Week Without Socks

Before I get this party started, I feel like I should begin with a few disclaimers.  For starters, this blog takes a generally overdramatic approach to humor.  And uses a LOT of cursing.  If you're here you probably already know that, but it bears repeating.  Secondly, I hate hospitals.  Like, medical stuff in general is just squicky.  If I could go the rest of my life without ever having to interact with a doctor again, that would suit me perfectly.  And finally, my doctors were excellent.  While parts of my experience weren't entirely to my liking, the two doctors I primarily interacted with (the gynecologist and the interventional radiologist) were fantastic and - possibly most importantly - very patient with my histrionics.  Which is why I have left out names...this post is more about experiencing a fairly major medical procedure as an expat (I know, I know...I don't really write about the expat stuff much these days, but this was a doozy of an experience, and I thought it was worth writing about).

The previous paragraph makes it sound like I don't go to the doctor much, and that's definitely not wrong.  I DO avoid doctors (they can't tell you you're dying if you don't go to them in the first place), but it's not like I've never been to one overseas.  Actually, I think I've actually seen a doctor in every country I've ever lived in, not only for the standard visa health check, but for some small ailment or other.  Foot pain.  Constipation.  Food poisoning.  Mostly the kinds of things that they give you a prescription for and send you on your way in 15 minutes.  This time, though, was different.

Content warning: Lady Parts.  Also, Gratuitous Use of Capital Letters, but back to the first warning: if you're squeamish about women's reproductive health, I'm not sure what you're doing here, (my target audience is made of sterner stuff), but this is probably the time to close the tab.

So.  Back up about 6 years.  The first time I remember anything weird was my fourth Junk-To-Punk fashion show.  That morning the school went down to the river en masse to pick up trash, and my period went batshit crazy.  According to my estimates, I should have been fine with the tampon I used before leaving the school, but when I took the fashion victims back to the school I had to make a quick stop in my apartment to change clothes, which irritiated the fuck out of me.  Over the course of the next year, "batshit crazy" became normal, but while that was irritating, I was in my late 30s, and every woman my age that I talked to reported similar issues, so I figured this was just getting old.  Along the way I learned the "lite/regular/super" system of tampons I'd been using since my 20s also had "Plus Ultra" and "Bloodbath" iterations...which was good to know because super was no longer enough.

(If you're regretting sticking around for this, sorry, but I did warn ya.  Women bleed.  Fuck off).

Well, among the women I discussed this with, one was the Evil One.  She is probably the best friend I will ever have in this life, and she loves me very much, enough to be straight with me even when I would very much prefer to just Not Go There.  And she said, "Yeah, you really need to go to a gynecologist and get that checked out."  I ignored this the first time she said it, but eventually, for something else entirely, I took her advice (it was two years later, okay, but I DID go in the end).  That is another story that I won't be sharing in this blog post, involving High Blood Pressure and an Awkwardly Answered Question...but for the purposes of this story, the doctor found myomas.  I had to Google to figure out what the fuck those were, but before I could get "non-cancerous growths" out of the internet, she was explaining that they would try to remove them surgically, but based on the size and number they would probably need to do a hysterectomy.

I've always found the fact that this procedure is called a hysterectomy a bit comical as well as insulting.  Like just because I have a uterus I'm a bit unhinged?  But when the doctor suggested that they would need to remove it, I did get kind of hysterical (and this is definitely one of the reasons for the aforementioned high blood pressure).  I maintained my composure pretty well until I got back to my apartment, and then I Lost It.  Ironically, when I first learned about body changes in 4th grade and discovered that I would be stuck bleeding from anatomy I was previously blissfully unaware of ON A MONTHLY BASIS FOR THE NEXT 40 YEARS OF MY LIFE?!?!? I would have done anything to get rid of it.  Which I guess means I've matured somewhat since then, because a hysterectomy has huge consequences, and without even being aware of all of them, I knew I wanted to avoid them.

I wasn't thinking clearly enough to ask Google about alternatives until after 1 AM that night.  Imagine my shock when I learned that there are LOTS of alternatives, none of which the doctor had mentioned.  I'm not blaming her, BTW...skipping over everything else to surgery seems par for the course with uterine fibroids.  I kind of figured that maybe they weren't really options here...Mongolia isn't exactly on the forefront of medical technology.  But you know who is?  Korea - and I had already booked a ticket to spend my fall break there.  So I did some research, found that Seoul St. Mary's has a whole Uterine Myoma team, and made an appointment to get a second opinion.

I prepared myself for this visit by doing the bloodwork my doctor prescribed, and the MRI that she suggested.  I had a small freak out because the MRI came on a CD, and who the hell uses CDs anymore?  And the day before I left, the radiologist here talked to me about the MRI, and said that if I decided I wanted to, that they could do a procedure called uterine fibroid embolization here.  This was actually the procedure that I felt the best about.  UFE is clever.  Rather than cutting you open (or, possibly more horrifying, going in through your vagina past the cervix to nip the little bastards), the interventional radiologist goes in with a teeny, tiny tube through puncturing your artery (either the one in your wrist or the one in your leg) and uses real time x-rays to find the blood supply for the myomas.  When he gets there, he blocks it by shooting nanoparticles into the artery, which eventually causes the growths to shrivel up and die.  It's about 90% effective in alleviating symptoms, which in my case means I hopefully won't experience shark week on a monthly basis anymore (there are worse symptoms, btw, like needing to pee all the time or getting constipated...comparatively, a little anemia doesn't seem that bad).  And apparently it was a procedure that they CAN do here, if he was recommending it.

