Swimmers to Your Starting Blocks...

... Swimmers; on your marks,...
... Get set,...

...BANG!

And so was spent our first swim meet ever, since the Eldest Unfortunate started swim team training this past mid-March. She is really stoked about being a team swimmer. The fist signs of swimming becoming her love was during her first serious swim lessons at 5yr, now swimming has become her passion. So much so that our life is starting to branch out from being just aikido as an obsession... Okay, to be honest, aikido is my passion--okay, near obsession--I just swept everyone aboard this ship, into my wake. Now Sapphira has found her passion, and I saw the glitters of possible obsession in her eyes today when she was talking about it on the drive home and then at the table during lunch. She participated in only two events, due to poor communication by the coach and misunderstandings not only on Eldest's part but over half the team's part. Despite having to wait two hours past warm-ups till my Unfortunate got to part the seas, the Eldest FINALLY got to swim her favorite: the butterfly, 25m and came in 3nd. Then she participated in the 7-10yr free-style relay. She was the anchor and made up time bringing her team into 2nd place. YOU GO GIRL!!! She may not be the fastest swimmer of her age group, but girlfriend has form and she is no longer contemplating drowning as an option to getting out of the pool when tired or embarrassed.

Don't get me wrong, girlfriend's form goes in and out, but it is starting to stay in more often than not; and her journey to competitively swim has been rocky, but the treasure the Eldest gains through this is far more than its weight in gold, regardless if she quits by summer's end or stays in it till she up and dies far past my kicked the bucket day.


Here I am, still reveling in the glory of her moment, getting a thrill each time I look at the good pictures, I took; I can't help but think back to when she started school swim team nine weeks before the summer break. Yeah,... that was sunshine, rainbows, and joy.

Beginning in Monterey, she started at the Monterey Bay Swim Club; where practice was five days a week, with her only going three out of the five days. It was only for 1 hr. on a 50 meter pool, . She was slow, tired, sore, frustrated, slow, not in with the group, and did I mention slow and frustrated, without friends during practice? Her first night of practice, it was obvious that she was exhausted with 30 min to go. She kept going though, with encouragement from her coach Johanna and pride... Well, she got out of the pool with tears in her eyes, took the towel from me and said that she hurts so badly. I asked her if she wanted to just shower at home. In a firm yet, tear sounding voice, she straightened up and told me, "No." As she turned to walk away, I smiled knowing that girlfriend was hooked. Later in evening, she let me know that she contemplated drowning during that grueling hour. This statement fascinated me, "Really, why?" I replied. "I was so tired and my legs and arms hurt so much, I really wanted to get out of the pool. I know you would yell at me and Ms. Johanna would yell at me too, if I just got out and walked away; but I knew if I was drowning, then the lifeguard would come and save me."
"Wouldn't you have been embarrassed? You know with all those new team mates and you trying to make friends and all... you would have forever been known as the drowning girl?" I say with a chuckle.
"Yeah, I know, but I thought about that too, and I was ready to have it; because I knew that I was out of the pool and they weren't, and I didn't have to swim anymore today."
Outstanding! I had taught my baby well; Whatever action you decide, be prepared to accept the consequences. It brought a big smile to my face and nearly a tear to my eye.

Yet, just as the team started to warm up to her, and her to them and practice, we yanked her out and whisked her away to the other side of the puddle. After about a two week travel break, I threw her into the Yokosuka Seahawks Swim Team. She was feeling more confident and eager to go; she held the same schedule, except two minor things... practice was 2 full hours, sometimes running into 2 1/2 hours on 100 meter pool. Yeah, we were pretty close to being right back to square one, without all the soreness. Frustration on the part that the assistant coach in charge of the younger kids didn't really help out on technique, or lap-lane rules. Girlfriend set herself a mission: improvement, improvement, and improvement. She was tired of getting ran over or crashing into a teammate coming from the other end of the lane (and there were really bad accidents involving most of the jr. members just from the six weeks we were with them), and she felt that she wasn't getting the help she needed to get better. I gave her my tips of course, (then again I am only mom) and a good nudging to go and hound all the coaches for pointers. She took to this idea after I shut her down from complaining to me for the second week in a row with out asking her coaches for help. "If you don't like where you are standing, move your feet." Seek and you shall find--Oldest got the help she been craving and took the advice to heart only in a way a 9yr can. I was proud, she really did dedicate her self to what she asked for. Slowly yet surely, she began to improve here and there; then school swim team broke for summer break.Bring us now to summer swim team...

