Green Thumbs R Us

My Xmas Cacti are both in bloom!



I managed to force the Poinsettia.



My citrus plants I grew from seeds have survived the summer.



We bought some plants in late summer. This one never took off, so I figured it was just a dud. But apparently it really likes the warmer-than-normal temps and rain, because it went into overdrive recently.



Here’s one of the other plants that we bought at the same time and which bloomed and died on schedule.

TMI Alert!

My doctor’s appointment went fine. Everything looks good, including the IUD I complained about. I had it put in to reduce my period because I was suffering from severe-ish iron anemia. Technically, it has reduced my period—if not for something called hygiene, it would be possible for me to use only one thin pad on most days and a mini-pad on others. Sweet, eh? Except my periods last 12-15 days. (1) Even the doctor agreed that is a drag, but since it is not unheard of, and since the *total* blood loss is less, she highly recommends I keep the IUD. We’ll talk about it again when my blood-work comes back next week (the phlebotomist didn’t maim me this time).

(1) When I called 2 weeks ago to make my appointment, it was the first day of my period. I thought I’d still be on it when I had my check-up, based on 21 months experience (and the longest period to date the month before). But my body betrayed my brain once again: it lasted only 5 days! That was probably the shortest period I’ve ever had, except maybe my first one at age 11.

Hannah Fannah Po Pannah

Hannah specifically asked for this advent calendar this year (usually she gets one like this). Unfortunately, she wanted the hottest item this xmas season; the department store I went to yesterday was sold out, and they reported that there weren’t any to be had for love or money. Rats. Hannah declared that she’d just take the normal chocolate calendar, but I think I can improve on that with something like this.

I would have gotten her one from our local gummi-bear shop (how cools is that? We have a shop that sells nothing but gummi bears), but I’m afraid Hannah was swapped at birth, because she doesn’t like gummi bears very much and therefore cannot be the fruit of my loins.

One thing that makes me very proud of Hannah is her congenital resistance to peer pressure. She is not merely impervious to it, she is actively hostile to it. She and her best friend (1) were talking about participating in a local parade, which is usually a low-key affair around here. St. Martin rides his horse at the head of the procession, and kids and their families follow carrying paper lanterns. Hannah mentioned the lanterns, and the friend said that teenagers don’t carry lanterns (she is 10). Hannah bluntly pointed out that they are not teenagers. Neither ended up going after all (we just caught the tail end of it from our balcony), but it was reassuring that Hannah understands about and approves of age-appropriate behavior.

(1) Back before she and the best friend had a flaming row and broke up.

Gotta Be Me!

Probably once a week (and now it really is only once a week because I’ve restricted my blog-reading (except WesTexGirl) to Saturdays—oh, the agony!) I read about the "10 weird things about me" meme that is making its way around the blogosphere. That got me thinking about my own level of weirdness.

I don’t have webbed toes or a third nipple; I think I’m physically normal (although some people might argue that my long toes disqualify me).

But, I know that maybe I, uh, think about things a little differently from my nearest and dearest; I really don’t think I’m *weird*, deep in my heart. I’m just a person who likes to hum while she walks.

I noticed recently that when I am washing the dishes or taking a shower or otherwise doing something that doesn’t require a lot of attention, my mind wanders. Back to Austin. And not Austin as the backdrop to a big chunk of my life, but *Austin*. Burnet Road, Lamar, South First, the Party Pig, HEB. *Every HEB I’ve ever been in.* No kidding. Instead of thinking about Hannah’s second birthday party or her first steps or our wedding or John’s graduation, I think about the produce section of a supermarket I haven’t seen in 2 years, alternating with driving directions to said store.

But that’s ok, right?

Not for Children

Here are a couple of links that I have been saving. They depict the Teletubbies and Sesame Street, but they are definitely NOT for children. Wait until your kids go to bed to look at these.

Teletubbies kill
A shooter game. Enough said.

Sesame Streets
A "trailer" for a "film" by Martin Scorcese. (Which means audio from _Taxi Driver_ tacked onto video for Sesame Street. Sacrilicious!)

Gobble! Gobble!

The turkey and I will have a lot in common on Thanksgiving Day:

We’ll both be lying on a table with our legs in unusual positions.

We’ll both be stuck with metal implements.

We’ll both have more of our insides seen than we might like.

We’ll both be glad the day only comes once a year.

Guess what I’ll be doing, and I’ll scrounge up a prize for the first one to guess right.

Man, it is a gorgeous day!

The sky is clear and blue,



the sun is warm and blinding,



and the trees are orange and yellow and brown.



What more could you ask for? Fog?



Snow?



Yes, those last two are actual recent photos.

More Online Quiz Results

You Are the Swedish Chef

"Bork! Bork! Bork!" Your happy and energetic - with borderline manic tendencies. No one really gets you. And frankly, you don't even get you. But, you sure can whip up a great chocolate mousse

The Muppet Personality Test

Blah to the Blah

Winter struck right in the middle of Hannah's school vacation last week, so we've been getting acclimated to the cold. But today it is also raining. Ick. At least I don't have to get out today (my class meets every other week). And Hannah is home sick with a tummy ache. I don't know if it is due to the tiny portion of pinto beans she had last night, or the lingering post-nasal drip, or some stomache bug, but she really does seem (mildly) ill, which means she doesn't feel well enough to flop. That is how we assess her level of illness: if she starts flopping, she's not as ill as she's claiming to be.

I made a big ol' to-do list (my short-term memory is not what it once was, although it is still better than John's) yesterday, and the checking off of many, many items was quite thrilling. Of course, I went to show Hannah how I had whittled down my list, and there was still 2 Palm screens worth. *sigh* But not all of it is pressing stuff.

And that's about it. It's been a dull, dull week.

