Munchies

John discovered that the "American-style" chocolate chip cookies* at the store were only 88 cents, so he bought 2 packages. After we had hovered up most of them, there was one left, and since we are fair-minded people who knew we had had our fair share, we left it for Hannah. Only she automatically assumes we are not fair-minded, despite us telling her that we left the last cookie for her, and so we got this:



If you can't read it, it says, "Hannahs cookie Paws OFF!" This, after she licked *both sides* of the cookie in front of me.

*To be fair, they are really similar to Chips Ahoy. Usually when something is labeled American-style (or it is implied by the obvious red-white-and-blue packaging), it tends to be American in name only.

Despite her bogarting the cookie, I must tell you how much I love this girl. She was looking in a German teenie magazine and was asking about the difference in two words she thought were synonyms. Turns out, they are only very similar in meaning, just like their English counterparts--jealousy and envy. John pointed out that God says in the Bible, "I am a jealous god." Hannah asked with a straight face, "Which Bible?" I can see that 4 years of religious instruction in elementary school were not wasted on her. :^)

Finally, I got the horrible munchies this afternoon, and all there was left to eat was a very slobbery chocolate chip cookie, so I dug into the pantry and whipped up some cookies. Ingredients: butter, marzipan, flour, almond slivers for decoration. Yum! And in a serendipitous turn of events, the marzipan had been sitting, unopened, in the pantry for who knows how long, and I managed to use it up a mere week before the expiration date, without even looking at the label in advance. Not bad for a sugar-fiend.

Then I came back to my desk and finished 2 documents totaling 3 pages of loosely spaced text. Yay!

Today was rough

Really, really rough.

I talked to my mom on the phone last night and came away pissed at my almost 18-year-old nephew.

Got up and got a doctor's appointment for some minor breathing problems I've been having. I was able to concentrate and get a solid hour of work in before going to the doctor, but then I had a hard time keeping it together.

Then this afternoon, I read this entry at Regretsy, which had me a little teary, but when I got down to this comment

#22 Kate V. :
That is so incredible! I’m actually inspired to make my own urn now. My family’s lazy, and if I don’t they’ll just pour me into a coffee can.

I started bawling and couldn't stop.

I can't explain it... Shannon would have been able to put it into words...

Hannah's new look

Hannah was in the orthodontist's chair on Wednesday while I was landing in London at Heathrow. Here's the results:



She's on a soft-food diet at the moment, due more to the pressure on her teeth than to any pain, but she's handling the yoghurt drinks, soups, apple sauce, and overcooked noodles pretty well so far. Hopefully in another day or two she'll be able to chew a little better.

All of this coincides with a big pile of goodies I brought back with me at the behest of Hannah and John. Actually, my mom wanted to send John a care package for his birthday, but first we were in Sweden and then her back got all jacked up, so it fell to me to arrange a calorie-laden birthday box. If Hannah's teeth don't get better soon, she'll miss out on the corn chips and Reese's pieces. I managed to convince her not to open a couple of things so they won't go stale before she can eat them, but it is a real test of her intestinal fortitude to forego all the treats.

We haven't managed to get out of the house since I got back around 9:30 pm on Wednesday, so tomorrow we really need to get out and procure the new tooth-care items her doctor has recommended, as well as some school supplies and groceries. The first day of school is right around the corner again!

Shannon

As most of you are aware, my best friend Shannon Coad died last week.

I am not ready to talk about it.

I have read the outpouring of love and support for her and her family online, but I am just not ready to do it in that format. I spent a little time with John and Sherrie last weekend, and they know what is in my heart. That is all that matters.

Right now losing her is a big gaping wound whose edges don't even meet, much less starting to scab over or heal.

Someday I will find words, but for now, there are just tears.

Only in our family

John and I* have this shrieky voice we use when we are going to say something offensive to the other person without really meaning it, or meaning it with love. Yesterday, John shriekily told me to “shut the hell up!” Hannah, who knows our weird ways, said sort of wistfully, “I hope I have a marriage like yours someday.”

While considering how to tell this story, it occurred to me that some things are just really hard to put into words without giving people the wrong idea.

