Ooh, you know who you remind me of?

If anyone said that to me right now, I'd have to ask if it was Marilyn Monroe. Not because I'm a blonde with shapely pins (rather an ex-temporary-blonde with increasingly fat pins and waistline), but because I have a seven year itch. At least last night felt like 7 years, as I lay there at four o'clock scrabbling for any medications I could find that would knock me out (sometimes I regret not keeping gin in the house). It ruined what had been a successful day with two lessons at school and the first dance routine I could manage in it's entirety at dance class (think top of the pops 2002).

In fact it has been getting more and more irritating, even though I now know there are even more people with the same inexplicable ailment (their doctors have as little idea as mine as to what's going on, although I think lying to her and telling her I didn't itch in England may have made it seem like it could be an allergy).

Last Monday started promisingly, dance class was rock hard (Jazz dance) and I couldn't manage it at all. Couldn't even do the turns properly. I was moving like a spinning top. A broken spinning top. That can't spin. Hot damn. And that night I slept for two hours, and thus spent most of Tuesday trying told my head more than three inches from my desk at work. Due to this extreme tiredness (I nodded off at one point, to be woken-thankfully- by the world's most unpredictable and noisy photocopier) I didn't go to conversation class, instead falling head first into a pit of snide comments from a person whose opinion means about as much to me as something that doesn't mean much to me.

Wednesday was a good day at elementary school, where I earned extra gay points through my choice of which club to attend (not that I can cash in these gay points here, I shall have to wait till I return to England and hope they haven't expired). When offered a choice of sports club (football and foot baseball- say what? Say no...), shogi club (Japanese chess with more rules than there are kanji characters), cooking (no, I attended that last time, so it wasn't really a choice), craft club (knitting) and science club (today, chemistry), I chose chemistry. Except they couldn't explain in English what they were doing, so I had to make an alternative choice. Knitting it is then, and they were all very surprised when I said I was good at it as a child (in hindsight I think this may not have been true) and from then on I proceeded to ruin a ball of wool in the name of club activities... And because Monday had been such a hard session, we couldn't be bothered going to dance class on Wednesday, and instead LeeJay and Abslance came to mine and we had tea and watched Mean Girls (not so much a movie, more a way of life).

Should full stops be inside or outside of bracketed statements? Grammar please.

Thursday must have been a lie because I can't remember it, and on Friday I got a lift to Okayama with Kathleen, which took approximately half of the time of the bus. I finally bought curtains for the front room, although thanks to a useless salesman (because obviously it wouldn't be my flawless Japanese at fault) I nearly bought only one curtain. There's something to be said for whipping it out and having a look before you pay. I then met Fiona who took as little persuasion as I do to start shopping and then we had our tea at Busty's. Busty had real cheese. It was amazing.

Saturday was a slightly busy day, where I went to the doctor's first thing and then after a brief period of birdwatching and being brainwashed by the Tivoli park theme song while waiting at the back of Kurashiki station, I met Chad at Norio's bar which has an incomprehensible name based on some old rock track with the same incomprehensible name.

Lunch was served and then I split to meet Philip and Cho-Lin with whom I went back to Kuse for dinner at Leejay's, albeit it a slightly tanked up dinner having had a few cans of alcopops (alco j-pops?) on the way. We were all way gone by 10:30 and in bed by 1. Oops.

Sunday was a slow day, and Johanna came to mine for tea where I experimented on her with Korean fried rice. It didn't contain Koreans or house pets, just some spicy pickled veg and some egg. Yum.

And today I'm pondering what to do in tonight's English conversation class, and whether they'll find my head lolling about the table very acceptable. Well, bugger them if they don't. It's not like they pay me...