Yeah, we did end up having a good one. Read more
Yesterday I went to my teacher’s Christmas party. It was pretty good and really great to be there with a bunch of other kindred spirits. Lots of great food – everyone brought a plate – I took rocky road that I had made. Read more
Had a really fun day today, met lots of my spooky friends, did some readings (tea leaves and cards), received some readings, and ate lots of yummy food!
We had loads for morning tea including hand-made pies and sausage rolls and hot-out-of-the-oven scones with cream and homemade jam! Yum!
Lunch consisted of 3 types of quiche, bruschetta, more salads than you can poke a stick at, roast chicken and various other meats, scotched eggs and various other savouries. Dessert was cheesecake, pavlova’s, fruit salad, fresh mulberries, chocolate mud sponge cake, brownies, my lemon bar, spongecake, coconut pudding etc etc!
I piled my plate high and felt like I could have rolled myself home. I was that full. We had a sweepstakes, but I didn’t win anything. Then we got to choose a pressie hanging from the awning, and it had a $1 scratchie, which I again didn’t win anything on, and a ticket for the Lotto for tonight, we all got entered into it thanks to Joyce (my teacher) and Helen (my reflexologist). They set it all up by themselves! On top of that, we then got our names called out of a hat and got to choose a lucky dip, the whole 29 of us! I got a set of Maya Oracle Cards, and my other spooky friends got either cards or books relating to what we’re interested in. The non-spooky people there got other kinds of gifts like soap, smellies, home decorations etc. It was cool! Really nice to get something too!! What can I say but that my teacher is one of the most generous people on the planet!
I’m not sure if we won anything on the lotto ticket, I haven’t checked yet, but if you don’t hear from me again, you’ll know I won and have left the country! haha 
Melbourne Cup Day @ Joyce's house
People getting their pressies from the awning
Pressies blowing in the wind
My morning tea
My lunch
Choices for afternoon tea
As yesterday went along it got much better.
When I woke up in the morning I started to feel really sick again, and by the time Yasu came home at lunch time I had all the stomach cramps and nausea back.
I didn’t feel like going back to hospital, so I quickly scanned the Yellow Pages for a Chinese Medicine doctor. I found one in the city and they had a booking for me for 3:15pm. Yasu took me in there and then I sat down with Jane who went through my medical history.
She checked my pulse, looked at my tongue and wrote down everything in Chinese. Very authentic.
She told me that my problem is that I have a liver qi block. In Chinese medicine the energy or “qi” (chi) is what flows through the body and if you have a block then the qi won’t flow smoothly and in my case instead of flowing down, which is the natural direction, the qi was blocked and flowing upwards, which is what is making me feel nauseated.
The liver qi regulates the digestive organs and is probably one of the largest qi in the body that regulates all other qi. The doctor said that because I had been experiencing these symptoms since 2001 and gradually I had been getting more, then the blockage had been building up until now, when I spent time in hospital because the blockage was too much for my body to handle.
Here are some of the symptoms commonly associated with Liver Qi stagnation:
- Pain or discomfort anywhere along the sides of the body
- Depression
- Mood swings
- Sighing
- Hiccups
- Frustration
- Inappropriate anger
- Sensation of a lump in throat
- Difficulty swallowing
- Bitter taste in mouth
- Constipation
- Abdominal pain and discomfort
- Stomachache that improves after massage
- Stomachache that worsens with anger
- PMS with irritability or swollen breasts
- Irregular or painful periods
- Poor appetite
- Churning sensation in stomach
And no surprise I have every one of them!!! I am also surprised to find that irregular periods are on there too.
Well after my diagnosis I had 25 minutes of acupuncture, including electronic acupuncture (that pulses) on my stomach, head, wrists, feet, and legs. Then I was prescribed 3 different liver qi medications, 10 each, 3 times per day (90 pills per day, granted they are very small though like dots).
When I walked out of there I had lost half of the bad sensations I had walked in with. The bloated feeling that I had, the cramping pains, the lethargy, the nausea. And as the day progressed, I felt better and better. I immediately had to urinate, almost as if my body was getting rid of the toxins or blockage.
