Movin' on up

As of yesterday, I am 38. I'm not feeling any particular anxiety about getting older, I don't think, especially not with John announcing to facebook that he finds me hotter than ever. :) I cut my hair short recently, and the compliments I got on it (also on facebook) were a nice boost to my ego. I have also been running the 14-minute game on Wii Fit every day (I managed it in 13 minutes the last 2 days), so physically I am feeling pretty good. (I highly recommend the B52s "Private Idaho" as exercise music.)

I imagine I'll be getting off the St. John's wort soon, too. I made a little health journal when I was feeling funny recently, and although I didn't have a way of taking my blood pressure, I checked my pulse a couple of times a day for about a week and a half, and it was up over 100 for the whole time. It was back down to 80 yesterday for the first time and was still at 80 this morning before I exercised. I wonder if it has something to do with my menstrual cycle, or if it has been off and on for a while and I just never noticed it? In any case, it hasn't stopped me from doing what I want to do, so maybe I just shouldn't worry about it for now.

Let's see... Yesterday I hand-wrote notes to all the customers I had last year (in English and German) and sent them out with my business card. I am between jobs at the moment, so it seemed like the perfect time for marketing myself. I also did 3 loads of laundry, helped Hannah prepare for a Latin test on Thursday, and baked cupcakes, half of which were a disaster, although I am not quite sure why. We bought yellow cake mix at the commissary recently, and it should have been a snap, but I think they were not arranged optimally in the oven (all 24 in one go); I should have waited to put the second batch in by itself. Hannah's been eating batch 2--flat and crunchy on the edges--so they can't be too terrible. Well, edible at least. I mixed up chocolate frosting from scratch and slapped that on the "good" cupcakes, but there is still some left for helping the "bad" cupcakes go down.

John has already spilled the beans on facebook about Hannah's school problems. She's doing really bad in 2 subjects, bad enough that she could have to repeat the year. We have gotten her into tutoring, 3 times a week, but it may be too little, too late at this point. She is pretty far behind in math and Latin and may not be able to catch up. We were rather surprised to hear from her teacher, though, that Hannah's attitude seems, to her, to be one of the biggest impediments to her learning. The math teacher we've heard such terrible things about only has 4 students doing as poorly as Hannah. (Latin is an unqualified disaster for all of the students, but that has more to do with them starting so young and having to learn more due to changes in the curriculum.) Apparently, at the beginning of the school year, Hannah put up a sign on her desk, in all of her classes, "I am on strike." I have no idea why she did this, and she only stopped when her homeroom teacher pointed out that she was only hurting herself and her grades with her strike. I had never heard a peep about it until the teacher told us about it on Monday. That made me want to cry. Then yesterday, Hannah came home from school and told us that there was no vocabulary quiz in Latin, which we had been studying madly for for days, and instead she had a major test (the 2nd of only 4 for the whole school year) on Thursday on 2 totally different chapters. I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry at that, as well. But I managed to pull myself together and help her study the "new" material. It is impossible for her to get a top grade at this point, but I gave her some tips about making lots of notes on the test so the teacher can see what she does know, even if she is not able to apply it on the test. Knowing the material and knowing how to use it are not always the same thing, so that is something I am trying to address with her. I've steeled myself to giving her my afternoons to help her with her school work; she won't be able to get caught up otherwise. But with her school schedule and her tutoring schedule, it shouldn't eat too much into my working hours. I will just have to be sure to buckle down when I am working and to be as effective and efficient as I can.

--Nee in Germany is trying to be Zen-like, but fears she is probably more like Cornholio

Doing and spending...

Right after I finished my last translating gig, I was offered 2 short jobs back-to-back. I got the last one out the door on Monday and have been trying to get crap done ever since, with mixed results.

For one thing, I went back into my list of bookmarks to clean it up. I have a new system now that I have a new laptop: permanent links are filed in folders. Links that are actually reminders (to buy a replacement light bulb for the microwave, etc.) are unfiled, but I delete them once I take care of what they were reminding me to do (the bulb came in the mail today).

I have a few paperwork-type things to do. I have some marketing-type things to do. And I have some Hannah-type things to do. I'm going to be busy for a bit, but I have a heads up on more work in a couple of weeks, so I know I can't dally in getting my stuff done.

Hannah is home sick today. We all used it as an excuse to sleep in, which was nice, but now my mental clock is off by about 2 hours. Hannah has a bad cold: red, watery eyes, clogged sinuses, light sensitivity (she dug out her shades to wear in the house), sneezing, runny nose, cough. She hasn't been running a fever to speak of, though, so I think a little rest today will go a long way. She has to give a very short presentation in English tomorrow, which I have been making her work on and practice today, and we both hope she's up to giving it. I made her take a steam shower (head over sink) this morning, and that seemed to help, so maybe we'll repeat it this evening before bedtime.

We're having some lovely sunny weather, and the bulb flowers are starting to come up next door, but it doesn't quite feel like spring because there isn't any water flowing out of the neighbor's yard. We had a bunch of snow around the holidays, then a thaw and a bunch of rain, leading to the Great Flood of Winter 2011 in January:



Normally that kind of flooding doesn't happen until later in the year; I wonder if the change is going to affect the farmers in the area.

We went to the commissary on base on Friday and stocked up on 200 dollars worth of crap, to put it in the most accurate terms. This was after eating at Taco Bell. (I was pleasantly surprised by the fresco burrito I had; I think it had real pico de gallo in it.) John didn't seem to think that the 4 cans of Wolf Brand chili I had bought would be sufficient for his chili-eating needs, so he threw in another 4 cans. After eating one can for lunch on Saturday, he wondered why I didn't keep him from buying something that is suspiciously similar to pet food and contains the nutritional equivalent of a jar of lard. I'm sorry, but if my calling Wolf Brand chili "dog food" for the last 10+ years has not turned you off of it, John, I don't know what else I can do but try to sabotage your chances of getting back on base. Since John's contact is moving back to the States, like this weekend, I think it is going to be a long time. But now I have 7 cans of "dog food" and a husband leery of eating them. Maybe I'll donate them to a food pantry....

I must admit I folded like a cheap card table and threw in a few items myself--oh, Nutter Butters, I am your bitch--but I tried to stick to the list we had made in advance. John was *so sloooow* going through the store; on each aisle, I would get whatever was on the list, then I would send Hannah back to the previous aisle to tell her dad he needed to get X on the next aisle, because he hadn't specified on the list what type or how many of X he wanted. Then he would catch up with us 2 aisles later with a grumpy look on his face and 20 pounds of chips and dip perched precariously in his arms.

When we got home, I had to find a place for all the crap, which means that not only is the pantry closet and the snack cabinet packed to the gills, but also the top shelf of the spice cabinet, the freezer shelves, and the cabinet above the stove, plus the corn chips stashed on top of my baking pans in a drawer, not to mention the cookies and candy I just left on the counter. Good thing I had already started working out with the Wii!

Then on Saturday, we needed a little R&R (and pants), so we ventured into town for a little shopping, movie-viewing, and pizza eating. We did manage to find pants for Hannah and John, but H&M almost derailed us. It was crazy packed in there, and Hannah refused to wait in line to try on the pants she had picked out, and I refuse to let Hannah buy pants without trying them on, so we ditched H&M and found a couple of nice, quiet department stores up the street in which to spend our money.