Hannah is getting into the groove of our weirdness. The other day, John said something about the bigness of his butt (in the context of trying to navigate our long, narrow kitchen with all 3 of us in there), and I quipped that his butt is so big it has its own gravitational field, and Hannah chimed in that his butt needs its own weather forecast. I high-fived her for that one.


* I have generally moved on from the shrieky voice and play it straight. John finds it hilarious when we’re chatting in bed and he says something annoying and I tell him to fuck off. It’s twuu wuv!

Red is Blue

I am sad.

A friend's husband has just found out that the surgery and months of chemoradiation he suffered through has basically not made a dent in his cancer, and even a radical surgery that would leave him without a tongue or vocal cords would only have a 25% chance of completely getting rid of the cancer. Hospice has been called in, and he is not expected to make it more than 6 months.

Every time I think about it, I start to cry. He's only 46. My friend is going to be a widow at 37.

It is so fucking unfair. I want to scream at the universe, hit something, put the pain somewhere outside my body.

All I can do is tell her I love her and hold them in my heart.

For the first time in living memory,

...we are out of tomato paste. Please bow your heads before the enormity of that statement, because it means that the impossible has just become possible. John may not know how much milk, toilet paper, or coffee we have in the house, but he knows that civilization just may cease to exist if he doesn't come home from the store with a tube of tomato paste. Many's the time when I've fallen on my knees before him, shopping list in hand, "For the love of all that's holy--no. more. tomato paste." I was understandably panicky when I realized that the last 2 tablespoons of tomato paste in the house were stored safely in the vegetable crisper--just before I squeezed them into some carne guisada. Now I feel unanchored from reality, floating along on a tomato-pasteless tide. How will I survive until John is able to unleash his tomato paste-buying propensities on Saturday?

-Nee in Germany gets a bit emotional about tomato-based products

A little of this

Hannah is off on her class trip. She wouldn't let me help her pack, so she forgot the folding fan I bought her and her retainer. I hope 4 retainer-less nights won't cause a big setback in her dental progress; probably not. A couple of days before they hopped on a train for their 1-hour tip, there were a couple of instances where the A/C went out on some trains and caused some students coming home from a class trip to suffer heat stroke. That's *just* what a mom wants to see on the news while preparing to ship off her kid.

I also had to sign another form for her to be able to do the climbing wall [this was the thing we were fighting about in my last post] and email it to the place. The original one got misplaced between my signing and their arriving. *sigh* We haven't heard from Hannah since then, so I hope everything is under control. She'll be back about 2pm on Friday.

Yesterday it was hot all day, to the point where I had to move my computer downstairs closer to the oscillating fan, but then a delightfully violent summer storm blew in in the evening and pelted us with rain and hail. John had tipped the upstairs windows, and rain managed to blow in across half the length of the room, so I had to run upstairs to mop up. This is what it looked like outside afterward:



At one point, we couldn't see anything beyond the tan house at the bottom of this picture because it was raining and hailing so hard.

It's been much nicer today. We've had just enough cloud cover and wind to make it comfortably warm as opposed to murderously hot. I wish I could paint. I would only paint clouds.







-Nee in Germany doesn't know her cumulus from her cirrus

Yesterday

Yesterday was stupid.

I got up prepared to wage battle against my computer. Tuesday afternoon, my anti-virus software started giving me warnings every single time I changed web pages. Just checking my webmail was a travail. Tossing the alleged culprit from my temporary internet file folder--multiple times--did nothing. Ran the anti-virus software without it actually finding anything. Gave it up and decided to do it Wednesday morning.

I got up, started my computer in safe mode, started the virus check. While that ran--for 2 hours!--I washed the dishes, watered my plants, and vacuumed the entire house. When it was done, I discovered that it still hadn't found anything virus-y on my machine. It just didn't like that script running, apparently. Anyhow, through the power of my big brain and a quality I like to call stubbornness, I finally figured it out and got rid of the source of annoyance. By this time, it was close to noon.

I worked a bit on my translation, but it was hard to get into it. The elation of the previous day, when had I finished 1.5 times my normal workload, and the morning's triumph over my computer made it hard to settle down.

