afford or were not willing to spend on? |
Okay, so I'm a first-time dad. Unlike some of my gifted friends who claim they can remember stuff from when they were two years old (I just saw a Facebook post today about a woman who can remember stuff from when she was 18 days old...  ), I am not blessed with an elephant hiding inside my tiny brain. I can only remember what I had for lunch yesterday, because I had the same thing for a week. My wardrobe looks exactly like Jughead's (you know, from the Archie comics?), except that I don't wear sweaters. But I do have only two pairs of pants and five shirts exactly, so I never bother spending time deciding what to wear. For me, it's simply a sniff and if I don't pass out from the smell, I simply assume that others won't as well.What has my memory got to do with bilingualism? Well, my native language is Mandarin, and what I do remember is that when I was in elementary school, that was my stronger language. I graduated as the top student, and won several Chinese essay-writing competitions but never for English. English was the only subject I did not get an A  in. It's weird when I think back on this, because English is my strongest language now, and what I make a living from. But because it took me till high school to actually start to be pretty good at it, I've never been too concerned about anyone having a slow start to anything. Now on to my son Lynx. Naturally both my wife and I dream of him becoming bilingual, trilingual or even semi-polyglot. We are immensely proud of every new word he manages to mangle, and poo-poo other kids his age who are already spouting fluent and complete sentences while Lynx happily gurgles his Minion-gibberish. His delay in forming coherent sentences like other kids his age is excused by us as a consequence of him having to grapple with two languages, two phonemic systems, and two completely different alphabets. My wife used to keep a notebook of all the words he's managed to acquire. Among the usual words like 'dog', 'cat', 'pee' and 'poo', it's somewhat eyebrow-raising that 'excavator' was among the first thirty words he managed to learn. I put that down to his inordinate passion for vehicles of all sorts. They were almost exclusively English words, however. Perhaps for every twenty English words he learnt, there would be one Japanese word in the mix. This was at least partially due to him attending an American daycare, where they had daily practice in phonics, sight words and writing the alphabet. We still break out into unbridled applause whenever he recites his alphabet flawlessly, complete with accompanying actions to his recitals of "C said ke, ke, ke. C for cold!" where he would hug himself and shiver. But Japanese? He struggled. My wife tried talking to him only in Japanese, but the looks of incomprehension she received eventually drove her to give up and switch back to English. So it was with both trepidation and relief that we finally put him into a reputable Japanese daycare/kindergarten, where he has just completed one month. We worried, of course, that the teachers would tear their hair with frustration when he couldn't understand their instructions. We wrung our hands over whether the other kids would play with him, when he kept up his constant and excited chatter in a mix of English and Minion-speak, "Wook! Wook! Over here! Pookapi! King Bob!" (Half the time, I still don't understand what he's saying, and I'm an expert on Minion-speak.) But we also felt sure that here at last, he would start receiving the education in Japanese that we've both been remiss in delivering at home. One month in, he's speaking an equal amount of Japanese and English. He's not quite doing full sentences in Japanese yet, just single words and simple phrases and expressions, but he's spouting them with the same ease as with English. Yay! So of course my Chinese half of the family sometimes bugs me - when is Lynx going to start learning Mandarin? Sigh, I don't know. Right now, I'm just happy that he's been seizure-free for a month, well-adjusted to his new school, and finally beginning to sound bilingual. Beyond that, I don't want to think too much. So my question for today's blog is: What kind of struggles have you had before with language acquisition or with your child's learning? If you are multilingual, do you remember how you acquired your non-native language? |
| So I've been through a fair share of close shaves in my life. I've fallen off a cliff in Nepal. Thankfully soft snow and a backpack full of clothes saved me from an embarrassing demise - I was racing my Sherpa guide and he was letting me win, not expecting that I would look back and miss the gaping chasm that had opened up just in front of me... That same trip a strong blizzard collapsed two of our tents in the night burying the occupants within, whom we had to dig out with our hands. The two Germans and their porters ahead of us in the Thorong-la pass didn't make it through, and stayed up there forever. So quite possibly the delay caused by the bad weather we experienced also saved our entire party... As a young teen, I chased a stray ball into a storm drain. I cleverly dropped down the 2.5-3 meter deep canal, which was running dry, using a bit of pipe jutting out as a step as I lowered myself over the edge. After retrieving the ball, I found out that I could not get back up the same way! There were no steps or holds set into the wall as far as I could see, and as my luck would have it, it began to rain. The rain grew into a downpour and the waters started rising swiftly. I started to panic. I did not want to die in a drain drowned by sewage!! To this day, I still can't recall how exactly I managed to scale that wall and get to safety, but I somehow did or this is quite a cunning ghost that's using this laptop now. Perhaps all the other occasions will eventually make their way into this blog, or find themselves