Tragedy!

During my blogging black-out last month, Hannah and I ran out to grab a few groceries. She entertained herself on the way back out to the car by figuring out how many days until her birthday. 40. (Which makes it exactly 20 days ago.) She thought it was tragic she'd have to wait that long. She actually used the word "tragic". Me: "No, it's tragic if you *die* before your birthday." She didn't get the distinction.

I also had to make a quick trip to the drugstore for a few things. There, I was profoundly disturbed by my purchases. Yes, I found everything on my list, but the packaging was just *wrong*: the TP was white! The shower gel was in a different bottle! And worst of all--the toothpaste came in a pump. Why?! Why have you forsaken me, Colgate marketing department? I wasn't emotionally prepared for the experience, let me tell you.

Here's a bit I accidentally left out of my account of our foray into folk dancing:
We had been doing this dance with a turn on the ball of the foot. A variant has you turning on your heel, so we were practicing that individually before inflicting ourselves on a partner. The instructor's wife was putting her leg out, heel down, in a weird squatting way that reminded me of a duck. And I just about lost it.
Nee's brain: "Oh my God--if I start quacking and laughing, I will never stop!"
I didn't want John's German-Swedish club friends thinking they'd saddled themselves with a president whose wife was a nutball, so I made a heroic effort to nip it in the bud, but it was hard with the duck-lady standing right next to me.

And in that vein:
I crawled in Hannah's bed one morning to wake her up, because I was too lazy to stand next to it, and I was doing my usual wake-up routine of poking and tickling when she asked me if I had rabies. "Nope, I'm like this naturally." I'm thinking about adding it to my banner up there, because she's not the first person I've had to explain this to. The last time was to our American neighbor who had come over for drinks and games. We got really silly, and then she realized I wasn't even drinking. *g*

I got a job!

...as a student employee/proofreader. With my tutoring gig, I will be working about 10 hours a week, plus taking two upper-division courses. I think that is the perfect division of work/study: just enough that neither will make me crazy, and not so much that it eats into my family time. I am looking forward to being around other people more and being useful outside the house. Having a job and all that entails was an important part of my life back in Austin, and I have been kind of missing it. I can't wait to start!

Spring Fling

It has finally come home to me that keeping myself cooped up trying to force myself to do something I am not really all that gung-ho about doing (like a certain term paper) makes Nee a dull girl, one who sits and drools instead of writing. Rather than sit and stare out the window at the lovely scenery, I finally gave myself permission to wander out for my seasonal photo-taking. I may have waited a little late, so the flowers aren’t quite as glorious as last week, but better late than never.

And to prove the point above, yesterday I hand-wrote 6 or 7 pages on my paper, even with a two-hour break to run errands in town with Hannah.

This whole year so far has been warmer than average, a fact I have appreciated considerably, but I feel a little guilty about it. First, some people like snow and missed it this year. (I call those people “crazy”, but whatever.) Second, the warm temperatures have not been accompanied by the normal amount of moisture, so the farmers are worried about their crops this year. And the forest rangers are worried about forest fires. Coming from Texas (and with friends and family in desert West Texas), it seems kind of weird for Germany to be having the same concerns that are a perennial plague to the southern and western parts of America.

Not for the squeamish

We haven’t spotted any meal moths lately. John declared that we had them licked, but not wanting to bring down the retribution of the moth-gods on our heads, I pointed out that he shouldn’t count his larvae until they’ve hatched. But in reverse, I guess.

I realized on Tuesday that my last period started 40 days prior. (BTW, I started my period on Wednesday.) To head off hyperventilation, I got out my handy-dandy calendar and started doing some counting. Apparently the month before my cycle was about 37 or 38 days (February being short and all). So even though I am still having two weeks of light bleeding, the time in between is getting longer. I know that the IUD I have is supposed to make me lose less blood, but I thought my period would be shorter and lighter. No one said anything about having a 6-week-long cycle. Now, a 6-MONTH-long cycle--that I could live with.