Hannah wanted to see Black Swan, but 1. it is for 16 and up, and 2. it has a late-ish showing, so we ended up seeing the first part of Harry Potter 7. Now, I am one of those people who will almost always prefer the book to the movie, no matter how well made the movie (I'm looking at you, Lord of the Rings), and I have really not enjoyed the HP movies since after the first one. I can't remember exactly, but I think I blew off seeing one of the later ones in the theater, because I just couldn't bear seeing how mangled it would end up. But I was pleasantly surprised at how 7 turned out. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I had feared. I still had to explain several things to John (who hasn't read any of the books) and Hannah (who hasn't read book 7) over dinner, requiring a pen and paper and some charting to make it all clear. I'm sure the 2 bored-looking girls at the table next to us in Pizza Hut were thrilled to hear all the specific details of the Harry Potter universe, plus spoilers for the second half of book 7.

--Nee in Germany passed on the Trix and Lucky Charms to have plain old muesli for breakfast

Quote of the Day

Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.

- Abraham Lincoln, 1809 - 1865

from Quotes of the Day newsletter

Freestyle

I finished my translation work for the day, and we are going to meet John's "connection" to do some grocery shopping and fast food munching on the base, so I suddenly found myself with a little free time.

So here, in no particular order, is a bit of what has been going on around here lately:

I think I mentioned getting the Wii Fit game, and I have been "playing" it for 30 minutes, 4-5 days a week. I woke up with a bit of a headache yesterday (stupid weather) and didn't feel up to exercising, but I kind of missed it. The wacky music and weird situations seem to have grown on me. For instance, in one game, my Mii character (an animated avatar of myself) is wearing a little penguin suit, and by shifting my weight from one side to the other, I can make my Wii slide on its stomach from one side of an iceberg to another to catch (and presumably devour, but they just disappear) fish. Or the soccer game where I am supposed to head balls that are kicked at me left, right, and center, but avoid being hit in the head with soccer cleats and panda heads. Mostly I like jogging, although John thinks I am mad. Most of the routes are rather short, 4-5 minutes, but even the 14 minute route is doable. I didn't think I would enjoy exercising this much, but I also don't try to do a specific routine or target certain areas. I just do what I feel like, whether that is yoga poses, jogging, balancing games, or snowball fight.

John bought me a food processor (at my request) for xmas, and I have been trying to finagle our uneaten fruit and such into new and delicious recipes. Banana cream pie was a win, although I was disappointed in the meringue topping. I've got breadmaking down, but eggs seem to be my Waterloo. On days when I don't have a lot of work, or I'm between gigs, I try to get more from-scratch cooking in. I have even managed to make some things that are rather healthy and get Hannah to eat them, like the blueberry muffin recipe I modified by using frozen mixed berries. She ate those in her school snack every day that week. We've gotten through about 3 loaves of fresh bread since xmas. I have even been making homemade yoghurt, just to see if I can. I found tips online at Salon in the food section and have had one ok batch and one quite good batch. I wonder if I could use straight cream to make some? Don't want it to go bad on me. I also made up my own muesli to eat with my homemade youghurt, and it is just sweet enough (thanks to the granola in it, I think) that it complements the sour yoghurt perfectly, or vice versa.

Some cooking has not gone so well, especially American recipes that call for very specific ingredients like corn syrup. It is not to be found here, and the sugar syrup I tried to make as a substitute was a disaster. Oh, yes, and anything based on eggs, like baked meringues. They were tasty, but the middle was way too chewy to me. With John's dental problems and Hannah's braces, I've just given up on making them for the foreseeable future.

John can't decide whether to be amused or horrified by the notes I make on my recipes: "J & H bitched about the lack of nuts" on a banana bread recipe. Seems like a perfectly legitimate reminder to myself, as far as I am concerned.

Last year, I planted carnations in my window boxes, but then I read on the seed package that they only bloom in the second year. The weather has turned warm-ish lately, so I went out and checked them, still in the box hanging on the balcony, and they seem to still be alive and generally unharmed. Plus there are a bunch of seedlings coming up in the other boxes, so I pulled all the dead stuff out of there to give them a little space, now that they seem to have taken root. I may not have to shell out much for plants this year.

My indoor plants seem to be doing ok, too. I think I didn't keep my poinsettia's covered long enough, though, because they didn't finish putting out the actual flowers in the middle. You can see here how they look stumpy.


Plus, I think this was originally a red poinsettia, which you can see streaks of on one of the bracts in this photo:


So it was a semi-success for xmas 2010. There's always next year, I guess.

The mystery citrus has pleasantly surprised me, once again. This is what I was looking at all fall and winter to date:


I mean, look at that tangle of bare twigs! But then this started to happen just a week ago or so:


Baby leaves! Now I'm glad I didn't start hacking away at like I had planned. I guess I will wait and do that in the summer when it has put out all its leaves and I can tell what is really dead.

I also finished reorganizing my office. I did it in two stages, well three, if you count swapping my desk and plants so the far end of the room is a hothouse and the other my office.




Now I have a handy bookcase with my work materials, two outlets for my gadgets, and I still have the great view. Plus, my stuff is out of the way for when the chimney sweep comes (only once a year, but still).

-Nee in Germany spends a lot of time at home

Quote of the Day

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.

-Herman Melville, novelist and poet (1819-1891)

From the A.Word.A.Day newsletter (more info at Wordsmith.org)

And now for something different

I like reading about regional issues, especially those having to do with the logistics of feeding urban areas. Here is a well-written refutal of the persistant myth that there are no grocery stores (by which is meant *national chain* stores) in Detroit, by James Griffioen.

I don't know sometimes...

I recently took part in an exchange on Facebook with a teenaged relation (not one belonging to any of my readers) that bothered me. She started off by saying that she wanted a boy who would call her sweet names, among them "baby girl". One of her friends (a guy) said he thought all the names *but* "baby girl" were kind of derogatory, and I responded that I thought that was the worst one. When her response included "...the day i stop wanting to be treated like a woman...", I had to disengage or my head would explode.

Does she really think having a man call her "baby girl" makes her womanly? To me, it is infantizing her and putting him in a father-like role. That is the patriarchy, plain and simple. Is this what girls are learning about love relationships and gender roles? I know she is only 16-ish, and has had a rather odd upbringing, but isn't anyone telling her about the joy of a relationship based on respect and equality?

I love John, but I've already told him that the first time he calls me "baby girl" (or "wifey", another usage I've seen from a relation), I'm punching him in the gonads. It's actually already kind of a joke between us; sometimes he'll exclaim that I'm just so cute (in the kind of voice you use to talk to/about very small children or kittens), and I'll flip him the bird, just to make sure he knows that I consider that the very least of my attractions.

--Nee in Germany is a woman, not a baby

Stress

In the spring and summer of 2009, I was writing my master's thesis and thought I knew what stress was. I was eating poorly and sleeping less than I would have liked; I had lots of weird dreams; I had hot flashes during the night a few times; my eye tic returned; I stopped having my period for 3 or 4 months. To me, that is what stress should physically look like.