... And it stinks! Disorganized with lots of play and down time. I'll go on about this phase of swimming in a different post. Sapphira isn't too happy about it either; and I know I do color my children's views, but when she is complaining about playing another swim game (i.e. Marco Polo, sharks and fishes...) something is wrong especially coming from, 'let's play in the pool,' girl. Another thing is that the competition distance for her age group has been pushed back to 25m not the 50-100m she had been training for. Her goal for this summer was to advance in technique and endurance. Of course she wants speed--who doesn't; but I told her that will come with the territory. With her goals--that SHE made out for herself-- in my mind, I suggested to her after the first week of summer team--only two days a week for 45-60 minutes--that we could go to lap swim on the off days to practice. I got the polite form of the incredulous pre-preteen look of, "are you serious?!" By the end of this week; the second week of practice, she asked if I could take her in the mornings for lap swim, after my swim class. Today, now that she has had the taste of competing and the savory dish of placing, she is really on me to getting her to the lap swim.


We hope you like the pictures, it is rainy season here so it is all over cast, but the weather held for the meet. After enduring my camera and all it's cannots, I am really holding myself back from just chucking the camera. It takes excellent pictures when the environment is right, no matter how you adjust the settings. It is so damn busy auto focusing that when you try to take fast moving shots you miss the action, and just dream-on on getting continuous pictures. Click... wait, wait; click...wait... wait... oh,... no... wait... ah, click. Of Eldest's 25m butterfly, I only got six action shots, and only three for her relay. I a going to get a camera that does what I need and want it to do!!! Today, I really missed my film camera, but I am trying to keep with the times and fully embrace the digital age... now that I think of it, I think I have by-passed my camera and it's abilities... must find better camera... Oooo, the Nikon... Ohhho, the Canon... ~sigh


The next pictures are of a good friend to the Eldest Unfortunate.

Kamakura... Home of the Daibutsu...

... And who knows how many shrines and temples; yet this was our first homeschooling venture in the Land of the Rising Sun. I signed us up to go on the Kanto Plain Homeschool Group organized field trip to the beautiful town. The trip was not just us wondering about, but we were going to be lead by a group of Japanese tour guides who were doing our tour for free, just so they could practice their English and get certified to give a bilingual tour. I surmised that we could get to know our fellow area homeschoolers better, see sights only Studman and I saw when first in Japan, all the while hoping I like or at least can tolerate the people we just met, and the Unfortunates happily take to walking without my promises of bodily harm should they refuse. Of course I survived, in fact, I enjoyed myself! Why such pessimistic foreboding? A trip through Kamakura means you are hoofin' it, this time with short Unfortunates from each and every point in the ancient capital of Edo period Japan. Believe it or not, the Unfortunates actually had a great time and want to go an another such trip, I can happily oblige them! Muwahhahahaha!!!
Okay,back to the field trip...
Getting to bed after 1am, just to lie there awake, isn't a good idea if you need to get up by 7am. 07:30 I roll out the rack and shuffle over to the Unfortunates rooms to rustle them up. Note to self; get proverbial ass to bed before 01:00hr when the morning comes early. Those accursed boxes could have waited if the damned packers would have just put the phones in the boxes of the rooms they originally were in! What-the--!(in with the good, out with the bad... in with the good... out with the bad...). Good thing we got our yen, packed our bento boxes and put the rainy weather clothing together before bed, it really came in handy... now if I hadn't have been too lazy to do hair too, we would have been golden time wise. Despair begone, Mommy has a plan. Remembering to feed Suicide-girl before leaving in a rush, but looking good; we're armed with my backpack of snacks, bentos, water, and a change of undies for the Crazy Unfortunate... Traditional Japanese toilets can be precarious at best to the unpracticed. (here is an excellent blog entry regarding this issue). We hop into the Box and drive to the parking lot next to the main gate. See, this here be thinkin aheads... knowin n'all that dem'youngins would be plum tuckered out, 'bout th'time we'ds be makin it back heres, see? So we step lively in the drizzle and hail an off base cab, cutting out our 20min walk to the train station by 15min. We hop out, and pulling the Gaijin flag, I tip him 200yen(you don't tip in Japan), due to excitement and appreciation for shutteling us to the station, giving the Unfortunates their first Japanese cab ride, and waiting for me to make change of the annoyingly large 5000yen note all ATM give out. Getting through the ticket readers, we make our way to the platform and we are really on our way! You can just feel the excitement radiating from the Unfortunates; the thrill of their first train ride--city cast in the gray of eminent rain, speeding past the windows. "Too bad you can't ride trains like this in the States," the Older Unfortunate says to me. "Nobody would drive cars 'cause its so easy and really cool!" All this is said with a glow about her face and the Crazy Unfortunate nodding vigorously in agreement. "I can't wait to meet the other homeschoolers," she wistfully says with Crazy chimeing in, "me too." We already met a few, who just happen to be the same age groups of mine and were also going on this outing.