Which was all well and good, but I had already pretty much decided that I'd hit Seoul up on my way back at Christmas, get my procedure, and spend a couple of weeks crashing on my friend Happy Tree's couch til I was safe to fly.  The only problem was, when I talked to the doctor in Korea, she said I could just wait and see.  My anemia "wasn't that bad," and if two excruciatingly bloody days out of the month were my only symptom, it was okay (she has obviously never had that symptom while teaching a class of teenagers for 85 minutes straight, fully knowing that her feminine hygeine was NOT going to make it to the end of the block).  Maybe I should have said, "That's reassuring, but I'd rather have UFE and get it over with...can you make that happen?" but I didn't.  I went and paid my consultation fee back at the international clinic and left to eat a burger.

I guess I could have tried to schedule it with a different hospital in Seoul, or elsewhere.  The US is kind of out due to financial reasons, though, and other than Korea, I wasn't sure there was anywhere I wanted to try and get it done.  Maybe Japan, but that seems like it would be expensive, too.  The idea of putting it off didn't really appeal to me, and I also thought there were probably going to be more hoops - initial consultations, more tests.  Under the circumstances, I decided that if I could get it done here, that would be best, or at least easiest.  Although I did have one small trepidation...I didn't want to be the first one done in Mongolia.  I didn't ask that question directly, but I asked our office manager if there was any way to find out if a doctor had done a certain procedure, and she said she'd talk to her mom.  Within 24 hours she knew his history, and while she wasn't sure that he'd done UFE, he had 14 years of experience and was well known for being a good doctor.  From the previous interaction I'd had with him, his English was good and he had a reassuring manner, so I decided to go for it.

Well.  It was not quite as simple as that.  I had to schedule an appointment again with the gynecologist for the pre-procedure consultation.  In addition to scheduling me and telling me I needed a bunch of tests (including Covid...goody), she informed me I would need to stay in the hospital the night before and the night after, which freaked me the fuck out.  There's the fact that no matter where you are in the world, hospital food is shit, and trust me, that was pretty high on my "FUCK NO" scale, but there were more rational reasons I wanted to avoid a hospital stay.  See, thanks to the previous high blood pressure, I was now the proud owner of a wrist monitor, and I knew for a fact that it wasn't just that the pandemic had Done Things to my health...my blood pressure was completely normal when I took it at home.  It was only while I was at the hospital that it shot up.  Having Everest-scale blood pressure for an extended period of time seemed like a really, Really Bad Idea.  I also didn't think that I would be able to sleep at the hospital, and I've been in my skin long enough to know that rest is probably the most vital component to maintaining my health.*  Followed by food, which brings me full circle.  In the end, I didn't have to stay in the hospital, but there was a long, circuitous route to get there, and they really only let me leave because I told them I was staying with Engrish, so there wouldn't be stairs and if there was any problem she could help me get back to the hospital.  I should buy her a really nice Christmas present...

This is turning into a really long post...you might want to go get a drink if you didn't have one when you started.  I swear I'm trying to avoid unnecessary exposition, but this really has been an ongoing saga over the last two and a half months of my life, occupying most of my mental space.  That said, we've gotten all the way to the procedure itself, so hang in there.

So I was scheduled for Tuesday, November 29.  This is probably not the best time for a teacher to take a week off (the typical recovery time til you're back to work), but the week the doctor originally suggested we already had two teachers out, and the following week was my period, and I couldn't think of anything worse than that, if it was even possible.  The 29th was really about as late as it could be and me still be cleared to fly home for Christmas (officially there are no restrictions, but everything I read recommended avoiding travel for two weeks).  I got my leave approved, made my lesson plans - boring writing assignments that my students should have been able to do without me, although I haven't worked up the courage to actually read any of them yet) - packed so much stuff in a bag that it probably looked like I was moving in for a week, most of which I didn't use afterwards, because I was too weak to look at my phone, let alone crochet my blanket (seriously.  The nurse had to get my phome off the floor multiple times while I was in "day care").  And then showed up to the hospital over an hour late on the day of the procedure, because the traffic was fucking ridiculous.  And that was because I walked the last block...if I'd stayed in the Enkhaa Express, I probably would have been over an hour and a half late.

All things considered, I was flustered from the get go, but my doctors agreed to consider sending me home that day, they found hospital clothes in my size, and tested me for contrast dye allergy (apparently it's a different dye than they use for the MRI).  Somehow I managed to not chicken out, and found myself lying on a zoomy motor bed thing, with screens positioned down by my legs and a little x-ray device overhead (overhips???).  They started the contrast dye, and gave me another IV for my NSAIDs - not sure which one they used, but I was feeling pretty detached by the time they all came in and started the procedure.  They had to use the artery in my groin, which I wasn't happy about, because it meant I had to lie down for at least two hours afterwards...according to what I read online.  In actuality, it was 5 hours before they agreed to let me stand up.  You may be wondering what that means for going to the bathroom, as was I.  Initially they didn't put a catheter in my bladder, for which I was profoundly grateful...

