Things settling....?!?!?!?

Yes, time is starting to move on and my schedule is lightening up and things seem to be starting to fall into place. Ritsy and Ken had spent the first few days at home in the living room where Santa was always trying to get in on the warm action. No problem as long as he doesn't try to lie down on Ken.
Ritsy was starting to feel better, and was moved into the baby's room by Monday. But going back a couple of days- Peter and Chris managed to convince me to come out to Hamamatsu city to celebrate the beginning of fatherhood. While I am weary of overdoing it , it had been a pretty stressful 2 weeks for me and it was really nice they wanted me to come out, so I headed into town for a couple of hours to a place called Liquid Kitchen- run by a guy we knew, Marty.
Even our other friend Peter came out and we saw one of Chris' students- in this picture is her friend. If I didn't know better I would say these two look like a nice couple...
We were good though and got home at a decent hour on the train.(hmm that poster looks oddly placed in the background)
This week was pretty busy too, but definitely starting to lighten up. I am also starting to understand why my students keep telling me to take lots of pictures. He has already changed in looks a lot in just 3 weeks. I actually see a little bit of me in this little face now! His hair is brown, though much darker than mine- but his eyes are dark-- well that light-coloured gene is a recessive one isn't it...?
He is a hungry bugger and seems to get really fussy at night- but we are learning and starting to minimize the fuss a little better little by little. Poor Ritsy was getting pretty tired though- yesterday I caught her having a nap with the little guy when I came home from work.
I know time is moving fast- I can't believe the little guy is already 3 weeks old! There will be lots of great times- but I am so interested to watch as he develops mentally and physically, I can't get enough- I am starting to get oya baka (Baby crazy)-- this is going to be a very interesting journey!

A positive turn

I just survived a crazy busy couple of weeks! I guess my week isn't really over, but I know my schedule lightens up a bit from this point, so I'll enjoy it.
I continued with a tough week of commuting to my classes, the hospital and the Midwife clinic and last week reached an end with me having to travel out to Shizuoka city early in the morning last Sunday to take my Japanese proficiency test (level 3). With the hectic pace of the previous week and the buildup in the week before that, my studying dropped off pretty steeply. I am not confident that I did well in the test, but I guess I earned valuable experience for when I have to retake the test next year! On the bright side, the color of the leaves on the ginkgo trees were quite beautiful in their autumnal richness!
Of course, following the the test I was able to make it back to town in time to visit both Ritsy and Ken.
Ritsy was feeling much better as she had opted for a transfusion the day before. I understand her original skepticism to do so with the controversy about people contracting Hepatitis C recently, but the doctor assured her the risk is small, and in the end it was definitely just what she needed. On Monday she was able to leave the hospital and join him at the midwife clinic for a couple of days. She was pretty happy!
Finally last night the family was united at home. Though Ritsy slept downstairs with Ken, and I upstairs with the cats, it sure feels nice to all be back together again!

The three corners

Even though the family has expanded over the last few days, it doesn't really feel that way right now. The three of us right now are in three separate corners of town- each of us going through our own issues.

For Ken the ordeal is pretty straightforward. He has spent 9 months in a nice, warm, safe womb and now he has been dumped out into this bright, cold and mind bogglingly complex world. He can barely see and doesn't even know why he feels compelled to suck down as much milk as his little stomach can handle. Even just burping looks like a lot of work- he's got a lot to learn.

I am most concerned about Ritsy. I mentioned that she had to go to the hospital after the birthing and was pumped full of fluids at the hospital. When I visited her yesterday, she seemed healthy and I thought that for sure she would be released from the hospital and be able to return to the Midwife clinic to reunite with Ken. Last night though she had a fever and today, her blood tests showed her to be quite anemic, she is really low on iron. When I saw her she was again looking healthy and had no fever, just frustrated that she can't see her son.