Quiz results

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The South
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The Northeast
What American accent do you have?

Housekeeping

Sometimes I wonder why I even jot notes in my Palm when I never go back and write them up in blog form. So in the interest of freeing up some memory on my Palm, here are the bits and pieces that have been floating around in there.

One of John’s former classmates visited us while she and her husband were on their “memory tour” of Germany over the summer. Hannah loves to play hostess, and she proceeded to tell them all about our apartment and to introduce them to our cats. “Eliza is a big titty baby.” John’s friends are so cultivated that they didn’t even know the expression. This means that John is a cracker x 2, because I certainly didn’t teach her to say that.

I was waiting to cross the street one day, and I heard someone singing along at top volume to Tenacious D’s “Tribute” (aka, The Best Song in the World). It was the last place in the world I expected to hear it. (Usually I listen to it at home on our computer.)

Why did the guy sitting behind me on the bus smell like cigarettes and melted gummi bears? Who can say?

In reference to the class-hijacker: WANKER! (Wish I were British so I could pull that off properly.)

Hannah had a temporary hatred of xmas candy recently. She desperately wanted me to buy her some Jelly Bellies (Bellys? Hell if I know) so she could try out their recipes, and she had finally talked me into it. Except the department store we went to—where we both knew there were floor-to-ceiling bins of jelly beans—had blocked access to the bins with their displays of xmas candy. For 2 days, Hannah would randomly burst out in an angry hiss, “I hate xmas candy!” until I found her a mixed bag of Jelly Bellies at the other location of the department store. Now xmas candy is AOK again.

We sometimes hear some loud scuffling around coming from upstairs, and we used to think it was our 2 cats. Lately we’ve noticed that it also happens when Missy Cat is downstairs (i.e., Eliza Cat is alone upstairs), so John and I naturally assumed that Eliza was merely possessed or deranged or otherwise having some sort of episode. Case closed. But Hannah has a better explanation (or at least more entertaining). An evil gnome who formerly lived on the roof managed to get into our apartment through an open window and now spends his time terrorizing and trying to eat our cats. It’s as good a theory as any, as far as I am concerned.

Hannah found her Disney princess paper dolls while on school vacation this last week and has gotten a surprising amount of entertainment out of them. Each princess—Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty—comes with a prince—labeled “Prince”, how helpful—and girls and boys both come with their own outfits for mixing and matching. The first thing Hannah did was to grant each couple a divorce and pair them back up with a new partner. One prince has gone AWOL, so I think Cinderella is still single. Then she arranged them on the couch so they could 1. watch the video of Cinderella with us, and 2. act in a movie of Hannah’s own devising. I don’t know what the movie was actually supposed to be about, because Hannah spent more of her time on her cell-phone (drawn on paper by herself), telling the producer to get off her back, she’s trying to work! And who can work with the producer calling every 2 minutes?! Sheesh! She quits!

I couldn’t find a correspondingly hideous photo on the Internet to illustrate the horror that my classmate unleashed on the rest of us, so you will just have to use your imagination to fill in the spaces in my description. Picture a purse, made of red “leather”, of the roundish, pouchy variety. Add a ruffled edge, still red “leather”, to the top, along with 2 dark-brown handles. Now add a wide stripe across its width, slightly below the center, a stripe made of leopard print, edged with more ruffles of red “leather”. Did you sprain your brain? Me, too.

Halloween in photos

Halloween baking


Edible pot of dirt plus worms and frogs (aka chocolate cake with chocolate sprinkles and marzipan pot and gummies).


Hannah’s first try at a costume. We guessed “chimney sweep”, but she was really a witch (note the broom).


Gruesome!


Hannah attends a Halloween party thrown by her best friend


Hannah sorts her loot

Happy happy, joy joy

Sometimes it is good to unload and get all the hate out—kind of like lancing a boil. Even though John claims people enjoy my occasional overflow of vitriol, I thought I would take this opportunity to help you get the taste of hate out of your mouth by listing a few of my favorite things. (In the interest of full disclosure, there are no kittens or packages or string on this list.)

You already know how I love the M song and “Mahna Mahna”, but here’s another Muppet classic, “Never Smile at a Crocodile.” I laugh like a toddler in diapers every time that croc munches up one of the frogs.

NEVER SMILE AT A CROCODILE
(Peter Pan)

Never smile at a crocodile
No, you can't get friendly with a crocodile
Don't be taken in by his welcome grin
He's imagining how well you'd fit within his skin

Never smile at a crocodile
Never dip your hat and stop to talk awhile
Never run, walk away, say good-night, not good-day
Clear the aisle but never smile at Mister Crocodile



Hannah. Enough said.



Halloween, which will get its own post soon.

Christmas socks.

Coffee.

Nee Hates on Everyone

I don’t know why I’ve been in such a bad mood lately. It’s like I had a double-portion of hate and a side order of annoyance, but it’s still sitting in my gut like a lump of poorly digested hate. Or something. Maybe it’s hormonal, or the start of winter, or the time change. You choose.

Or maybe it’s all of the above PLUS my husband. There is a perfect word for him in German: Nervensäge (lit. “nerve saw”). When I’m already in a foul mood, like yesterday, he likes to push my buttons until I’m literally raging with clenched fists and gritted teeth and everything, then he says, “You’re scary.” GAHHH! He’s lucky I didn’t smother him in his sleep last night, but I always fall asleep first, so it’s not likely that is ever going to happen.

Giving Hannah a nibble on the cheek often helps me calm down, unless I have just noticed that she’s put a clean and folded pair of socks in the laundry (for the third time), or that she hasn’t put away her clean laundry and has instead thrown it on top of the tower on her play bed. GAHHH!