Well, we get to Zushi station--the rendezvous point at 08:53, 30min till the group was to meet up and catch the train to Kamakura. We wait...15min: just us still so we kill some time by wandering around and take a picture just for memories and the blog of the girls at the station (I forgot how to ask in Japanese, 'could you take our picture please,' so I am not in it). We anxiously wait... 10 more minutes; by this time I am starting to kick myself for not rolling out of the rack sooner to check email in the event that they postponed the trip since it was raining when we got up, and had been raining for the past 3 days. I also wished that I had given my cell number to some of the people we met who were going... Agitatedly we wait 5 more minutes... 09:30 and I am starting to wonder if there is ever anyone who tries to make it somewhere on time besides me when you are suppose to leave at that time. 5 more minutes... The Unfortunates glow is definitely out the door and they are starting to resemble the weather in their demeanor. FINALLY, 09:45, just when we were going to catch the train and do our own little tour of Kamakura, I am flagged down by the leader of the leader of this field trip with her tall teenaged son, and sulky, ill tempered preteen boy (who seemed to be in a much improved mood from the last we saw of him). Three minutes later we are met by another family... and that was all, only 9 of us. The other 8 families bowed out due to colds and weather, so by time we made it to Kamakura, we were greated by 9 very happy Japanese guides who look a bit confused with the size of our group. They quickly recovered their shock and we all merrily set off on our personal tour of the city.

First we went to see the Great Buddha--Daibutsu (second largest in Japan), and cleansed ourselves before entering the shrine. We got to go into the bronze cast statue--not for the claustrophobic. We took pictures in front of his sandals that an elementary school made for his feet. Seeing all we could see there, we headed out to a small but beautiful Shinto shrine where we had been given special permission to eat lunch on their grounds (the head tour guide is friends with the head priest's mother). That was great, the kids loved exploring the grounds, seeing> the turtles, fish, frogs, butterflies, and getting a personal tour by the head priest of the shrine.
Once rested, we set off again this time to Hasedera Temple. I would have taken more pictures but I was running out of space on my memory card and many of the sites on the grounds were off limits to pictures. I linked the official website so you could see what we saw. This place was really beautiful and we all would have loved to stay longer, despite the losing the Oldest Unfortunate. One moment, she was right with me and all together as a group we moved to go visit a cave within the temple grounds. We spent about 10 minutes in the cave and came out and did a head count. I realized that she was no longer with the girl she hung back with before we entered the cave and my heart skipped a beat when she was not to be found around the entrance to the cave. Just when me and our personal tour guide were about to go ask the temple for help that is when I hear from across the way a tear soaked, full of relief, "Mommy!" and here she comes running, snot and tears down her face, crying loud as ever to me. Sweet Relief!!! After getting her to stop sobbing loud enough for the gods to hear, I made sure she was all right. Come to find out, she stopped off to the side of the path we were walking to look into one of the many fish ponds right outside the cave. She didn't realize that we all entered the cave and thought she saw me walking out of the temple grounds. She followed "me" until she realized that no one in our group with with "me." That was when she panicked and started shouting for me while running around the area looking for us. No Japanese helped her, but fortunately this was a Thursday, which is when the mandatory AOB/ICR (Area Orientation Brief/Inter-cultural Relations) class has their self-guided explore Japan day. A group of Yokosuka base new comers, who had seen us before, then again at this temple, knew that we were still on the grounds.
They brought her back to the temple and helped her look for us. I was SO happy someone helped her out before too much longer. It was pretty scary, more so for her, I wouldn't want to repeat that with any one.