Okay, you may be wondering about this hyperactive hospital phobia (nosocomephobia, if you like to know these things).  Please remember that all of this was 100% new to me.  In addition to the fact that I don't even like going to hospitals to visit, I've never actually been to one for myself.  The only time I've been under anaesthesia was when I got my wisdom teeth taken out.  My primary mode of dealing with illness is "ignore it and hope it goes away" and this has served me pretty damn well, even if I do say so myself.  So yes, having someone stick a pee-pipe in me was a major point of anxiety for me.  Until the procedure was over and the pain was kicking in, and I just KNEW that part of the reason it felt so bad was that I probably needed to pee.  When I told the nurses and they said I would need a catheter, I requested that a female nurse assist me with it, but otherwise bowed fairly gracefully to the indignity.  Maybe I covered my face while they were up in my bizness, but Baby Chicken Wing was telling the truth when she reassured me it wasn't that big a deal, even if I had to experience it for myself to believe her.  I honestly hardly felt it.

The procedure ended up taking 3 hours.  Everything I'd read online said it was usually over after an hour, so I guess I'm special.  The doctor explained afterwards that my uterine artery was longer than they were expecting, and it took them some time to locate the correct access point to block the blood flow.  Which, I mean, it takes as long as it takes, but by probably halfway through I was no longer in a state of dreamy detachedness brought on by a combination of sleep deprivation and pain meds.  I was pretty much fully lucid after an hour and a half.  I told them so, but I wasn't really experiencing any pain, so it wasn't really an issue - until it was.  Probably about the last half hour or so I could begin to feel the cramping that I'd read about, and I told the doctors that, but I still had to wait for the anaesthesiologist to come before they gave me anything.  And while she was administering the fentanyl, she remarked on my low pulse, seeming to think I had an irregular heartbeat and that I should come back to see the cardiologist.  To which I wanted to reply, "FUCK YOU."  Like, let me get through the current health issue before you conjure up a new one.

Which brings me to the vindicating portion of this post: IT REALLY MIGHT GO AWAY.

Because my previous approach is not entirely off-base - I'm not being completely frivolous.  Turns out iron deficiency triggers a bunch of related shit.  Everyone thinks if you're anemic, you're just tired all the time.  Which I am, but let's write that one off to being a teacher, because that is definitely a truey.  On the other hand, at some point in the last two and a half months I have googled everything I've experienced over the last 5 years that made me go, "Hmm, that's weird...guess this is what getting old is all about." All those things can be triggered by anemia.  Slower metabolism, lowered immune response, allergies, and yes, even arrhythmia can all be effected by the fact that your blood is too weak to carry around all the oxygen it needs.  Sure, it might not be fixed just by getting my iron up, but I'll still take a hard pass at immediately freaking out and going back this week to see a cardiologist...once the Red Sea ebbs and I've been taking these stupid iron tabs a bit longer, then I'll go in and see if it's still an issue.  

I'm not going to lie - waiting to leave the hospital was a nightmare.  Maybe this was my fault for insisting that I wanted to be an outpatient, but I didn't have my own recovery room.  As they wheeled me past the door I saw a sign that said "Day Care" (haha, so many jokes to make), and noticed there were two Mongolian men in the room.  I asked about the curtain and they pulled it, but it didn't go all the way around the bed, so I still had one old guy on an IV for something within view.  They gave me my phone, my tablet, my plushie, and a call button, and then they left.  Which, I guess I wanted to be left alone, but I also wanted to be comfortable, and that was Not Happening.  For example, I had to ask for pain meds three times before they finally gave me an IV of something (and I still have no idea what it was).  By the third time I asked I was on the brink of tears.  They also only gave me 9 tablets of ibuprofen to go home with.  From everything I've read, it sounds like UFE patients typically get a narcotic painkiller which they can take up to twice a day, as well as a prescription strength OTC painkiller and a stool softener.  Maybe something for nausea.  I didn't want to go home with a whole pharmacy, but if my pain had been worse, this could have been problematic.  

And - oof - the pain was bad enough!  I feel like The Literature kind of glosses over this one.  I mean, doctors tend to do that, tell you you'll feel some pressure or a little pinch when they mean it's going to hurt like fucking hell.  And I'm not even that sensitive to pain!  However, the websites I read gave the symptoms of embolization syndrome (crampy pain, flu-like symptoms including fever and chills, and nausea), without giving the degree.  For example, "crampy pain" should be interpreted as, "IMAGINE THE WORST CRAMPS YOU HAVE FUCKING HAD IN YOUR LIFE, EVER, AND THEN MULTIPLY THEM BY 10."**  Also, when it comes to nausea, someone should mention that you probably won't have had anything but small sips of water since midnight the previous night.  You're still going to throw up, but nothing's going to come out but bile (at least, not the first three times; the fourth time I had gotten to casa de Engrish, and she had bananas, so it was banana puke the fourth time, for a fun new twist).

Well.  Nothing lasts forever, and eventually they released me to go to Engrish's place.  I mean, first I had to pay my bill, and that was mendokusai, because the hospital doesn't do direct billing with our insurance company.  I only owed a little less than $2,000,*** and I had plenty of money in my accounts to pay for it.  However, there's a little problem with Mongolian banks...they don't like you to spend more than 3,000,000 tugrugs in one go at the same place.  So the cashier tried to put 6.5 million tugrug on my Mongolian bankcard, and my card said, "Nope!"  So I had them run 3, successfully, and then they tried to do another 3.  And of course that didn't work.  Well, fortunately the day before I'd dropped the last $700 of my fall bonuses into my US dollar account, so I had them put 2.5 mil on that card, but that left me with one million left to pay.  I was able to pay the rest of it by using my mobile app and just skipping the card entirely, but I feel like this is a flaw in Mongolia's banking system.  If you are paying a hospital and you have enough money in the account, the charge should just fucking go through.