By evening the lump that had been in my throat for 2 years had vanished. Wow!
I will have acupuncture 3x week for the next two weeks to get on top of and remove the blockage, and I will take the pills for a week, and then the doctor said if I can handle the taste she would give me the real root form to boil up and drink (yuck!!).
Amazing!!
So I felt really crap when I woke up yesterday but by evening I was much better.
I arrived home to find Jo waiting for me with a present, I will post the pics in the next post (later). And there was a card from my mum in the letterbox with $50 inside which I was really surprised about. The best thing was the card that said “Happy birthday to a wonderful daughter”, which was really touching and made my day.
Yasu also surprised me with a card and a dvd of the movie The Karate Kid. Don’t ask me why!! I do like the movie though and the dvd has all three movies on it. Sometimes I don’t know how Yasu thinks, but it was sweet of him anyway.
Yasu also brought home some pork bulgogi for our dinner and he cooked for me and washed the dishes (very nice) and then we had marbled baked cheesecake & bee sting cake for dessert. Yasu bought half of each cake for us to try.
So it turned out to be a very nice birthday much to my surprise!!
Because I had acupuncture in my forehead between my eyes, the place that is meant for relaxing, by 8:30 I was yawning my head off, so Yasu and I both headed for bed. We both slept through the night like logs and woke up at 5am this morning.
I feel good, no pain, no bloating, no nausea, no lump in throat. Ahh…why did I waste my time with the hospital! I should’ve just gone this route a long time ago.
I also want to say thank you to all the birthday wishes on facebook and twitter, they made my day, and I’m so happy to consider you all my friends, even if some of you I have never met. I hope to rectify that someday.
I’m sure you can gather by the title of this post that i didn’t end up spending Christmas day miserable and alone. Yes, Yasu decided to work at 4:00 am Christmas morning until 9:00 am and came home just after 9:30 am to pick me up and take me to our friends house! Seems like all my jumping up and down about it actually got through to him.
We had a lovely day, my friend’s family was there and we were included as “family” because we are now considered that. It was a lovely warm atmosphere. Lucky i took extra wrapped presents because we received quite a few from family members that we didn’t expect. As it turns out we had brought just the right amount.
Yasu got a hot chocolate making set from our friend Jo, who owns a cafe. Every time he goes to her cafe, she makes him a mega hot chocolate with extra marshmallows, so now he can make his own. He was pretty happy with it as you can see from the pic.
Santa in shorts made a surprise visit and handed out presents from under the tree.
We had Thomas the Tank going up and down the middle of the table during lunch, courtesy of our friends’ husband’s creative mind and their 2 year old son’s toy box!
As Thomas Tank went down the track it made real chuga-chuga woo-oo noises and blew steam! What a treat and very unique experience.
I celebrated my Christmas meal of Turkey, Ham, Seafood (of which i didn’t have any) and salads with a grape chuhai.
You can see next to the chuhai is a wrapped up bag of fruit mince pies dusted with icing sugar, courtesy of our friend’s cafe. Everyone got a take home bag!
Lunch was finished off with berry pavlova. The pictures underneath are of the mass production going on before we sat down to eat them.
In all it was a great day, and both Yasu and i enjoyed ourselves. At the end of the night i farewelled Yasu as he went home. He was working the next day so i decided to stay at our friends house overnight. He didn’t mind.
I didn’t get much sleep as i was sleeping in their 4 year old son’s room, next to the 2 year old son’s room, and the 2 year old son was crying all night. When i finally got to sleep, i was woken up at 6 am by the 2 year old wanting to play!! He must have known i was in there… being the good guest that i am i got up and played with both son’s as the other one woke up not much later than the first one. When my friends got up and saw us all playing they said they should have me sleep over more often!
That day we had decided to go to the Perth Zoo, but because it was so hot we decided instead to go to the movies. We saw Madagasgar 2 which was really good, quite fun, and the music was very boppy. I enjoyed it even though i haven’t seen the first one. The lion characters reminded me very much of the good and bad lions in The Lion King.
