A Dearth of Words

It is truly pathetic, that I, who wanted to be a writer has not even managed to blog in 3 months. So here's the bullet list:

• I survived the constant bickering, fighting, visiting playgrounds, taking swim lessons, and avoiding drug dealers and panhandlers that were our summer.
• My oldest started 2nd grade and is way ahead in math and way behind in English. The English language summer workbook I bought him was barely touched. The Japanese workbooks did get done, but under much duress.
  
• My youngest started co-op preschool last week. The economy has meant that we are under-enrolled and are scrambling to find kids to keep the program viable. Did I mention I am the treasurer?
• Still no house. We made an offer on an 83 year-old one and backed out when two separate professionals told us to "scrape it off the lot and build a new one." We opted to place an offer on a new house, not in our preferred location, but a nice neighborhood nonetheless. Our offer was lower than another person's and we did not get the house. We are still living in the rental condo. I am still trolling the MLS listings.
• My husband spent most of the summer telecommuting from our condo since he hurt his back and couldn't sit or walk for six weeks. Nothing like having to keep your children out all day so Daddy can work lying down on our bed with his laptop propped up off the floor.
  

Still trying to find the joy in our lives. It is there. In small boy hugs and art projects. In ice cream cones and caprese salads. In skype and on the phone. It just seems like such a small percentage of the hours in a day.

Radio silence

End of June. I want to say everything is better. It is, and it isn't. My oldest is out for the summer and I enrolled both boys in swim lessons every morning for the next two weeks, at least.

The groove I had gotten into has been wrecked. I was working out two mornings a week and volunteering one morning a week at the local Y. Now I'm schlepping the boys and getting less toned by the moment. (Is that even possible?)

I'm still browbeating my oldest into doing Japanese workbooks almost every day. I still have an exchange student coming once a week to work with both of them. I'm still putting way too many books on reserve at the library, like some kind of bibliophile junky. I know I won't read them, but like a piece of bread given to a starving orphan for nighttime reassurance, I keep a pile of books nearby.

I'm out of dinner ideas. I've cooked all of the dishes I missed while living in Japan. I'm still waiting for a house so I can buy a grill.

And the house, if it's a buyer's market, I sure haven't noticed. I looked at a craftsman that was used as a boarding house in our desired neighborhood. It needed lots of work and was still 479K. It sold that night. I spend my free time trolling the MLS listings and ignoring my cluttered and crappy rental condo.

And I'm reading books on happiness. I'm working on that too.

April

I have another 30 minutes before I go to pick DS2 up from the one morning away from me he has during the week. It is my sole child-free time on a weekday. I came home and picked up and started laundry and vacuumed and avoided doing my taxes.

I read an article online about parents at an elementary school in Ishinomaki who lost their children. Only 24 of the students at that school survived the tsunami. I cried. Not really a productive use of my time. I'm not even sure it will make me be a more patient mother with my own two boys. But I needed to know someone's problems are way more tragic than my petty ones.

It is April and I'm still floundering. I'm looking at teaching certificate programs online. I'm bickering with my husband about finding a house. I'm enrolling my child in a preschool 80 blocks north of here from September, because that's as good as it's going to get. I'm avoiding Script Frenzy since I know I will not be writing anything.

And yet, I know at some point, I will need to start celebrating the things I am doing. I got DS2's hernia surgery taken care of. I finally went to the doctor's office. I signed up for the Y so that DS2 and I can have a place to play and work out in the mornings. I emailed a friend with a University connection to try and get an exchange student to come over once a week and tutor my boys in Japanese in return for English lessons from me.

And I'm resenting not having an income. I don't like to be beholden to my husband. He would never begrudge me something I truly want. We consult each other on all the big things. But I miss not having mad cash that allowed me to pay for weekend trips to the noodle shop or the ice cream stand. I liked having a rainy day fund. Most of which we used to pay for expenses when DH was out of work for 5 months.

I will get there eventually. And I will start my taxes some other time, but before the 15th.

A beginning, really?

A month later and I really don't feel like I've begun anything. Okay, I did get DS1 enrolled in school which I am now agonizing over, since it seems way too easy. I did get DS2 to the doctor to look at the hernia which I've been ignoring for the past four months. Surgery is scheduled for March 22nd. But the rest of my life seems like just so much crap.

I can't get DS2 enrolled in any kind of regular preschool and he's acting out. It's the f--king fours, redux. I took him to a home-run Japanese preschool class today and he tried to escape for the first 30 minutes of it. I'll enroll him in it, but four Friday mornings a month costs me almost one third of what I was paying for full-time daycare in Japan and that included lunch. And the sad thing is, he wants to go. He keeps asking me when he'll start hoikuen again. All of the trips to the library and the supermarket don't replace being with your peers and having lots of fun activities to do. I suck at the whole home-schooling thing.

