So proud of our girl!

When the half-year report cards came out in February--yes, Hannah is only notified of her grades twice during a 10-1/2-month school year!--John and I were shocked to see that Hannah had officially been labeled as being in danger of failing the year. Most of her grades were ok in a but-we-know-she-could-have-done-better way, but she was failing two classes that are key to determining if she passes the year.

At that point, we talked to her teachers and discovered that it wasn't just the fact that she wasn't putting in enough study time that was likely to doom her to repeating the year or even to changing schools, but that her attitude to school was so bad that it had become a block for her. This led to several come-to-Jesus type talks with her and her enrollment 3 days a week at a tutoring center. I have also been working with her on those 2 subjects to make sure she is getting in enough repetition to make it all stick.

I am thrilled to say that it seems to be working. She has a much better attitude to studying, homework, and tutoring than I foresaw, and her homeroom teacher has verified that it is carrying over into the classroom. (Perhaps not in math, but I've met her math teacher and can't say that I blame her.)

Best of all, Hannah herself is able to see the results of all this hard work: she has gotten a B on each of the last 5 Latin vocabulary quizzes (a B+ even on the last one!), and an A on her English vocabulary quiz. Here she is with the proof of her diligence, in the place of honor (which is also the only place in our apartment where magnets will stick):



I'll admit that I'm not above giving her the occasional treat--so far, just a set of Star Wars patches--but I make sure not to give them to her after she brings home a good grade; that should be a reward in and of itself. Instead, I gave them to her on a day when she had worked really hard and had not complained about all the work I had given her. That's the behavior I am trying to encourage.

Last week, Hannah's physics class took the rockets they had built down to the fields by the river and had a contest to see which group's rocket would fly the highest. Regional media sent a camera man, and a picture of Hannah's group "tinkering" (at the camera man's suggestion) with their rocket made it into the paper. (Unfortunately, the scan came out very grainy, and I couldn't find the article online, so no picture here.) Hannah pointed out that there was a quote in the article from a boy in a different class (or a different school?) predicting that his group's rocket would go much further than the girls'. Haha, boy, the joke's on you, because Hannah's group--3 girls and a boy--got second place! Here's Hannah with her rocket and a few goodies she received as part of her prize:



She just got home and was telling me about her hands-on chemistry experiment in class today, and not once did she sound or say something sarcastic. Once she finishes her lunch, we'll be hitting the books. There's a lot to get caught up on between now and the last 3 tests in the 2 classes she's failing, but I am feeling a lot more sanguine about it now than I was a mere 6 weeks ago.

Poking along...

Not much has been going on around here. I did buy some more soil for starting my window boxes, but it is chilly and overcast today, so I may put it off for now. Same thing for cleaning the lower balcony. At one point this winter, I noticed that something that appeared to be ashes was blowing onto our balcony and assumed it was coming from one of our neighbors' chimneys, somehow. It turns out that ashes from OUR fireplace had gotten dumped into a bucket on the balcony instead of carried down to the garbage at some point and then when the wind picked up, they were blown all around. D'oh!

I probably also need to look into some advice on caring for my poinsettia. It is getting bigger, and the "flower" parts are coming out, but I don't know why now instead of at the holidays when I was covering them. Also, the edges of the leaves are turning brown, but just the green leaves.

Both the pink and the white Thanksgiving cacti are in bloom at the moment, adding to my general enjoyment at sharing an office with my plants.

I spent part of Friday and Saturday wrestling with a sewing project but seem to have things under control now. John is a movie junkie, so once I had things sorted, I sewed while watching a movie he streamed from our German Netflix-type movie provider. Right now, he is watching No Country for Old Men, but I just can't get interested in it, especially since a lot of what I'd heard about it was the violence/gore. I can handle those things if the story interests me enough, but this one just doesn't.

John rode his bike clear across town yesterday in search of a tennis court. For most of the courts he has found, you have to be a member of a club, and John doesn't often have someone to play with or time to play, so the idea of plunking down anywhere from 200 to 400 Euros per year for the opportunity to even get on the court doesn't sit well with him. He found out about one place online that has hourly rates and no membership requirements, so he headed over there to have a look at it (and en route to return the opera video he insisted I check out for him).

I had my annual exam, and everything seems ok, but the GYN wanted to check both the placement of my IUD and a fibrous spot in my breast with the sonogram machine, so I ended up feeling rather sticky and gross from all the gel in play. And that is all I will go into there.

We just "sprang forward" today, and it is shocking to find that it is already pushing 4 p.m. Getting Hannah off to school in the morning is going to suuuuck, I can already tell.

I think the time change has affected my brain. I'm pretty sure that there has been slightly more than that going on, but I can't seem to recall at the moment. Oh, well.

--Nee in Germany likes to blame factors outside her control for her mental decline

The joy of the sunroom in spring

In the American university system, we would talk about this time when John is not having to teach as being between semesters, but in the German system, the semesters run into each other and include lecture periods and lecture-free periods. Students can still be on the hook for work during this period and often have papers to write that are due when the next lecture period starts. So even though John is not teaching right now, he is not really on vacation, either. But he does have more time available for things like taking care of various paperwork that living abroad entails.