In the fall of 2010, I started having weird feelings in my chest and ended up at the doctor's office, where I was given a variety of tests and some beta blockers. I finally landed in the offices of a cardiologist and a gastroenterologist. Even after all the poking and prodding, the only thing that came up was gastritis and H. pylori. After I was done going nuclear on the H. pylori, I discovered that I had a lot more energy, but the weird chest feeling was still there.

When I ran out of beta blockers, I went back to the doctor, but this time I saw someone else in the same practice. This was in the run-up to xmas, and I had been having a hard time emotionally. I cried baking cookies. I cried listening to Abba. I cried washing the dishes. At that point, I had spent a little time each day that week crying, often in the shower so I wouldn't upset my family. I felt like I needed a way to get the sadness out of me, and since do-it-yourself primal scream therapy probably wouldn't win me any friends in our 4-family house, crying seemed like the best approach.

The doctor's office was the emptiest I had ever seen it, so I guess that is why the doc spent so much time talking to me--there was no one else waiting. I had a hard time keeping it together in her office, and she gave me a prescription for St. John's wort. She said it would give me a bit of distance from the emotional problems. It has worked as promised in that respect, but I have to say, I was not expecting to suddenly feel more mentally alert or sharp than I had in a long time. That's not to say that I've been feeling stupid, but suddenly I was able to take all my post-antibiotic newfound energy and direct it in a way I hadn't been able to for a while. Like I told John, if that is what St. John's wort does, I am never going to stop taking it. I wonder if I could plant it in my flower boxes...

I also mentioned at that visit that the weird chest sensation (palpitation-like) had been more or less replaced by a kind of muscle-burning sensation that goes from my sternum to my back, but she thought that was a back/posture problem and suggested a physical therapy course just for strengthening your back muscles. I found several courses through the city's web site, but I just missed the enrollment dates, and they were all offered on the opposite side of town from where we live. It would have taken 45-60 minutes to get there by bus. So using my newly sharpened mind and my reignited sense of direction, I went into town on a whirlwind shopping spree that included buying a balance board for our Wii and a Wii Fit Plus game (used, so it was only 15 bucks--woo hoo!). I've been doing 30 minutes on it every day this week but haven't noticed any difference in the burning sensation, except that it is stronger when I am tired. I'll mention that when I see the doc again next week.

After I had been at the doctor's office, I was working on a translation about job burnout and came across this online stress test:

"The Life Stress Test, also known as the Holmes and Rahe test, was first created in 1967."

It has events that could occur in 8 different areas of life (finances, living conditions, etc.), and you are supposed to check off how many of them occurred to you in the last year.

"If your score totals 150 or more: You have a 50-50 chance of developing an illness."

"If your score totals 300 or more: You have a 90 percent chance of developing an illness."

My score was 257.

I was floored, because I hadn't experienced the same kind of physical response to stress in 2010 that I had in 2009. (Of course, once I started a "real" period this month, I realized that I had been having a "barely there" period all fall, which I had wanted to attribute to changes in my hormone levels as I am getting older interacting with the Mirena IUD I still have.)

I had also been discounting stressors that I had not viewed in a negative light, like finishing my degree (after months of antsy waiting for my results) and starting up my freelance business. Those things, on top of losing my grandmother in March (which was not unexpected, but still...), John's uncle in July (he was only 58 and had a series of heart attacks), and Shannon in September, apparently were enough to push me into the danger zone as far as my own health goes.

I know that time heals all wounds, and eventually I will get there, but I am trying to just take things one day at a time, to be productive, eat better, exercise every day. Not to take my friends and family for granted and remember to tell them I love them every chance I get.

Quote of the Day

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
-Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)

From the A.Word.A.Day newsletter (more info at Wordsmith.org)

Notes to myself

There are certain things that recur year after year, but I haven't come up with a reliable way to leave myself notes about them. For example, when we went to set up our xmas tree this year, we found the base in the cellar, but there were no screws in it. John found them upstairs in the tool box. Why? No idea, but there must have been a reason for it last year. Then once we got the tree set up, water started leaking out of the base. That must have been the reason. (After the drying of the floor and tree skirt and the siphoning off of the rest of the water in the base, our tree was tinder dry.) But after xmas, I went over that base with a fine-toothed comb and tested it with colored water, and there was no leak. So I can only assume I filled it too high and it overflowed. That would be a good thing to know next year, hence this entry.

I could make a note in my Palm organizer or in one of my many journals, but I don't use my Palm for much outside of jotting down appointments while out and about or noting library call numbers for books I want to pick up, and rereading my old journal entries makes me sick to my own ass, all the whining and navel-gazing, really. But I generally find myself rereading my old posts here a few times a year (or more, shhhh), so this might be the most convenient method. Maybe I will also jot a note on my paper family calendar to look this post up in the fall. Hmmm...

Item 2: John is supposed to check the mystery strands of lights in the xmas box. I think they are our outdoor lights, but I don't think they work. He refused to address it this winter--his doom is sealed for next winter.

Item 3: Pat the chicken completely dry before breading and frying. I have a little burn on my forehead from popping oil that is scabbing over, and I would like to avoid that in future, thx.

Item 4: Buy an advents wreath *before* the first Sunday of advent, because there won't be any afterward. One day I will manage this. Same with advent calendars, although they might be cheaper if we wait, but all the good ones will be gone.

I may be coming back and adding more to the list as it occurs to me, but this is a good start, if not completely seasonal.

--Nee in Germany needs a steady stream of reminders in order to maintain her sanity

More small victories

I've been trying to take care of small repairs and replacing defective items around the house. Recently I had to buy a new flashlight due to corrosion in the old ones (no idea how that happened), but it is currently only being used for one thing--illuminating the contents of the microwave through the glass in the door since the bulb went out. And of course the microwave manual says to take it to a certified repair person to *change the lightbulb*, which is ridiculous, even if you have to take off the entire casing to reach it. As soon as I can get to the hardware store, I'll be looking for a replacement bulb to do it myself.

I also have to find the proper knob for the radiator unit in our living room and exchange the one I bought last weekend. Ages ago, I was able to pop off the knob from the radiator in the dining room and snap it onto the one in the living room, and it worked just fine, but the stuff I found all had ventilator valves and extra bits and pieces I don't need. Unfortunately, everything in this apartment is rather outdated, so I don't know how easy it will be to find "just" a knob for this particular radiator when neither the radiator or the knobs that are still intact have any part numbers or other identifying marks.

Speaking of light bulbs, John replaced the light bulb in the fridge, lo these many years ago, and it never lit up again. While fiddling around with the microwave, the unfairness of it struck me: John had gone through who knows what ordeals to find the stupid bulb, had stuck his hand at an uncomfortable angle into the frige to remove and then replace the bulb because the cover would not come off, and then it didn't even work. So I fiddled around with it and finally got it to work by some combination of tightening and wiggling. Now we can finally see everything in the fridge, and boy is it a mess!