I'm hating the gurgling toilet in our over-priced rental condo. I'm hating the rain, the endless horrible rain. I'm hating the too tight parking space that makes me fear taking off the side mirror on a concrete column. I'm hating the moving boxes that are still stacked in the hall. I'm hating the chick on Craigslist who sold us an Ikea bunk bed that is missing the clamps to hold the ladder in place, and no, I couldn't get them from Ikea, I tried. She won't return my emails or calls.

I hate all of this right now. I knew this would happen, but no matter how much I try to blow sunshine, I really just want to bury my head in my hands and cry. I had a life. A flawed life, but a life. And now I have to go through the work to put a life together again. Yes, I didn't have to get a driver's license or open a bank account. We still had those things. Yes, I have a sister who listens to me and invites me over for wine. Yes, I have a partial life. It's a life and I need to live this life and stop being pissed off that I don't have the other one anymore. I'm working on that too.

iyo iyo saigo...

The end is here at last... (That's what the title means.) Today, DS1 said good-bye to his first grade classmates and I picked him up from school. His teacher gave him a kanji dictionary and I gave her a pound cake and cookies from the local pastry shop.

DS2 had his last real day of daycare. His teacher gave him minicars, a Pokemon DVD and stickers. I gave her gift certificates. I gave all the staff and teachers at his daycare rice crackers and cookies. I'm getting pretty good at obligatory gifts.

Tomorrow is happyokai, or performing arts assembly. My last one. Funny how three years ago, I dreaded it. Two years ago, DS1 was sick and I rejoiced at not having to be packed like a sardine into a tiny room to hear 5 year olds sing and watch them dance. Last year, I was nostalgic. DS1 was in his last year of hoikuen and danced and drummed and sang. DS2 danced with other three year olds. This year, I am weepy. Of all this is coming to an end.

I have been out to lunch or dinner multiple times this week. I am tired, strung out, and ready to burst into tears every time someone says good-bye to me. I'm still getting rid of stuff, packing bags and wondering how everything will play out on Monday.

It is the end and I'm sad. And telling me I should be happy that I'm going back to my home country doesn't actually make me less sad. And platitudes about "one door closing and another one opening" don't actually help with the sadness either.

I'll blog from the other side when it's "iyo iyo hajimaru." (At last, it begins.)

Three weeks later, four to go...

So, it's three weeks after the movers came and four weeks before we get on a plane to Seattle. I'm sitting on my futon in the middle of my mother-in-law's living room. These past three weeks have been tiring. I did Christmas. I did New Year's. I've had two sick kids on my hands, one week apart. I still have boxes of stuff that I'm getting rid of.

The oldest finally goes back to school tomorrow after winter break. I start work again tomorrow and for the next 3 weeks. I have one foot in two worlds. My husband google chats us everyday after work. He is lonely and not enjoying being single in the condo we have rented in Seattle. I want to be there with him, but I don't want to give up my job and life here. But right now I have half-a-life. I don't have my own kitchen, or computer, or even a room.

I'm stuck in grass-greener mode. My own space and life in Seattle seem greener, but I know I will be hating my return to full-time SAHM status. I will want my life in Japan back. I will suffer from reverse culture shock. I will struggle to find my voice and purpose again. And I will blog about it all, but very infrequently.

two beers later.

Can we say "Day from hell?" I was up before 6, which is unusual for me. The movers got here at 9 a.m. They were actually here at 8:50, but being the polite Japanese that they are, they waited until exactly 9 a.m. before ringing the bell.

A friend helped me from 9 to 12. She deserves a steak dinner, but that's another story. We finished sorting out all the crap near my desk and putting away the stuff that the movers weren't taking care of.

The biggest shock was that the movers wanted to finish in one day. I really didn't want to shut down my computer and say good-bye to my desk. I felt weepy when I put my iMac into its fashion forward industrial design box. The movers swooped in with 5 folks (6 later) and proceeded to pack our lives into 127 boxes. If this sounds like a lot, remember that 6 of those were chairs, 2 of those were desk and parts, and only a measly 7 were boxes of books.

They finished at 6:15 and left me with homework: 127 box descriptions to assign a yen value to. I promptly drank a beer and then I had another one, since this was a two beer kind of day. I will finish this blog and Grandma will bathe the kids and I will get them to bed. After that, I will ignore the remaining mess in my condo and finish the evil paperwork. And then, I will figure out where the hell I'm sleeping since my boys have bunk beds at Grandma's, but I have nothing.