Now that our short, scary adventure was over our group headed to another train station to ride it back to where we started so that the two other families could go, since they all had business to attend to after 14:00. We said good by to 5 of our tour guides and our little beach det. and the rest of the tour guides decided to take a chance on the break in the weather and see one of the largest shrines in Japan, the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine.
It is huge and we had fun walking down the cherry tree lined lane that runs down the middle of the road, with cars passing on the left and right. The lane was constructed to appear longer than reality, to bring fear and humility to anyone who came to beg audience or enemies to fight with the shogun. I didn't get any good pictures of this shrine, but I did get some. They are not the best thanks to the clouds deciding to pour on us.

Lots sites, new friends, bit of a scare, and just plain fun had been had, and to celebrated the end of such a good day, I treated the Unfortunates to ice cream outside of the station. We said our good-byes to the last of our tour guides, finished up our treats, bought our train tickets, and awaited the train on the platform headed to home.
Hope you enjoyed our little photo journey. Ja-mata ne!

Cirque du Soleil

I am going to do it! I am going to pay the ransom to go see Cirque du Soleil here in Japan. This year is the grand opening of their permanent venue. It is right outside of the whole Disney Tokyo Resort complex. We are going to go to the preview showing of ZED. I am very excited. Hopefully the whole working party of this ship can go, (hint hint Sailorman...) so is the illusion that I hold. If not this three man beach det. will have a good time of our liberty.

The tickets I am aiming for are the front view seating area. Not too close where you can't see everything but not so far away to where you feel like you are sitting in a sup-ed up version of your own living room watching t.v. I am aiming for the preview performance dates due to the the discount rate you get. So, the cost after guesstimating in the yen/dollar rate should be around $98 no more than $105. *sucking of teeth* I know, that IS per ticket, and there are no deals for the Unfortunates... however, the idea had occurred to me and my mom voiced it; just pay for a sitter, rent a movie and get some good chips and ice cream that the Unfortunates picked... and I just go by myself! Tempting... hmmm... yes, tempting... but I loved the whole experience of this circus so much when I saw it on my high school, senior class trip, that I am willing to share it with both my Unfortunates now that they are all old enough to remember what I am paying for. Another reason for going is my love of costume. I aspire to sew costumes that seem to have come right off the stage of such a production one day. I will... just give me time!

Now, I am just hoping that good seats are still available since tickets for these shows have been on public sale since the 26 April. I will be finding out either tomorrow or Saturday when we go to the travel agency so I can pay cash for them either then or next week. I am staying true to keeping off the credit crack... tis an evil and vile creature to bed with. We are still washing the sheets from our tryst, but should be done not too long from now.

I FOUND It!!! Broken Arm X-Rays

A'las, I found it, no not the missing phones that are no where in any of the boxes they should have been. No, not the dvd remote controll which has everything on it and the actual player has only stop, play, eject, ff and rewind; so we can't explore anything on all of the dvd rentals we keep getting. No, it is not the very important People Papers packet that was misplaced the day the movers came. It is the cd ROM the fantastic orthopedic surgeon made for me of my arm and its crude bionic parts!!! Just click the "Read More," to see the lovely x-rays
I think this is one of the coolest things ever! Granted I don't think living with a broken arm is great but the whole medical side of it all is absolutely fascinating! So Dr. Sohrab Gollogly made a copy of it for me. I didn't have time to get my hands on a copy of the first x-ray at the hospital when it was still at an undisputed un-natural angle. I hope to get that soon... we shall see.
Anyway, I broke my arm on 13 January, and yes the sound of it still haunts me sometimes (just hold about 3/4 inch in diameter, bunch of uncooked spaghetti and brake it in half).




