I'm Confused...

So I've been studying Japanese all told for about 2 years, and considering the minimal effort I put into it, I've been making decent progress. Nothing has come along in terms of Japanese grammar that has totally blown my mind or been impossible to wrap my sizable brain around, but we're getting close. My good friend/former coworker/budding semi-porn producer/very proficient Japanese speaker Andrew once encouraged me to learn all of the various verb forms that exist in Japanese as I learned the new vocabulary, because they have a way of snowballing once you learn more and more verbs. I should have listened. There's a big snowball sitting here with me.
I'll do my best to give you an example, and I'll refrain from the mega-ego stroke I would get from writing in Japanese just to prove that I can, mainly because most of my readers' computers probably wouldn't be able to display it anyway.
The first thing you should know about Japanese is that like English (and probably every other language), there is a formal way of speaking that you hear when people talk to their bosses or when the President is giving a speech (ok bad example), and then there's the normal, colloquial way of speaking that people usually use to communicate. In Japanese, one of the more prominent ways this difference manifests itself (though by no means the only way) is in terms of verbs.
Let's look at the formal way of speaking first. The Japanese verb 'to eat' is 'tabemasu.' When speaking formally, all Japanese verbs end in '-masu.'
So the sentence 'I eat bread' would be 'Pan o tabemasu.' ('pan' = 'bread')
To form the past tense, '-masu' becomes '-mashita.' 'I ate bread' = 'Pan o tabemashita.'
To express the fact that you want something, '-masu' changes to '-tai.' 'I want to eat bread' = 'Pan o tabetai.'
Maybe I have some bread and I want you to eat it, so '-masu' becomes '-te' plus the imperative 'kudasai'. So 'Eat some bread please' = 'Pan o tabete kudasai.'
Confused? It's not that complicated because you can change the meaning by attaching different endings to the verbs, and there are several more that I won't get into.
The problem? Nobody talks like this. So I've spent the better part of two years learning this stuff, and it has given me a necessary understanding of the underpinnings of Japanese, but now I have to kind of start over again and learn how to really talk. Granted, I can communicate somewhat adequately, I just sound like a dweeb using the polite form all the time. And more importantly, given that nobody really talks like that, I have a hard time understanding them.
Enter the 'dictionary form' of the verb, which the bane of my existence at the moment. All verbs have a 'dictionary form,' kind of a base form of the verb: tabemasu-taberu.
So dorky me would say (I eat bread) 'Pan o tabemasu.' Cool Japanese person would say: 'Pan o taberu.'
Dorky me: (I ate bread) 'Pan o tabemashita.' Cool J-folk: 'Pan o tabeta.'
Dorky me: (Do you want to eat bread?) 'Pan o tabetai desuka?' Cool J-birds (gesturing with some bread and rising intonation): 'Taberu?'
So multiply this by the 100 or so verbs that I've learned, times all the different endings I have to learn now, plus the fact that I probably only know about 50% of the dictionary forms of the verbs, which is kind of the foundation of learning all the new endings, and you can get an idea of where I'm at. Which is confused. But that's fine, I'm due for a hurdle in Japanese. Once I grasp this grammar it will be a big leap in my ability, and I'll be able to understand my students better when they are talking sh*t about me!
Actually despite my lack of effort and proactivity about learning Japanese, it is a goal of mine to really improve. I have the whole issue of communicating with my in laws, who don't speak English and aren't go to learn any time soon. Plus, I would love to be able to have a job someday that involves using Japanese (more so than listening to my students offer lame excuses as to why they missed class). So, I'm contemplating upping my lessons to twice a week because next semester I will have a bit of a lighter teaching schedule.
Which is a perfect segue! We received our schedules for next term already, although it doesn't start till the beginning of April. I'll be teaching the same level again next term, which is good and bad. The bad: it'll be all the students who failed this term and are repeating, plus others who have probably struggled thus far to grasp the wonder we know as English. The good: I'll be teaching this level for the third time in a row, which means the bulk of my lessons are already planned, minus some minor tweaking to accommodate the lower level students. Also, classes will probably be small since these will be the stragglers. The bulk of students don't have any trouble passing, so by the time the spring term rolls around, there generally aren't that many students left. Does that make sense? I feel like this is the most confusing blog post I've ever made.
Anyway, the other bonus is that while we usually teach 18 hours a week (i.e. 18 classes), my schedule for the spring is only 14 hours. So I'll have a little more time to study Japanese, which I going to abuse for a mystical reverse-segue!!
That being that going to my Japanese lesson today is about the only remotely productive thing I've done for the past 3 days, if being thoroughly confused for an hour counts as being productive.
Yes, since I finished up work on Friday, my life has taken a drastic turn towards sloth. I stay up until all hours of the night, sleep until 12:00 every day, play my guitar, go running to counteract the uptake in beer I am consuming, since my awesome gym has been closed for four days, then repeat the process. I attempted a blog post the other night only to find that I had absolutely nothing of any consequence to anyone that I could talk about, nor any good pictures to put up, so I simply abandoned the idea.
Speaking of the gym, it reopened today, and like the rat that I am I was THERE! It's always fun to go back to the gym after one of their selfish week long closures, because they always rearrange all the weight machines. That's not really fun, actually. Well at least some sense of purpose has returned to my life.
This has turned into a massive, rambling post, and if you've made it this far, I am impressed. Most folks probably bailed out mid-Japanese lesson. And I was just getting started way back then. So your reward for all that dedicated reading: this picture. It's a jet, flying by the moon. I took it while walking home from the gym this evening. Rest assured that it looked much cooler in real life. I'm sorry. OK, now I have to proofread this damn thing. Have a nice night/day where ever you are.