和 敬 西 洋

So. Saturday went about as awful as I expected it to, and then some. (93 degrees and we had to stand outside in kimono. It's like a really fancy sauna suit, at that point.)   I shouldn't be as torn up as I am over it, but I guess I was holding onto hope, somewhere deep down, that this time would prove me wrong, that it wouldn't suck.  Nope.  I paid $45 to be on my feet from 1:30-midnight, get barely 30 minutes for a sub-par boxed meal (that had been sitting for hours), and not once did I get to actually sit and have Tea -- the whole goddamn point of a Tea gathering.  Instead, all the other ladies who were working decided that our station should be the last one of the night. Fine, but do you think one of them might have maybe asked if those of us working would like to sit and be waited on afterward? It's not hard to offer 5 minutes of simple courtesy. It really isn't. (Especially when the other group of ladies sharing the tent space left US a pile of dirty bowls to clean and took half of ours, rather than wash their own. I mean really, WTF?)  It took 4 Advil to even take the edge off my back pain to get to sleep, and I woke up with a splitting headache along with the back ache. Plans to get to kickboxing/the gym were nixed after that. 

(And after digging out the kimono items I was supposed to loan, I get to Sensei's house and I'm told they "figured out how to make it work" and didn't need what I'd brought. So really, that just tells me that the next time I'm asked to do something, she may or may not mean it.) 

I have decided that I am never participating in a chapter event again, unless it is as a guest.  I'm angry to the point of tears over this; part of me feels betrayed by Sensei because she wouldn't look out for her own students (that last seating? She was supposed to go ask that we actually get to stop and have tea, and didn't), part of me feels like the whole local chapter doesn't even grasp the fact that Tea has four basic principles (purity, harmony, respect, tranquility) and just MAYBE those could be applied to events, too. About the only people I'm not pissed at from Saturday are Sensei's husband (he knows his way around the mizuya and worked his butt off) and the head of the chapter (who was super sweet and made sure to get those of us suffering outside a cooler full of cold water bottles, etc).   So. From now on, it's lessons only and events-as-guest. Period.   I'm done wasting my time, money, and energy on this mess.  

Sinus headach - gah!
Yet again, my allergies
Are punishing me
For spending the day outside
Despite using Claritin.

There. Whiny tanka for the day accomplished. :P [One of these days before the end of the month, I'm going to actually compose one in what little Japanese I can manage. One of these days.]

Hanamatsuri was fun*, and yet again, my interest in joining OCBC is renewed. Of course, in the copious amounts of free time I have to GO... yeah. And of course, the beginner Buddhist classes meet on nights I already have school. Boo.

Oh well. I'l just have to go to their events and try to get out of bed early enough on a Sunday to attend once in a while. (25 minute drive is a bit... ick.)


* Fun in this case is both the literal and Firefly meanings - the OC Tea teacher that people aren't fond of was there. I like to think I made a good impression. I certainly had plenty of snarky thoughts in my head throughout, and a TON of sympathy for the girl doing the ceremony - her hands were shaking so bad! I know that feeling. Anyway. I probably sounded like an ass trying to explain later what I found so amusing/aggravating - it made sense in my head, but the Sudafed has really borked my filters. Tomorrow I'm just going to not talk and see if that's more successful on the social front.

(I forgot to write down the ones I was thinking of over the weekend. Oops.)

Spent too much money
On such pretty, shiny things --
I've always felt that
There's still a long road ahead;
Yet I was the only one.


A bit starved for poetic appeal, but... meh. The Bowers Cherry Blossom Festival yesterday had neither cherry blossoms nor much festivity involved. There were hordes of badly behaved children and their minders, and even the performance troupe had only ONE person in a proper kimono ensemble. (And I mean proper in the loosest sense of the word. Seriously. Like, proper = actual kimono. Not the ladies' silk bathrobe from Chinatown, not something sheer and pink and fuzzy with no collar. Folks, you're within 20 miles of some place that will sell them for a good bargain, even on this side of the Orange Curtain. You're also near at least three distinct ethnic enclaves of Japanese people - SOMEONE will have a kimono to lend for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon.)