These pictures were taken in (correction) March, so the breaks are still fairly visible-- you can see them if you click on the picture, the full sized pic will open up. I opted for surgical correction instead of running around in a cast. After weighing the odds of me screwing up the healing of the arm and having to have the doctors at the new duty station re-break my arm to fix it; then because we were set to move in 30 weeks or so, and it would take 26 week for complete healing, I decided to go the fast track route. get it surgically corrected to get it right the first time. Well, after all was said and done, I found out that I don't have enough meat in my arm to protect my arm from the ulna side of the titanium plates, it needs to be removed, but only time will tell... fast forward to now, I have a good sized lump growing on the edge closest to my hand--the ulna side of the plates. The whole ulna plate is sensitive and any bumps and thumps cause deep bruising and fosters further growth of the lump that has become apparent. Now I am working to get seen by orthopedics, but because they are "swamped," or so the guy on the phone told me, I am forced to see a primary care physician, the physicians appointment desk thinks it is bull$%*! but their is nothing they can do but give me the earliest available appointment... which was exactly 30 days from the time I called. Beautiful. Now I wait and keep calling the appointment line every afternoon asking for any cancellations. There has been only one so now I can be seen instead of 2 July I am going to be seen on the 30 June. I don't really go to aikido anymore, training is getting more and more challenging with each thing that I add to the cannot do list. It really is disheartening, but I know it isn't forever and there is much to learn in this. Breaking my arm has allowed for more aikido to sink in. After being on the fast track since I started, it is well past my time for slowing down.

Our Uchi (revised with more pictures)

The pictures, as I had promised to a few, are not much but this is our abode. I like it more and more with each box we unpack and brake down. I am hope to be able to call the moving company to pick up the boxes by the end of the week, or early next week.
Kochira wa watashitachi no uchi des; Yokoso!

This is our house, yeah, real eye catching... But give me time, just give me time. The Unfortunates and I are working on our most spectacular garden yet! Meet Jasmin and
Jessica (aka the tomato plant). Jasmin though small is quite a beauty to inhale, nothing like the jasmin that was available to us in Monterey. Jessica normally sits on top of the wall in front of the house catching sun, she's on the ground to get some water. This is our back yard; yes it really is that small and Suicide-girl isn't happy but she is grateful that at least this yard has grass to graze on. Our back yard shed is just out of the picture. I have a on going war with myself over the yard. If it was me, I personally would cut down the cute little tree you see, due to it being over whelmed by the wolf cherry tree above it which you can't see, and the two-story tall coniferous tree that you can only see the trunk of here. I wouldn't have let the conifer to grow to begin with due to how large it is going to become and how close it is to the damn house; adding another element that make the ground too moist for grass to take here (next door to us is where our friends use to live the first time we were in Japan here it is mud, mud, or mud). Give it five more years and they are going to have problems besides the nasty, blue and black, amazonian sized mosquitoes that thrive in the hill side surrounding our complex of town homes. So, the kids don't really play out back, grass doesn't grow, and that green stuff is just weeds and strawberry family ground cover that gets pulled up every time we pick up after Suicide-girl. The next set of photos are of the living room and kitchen, as the movers put everything from the truck into the house we quickly realized that wall space is a premium here with all the furniture we have. Once I get all the books on the shelves, then I will have space to move things around some more, and when my Man-Thing-Loveslave comes home he is going to help rearrange the large step-tonsu I didn't realize till the movers left that it is configured backwards. I have to keep something around for Studman to do, or he might pout.





And this is where I spend my internet time. Don't you just love the informal look of it all? Having a desk that is constantly walked through, keeps it clean and clutter free! At the moment we don't have a real place to put our corner desk... I am still thinking of where to put it. The packers dissasembled and packed the entire thing while I was in a different room; it was quite a suprise when it was moved and unpacked here with the words, "COMP DESK," written on the wrapping. The last time it was ever in pieces was when we bought it 9yr ago, and it has always been moved in two pieces, the shelveing seperated from the desk... I don't really feel like putting it back together. The shelves in the kitchen is making the best out of what the packers gave us. They didn't bother to secure the pegs in the shelf and we are missing 6 pegs. Once I got over my cursing fit, I decided to trying moving the shelf to the hall and in the process, I discovered the shelf fits perfectly where the laundry room closet wall sticks out and the refrigerator rests against. Now I can have my cook books and herbal books in the kitchen and the trash bins fit in the shelf-less space below, yea!



