What a day.

First, I woke up with a cold. Same one I've had for three days. Took the same medicine I've been taking for three days - a nice hearty dose of 12-Hour Sudafed. Weeeeeee...
[I found out today how to say "runny nose" in Japanese. Turns out it's "hanamizu ga deru" which literally means "nose water is exiting"]

At work, I had my usual Nippori Nightmare Kids. But something must be in the water this week, because the kids were unusually out-of-control across the board:

The "Mini Kids" - Three kids and their moms showed up. Hiromi and Kazuya spent the whole class laughing hysterically while running around/rolling on the floor/throwing things. Their moms spent the whole class attempting to get them in order, which was of course impossible. Meanwhile, Mikoto stood there like a little statue, completely unfazed by the chaos around her, focusing on the flash cards and repeating "train" "ticket" "platform" etc. like a good little Asian Robot Child.

The Eight-Year-Olds - Chiharu spent the whole class YELLING in Japanese and bossing the other kids around, which is to be expected. Hirokazu spent most of the class either riding Akinobu like a horse, or attempting to mount him. When not being mounted by Hirokazu, Akinobu was generally making a mess of the room. When I asked what kind of game we should play, Tatsuya suggested a "kicking game."

The Ten-Year-Olds - You know how the bartenders at Drunky are always teaching me dirty words in Japanese? Well, this class is where I get to hear these words. Besides the non-stop flow of dirty talk and mean comments directed at each other, which is what I deal with every week, the kids seemed especially keen to piss me off today. Tetsuhiro wouldn't stop cracking his knuckles. Takumi mocked everything I said. Toru was just plain rude, disruptive, and demanding. Kazuki was okay...I guess I should be counting my blessings that he stuffs everything down his shirt now and not his pants. And poor Gi, the only girl in the class and the most ostracized, just sat in the corner and scowled. To top it off, someone in the class was farting freely about every ten minutes, it reeked like the devil, and it was too cold to open the window.

After the kids' classes, I had only ten minutes in which to either blow my nose or stab myself with safety scissors (I chose the former). Then I strolled into my first adult class of the day. Four students, and NONE of them had ANYTHING to say. They just stared at me. My best efforts to come up with topics would be answered with a "nothing special" or an abrupt answer then a look back at me. At this point, I did not have the energy to be Super Entertainment Power White Girl, after spending close to three hours threatening kids with "time-outs." Ugh.

So yeah, today was particularly bad.

The few not-so-bad things about today: I ate a sweet BLT sandwich for lunch, had a nice relaxing dinner at the Excelsior Cafe after work, rented a couple movies on the way home, watched horrible TV with Liza (Ripley's Believe It Or Not, so easy to make fun of), and had a phatty Chopin jam session on my keyboard.

Now I'm sitting here in my Relaxation Hat and the Temple sweatshirt I "borrowed" from Tom, and it's 2:20, and I'm not tired.

Yup.