Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; whine, and get a major butt-whooping. I'm not even a bit amazed that shortly after I published that truculent post about being boooored (and that other one about hovering), suddenly everyone and my uncle's dying hamster decided he/she/it needed 180 pages of something edited RIGHT NOW.

We-hell, at least my present assiduous state has allowed me to bat aside that pesky resolve to extricate my dusty running shoes from the back of the shoe closet (for the purpose of running, I forgot to clarify). Gosh darn it.

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To Sit or Not to Sit

Just got back from the bathroom and thought I'd share some unwanted personal information. Whenever I have to work at an office, I make an agreement with myself that, for the duration, I will allow myself to really sit on the toilet. See, I am one of those girls who ordinarily will not let my butt make contact with the seat of a public toilet. I just sort of... hover. You may roll your eyes if you wish, but I've seen too much pee on toilet seats -- and once, when I was pretty little, I had the traumatizing experience of plopping down on the seat and making splashy contact with someone else's urine. It was every bit as gross as it sounds.

You know what really bugs me? In the movies or TV, when a female character who is upset about something goes into a stall and sits down on the toilet without even looking, and then usually puts her head in her hands. Just ew. And distracting.

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Office vs. Home

I'm boooooored.

It's ironic that when people hear the words "work from home," they automatically think stuff like: part-time, half days, stress-free, lightweight, got it made -- at least, this is what flits about in my own husband's head. I know this will come out as defensive-sounding, but while my schedule may be irregular, I work five days a week (sometimes even seven) and usually 10 to 12 hours a day. In addition, when one's "office" is mere steps from bed, and the majority of interactions are carried out through sterile emails, things like being sick and/or overloaded with work do not apply. Trying to communicate such possibilities to people at the "real office" will sound laughably lame, I assure you. Take my own husband: not even a fever will deter him from strapping on his suit and charging out into a raging blizzard to get to work.

Yet here I am, rising each morning, melting into the flow of regular commuters, as good as chained to a desk by the time clock, being far better compensated for my troubles than I ever am as a freelance editor, and also thumb-twiddlingly, guilt-strickenly, madly devoid of any work to do -- as you may have deduced from the abnormal amount of blogging I've been doing lately. Sure, I get the odd document to edit, which takes all of five minutes to painstakingly pore over (I feel obligated to overcompensate). Then I check my email about 47,000 times, read a little literature online, do some volunteer editing work not related to my present job, drink lots of free green tea from the vending machine, pee a lot. Yup...

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Rachel and the Mystery of the False Advertising

I was trying to pull up my blog at work, but haven't bookmarked the URL on the office computer, so very lazily Googled it. And something weird caught my eye. My blog seems to be included in various blog listings, and always attached to the name are the following words: "Description of the adventures of Japanese cooking." Who wrote that? I didn't. I don't think I've blogged about Japanese cooking once, even. Okay, maybe once. It's nice, I guess, that someone thought to summarize brown bread ice cream for the elucidation of the general public. But I don't like it! It's not accurate and people might come to my blog with mistaken expectations. I don't imagine there's anything I can do about this now. But I really wonder whence the little summary originated.

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Every Squeeze of My Heart

 
 In the insanity that is Valentine's Day in Japan, pink-boxed truffles (and home truffle making sets) start popping up almost a month in advance; overheated department stores are inundated with a fury of women on a grim mission to sample and select chocolates for everyone from their boss to that annoying but pitiful dude who sits in the desk opposite theirs; and even the hapless lemon is made a pawn, deformed in the name of this most frighteningly lucrative Day of Love.

 
  What did I do today for my special guy? I made him breakfast. My poor husband looked so amazed by the miso soup, it dawned on me that I'm a terrible wife. He then commented that one of his friends wakes his wife up every morning, to demand that she make his breakfast. I never liked that jerk.

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Been Up To

I'm at this very moment seated at an honest-to-goodness desk, at a real office, with human beings all around me, filling the air with sounds of officeness. Did I capitulate? Become a Tokyo salarywoman? No, I've merely been hired as a temp at a company, to fill in while the regular editor is away a few weeks. And I only agreed because they promised me I wouldn't have to start work until 1pm, which earned me a lot of eye rolling from my husband.

Since beginning the job, I've been enjoying:

the conversational exchanges with my temporary colleagues, as opposed to the more limited ones I have with Edward, when working from home

sampling the different obentos sold in the area around the office, because I can't seem to bring myself to pack my own lunches and save tons of money in the process

 
 Today's obento: salmon and ikura strewn over rice, with a bit of egg garnishing (the yellow strands)

my much-earlier-than-usual morning walks with Edward, as I realize the quality of light at 9am is quite different from the light at 2 or 3pm--the former is clearer and sweeter

reading on the train, because somehow that seems like an extremely acceptable thing to do, whereas sprawling on the carpet at home and reading seems unproductive and slothful; additionally, the limitations of the train ride allow me to draw out the reading of a book and savor it for days, when I am more apt to gulp down books with a strange, uncontrollable greed

the little food omiyage (gifts) regularly distributed around the office; so far, I've had soba manju, brownies, thin little crunchy almond wafer-cookie-like things, and little mochi things

On the other hand, I have been disliking:

trying to piece together acceptable office attire from my scarcely-updated-since-college wardrobe

having to worry about bad hair days again; lately, bobby pins have become my greatest allies in the fight to subdue my ridiculous hair; however, I have to work with restraint, or after a few hours I start to feel like I'm wearing Magneto's really heavy, really butt-ugly helmet.

evening rush hour and getting up close and impersonal (think their-sweat-is-your-sweat close) with strangers who often (a) smell weird, (b) have weird/annoying habits that trust-me are staggeringly amplified when endured at close range for half an hour without relief, or (c) think your body is their personal Lazyboy

being made to feel conscious and guilty of the fact that I need to pee WAY more than normal human beings--I have a little bladder, what can I say?

But, all in all, this is very short-term stuff and soon I'll be able to put away the ugly formal shoes and forget how it feels to be pressed up against a strange man with exactly 28 long hairs sprouting from his neck.

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Creeping Back

I get the feeling that had I told my mother about this blog, even she would have stopped reading it by now. Then again, my mother...

I haven't checked the date of my last post, but I know it was way, way back. I rather feel like a newbie blogger again, writing for nobody but myself, and maybe liking the freedom of that. I've even been toying with the idea of disabling comments, not because I didn't love hearing from people out there but more because... It's hard to explain. Partly, when there's evidence of actual readers, the way I write is unconsciously affected. I find myself performing, trying to please. I also start worrying about blogging, like it's a responsibility or an unspoken commitment. In case you don't know me (or only thought you did), yes, I am exactly that much of a ninny.

But I do like sharing my thoughts with others--that's how blogging is different and infinitely more satisfying than private journaling. So what is this girl to do? Not sure yet, but have decided to get into the swing of succinctity (I realize, but I dislike the sound of "succinctness"--clumsy-sounding) by attempting a series of short posts. And so ends the first.

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