What else? Oh, yes. The cats’ very existence. Other drivers. Other bus passengers. That lady with a baby. That old lady. *Our downstairs neighbor*! Our new next-door neighbors. Our landlord. And a bunch of people I’m too tired to hate on right now.

Except I went to class and hopped right back on the hate-train. This jackass, who is not even officially signed up for our course, keeps jumping up and literally taking over every class (I mean, picking up a piece of chalk and drawing on the board and dominating the instructor). Hate! I’m bumping him above the neighbors on the hate-list. And he has a deep voice and makes a lot of sub-vocal comments and hmmms and ah-has, so it sounds like someone below us has the bass cranked up. I was on the verge of jumping out of my chair and throttling him, except I didn’t want to disrupt my classmate’s presentation (which this guy had already interrupted two or three times).

Let the healing begin!

Hannah the Chef

Hannah is the sweetest sweet little monkey-face! (She likes it when I call her that. Really!) She is still enamoured of the idea of becoming a restaurateur, so in furtherance of her career dreams, she offered to cook us dinner one night. The whole thing.

She planned the menu (see below), went grocery shopping with me, prepared the food (including a salad dressing from scratch), folded the napkins (into paper airplanes—unique!), set the table, lit candles, and generally provided a delightful culinary experience for us. She may have gone a bit overboard with the place settings (says the chief bottle-washer): a plate, a salad plate, and 2 bowls *each*. We ate salad, roast chicken, and mashed potatoes. There were more items of china than items of food! She also provided spaghetti eis (vanilla ice cream pushed through a press into “noodles”) for dessert. Yum!

I tried to convince her that all chefs have to train on dishwashing, too, but she didn’t believe me.

She wanted everything to be as fresh as possible, so if you ordered orange juice, you got an orange with a hole poked in it sitting atop a glass. You don’t get any fresher than that!

Menu



Putting on the finishing touches

Photos galore

Am I the only one that thinks this poinsettia is turning red(dish)?


I love the views at the end of our valley (the back of the hill where the castle is located), especially in the evening and when there’s fog. I’m tempted to do a photo essay on fog, but I’m just not a good enough photographer.







Real content soon, I hope.

In my head

I have spent most of the last four days singing the following to myself. But that’s all right, right?



Before that, it was this one:




I have finally discovered the perfect solution to my xmas music predicament: John Denver and Muppets! The great taste that tastes great together!


And for your reading enjoyment:
Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations, a newspaper reported on Sunday.


Halloween crafts made of tampons


An interview with Velvet d'Amour, a plus-size model who was in Jean Paul Gaultier's fashion show during Paris Fashion Week.

Rubbing It In

Don't hate me for living in such a beautiful corner of the world. Hate me for gloating about it. ;-p

View from our study



View from our upstairs bathroom

Teaching the Teacher

I am taking a teaching methods course and have already enjoyed our first two meetings. I’m not nervous about teaching per se—as John says, tongue in cheek, it’s one of the few jobs where people have to listen to everything *you* say, but you don’t necessarily have to listen to them. :-) And I am teaching two classes this semester on topics that I feel fully qualified to instruct others on—American English pronunciation and how to put together a presentation.

I am not quite up to terrified about teaching German, more like very, very nervous. I know my German is leaps and bounds better than when we moved here, but good enough to be able to help other people improve their German? I’m not so confident of that. Fortunately, I have from now to January to prepare for my 45-minute crack at teaching a German as a Second Language class; also, we are learning how to organize a class-hour so as to minimize any unpleasant surprises.

As part of our class, we are watching and analyzing videos of other people teaching. After we watched the first video yesterday, some people in my class were complaining that the teacher in the video didn’t give his students any rules about the grammar topic they were working on (past tense). This was a beginner-level class. They gradually worked their way up to the actual grammar topic via some introductory exercises (that were old-fashioned but surprisingly ingenious), and the way the teachers organized the lesson, the students came up with a simplified version of the grammar rule on their own, based on the earlier exercises. Some of my classmates thought the teacher should have given them the full set of “rules” regarding past tense at this point, and we debated it a bit. As I pointed out (*buffs nails on shirt*), this is not the last time in their German-learning that these students are going to work with past tense, so why overload them with rules? Maybe the teachers wanted them to have more a feel for how past tense works at this point, and then another time they can get additional examples that demonstrate some exceptions to the rule they came up with.

I came up with an analogy while walking to meet my tutee this morning. Learning a foreign language is a bit like learning to ride a bike. You wouldn’t give a 3-year-old a 27-speed mountain bike to start out. Instead, you give him something like this (which is what I saw a small child on this morning and which kick-started this train of thought):



When he gets really good at balancing and is tall enough, you move up to something a little bigger, maybe with training wheels.



It may take a while to build up to that mountain bike, and some people may never make it past 10 gears, but most people can learn to get around on a bike. Same thing with a foreign language. You can’t expect a person to be able to handle a whole pile of rules right away; you have to give him a chance to find his balance and get familiar with this new way of doing things.


Well, duh!
To Lower Costs, Hospitals Try Free Basic Care for Uninsured (NY Times)

The Wheels on the Bus

All I wanted on Wednesday was to get from point A to point C via point B, but that was the point at which Mr. Itinerant Preacher Crazy Man got on the bus. His non-stop diatribe really killed my enjoyment of being squashed between the window on one side and 80 other standing passengers on the other. At least we got the entertainment of catching each others’ eye and cracking up.

Mr. IPC Man was in fine form: (translated from the German) “G is for God. God is great, ja ja. G is also for great. God is good, which also starts with G, ja ja. This is NOT about Hitler!” And so on and so forth.

By the time we got to my stop, I had prayed more in the 6 minutes he was on the bus than in the last 20 years. I was able to tune him out a little by thinking, “Christ Jesus and Baby Jesus! Get me off this bus!”