All that to say, we got German driver's licenses! John is sad that we had to give up our Texas licenses, but I photocopied them so we have proof of how young and cute we were when we got them. Now we're looking forward to our first German traffic tickets.

We decided to take our new licenses for a spin this weekend and drove over to Lorsch, where there's a building still standing from the Carolingian period (Charlemagne's grandchildren are thought to have been there after it was built; he was there before it was built). Since John was good enough to load our photos to Flickr and label them, I went ahead and wrote it up over at my poor neglected travel blog. I also found a new 30 spf sunscreen that goes on more like a lotion and without making my face first white and then shiny, so I was able to wander around without feeling self-conscious about my shiny face but confident that this wouldn't be the sunshiny time that tipped the skin-cancer scale.

I called Hannah briefly during her lunch break today to ask her about her lost pencil case, and she told me that she got a B- on her Latin vocabulary quiz last week! I am so excited for her--to date, she has failed all of them. She took another one today (it's a weekly event) and felt that she may have done even better. I am so proud of her for sticking with the work; I think this kind of positive feedback is going to only make her eager for more. It would be lovely if she could have this kind of result in math as well, but there are fewer opportunities for it as they only have 4 tests and no quizzes or graded homework for the whole year.

It is starting to warm up, and I am loving the extra sunshine. Come on high pressure system, don't fail me now! I put our drying rack out on the balcony for the first time this year and now have a couple of windows open, not even for airing out a bathroom after a shower or a catbox cleaning. If the weather stays this good, I think I will buy some more soil this weekend and get Hannah to help me seed some more window boxes with various flower mixes I picked up at the grocery store. I am not holding my breath about John's yearly proclamation that he is going to buy geraniums to plant, which he has only managed to do once in 7+ years. Besides, it is ridiculously expensive to fill all the boxes we have, and if the summer is wet, which it was the last time and very well could be again, the geraniums molder. I am perfectly happy with the seed packets that cost less than 2 bucks and hold enough seeds to fill 2 boxes with a profusion of different flowers that bloom at different times.

I didn't bother with my Wii game over Hannah's spring break, and last week I eased my way back into it with a lot of yoga exercises, but this week I am pushing the pedal to the metal. Today I ran for 20 minutes and made it 4 km (barely). When I passed the 2-mile mark, I had to scream for joy a little. We'll see how I feel when I wake up in the morning, but I have felt great all day, with lots of energy. It would be cool if I could jog outside, but since we basically live on the side of a long hill, I don't think I'll be starting from my house. It would be nice to be able to jog along the river, but the near side is all ripped up due to road work. Not if I ran in the other direction, though...

I am itching to start some repairs around here--there are holes in and chips out of the wallpaper in places (not all made by us!)--but our landlord said something about replacing some windows last year (or maybe the year before?), and I don't want to start my project before they come in and make a new mess. I may just do one wall at a time, as time and expense allow it.

I managed to cut my coffee consumption down to one cup a day, but failed at reducing it to half a cup. We weren't driving for a bit for various reasons, so we were limited to shopping at stores within bus-reach and buying what we could carry; I wasn't able to get my usual mix of 1/2-caff coffee, so I have been drinking a full cup of full-caff. The horror! Once we run out of this kind, though, I won't feel so bad about my full cup of 1/2-caff. I am also trying to cut out chocolate and black tea, but it is haaard. Fruit tea is just not cutting it for me in terms of a fortifying mid-day hot drink. I have some instant decaf (to use in making a kick-ass tiramisu); maybe I should try that.

--Nee in Germany likes her drinks like her man--hot!

Lazy kind of Sunday, except for all the work

Hannah has been on school vacation this week for the start of Lent, and I think she has gotten plenty of loafing in, although she claims she didn't get in half of the loafing she had planned. She went to tutoring 3 afternoons and had a dentist appointment one morning, so there went some of her loafing time. We didn't do much sleeping in, though, so I am hoping that getting her up at just past 6 tomorrow morning won't be too much of a headache.

I wanted to go over more of her school stuff with her this week, but just didn't get around to it as many times as I had originally thought I would. I realized yesterday that if I don't sit down with her and get her started, she will just disregard my many, many reminders, just like when I ask her to put away her laundry. Rather than blowing my top, which is my usual m.o. to finally get her to put up her clothes, I need to put my money where my mouth is and show her that her education is worth my time.

I also had a bit of work come in at the end of the week, and it was haaard switching gears. I am looking forward to getting back into my work/exercise/Hannah routine tomorrow. I didn't manage to exercise all this week and missed it. Running errands isn't nearly the same as rhythm kung-fu or skateboarding on the balance board (no whacky music, for one thing).

John and I also had our 16th anniversary on Friday. We tend to be low-key about these kinds of holidays for the most part. I made breakfast tacos for dinner, and John bought me flowers from the grocery store on his way home from the library. Then on Saturday I got around to sending him an e-card. (BTW, Hallmark now has a German online presence--woo!) John and I were bickering about something (we're in the throes of acquiring various paperwork for some German bureaucratic this-and-that), and Hannah was astonished that we would fight on our anniversary. Bickering waits for no one, kid, even on such a hallowed occasion.