Also, red-headed dude on the shamisen? Awesome skill with the instrument, but I really hope you didn't pay a lot for the ladies' kimona-sleeved poly-satin nightgown you had on over your Western clothes. I really wish someone would have shown you at least one picture of a man in proper attire before you chose that outfit.

I realize I break the rules a lot, and still have a lot to learn about kitsuke, but if you're going to present something to a large audience of people who don't know any better? DO IT RIGHT. Even my mom, who is steadily learning proper Japanese terms for all these things and patiently looks through my kimono porn magazines with me, was asking what sort of special fashion or regional thing the presenters were doing that they looked so different from what she was used to seeing.

It was oddly discouraging to be the only person in kimono there. (Though I did meet a nice Japanese lady from Okinawa who's been in the states 10 months now, has enviably awesome English skills [I wish I were so skilled with Japanese], and wants to wear kimono and go to a cafe, just like in all the magazines. She was surprised I knew how to get dressed, and had picked my outfit * out on my own. She was also very amused that I was telling mom how the 'maiko' obi was usually something that hung much longer, rather than a large bow-shaped musubi as the presenter had on, and the shigoki obi was usually red, not white. I didn't bother getting into the katsura style... (Amazing what you learn when you lurk on the internets.) That said, the outfit and makeup were fantastic, as was the dancing, and I'm sorry I didn't bring my camera for that part of the show.)

* Green hitoe (because it was hot!) with little critters and umbrellas and sakura petals, a burgundy and white hakata obi (which I found is MUCH too short to wrap twice, oops!), and pink accessories (obiage, obijime with glass bead), plus a cute jade obi kazari with a turtle on it. I did have fun with a flower-patterned han'eri and my light green yabane tabi socks, breaking the rules on what 'should' be white. Hey, it's an outdoor festival. I don't need to be too conformist - I'm not pretending to be an expert in front of an audience of several hundred. Also, I REALLY should just spring for a silk muji hitoe, because it's so miserably warm by April. My poly ones are too warm!

Saturday's Kyoei trip was brief but fun - I picked up a red obijime, a lemon yellow obiage, and a yellow date-eri to go with my crane houmongi that I want to wear to the opening day at the museum on the 19th - I have the outfit pretty well picked out at this point. I definitely plan on staying indoors as much as possible, since it's a lined kimono and the only juban I own is synthetic (gah!) at the sleeves and skirt. I also plan on wearing my decidedly NOT Japanese gold "zori" that are actually just nice thong sandals with a cute crystal bead fringe on them, because my feet ache enough in slightly-too-small shoes as it is. I will have white tabi and a white collar, though. ( I do lament my lack of a pinstriped blue/grey wool kimono and obi in my size, now, because basting on a black cotton collar to look very Edo would have been SO much fun for the opening of the samurai exhibit. Just sayin'. )

Note for later: The next shipment is at month-end, and the lady that does the kimono alterations is in Japan until mid-month - May will be a bit spendy, too, I think. Good thing I'll be working overtime... (We'll not go into the paranoia about my job because I've been making noises about wanting to move up, and they're making noises about reducing staff if we don't meet budget. I don't want a pay raise as badly as I want to get out of the clerical pigeonhole I'm stuck in...)

Finally got this off my camera and uploaded, though my computer complained something fierce. The writeup for the lecture is on the Immortal Geisha forums.