Luckily the doctor offered a great suggestion- Myself, her sister and the woman from the clinic went to the hospital carting along little Ken to finally see his mom. Unfortunately Ritsy once again had a fever and only could hang with him for a few minutes. I feel real bad for Ritsuko- she just wants to connect with the little guy- and feed him her milk and be happy. But she is stuck recovering and now I worry that because he is getting used to the bottle, it'll be tough for him to switch to breast milk later. Well, I'll try not to get wound up in a little knot over something I can't fix.
As for me, my ordeal is about my leg. I had my cast taken off on Monday but I am meant to only walk with about 30% weight bearing pressure. God, I'm a horrible judge of how much weight that means, especially if you consider you can potentially take thousands of step in a day. It's much easier just to think that I should try to walk 'lightly' and I think I will be okay. I'm actually back to using my crutches more than I did in the last 3 weeks before it came off. I am confident that my leg will improve a lot and quickly, I just need to keep patient with it.

Separate the 3 of us will have to fight our battles and get to the next level- I really look forward to when we can all sit down together quietly (well as quietly as it gets with a baby) and enjoy the true feeling that we are a big family.

Here is a little video of the guy doing nothing, but as a parent, I feel it is cute anyway. Please pardon me for using the I'm talking to a baby voice- I am trying to avoid doing that too much...

Another video- an evening resting the foot, cats and pregnant Ritsy

Just a little clip from last weekend, sitting on the couch. It's starting to get colder here so the cats are starting to be more 'social' to share warmth with us. It's going to be tough on them when the baby arrives- they won't be sleeping in the same room as the baby, though I may crash in the separate bed sometimes when I need my sleep- so maybe they can crash with me there. Also you will catch a glimpse of how pregnant Ritsy is now. I heard that the baby is up to about 3200 grams now, should be a little big bugger...

Oh ya- Chris has been updating his blog daily lately with some funny cartoons- including this comical one of me during Halowe'en week- based on true events, though I never think like that, honestly! LINK

What's going on?

What's going on indeed!

I guess part of the more quiet pace I have been on with my injury, some my energy for blogging has sapped. Must stay on track! This whole blogging thing was meant to be an exercise for me to practice day to day focus, so it has been largely successful, but there's been a big tailing off the last couple of months. But, when we fall off that horse, we get back up again!
Mac: According to pictures stolen from Facebook, my sister's, son- Mac (because he looked like a big Hamburger when he came out, I think... :-)) was recently spotted dressed up as a big chicken. Pretty Funny costume! If you are wondering what my brother-in-law is dressed up as- I believe that is just one of his regular hats! Just kidding Sean! Well, also, using my detective skills, not having heard the story, it looks like he may have won a prize for his costume. Good Job, little guy!
Music: Most people know I love Radiohead- so I was pretty excited when they gave us 10 days notice last month and they offered up their new album only as a download. Plus we could pick the price. Pretty interesting move, though an established artist has a better chance of pulling it off than a struggling band. The initial offering of 10 songs is pretty good and filled with the usual ear candy that makes for great ear-phone or in-car listening, so was a solid release indeed! They had another option of purchasing a CD packaged with 2 LP's and a bonus disk- but the price of 40 pounds was pretty crazy. I will probably hold out until they strike a record deal to get the other new music. Oh, how much did I choose to pay? I thought 6 pounds (about 13 bucks Canadian) was fair, considering I probably will buy it on CD to get the songs at a better quality later on.

My Leg: Went back to the doctor last week and he said that my leg was healing slowly. Indeed, looking at the previous X-rays and the new ones, I couldn't see any difference whatsoever! Hmmph. He made a new cast with a good rubber heal and said that I could walk a little bit, concentrating the pressure on the heel of my foot. I am definitely more mobile- but I have probably been walking too much, so I hope it doesn't further slow my healing. The new cast is also removable so we can pull it off and wash the foot. I don't much like looking at my swollen and bruised foot, to be honest though!

The Train: Taking the train a lot the last couple of weeks, I have seen a lot of my old favorite employees of the local train- Aka Den, I remember I had created some 'names' for them- there was Creepy Smiley Guy, The Guy With Big Lips for example, but sadly- Unusually Tall Girl has not been spotted yet. It's good to see them all again, it reminds me of a year and a half ago before I had my car! Nazukashi!