Then Hannah came home and accused me of not signing a form she needed for a rock-climbing event her P.E. coach had arranged (to take place in two weeks, I believe). We disagreed about that for a bit, then when she went to the bathroom, I checked her school stuff in her room. Where I did *not* find the form, but I found a different form that she had never shown me about tutoring in Latin. Not to go into too much detail, but I was immediately incandescently angry. The kind of angry where you completely shut down lest you choke the living shit out of someone. Yes, that angry.

So I made her go eat lunch and put the finishing touches on the presentation she is giving today on Texas. I was too mad to concentrate on working, so I just gave up and went to help her with her handout and slides. Which is when our new printer ran out of ink for the first time. *sigh* I should have known. So John took her stuff into town for copying this morning and will meet her before class to make the drop. I'll have to take the ink cartridge into town tomorrow to be refilled (refillable--yay!).

I figured I wouldn't be able to get to sleep with the Germany semi-final game starting at 8:30, so I stayed up farting around on the Internet when I had intended to write or blog. It was surprisingly quiet--a lack of goals will do that--with only the occasional sound of a dispeptic cow in the distance (aka, someone who can't make his vuvuzela work).

All in all, the day was a bust, minus the workout my circulatory system got from the rage jolt.

-Nee in Germany has hope that today will be better

New sub-title

John called me that--"militantly anti-sentimental"--and it was perfect, so I stuck it up there with my title.

I used to worry that I was too unemotional, but that is not exactly true. I cry at yoghurt commercials and that one scene in Return of the King and that one song on the Wiggles. I just don't get worked up about getting old or dying or experiencing other calamities. That's just a part of life. Part of that I get from my grandmother, who used to say that she had gotten her 3 score of years and the rest was gravy. She was a pragmatist, and I picked up on that. Part of it is just me. And that's ok.

I'm baaack

Last week was dreadful. It was hotter than Satan's oven, and I had the last of those articles to finish copyediting, and my office is on the top floor of an attic apartment with windows facing southweset, and it is hard to think when all of those factors conspire against you at the same time. But luckily, it cooled off a bit over the weekend and is now delightfully overcast, so my brain is functioning properly again and I can tell you all about all the non-thinking things I have done in the meanwhile.

Due to the mind-numbing heat, I have had to be extra-vigilant about watering my balcony plants. I don't know what this is, but I got it as a little gift from a guest, and I bunged it in the pot with the walnut tree and the dead mice for want of a better place for it, yet it is thriving there.



I have a variety of flowers growing from seeds, none of which I know the name of.







This is some cilantro I let get away from me. Apparently, you are supposed to use it before it puts out flowers. The leaves near the flowers don't taste good, but maybe there are still some bigger leaves lower down that are still edible. John is making guacamole tonight, and baby needs some cilantro for it!



Someday, this will be chamomile. Right now, it is just some disgusting green stuff. God help us if that is how the tea is supposed to taste. (I don't drink it anyway, but John does.)



There's also the mystery citrus plant. Every year, I drag it indoors in the fall, and it gets scraggly and droopy and its leaves fall off if you look at them, and I do a little creative snipping on it, and when spring comes, I drag it out on the balcony and say, "The hell with it." Then it puts out a bunch of healthy leaves that you can't get off with pliers. Still no fruit, though.



Here's another victim of my long-term gardening. This poinsettia still has a few faded pink leaves from when I successfully forced it this last winter. And look--a bud!



Finally, we have the biggest disappointment of my 2010 gardening attempts. Looking at the thick, healthy leaves, you'd think I was well on my way to a motherlode of flowers. Well, you'd be wrong. Wondering what was up with the mystery plants (because I always neglect to label the planters), I dug out the seed packets I had saved and discovered I had planted carnations. Yay! Carnations! My favorite flowers! And then turned over the packet to discover they only put out flowers in the second year. What a blow.