So that was it.  This is Day 6.  I finally started to get some rest on Day 2 (back in my own bed cuddled up with my dakimakura).  Gradually regained my appetite by Day 3.  Stopped freaking out about constipation on Day 4.  I've left the apartment today and the previous 2, and feel like I'll be okay at work tomorrow (it's the day I only teach 2 classes anyways).  I'm not totally Over It yet, but I'm getting there.  The first 24 hours or so, I questioned if I'd made the right choice, but compared to the recovery time for myomectomy or hysterectomy, this has been a cakewalk.  All the same, I'd still rather go the rest of my life without visiting a hospital again.  Hopefully this will make it more likely.

*Fact: I never used to take OTC meds because I believed my immune system was Tough Enough.  Then I took a Nyquil once when I couldn't sleep from coughing, and after a full 8 hours of sleeping like a baby I woke feeling fresh as a daisy, and decided that being Tough Enough was bullshit - quick recovery was MUCH better.

**This is somewhat subjective...my cramps have never been that bad.  On the other hand, I feel like I only made it to an 8 on the pain scale at the worst I felt. 

***Fun fact: According to the internet, you're looking at about $10,000 for the same thing in the States.

This Hina's Ningyo

It's been almost four years since I started making hand-sewn plushies.  They show up in my blog every once in a while, but I haven't dedicated an entire post to them since 2016, back in my tender youth when I hadn't even won a plush prize yet.  Well, a lot's changed since then, and since yesterday was Hina Matsuri whether it's celebrated here or not, I decided it was time to do an update.

I thought the other day about all of the ideas I've had over the years, and the tricks I tried to make them work.  They range from giving Aizawa hair that flips up when he uses his quirk to accessories (shoes, hats, goggles, swords, etc) to different kinds of ears and facial features.  I wrote about the Cricut that a friend gave me last year, but it wasn't until my sister-in-law suggested it that I decided to try using iron-on vinyl for my plushies' clothes.  I happened to be in the middle of Tsukishima at the time, which was perfect.  Originally I was only going to paint on his number, but when I realized I could get every element of his uniform cut out perfectly and ironed on together, I went all in.  It was so easy I realized I could make up the uniforms of all the Karasuno boys, and if I ever get to the point where I sell at a con, it would make stocking that much easier....instead of bringing x-number of each design, I could just bring the number of bodies I hoped to sell, and assemble the uniforms and hairpieces as they sold.

AnimeIowa gets a shout-out every year around July, so you six faithful readers probably know that I've won prizes the last three years, for Sesshoumaru, Kuriyama Mirai, and last year Sugimoto and Asirpa.  But last year while I was waiting for news about AI 2019 I discovered a "craftalong" for Desert Bus for Hope (a fundraiser for Child's Play - a charity that improves the lives of kids undergoing medical treatment or living in domestic violence shelters).  I decided I wanted to participate, and ended up donating Link and Zelda plushies I'd made.  I thought they would be auctioned off and might raise a couple hundred dollars at most, but instead, they were used for a "raffle" kind of prize.  During one hour of the fundraiser, each donation of a certain amount (and multiples thereof) resulted in an entry, and at the end of the hour a winner was drawn.  I couldn't believe that Link and Zelda raised just over $2200, but I was really happy that my hobby - which, let's face it, is kind of silly - was able to contribute in a pretty tangible way.

Giving might as well be my theme for this year in plush.  Back at Christmas I decided to surprise The Evil One by showing up in California during her home leave, in spite of telling her I just wouldn't be able to make it.  My dastardly scheme involved a phantom package with gifts that I was supposedly sending to her parents' house, one of which was a plushie for her spawn, who loves Darth Vader.  I haven't made that many of these guys specifically to give away, but there's just something about this kid who loves Lord Vader that warmed the cockleburrs of my heart, so I spent the first week or so of vacation posting pictures of the progress on Instagram and apologizing that the package wouldn't be there when they first got there (part of my deception, you see).  And then I showed up at their layover in Denver and went on to celebrate with them in sunny California.  Which was all the better, because it meant I got to see her reaction to Little Lord Vader - she kept turning to me in the car and talking about his features, and saying, "I like him.  I love him!"  And when Evil sent me this photo of her daughter snuggled up with the Sith lord, I swear my heart grew three sizes.

One of the ironic things about the fact that I'm pretty much stuck at home with nothing to do while Covid-19 rages on is that there have been times when I wished for nothing but time to watch anime and sew.  As the weeks have dragged on, it's kind of gotten old.  However, it has given me the ability to focus long enough to solve some design issues I'd been grappling with.  About a year ago I decided to try making a sitting plush, but gave up when I couldn't figure out how to make Kitaro's shorts fit.  Since I threw away the body when I left Japan, I had to re-engineer his pattern before getting to the shorts, but during our Tsagaan Sar (but-not-really-because-the-government-said-No) break, I worked most of it out.  It's a design I want to play with a little more, because he doesn't quite sit up on his own, but at this point I'm more concerned with finishing his hair and drilling the holes for his geta, because he may become an entry for this year's Mini-Festival.

So what's next?  Well, first I have to finish my waifu, Hinawa (the other contender for this year's Mini-Festival entry), and then we'll see.  I have an outfit for a plush that I've been tinkering with for at least two years, but when I lost interest in the character my motivation also waned.  However, now I'm thinking that he might end up being my first ever art abandonment project - I could leave him in Ikebukuro somewhere and I'm sure someone would find him and appreciate him.  Like I said, this year's plushie theme is apparently giving.