I spent most of yesterday on two tedious projects, one rather gross and one rather extensive. I don't think there is much of anything between the wood paneling that constitutes our ceiling and the tiles that make the roof, and I know for a fact that a bat or two has called the space between the balcony roof and the outside wall home during the warmer months. Who knows if anything else is up there right now, but more than once in the past, I have heard the scritch-scratch of something scrabbling around above our bathroom ceiling when heading for a night-time pee. So when I saw that something black-ish and very dirty looking was escaping from the crack between the paneling and the tile wall in the bathroom, I didn't know whether it was rodent poop or just dirt. It had to be cleaned off, though. While I had a bucket or two of hot, soapy water on hand, I cleaned the shower stall, too. Luckily, it hasn't been that long since I scrubbed the shower floor, so I was able to give it a quick slosh with the left-over water and call it clean.

My other project was an organizational one: I put all of the digital photos I could get my hands on into one file on the external drive we have for backing stuff up. I found photos people have sent me, photos from our old digital camera, photos from various old film cameras that were put on CD as part of the processing, photos from CD back-ups, photos that had already been backed up to various files on the hard drive, and photos from John's old Palm device. I even managed to get them organized to some extent, but it took quite a bit of the day.

Now I need to go help Hannah, whose iPod was abused by iTunes and lost a bunch of music she had saved from our CDs. I think there is a copy of one of her older libraries on the external hard drived (spotted while searching for more photos) and we are going to try to fix it.

--Nee in Germany is already kind of tired

I wish it were so, JFK...

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
-John F. Kennedy, 35th US president (1917-1963)

From the A.Word.A.Day mailing list.

Computer stuff

I am not fond of having to download software to be able to use a web site, but I am kicking myself for not having installed the Flickr Uploadr sooner. Rather than selecting the photos you want to upload, waiting for them to upload (which can take a while if there are a lot), and then having to come back and label them, you can select and label them first using the software, which them uploads them directly to Flickr without you having to go to the site and log in first, and when it is finished, all the labels, tags, and sets are already done.

I don't know if I mentioned it already, but we used our xmas loot to buy a new digital camera. Our old one was about 5 years old and had already been in the shop twice when it gave up the ghost. The new one is a Fujifilm camera that has a way-more powerful zoom feature than the old one and uses an SD card instead of whatever the old one had (for which I had to buy a separate reader when the cable croaked since our computers only have SD slots).

Right now I have some photos loading from February, so head on over there later if you would like to see them.

And on that note, I need to get back to translating.

--Nee in Germany is only uploading photos right now as a favor to John

Let's see...

Getting lots of stuff done lately, here and there. Yesterday, Hannah's class had a hot dog stand at their school festival / open house for incoming 5th graders. John and I took a turn through it, dutifully buying hot dogs for lunch--24 of which we had already bought and donated for selling--and washing them down with a chocolate milkshake to benefit a school in Uganda and chocolate-dipped bananas on a stick (well, John ate those).



Here you can see the classroom a little better. Hannah and I spent half a Saturday in January painting it green. It started out a rather distressing yellow, but this is a big improvement, even if all of the adults involved on painting day said, "Better the kids than us," regarding having to sit in such a bright green room.



Then we walked over to the library to return 3 books. Now I remember why I don't take John with me--he checked out 3 dvds and 8 cds. That means one of us has to go back in a week to return the dvds and in 2-1/2 weeks to return the cds. You get books for a month, so there's no pressure to hurry back until you need more reading material.

After that, we got some groceries so we could make aloo baingan (Indian eggplant and potato dish) and gumbo and tamales. John found the ingredients for tamales in a kit when we went to the commissary a while back and wants to try it out.

I finally got the floor of the shower stall good and clean after trying out various cleaners and spending way too much time on my hands and knees scrubbing. When the cleaning bug bites, you just have to go with it.

Every year at xmas, I am inspired to make a gingerbread house. My attempts at making one from scratch in the past have always failed, so I aim to buy a kit as early as possible in the season and hold onto it until Hannah says, "I'm bored!" Next year, I'm going to let Hannah munch on it the first time she asks, because by the time I decided we no longer needed it as a decorative holiday element, it had gotten so hard that Hannah had to saw through it with a serated knife and scraped her gums trying to chew it. I finally threw it out this morning.



We have been eating our way steadily through the American food bought on post, but it has not all been as good as we remembered. I made a strawberry cake for VDay from a mix; not good. Looked good, but tasted odd. And I mentioned John's canned chili recently--yuck.



I spent a big chunk of the day on Friday labeling photos from our Italy vacation in 2008(!). I don't know if I am ever going to manage to be done. There are so many photos! And I am still only on day 3 out of like 12 days. This may end up being my new neverending project.

--Nee in Germany doesn't seem to be making as much headway with her projects as she thought

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