After I got my editing sent off Friday evening, I devoted myself to a weekend full of watering and cleaning. John was disappointed on Saturday that I would rather stay at home with a bunch of cat fuzz and caustic chemicals than go swimming with him, but really, the house needed it and I had been planning it for half of the week. It takes me that long to build up to these things. John didn't give me half a week to embrace the idea of swimming, which I don't care for that much to start with. Plus, he was happy to have been gone when I told him that Cry-Baby came on tv, AND I WATCHED IT. Luckily, I had a lot of stuff already sprayed or washed and drying, so I could devote myself to the deliciousness that is a young Johnny Depp. I must have watched this movie once a week the whole time I was preggers with Hannah and during her infancy (I think Jooge turned me on to it--how can I thank you enough?!), so it is probably melded with her DNA somehow. Anyhow, when I wasn't getting all hot and bothered over Johnny Depp in his tighty whiteys (let that image sink in, ladies), I was scrubbing the shit out of bathrooms and the kitchen. Major spring cleaning type stuff.

On Sunday, Cry-Baby came on again, so Hannah got to enjoy the beauty of it first hand (she had accompanied a friend shopping on Saturday and so missed out on the glory). John avoided it by washing the dishes, slowly and thoroughly. Afterward, I put together a new bookcase and got my side of the closet a little bit neater by moving all the books out of it and into the new bookcase. I also got my office neatened up now that the one project was over but before I got back to the other project. It made it nice to get back to work this morning.

Then Hannah wanted me to cut her hair. I told her that she'd have to get in the shower right after dinner if she really wanted me to do it. Normally she has achieved a mind meld with the television at that point and requires a blasting cap to get her moving, but I must have come across as sufficiently serious for her to get a move on. She has thick hair, like her dad, and she was getting annoyed with "sweaty neck", so off it came, all but a section that she is braiding and pushing behind her ear so she looks like a Padawan learner.



I'm sure there are other things I've forgotten, but I need to go start dinner, so farewell, friends and loved ones, for now.

John got home Sunday night, tired but happy. Since then, I've been busily working away, and everyone else has been busy, too, so not much has been happening to report on. John had over 400 pictures(!) from his Russia trip, but he managed to weed them down to somehere in the 200s. Last night he got them posted, but not completely labeled, to Flickr.

Hannah is suddenly eager to work on her school project about Texas because otherwise she has to study Latin. Rather than make her wade through a bunch of stuff online, I bought her a book to use while I was in Texas in March. It's a rather simple book, but the project is for English class, and her classmates haven't gotten so good in English yet that they could follow something too complicated, so I guess it will work out.

-Nee in Germany, not dead yet

The Wisdom of Hannah

Walking to the bus with Hannah on one of the play nights last week, I asked her about her grades. She told me that her Latin teacher thought she could get her grade up if she put in some more work. Then, she said the most amazing thing: "Mom, will you help me?" I told her that was the first time I could recall her asking me for help with school (usually I just boss her around, unasked). Then I mentioned that I had just bought a book for her to help with Latin (I do that a lot--our collection is quite extensive). She moaned and groaned. I pointed out that she *had* asked for my help. "Yes, but I didn't say I wouldn't complain." That was so Hannah, I just burst out laughing.

Play Report

At Hannah's school, extracurricular activities aren't extensions of regular classes like when I was in school in Texas, for instance, classes for band or drama. Instead, they are completely voluntary, after-school clubs. I think (this is Hannah's first year) participation gets marked in the kids' end-of-year report cards, but there is no grade for it. This year, Hannah joined the theater club, to mine and John's surprise, and this week, they put on their play, three times.

Since John has been out of town all week and therefore unable to pull his weight in the areas of attendance at the play and accompanying Hannah home after 8 p.m., I have been to all three shows. I now consider myself somewhat of an expert on Hannah's club's adaptation of Sarah Weeks's novel, So B. It.

The basic premise of the play in the stripped-down version I saw (there's more plot info at the amazon link above) was that a girl living with her mentally retarded mother and an agoraphobic neighbor runs away to travel across the country to try to find out about her mother's past and her own roots. Hannah played the role of the girl's father, who lives in the home where the girl's mother had once lived.

The play opened with a bunch of girls in white dancing around the stage with some white boxes that got left behind. The boxes were the main props in the play, serving as chairs, tables, beds, benches, even a bus. The bus scene was really well done, too. The boxes as bus seats were offset from each other so all of the passengers--an elderly pair of sisters (one of whom complained the whole time), a mother and bratty kid, a lady who talked nonstop about her cats when given the slightest opening, the main character--were visible to the audience. A screen had been placed at the back of the stage, and passing scenery was projected on to it. The only bit that was kind of off was the sound effects for the bus motor--it sounded like a souped-up lawn mower.

