Marine Day

Yesterday was a national holiday in Japan, Marine Day or Ocean Day.  There is a little article about it on Wikipedia    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Day
I always thought the idea for the national holiday was to make people take a day off.  Japanese are real workaholics and won't take a vacation unless they have to.  The younger generation of Japanese are more laid back but the older Japanese seem to have no other interest other than work.
We stayed home.  I thought about going somewhere but most places near here were recovering from the awful storms of last week.  Some places got hit really bad plus there is now a typhoon (number 7 of the season) heading this way.  I think we will spared the worst of it, looks like it will stay over the sea but probably a load of rain....again.  I don't mind the rain, it cools things down and the plants get watered but having a load of laundry that won't dry drives me crazy.  My washing machine has a dryer function on it but if I use it too much my electric bill sky rockets (and I would much rather run the air conditioner!).  Also the rain has been accompanied by terrible thunder storms.  Last Friday we had a thunder storm that lasted all day.   So not fun.

I'm still trying out some new recipes.  Last week I made chicken with ginger, Worcestershire sauce and sake.Nice change from the usual soya taste.

This was really easy to do.  Pan fry the chicken, remove from the pan, fry sliced ginger, add Worcestershire sauce and sake, add the chicken and cook until the liquid has evaporated. 
I also made chocolate pudding, very yummy.  The recipe is from this web page   http://norecipes.com/
Some of the recipes on there look really yummy and simple.  And when the temperature is in the mid 30C's simple is best.

Our garden is really taking off, thanks to all the rain.  Our green curtain is covering most of the windows and we even have some Goya to harvest.



Something else growing, not sure what...pumpkin??

 

The green curtain





These are lovely flowers that just appeared

This is the last week of school before the summer holidays start.  I have a lot to do as I would love to get the house clean and organised before having everybody at home for the next 6 weeks.  It is easier to keep some kind of order that way.  But it is hot, it is only 9am and I'm already too hot.

The midnight cockroach fight

This cough is now driving me crazy.  I am a lot better but still coughing, not as often, but it is really heavy when I start.  One big problem is getting enough sleep.  I drop off but am woken every hour or so coughing.
The other night I gave up trying to sleep.  About 1am I came down and started to watch TV.  Mikey came down and offered to make some tea.  Tea always helps.  While he was making the tea Mikey saw a massive cockroach race across the room.  He put the light on and spent the next few minuets looking for it.  I'm sitting there, sipping my tea, I hadn't seen the monster yet.  Mikey then tells me to look at the wall, there crawling slowly was the biggest cockroach I had ever seen.  That's when the screaming and jumping around started, even sick I could really move it.  Poor Mikey was left with the task of killing it, took a good fifteen minutes to get it, then we stood looking at the body, doing the "is it dead?"  routine, neither of us brave enough to go near it!!

In other news we have had lots and lots of rain.  Where we live is a good area, no major rivers nearby, no mountains to fall down on us, also the house is a good metre above the road.  Yesterday and all last night we had incredible thunderstorms.  Rain was intense, the lightening lite up the room.  The worst is over for now, but it should start again.  Then the next couple of days are going to be hot. 

The Table

Do other families have problems with flat surfaces?   I have a wall in my living room that needs something,  but everything I have put there has become the junk place.  When we moved in I had the piano on the wall but with in a month it was piled high with papers, books, flyer's etc.  So I got a nice unit. Same problem, the shelves and drawers were empty but the top had a mountain.  I needed bookshelves in my room so I moved it up there.  Then somebody gave me this lovely table, it has a real English feeling about it.  But I spend so much time moving the stuff off it that it is driving me to distraction.  This week I've been really sick with a cough and cold that has sucked all the energy out of me.  I get the basics done each day but haven't had energy to face "The Table"  look at it....

See, nice table with a disaster on top and underneath!!!

So I guess this week I will be moving furniture..... again.  No, it is not my hobby, even if my kids think it is!!