I had this whole long post written up about three near-misses with lice this year, but who wants to read about lice. Suffice it to say, Hannah actually did get treated and all her clothes, bedding, and toys boiled, but we don’t think she really had lice, just dandruff and/or allergies. Of course, all that happened when I was trying to devote large chunks of uninterrupted time to writing my paper, so it just added to my sense of being doomed, paper-wise.

The poinsettia is dead. It fell victim to the zeal of an amateur gardener. But now that frees up its pot for some other victims...I mean, plants.

Life in the Fast Lane

On his last ever visit to Chez Nee, the Easter Bunny brought Hannah a computer game, The Sims. It has taken her a while to get the hang of it. So far she's had a man who hates his wife, a man who fell asleep on the bathroom floor, a family that almost starved to death, and a couple of house fires. Now she's moved up to a biting hamster and a job as a subway musician. (And another kitchen fire just now.) Sims has probably passed TV as her favorite pasttime. We don't know if that's actually an improvement. :-)

Uninvited Guest

So we had this, uh, visitor, living up under the roof of our balcony. Can you spot him?



There were little bits of poop on the balcony, but I wasn't sure if they were left over from last year's guest(s), or if they were fresh, and I wasn't about to check for freshness.

After our visitor had been roosting up there a few days, I decided to study on the balcony and soak up some morning sunlight. I would just pretend he wasn't there, just like I do the cats. Missy Cat came out on the balcony and was meowing, but I ignored her since she had just been fed. Then I realized our little guest had switched sides and was squeaking wildly. I figured that since he was still up in a crevice, he'd be safe from the predations of Missy. Except for some reason only fathomable to bats, he got within paws' reach of our Great Brown Hunter. John came upstairs and made Missy spit out the bat. After taking a breather, the little bat decided that maybe this just wasn't the place for him and flew away. I haven't seen him since. Godspeed, little vermin.

Ain't no sunshine when you're gone

I have been going through some hard-core blog withdrawal. I've tried to be a good girl and devote all my spare time to my paper (still not done *dies*), but it is making me kind of crazy. So rather than shoot my wad all at once, so to speak, I will drop in here and leave mini-posts about this and that that have occurred since my last post, which given the amount of time that has passed, has been quite a lot.

Also, I will save time by typing and posting without editing. You have been warned.

Since John is so gung-ho about all things Swedish, he signed us up to have an intro class in folk dancing (offered by one of the members of the German-Swedish club). We made arrangements for Hannah to spend the night with a friend because the dancing started at 8, which is normally when we start Hannah's bedtime routine. (Every weeknight event starts at 8 here, for some reason.) Then we flung ourselves around and stepped on people's toes for about an hour.

I haven't danced in ages, since back when I was in junior high and joined a local square dance club with the family of one of my friends. John and I got split up since we were beginners, but I had a good time anyway, even dancing with a relative stranger. I was sore the next morning, especially my upper arms, but I survived. I would be interested in doing it again, but the time is so stupid, and we'd have to drive across town into the Bermuda Triangle area. Oh well, maybe when Hannah is a little older and can stay home alone or can stay up later.

Checking In

So let’s see...
Paper—unfinished
Cold—lingering
Moths—undefeated
John—supine
Hannah—bored
Groceries—dwindling
Laundry—teetering

As you can tell, it’s all fun and games at Chez Nee. Actually, I had to take time out to address the last 2 items on the list. John gets unhappy when he has to wear the dregs underwear, and all of us like to eat.

My cold is hovering on the edge of the coughing stage, and I HATE coughing. I think I would rather give birth than have a lingering cough. Chunk-expulsion is bad enough on its own, but then there’s the rib and back soreness, the throat rawness, and sleep-coughing. The anticipation is almost as bad as the actual suffering, so I wish it would just get on with it if it’s going to so I can get on the mend.

I loaded up on cough drops recently, nice herbal ones we’ve used before. The lemon ones are lemon-y (duh!), but the sage ones have the annoying tendency to taste like Italian sausage pizza topping for about 5 minutes after being popped in my mouth. Not a taste I associate with healing.

We have seen a couple of moths around that we managed to squash, but to add insult to injury, I found 2 worms up under the edge of a metal lid on a jar of red cabbage the other night. There are no words, even made-up ones, to convey my horror and disgust at such a discovery. John pointed out that they couldn’t have got at the food inside because of the seal, and that they were only up under there because they prefer tight places. That may be true, but it doesn’t make it any less gross. The first time I find a worm on the peanut butter jar, I’m taking a flame-thrower to the pantry.

