blodeuedd

Hey, breasts, you can stop being swollen and tender right about now. Seriously, it's been almost a week, my period's finally started, you can go back to your usual state of irrelevance.

I woke up a bit before my alarm went off this morning, most likely because my dream had gotten too weird and uncomfortable. I have not idea where it came from, but between the sadness and the violence, I guess my mind decided that waking was preferable.

It's really chilly this evening, so I've got a blanket on my lap, the cat on my lap, a blanket around my shoulders, the space heater on, and a mug of herbal tea. Once the tea is done I'll be off to bed.

It's becoming clearer and clearer that I fail at remembering anniversaries, so this one is nearly a week late: last Monday marked the date that I'd been living in this apartment for two years.

Two years! Incredible. You know how when you start something, or go through a change, and everything seems so new and fresh and the days ahead seem to stretch out forever? Then, suddenly, you've blinked and it's two years later and you can't imagine how you initially thought, "Well, I have two years here, then who knows?" because you're so comfortable and why on earth would you want to change anything now? You're just getting started!



Friday night, I was in bed by 11:30 and slept until 9, I was so exhausted. Sometime between yesterday morning's brief awakenings and further bouts of sleep, I dreamt that I had signed up for a ballet competition, but I couldn't find the venue. Once I found it, I couldn't find the dressing room and kept walking into the auditorium by mistake. When I finally found the dressing room, I realised I had no idea of when I was supposed to perform, and the weird way the order of the performances was listed on the wall wasn't helping. Oh, and also it turned out that I had signed up not for one dance, but two! Then I couldn't find my costumes. And I had no idea what music I was dancing to, and I'd forgotten all the steps.

Gee, you think I might have been stressed about something? XD

Actually, it's post-traumatic stress of sorts, after a crazy week at work. I tend to sublimate immediate stress so that I can function, and my body reacts by either developing a cold sore or storing it up and releasing it after the event, so that after Friday's ballet class, I was nothing but a little blob of spent muscles and liquified brains.



The reason work was so crazy was that we had Culture Day on Friday. The parents were invited, and each kid had to dress in the traditional outfit of the country of their (read: their mother's) choice, and bring some sort of food from that country. We had the kids sing a song in four languages (Tagalog, Spanish, French, and English), and presented a dance performance. We had a ballet troupe (I led that, of course, and had made their costumes), a hip hop crew and a hula group. OMG the kids were so adorable! Some of the mothers really put a lot of efforts into the costumes, and the food was great. We'd told the kids, who had brought their lunch as usual, that they had to try the special foods before their could open their lunch boxes. I was so proud that only one out of ten kids was even interested in her bento! It helped that the mothers had chosen to make things that kids would like, but it wasn't all desserts. The Swiss rösti was extremely popular, as were the Korean sweets and the French bread with cheese.



I really like Friday's ballet teacher. She's kind of like a female version of Inui-sensei, but I need to find a good nickname for her; it seems disrespectful to think of her as Perfect Ass-sensei, no? Anyway, she's not so much hands-on, but she's really precise in her corrections and pinpoints exactly what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it, so that it feels like a revelation. "Ooooooh! That's why my position looked off! :O" The only trouble I have is that she sometimes uses imagery in her explanations that I have trouble following. Friday, she resorted to English (her English is quite good) when I wasn't understanding why she was holding her hand out while saying something about my fingers. I do appreciate that she asked me if it was okay to use English, because I'd told her during my first lesson with her that I was fine with just Japanese.

The windows in the studio were open, and near the end of the class, a wasp flew in. At first it hovered around the lights, then started inspecting us. It landed in my hair, and I brushed it away, but it came back.

"Wasps like bright/light-coloured things, don't they?" someone said. The wasp, grown tired of my rebuffs, flew over to the only grey-haired woman in the room. Then, somebody had the idea to turn off all the lights and open the door to the hallway; the wasp flew right out.



It seems unfair that breasts as small as mine are should become this sore when my period is about to start. Or maybe because they're small, the swelling is proportionally more severe, thus more painful? Bloh.