The next morning, I was forced to partake of a fellow bus rider’s iPod playlist. I didn’t really want to be at a funky disco bus party; I just wanted to sit and be surly as usual.

Thursday afternoon was a bit better, bus-wise. One stop after I got on, a whole kindergarten got on the bus (in Germany, kindergarten = pre-school/daycare and not the grade before 1st grade), so there were about 40 kids, toddlers up to about age 4. Cute! I shared my seat with the two tiniest, and one of them fell asleep on me. I had forgotten how tiny they can be. I actually ended up riding one stop further so I wouldn’t have to trample my way through kinders or wake up the little punkin on my arm.

***

When we moved here, I planned to be done with my master’s degree in 4 years. Looking recently at the list of coursework I had completed and had left to complete, I saw that I would be able to finish all my coursework by the end of next summer semester, right on time. Except I wouldn’t be able to *get* my master’s by then, because you can only apply for admission to candidacy (basically) once all the coursework is complete and grades are turned in; at that point you can write your thesis and take your exams (2 5-hour written exams and 2 1-hour oral exams—ouch!), which you have a total of 12 months to do. So even if I finished all the coursework as early as possible, I would not be able to complete the other requirements by the end of the summer semester.

This put me in a bit of a conundrum. If by conundrum you mean a day-long crying jag. Should I go on bended knee to the department head and try to get her to pull some strings for me? Which meant I would have to cram in the coursework, thesis, exams, and quite probably packing up our household into one semester. Just thinking about it makes me want to die. Or should I drop out?

Finally, I realized that although the MA after my name would be nice, it doesn’t define who I am and wouldn’t guarantee me the job of my dreams later. So I have decided to continue with some of the coursework (dropping one upper-division class, whew!) that would be most useful to me in the case that I had the chance to teach German in the future (a teaching methods course plus student teaching, a course on second language acquisition, and a conversation course). I woke up the next morning feeling a sense of total-body relief (you know it if you’ve felt it). If events conspire to keep us in Germany longer, then I will finish up. If not, then I still haven’t wasted my time here.

***

I needed to get out and stretch my legs today, so fall photos from our village here.

***

Furniture made out of books! Why didn’t I think of that!?

How do I love lists? Let me count...

Now that the semester and “real life” have started up again, I am back in list-making mode. You all know that I love me a list, uh huh, but I just realized recently that I am a really sucky list-maker. Here’s an item from my Palm To-Do list: “Start reading for class.” How helpful is that? When can I consider that item completed? 2 pages into the text? 5 pages? It has finally occurred to me that I have to be specific, and I am allowed to break jobs down into their constituent parts, which means more things on the to-do list, but the list gets whittled down faster because I am not waiting for one big thing to be completely finished. So that list item became “Read Chapter 1.” Much better.

John is one of those people who has a routine, and he deals with new things by making a routine out of them. That is *really* hard for me to do. Taking my vitamins? Sporadic. Forcing the poinsettia? Thank the seven dwarfs the days are getting shorter anyway, because I often forget to cover that puppy until it is already dark out. List-making is one way I deal with this; if it is on the list, at least I am reminded of it once a day at a minimum. We’ll see how smoothly this semester goes with my new outlook on lists.


Gnome-fanciers unite!
“Man vows to fight garden gnome arrest threat”

I first read about this in a German magazine!
World’s Ugliest Dog Contest

“In contrast to an earlier finding, it does not appear children who watch a lot of television wind up with behavior problems in school, researchers reported Monday.”

Christmas in October

Germans already have Fasching/Carnival for their big dress-up holiday, so they don’t really do Halloween except for the occasional costume party for adults here or there. That would explain why the xmas cookies and candy are already on the shelves at the grocery store—there aren’t any buffer holidays like Halloween or Thanksgiving (in September in Germany) to slow down the train-wreck of xmas advertising.

Personally, it doesn’t matter to me what time of year it is, any time is good for humming xmas songs. I like the tacky songs, while John is more a religious-carol-type guy. I don’t think my love of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" is going to jinx our relationship, but it does put a cramp in our holiday music buying.

Last year in December, I went into a Starbucks for the first and only time—a classmate invited me, I swear!—and not only did I drink a large cup of their coffee, I also bought a CD of xmas music. I felt my soul shrivel even smaller than usual on that day, but the CD turned out to be not quite what I was looking for, so that made me feel better. Here’s what I got:



Sleigh Full of Songs
1. I Like a Sleighride (Jingle Bells), Peggy Lee
2. Deck the Halls, Nat King Cole
3. Winter Wonderland, Dean Martin
4. The Christmas Waltz, Nancy Wilson
5. Do You Hear What I Hear?, Bing Crosby
6. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Aimee Mann
7. 2000 Miles, Holly Cole
8. The Little Drummer Boy, Lou Rawls
9. Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, Lena Horne
10. Merry Christmas, Baby, Charles Brown
11. Silver Bells, Wayne Newton
12. O Come All Ye Faithful, Ella Fitzgerald
13. Peace on Earth / The Little Drummer Boy, David Bowie & Bing Crosby

I realize that practically every recording artist prior to 1980 recorded at least one xmas song—my mom had complete albums of xmas music by Elvis and Jim Neighbors--but I’m not too keen on some of the artist/song combinations on my Starbucks album. In theory, I find it awesome that David Bowie and Bing Crosby did a duet, but in *practice*? Meh.

So if I were to compile a perfect xmas album—and this might be perfectly within my means via the magic of the Internet—here is what I would require, but not by any particular artist (I find that generic is usually better):

Sleigh Ride
We Wish You a Merry Christmas
Up on the House-Top
Jolly Old Saint Nicholas
All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth
Jingle Bells
Jingle-Bell Rock
Walkin’ in a Winter Wonderland
Let it Snow
Silver Bells
Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town
Frosty
Rudolph
Blue Christmas
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer

Any additions? n.B. This is the camp-only list. Non-campy songs should go to John.