But on the bright side, I am working in the sunroom, where it is sunny and bright and smells of freshly watered plants. My big Thanksgiving cactus is putting out buds and the little one leaves, and John’s plumbagos are a-flower. The only damper on the good times in the indoor garden is that I probably killed my poinsettia. It was getting pretty mummified, per the directions I was using, so I chopped it back and started watering it again. I may have gotten a bit carried away with the chopping, though, d’ya think?

I guess I can get a new one this Fall.

My paper... I have never doubted that I *can* write this paper (thanks to my giant ego where education is concerned), I just can’t seem to give myself the impetus to apply my butt to my chair and do it. But you know what? I *do* want to finish my degree, and I can’t move on with this stupid thing hanging around my neck. So me-time is over; back to work.

Attitude adjustment—complete.

Head-Cold of the Ages

My cold has entered the cranial evacuation phase (thanks to Hannah’s germ-breathing pillow-stealing the other night), where everything that has been hoarded in there over the last few days is now trying to make a break for freedom. My eyes feel kind of like a super-ball that was found under the couch. My sinuses feel like the end of a long summer’s day at an over-chlorinated pool. And my face is covered in so many petroleum products that I look like an oil slick.

This has not been very conducive to paper-writing, as you might have guessed. Blech!

Fraud! Fakery!

As a student, I have always felt like a bit of a fraud. On the one hand, I try to get away with coasting on my brains instead of working hard. Then when I have to take a test or write a paper, I feel like I should finally get my comeuppance (which, since I kind of believe in Karma, I totally deserve). But then I inevitably get a good grade. Like the paper I wrote last October. I finally got it back (or at least got an answer to my email to my professor about it), and I got a 1.7 on the paper and a 1.3 for the class. In Germany, grades start at the top with a 1.0 and go down to a 6. So once again, my suckitude has gone totally unnoticed! I guess I am just going to have to work harder at proving I suck.

But at least this gave me a bit of a boost for finishing the current paper, so I'll see if I manage to squeak by or get the lashing I deserve this time.

Working working working, dying dying dying...

Let's see ... at the rate I'm currently going, I'll have finished my paper by sometime in late 2009. I need to pick up the pace if I want to get this thing turned in before classes start again the third week of April.

Hannah is on Easter vacation, so of course she has a bad cold. Which means she has to sneak into my bed in the middle of the night to breathe sick germs on me and steal my pillow and generally squash me, which equals a bad night's sleep for Nee. I think I'm going to bed early, like right after posting this.

John has totally put me to shame with his stick-to-it-iveness. I think I hate him. He's spent the whole day preparing for a new class he'll be teaching this semester. What an upstanding jerk, ha ha. (Please take my sarcastic assholery with a grain of salt--I'm totally projecting onto poor John.)

Back to the mines!

*They* are the champions

Apparently I am the only lame-ass in my immediate family. John was recently voted president of the local German-Swedish club (out of a field of 1, but still), and Hannah was just accepted into her first-choice Gymnasium. We just turned in her application one week ago and weren’t expecting an answer for at least two more weeks, so it was a pleasant surprise to get the letter in the mail today.

I, on the other hand, don’t have a single word down for my paper, which was due by today. I’ve been reading and thinking, and thinking and reading, but no writing yet.

Unfortunately, my lame-assery is spreading, because all I can manage blog-wise right now is some linkitty, for your entertainment.

Some printables for kids (German site)
Each of the pictures links to a different collection (calendar pages, seasons, sports, etc.).

Children’s artwork translated into photographs (click on the arrows for the complete series)

Crass avarice (or stuff I would like to buy):
chess cookie cutters
approximate watch
parasite pals erasers
a sari
Jane Austen action figure
periodic table shower curtain

The Periodic Table of Dessert
A Scientific and Rigorous approach to patisserie -- in Full Color

Place the state game
Name all 50 states in 10 minutes

Death and Taxes poster

Stuff aimed at specific readers:
Art Garfunkel’s reading list
Chris' Eastern Screech Owl Nest Box Cam'

Photos galore

Today I will let my photos do the talking. Here are a few recent events.