I think I mentioned that John is the president of a local club for Swedophiles. This club does not have an office or a fixed location for events; they just have to rent out space on an as-needed basis. This means that anything the club has accumulated--books about Sweden, leftover items from parties and events, coffee and tea thermoses and decorations for their annual xmas event--has to be divided up among the members of the leadership committee for storage. We seem to have gotten more than our fair share of this stuff, but since our apartment is rather snug, storage-wise, and our cellar rather, eh, *earthy*, we've been stashing boxes under a patio table at one end of our sunroom, which currently doubles as my office. I think I mentioned that John and Hannah moved our stuff in the cellar to a slightly less moldly corner, so that led to us reorganizing the Sweden stuff under the table and moving some of it into the cellar. Yesterday, I got some more of it pared down and into a smaller box that I hope to move out of the sunroom soon. As of right now, the space under the table is clear. My plan is to clear out, at least partially, one of the bookcases in the downstairs study, move it upstairs to my office (where it will provide storage for my books and binders and a surface on which to put some of my plants), and move the table onto the lower balcony. I want to claim the whole room as office space, and although I have been using the spaces between the plants on the table to hold papers and office supplies, I think it is better if I am not using a sizeable chunk of the room for storage.

I was relieved to find that I had stored my notes about our Italy trip in the folder with our digital photos, so that survived the great involuntary laptop-purge of 2010. I think I will work on labeling those photos this weekend.

--Nee in Germany likes to plan ahead

I am a buzzing bee... buzzzz...

Let's see--I've been busy busy lately.

Yesterday I spent the whole day cleaning out my side of the closet (not even the clothes, just the storage) and my side of the bed (the floor and shelf have been such tempting storage places in the past). I bit the bullet and tossed some things I am never going to use (ugly crochet pattern for Barbie "antebellum" gowns, articles from class on prepositions of space, a plethora of amazon boxes). I downsized, reorganized, and redistributed, and now everything fits with space to spare. I even vacuumed upstairs when I was done, although it was 8 o'clock at night.

Saturday John and I drove across town and got lots of errands done while Hannah went into town with her friend and bought make-up. She got home before us, of course, because even make-up shopping can get old after an hour-and-a-half and 15 bucks worth of nail polish and lip gloss (thanks, Gwamma!). But she was perfectly cool and collected when I called from the store to tell her we were on our way home, almost 2 hours after she had gotten there herself. Recently she had told me she thought she was old enough to spend a few hours by herself in the evening if John and I wanted to go out. Our 16th anniversary is coming up in March, and we didn't get to celebrate our 15th because I was at my grandmother's funeral in Texas, so we might just have to take her up on that.

Last week I spent my evenings saving every blog entry and accompanying comments for Shannon's blog. I had saved it on my old computer (whose data has now gone bye-bye) as a series of pdfs, minus the comments, but this time I wanted to get everything, in case Blogger decides to take it down. By the time I was done, I had 674 pages in Microsoft Word. That was a mighty output for 5 years.

I thought I would be a lot more torn up reading back over her posts, which is one reason why it took me so long to start. (The way I had done it before, I was able to save a year at a time without having to go through every entry.) One thing that probably helped was this new prescription for St. John's wort, which I got just before xmas. The doc said it would help me feel a little distance from things. So far, so good. But reading back through all the entries, I was reminded of just what a wonderful person Shannon was, and how much love she had for so many people, myself included. That is something to feel good about, not sad.

Last Wednesday, we had some friends over for coffee, so the whole day was taken up with baking (me) and cleaning (John and Hannah--woo!) in the morning and visiting in the afternoon. But that meant I lost a day of translating. Today I more than made up for it. I have been aiming to get through 5 manuscript pages a day--this is for an informative brochure with lots of big pictures, so most pages are not solid text--but today I got through 11! Granted, one page with *just* a photo, but there was still a header to translate.... The next bit of text could be more challenging, since it is 3 or 4 pages of glossary to explain the medical jargon used in the brochure, but I think I have a pretty good handle on all the terms by now, 35 pages in.

And now I have to go finish up the stroganoff so we can eat.

--Nee in Germany loves dairy and mushrooms, so stroganoff is right up her alley

In the New Year

Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.
- Carl Bard

This quote kind of sums up my philosophy for 2011. I'm not usually one for making New Year's resolutions; this just kind of came up during my time off over the holidays. You have more time for thinking once things begin to settle down after xmas.

I have made up my mind that there's no use having regrets about things I can't (and probably wouldn't) go back and change, so why let them take up so much of my mental real estate? I can't go back and practice more so I don't choke during the school musical or state music contest; my master's thesis is never going to be any better; I can't go back and not put off the small thoughtful gestures I thought I would have time to get around to doing.

So now I am trying not to put things off, even if it is just something small, like sending a donation to the proprietor of an email newsletter I have been receiving for years or filing papers in their proper place instead of stacking them on top of the file box. The big things are made up of the small things, and maybe by accomplishing enough of the small things, they will add up to something big.

--Nee in Germany resolves not to be such an ass, but she makes that resolution every year

Baby steps

My friend Shannon, who passed away in September, was a big fan of quoting song lyrics. She was always much more in touch with her emotions than anyone else I know, and could find links between what she was feeling and certain songs.

I, on the other hand, have only rarely been struck that way, but I wanted to share this video for "Firework" by Katy Perry, because it reminds me of Shannon.

This and that

Hannah and John still have a week of vacation, so to combat all the loafing around, he took her down to the basement and made her help him clean out our storage area and move everything into the space vacated by our downstairs neighbors when they moved a couple of months ago. Our stuff in cardboard boxes had been sitting on an earthen floor for 7 years, and the boxes were moldering. The neighbors' space was at least lined with some kind of rough tile, and they left behind a storage rack (minus shelves) that I think John was able to get some use out of. He also found a few bottles of mead that he had made back in the day, maybe 5 years ago, and one beer. Unfortunately, he also found a couple of framed items that I could have sworn were with the other framed pictures behind the desk in the study. I guess they got left in their box from when we moved here because they were relatively big. One is a drawing John's high school friend made for him and seems to be in ok shape; the other is the cross-stitch my mother made us when we got married. It looks a little moldly around the edges--I just hope I can get it clean. Any tips, LMIL?

I managed to get a decent amount of work in today, even though I slept in this morning after a less-than-decent night's sleep. The cherry on the top was checking my bank statement and finding out I had been paid for my last 2 jobs. Whooo!

I've been saving up my veggie scraps in a freezer bag to make broth, and I had a full bag, so while the soup for dinner cooked yesterday evening, I had a pot of broth simmering on the back of the stove. Then I got busy doing something else after dinner while it was cooling, but Hannah was kind enough to remind me on her way to bed that I needed to strain my weeds.

I also made goose broth from our xmas dinner carcass, but it might be a bit strong for soups and such. Maybe in rice? That carcass also provided some nice grease, with which I made a crust and the rue for a sauce to go into my chicken pot pie a couple of nights ago. Yum!

Last year, John started keeping track of all the books he had read for pleasure since we moved here, and he started an account at Shelfari (sp?) for this. I wasn't willing to go that far at the time, because it would have taken me ages to enter all the books I remember, after learning how to use it, but I did make up a list in Excel. Which I lost during the great computer debacle of my own making of 2010. Alas. But I am going to start from scratch for 2011, seeing how I got some books for xmas and all. So if I manage to get it set up, I will try to add a gadget (widget, whatever) to the side bar so you can see what I am reading.

--Nee in Germany didn't seem to mind the snow as much this winter

not dead, but starting to wish

computer has been fucked for several days

using John's new computer, hate the keyboard, couldn't find notes in msword all day

have a rush job, suddenly behind on everything else

*sigh*

Busy, busy

Today I spent the first part of the day running errands. Xmas is just around the corner, you know, plus I needed to pick up some medicine, do some insurance stuff, buy some shampoo--you know, errands. I was mostly successful, so that was nice. I came home tired but with a feeling of accomplishment.