embellished and dramatised as a scene or element in one of my stories. However for now, I will share how I nearly killed myself again, just a few hours ago. To understand how this happened, I have to bore you with some details of my daily routine. It goes something like this - wake up at 5ish, get some early morning writing done, change and be at the school by 7. I spend the entire day at work, leave promptly at 5 to pick up my son from daycare, and am back home between 6 and six-thirty, depending on traffic. Dinner takes me half an hour to prepare, because I refuse to do anything that will take more time than that. Sometimes the wife will do this instead - about once to twice a week. Washing up is my domain (see "Invalid Entry" in this blog), and after all the cleaning is done it's time to spend some time watching cartoons with Lynx, playing or reading. I stay up till about 1 or 2 to write before going to sleep.What this all means is that I'm chronically sleep-deprived. Since I survived 14 years of sleeping light on the streets, I've kind of developed a false sense of confidence in my ability to function on this amount of resources (For about five years, I also survived on 1 meal a day until I lost too much weight and decided to have 2 instead). So all this came to a head today, with almost devastating impact... Lynx has suffered 9 febrile seizures since he turned 1, and possibly has seizure disorder although the doctors cannot give a definite diagnosis. It always happens when he gets a high fever. Today his daycare called to inform us that he was running a fever of 38.2 degrees and requested that we pick him up early. I took 2 hours off and drove off for his school. I was aware that I was fatigued, as on Wednesdays and Thursdays I have only a one-period break between classes (including lunch). I worried that Lynx would get a seizure in school (which has never happened before), and that would make everything a lot more complicated for him... I started thinking about what to do for dinner, and whether I'd be able to convince him to take a nap when we got home. I woke up to a terrifying crash and the blow of an airbag punching me in the chest. The car spun almost 180 degrees and came to rest about one meter ahead. For two seconds I watched in shock and horror the crumpled back of the car I'd rear ended. I noticed that both airbags had been deployed, and the acrid smell of burnt rubber warned me that engine parts might catch fire. I checked myself for injuries but other than a stiffness in my back, I could discern no other pain or discomfort. I disengaged the seatbelt and hurried out after checking for traffic. The lady whose car I'd hit was on the phone with the insurance or tow company, I assume. I asked if she was hurt, and she said that we should probably not communicate until after the police and insurance investigators arrive. What followed is a familiar sequence of statement-taking, clearing up the mess on the road - all scenes I've become accustomed to since I joined the Red Cross as a volunteer when I was 13. But this was the first time ever I'd fallen asleep at the wheel, or gotten into a car accident where I was driving. I've only ever been a first responder treating the trauma victim, and this time I was both the victim and the perpetrator. It was one of the worst things that's happened to me in recent years (the tsunami that killed so many of my friends and students notwithstanding). Yet at the same time I was relieved and grateful that it was not worse. I could have hit someone. The damage could have been much worse if I had been driving at more than 40 kph. The airbags might have failed to deploy... So my question for today's blog is: What kind of accident have you been involved in before? Have you ever been the one at fault, like I was? How did you deal with the situation? |
| So my little 2-year old monster loves locks and laundromats. Tonight, not 30 minutes ago, he showed us how these two loves can go very very wrong... First you need to understand a little more about his penchant for locks. Ever since he could walk (10 months), and manipulate objects (he's at the level where he can use chopsticks to pick up fish to eat), he simply has to go and climb everywhere, touch, turn and throw everything. He loves to climb onto the bay window, and jump from one ledge to another. And when he reaches the end, he'll jump off onto the bed. Sometimes he misses (reminds me of my cockeyed cat Kino...), but never completely (thankfully) so he would catch the edge of the bed and maybe hit his leg against the frame and HOWL! But it's his fascination for locks, and the uncanny ability to turn to lock, yet utter inability to turn to unlock that has been the cause of several anxious incidents. First Incident: He locked himself in the master bedroom, which we don't have a key for (I actually don't know why, but we're renting). This was when he was still a 1-year old over a year ago, so my instructions to him through the gap under the door, "You see that little metal thing you turned earlier? Turn it the other way! Come on!" went completely unheeded. I went to the extent of going outside the house, climbing a dumpster and shimmying across a pipe to reach the bedroom window on the 2nd floor, only to find that the window was locked, of course... As I was there looking in, the door miraculously opened! My surprisingly enterprising wife had found a flathead screwdriver and turned the lock from the outside! Cue hot tears and hugs. Tonight's incident: So we went to the drugstore to get some antibiotic cream for a nasty wound on his knee that showed signs of infection. He has been scratching it non-stop despite our admonishments, and woke up crying of pain several times last night. Since he is prone to febrile seizures (having suffered 9 of them in a year whenever his temperature spiked), I was anxious not to have him suffer a fever again. Next