Winter waited until the first day of Spring to wrap up, but I think it is over. Click on the photo for the full array of carnage.


Once Spring defeated Winter, we took advantage of the nice weather to go to a nice big park (think Zilker Park in Austin) in a neighboring town. Again, click photo for the full album.


I didn’t manage to work up a full plant-blogging post, but I did put a few recent photos together into an album (click photo).


John shows the proper way to hold up your pinkies during high tea. Hannah invited us.

Let it snow x 3

The intermittent snow of Wednesday was followed by the ceaseless snow of Thursday and Friday (where we live, at least.)

Unfortunately, it is a very wet snow that Hannah says is no good for making snowballs. Walking in it sucks, too. And tomorrow starts our week of servitude in the public areas of our house, so John will get to shovel snow (if it doesn’t melt off overnight, which is doubtful), and I will get to clean the stairs and entryway. Bleah.

I think I had mentioned the unusually warm winter we had been having up until the first day of spring. The restaurant next door to us got a bit ahead of themselves; they started working on expanding their outdoor dining area right before the snow hit. I was impressed, though—their handymen kept working despite the bad weather, and now the steel girders supporting the new wrap-around porch are already in place.

I think my iron levels have stabilized, if slightly at the low end of normal. For one thing, my eyes look a lot like those of a white rabbit—reddish around the edges. Back when I was bloodless, that part was the same color as my skin. For another thing, walking up stairs (or through slushy snow) no longer makes my leg-muscles gasp for air like a stranded whale (at least, that’s what it used to feel like).

We put in Hannah’s application to her Gymnasium of choice. She may not get accepted because they have a lot of variables they consider, some of which don’t apply to her (sibling already attending), but she had a second and third choice listed in the case she doesn’t get in to the number one choice. We feel that she will get a good education no matter which school she gets into, and we don’t plan on being here for the rest of her education (knock on wood), so it is not the end of the world if she goes to 2 or 3. We know of some parents who dislike the local choice of schools so much that their reaction to not getting into the private schools they applied to was to start considering moving to another country. *boggles*

On the first day of Spring 2007,

Mother Nature gave to me...

Snow


Sun


Snow again


Sun again


... and repeat up to now. It hasn’t been below 40F since this morning, so there was no chance of it sticking, but that doesn’t mean the weirdness of the weather was lost on us.

This was the most exciting thing to happen to us since Hannah lost a tooth last week, so you can understand the dearth of posting. Maybe I will do another gardening post in a day or 2, since that is one of the few major things I’ve been up to. (I did finally find a paper topic; writing it will be a different matter.)

Food-blogging

Happy Anniversary to Me!

I don’t know that the recipe I had for this is very close to real Black Forest Cake, but that much whipped cream can’t be wrong.

Did you know that the (GenX) 12th anniversary is gold foil?

That is one of the dangers of having an anniversary that falls within the grocery store Easter-display season.

I know that, at least in Texas, people have the impression that German sausage is the end-all, be-all. If you are talking about Bratwurst, you may have a point, as evidenced here by this prototypical German dinner of Bratwurst and Spätzle:


But the German sausage-making industry has a dark underbelly: Wurstsalat (sausage salad).

The sausage is basically strips of bologna, and the salad is made of the same ingredients for tuna salad—mayo and pickles, etc. John wanted to try it, but that was likely the first and last time.

Another German food with a reputation that is better than its actual taste (to me) is Knödel. These are basically potato dumplings. I made plain ones from a mix, but you can also fill them with meat or veggies. I thought I made them too big, even though I followed the directions on the package, but mine looked a lot like one of the pictures on the Wikipedia page I linked to above. To me, they ended up tasting like a gloppy lump of gluey potatoes.


We got out and enjoyed the first nice, warm day of spring. See John and Hannah frolic here.

Dullsville, Population 3

We have finally caught up to the 20th century. Yes, you read that right: the last century. We still don’t have a tv with a remote or a cell phone, but we do have a DVD player (2 actually—1 American and 1 European), and as of yesterday we have a cordless phone. This from a family who hooked up DSL before our computer was even delivered.

