this morning i made hiro's bento, got him dressed in the clothes i quickly washed and dried this morning, and barely made it to the bus stop in time (that damn hat, every time!!) then i put tommy and sasha in the car and drove to the shopping center, because i have some last-minute shopping to do for christmas dinner (on saturday). on the way, the cell phone's battery ran out and the phone turned itself off. no big deal, i thought. no one ever calls me anyway.

i did my shopping (though i didn't get the one ingredient i needed. oh well.) and then the three of us had lunch. then we drove home. sasha fell asleep on the way, but tommy was awake when we got home. i took tommy into the house, but i had forgot my phone. since i didn't want to wake sasha, i just left it there.

tommy went to bed, and i made gingerbread batter. i had to rush at the end and ran out the door without a jacket. i got to the bus stop just in time...and waited. and waited. and waited. recently the bus has been late, so though i was freezing my ass off in a short-sleeved shirt, i waited. finally i HAD to go home and get a jacket. and make sure sasha was ok (she was still sleeping). i went into the house and checked the time: four o'clock, fifteen minutes after the bus was due. i checked the calendar but there was nothing special. i got a jacket, went back to the stop and no bus. since the stop is in front of another student's house, i rung the bell and found out...the bus came at 12:45. *SIGH*

i went home and sasha was awake. i told her to wait a moment because we had to go to hiro's school. i grabbed my phone, took it inside and plugged it in. i called yoshi. tommy woke up and started to cry. yoshi told me the teacher forgot to tell me that today was an early day. i got mad. i started to cry. i HATE this. i felt like i was incompetent somehow, that my stupid low japanese skills caused this mistake.

when the bus got here (it drove to our house after dropping off the other boy), and i wasn't home, they took hiro back to the kindergarten. they have an after-school day care, and luckily (i guess) they got a hold of yoshi and he told them he would pay for daycare.

i got tommy out of his crib, and he was completely stinky. i changed his diaper, grabbed a bag of baby senbei and put him in the car. tossed some sembei at tommy and sasha and drove to hiro's school (which is at least 20 minutes away.)

when hiro saw me, he said, 'mommy, bus is coming!' what do i do? what do i say?

the teacher said sorry, but she didn't seem really sorry. and she asked me about tomorrow's mochi making thing, but i didn't understand. am i supposed to go? i kinda forgot about it. i knew i had to pick hiro up tomorrow (it's the last day before winter vacation) but i wasn't sure about the mochi thing or what i would have to do. she wrote a note for yoshi. whatever.



i feel kinda lucky, because so far with youchien, i haven't had to go there all the time, which would blow because of tommy and sasha. but WHEN THEY CHANGE THE FREAKIN' SCHEDULE, i wish they would make sure they let the parents know. this morning when the bus came, the teacher on board said something, but i didn't catch it. the other mother responded, so i thought the teacher was talking to her. when i got hiro's kindergarten notebook this afternoon, there wasn't anything in there letting us know school ends early today.

why do we have to pay for daycare? i am of the opinion that the school should eat it. and if they can't, then hiro's freakin' teacher needs to pay the fee. i am not pleased. >:-(

and i don't even know what hiro's getting out of school. several people have asked me how he's doing, how he likes it. i have no idea. he doesn't talk about it. he can't even tell us who his friends or classmates are. is he getting along? is he enjoying school? is he learning anything?!


EDIT:

well, it looks like it wasn't a change of plans, just my poor japanese reading skills. i guess i need to tell yoshi that we need to go over the calendar when we receive it and make note of early days and other such things. i HATE this. this is the second worse thing about living in japan.