Oct 21st through 23rd in 2015

Oct 22nd.
Last night, I had two dreams that were memorable. Only one of which I now remember. Which bothers me. The first (the one I remember) happened in my living room as I slept, waiting to hear from Ebihara Sensei to go and to do the recording. The second was the one just before I woke up. I seem to remember that one as having been more significant, but I can’t recall it now to save my life. Hopefully I will soon.
At any rate, in the second, I taught at a school that included a lot of special ed kids. One died in class. So we used liquid nitrogen (but it was coming off in gas obviously) to preserve him until he’d go home or something like that. But we also reflected the gas so that it’d suffocate his dog. I mean, not painfully, the dog would just breathe stuff that wasn’t oxygen and fall asleep. Even so, it disturbed me. I really wish I could remember the second one.
Making it worse, on the night of the 22nd/23rd, I had another interesting dream that I remembered, and also remembered the dream from the 21st/22nd. However, now on the morning of the 23rd, I’ve completely forgotten. Because of course I have. Fucking memory.
Well, on the 21st, after finishing the entry, I did some classes and kept myself generally useful around school, if I remember correctly. They’re usually pretty good at finding some busy work for me. Not even busywork. Stuff that actually helps the teachers. I like proofreading for them and typing for them and checking their stuff over. It helps them.
Well, the 21st I felt like crap. I went home, and I watched more Redletter Media. It was good. I then took a nap in my floor chair and waited for Ebihara Sensei. Wait, that’s right! More details. I actually took the time to make mashed potatoes. They weren’t very good and were decidedly unsatisfying for my random craving for mashed potatoes. I also ate fried chicken with it that I’d bought at Plasse. It wasn’t very good, but I knew that. My stomach has been bothering me and I still feel lousy since my cold, so when a food randomly sounds good, I’m trying to indulge in it in the off chance that that’s what I need for some stupid reason. Well, that didn’t help at all. Anyway, I fell asleep waiting for Ebihara to call. That’s where I had the weird killing stuff dream. Then she called, I went in to record, then came home and tried to sleep. It was harder, for whatever reason. Also, pun (though, sadly, unintended). The recording was fun and easy. Then tried to go back to bed. It was much more difficult. I woke up far more often than I have been. See, I’m on these sleeping meds that don’t seem to do much, but evidently they do enough because, man, it was a lot harder to sleep without taking one.
Yesterday I felt like crap. I dragged myself to the BOE, and, from there, I taught at Kukino. Kukino is that school with three adorable girls. They’re the only students. The staff outnumbers them. We had a lot of fun. We were working on countries by flag. I was kind of happy that the teacher took it for granted that I’d know the flags of so many countries. I was proud of myself for knowing as many as I did, though a few may have been upside down. Oh well. At any rate, we played a lot of games and had fun. Apparently I’d forgotten to bring my treasure box last time, so this was the first time the girls saw it. They loved their stickers. I love making them happy. Well, at lunch I made it a point of eating everything I got (though I did arrange to have the smallest portion). I’m really becoming more and more certain that a lot of my dislikes were just ingrained childhood prejudices than actual likes or dislikes. I’m also fairly certain that this is the case for most people. I’m getting over my fear of spiders, but I can, vaguely, remember a time when I affected the fear in order to have fun with friends. This does a lot more to confirm my belief that a vast majority of who we think we are is simply a set of prejudices and random decisions that later become part of our “identity”, and then we alter everything to keep this self-image consistent. I mention this because we had “chili con carne”. Which, of course, had no resemblance to the real thing (which I had always refused to eat). It was, however, full of beans and with a good deal of cauliflower. Still, I ate it and it was fine. Anyway, I did that in spite of resilient stomach pains that just will not go away. After lunch, we played soft volleyball (they call it). It’s where you play volleyball with a lower net and an inflated . . . basically beach ball. It makes the thing fly all over in crazy directions. I had a lot of fun with the kids. We had two teams. First it was the two teachers and nurse vs. the girls. Of course we won, then I learned a cool Japanese system. It was time to switch up the teams, so the three of us either had to make a rock or a paper with our hands. Whoever was in the minority switched teams. Same with the other girls. We repeated this after the next game. Team white (other team was red) won 2/3 games. I was team white all three times. I contributed most in the game we lost (by that time, the other team had two teachers). The girls loved it. We all had so much fun. I love that school. I’m always sad to leave it.
Then, however, it was time to return to the BOE. I took a longer route back (according to Google, 3 minutes longer) because I wanted to see more of the beautiful countryside. It’s so different. In September, it was still summer. The rice was that amazing green gold that just doesn’t even seem real. Now, the rice that hasn’t already been harvested is a straw gold. A lot of it has been harvested and is hanging on racks to dry. A lot of the fields are mud and the remnants of cut stalks. It looks like fall. With the burning of a lot of the rice straw leftovers, it even smells like fall. The light of the sun looks different. The whole world seems different. It’s not like fall in Hikone. But it’s still something beautiful to watch.
I made it back to the BOE, and I killed time, feeling sick, until 4:30. Then, I headed over to the hospital. I’m now on three kinds of temporary stomach meds, plus the sleepy pill. It was decided not to up my dosage yet, dammit, because I’m still sick. Well, I ate dinner, and I tried to go to bed early. It wasn’t a rousing success. My apartment is still clean, but could use a once over. I’ll try to hit that on Sunday.
Well, got up this morning, and I’m finding it harder to stick to my “no internetting until you’re ready to go to school” resolution. A side effect of actually having a clean place I don’t mind sitting at to use the internet. But, of course, I’m at school on time. I was going to go to 7-11 for tea, but, instead, I brought a mug and a tea pack from home. Better idea. Saves on money. So, as much as my inability to do what I want was brought on by my lack of self-control, the end result has been a net positive.
I’ve gained weight lately. I need to get back to exercise, and I’ve got to watch what I eat. When you’re sick and depressed and can’t exercise and can’t eat because your stomach hurts then suddenly get overwhelmed with starvation and gorge . . . you pack on the pounds. Quickly as it turns out. A week of feeling like I was getting sick, a week of being super sick, and a week of still not being able to get better has not been kind. This violates the goal of priority one being my body. Now, I have been cleaning, which is good, and since getting my ukulele back, I’m working on being better at that (priorities 2 and 3), so that’s some small mitigation, but I look gross, and I feel gross, and I can’t wear black pants anymore because the brown, green, blue, and grey are more generous. It’s just not okay, and it needs to change.
I had more I felt like writing, but, for whatever reason, this feels like a good enough place to stop. If I feel like writing more later, I will. Otherwise, I’m expecting a fun weekend and I’ll write about it Monday or Tuesday.