Straight Outta Wuhan

Unless you've been living under a rock, you may have heard that we're having a pandemic this year, the coronavirus now known as Covid-19.  This has been an interesting experience for me.  In past years, I've somehow missed the exciting new flavors of panic, having been in the wrong place each time - and that was just fine with me.  However, when I first read about the new plague in China before I came back from winter vacation, I did find myself thinking, "Oh.  China.  That's, like, next door, eh?"

Funnily enough, my flight back on January 17 went through Beijing.  At the time, that didn't seem as risky as it does now.  I didn't wear a mask, and simply went about life as usual - eating at Pizza Hut (the only good restaurant in the international terminal) and trying to kill time while waiting for my flight.  I was irritated when I got back to Mongolia because they made us wait on the plane for health inspectors to come collect the health declaration, but although I've never been in the epicenter of an outbreak before, I've traveled in the time of everything from mad cow to swine flu, so I really didn't think much about it.

Now dinner comes with a moist towelette AND hand sanitizer...

It was about a week later that I realized this was going to be a biohazard of a completely different color.  After dinner with Engrish and Blondie, I got into a taxi and asked the driver to take me to the school.  Immediately he started trying to tell me something, but I wasn't exactly sure what.  The next morning one of my colleagues enlightened me: the government had ordered schools to close UNTIL MARCH 3.  In school terms, that's approximately forever.  I didn't believe it - I had to message Engrish and ask her about it in order to consider that this was happening.  And that was three weeks ago.  Now fortunately for us and our students, we live in the digital era, and this means that learning can still take place.  Sort of.  It's kind of hard to teach art online - I've had to do a lot with art journaling and reviewing fundamentals, but I'm hoping that when they get started for real that their work will benefit from what we're discussing.  But apart from that, the quarantine order has basically made it impossible for me to establish any sort of routine in my life.  We teachers go into work three hours a day, and while the first week I thought, "Hey, I could get used to this!" I quickly got bored.  I should probably be using that time to do all sorts of wild and crazy things, but...well...I'm just not feeling it.  I think I need the stress from the 5.5 hours of work I don't have to do each day to feel motivated to do things like work on my art, or do my homework.

There is one wild and crazy thing that I've done, though, enabled by the short work days.  A certain event takes place twice a year in Chiba, which for some inexplicable reason I missed every time during the two years I lived in Japan.  Now on a normal weekend there's no way you could make it to Japan and back, but I managed to convince the school to let me off my leash in exchange for working a couple of long days, and off I went.  Three weeks had made a helluva lot of difference in travel.  Pretty much everyone wore a mask on the plane, and even in the airport.  I also noticed a LOT of hand sanitizer dispensers.  They might have been there before and I only noticed them because the fact that Incheon was still running flights to China sketched me out a little, but still.  The flight back to Mongolia was only about 1/3 full, and in addition to having our health declarations collected before we left the flight, the inspectors came on the plane in full hazmat suits and scanned our foreheads to check for fever.

It was kind of crazy.  In two weeks we are supposed to be back at school on a normal schedule.  Since Mongolia has yet to report a single confirmed case of Covid-19, it seems reasonable to think this isn't just a pipe dream, that we'll actually be teaching again.  However, in the last week the government officially cancelled Tsagaan Sar, one of Mongolia's two big holidays - no wrestling matches, no big formal celebrations - so who knows how it will actually play out.  Although it annoys the heck out of me, I kind of get where the government is coming from - Mongolia doesn't exactly have the medical facilities to deal with the Big Nasty.  Still, I'll definitely have a celebratory coke when things get back to normal.

The Water's Fine

So let me hit you with an Absolute Truth: I am lazy as fuck.  Returning to Mongolia was a strategic move that I needed to make in order to have both the time and money to finish grad school...but it came with the added benefit of enabling my laziness.  I live at school.  I can afford to take taxis again.  I can order in food again, because I can afford both to eat out and to order delivery.  When the weather was still what counts as "nice" here, I made at least a token attempt to fight my laziness, but those days are gone, along with any sort of sensation in my thighs if I walk outside more than 5 minutes.

That said, I'm self-aware enough that I know these are not sustainable life choices.  Coming home from school each day to order Songo and watch anime in the dark for several hours...

...speaking of which, yeah, instead of my usual photography you're getting (mostly) anime swimming gifs today instead.  You're welcome...

...before falling asleep way too early is pretty much guaranteed to wreck both my body and my mind.  So as my November payday crept closer, I resolved that I would join a nearby health club that had a pool.  The pool is important because we're coming up on the 10 year anniversary of my feet being shit, and even though I spend less time on them on any given day here than I did at any point in Japan, they can still be a bitch.

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Back to being lazy as fuck, one of the ways in which Mongolia beats Japan most days is that things are relatively simple.  For example, rather than a long winded bureaucratical nightmare if you need a phone in Mongolia, you just drop in on Mobicom with your passport and you can walk away with a SIM card.  However, I knew from previous experience that joining a gym - or at least, one with a pool - involved a doctor's clearance...less for my own sake than for the fact that I might bring something communicable into the water.  However, this damn doctor's clearance was what kept me from joining a pool in the five years I was here before, because it required a pap smear, and on general principle I refused to do it.  Since you can't get an STD from a swimming pool, I failed to see how the state of my vagina was any of their business. 