This morning I asked John if I should make a Black Forest Cake this weekend.
“Do we really need a cake?”
“Don’t you like a cake for celebrating?”
That’s when he got the deer-in-the-headlights look. I know it might seem self-serving to others, but I didn’t want him to be caught flat-footed tomorrow when there will definitely be no opportunity for him to run out and make a last-minute contribution to our anniversary festivities. I don’t actually want anything, but I want him to at least have a chance at doing something, if he wants to.

When we do our grocery shopping on Saturdays, we each get a candy bar. That is John’s idea from the Swedish tradition of “Saturday candy”. Sometimes I let Hannah get a magazine in addition to/instead of her candy, if she is with me at the store; last week it was a Barbie magazine (aargh!). During our outing last Sunday, she had it in the back seat of the car and was checking off all the items she wanted out of a mini-catalog on the back page. She tallied up her choices: 250 Euros! She asked if I would buy her everything on her list. No-o! Well, how many chores would she have to do to buy them? I would never have to lift a finger around the house again. She automatically rejected cleaning up cat barf—that would still be my job. Then she decided to try a new tactic. She pared a few items from the list. How about buying her 120 Euros worth of stuff? Still no go. She has been working on the list every time she comes across the magazine this past week.

John was tired of the moth-sex paper in the pantry, especially since he thought it was cruel to leave Wormy Little Bastard stuck on there indefinitely. WLB seemed to be getting dehydrated, etc. So John took the paper down and was going to remove WLB from his hormone-laden prison. But in doing so, he pulled WLB in half. Which is much less cruel than leaving him stuck on the pantry wall. So farewell, Wormy Little Bastard. You were a much better pet than Missy Cat, and you left Eliza Cat in the dust.

We have spent the better part of the last winter stockpiling newspapers, in the event we ever got around to buying wood for our wood-burning tile oven, which we didn’t. I was reading up on ways to form logs out of the paper, and I was planning on trying it out one of these nippy mornings. But of course it is getting steadily sunnier/warmer, so even that pitiful attempt to light up the oven just once this year is doomed to failure.

Remember the fruit seeds I saved for planting? Those are doing fine, but now John is getting in on the action with some walnuts that were sprouting in the pantry.

This one is already pretty far along; the other one is just starting to peek out from its shell. Maybe tomorrow I’ll fix up one of the window boxes with the onions that are sprouting.

School Daze

While I was making Hannah’s snack for school, she asked me not to chop up her carrot, because she likes to eat it whole.
Me: I’m just afraid it’s too hard and will snap off your teeth.
H: To me, it is as soft as a baby’s butt.

Hannah asked me to get her a training bra. I find the sports bra to be infinitely more comfortable than the regular kind, but I figured that every girl needs a traditional hook-and-lace type bra to start. She was so excited, she put it on right away. Then we went to a school open house, and she fidgeted, and pulled, and complained the whole time. “Welcome to the rest of your life,” I told her. She took it back off as soon as we got to the car.

In the German school system, instead of having one all-purpose type school that offers a wide variety of classes, they have schools that are specialized, and the children are sorted into them based on their personal strengths. Children that are strongly academically oriented go to Gymnasium (college-bound); each Gymnasium has its own orientation. We went to an open house yesterday at one that stresses foreign languages and all-around personal development. Band has not traditionally been a school subject here, but this school offers band, and for those who don’t want to participate in band, keyboard or recorder. There is also a science track at this school, but even that requires two foreign languages. Hannah really liked the school; if she went there she would take English and Latin next year (and probably keyboard), and add French in 8th grade. It’ll probably break John’s heart, but she’ll drop Swedish lessons next year.

I’ve often considered coloring my hair a la SJ, but 1. I don’t have the nerve, 2. I’m not thrilled with the idea of bleaching (i.e. frying) my hair first, and 3. I’m not sure it would take on the white hairs (which would not actually be the purpose of said dyeing). As to #3, John said maybe a rinse would work, since it works on old ladies. As much of a fuddy duddy I may be, I refuse to accelerate the process of aging by putting a purple rinse on my hair.