Baby: Not yet!

Yep, I'm a little dry for topics right now- tough to grab the camera and go to check out a temple or whatnot, but I will get my groove back in no time!

Some old pics and getting to know my couch

My mom uploaded a few old pictures after my old blog in response to my request. I'll only share a couple here due to the 'bad hair' that I seemed to chronically have between ages 6 and 23. The above is one of the oldest surviving pictures of me- aged 3 rocking out to "Chipmunk Rock" by the Captain and Tenile I believe. (I'm not sure why I have this in my mind that was the song I was listening too, it could be the fact, or just an artificial memory as I like to call them).
Here is the picture of me the winter after breaking my leg the first time. I heard that my recovery at that time was 8 - 10 weeks. Probably a bigger break, but I wasn't too surprised when the new doctor I went to the other day lengthened my expected recovery time to 6 weeks. But looking at that picture- holy crap- have you seen the movie Bad Santa? Because I'll be damned if that isn't Billy Bob Thornton working as Santa at the Seaway Mall. I wonder if they got robbed that year...?

So I had a soft week last week, with my business classes cancelled, just 2 home lessons, then the end of the week we started stepping up the work load with a couple of trips to ESL College (Though don't be fooled it's not a college- nor is it ESL... it's EFL okay, sorry Chris!). Next week is going to get more tough, me getting reacquainted with my old friend the train. But I have been trying to concentrate on getting lots of rest this week. Maybe a little too much? I think Ritsy was getting a bit annoyed, but she is awesome- been really helpful, I will step up my help around the place now too!
Well the couch I have been using for propping up the foot is usually the couch where the cats sleep. So you can imagine that times there are territorial challenges. The other day Lanma was so funny, she was sleeping on my side and kept stretching until she was almost sitting up straight. Funny girl. Well, one more day of rest then back to it! Maybe I'll shoot for one more posting before I get back to the busy schedule...

A funny thing happened the other day...

Wow, fall is here. The trees around the area are starting to sprout Mikans (also known as Mandarine oranges) and Persimmons and the weather is actually bearable now. Yep life couldn't get any better.

Except for the October curse.

Those who know me- know the story of when I was young (maybe 6 years old) on Halloween I ran into the side of a car and broke my leg. The part that still always cracks Ritsy up is that I was too scared to use crutches for whatever reason, so I walked around in the beginning with an old person's walker. Near the end though, I was on crutches. {Mother- if you read this can you scan the old picture of me with Santa clause in my cast?}

Some 29 years later, the October curse strikes again. I will have to document somewhere to beware in October of my 64rd year...

Sunday started harmlessly enough. I taught in the morning. I was quite proud of the handout I made for my Sunday class- studying haiku. I thought it would be easy for them get since it was a Japanese style of poem, and a great way to study counting syllables. Well it turned out to be tough for them to get, but sometimes we have to push the students, right? I digress....

After teaching, Chris called me up for a spot of basketball, which is quite a common activity for us on Sundays. So I met up with Pete and Chris and we saw that the usual crowd wasn't there, and we ended up playing a few games with a big crowd of guys from the Phillipines, nice guys and they played hard. Early in the third game, I was starting the playing and found that my check was easily fooled if I would stand with my back to him, protecting the ball and spin backwards into the lane to the hoop. While I was spinning though, my foot caught in an awkward position (maybe something related to the piece of my shoe that fell off earlier in the day) and instead of stopping I kept trying to twist my foot and I was met with an odd popping sound. Yep, that pop was the fracturing of my fibula. How lame to break your own leg without any contact or anything.
I planned on going back to work right away, but I realized that with a 4 week healing time, and my baby due in about 4 weeks, it's better to cut my financial losses a bit and try to get a head start recovering, so I asked for a couple of days off. Time/Life went ahead and got me the whole week off from the company classes, which will really help, once I start taking the trains to work it's going to be tough! Well, I saved the pictures for the end of the post to preserve the integrity of the story...

This is my leg, try not to look at the toes too closely...

And here is me resting on the couch, trying to heal quickly....