Speaking of xmas, has anyone successfully "forced" a poinsettia? Mine is 2 or 3 years old, and this year I am covering it with a black trash bag 6 pm to 8 am. After 3 weeks of this, one leaf looks a little blotchily red; the only other impact I can discern is that other leaves are turning yellow and dropping off. I don’t know if that might be due to changes in watering patterns after I brought it inside, being enclosed in plastic half the day, or being man-handled into the bag twice a day. Otherwise it looks mostly healthy (once I cut off a branch that had some kind of boils on its bark). According to the web site I linked to above, the whole process can take about 8 weeks; I’ll keep you posted.

New to Nee

I come across a lot of interesting things via my Internet reading, but I am loathe to forward them via email, because it seems like the modern version of my grandmother the bag lady clipping and mailing bits out of the newspaper. But since I have a blog, where people can decide for themselves whether they want to follow a link, I can put up items of interest whenever I like. Ha ha ha!

John is the real debater in our family. He can formulate a position and make logical arguments, and he doesn't get all worked up the way I do usually (depending on the topic and the other person). So for now, I will put up links with a short bit from the text itself, and maybe a quick explanation in case the topic is more controversial, and save the personal commentary.

My first article is from the New York Times (you probably have to be registered to read, but it is free--I've used it for about 5 years, no prob):

Married couples, whose numbers have been declining for decades as a proportion of American households, have finally slipped into a minority, according to an analysis of new census figures by The New York Times.

Halloween, part 3

I think I’ve already mentioned that Hannah and I wanted to make a Halloween version of a gingerbread house since we will be in Texas at xmas-time this year. Yesterday we got busy and put one together. (1)



Here are our building blocks. I made the dough from scratch out of an xmas-themed German cookbook; Hannah designed the house, and I made a pattern for cutting out the pieces. Then I whipped up some “mortar” made of egg whites and powdered sugar.



I can’t remember if this is before or after the house fell apart on us. I think it is the first assembly. Here’s a tip, if you should ever want to build your own g-bread house: let the walls set before putting on the roof—it is surprisingly heavy and will knock the whole structure down if the mortar is still wet.



Here is a front view of the finished product. Note how the edges of the walls curved while baking, so we had to fill in the gaps with lots of mortar and candy, “so the rats can’t get in,” said Hannah. Here’s another tip: be careful while adding the baking powder, or the walls will end up much puffier and rounded than you intended.



Here is a back view. Hannah didn’t really like the sugar-egg glue, so she pulled apart some Brach’s Halloween candies and used those to attach additional decorations onto the back wall since it was looking a little bare.



This morning Hannah got out some marzipan and sculpted a witch and a broom out of it. She got them to stick to the front of the house by impaling them on a toothpick. Gruesome!

(1) John is so sweet. He thought it was ingenious and original to come up with a Halloween version of the xmas favorite, but I had to disabuse him of that idea. A google search came up with 434,000 hits for "Halloween gingerbread house" and 125,000 hits "+kit". At least I didn’t try to market the idea, because some of the kits are really cool.

Nee: Entertaining and Informing Since 2004

I have a bunch of photos I wanted to put up, so consider this post educational.



This scary item is Mortadella sausage for children. See how the package looks all cute and slightly appetizing, while the reality makes you glad it is going to be smothered in ketchup and covered with bread? Hannah specifically asked for this lunch meat.



To the uninitiated, this may just look like a bucket of water. But for your information, it is the amount of water that comes out of 1 week's worth of whites and underwear in our condensation dryer.



(Sorry for the blur.) This is the one and only bud to form this year on the xmas cactus I bought last winter. I had been watching it diligently for about a week, giving the plant plenty of water and verbal encouragement, but one morning I found the bud lying in the pot. I don't know if it dropped or if a cat had anything to do with its untimely removal, but I was slightly heartbroken. The other xmas cactus has bloomed regularly ever since I got it (hell, it has flowers and buds on it right now), but I had high hopes for new hot-pink flowers.



Halloween, Part 1. Hannah was in charge of drawing on the jack-o-lantern's face. We are not going to carve it until closer to the 31st, because I hate having a pumpkin deflate before the big day. Doesn't this guy look dapper? I think he just needs a beret and a cigarette in one of those long holders.



Halloween, Part 2. The other side of the pumpkin is a bit abraded, probably from lying on the ground, so Hannah couldn't make face 2 opposite face 1. This is a girl face (note the long hair), but to me, it still looks like a clown.

Ding Dong, The Paper's Dead

So I turned in my paper yesterday. It's basically garbage, but at least it is gone. I got off the bus to go to my department 25 minutes after the last page came off the printer, and things I meant to put in the paper started popping in my head. Also, a better conclusion. Also, a better section on paranoia. At this point, I will take a C and a note to never enter his classroom again. That is how sick of it I am.

On the plus side, I found this lovely line in Underworld that just really clicked in my brain:

...and he bucketed up to the bar car, filled with people who more or less resembled Charlie, give or take a few years and a few gray hairs and the details of their evilest dreams.

Even after reading it several times, it gives me a shiver.

My daughter has a mouth on her that would please my mother to no end (her and that "mother's curse" and all). I rubbed Hannah's cheek, and she claimed I scratched her with my "old lady skin". It's not that bad, yet! So now I feel no compunctions against bringing up her flabby armpits and stinky feet. Take that, young one!

You asked for it!

I hadn’t realized how much like a transsexual I was starting to look until I tried to take a hair photo this morning. Yikes! The photo below is the best out of about 5 or 6 attempts, sadly enough.