When John went to clean the stairwell this afternoon, he realized that the bucket has been sitting out on the balcony, in the sub-zero temperatures, ever since we had our shower repaired. Sitting full of water. He thought it was frozen solid, but it turned out only the sides and top 2 inches were frozen. So now there is an enormous ice cube (or partial cube) melting in the bathtub.

Hannah has been watching the adventures of Chad Vader on Youtube. She got a Star Wars (Clone Wars) advents calendar this year, even though it has no chocolate in it, just cheap plastic toys. She has been bitching about the makers' sloppy attention to detail vis-a-vis light saber colors, etc, yet happily drags the bits of plastic around with her the whole day at school.

After the recent round of antibiotics, I have been feeling great energy-wise, but have recently started having digestive discomfort. I read that is pretty common until you build the flora in your gut back up. Since I originally came by my intestinal flora by passing through my mother's birth canal, and I don't think I'll manage it again that way, I have been drinking priobiotic yoghurt drinks, but I probably need to be drinking them more often. I asked John if he would share his flora with me by taking bites off my food.


I need flora, any flora!

John did not seem disposed to help me, for some reason. So I'll just have to do it on my own. Plus, I picked up the proton pump inhibitor my doctor prescribed me. That keeps you from making too much stomach acid, so I'll see if that helps, too.

And now I am off to watch the first movie from the Netflix-type service John set us up with.

Many returns of the day!

Happy Birthday to my seestor Kee! May your family and your ulcer be well-behaved. *smooch!*

Disaster strikes!

In a small way. Hannah cooked us a delicious spaghetti dinner on Monday. She put the noodles on the table. She put the sauce on the table. She went to close the leftover container of tomato sauce and managed to knock it off the counter, sending the plastic lid onto the hot burner and sauce down me, her, and the length of our galley kitchen. Luckily, John was making salad behind her, so he avoided getting splattered. Hannah and I had to strip off and soak our clothes before sitting down to eat.

The next day, I put the wet clothes in the washing machine on the spin cycle before washing them (otherwise it gets unbalanced), and in the 10 minutes they were spinning, I splattered my sweater with ketchup. (My pants, too, a little, but I didn't notice until later.) So that got rinsed and thrown in with the other bespattered clothing.

Speaking of laundry, I may have to murder our cats. They are inveterate pukers (one is long-haired, and hairballs are now the bane of my existence), but when I found cat puke in one of my shoes recently, that was the last straw. I don't mind them puking on the rag rugs (which is part of the reason I bought them), because those can go into the machine, or on tile, which is easy to clean, but when they start puking on other things, then I get hacked off. I've started threatening to turn Eliza into a muff after she dies.

I finally had a chance to pick up all the leaves that had fallen off my citrus plant. It had dropped over 50 leaves in about a week. I didn't even think it had 50 leaves on it. It is looking rather threadbare at the moment, but the poinsettia is looking good.

This year, I planted a slightly different variety of flowering plants in my window boxes on the downstairs balcony. There was still some statice and lobelia alive at Thanksgiving, so Hannah made a tiny bouquet out of them for the table. When I planted the carnations, I didn't realize they only bloom in the second year. The poor things are partially covered in snow at the moment. I have no idea if I should move them, cover them, or what, but if they survive this winter and my half-assed care, they will be the hardiest flowers I've ever had.

And it is snowing again. I need to return the key to the people I was catsitting for, but I really don't want to travel around in the snow if I can avoid it. Maybe I can take it by tomorrow when I am already going to be out and about (if I manage it).

-Nee in Germany has petty complaints, in the larger scheme of things

The freelance life's for me

I am finishing up a freelance translating job that is pretty big--an 84-page (photo-heavy, it is true) promotional piece for the nearby university hospital. This is after finishing a different promotional piece for them that was also 84 pages long, plus plenty of photos. Now I've been asked to give an estimate for another translation from one of the hospital's departments. So I guess they liked my original translation enough to pass my name on.

When I am wrapping up a project, I start to get a slight panicky feeling, in case the work dries up. But so far, that hasn't happened. Small jobs pop up here and there, during and between bigger jobs, and the bigger jobs show up fairly regularly. So I guess I shouldn't give in to despair about the irregular nature of the job.

Editing is my real love, my vocation, but translating is starting to grow on me as well. At first, I was worried that my German wasn't up to snuff, but I didn't take into account the fact that I am as stubborn as a terrier when it comes to figuring things out. I might not know what a certain term means, or have seen a certain expression, but I will take the time to look it up in several places and tease out the meaning, and then take the time to look up the context in English and figure out how it is talked about there. I love looking things up, so this is rather up my alley. Plus, the proof of the pudding is in the English, not the German, and I can totally rock the English.

I am not rolling in dough with this job (at least, not yet), but it has kept us from being pinched when things like John's dental bill or our car repairs have come up. All in all, I am glad I have started doing it.

-Nee in Germany works in her jammies part of the day

Free from the tyranny of the cat!

Well, just the cat I have been sitting. Her owners should be back from a delightful snorkeling vacation in Egypt later today, and boy, will they get a shock. It has been snowing since the day after they left. We got a break yesterday, and the sun even came out in the afternoon, but it has been snowing non-stop since after Hannah left for school this morning.

Except for making the daily run to feed the cat and translating, I haven't been up to much. It was John's turn to wash the dishes and do the grocery shopping over the weekend, so I didn't even have to do any of that. I spent most of the weekend curled up in the armchair, powering through the last phase of a sewing project. The rest of the week's worth of evenings should see it done. Then I already have another project in mind--a friend's daughter is going to have a baby in February, and a crocheted baby blanket should keep me out of trouble for another month or so.

Poinsettia watch 2010: I added a second plastic bag at night (an IKEA shopping bag), and the pink leaves are getting even darker. I don't know if it'll make it all the way to red (or if this plant was even red when I bought it), but it is still an encouraging development.

-Nee in Germany has an unobstructed view of the snowing, snowing, snowing...

Let it snow

When Hannah left for school at 6:40 this morning, the streets were wet and it was drizzling, but by the time I left for my catsitting duties at 8:25, snow was falling fairly heavily (large flakes, falling at an angle so even an umbrella doesn't help 100% to keep them off you). I walked home through wet, slushy snow. At least it will disappear from the streets quickly--I don't have to get back out in it, but I have to think about John on his bike and Hannah on the bus later this afternoon.

The cat lives up toward the top edge of the valley, and the view of the snowy village below was really beautiful this morning. I wish I had a working camera to capture a bush covered in little yellow flowers along its side with a thick layer of snow on top, or pink roses, fully blown and draped in ice and snow. The warm, spring-like weather we had earlier in the month has not done the foliage any favors now that it is snowing.

Judging by this webcam, though, it is not that snowy down in town, just toward the top of the castle hill. We often get more snow up here than they do down there, and the village even above us often looks like a winter wonderland while we only have a light dusting of snow.

I have reached the tipping point in my current sewing project, and I'm finding it hard to get my brain engaged with translating instead of sewing. Both should be completed within the next week, though, barring a disaster.