There are just two more weeks until the kids summer holidays.  I am wondering what to do.  Six weeks seems like a long time but it goes past very quickly.  I have to work so outings are limited to local places.  Maybe a trip to a river park would be good.  Need to think!

Today is the first real hot weather we have had.  Last week saw so much rain, but it was cool.  Nice.  But it looks like summer is really here now!!!

Bad Day

Not really bad bad but not one of my best days.
I had plans, cleaning to get done, lesson plans to make, things to do.  But my cold has settled onto my chest making me cough constantly.  So after Christopher and Hannah went to school I went back to bed. Got myself drugged up with cold medicine, determinded to beat this.  Didn't work, still coughing, still have headache, still feel awful.
I slept almost all day.  Got up about 3 oclock, put some chicken breasts in oven to cook.  Even sick I still have to fed everybody!!  Hannah gets back just after 4 oclock with her usual greetings of   "I'm home. Mom, I'm hungry"  So I go to get the chicken out of the oven, thinking I could make her a sandwich.  As I moved the chicken the hot fat spilt out onto my foot, scalding it.  I stand in kitchen, shouting for help.  Mikey comes and puts some ice packs on it, but I need water.  Hubby comes and gives me a small bowl that my big foot can't get in.  He then has a great idea and gets the mop bucket, fills it with water and ice and gives that to me.  So I am sitting with my foot in a mop bucket,  the only thing the kids can say is that it is something to blog about!  No sympathy at all.



foot in bucket!!

Anyway there are no marks on my foot and the stinging ended a few hours later.
I get through my lessons okay, no little kids so no shouting which helps a lot.  The last class finished at 9pm.  Our dog likes to have a quick walk then but it was pouring down with rain, so she is quiet.  I'm all set for a nice cup of tea and a few pages of my book before bed.  About an hour later the dog starts yapping.  She has this horrible high pitch yap that goes through me.  I drag Christopher out of bed to walk the dog. The rain had stopped, just spitting.   Just as we got to the corner of the street the heavens openend and we got soaked.  Great ending to the day!

Summer cold

I have an awful summer cold.  I hate this!  Head hurts, throat is on fire and coughing all the time.  It is also raining a lot making everything damp and with the damp comes mold that no matter how much I clean it comes back.  So starts the summer!!  This year we have been lucky so far in that it hasn't been extremely hot, the highest so far has been 30C...good!  
Another problem this year is the power cuts that people will be getting.  Some of my students have all electric houses, which means that making meals is going to be tough.  I remember as a kid having power cuts because of the coal miners strike.  No coal, no electricity.  That was hard winter, schools were not heated, no school dinners, no TV in the evenings, no reading either because no lights.  It was a hard time and I feel sorry for those in Japan who have to go through this.  We got lucky this time because we live near the city hall which of course needs power so our area will not affected.   But I will be careful with power and not run the air conditioners 24/7, can't afford it anyway!

Mom

This week 8 years ago my Mom passed away.  She had cancer of the oesphagus.  She had been ill for about 3 years, complaining that she couldn't swallow and that almost everything she ate got stuck.  She was diagnosed a few weeks after Hannah was born.  Hannah's birth was traumatic.  She was born after just 26 weeks pregnancy, weighing only 900grams.  I lost it and spent hours on the phone to Mom, I called everyday,  most the time just crying.  My Mom never said how sick she was.  Hannah was born the begining of May, from June my Mom was in and out of hospital for tests, chemo and other operations to help her.  It wasn't until the next February that she told me that she had caancer and about a year to live!
But that was the kind of woman my Mom was.  She knew that I was scared when Hannah was born (I had two miscarriages before Hannah) and knew that I couldn't handle anymore stress.  She wanted me at home,  I'm the only daughter, but she wiouldn't dump her troubles on me. 