And I had been thinking about posting a grey update anyway, so here is the new photo, taken in natural light in the sunroom:



And here is a photo from almost exactly a year ago:



I knew the shorter hair would show up the grey, but it still makes me a little sad to see how *mature* I look. *sigh*

15 minutes

That's how long I have until John and Hannah get home and want some dinner! So I must blog fast-ly and furious-ly (but not like that crappy Vin Diesel movie *shudder*).

I am still writing on my paper. I know. Don't say it. I am plugging along with an outline and everything. I have a sneaking suspicion the whole thing might be garbage, but it's too late now!

Hannah and I want to make a gingerbread house, Halloween style, but one of the main ingredients is only available at the whole foods store. Despite that setback, we forged on with making Halloween cookies!



Hannah was actually only home for mixing the dough and cutting out one batch of pumpkins, but I put her to work frosting the un-candied cookies the next day:



She's got to earn that allowance somehow! (Wow--how exclamation-mark heavy can this post get?)

I have been very dissatisfied with my hair lately. It is tiresome always picking up one-and-a-half foot long hairs that I've shed, so in the grand tradition of my grandmother, I picked up a pair of scissors this morning and gave my hair a good whack. Goodbye, hair! It turned out pretty good for being self cut; even John was impressed. Now if I can just keep it out of my eyes...

Navel: It's What's for Gazing

I realized last night as I couldn't sleep that my recent "Shame" posts are what is known as the opposite of helpful. All this online self-flagellation is not actually helping me to write; it's just providing a distraction that I had mentally labeled as acceptable.

John needed to work on the computer this morning, which sent me to the table with paper and pencil, and I actually got a lot done. Today I feel like I'm in a better place mentally for working, so that's what I am aiming for: steady progress. Slow and steady wins the race, right?

The Shame Game--Tuesday, Part 3

(What a waste of a 400th post, eh?)

I make a little headway on my paper, then I flounder a bit. And I hate the whole thing.

I would rather be watching movies with Hannah (and I did stop to watch part of a Jimmy Neutron movie--the shame!), but instead I flail about on my paper, then take a break to help Hannah with her tooth-removal efforts, or get a snack, or more coffee, or go to the bathroom.

John is working like a fiend upstairs, and I...mmm...not so much. Rats.

The Shame Game--Tuesday, Part 2

It's 2:30. I have almost 4 pages of paper, plus bibliography, plus a couple more pages of hand-written graphs that won't be included with the paper, so why the hell did I do them after all?

John is diligently plugging away on his reading.

Since I last checked in, I have fed Hannah lunch, ate an apple and some peanut butter, taken a shower, made more coffee, washed a load of towels (in the dryer), and checked out Hannah's Polly Pocket plane that she made herself. And written a bit on my paper, but probably not enough to finish the goddamned thing today.

Feeling frustrated and ready to give up. Why did I think a paper about a book *827* pages long was a good idea?!

The Shame Game, Tuesday--Part 1

So here we are again. It is 11:30, and I am just getting started. I slept in, despite John's attempts to boot me out of bed starting at 9. I got Hannah up, started reading my email, cooked breakfast, finished reading email, and now I am going to work on my paper.

It has been raining for 2 days, and Hannah has a mild cold, and John is leaving for a conference on Thursday, so he has a bunch of reading and preparing to do for his presentation at said conference. I put Hannah on the couch and turned on the tv. We usually try to limit her tv intake, but today I will just add that to the shame list.

Shame Me Once...

John and Hannah got home, so we fixed a quick salad dinner, and now I'm back to looking at what I was doing when they got here.

I'm at the bottom of page 3, plus some notes on page 4. I had already abandoned the computer for my notebook and novel before the monkeys got home, and I think that's what I'll continue to work on this evening, but no all-nighter. That is never helpful.

I will check in tomorrow morning when I get rolling.

Self-Shaming Update

I had to take a quick break to empty the dryer (but not fold the clothes!), so here is the update:

I have another 3 paragraphs or so. In one hour. But considering that the novel I am writing about is 827 pages long, and even with a whole pad of post-its marking pages in the novel itself and about 15 pages of notes, it can sometimes be difficult to find what I am looking for. But the ideas are there. An outline would be nice, but I don't know if I am that far.

Onward and upward!

Oh! The Shame!

My paper is still not done. I wrote my professor over the weekend and told him I would turn it in today, but it is 4:30, and I barely have 2 pages. Tomorrow is a national holiday, so the department won't be open, but that is a lame excuse for putting off finishing the damn thing.

John has been really supportive and tries to give me positive reinforcement, but it is obviously not working. He and Hannah went into town to run some errands and see a movie (and give me uninterrupted time to work), but I am such a jerk, I am not getting much done.

So! I am going to have to take up the slack and shame myself into working. Here, for all the internet to read and tsk tsk at me. Feel free to tsk tsk in the comments, or just aloud when you read this. I will report back regularly today as I work.

Excuses, excuses

1. Check out Hannah's new video.

2. No new blog-love for a few days until I finish my literature paper. Being the smug smart-ass that I am, I started too late, and now am both super-late and stuck.

3. Hannah has no school on Monday or Tuesday (Reunification Day), so maybe there will be hijinks to report on.

Out of the Mouth of my Babe

"I think I got rid of the toe fairy. First she was in my toe, then I accidentally shook her out in my shoe, then she climbed up in my sock, but there was sweat in there and not-so-good-smelliness, and she cracked." (accompanied by a finger across the throat)

"The toe fairy has 50 daughters"--she had one a year starting at age 50, according to Hannah, so more toe fairies might move in later.

In Germany.1 (a series)

In Germany, there is no grape jelly, or corn tortillas, or pecans.