And now, I'm sleepy. Mom's dog woke me after I'd gotten only two hours of sleep and it was hard to go back to sleep... *grump*

Stopped by Payless tonight (what the hell - I'll justify it as stimulating the economy), and found that the Tattoo Airwalks were far too loose - I walked right out of them when I tried them on. But I found black and white plaid-with-fuzzy-velvet roses hi-tops instead, for a sale price. And those will just up the awesome quotient considerably. ^___^

Also, all four pairs of tennis shoes survived their bath. (The dryer, however, is a noisy operation - it sounds like I have a taiko group practicing - badly - in my garage.) So I took two of the four out to air dry and left the other two in. The purple-grey ones seem all right; not as clean as I'd like, but better than they were. The other pair badly needed the bath; they were stinky!

I have awesome tennis shoes, now. MWAHahahah! (Which just cinches the fact I have to wear my pinstripe or plaid newsie cap, to match my shoes...)

Hair... will probably be pigtails, because... because I can, I suppose. and I'm not feeling very creative. I might convince Mom to take the time to French braid it, if she's up and willing. It's long enough, now. (No, I can't braid my own hair pretty-like, I fail as a girl, bite me. It took long enough to learn how to manage a half-decent ponytail. I do not posess the Hair-Fu that usually gets handed out when little girls are put together. I make up for it with stompy boots and slogan tee shirts. Go figure.)

I have not yet cracked open Dalby's book for a re-read; I may just bring it along and hope for an autograph, and pray I remember to actually bring a notebook and pens with me. I'm dumb like that, sometimes.

Project Bumblefuck can be considered a success, I think. If you consider it's a kimono that's for someone half my size (literally), from the vintage-fugly phase of the kimono era, made of summer something (silk? I dunno), and had been hung in front of my windows as a curtain until faded near-white from its dark blue-grey color, run through the washer AND dryer*, and is now cut neatly in half into a vest for Tea lessons, with matching obi piece. (The 'obi' piece is a *project* on an epic scale - each tweak seems to fix one problem and present another. I'm not sure where to go with it.) I do know I need to go buy more $holyshit/yard 2" wide velcro, as sewing down the Joann's $1 bin velcro in 2" wide swaths just doesn't do it. :P That and it has NO grip. So. Save that for creative cord control or something. Also, stabilizer of the thick, nearly foam, non-fusible variety, which is about $yourfirstborn per yard. Good thing they don't take much. Oy.

On the bright side, we now have two Tea vest... thingummies. (I am thinking of making an obi thingummie for the lone male student with a little kangaroo pocket in the very front, since men carry their items slightly different than women due to the differences in kimono.) I've started a trend of finding the most godawful kimono I can to justify cutting wearable (barely) things to pieces. Kyoei had one the other day in lime green and neon hunter orange. It looked like a bad 70s acid trip puked on the fabric. Mom agreed it was absolutely horrid. I did NOT pay the steep $6 price for it. I just might go back and do so if it's still there on my next trip up. It's just SO bad. (And cheaper than winning one for 99 cents and then paying $20 in shipping. So.)

Which means I now have other projects to do, like Mom's tote bag that she's been asking for forever (and finally picked out the fabric and notions for all of two weeks ago). Once THAT is done, I'll play around with the d20 dice bag thing, since I have everything I need for it (note: we will be using only black thread, damn the matchy-matchy needs of our more compulsive side, because I REFUSE to re-thread the machine and serger 20-something different times.)

Also, I just now went through cleolinda's Twilight series recaps (except Midnight Sun, as I haven't read it but want to and the only thing Amazon[hiss] has is some vampire smut novel of an entirely different, non-sparkly nature. Sadness. I guess it really was pulled, not delayed. Boo.) -- I haven't laughed so hard in ages. Also, there is a sparklpires community that is ever so amusing to skim through. [It's true - it's like getting to be a goofy teen - in a good way - all over again, fangirling about these nutty books. They're so bad they've come 'round to good again, in some ways, and in others, well... you just have to laugh, because the other response is looking into the abyss...) Now to see the movie, then read the m15m version. :D (I see the movies first, because otherwise, well, I probably miss half the jokes.) I plan on re-reading the book once my coworker returns it to me (I lent her New Moon so she has a seamless transition from one sparkly! adventure to the next, though I may send her the links to Cleo's reviews, too...)