Well, I still object, but since I haven't had a proper checkup since I lived in Shanghai I wrote it off as killing two birds with one stone, and went and got it done.  And then waited around for two weeks for payday so that I could afford the membership fee.  And then promptly got sick, so it was almost three weeks before I finally got into the pool.  I’ve never really thought of swimming as hard work, so it said a lot to me that in my first lap I could already tell that my muscles, such as they are, were getting beat up.  I kind of thought I was going to be swimming for like an hour every day, but after that first excruciating lap, I knew I’d struggle to finish 30 minutes.  The upshot to this is that I slept like the dead those first two nights.

via GIPHY

There are other challenges beyond the shape I’m in (ie, round).  A big one is the fact that I live by Songo delivery, and I often skip lunch.  It was tough waiting til I got home to eat, and involved a balancing act of ordering in advance and hoping that the driver shows up when they’re supposed to.  If they get there too early, I’m not home yet.  If they arrive late, I’m so hungry that I actually want to bite the driver, I’m that angry as well as that hungry.  I've been better about cooking since winter break, though, especially since the quarantine...which is a topic for another blog.  A logistical nightmare of a different stripe is getting home with wet hair.  Before I started actually going this was my biggest fear; that on the 5 minute walk home my hair would freeze and break off (I may need to get it cut, but not like that!).  This has been a ridiculously warm winter, so I've gotten away with just bundling it up, which is good because I didn't particularly want to torture my hair with a blow dryer, only to turn around and shower as soon as I get home.

via GIPHY

However, after my first night swimming I had to upgrade my biggest fear.  About halfway through my swim two middle school boys got in.  They were speaking English, and though I was trying to pretend they didn’t exist, I made eye contact long enough that I’m pretty sure I recognized one of them as an eighth grader from my school.  I was kind of prepared for the fact that I’d run into students there at some point, but when I got out of the pool fifteen minutes later I realized someone had left the doors of the women’s locker room open.  I obviously closed them, but I’ve been terrified ever since that some dumbass will leave them open when I’m changing.  I don’t know who would be more traumatized, but considering how awkward it was when a female former student came in while I was getting dressed, I’m going to say everyone.

via GIPHY

So my (more or less) nightly swim's not perfect.  But the water is warm and with my earplugs in I can't hear the shrieks of the little monsters whose parents send them there without any supervision.  As I glide through the water, I do feel a little more peaceful, like my worries are floating away in my wake.  Walking back to the apartment, the moon greets me in a light, night sky, limning the hills in white and transporting me to a different place.  And I have to admit that this has at least been one new experience for me in Mongolia.

A Time To Sneeze

I've decided that one of the Japanese things to approach with dread and complain about til it's over is allergies.  I've avoided saying the "a" word over the last few years, even as I began to suspect (contrary to longstanding personal beliefs) that I might actually have a couple.  It's possible someone maybe should have thought about this BEFORE planting five bazillion cherry trees here.

A year ago with Five we were a little too early for sakura-mania.  This year, on the other hand, they were early and I more or less missed them while I was in Mongolia (not that this has prevented me from going through an entire roll of TP in 24 hours, finally forcing me to resort to buying actual kleenex).  Although I've come to the conclusion that I like plum blossoms way better, not writing about sakura season in a blog about Japan seems like a cardinal sin.  So here ya go.

First of all, sakura treats.  I'm not entirely sure if it's right to say that cherry blossoms have a flavor, but everything seems to be sakura flavored, so they must.  This year I had the opportunity to try sakura Cinnabon, sakura frappuccino, and a few different kinds of mochi treats, including the Haagen-Dazs sakura mochi ice cream thing.  My verdict: fun, but overrated.  It's always interesting to try special flavors, especially when they're pink, but they weren't the most amazingly delicious treats I'd ever had.

Although the craziest part of sakura season happened while I was chillin' in UB with my homies, the Yamatane Museum helped to make up for it by having a special sakura exhibition.  I got to take part in something similar when I went to the National Museum four years ago, but this time there were no prize buttons...just lots of really interesting nihonga.  Even more than the flower pictures, though, I enjoyed seeing the changing style of the paintings.  There were several pictures that made me think, "This is different," and when I looked at the label, I realized it was from 1940, or the 80's.  Skills of an artist, yo.

Finally, I visited Araiyakushi Park on Sunday in a last-ditch effort to feel like I'd enjoyed the spirit of spring.  (Mostly because I was going all the way to Koenji and figured what the hell, why not?)  They had a festival listed on Savvy Tokyo with performances including taiko, and since I haven't seen any taiko in a while, I figured it would make up for the fact that most of the flowers would be gone.  I did find one tree in bloom - the double blossoms apparently bloom a little later - and ate some festival food, but after working on a painting for five hours that morning, my head wasn't really in the right place.  Also, drunk people at picnics aren't nearly as interesting when they're not your drunk people, so I didn't stay very long.

What I've Been Up To

If you haven't noticed, I haven't been as focused on my blog over the last few months as I was during most of the last year.  Which is not to excuse myself for late posts or whatever, I just haven't been doing that much to write about.  It's not Mongolia's fault, and it's not really mine, either.  It's just life.  I feel damn lucky to have a life as interesting as I do...but sometimes what I'm doing is just not good blog material.