-Nee in Germany likes walking on snow, thereby destroying it

Home stretch

Just 2 more doses! Yesterday I bought a bunch of probiotic yoghurt to start chugging once I am done. I am thinking that after "eradication therapy", which sounds like scorched-earth warfare on my innards, I am going to need to jump start things.

I am getting rather tired of the incessant low-level nausea, the taste and sensation in my mouth of having just licked a whole xmas-list's worth of envelopes, and waking up 3 times a night and not even having to pee. Plus the anxiety over swallowing the larger pills without choking. When I feel nausea, I start stuffing myself, but then I feel overfull PLUS the nausea. I can't imagine suffering through it for a long time, like during chemotherapy. So I am telling myself not to be such a wiener.

[Had to take a quick break to de-escalate a situation with the cats in the next room. It sounded like one might be ripping the other's head off, but when I walked in, they were sitting about 2 feet apart looking at each other. Whatever.]

I am already feeling like I have a lot more energy. Part of that may just be psychological since I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere with all this medical stuff, but part of it might be because I stopped taking the beta blockers. I've been checking my pulse in the morning right after I wake up, and it has consistently been 70 beats per minute, so I think going off them is probably ok. Even after a whirlwind weekend of turkey day baking and cleaning, I felt regular tired, not I-have-to-sit-down-in-the-middle-of-what-I'm-doing tired.

This morning has been almost as busy as yesterday already. Everything went basically the same up to the catsitting duties, then I took the car into the shop for a few small repairs and its biennial (every 2 years) inspection. Then I got to walk home in the rain. Well, more of a heavy drizzle at that point. (By the time John left for work, we were getting rain mixed with wet snow. Yuck.) I could have taken the bus, but I need to get a little exercise to start building myself back up. You can't sit on your ass, babying yourself for a couple of months without getting a bit out of shape, you know. Tomorrow morning I'll take the bus all the way up to the cat, but I'll walk home. Depending on when the car is ready, I may be doing it more than once.

Luckily for me, I was wearing my GoreTex shoes and my raincoat over my winter coat as I walked home in the rain. When I bought the shoes, I showed them off to John, who for some reason had it in his head that I had bought sexy shoes and was disappointed when it turned out that I had bought boys' all-weather shoes. When have I *ever* bought sexy shoes? If I took a quiz that told me what kind of shoe I would be (sounds like something you'd find on Blog Things), I'd be orthopedic, I'm sure.

The pinkination of the poinsettia seems to be coming along smashingly at this point. The citrus decided to make a liar out of me and has started dropping leaves again, but it has also started shooting upward in several places, so I'll just have to wait for spring to see what happens under normal growing conditions.

My two Thanksgiving cactuses have been blooming for a few weeks now. I think the pink one is running out of steam, but the bigger white one still has lots of buds on it. They have bright, interesting flowers, but I almost enjoy picking off the wilted flowers as much as looking at the fresh ones. Unfortunately, they drop yellow pollen on everything under them, including my shirt sleeve while picking off dead blooms. Sorry, I'm not the one you're looking for.

-Nee in Germany hasn't murdered any plants recently

No Peace for the Wicked

Yesterday it was the sound of running water, today it is a high-pressure hose across the street. About a month ago, some genius decided to tag a stone wall with some anatomically questionable penises (if I were younger, it might influence my decision to let one near me). Now someone has come out to spray them off the stone.

It's already been a busy morning. Since John was focussed on turkey day foods and American junk food on Saturday (and our fridge is so small), I needed to go get groceries for the rest of the week. I am also catsitting this week, so I got up, took my meds, got in the shower, ate breakfast once the post-med hour was up, drove over to tend the cat, drove to my normal 2 stores, and came home. I managed to score some excellent Xmas wrapping paper (you know I love me some gift wrap) and a couple of things to put under the tree for Hannah, oh! and a kit for a gingerbread witch house, which seems to be traditional at the holidays for some reason. Hansel and Gretel and all that, I guess.

Yesterday I managed to translate almost 4 pages, even after getting a late start in the morning, so I am hoping that today will be equally promising, work-wise.

-Nee in Germany can't decide if tagging with more realistic penises would have been acceptable

This and That

Our shower is leaking and the repairman won't be here until 4. I finally put a rolled up towel against the bottom of the door and closed the door to my office to try to block out the noise, but such loud tinkling of water cannot be contained. Between the sound of running water, the extra water I am drinking, the antibiotics, and yesterday's turkey dinner (more on that below), I have spent an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom today.

We celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday. We could have waited until the weekend following, but the guests we had invited had a scheduling conflict due to child custody arrangements, so we moved it up. John and I both scoured the local shops for a large turkey and only came up with a frozen baby turkey that weighed about 9 pounds (not enough for 6 people) or a freshly butchered, large turkey for 50 Euros. Ouch! John has connections at the university, and she and her husband were able to take him and Hannah along to the local military installation, where they were able to gorge themselves on American fast food and drown in the junk food offerings of the commissary. And buy a big turkey, among the bags and bags of junk food they carried home. I started cleaning and baking on Saturday, and I was very glad to finally put my feet up yesterday evening after our guests were gone. All in all, it was a success.

Now it is time to concentrate on the next big event--forcing my poinsettia to bloom. I brought it and my citrus plant indoors a few weeks ago, and they both immediately started dropping leaves. Oh, no! But now they seem to have stabilized. The citrus has new leaves, and the new growth on the poinsettia is turning a nice shade of mid- to dark pink. I'm having to be extra vigilant about keeping the door to the sunroom (aka my office) closed because I suspect the cats had been chewing on the poinsettia's lower leaves, hence the extra pukiness after they were brought inside, and I know for a fact that one of them will chew on the plastic garbage bag covering it overnight if given the chance. Sadly, my ability to post pictures of the glory of a forced poinsettia is severely hampered by our dead digital camera (there is a workaround, but I am lazy), so you are spared my efforts at vegatative photography.

-Nee in Germany is dreaming of a red-poinsettia'ed Xmas

Now we're getting somewhere

(Copied in part from my email to my family, to save time.)

Finally got the results from the gastroenterologist: gastritis caused by h. pylori, plus a weak valve at the top of the stomach. So I will be going on a week of antibiotics (amoxicillin, clarithromycin, and pantoprazol (actually a proton pump inhibitor), handily packaged together as a "ZacPac") to eradicate the h. pylori. The gastro doc recommended that treatment because of the family history of stomach cancer (you have a 6 times higher chance of getting stomach cancer if you've had h. pylori, I just read). I also read that pretty much any symptom between the nipples and the belly button can be attributed to this type of gastritis, so I'll just have to wait and see how I feel after the treatment.

So, there is no reason to believe I will be keeling over any time soon.

I've only taken 6 pills so far (the regimine is one each of the above, mornings and evenings), and I've already got a delightful rash on the back of my arm, but I doctored it with some lotion and will keep an eye out for any other locations.

Now I can get back to the real purpose of this blog, boring you all with extended descriptions of my efforts in indoor gardening, which I will resume after work today.

-Nee in Germany is on the road to recovery, possibly via diarrhea-ville

Someday, my results will come...