Yasu came and picked me up at 4 pm and i went home and fell into bed and slept until about 10:30 pm. Yasu had been good and made his own dinner, not waking me in the process, and we spent a few hours together watching Japanese tv before going back to bed.
Yasu’s cousin and his wife gave birth to their second child about 6 months ago. Her name is Niko. I have no idea what the kanji is for that, but i can’t help but call her “niko niko” even though i’ve never seen what she looks like. Niko has an older brother called Yuuto, but luckily i have seen what he looks like.
Well anyway, back in the day when Yuuto was born, i was being the dutiful wife and sending out obligatory presents to births, marriages, and any other events like new years cards and stuff like that. However, being as we’re living in Australia, and i have my own social obligations such as birthdays, christmas, easter, and my own aussie family to do stuff for as well, it sort of got too much and i stopped doing it. I didn’t actually say i was going to stop, i just stopped. That was just about 2 years ago, right after Yuuto was born.
No one seemed to mind, well if they did, they never said anything. Until Niko came along that is. Since she was born, the pressure was on to buy a gift and send it to Japan. But because i don’t do that anymore, the duty fell to Yasu, and as we all know he’s so busy with work he barely gets time to sit down and relax let alone go out baby clothes shopping. So anyway, i left it alone. I wasn’t going to go there. Soon enough, when he called his mum every two weeks she started nagging him about the present. Every time he got on the phone to her she asked him “have you sent the present to Niko yet?” and Yasu would respond “no, but i’ll send one next week”, this kept on for 6 months, by which time i was having a big inside chuckle every time he got on the phone and got asked the same question. Ahh so now you know Yasu, what a pain in the ass it is to have to do this crap for people i’ve never even met!
It got so that Yasu stopped calling his mum altogether. He waited a month, then he called. The first thing his mum said was “have you sent that present yet?”. Haha, she doesn’t give up. Ever.
Finally Yasu turned to me and said, “i have to get that present for Niko”. I said, “ok, do you know what size she is?” Uh, no. He hadn’t checked. This resulted in another phone call to mum to ask what size Niko is. Mum didn’t know of course so then she had to ring the cousin to find out. The only thing wrong with that is that now cousin is definitely expecting a present any time soon.
Yasu kept getting more hours at work and didn’t end up buying the present. I got sick of all the waiting around and went out and bought two pink jumpsuits with cutesy frills and butterflies and an educational toy that squeaks and crinkles when Target was having 20% off in their baby products. I bought wrapping paper and a card. I brought it home. Yasu was ever so grateful he didn’t have to go looking at baby stuff. I told him to pull his finger out and start writing the card, wrap it and i would post it. That was two weeks ago. The baby clothes and toy is still sitting in the bag on the kitchen table. It hasn’t been wrapped, the card not written on.
I have no intention of doing this for him no matter how much i love him. Firstly because i have no idea the names of Niko’s parents (i’ve forgotten) and secondly that’s his job at least, i’ve done everything else. It might seem selfish of me, but jeez, in my mind the selfish one is his mother and cousin…they obviously forget that we have our own life here, in Australia, with cousins and uncles and nephews that we know. Also, postage to Japan for a small thing starts at $10, then on top of that the present, wrapping, card…it all adds up big time. Whatever happened to sending a card as an acknowledgement? Now we have these presents we have to send internationally as well. In my family it’s the thought that counts, but not in Yasu’s. It’s some social/family obligation. His mum says if we don’t do it they will look bad as they are in Japan and we are not. I have a solution to that problem – why doesn’t she just buy the present and say it’s from all of us? It would save a lot of time and money. Why do Japanese always have to do things the hard way?
So anyway, i’m not pushing it any further. I’m just letting the present sit on the kitchen table. I move everything around it. Yasu hasn’t even glanced at it. By the time he gets around to sending it she will be too big to wear it, probably. In the meantime every phone call to mum will result in a question about the present. Life! Sometimes you have to laugh or you’ll cry.
