On needlessly worrying about competition that doesn't measure up

Tuesday, this young half Japanese kid came into work to meet Karate Husband to discuss work. Me being me (and on Shan's insistence), I sneaked around as discretely as I could, trying to pick up what they were saying as the interview was conducted in Japanese. I didn't want to be obvious about it as that would seem kinda rude to Karate Husband. This kid seemed to want to work evenings after school, but I'm not entirely sure he was over twenty, and that's one of our rules for serving alcohol. There seemed to be some issues, and I'm not sure the meeting went in his favour, as he left pretty quickly without being introduced to either Shan or me and Karate Husband later didn't mention it at all, but I still spent the entire time he was there fretting, mentally going 'please don't take my hours' over and over in my head.

I found the ad for the job online, and it seems like it's more of a kitchen duty kind of job, like anime boy Yohei's job, which is comforting to me. Also they put 'being able to speak Japanese' as a must, so I don't think we'll be seeing a surge of candidates anytime soon.

Karate Husband seemed to be in a lovely mood though, and I find myself liking this tiny little man more and more. He's making sure all the staff gets free flu shots today, which once again makes me feel a bit like some sort of pet or something, but in a good way. "NotAWeeaboo-chan, the doctor's coming by to administer the flu vaccine on Thursday at six. Is that okay? You're not afraid of needles right?" he teased, giggling at his own little joke in a totally endearing old man way. He's always so sweet to me that I really don't want to believe that what the Swedish girls said about his wives was true. He's like my strict Japanese extra dad. Shan, on the other hand, is my doting Sri Lankan extra dad. He takes every opportunity to praise the absolute crap out of me, preferably in front of customers. "She speaks Japanese! She even speaks Japanese with the owner!" he'll gleefully exclaim to our regulars. When they ask if speaking Japanese is hard and I try to downplay it because I feel the whole thing gives me unwanted attention, Shan jumps in to sing my praises again. "It's super hard! I've worked here for twenty years and I still don't know any. She's so good!" It does impress customers though, so I guess that's cool. Anything that makes me seem bad-ass I'm pretty happy with.

Today, and probably tomorrow and most of Saturday, will be completely devoted to sewing (apart from work, obviously), because I'm kinda freaking out about it. About everything really. Still three more TEFL assignments to do before next Saturday as well. Once that's all over, I'll rest far more easy. It'll be like having oceans of time. I've been thinking I should take up jogging again - I felt so much better, emotionally, when I worked out a lot. I'd need to buy better jogging shoes and also I'd be terrified of slipping and dying on all the wet leaves and mud out there, but I think it would be worth it. My asthma makes me lose stamina quickly as hell though, so I'd be far less impressive than I was when I could run almost five kilometers in one go, but at this point I think any change in routine is probably a good thing. Things need to change for me.