Homebody Nee

My poinsettia has been looking kinda sickly, so I googled up a cure. Turns out, I should have retired it after it bloomed and let it “mummify” before reviving it when the weather turns warm. (Sounds very mad scientist-ish, eh?) So I lugged it out to the balcony, where I will patiently neglect it for a while.

That little maneuver has freed up some space on the table in the sunroom, but I had to clean the sap off it before I could reclaim it for my own use. Did you know that the sap from a poinsettia can cause an allergic reaction in a large portion of the people with latex-sensitivity? Also, a poinsettia is not poisonous. As this site so helpfully puts it: “If you're going to knock the hubby off for the insurance money (there's a cheery holiday thought...), find another plant.” I love learning useful stuff off the Internet.

On one of my mad mad mad mad Spring cleaning days, I emptied the pantry (again) and pulled out the shelves (behind which I found some more larvae—AARGH!), then scrubbed everything with shower cleaner. Then I did the same thing with a small cabinet where we keep our snacks—crackers, nuts, dried fruit, popcorn—then I put everything into zipper bags and plastic containers. Now it is several days later, and I was just going to brag on our worm-free pantry (excepting Wormy Little Bastard on the flypaper, of course) when Hannah went to open a Tupperware of cereal and found a larva up under the rim. It was blocked from the actual food by the awesome power of the T-ware seal, but it *should not have been alive* in the first place. So then I had to check all the other million containers, one of which also had a foiled larva against the rim. Hannah wanted me to add the newcomers to the flypaper so she can feed them to her Venus flytrap—she just sowed the seeds 2 days ago—but I said, Hell, no! The flytrap will have to attract its own food. This isn’t a cafe, you know. It is very humiliating to be bested by a creature with only one more brain cell than George W. Bush. *zing!*

I am afraid I have gotten acclimated to the rigors of indoor gardening and pest battling; if it were to get any more exciting around here, I might have a heart attack.

Back in the Saddle Again

Avenging Unicorn Play Set: “Everyone wants an imaginary unicorn friend that they can call forth to smite their enemies.”
I never knew I wanted one, but now that I know it exists, I can’t imagine living without it.

We needed to get out of the house this weekend and stretch our legs, so we took a little day trip on Sunday. For the last 3+ years, we’ve lived a half-hour away from the town I lived in as an army brat; we visited it for the first time yesterday.

The only address I could find was from my birth certificate, so John did his Internet magic and printed out a map or 2 to help us find it. We shot right past it on our way into Darmstadt, but since we also planned to see a couple of other things south of town, we decided to check it out on our way back out.

We made our way to the city-center, which is where you usually find any sites of interest in a German town. Turns out that Darmstadt is centered around a giant shopping complex, but there were a few interesting places interspersed among the shops. Nothing looked familiar.

Once we hit the old buildings, the playground, and the ice cream shop, we found our car and headed back out of town. Due to my bad directions, we ended up making a big loop to get back to the military housing, but find it we did. We took some photos of the building number on my birth certificate, then drove along the “village” and took some random photos of buildings. They definitely looked familiar to me, but none of the surrounding area did. There was a fence around the whole thing and a couple of guard posts, which I am sure I would have remembered if they had been there when we lived there. But that was almost 30 years ago; things change.

Afterwards, we found Burg Frankenstein (Frankenstein Castle) and walked around in it and took tons of photos. My dad likes to tell about the haunted house they (used to) set up at Halloween there. Looks like they still do. I remember going there once.

Then we headed for the Felsenmeer (Sea of Boulders). We were also there when I was a kid, but the parts I remembered weren’t the way I remembered them. I guess that is normal. Unfortunately, the name didn’t ring a bell when John was planning out our trip, so I ended up tromping around in the woods and mud in these.


Up until we had to hike back up the hill to get to our car, Hannah declared it was the Best. Outing. Ever. She got to climb over boulders. She used her walking stick to christen all the more interesting ones, like Big Rock and Whale. She ran out of steam at the end, though. Her last attempt? “I dub thee ‘stupid-I-have-no-name-for-you’.”