All in all, I thought they did a really good job.

After the third performance, the kids had to stick around to dismantle as much of the stage as the could; Hannah's school is in a historical building in the old part of town, meaning there is not a lot of space inside or outside where they could have expanded to add a theather, so they have to cram their performances in the foyer of the school. Some work men will probably be there on Monday to take down the risers. I waited out in the courtyard with some other parents and jotted this all down before I forgot. I was also driven slightly mad by the delicious smell of grilled meat wafting over from the far end of the courtyard. I mentioned the space issue with Hannah's school; the building forms a U at one end of a courtyard, and the other U is made up of a church and either some apartments or a co-op (Hannah wasn't sure). They have a yard that is fenced off from the school courtyard and seemed to be having a grill party. Hannah and I agree that it must suck to live that close to a high school, especially when the kids are out in the courtyard during their breaks.

John took our digital camera to Russia with him, so I had to take photos with an old analog camera. I'll try to come back and add a photo or two later when I have the film developed.

-Nee in Germany forgot her ticket for the third performance at home

I gots the brain pain

Yuck. Just waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in. But at least I got that horrible article done and out the door.

Got a random phone call. I didn't recognize the speaker's voice, and he (I thought it was a he) wanted to play "guess who I am". Annoy-ing. Turned out to be John's aunt-in-law, who apparently is here in Germany. I think she may have just landed, because she was in Frankfurt, and her family is in Bavaria. Probably waiting on a layover to Munich. She thought I sounded ill, and I thought she sounded like a man, so it wasn't the best conversation we've ever had, but at least it was short. Maybe we'll hear back from her when she is settled and de-jetlagged.

I think I'll work on the dishes while I am so mentally useless. Hannah's play is running through Saturday, and I am going to all of the shows. I have to leave here around 5:30 to run a couple of errands beforehand, so it is not really worth it to start another article (well, to pick up where I left off yesterday on another article) this late in the afternoon. After I sleep in tomorrow, I'll report on Hannah's play.

Licorice

I am on the hunt for some decent licorice. First I picked up a bag of hard licorice. I had to stick a new piece in my mouth to unstick the old piece from my molars, that is how hard they were. Then I got a bag of soft licorice (same brand). It is unsatisfyingly mushy, a bit like those red jelly candies we used to get around Easter. Dear God, why can't I find a proper licorice I can chew without damaging my dental health?! *ahem* I'll put that on my next grocery list.

So tired

Hannah had theater rehearsal this afternoon, so I wrapped up work around 5:30 to start the rice for fried rice later. I washed some dishes, and around 6:30 I started heating the oven for egg rolls. Then I got the fried rice and hot and sour soup going. Now it was past 7, and Hannah still wasn't home. So I called her cell phone. Not on. I kept on with the dishes. I fried the hell out of that rice. I called her phone 8 or 12 more times. Not on. I rushed to the window every time a bus came. She didn't get off. I turned the stove off. John called from Moscow, and at first I thought it was her (the numbers are similar). Freaked John out (that call cost him !13! Euros via our cell phone). Promised to call him when I heard from her. Cried. Called her phone. Called her school. Looked up the teacher's home number and called there. No answers. Finally, at 8:30 PM!--30 minutes after her toothbrushing and getting ready for bed time--she gets off the bus, looking totally unconcerned. I was so relieved I felt weak, but not too weak to rip her up one side and almost make her cry. She said she didn't even know what time it was. Called John and gave him the good news that I hadn't lost Hannah while he was gone. Got her fed and ready for bed, and now I think I will go to bed early, too.

Shopping

For some reason, when John is home, I tend to be somewhat reluctant about doing housework, but as soon as he leaves on a trip, I sack up and do what needs to be done, I guess because I know he won't be along to pick up the slack. He's only been gone since Friday, and I am already tired.