My period has been doing its usual thing again, i.e. timing itself to come at the most inconvenient times. I'm pretty lucky in that I don't get severe cramps or anything, and I'm fairly regular, but it's nearly a given that whenever I travel, I'll have my period. Last year, it happened a whole three days early, right in the middle of my Hawaiian vacation; it started on the night Emily and I left for our Great Train Adventure; it started the day before I left for Europe this year; and guess what was happening over my weekend in Seoul?! Naturally, the timing for my trip to China is perfect, and I won't even need to be early or late for my period to coincide with my travels. Given that I haven't travelled for more than two weeks at a time in years, and my cycle is an even 28 to 29 days, this seems suspicious.



I was astonishingly productive yesterday, even though I didn't take a shower. I earned three stickers for my sewing page. THREE! :D I made myself privacy curtains -- I've always found that term funny, because hello, they're sheer! though I understand why they're called that -- for my bedroom window, and then another little curtain for my bedroom doorway using the same fabric, thus using up a whole sari. Do you know how long those things are? I think it was the very first sari I bought off Ebay, so that would have been back in... 2004, possibly 2003. Now the light coming into my room is pretty and green. <3

My third sticker was for finally finishing the curtains I started back in... before Christmas, I think. They just needed to be hemmed, but for some reason I'd thrown them aside in disgust (over my inability to measure stuff properly and cut in a straight line, most likely) and hadn't touched them since. They're woefully out of season now, though, because when I think summer in Tokyo, bare trees are not the first things that come to mind. But at least they're something! It turns out the way to get myself to make curtains is to wash the only ones I have, so that I'm forced to put up something before it gets dark and I want to change my clothes.

Tabitha did her usual thing. Because she wouldn't be a true cat if, faced with nearly 2m of fabric laid out on the floor, she didn't sit right in the middle of the six inches I was trying to cut off.



When the weather gets hot, my vacuum cleaner has this annoying habit of overheating and shutting off, then taking at least a quarter of an hour to cool down enough to start working again. Last weekend, this happened after I'd only vacuumed half a room, which is bad even by Ion-kun standards, so I was worried. I emptied it, left to cool down for over half an hour, then tried plugging it in again. Nothing, not even the green "I'm plugged in!" light. Uh oh. Hoping I wouldn't need to try to get it fixed, or buy a replacement, I did other stuff for another half hour, then tried again. Still no green light! Sighing in frustration, I looked up at my ironing board and noticed that though the vacuum didn't seem to have any power, the iron was plugged in and working fine. XD;;;

Yesterday, I managed to vacuum the whole apartment in only three "sessions", which is much better than I'd expected. Not that it did much good, because Tabitha made sure there was fur over everything again before the day was half done. But it was nice while it lasted!

* * *

Today I hope to be just as productive. I've already studied for an hour (sticker! yeah!) and written this long post; next, I've got a Travelpod post to finish (the last of Team Okinawa's adventure down south). Afterward, I need to shower (definitely!), then decide what I'll do with the rest of my day.

Have a good Sunday, people! *kisses*

This morning I had a follow-up appointment to see how my back was doing.

Me: So about a week and a half ago, I noticed a thread coming out of my back.
Sensei: Oh? Let's take a look.
*Examines the scar and the thread*
Sensei: It's a surgical thread, all right.
*Snips it*
Sensei: And you said it only came out last week?
Me: Well, I only noticed it then.
Sensei: I see. You could have called for an earlier appointment.
Me: But it didn't hurt or look infected, or anything, so I thought it would be okay to wait for this appointment.
Sensei: *looking like she was trying not to laugh at this weird person who was not bothered by a thread coming out of her back* Come back and see me in November. And if you find any more threads coming out of your back, call, okay?

Last night, I dreamt I was with Alexis and we were meeting up with Jill to see Masa perform at a place called (how fitting!) The Beer Hall. We didn't have tickets, but that was okay, because we could just buy them at the restaurant next door. But on the way my cell phone had been stolen and replaced with another one that would tell me when I had mail, but wouldn't let me read it, instead flashing Russian spam on the screen. I spent a long time trying to figure out how the pickpocket had managed to get my phone charms off my phone and onto the replacement.

Waking came too soon this morning, in the middle of a wonderful dream full of the smell of chilly air and crisp autumn leaves, and the bittersweet flutterings of new romance.

*sigh*

Last year, my trip to Hokkaido at the beginning of October soothed my soul more than I can say, with the season being exactly what it would have been back home. I'm more than half tempted to find out where in Japan the leaves are at their best right now and hop on a train. I miss my Canadian seasons.