to the drugstore was a 24-hour laundromat, which means it's never closed. Lynx loves these places. There's so much noise and whirring and tumbling and excitement happening around him, it's probably his next favorite place after the game arcade. Naturally he shut himself inside and refused to share his little haven with me, so I just waited outside and peeked in every few seconds to make sure he wasn't pulling other people's clothes out and stomping on them, or something equally nasty. He found a trolley that he climbed on and off, and pushed all around the tiny little place. Happily. I looked away to check if the wife was done with her purchases yet, and then I heard a 'click'. Little Lynx had locked himself in. I wasn't worried at first. It sounded like the lock had turned pretty easily, and he should probably be able to unlock it himself. I gestured for him to unlock the door, "People need to get their clothes, Lynx. Open up." He tried, pushing until his tiny little fingers bent the way only a child's could, curling at an angle more familiar with CIA interrogators. The lock didn't budge. I asked him to try again. Again he put everything into it, and again to no avail. I was starting to get anxious. There was a set of windows but they looked locked (they were). "Open, pwease! Pwease help!" he started to cry, alternately trying the lock and pulling on the firmly locked door. It was useless. The wife came out and noted the situation with consternation. After consulting with the drugstore clerks, we learnt that they did not hold the key but would call the laundromat owner for us. No one picked up the call, despite several attempts made. As it was a 24h self-service laundromat, we did not expect anyone to come lock up. Lynx was frantic now. "Hug, pwease! I want Mama! Papa! Open!" Whenever he calmed down enough, we would get him to try the lock and add our non-existent telekinetic powers to his futile efforts to release the lock. We had been there for almost half an hour now... Then an ex-colleague of my wife happened by with her partner. We had gone to each other's house parties several times, and they were very fond of Lynx, having no kids of their own. Kaori stayed by the door with us, trying to encourage Lynx to keep trying the lock while Baba inspected the door with a professional eye. He went to the car and returned with a length of stiff wire. Now I have some decent expertise with lockpicking (a skill I gained from over a decade surviving on the streets as a teenager) and I knew for certain that the wire was not strong enough to hook the lock, nor was it slender enough to pick the mechanism. However I was not about to stop him from trying. He managed to stick the wire through a ventilation flap, ingenuously fashioning a hook at the end. However, since the lock catch lifted upwards and the ventilation flap was below the lock, I could tell that using the hook to push the stiff catch upwards was impossible. Several minutes of scratching and frowned mutterings later, this was confirmed to be the case. The wife suggested calling the police, and possibly asking them to force the lock, if the owner still could not be contacted. I was at my wit's end. Then suddenly Baba grunted with frustration and did a Hulk thing on the ventilation flaps, forcing them open. They were made of strong plastic? I'm not an expert on door materials but he managed to open up a gap! He stuck his hand through, and the flap promptly trapped his forearm painfully. "Help me, pull it open!" Baba grunted. I obliged, eyes wide with disbelief. I felt like the Hulk myself, holding apart those flaps which I never would have thought could be bent.. In two seconds, Baba had reached in and flicked the lock open. Lynx was saved!! The moment the door opened, there were high fives all around, and Lynx was all smiles - his panic completely forgotten. Well, maybe not completely... He'd pooped his pants, and the smell was a strong reminder of how frightened he had been. Me? I learnt yet another valuable skill to add to my little repertoire of locks and doors I can open without a key. With little Lynx, this is quite the essential skill, I would say. So my question for today's blog is: What kind of trouble does your kid get you or him/herself into? What skills or knowledge have you picked up from dealing with these situations? |
The Japanese are big on ceremonies. They have one for everything - making tea, putting on your clothes, and for the first and last day of school, even when the school break is only 2 days...  "It's all about the symbolism," someone informed me. For someone who skipped every graduation and convocation, it's all a lot of time and pomp spent on what I don't consider to be terribly important. I guess Lynx inherited that from me... So today he had to attend his entrance ceremony to be admitted to a daycare for 2-year olds (yes! there's a ceremony for that too here!). Right from the start I knew it was going to be trouble. The wife laid out his best clothes, including an elastic bow tie, which he ripped off immediately with a howl and refused to have it anywhere near. It was pretty much like trying to get a vampire to wear a garland of garlic cloves. I pocketed the bow to appease the wife, promising to sneak it on him later, although I knew it wouldn't happen. At 930 a.m. we arrived at the school (they take in kids from 1 year of age, and have kindergarten classes for up to 5 years old). Lynx refused to get off me to walk around, like he did the last few times we visited the place. So baby koala and the walking tree (me) trotted upstairs to 'Usagi' or 'Rabbit' class. We met his friend Masa and his mum Kae-san, whom he had a great time with at the playground the last visit. Lynx refused to greet, or hug, or acknowledge his friend in any way. I knew it was overwhelming for him to be with so many new faces all dressed up, but I was really hoping that a familiar