Hannah had a project for school, and I was really impressed by her ingenuity in getting it done. She had to record a poem, complete with sound effects for German class, so she used her ipod to record all the various parts. I went online and found a short demo for her on using Windows Movie Maker to cut and mix audio, and between the two of us, we got everything converted, imported, cut, mixed, saved, and uploaded this evening so she can play it in class tomorrow. (I also had to find another copy of the poem for her online, because it somehow got "lost"--she claims a classmate took it--between the day she told me about the project and a couple of days before it was due.)

I went into town with Hannah today to do a little shopping. I don't leave the house that much now that I am working full time from home, so it was nice to have a little break. She didn't have to go to school today because the seniors are taking their oral final exams and the school cut the other kids loose to reduce the noise level, but she did have rehearsal for the play starting at 12:30. We got up at a relatively early time, 8:30-ish, and after sending off another edited chapter, we got on the bus for our shopping spree.

Hannah's birthday money was really burning a hole in her pocket, and I had told her she could spend part of it. She had a firm idea of what she wanted, too, because she had fixated on the pajamas that Mia wears during her post-breakup depression in Princess Diaries 9. We found Hello Kitty pjs, but not fuzzy ones, damn the luck. I told Hannah that it is summer, and no one has AC--why would they be selling fuzzy pjs at this time of year? I also let her buy eyeshadow and an eyeliner--she played with them for a while after she got home and decided that she wouldn't wear them to school because she thought they made her look "slutty." Well, when your first attempt at eyeliner gives you Cleopatra eyes, yes, it might be a bit too much. I'm sure she will get with a friend and figure it out eventually, but for now I am not too upset at her decision. (Obviously, I am the wrong person to help her.) I had already put my foot down on high heels, though, which she feels is totally unfair of me, but too bad. As long as I can keep her distracted with Chucks, skinny jeans, and Star Wars t-shirts, she won't have to die of the shame of not having high heels.

After she went off to rehearsal, I rounded off my errands with a trip to the grocery store for some victuals for the actors on opening night (Thursday), since the teachers warned us the kids wouldn't have time to run out for something to eat beforehand. I also hit the Asian grocery for hot and sour soup mix, baking soda, and John's rooster sauce (hot!). Then I had to lug everything over to a different bus stop than I would usually use because the road into our village is currently being redone and the bus route is all screwed up for those of us trying to get there.

And now I have to go make sure all the windows are closed before heading to bed. John complains that it is stuffy if we don't have at least one window open at night, but Hannah and I have been waking up "grunky" (her term) thanks to the cold spell* we are having. John's not here, so stuffy it is.

*Germans even have a name for it: sheep's cold. Apparently there is an increased risk of a cold spell around the middle of June due to some meteorological stuff I didn't bother to memorize, a time when (historically) the sheep would already be sheared and therefore susceptible to the cold.

--Nee in Germany can hear the sheep bleating up the hill from her

Chatty

John is off to a linguistics conference in Moscow. He left Friday with a colleague, and a group of them were going to spend the weekend doing tourist-y stuff before the conference starts on Monday. He has promised me a matryoshka doll and Hannah a Hard Rock t-shirt (if Moscow has a Hard Rock Cafe, which I don't doubt).

So Hannah and I are on our own for the next week. It is going to be a busy one, too. She is in the theater club at school, and they are gearing up to put on their play, So B. It, starting on Thursday. She spent all of yesterday afternoon at rehearsal and went back this morning for another full day of it (9-3). She complained about all the sleeping in and tv-watching she was missing out on, but I pointed out that it is only 1 weekend and will be over soon. I also pointed out that she doesn't have school tomorrow, so she can sleep in a little then before rehearsals start again at 1. I was surprised that Hannah decided to join the theater club, because she is generally not a joiner, but she has stuck with it. Oddly enough, she got the role she has (as the slightly mentally retarded father of the main character, I think) because the teacher in charge thought Hannah was the only kid who seemed to be able to be serious about it when they had their retreat in March. Hannah, serious? She's a better actor than I thought, haha!

I am trying to use the forced alone time to get more work done on the book I am editing, and maybe get a little of my own writing in. We'll have to see how that goes.

--Nee in Germany is all alone. There's no one here beside me. My problems have all gone. There's no one to deride me, but you gotta have friends...

Quote

Found this while looking for something work related:

Be who you are and say what you want, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

--Dr. Seuss