Rant, Oink, Rant, Fucking-Oink!

I must say, this post will not have nearly as much effect as it would have last night, was much more fired up then! Let's see if I can re-create that blood boiling anger...

So all my in-laws have swine flu.
No other way to say it. Is it normal to be embarrassed about having swine flu?? Like dirty pig blood has infected their veins?? haha, I'm not quite so worried but Obaachan warned us all to keep our voices down when talking about it, she didn't want the whole neighbourhood knowing we were infected, I mean god, the oldest son married a gaijin, hasn't enough shame been brought on the family?!

It all started Saturday night when BIL started moaning about having a fever. Of course everyone ignored him and told him to man up, but by Sunday morning he had a raging fever and was coughing all over the place so Ryota being a good big brother took him to the docs. When Ryota came home he went into panic mode (as he tends to do) and just started furiously washing his hands and shouting "SALT WATER!" at me. Of course this sent me into a panic and I yelled at him to tell me what was going on. After much hand and throat cleaning he finally spluttered out that his brother had tested positive for the new strain of flu (which was the swine flu right, they just renamed it??) They were put into isolation at the hospital and had to register as 'infected' with the prefecture. By that night his mum and sister both had the chills and fever so it was becoming clear that they too were infected. Ryota had a sore throat last night but no real fever so we're hoping he's clear. He's at work today, becasue god forbid someone would take a day off for being sick in this bloody country. Ooooo it's starting, almost said fucking country, leave those for later...

So with Ryochan sick it's just Grandma, Ash and I who are still genki, and thank god, because if I get it, Ashton is more than likely to get it seeing as though he's still pretty much surviving off of my body fluids. Eww. Magic breast milk may just get him through it though. And I'm glad Grandma doesn't have it because even though she's genki for 82, I'm sure of a strain of swine flu wouldn't do her any good.
So with all the sickness and worry about sickness, our households are a little, tense, shall we say. I'm feeling the pressure as the only one who can touch Ashton. That means no running, no escaping, even showering is a struggle and at the moment he has one little tooth poking through with it's next door neighbour to follow so makes for one cranky baby.

So leading up to the rantiness of the post, I have to say we're all on edge, which led to the blow up last night.
As I think I mentioned before I'm getting unemployment payments and have to go to the hello work office once a month for about 10 minutes. 10 minute, 150,000 yen, meh I can handle that! Someone usually drives me and holds Ash or I scooter it and Ash stays with MIL while I go in, but when I was due to go in this morning with everyone in bed I just decided to walk with Ash in the stroller. As soon as I said this there was a flurry of phone calls from the in-law's house saying I couldn't do this becasue they wouldn't pay me if Ash was with me.

OK, for a start, I told the unemployment office I had a baby when i signed up, they know. It's not a secret. Second, MIL has brought Ash in with her when we've gone to the office before, they've seen him and me together, secret's out. But Ryota said that it didn't matter, if they saw me alone with a baby they wouldn't pay me because I can't work with a baby... When I asked what single mothers do he said they won't pay them. He also said if I went in there with pink hair and full of piercings they also wouldn't pay me because I wouldn't be able to work like that... What kind of a fucked up age are we living in. I suspected the in-laws were over-reacting and I gave them this answer to all their protests:

If they refused to pay me because I had a baby with me I would either:
A) Go off my nut then just lie and say the baby was my friend's bub that I was watching.
B) Go off my nut for at least an hour, storm out and then make the money by whoring myself out with English or any other whoring means necessary.
And I vowed that if they refused to pay me, we would definitely be leaving Japan for Australia within the month, and never coming back. Ever.

I honestly think this was a gross over-reaction on the part of my in-laws but the fact that it was even an issue for them shows just how bad this country is when it comes to discrimination. I'm spoiled, Australia has a very good welfare system, well, good if you don't want to work, but I do think they give too many hand-outs in Australia. Just can't please people like me!

But seriously, homeless people in Australia scare the shit out of me because they are usually junkies who will roll you for their next hit. Of course the homeless are friendly here, they just genuinely have nowhere to go and no money because there is no welfare system to help them. If Ryota died or left me I would be royally fucked and pretty much would have to go home.

Anyway, that was last night and I toddled off for my 40 minute walk in the 400 degree heat and they gave me my money and even played with Ashton while I filled out some stuff, as expected, it didn't matter that I had a bub with me. Ryota kept calling to make sure I was OK on my own and when I told him it was all good he apologised and admitted he forgets I can actually do things by myself. They seriously forget I lived here for almost 4 years by myself before I met Ryota.

Yup definitely not half as angry as last night, imagine the above post but insert a few 'cunts' many 'bastards' and lots of 'fuckings' and that's how it would have been. There were some more biffs but I'll save that for another post, Ashton is screaming the place down.

Wife of the year, right here!

After Sunday's blow-up I felt really bad, especially after talking to other gaijin mama's who got the exact same treatment, it wasn't just Ryota being a dick. Phew.

So I took the time yesterday to do what a good Japanese wifey would do, and said it with food. I made Ryota's favourite dinner and then a ごめんなさい cake (Sorry cake). Isn't it purrrdy! (And so sickly and corny that you wanna vomit all over it!)

Ryota and I hardly ever fight so in one way it upsets me when we do, but on the other hand it does make me remember how much I appreciate having him. As far as men go, he's one of the good guys and supported me 100% when I got pregnant, where I think a lot of guys would have run for the hills!

In other news I'm now officially scamming receiving unemployment benefits!!

WooHoo that's got to be on a goal list of mine somewhere, to be on the dole in Japan. But hey, I worked for 4 years paying that tax that I never knew what was for! I went to the Hello work office today and it was packed! But the advantage of not being Japanese came in handy again, they got all panicky at the sight of a foreigner and stamped my little paper straight away, 10 minutes for about 200,000 yen.

And lucky it didn't take too long, I was not in a good mood today after Ashton boy kept me up last night, no wonder he was so tired, here's a picture of him this morning.

"Flat out like a lizrd drinking eh cobber!"