We can buy plum jelly, flour torts, and walnuts, which are all fine in their own right, but it’s just not the same.

Also, no Kraft Mac n Cheese.

Cookie Crisp—yes.

Rotel—no.

Peanut butter—yes.

Molasses—no.

As you can guess, we have a much healthier diet than when we lived in Texas, mostly due to the lack of Tex-Mex ingredients.

Of course, German cuisine is not renowned for its low-fat-ness (cf. 800-ish varieties of sausage, about 20 varieties of fried pork, i.e. Schnitzel, and countless brands of beer), but we don’t actually cook German at home much, so it balances out.

This is not a cry for people to mail us American food—far from it. That shit is heavy (i.e., expensive to mail), and we can always put our most brazen face forward and ask our neighbors who work on the Am. military base to pick us up a few things at the commissary. We just don’t, so that is our own problem.

No, this is just a small whine about the junky junk-food that we love and miss and will whole-heartedly embrace when we are back in the States.

Another tacky Nee quote

"If we're made in God's image, he could really use an Epilady."

Moody Mom

I had forgotten that Depressive Irritable Nee tends to accompany Super-Manic Nee. They’re kind of like conjoined twins. My mood was not helped today by losing a piece of paper from our bank that I kind of needed. I was able to order a new one, but I didn’t until I had torn apart the study looking for it. That and a sense of not-accomplishing-anything-useful today and some serious absent-mindedness have put me in a foul mood. Fortunately, I can remedy it somewhat by cranking Smashing Pumpkins in the kitchen while I cook dinner and drink mint tea. Droning, loud, noisy music makes me happy.

I am in such a bad mood that I am throwing away my lists, because they just make it worse. Usually they help me get a grip, but I just might lose it if I have to look at another one.

While I was cutting Hannah’s hair, she was already formulating plans for using it. First she tried to talk her dad into using a chainsaw to cut some small pieces off the walking stick he is carving.



Once she realized that wasn’t going to happen, she took matters into her own hands. She found some cardboard—crap! I meant to take that to the recycling center today—to fashion a handle out of, a chunk of her own (pre-cut) hair, some tape, and presto! She has a paintbrush. Here is the first artwork it has produced.

Titleless

One big, blinking clue that something has gone south re: my IUD (the kind plus hormones) is the return of Super-Manic Nee (TM). To wit, once I was able to sit still today, I could not shut up. When there’s been no one to talk to, I’ve written blog posts and revised on a story. And even worked on my paper, which I’ve otherwise been aggressively avoiding.

Hannah has been watching too much Ren and Stimpy lately. She was talking about the episode where Ren loses all his teeth and the Tooth Beaver comes and gnaws on his nerve endings. She somehow used this as the basis for assuming the existence of the Toe Fairy, who causes toe pain. What happens is that if I clip Hannah’s toenails too short, the toe fairy can climb in there “easierlier” and eat the stuff from under your toenail. I am much too dumb to make this stuff up myself, you know.

Ironically, Hannah lost a tooth just a couple of days after this statement. She asked me straight out for her buck, because she knows “all about the tooth fairy.” And she vows that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are next. So I handed her a buck in change, and she handed me her tooth. But when I reached out to drop the tooth in the trash, she swapped it back. She didn’t like the idea of her *medical waste* going in the garbage. So she’s saving it for John’s dad. bwa ha ha ha! (1)

(1) John’s dad is an unreformed pack rat and sentimentalist. In a box he gave us from his garage, I found John’s *umbilical cord* and his brother’s *baby teeth*. I don’t think I will ever forgive John’s dad for that, but it makes me indescribably happy to think that Hannah will be returning the favor for me.

Like any conscientious student, Hannah has broken in her new notebooks by defacing the illustrations in them. In the people-drawings, this entails the adding of antennae, glasses, and beards—pretty straightforward stuff. (2) But she had to get a bit more creative when it came to the handout with the alpacas on it. Her solution was take a cute little alpaca about like this:




and draw a few curlicues around its face, then add a shiny necklace, a cursive version of this:



The result was pimptastic! (But difficult to photograph, hence the approximation.)

(2) She just showed me an “embellishment” that was the special eye-gear and breathing apparatus for an alien, and then proceeded to tell me the alien’s life story. I told her to just get on with her math homework.

The Many Faces of Hannah

Hannah's first day of school was today, and boy, did her classmates get a surprise! See if you can spot the difference:



And the before photo:

How do I love thee, Consumerism?

Hannah’s head is full of the glamours of shopping these days. Which is funny, because when I take her shopping—for instance, for school clothes—she acts like I have devised a new method of torture involving a bank card and a department store.

I blame her infatuation on the Barbie web site. Most of the games and video clips revolve around malls and shopping. *gag* I try to point out the vapidity of the whole set-up, but she won’t hear a word against her beloved Barbie overlord web site.

But she also has a friend whose family is in a much higher income-tax bracket than us, and who have a correspondingly more friendly attitude to consumerism. I myself am not completely opposed to buying things, but

1. we live in a smallish apartment that would fill up quickly,
and 2. I firmly believe in living within your means.

Besides, past evidence has shown that Hannah loves and plays with new toys for about 2 days before they are relegated to the toy heap under her play-bed. So it seems silly to keep adding to the heap, especially since I’m the only one who ever tackles the heap to prevent it from taking over her whole room.

That being said, I like to see the kinds of things that are available to buy, or that other people have bought. For instance, I saw a woman wearing sandals with a spring where the heel would normally be. *A spring.* Considering the oddly stiff way she was walking, I don’t think the spring was really adding to the comfort-level and wearability of the sandals.

