My another photo blog “LQ Laoshi’s Photo Gallery”(outside wordpress)
Yesterday I uploaded a post that I wrote in Japanese. And today I realized that the post got very few viewers. Sometime I feel that words, phrases, and even thoughts that are not written in English are just the same as “non-existence”. This fact makes me sad, but at the same time, encourages me to write something in English.
Yesterday morning I took my mom to the place for the elderlies to get vaccine shots for COVID-19. I made the reservation for her through the internet about one month ago. Yesterday’s was the second shot for her. The last time I just went to the bus stop for her. But this time she wanted me to go together to the building of the place. Actually she shows the early sign of Alzheimer’s disease and she surely recognize it herself. She was worrying if she could not get to the place by herself although the bus would directly bring her there.
If I had a car, I could give her a ride to the place, but I don’t have one for some reasons; I don’t get enough income to maintain a car. I don’t like driving because my driving technique is very poor. I don’t want to be a criminal if I cause an accident. Not having a car is a rare thing in this rural Niigata, because everyone has his/her car and moves only by a car. It is common that there are cars in number of family members in my area.
So I had to go with her by public transportation. I started my house before 8 a.m., got on a JR train, got on a taxi using 500-yen coupon that was given by the prefecture, and then brought her into the big building in city center. There are several staffs in the entrance. I told them that my mom’s reservation was of the 9:15’s. It was still early for the time. A young lady, a staff but looking like a university students told us to wait for the time. So I just left her there and came back home alone. My mom said that she could return home herself after the shot.
The following day of the first shot, my mom got severe side reaction. She had been in futon all day. That was the thing happened one month ago. And it was said that the side reaction of M-vaccine was even more severe for the second shot. I worried, although my mom seemed to be not aware of harder reaction than the first.
Already in yesterday, she laid down her futon in the afternoon. She looked not so bad yesterday. But this morning, when I came down to the first floor to make a breakfast for her, she said in weak voice, “Don’t make me get up (for the breakfast). I felt I was almost dying last night”. That’s terrible. I made her measure her body temperature. It was 37.7c. Her usual temperature is 35-something. So she got 2 Celsius higher than usual. It must be hard for her. I gave her a cup of water and let her sleep in her futon.
I took my breakfast alone, and went up to the second floor to do my job. I evaluated 6 students’ homework assignments that were to be graded as the final examination. And then I tried scanning some books that I borrowed from city library. Let me be clear, the scanning is purely for educational purpose. So I believe there is no problem with copyright. I have to teach Japanese Literature in coming fall semester. So I need a lot of references.
In these two years, I have just used a digital camera instead of a scanner. But it was very inconvenient for me to make materials and articles for teaching. So I bought Canon’s scanner “LiDE400” recently. This afternoon was the first time for me to use that scanner. But soon I had got a problem with it, because the scanner’s application produces only jpeg and pdf for the output images. I really want to make it 600dpi black-and-white bmp and to make post-processing it to be png. Jpeg images deteriorate. In order to process without deterioration, I wanted to scan and output images in bmp. It was surprising to me that Canon eliminates or ignores that basic image format from their scanning application. The scanner was a little cheap one. There is a Japanese saying which is “Buying cheap goods ends up losing money” (there are many better translations on the web, but…). I felt I was disappointed by Canon. Fortunately, I found a solution for the issue by searching internet; I can make bmp through the function of “Windows Fax and Scan”. When I found out this solution, it was almost evening, that was the time for me to start preparing for dinner.
My mom was still in her futon. And she said that a small portion was okay for the dinner. I made rice porridge, miso soup, and just a little bit of pork. It is wondering to me, she is in her 80’s, she likes to eat oily food like potato chips and fried chicken. For me myself, my stomach is getting weaker year by year, I don’t want to eat oily food. But she is different. So I cooked for her just a little bit of pork with ginger and garlic by heating on a pan.
At the dinner table, she was eating with her pajama. While we were eating, the time became for TV anime “Sazae-san”. Sazae-san is the name of the main character of the comic created by Ms. Machiko Hasegawa after the World War II. And TV animation show is also a quite long-run. It is aired at 6:30p.m. on Sunday. So it is like the Sazae-san TV show exists to let Japanese people realize that a weekend is over. It makes me sad. Probably so many Japanese feel sad like me all over Japan. Anyway, my mom kept watching Sazae-san after the dinner. Sometimes she laughed, probably Katsuo did a stupid thing on the screen. So it seemed like she got a little recovery from the side reactio. Usually I let her wash the dishes after the dinner, but tonight I washed all the dishes. I left the kitchen. A little later she thought she would wash the dishes, she put dishes into the water in the big wash tub again. Those were that I had already cleaned.
I evaluated three students’ homework assignments after those things. I stopped working and started writing this post. I am going to bed right after I finish uploading this.
Summer break is coming soon, but I have to keep working during the break. The university makes me teach four subjects in the coming fall semester. It is too much. No other teacher will teach four subjects. I am not confident to get through the semester. I may get sick and get damage to my health on the course of semester probably. So I don’t think I will be able to be alive at my mom’s age.
Crows (Black Birds) have eaten my tomato.
Flowers of Montbretia started blooming in my garden. Actually they are too strong and increase very much. So you need to control so that they would not occupy the wide area in your garden.
Okay, now I am finishing writing a long post, hoping that this describes a tiny daily life of mine.
Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning 