Post no. 301!

Can`t quite believe I have posted 300 times!! I guess I have alot to say/ too many pictures to post!!! The rest of the weekend had good points and bad points. My friend Sue`s kids came over for a couple of hours on saturday and Joey enjoyed playing with them, then we all went to McD`s for lunch! Desptie not eating much since thursday, Joey was munching on the McD fries so I stopped worrying about him a little bit! Saturday night was a bad night though, Joey`s fever went up again and he was clearly very uncomfortable. We finally cooled him down by putting an ice pack down the back of his onesie. He screamed the place down for a while but he calmed down in the end!! We also managed to get him to take some Calpol which probably helped as well. I didn`t succeed in my mission to get him to take the other meds that the doctor prescribed. I tried EVERYTHING but as I was on my own, I couldn`t get him to sit still/ open his mouth etc.. long enough to get anything in his mouth. Our living room is covered in splatters of meds!!! The good news is that despite the lack of medical intervention, Joey`s fever is down this morning and he slept very well last night as well so I figure he is well and truly on the mend. (fingers crossed!) Yesterday morning I decided he was well enough to go to the Sports Days. I figured that he was only going to get bored and fed up in the house all day so we went for a long walk to check out what was going on at the two local primary schools. Last week my MIL dragged me to the local JHS sports day, despite the fact that neither or us know anyone there! I was SOOOOO embarassed! She kept trying to push Joey into the middle of everyone so he could see, totally oblivious to the fact that a) EVERYONE was staring at me and b) I was VERY embarassed because everyone was staring at me, and we weren`t really supposed to be there. I tried to explain this to her but she ignored me. Thankfully, at this point the school`s ALT (a very nice guy called Sam) came over to stand close by so I went over to talk to him, glad of a chance to make everyone think I might possibly belong there!!! I finally managed to drag MIL and Joey away after about half an hour but when I was talking to my neighbour about it, she was like "WTF? You MIL is insane, people don`t just rock up to random school events in Kagoshima city!?" I did suspect as much but as MIL is from the countryside and everyone goes to everything around there, I guess she didn`t think twice about it. I still go red thinking about everyone staring at me!!! Sunday`s sport days weren`t embarassing at all. Everyone might have been staring at me but I wasn`t so conscious of it because I had actually been invited so there was a sense of belonging there!!! It was fun to meet up with the people who live downstairs and they had lots of yummy food for us to eat! Joey was a bit cranky but he soon got used to everyone and it was very cute because he kept picking out things to eat, then dropping them in the bowl of the girl downstairs so that she could feed him! ONLY Karen-chan was allowed to feed him, it was so adorable!! I also had a chat with my friend`s husband, he spent more than 10 years in the US, starting when he was a JHS student and his english is flawless but for some reason we always speak Japanese to each other. However, I wanted to tell him something about a mistake that had been made in a calendar that he sends out to clients (and last year he gave me a copy as well) so I figured English was more appropriate. The weird thing was that as soon as we started speaking English, Joey calmed down completely (he has been wriggling and whiney until that point) and sat quietly on my lap... very bizarre! It was nice to have a chat in English and to be able to explain how I am feeling in general for a change! They say that your personality changes when you speak in your second language and while that isn`t necessarily true for me, I do find I am alot more forthright in English than I am in Japanese... Ok, I can hear Joey waking up! Time for me to go!!!