The house is slowly transforming into a home, I feel it, the Unfortunates feel it and our grey-baby feels it too. Home is where the Navy sends you.

We Have A HOME!!!

Now that I am not so distracted by the mess also known as my home, I am finally around to updating this blog. We now reside in an actual house that is our own: Yea!!! However, it is not at the lovely Japanese home that I had found and was in the painful process of finalizing the paperwork for. No, I didn't get to let heads roll in full shock and awe... turns out it was quite behoving that I did not.
The Tuesday after Memorial Day, I went about business in more humbled, and dignified manner. Over the course of the long weekend, I discovered that there was just one paper that we did need from the ship, signed by the head cheese after all... yeah, there's another one of those minor changes that have been put into place since we last here in Japan oh-so many years ago--hello?... After printing out the afore mentioned paper (at the library of course, we don't have our stuff.. duh!), I take it to Housing and while they are entering our info into the computer to print out the next set of paperwork I had to take to a splendid place called PSD (personnel support detachment), our on base housing agent runs up from the back of half of the office, to the front counter where me and my entourage are waiting; all out of breath she breaths, Sailorman's name then mine in the wonderfully complicated manner that only those with non Germanic/Latin language roots could do to very non Asian root names. She asks if we have already signed the housing contract and lease yet? No we are getting the money request together now, I say. "I have a house to offer you, on base."
Pause--"REALLY," I reply in a guttural, semi-stupefied, shocked tone. "No, seriously, really?" She nods her head and smiles all excitedly. All I could say was, "wow. Really?!" "Hai, yes I do. A townhouse on base." Of all the words I know all I could say was, "wow. Okay, on base; wow!" My verbal record was skipping due to me fighting back the maniacal laughter that was threating to emerge past my lips. Why, well, we were definitely on borrowed time. You are alloted 30 day stay at the Navy lodge here, on your 20th day you must submit a request thought three different sources, then pray that there space available for you to stay in the lodge. Now we were getting into the full swing of the PCS season and on our 30th day, we were approved with a hitch--there were only 6 days available at the Navy lodge, and we had yet to find a home. Bring it on baby! While waiting for our 30 day extension, we found a home but it was taken already by another perspective renter, in a very rare, yet once in a long while mix up that occurs when an owner who allows the primary housing agency to use their lesser agency to find a renter while the original agency also plies the same house, then they don't talk to each other. Yeah, we were the ones to experience that, bunches-o fun, let me tell you! The house that I posted under Japan Home (or something like that), we were in the process of getting when we were hit with the on base housing option. The Unfortunates and I had only 2 days left before finding out whether or not the lodge had more days available to us. Keep in mind that we were still in the paperwork process of requesting money from the Navy to afford to move in to the Japanese house, once this is turned into PSD it take anywhere from 3-6 days for the money to be approved then wired into your account.
Well, by time we made this far and offered the townhouse, I was just... yeah,.. not only were my own worries afield, but I had to field Sailorman's rants, worries and frustrations via satellite phone since he was whisked away to a tin cup in the middle of some pond. (love ya Babe! Remember don't let them see you puke, 'cause YOU ARE THE MAN--SAILORMAN!!!) I couldn't go and have a break from it all via my beloved Aikido, due to one of the plates in my arm (and that is a whole new mess of a piss pile story there--gotta love the Navy!); the girls were really feeling the crush of moving to a new place with plenty of kids but they all are sectioned off with their little clicks, they still had no home, Papa was gone, and the Oldest Unfortunate was really feeling it. And there was Suicide-girl who came to Japan weighing 56lbs, and was a mere 46lbs and dropping. For a greyhound this is really bad and she still had several months left of her quarantine (which must be finished out Stateside, Japanese kennel, on base kennel, or on base housing we knew no-one to take her home for us on base). We were about to take on another loan that we REALLY could do without, I wanted friends and Studman back too, so he could sit in misery with me--not working to death on the tin cup. So..., by time we were offered this house, we looked at it, Sailor man pulled into Sasebo and called on the cell phone 1hr later, told him what had transpired and we took the home. We moved in one day later and silently thanked the 2 people ahead of us on the housing list who turned down the house.
It worked out.
I shall post pictures later, when it is not 01:30 and 08:00 I have my 6 mos dental cleaning. I must stop getting to bed this late.