I’m sure that old-school Adidas wouldn’t have those issues, but the pair I saw in Kermit-green with Mr. The Frog himself on them might drive the wearer mad or temporarily blind. When looking for the above link, I discovered that they also sell a Miss Piggy version. I like my Muppets, the seven dwarves know, but that is just going too far.

The one item I coveted desperately, but that disappeared from the window display by the following week, was a set of yard-gnome candles. One was pink and the other apple-green. They were full-sized, so about 10 inches tall. If anyone spots a yard-gnome cookie jar, let me know, because that would satisfy two of my shopping cravings in one go.

Addendum to "Our Girl"

I knew there was at least one other thing I wanted to add to my last post, but I was starting to get a little frayed around the edges and didn't manage to think of it that night. In the meanwhile, I found some notes I had jotted down, and it has all come back to me.

When we were at Legoland, there was a room with tables covered in Legos for their visitors' building pleasure. John started building a car. *ho hum* I started building a house. *thunk* (the sound a someone falling unconscious from dullness) Hannah built a phone booth. With 2 phones, so it was more like a call center.

Also at Legoland, Hannah attracted the stares of the people we were walking behind when she described how she wanted to live in a mansion when she grows up. A mansion set in the middle of a shopping center just for her. *Where did I go wrong as a mother?* Her idea of a good job that would fund all of this was President of the United States. I had to disabuse her of that notion quickly. President pays ok, but not mansion-buying ok.

Hannah and her friend, the cooking duo, found the recipe for "spice soup" they had previously concocted and decided to have another go at it. Except this time they thought it would make a good base for bread. Not wanting to let them loose with flour in my kitchen, I agreed to come help them make pancakes instead. They turned out a little crepe-y, but still surprisingly tasty, considering their origins. They were like a savory version of pancakes, or like seasoned naan bread (Indian). Hannah even ate the leftovers for a couple of breakfasts, which she is otherwise morally opposed to. Now I just have to figure out a way to get her excited about cooking what *we* want to eat, and I can resign from my post as chief cook.

Our Girl

... is a very, very, very weird girl. In the car on the way to Sweden, she got to thinking about Harry Potter. She says his uncle and aunt should be named Vermin and Clunia (which is an Asian clown, according to her). Perhaps.

She is a bit paranoid these days about bees and wasps, not because *I* was stung by one, but because she thinks she herself has been “pinched” or “bitten” by one a couple of times now. I haven’t noticed any giant red boils on her anywhere, so I doubt it. A few days ago she managed to use a Pringles can to catch a wasp that was in her room. I told her to put it on the balcony, and I would let it out later after it had calmed down (not wanting another sting myself). Except I forgot. The next day there was a slightly dead wasp in the Pringles can. Despite her fear of living wasps, she felt nothing but pity for the dead one. Hence the wasp grave on our balcony.



Sometimes I feel like I just can’t win with Hannah. In the course of cleaning her room (which is finally done, thank the seven dwarves), Hannah has been reintroduced to the large number and variety of her toys. She dug right into the Polly Pockets and came up with new and glamorous sartorial choices for those little blobs of plastic and rubber. She held one of her concoctions up and asked what I thought. “Pretty.” She thought Polly looked more like a homeless child.

John has been reading Hannah The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy at bedtime. I think Zaphod Beeblebrox is her favorite character. Every time some alien shows up unannounced, which happens fairly often, she says, “Zaphod Beeblebrox?” before he can finish the sentence. This may explain a lot about her in the future.

Cookie Cookie Cookie Starts with C

I think I poked fun at the tea-set-shaped cookie cutters before, but I bought them anyway.



To complement them, zoo animals, including a lion, a hippo, a moose, a camel, an elephant, and a giraffe. We only realized we were out of powdered sugar for glaze when the second batch was already in the oven, so we had to make do with some disturbingly shiny sprinkles.



Speaking of moose, there were signs on all the roads in southern Sweden to watch out for moose. I am kicking myself that I didn't get a photo, but they are all over the Internet. Anyhoo, rather than read my rather boring book on the drive home, I stared into the woods, trying to spot a moose. At one point, I saw an animal that was noticeably smaller than a moose, but I thought it might be a baby moose and was starting to get excited. Until I realized that it was a dark grey standard poodle. Accompanying its owner, who was wearing hunting gear. A poodle as a hunting dog??? Swedes are weird.

I Love My Husband

... except when I want to throttle him. This morning I cleaned the kitchen--vacuumed and mopped, and scrubbed the fronts of all the cabinets. I don't know what he was off doing, but it didn't make it onto his radar. After Hannah and I had made cookies this afternoon, I was lamenting the state of my freshly mopped floor.

John: "You mopped this morning?"
Me: "Yes."
John: "I was wishing the floor would get mopped."
Me: bust out laughing

He's lucky I have the sense of humor I do, or he would have been dead meat. I guess my response offset my super-bitchy attitude this morning. I don't do mornings, and John was being all chipper and awake, and he expected me to be the same, and that just chapped my ass.

I have a paper to write by the end of the month--procrastination, thy name is Nee--but I have been too busy to work on it much. I have been engaged in the domestic equivalent of putting a pillow over my head and humming loudly. I've been quilting, balancing our bank account, going to the library, cleaning--oh dear dwarfs, Hannah's room was on the verge of being condemned; I found a half-eaten marshmallow cookie while cleaning in there. Hannah has been fussed at quite a bit today, and she has commanded me to report that she called herself a pile of doo-doo. I only told her that she was just getting herself deeper into the doo-doo with her bad attitude and poor hygiene, not that she actually *was* doo-doo. Just want everyone to be clear on that.

I've been kicking around on one of my short stories, with a little success, but I doubt it will be in form to send to any editors before school starts in about a month. Maybe I will have a flash of inspiration, but it is more likely to be a flash of annoyance.