Recently, I also marked the anniversary of the beginning of the end with G (not because I keep track of the date on purpose, but because it unfortunately coincided with my mother's birthday), and I've had to admit to myself that while I'm not at all the type to need someone by my side, it's been three years. Sometimes, like now, I really, really miss being in a relationship.

*sigh*

On a lighter note, the dream also included a road trip with my father and brothers; a bridge that had been built between Moosonee and Moose Factory (wtf, brain?); Masa looking an awful lot like Orlando Bloom (I think I was merging their respective characters in Cyrano and Pirates of the Caribbean, but still, wtf, brain???); my coworker's three daughters (she actually only has two); and nekonezumi taking me to visit the company she wanted to work for, which was some sort of consulting firm whose brochure had large red letters proclaiming "PROBLEM CANDY" on the front.

After careful consideration (fine, it was a flash of inspiration), I've kimeta-ed (god, I love that word! XD) and though I probably won't officially sign up for NaNoWriMo (I'd never make 50,000 words, that's for sure!), I'm going to use November to write up all my travels since I got lazy and stopped writing in spring of 2008, which was the last time I really posted on my travelpod. I need to write about and post pictures of:

- Switzerland (April 2007)
- Kyoto (October 2007)
- Hakone (October 2007)
- Provence (May 2008)
- Osaka/Nara/Himeji (May 2008)
- Taiwan (August 2008)
- Hokkaido (October 2008)
- Atami (January 2009)
- Kanazawa (January 2009)
- Hawaii (May 2009)
- Mount Fuji (August 2009)
- Nagoya (September 2009)
- The Great Train Adventure (September 2009)
- Okinawa, Take II (November 2009)

I should also use that time to sort through all my photos and write up some Random Tokyo Fun posts (like Thanksgiving), because I've got tonnes of pictures, including many I've probably never shared with the people who are in them.

I wanted to post this when I woke up, but livejournal was being difficult and not loading, so now you only get the half-remembered version of it. Which may be just as well, because reading about other people's dreams is not always that interesting. HOWEVER! This one was pretty special.

I was a contestant on America's Next Top Model. We were doing a runway challenge at a place that looked a lot like the south-east exit of Shinjuku Station (except it wasn't), and we had to walk down the stairs in different ways, whatever Tyra told us to do. I was wearing these weird shoes that felt like ice skates and were pretty hard to walk in, so I was nervous about falling down the stairs. I was the last model to walk, and approached the top of the stairs slowly, waiting for my cue. Tyra was standing at the bottom, along with the camera crew, and then she opened her mouth and yelled...

"Walk down those stairs like... A SUSHI ROLL!!!"

After a split second of WTF??? I decided to ganbaru and started spinning around, jumping down the stairs, miraculously staying upright. Because obviously, that's how a sushi roll would do it! When I reached the bottom, unharmed, everyone congratulated me, saying my walk had been the best.

Then the dream shifted and I was a... squid? An eel? Some sort of sea creature, swimming around with my friend the sea turtle. XD

Creating a hot girl for me to make out with and timing it so my alarm would go off just as things were getting interesting?

Brain, you FAIL! :P

Also failing today are my mood (see reason above for first cause of the day), my shoes (why must you pinch me so?!), and Windows Live.

On the bright side, I had a giant Hawaiian avocado at lunch, Yuriko was even more ridiculously adorable than usual, and my hair still looks more or less the way I styled it this morning.

I might as well have not bothered to style my hair yesterday morning, because by the time I got to work, after the 40-minute walk in the rain and accompanying HUMIDITY, my hair was flipping up and curling all over the place. Seriously, a slightly different cut and I'd have natural Eiji hair. This summer is going to be fuuuuuun... @_@

Though I haven't yet showered today, I can be proud of the fact that I've tidied up, vacuumed, and finally rearranged my sewing shelves and storage to a better configuration. Now if I can only get myself in gear to actually sew something, I'll be all set! I have a sewing meme to complete, after all.