For example, I've been having a helluva good time with my new friends...doing things my old friends and I did last year that I've already written about.  New people make all sorts of things new and exciting all over again.  Quiz night, for example.  We've been doing the Hennessy's quiz off and on over the last year, but only managed to take the first place prize again last Saturday.  (There should be a special prize for the most second place wins, because we would get that.  Alas, there is not.)

I'm also spending a lot more time trying to be what I consider a better teacher.  Teaching art is tricky.  You want your students to enjoy class, to be challenged, to be engaged, to learn, and to make things they'll want to keep forever.  I don't consider myself to be a tough teacher, and sometimes I feel like I'd be a "good" teacher if I were.  But would that make my students learn more, make me more effective?  I don't think so.  Instead, I'm trying to focus on making my time with them more engaging, and to be a better advocate for them, showcasing their talents and achievements more.  To that end, I went looking for the ceramics studio in town, and have spent a lot of time researching galleries that are around, in hopes we can put on a big junior/senior art exhibit this year.  It's not very exciting, legwork, and it doesn't make good blogs, but it's important.

I've also been reinventing Apples to Apples.  If you've never played it before, it's hilarious and a ton of fun.  You have green describing cards and red noun/verb cards from which you must pick the most appropriate comparison.  Well, toward the end of last year, somebody decided that we should make a special edition of Apples to Apples with cards relating to Mongolia and our school (I like to call it Apples for the Teacher).  We made it up on the penultimate day of school (the students were gone and the teachers had nothing to do) and played it that night at dinner.  It was so fantastic that this year I went all out and made templates on MS Publisher, typed the words into them, and printed them in color.  If you want to try your hand at your own edition of Apples, here are my templates.  But do yourself (and me - copyright infringement was SO not intended, Mattel!) a favor and buy the actual game first.  It will help you with your brainstorming and give you an edition to play with people who either won't get it or will be offended by your snarkiness.
Green Apples Template
Red Apples Template

 

Finally, forgive me for using a phrase as hackneyed as this, but I've been working on myself.  Or rather, failing to get back on the wagon of working on myself.  About a year ago I determined that I needed to cultivate some improved habits.  I did exactly that, but around summertime I kinda fell off the wagon, with the exception of my morning constitutional (a phrase which, in this instance, refers to a walk, not to a bowel movement!) which I've been neglecting for the last three weeks in the interests of my feet.  Part of this campaign was to get back some of the self-confidence I lost during my association with Socrates.  And to that end, in May I started taking a selfie every day (when I remembered), so that I would see myself as I actually was, the good and the bad.  I determined I would do this for 100 days, and although it took longer than 100 calendar days to complete it (thanks to my lack of memory at times), eventually I did.  I'm still not the most self-assured person on the planet, but it's helped.

Capital Improvements

I know the truth about the size of my body (how can you not, when you've been half-clad and shared a stage with Asian girls on more than one occasion?), but I've managed to put my insecurities far enough aside to get on with life. I do have insecurities, but in spite of being surrounded by girls the size of chopsticks, Korea did a lot for my self image. I could, for example, eat whatever I liked and still lose weight. There was also the fact that I worked for a man who was NOT one to spare your feelings, and when one night at the Beer Halle my Dark Lord and Master told me I was NOT a "big girl," I had to believe it.

And then I went back to America and gained 50 pounds. Life hasn't been the same since, so it was not a complete surprise when a person of my acquaintance called me - not too terribly long ago - a big girl. Still, I'm as human as any of you, so as you can guess, the insecurities were thrust back into the limelight, and now I find myself scrutinizing when I walk past a mirror.

What can you do? Well, I'll tell you what you can do. You can give up pop. Again. (Third time's the charm, right???) And I have - it's been a week since my last soda. You can stop eating chocolate bars for brekke and start eating two nice eggs with a little salsa for flavor (again). Okay, go ahead and laugh, tell me that of COURSE I've got some wobbly bits if I eat chocolate for breakfast, but it's been a staple of my diet. Ask any teacher from GDA between 2004-2008 about the Rebecca Teacher diet and they will tell you snickers and coke are breakfast foods (as I said before, I can eat whatever I want in Korea). But the fact of the matter is, I'm 31 years old now. Although at the rate my life is going I should have lived enough that I'm ready to die by the time I'm 60, I probably will not (as has been pointed out to me...I don't drink, smoke, do drugs or engage in other risky behaviors). And I don't want to be crippled and unable to enjoy sweets guilt-free if I do. Thus the changes.

I've been biking a lot this week, as well, but since most of those bike rides involved a stop at Coldstone's, the positive effect is kind of negated. And last night I went for yet another belly dance class. I've actually been to three teachers' classes now - a week after QiQi's performance class I went to the beginner class taught by Julia (pronounced Yu-lia), who is Ukrainian. She figured out at some point during the class that I was not, in fact, a beginner, and afterwards asked me how long I'd been dancing before suggesting that the following class with Tanya might be better suited to my level. This was the plan all along, so last night I finally (due to holidays and vacation) made it to her class. She's another Ukrainian if I'm not mistaken, and I've got to admit, I was not expecting to be impressed with any former Eastern bloc dancers. What can I say - I lived in the middle east, and except for Katia of Cairo, I've never seen a Russian dancer that was a dancer. If you get my drift. I still don't quite understand what they're doing here, but both Julia and Tanya were pretty decent teachers; whether or not they know all the fascinating cultural stuff that Azhaar knows, they can dance, that's for damn sure. Hell, Tanya put me through my paces so well last night that I've been sore all morning. And it's good to feel it.