face would help make things better... The ceremony would start at 10, and there was a specific seating arrangement. Only 1 parent could accompany the child, and it was decided that I would be with Lynx while the wife and the grandparents sat in the audience. After all, baby koala had already chosen his tree and showed no signs of letting go. Also if he decided to throw a tantrum, I was better able to, well, contain the damage... The wife stayed with us until we had to file into the hall. From the moment we parted, Lynx began to squirm and whine, "Mama! I want Mama!" Uh oh. I managed to calm him down by asking him to look out for Mama and pointing her out to me. This worked for about 2 minutes... All the 2 year olds were seated in a semi-circle in the front facing the audience on these tiny little wooden chairs, with one parent behind each. Lynx stayed in his seat for about 1 minute. The moment he spotted the wife in the audience, he began calling for her. Well, he wasn't the only having trouble acting like a perfect robot, of course. There was another kid who never made it into the seat, and just kept crying the whole time. Several others ran off and did little jogs around the semi-circle before returning to their little chairs. Masa rolled like a log on the floor. But none of them cried as loudly and for as long as Lynx did when he realized that Mama was not coming to him, nor would he be allowed to go to Mama... Now all kids cry when they're upset, we all know that. But Lynx is so far the only one I know who performs an 'inabawa' - a back-arch, at the same time. So here he is in front of everybody bawling his lungs out like a couple of other much quieter kids (why can't he cry quietly?), and to top it off, showing off why he would be a future ice-skating queen or Olympic gymnast at the same time. He does this through the introduction speeches, and there were like 3 of them... through the individual student introductions (about 70 altogether, 15+ in each class), through the teacher introductions (about 20+ of them), and then halfway through the dance performance by 6 teachers, he throws up all over the floor... So what am I doing through all this?? Well, trying my best to stay calm, and transfer some of my calmness to him through telepathic means, coaxing him to point to Mama and his favorite things, giving him hugs (which calm him down for about 10 seconds before he begins bawling and backarching again...), and asking myself how much longer the ceremony was going to be... The wife couldn't stand it any longer, I suppose, because she finally allows me to take Lynx out of the room where he calms down immediately. For the rest of the time, while the principal or some head honcho equivalent continue with lengthy details of the schedules, and programs and important information for parents, Lynx happily and cheerfully runs around outside behaving like a poster child. So my question for today's blog is: would you make your child sit through such a ceremony? Is your child an angel, or impossible like Lynx to handle when it comes to sitting still and behaving exactly the way he's supposed to? |
| Okay, so I'm the oddball. I can swim through s*** (literally - an occasional occupational hazard when you served in the army and spelunked), wear the same clothes for weeks (months if I can get away with it), but I can't stand a messy home. Here's what I mean. If I see a piece of tissue or dirty diaper lying about, I have to stick it in the trash. If I see half-chopped up vegetables or a half-finished cup of cold coffee calling flies to the party, I have to stick them in the sink. And if I see unwashed dishes piled up in the sink, unscrubbed pots and pans sitting on the stove with unidentifiable contents trying to cultivate a bacterial colony, I have to drown everything in soapy water. Oh, and if it's not clear why there would be such phenomenon around the house to catch my eye and make my mind go <sputz!>, look no further than the wife. She's lounging there on the recliner, with a hot mug of coffee in hand. Two other mugs sit beside her, half-full of contents cold from the day before, or maybe before that. Or maybe that's her third cup of the evening? I don't know how she does it. So here's how the system's supposed to be: When she cooks, I clean. When I cook, she cleans. Or we do everything together. (We do solo chef duty twice a week each, and either eat out or cook together for the other days) Here's how it actually works out: When she cooks, I clean. When I cook, I clean. When we both cook, I clean... Why, oh why? Reason 1: My weird habit. I can't help but multi-task. So when I'm waiting for stuff to boil, or stew, my eyes sneak over to the pile of soiled dishes in the sink and the next moment I find myself soaping and rinsing what I can, all while watching the stove. And she wonders why there's nothing to wash up after I cook... (I think she believes there're little helpful gnomes hiding in the house who do stuff for her) Reason 2: She can't clean. 1/3 of the stuff she has supposedly washed have grease or bits of food still stuck to them... so I usually take over, because I'll have to inspect and rewash again later anyway... Reason 3: She has low cleaning endurance. Example - Me: Okay, let's spend the next hour cleaning together. She: Okay... 15 mins later, she's on the recliner surfing on her phone. I think she's probably just taking a breather. 1 hour later, my self-assigned area and the area next to it are showroom-worthy; the wife is still on the recliner, and you can guess what her assigned area is like... So here's my question to all you choremasters out there - how do you split the chores? And what's your biggest gripe about your partner/housemate's cleanliness habits? "It's not about being good, it's about becoming better." |
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It's actually quite humorous if I think about it. 