* If you tell me I shouldn't or can't, what do you THINK I'm going to do? ("Don't wash kimono!" "Right. Spin cycle with non-chlorine bleach it is.")


Now I'm off to bed and I'll try not to wonder if LJ will vanish in smoke before this time tomorrow - I'm fond of the place and I'd be put out if it went away, but there's not a whole lot in entries worth archiving (a few, maybe one or three a year, at most). I think I'd actually miss the community stuff - I do all my passive research (I let the research come to me) for SCA things through the communities. All y'all on the friends list? Go get blogs. I'll RSS your asses or something. ^_^

Today was good - got up laaaaate (noon-ish) and got dressed and headed up to Kyoei, where Mom decided to buy me more prezzies. Met a woman there and her kitsuke sensei, and just may be taking a few lessons of my own in the future, if the money and schedule allow for it. Awesome fun. Lots of chitchat, and I learned how to get my obiage to lay pretty, since the books I have never really TELL you the 'fold in thirds, then in half, then run your finger up the fold so it lays right all the way around' with pictures (and my Nihongo is crap, so i can't read the instructions). She also showed me the kai-no-kuchi musubi, and I realized I had the proportions wrong, which is why it never came out right. (Ah-hah!)

Good day. I have another kimono that fits properly, now - I'll have to mail off the check to pay the seamstress Monday a.m. - and it, too, is PINK, but it's a good pink and a lot of my obi match well, so... yesh. :)

So, flat broke person that I am...

Would anyone else think selling my kimono stuff on eBay be a good idea? The things that don't fit me, etc.: I have a few vintage obi (very wearable, no snags or tears but there is some patina or small spots), and at least three kimono that are too small (and the wrong coloring - autumn/spring when I'm very winter), plus a furisode that I never wore and probably never will, though I'm still not sure I want to give it up. 


... thoughts?

(This post brought to you by today's adventure in Accounting with Kitty, or "Why the fuck is my Visa balance so high? ... Oh." )

I just paid for my spring registration at OCC. Without books or parking, it's already $100. Dammit.

Holeecrap today was expensive. I probably dropped close to $225 on stuff. Only about $190 of that was specifically for Sensei/Tea purposes. (I did splurge on getting myself an obiage and obijime in colors I think I will use.)

While I don't expect anyone to chip in towards this HUGE present, I am certainly going to cross my fingers and toes and braid my hair that someone might be willing to, because even with 7 hours of overtime, that's not enough to cover this all. So.

On the other hand, I was complimented quite a bit on my kimono ensemble today (and my ability to walk properly in it), so it made running errands despite a splitting migraine headache somewhat worth it. (Trying to field questions with a splitting headache, especially when they are in Japanese, is another matter entirely. I think I came across as a rather retarded but well-intentioned, bumbling idiot. Damnit.)

*thud* And now I'm off to go crawl onto the couch and watch some Netflix'd stuff until my brain melts from the agony that is my head right now.


(I have also fallen off the Tanka Challenge wagon, and will probably not be crawling back onto it until Thursday...)


SDMA tomorrow - let me know if any of you plan on going! (If you're coming from farther north, maybe you can carpool down with us? Otherwise it's just me and mom.)

Oh, and I'll be wearing my blue iromuji and cream watercolor-painting obi. :) Look for the big gaijin in blue if you go.

Mom wanted to go out for brunch tomorrow. Hopefully, it won't be miserably hot down in Dana Point, because she doesn't mind if I wear kimono (but she nixed my hopes for Thanksgiving kitsuke... No trip to the fabric store for turkey-print cotton this year!) - I'm trying to decide whether I should try one of the challenges from the IG boards or just mix and match something nice. It may be the latter. I have a han-eri to re-sew, also.