Talked to the gastroenterologist's office just now. The doctor is reviewing the results and will fax them to my g.p. first thing in the morning. So I should be able to call in the morning and get an appointment. Hell, I'll call now and get an appointment for later tomorrow morning. Ka-ching!

ETA: appointment for 11:30 Thursday morning.

I'm much calmer now

So I spent the hour from 5 to 6 pm last night dialing the gastroenterologist's number every 30 seconds or so and didn't manage to get through. I was about 50 flavors of pissed afterward, and I think John thought I was going to give myself a stroke.

In the meanwhile, I have been tracking down information on my symptoms, and I will go out on a limb and make a self-diagnosis of non-acidic laryngopharyngeal reflux, caused by a malfunctioning sphincter or 2. I may end up being way off base on this, but at least I have given myself a bit of relief from thinking I might (possibly, probably not) keel over while waiting for stupid test results. If reflux is causing my esophagus to spasm, that could be the chest weirdness I've been feeling, and the mild breathing problems I've been having could also be caused by bile or whatever hanging around in my tubes.

We'll see, but I think just calming myself down is going to help with the severity of some of the symptoms, at least. I'll keep everyone posted...

-Nee in Germany spends a lot of time clearing her throat

Seriously hacked off

Just got off the phone with the g.p.'s office. Still no results. She asked when I had been to the gastroenterologist. Last Monday. Oh, it usually takes *3 weeks* to get results. Wha?! The receptionist at the gastroenterologist said middle to end of *that* week. I'm pretty sure John heard that, too, so it wasn't just me being high. So I am going to try the special call-in hour this evening at the gastroenterologist and see if I can get some more info. grrr...

Busy, busy

Yesterday I went to the grocery store, or rather, 2 stores, which went off with one big hitch--my debit card wouldn't work at the 2nd store. After I had gotten out 20 bucks, printed a bank statement, and bought groceries at the first store *with the same card*. Annoying. So I had to run down the street and get cash, come back, and pay for my groceries, which were sitting in the cart at the end of the check-out lane the whole time. And since that jolt of adrenaline, I've felt pretty good.

Today, I spent a good chunk of the day finishing up the dishes and battling meal moths, again, but in the spice cabinet this time. Also annoying, but I got the cabinet thoroughly cleaned out and sanitized, so I'm hoping we don't have another outbreak.

Now I am going to hang around with Hannah watching tv.

Annoyed

I called the g.p. yesterday and today, and no results have come in yet. So I decided to google the gastroenterologist who did the endoscopy to see if there were any tips on how long I would have to wait, and there was a whole slew of info on the site. Now I am annoyed that 1. when I made the appointment by phone, no one said, oh, by the way, check out our web site while you wait for 4 weeks, and 2. it didn't occur to me until now. Extra annoyance: there is a phone-in consultation available to ask for your results, but only Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, 5-6 pm. If I had known that *yesterday*, I could have called. Now I have to wait until Monday for *somebody* to have some results, either the g.p. or the specialist.

So annoyed.

Probulation complete!

So yesterday I had the upper GI probe. I have no idea how it went, because the sedative basically knocked me out. I assume I was only about 97% unconscious, though, because I woke up in the next room in a comfy lounge chair, and I am guessing I got there partially under my own power.

What weirded me out last night was the realization that I probably was able to cooperate with the doctors *in German* in a semi-conscious state. At least I am spared the embarassment if that wasn't the case, because I don't remember anything after drinking something that tasted like banana + cat food and getting a shot. I have a hazy recollection of being asked to hold something in my mouth and it subsequently falling back out, and that's it.

Even when I had my wisdom teeth out and had laughing gas, I wasn't fully out of it, although I was pretty high. But I was aware of them tugging around in my mouth. That was the last time I had a major medical intervention requiring chemical assistance. Now I am wishing I had been given a sedative when I got my IUD inserted.

Sleepy time aside, I felt pretty ok when John got me home, but later, once the deadening spray had worn off, I had a couple of sore spots in my throat, so I am wondering if they took any tissue samples. I got to laughing at my current Terry Pratchett novel last night, and that did not feel good at all, but things feel better this morning.

I should be able to get the results from my doc at the end of the week, so I'll update once I know something.

--Nee in Germany is glad she didn't see any tubes anywhere at the doctor's office

Back Home

Our trip to Switzerland went off well. We didn't have any problems traveling, except for indecision on what kinds of snacks to buy en route. The train is not the cheapest option, but it is not that much more expensive than gas and toll fees and parking fees if we were to drive. Plus, it is WAY less stressful. Navigating on the German/Swiss highway systems is not that difficult, but there are always little surprises lurking, plus the famous German traffic jam (Stau). We left home on the first day of the fall holidays in our state, and the train was full enough; I can imagine what the roads must have looked like. So we saved ourselves a lot of frustration with the train.

You also get a better view of the scenery from the train compared to the highway. Of course, when I pointed that out to John en route, we immediately went into a tunnel. Talk about unfortunate timing. But we didn't spend too much time in tunnels. We did get to see the Rhine Falls from up close, though. When we went to Italy a couple of years ago, we stopped there and climbed down to them, but on the other side. Either way, the view was spectacular.

When we got to Baden, our friends met us and showed us around a bit. There was a way cool playground tucked under a tall bridge. Looking at it from an American perspective, I could imagine it being a lodestone for lawsuits, but from the perspective of someone who's lived in Germany for a while, it was cool but not out of the common way. The town reminded me a lot of Heidelberg, on a slightly smaller scale. There are thermal springs there (hence the name, "bath"), and John and I drank some of the water. It tastes like the liquid inside the shell of a freshly boiled egg. Not something you'd want to drink a lot of, so you'd be sure to get well quickly, if you were drinking it for the health benefits.

Then we headed for their village a little ways outside Baden. We had delicious a Indian dinner, sent the kids off to bed, then stayed up chatting until about midnight. It was nice to visit with friends from back in the day in Austin.

The next morning, I realized I had neglected to pack a change of pants. I could have sworn I had folded them with the rest of my clothes, so I assumed I had just not managed to grab the bottom item in the stack of clothes slated for the suitcase. I imagined I would get home and find a giant pile of cat hair on my cords because they had been lying on the bed unattended for 3 days. Turns out, they were still in the bottom of the laundry basket full of clean clothes. I had gone over my mental list so many times, I had just imagined myself folding the pants. D'oh!

At 6 that evening, we were descended upon by a swarm of little kids. Karen (a Brit married to an American) had put up a sign in their apartment building warning the residents that they would be visited by marauding children in search of sweets and had arranged to have children of their acquaintance from the building, the kindergarten, and the playgroup come by so they could trick-or-treat in a pack. Hannah had bought some black fairy wings* and sparkly make-up and dressed up as a Goth butterfly fairy. We also had a pirate princess, a regular pirate, a regular princess, a teeny teddy bear, a wizard (who went around roaring like a dinosaur--he wasn't too sure about things), and a cat. Hannah has determined that the key to getting a good haul (either at Halloween or Mardi Gras) is to have a cute, tiny kid with you so you can siphon off the bulk of their candy. They won't know the difference.

*The wings were decorated along the top edge with black fur and silver tinsel and came with a headband topped with a circle on a stick (also covered in black fur and silver tinsel), making us joke that next year she can use it to dress up as a Goth Teletubby.