My Mom was one crazy woman.  She was always doing things that were daft.  I remember fairy wings and secret chocolate from Santa's elves.  Christmas was her big thing, no matter how tight money was she did Christmas.  She worked at a church as a cleaner when I was very young.  She loved the quiet and peace in there, she wasn't particually religious but she believed in God and the goodness in people. She taught me that the colour of a persons skin was not important but what they are like inside counts.
She also taught me to cook and make messes,  that water fights and snowball fights are fun.  That life can be crappy but somehow the bad times pass and the sun will shine.   She believed in living now because we never know when our time is up.  I remember shopping with her when I visited the UK during the mad cow scare.  Beef was so cheap, nobody wanted to risk getting BSE.  We were in a market, the butcher had this lovely piece of roast which would normally cost at least 20pounds but nobosy wanted to buy it, so he was selling it off for 5pounds.  My Mom snapped it up.  The woman next to her said "Don't you know you could get sick and die from eating that"   My Moms answer "Lady I could walk out of here and get hit by a bus an die,  if you don't want to risk getting hurt stay in bed"   She felt that life was risky, it is, but if we hide we don't live.  The last few years of her life were full of adventures.  She stared swimming lessons, did car boot sales, and went to the theater, she made new friends and deepened the friendships  she had.  She beat breast cancer and leg problems, she didn't give into  fear when she was mugged just round the corner from her home. 
She was the best Mom for me, she drove me crazy and we had all sort of fights but all I had to say was "Mom" and she would hug me and all was forgotten.  There are many questions I wished I had asked.  When I was 4 years old my younger brother was born, a couple of months later my Granddad (Mom's dad) came to stay.  He was very ill, basically an invalid, he couldn't move by himself so Mom had to do everything for him.  But my memory is confused, and it is driving me crazy.  I remember the sofa being in a place across the room, not where it usually was on the back wall.  I'm wondering if it got moved just for Granddad.  Silly little thing but it drives me crazy.

Most of the photos I have of Mom are print and I have no idea how to get them into the computer.
Here are some from the last visit, a year before she passed on



Feeding Hannah, Mom loved her grandkids

I was asked to choose one of the songs for her funeral.  My Dad chose 'Some enchanted evening', the song he sang to her when they were courtiing.

My chocie was one of Mom's favourite songs, 

Now I have to go as I'm crying.

Dentists

Poor hubby had to have a tooth removed yesterday.  He came home with his jaw swollen.  The gums around the tooth we red and inflamed.  He managed to get a last minuete appointment and came back unable to talk properly....peace!!   But he had to teach a junior high class, he managed okay.  I know if were me I would just go to bed.  I HATE dentists but my teeth are bad and I have to go....next week or the week after or sometime.

The great bedroom challenge came to grinding halt!  It just seems so hard to get things put away.  I think it is my fault.  I like things to hand,  I find it hard to put things away because I know I will need them someday.  So I have piles all over the place, pile clothes here, books there, papers on my desk.  And it looks like my kids have the same habit.  But habits can be changed.  I am trying, one pile at a time.  My teaching room is in disorder because of this habit, today and tomorrow I need to sort and throw out stuff that is not useful, I have loads of prints that the kids  teach have done, they are finished but I keep them, why?  So cleaning and decluttering.  Got to get the habit!!


Also I forget to say where my hometown is when I wrote about being homesick!!  I'm from Wolverhampton, in the West Midlands.  It's an industrial area and even though it is my hometown it is not a place I would recommend for vistitors.  There are some lovely places and many historical places as well but some areas are dangerous with crime and gang problems.  Even the local area that I grew up in has problems now and people are advised to be careful when walking out in the evening.  My Mom was attacked just round the corner from her house, the same area that I use to deliver newspapers when I was a teen!

This is a link to google maps, I tried to put in here but it wouldn't work!

http://goo.gl/maps/zsHb


Little update.  I found that Wolverhampton has a page on Wikpedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolverhampton

Even I learnt something, the first automatic traaffic lights in the UK were in Wolverhampton.  As you scroll down you will see the areas in Wolverhampton.  I grew up in the  Lanesfield, Woodcross area and my school was in Parkfields.  When I was a teen I spent most of my Saturday mornings in Bilston and even worked on the market there for few months.  Furthur down the page is a list of places nearby.  Bridgnorth is where I was born and lived until I was about four.  All these places bring many memories to me.