The Best I Can

I've been off the sauce for fifteen days now (and the temptation hasn't weakened). I have seventy-one more til I leave the Emirates. I have done some exercise the last three days now - I danced on Sunday, biked and jogged on Monday -

- oh yes, I jogged...Trish had mentioned the bikes before, and since I finally had Paul's and mine both at home, I texted to ask if she wanted to go for a spin that night, and afterwards she asked if I'd come for a run with her. For anyone else, it would have been a resounding HELL NO! -

- and went for a swim last night. Not bad, right (I mean, except for the pain - OH THE PAIN - in my ankles and calves)? But when I stepped on the scale at the Hilton yesterday, I hadn't lost anything. Nothing. Now a year ago when I was trying to change, I'd get demotivated right about now - what was the point of changing if it didn't make any difference? - but giving up now isn't going to be very helpful. I've determined to make it at least until I leave the Emirates. In 71 days. For good. As in, not coming back.

If this is the first time you're hearing this, I'm sorry...neither Hallmark or egreetings.com had a "FYI-I'm-quitting-my-job-and-going-somewhere-new" card. What can you do? Not to worry - I have a new job. I had an interview over Skype the night I got back from Paris while I was sitting in front of my computer in a towel, dripping. Nice, right? No, I didn't have the webcam on.

Why am I leaving? It's not just because my partner-in-crime is gone, although it's no coincidence that my new school is in the same city as his. I've been caught up in a gold-sand inertia the last 8 months. I have felt like I can't really be bothered doing anything. I have a beach ten minutes away that I go to maybe twice a week. I have plenty of time to work on an illustration portfolio, but I don't actually work on it. I'm living in the middle east but I've only bothered to see belly dancing once. And for the most part, my friendships here feel more like work. How pathetic AM I?

The two people here I will miss sorely (I mean, other than my students, of course...) are Trish and Michelle. In spite of the fact that they are my two best girl friends here, I don't think I've ever mentioned them in this blog. They are amazing, and they give me the relief I need to get from one day to the next. I can't imagine what the next two and a third months would be like here without them. Probably they'd be what my first two months were like...watching X-Files and working at friendship. Which is not to say that I won't be doing those things, but it's nice to know that there's more to it than that, because I want to make these last 71 days the best I can. On all accounts.

Losing Control

The good news is, I've got the remote con back for my projector. The bad news is, it took me all evening to check the last place I would look...

Today was a bit of a wash. My partner in crime was in Dubai trawling for jobs, so I really didn't have anything exciting to do today. I went to church for the first time this week in the Mormonmobile. Yes, that's right: the Mormonmobile. One of the plethora of Mormon RAKESS teachers decided it would be a GREAT idea for us to engage one of the school vans to take us to church and back every Friday. I'll admit it has its good sides - like the fact that we leave (approximately) a half hour after the meetings end, rather than, oh, two hours, and it only costs 15 dirhams each. But on the other hand, I'm enclosed with even more people but less legroom. Oh, and I spent the entire ride back entertaining the Heusners' three year-old. Sometimes the fact that every child loves me can be a burden. However, since I had to teach Sunday School this week and didn't have the money to rent a car or take a taxi, I took - for the first time in my life - the church bus.

I should have started reading my next lesson when I got home. Socrates once told me that the elder Vigliotti girl is too smart to be Mormon, and while I disagree because I've known some fricking smart Mormon kids, she is definitely going to keep me on my toes. But no - I got home and went to the computer, where I'd downloaded the first episode of the last season of Lost, got it on the memory stick, and plugged it into the projector, only to realize I had no idea where my remote con was. I started to turn the living room upside down, but I was lethargic in spite of the fact that I slept through sacrament meeting. Also, I was fasting, and as the locals will tell you, sleep is a great way to make the experience more pleasant! So I slept about two hours this afternoon, and woke up to look around for the remote again, and, failing to find it, went in search of food and a few things from Carrefour.

One of the things was alternatives to "fizzy drinks." I keep failing to give them up, but I'm going to try again. Don't ask why. I like coke. Maybe I'll just become a social drinker - I'll go on my Thursday night binges once a week. I kind of like that idea. In the meantime, I've got Tang. Orange tang for the nostalgia of it and fresh baked crybabies in my great-mom's house as a child, although I was pleasantly surprised to find that it comes in mango and pineapple and I think one other flavor, as well.

The other thing was ice cream, which seems to have survived in spite of the fact that I forgot to put it away for...uhmmmm...two hours after I got home. I finally gave up on finding the remote and managed to manually load Lost. Five minutes before the end, Socrates called me back and so I had to restart it since I haven't figured out how to pause or fast-forward the damn thing manually, and let it play through again until it got to the right spot. Then I started looking for the remote again, incidentally finding the ice cream was sitting on the counter. I was upending furniture, which apparently involves me tripping backwards over my upside-down end table (again, I found myself cursing the fact that no one was there to be amused by it and/or be in awe of the fact that I managed to do so gracefully and with a minimum of self-damage - MAD NINJA SKILLS!!!) when my eye landed on the bag of cheetos I munched on throughout my sick day, and I thought, "Surely not." Surely so. There on top of the cheetos was my remote con, a little cheesy but none the worse for wear. Yeah. That's what my day has been like.

Yesterday I had my first sick day in five years. I probably could have toughed it out, but I didn't. Sometimes you just need to stay home and take care of yourself. So I did, and it was good.