This morning, before waking up to Tabitha trying to lick my face (WTH?!? She's never done that before!) I dreamt I was at some sort of play or show. I went to have lunch on my own afterwards, but suddenly remembered that I was supposed to meet Jill and Erynn to see another show*, and would be late. I rushed across town, which wasn't Tokyo, but was late, so had to wait until the intermission to find Jill and Erynn. B1 was with me for some reason, and we decided to head upstairs because we didn't know which floor they were on (the theatre was really weird and there were seats on several different floors), but we took a staff staircase by accident and had some irate kitchen staff tell us off before we finally found my seat. Later on, the dream changed to me with my family riding our bicycles down the highway and missing the turn-off we wanted, so we had to turn around, but then we got lost in an orchard.

...

I don't even know. orz

* This is a direct result of Jill trying to tempting me to go see Altar Boyz with her before I went to bed last night.

I figured I should share this with the internet, because the odds of you seeing me this prettified ever again are... pretty slim. XD Though my hair still won't do what I want it to! ( I need a haircut. )

Despite having experienced the full glory of the Sparkle Twins and Pocket Sprite yesterday, I managed to have the LAMEST dream EVER. I dreamt... that I was scrubbing my bathroom mirror and was frustrated because I kept being interrupted by the phone, the doorbell, etc.

*headdesk*

In other news, my boss and coworkers gave me some Visa gift certificates as thanks for having sewed my fingers to the bone making their Halloween costumes. How sweet of them! Unfortunately, Lawson is not listed as a convenience store where I can redeem them, so I can't use them to pay for tenimyu tickets. XD

Karaoke Guy actually seems really interested, texting me "Adele chan, I hope I'll see you again soon!" and so on -- not sure how I feel about the whole thing (while on one hand the attention is flattering, I don't feel interested in a serious relationship with a guy), but it can't hurt to see what happens, right? At any rate, our movie date won't happen this weekend, because fabric shopping and going to onsen are higher on my list of priorities.

Today, I saw a rat for the first time in Tokyo! It was pretty big, out and about in the fading daylight on Aoyama Doori.

I love my electric kettle. I don't love the fact that I have it because my good friend K (German K, not coworker K) left Japan to go back home (though she gave me two huge bags of great stuff that I lugged across Tokyo), but I love that I can plug it in right next to my computer and don't even have to get up to make myself more tea! <3

Really, the next thing I buy should be a space heater.

Yay! B2 just sent me a message to say that he's Without (this time) a shadow of a doubt, it is 100% confirmed, a certainty that I'm coming to visit you in Tokyo in early 2009!

I am DEFINITELY taking him to karaoke! >:D

This morning, I dreamt that my super-pretty girlfriend (sadly, she exists only in my mind... ;__;) and I, along with a bunch of other people, took a trip to Osaka, where the French owner of a cute little boutique tried to sell me three hats for Y1000, even though I only wanted one of them. It was pink.

I also managed to get a picture of Tabitha finally providing a return on my investment, i.e. warming my feet (my feet are the lump to the right):

When I woke up this morning, after a dream I can longer remember, I congratulated myself on not having dreamed of Prince of Tennis. (Again). With that in mind, I promptly went back to sleep and dreamt about Atobe wanting to buy A-L's parents' house, and I got involved in a long discussion with him about it, only I don't know if I was trying to convince him to buy it or not: "The neighbourhood is quite nice, but the staircase to the basement is way too narrow for your taste."

Speaking of Atobe: his ridiculous shirt, let me show you it.

But! Before I start my long, image-heavy post, I must list a few reasons why you should watch this show:

- It's full of pretty boys
- It's a great way to learn all about tennis; like how it's a smart move, while playing doubles, to vault off your partner's shoulders to reach a high lob; or how on a tennis court, the usual laws of physics don't apply (especially if your name is FUJI)
- It constantly reaffirms the value of friendship and teamwork (alternately, you can read that as TWU WUV! between some of them, and don't imagine for a second that the animators were unaware of that -- some of those boys spend an awful lot of time time holding hands *looks pointedly at a certain doubles pair*)
- Fuji = Kenshin. Really.
- Who doesn't want to watch tennis matches that go on for multiple episodes?
- There are CHIBI EPISODES!

And now, some images. I suggest you click even if you don't care about anime, tennis, or anime about tennis, because I need you to help me decide whether Atobe out-gayed Mizuki in the shirt department:

( Purple With Flowers vs. Pink With Frills )

( Momo and Kaidoh team up! )

( Eiji = Cute )

( Rurouni Fuji )

( GIRLS?! )

( Come for the tennis, stay for the chibiness! )

( My bad )