Then the next morning, but not too early, we headed back home. Since we got to the train station early, we had time for a cappucino and to buy some lunch to take with us. John managed to find chips that have the texture of Funions but are bacon flavored. Riiiight... Then when we got back to Heidelberg, John got approached by an old lady while I was busy buying bus tickets from the machine. She was offering to sell him a ticket that would be good for the rest of the day, but that she didn't need any more. All for 2 Euros (a one-use ticket for 90 minutes is 1.90). When we took a closer look at the ticket, it was for Bern, which is in Switzerland. I am pretty sure it isn't valid in a town more than 2 hours north of the border. Oh, well--you live and you learn. John learned that sweet-looking little old ladies are not to be trusted. I could have told him that.

Nee in Germany is related to little old ladies of that kind

Off for the Weekend

Just to keep people in the loop, we are going to Switzerland for the weekend to visit friends and will be back Monday afternoon. It feels a little douche-y to announce we are flitting off for an international jaunt, but my family yells at me for not letting them know if we are going to be gone.

I am going to spend the afternoon finishing up a BIG translating job I have been working on forever *cough* so I can send it off and enjoy my weekend with a clear conscience.

Hannah is supposed to be stopping at Claire's after school to put together a few pieces that should culminate in a Halloween costume of some kind. She tried to tempt me hither with the suggestion of a little mother-daughter time, but she just doesn't have the guilt-trip chops yet to get me to abandon my so-close-to-being-done translation.

I've finished the laundry already, so this evening we just have to throw a few things in a bag, then we'll be catching a train at 8:30 tomorrow morning.

Ciao!

One reason I consider myself liberal

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

-Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945)

My girl, again

I love that Hannah is so close to us. She could be a raging teenager already, and who knows? Someday she might be. But for now, she comes home and chats us up, and since I'm working upstairs, she regales her dad with everything that is going on at school, including dishing the dirt on people's love lives and what's up today with her nemesis. This even after we have urged her not to be so mean (if mostly in her head) to said nemesis.

Nee in Germany is a lucky mom

My big girl

Hannah and I have been on our own for a couple of days while John is away on business, and I've really been aware of how mature she's getting. She had an orthodontist's appointment on Monday, and afterward we had to run by the grocery store for a few forgotten items. She insisted on carrying them even though I offered to carry the toilet paper, saying her dad would insist that she carry it for me (since I am sooo frail, duh), plus my stuff, and his stuff, too, while she was at it. I love her understated sarcasm. I told her I was surprised she didn't think her dad would want her to carry me, too; I fit on her back.

She stayed home sick yesterday. She wasn't violently ill like in September when I was in Texas--John sent her to school with an upset tummy, and she barfed on the bus before she even got there--but she had a loud, wet cough that would have been a distraction to her and her classmates. She was already sounding better yesterday afternoon, though, and told her dad on the phone last night that she'd be going to school today.

Then this morning she told me she was enjoying school more this year, now that she has gotten away from certain teachers and has more interesting subjects, which includes chemistry, physics, and a technology class. She even learned something in music class! (Instead of doodling SpongeBob, which has been her usual m.o., I learned.) And when she left, she was perfectly pleasant, unlike the surly dwarf I used to send out the door last year.

This afternoon she is going to stop off to pick up another forgotten item at the store. She even took it upon herself to make a reminder in her cell phone. She's getting so dependable! That's one of the things I like about living here: our town is set up in such a way that Hannah can get herself around and help with errands and such while staying in a fairly circumscribed area. I think that has contributed in large part to her burgeoning independence.

Nee in Germany is all verklempt

Patience is a virtue

I was hoping to have the results of my 24-hour EKG earlier this week, but my doctor was out of the office, and today, her first day back, she was already booked, so I have to wait until tomorrow to go over it with her.

Having to wait kind of sucks. I've been pretty calm about things up to now, but I'm still having the fluttery feeling, plus some new annoyances that may or may not be side effects of the medication I'm on, and my patience is getting a little thin.

It's boring to me and to my family to always be paranoid about every little twinge or burp. I'm trying not to complain too much, because John gives me this look, like he's torn between worry and thinking I'm a hypochondriac. :) But this is my blog and I can complain here if I want to.

Most of the physical annoyances are right there on the package insert, so I haven't let myself get too worked up over them. Oddly, I haven't experienced any of the symptoms on the "very frequent" side effect list. But headache, shortness of breath during exertion, stomach ache from the "frequent" list, and pains around the heart area and muscles cramps from the "occasional" list? Check, at least in small doses off and on. As long as they go away again within a day or so, I chalk them up to the medication and don't worry about them. But there is one spot right between my shoulder blades that hurts (and I kept accidentally whacking it against the edge of the kitchen counter while sitting on a stool in there this morning, grrr); it could just be from working at a desk, but I don't like it.

I have also developed a burping problem. Laugh if you like, but it is extremely annoying. Water makes me burp. A banana makes me burp. Not eating anything for over an hour makes me burp. The icing on the cake was some bad reflux last night while sitting on the couch, upright, after one of the healthier meals I've made in a while (baked fish, rice, and stir-fried veg). Now I just need to find out if the chalky antacid I have is ok to use with my medicine. I guess it doesn't matter, because I had to use it last night, and I'm still here this morning.

Maybe tomorrow I'll get some useful news.

Beans, beans--they're good for your heart...

Maybe I haven't eaten enough beans, then.

Right now I am undergoing some tests to try to pinpoint the reason(s) for some odd feelings I have been having--a slight tightness in my chest, a fluttery feeling in my chest and neck that comes and goes--and a fast heart rate and higher-than-normal blood pressure my doctor found. So far, all of the tests--blood work-up, ultrasound on my heart, EKG--have come back normal, but I am waiting on the results of a 24-hour EKG before we can make any more decisions. I am on a beta-blocker to bring down my heart rate, but at a fairly low dose.

I haven't had any shortness of breath (outside of climbing the stairs) or dizziness, just the occasional slight headache, which can be a side effect of the medication I am on. And the funny chest feelings.

After the last month, I am willing to accept that it could be stress-related, although I normally react to stress with sleep problems and an eye tic.

One thing that really got to me in all this was my enforced uselessness over the weekend. When I saw my g.p. on Friday, she immediately rushed around taking blood, hooking me up to the EKG, and giving me meds, but then I was supposed to take it easy when I got home and try not to overdo it. John was the iron-fisted enforcer of this advice, and his gentle but firm remonstrances when he found me sitting on the floor, trying to sort laundry put me in tears. One would think that having doctor's orders to do nothing would be the cat's pajamas, but it was driving me crazy. After dropping off the EKG device yesterday--and having no new directions to the contrary--I started adding some activity back into my day. I drove the few blocks down the street for my turn at catsitting duty, cooked a simple dinner, scrubbed out Hannah's toilet, and put away some clean dishes. Surprisingly, I felt both tired and slightly manic afterward. Who knows what that is about, but I will continue to try to pick up my daily activities without pushing myself. If I feel weird, I will stop, as I already promised John.

And Hannah was so good with helping to pick up the slack in chores and such, I got her a little Wars calendar she had already begged me for. Each month has a photo of a different character, plus sketches from the planning stages. The Leia photo will help if we manage to get around to making a Leia Halloween costume for Hannah.

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.