All roses up in here

I waited a day too long to pillage more roses from the garden.

The purple one is another freebie out of our garden, but here it is already a bit faded and turning brown on the edges. It only lasted a day in the vase before it dropped all its petals. John and I can't quite put our finger on the scent: air freshener? Hospital hand soap?

This one is one of John's purchases for the slope: Friesinger Morgenröte, I think (=sunrise). It is a beautiful color, but John and I disagree as to which is the better rose, his or the pink one above. I can't tell that it has much smell to it (maybe it, too, was picked too late), but John reports that it is supposed to have a slightly peach-like scent to it.

The garden came with another type of rose, as well. In German they are called Beetrosen (=(flower) bed roses), but I guess in English they are referred to as being "bushy". They put out clusters of itty-bitty roses. I like them because they seem very old fashioned, but John is not impressed.

Last but not least, we have the climbing roses that actually grow up the street side of the house.

Unfortunately, they seem to have some rust or something growing on them. John was advised by a neighbor (who used to be a professional gardener, I believe) that they needed to be cut way back last fall, but John was loathe to at the time. Watching them over the last year, and having a little more experience in the garden, he's realized that even if cutting them back kills them, they can be replaced. And if it doesn't kill them, they'll grow back quickly. So we picked up some reading on how to trim the various kinds of rose bushes, and I guess we'll be whacking away at them in a few weeks.

--Nee in Germany loves her rose pruning gloves--look, Ma, no pokes!

Gotta get outside

If I spend too much time indoors working (like this week, finishing up a big translating job), I start getting antsy. Getting outside, even if just for 10 minutes, really helps me stay even. Luckily, our laundry room is situated such that you have to go out the back door to get to it. So if I run a load or two during the day, I have a ready made excuse to step outside for a bit.

Sometimes I putter around out back, fiddling with my potted plants or pulling grass and dead plants up from various cracks. At this time of year, though, there is one main task: cleaning up after the giant horse chestnut tree behind our house.

Pretty, isn't it? It provides nice shade up there if you want to take a break and sit on the bench behind it, but it also throws shade on our garden (see the grass John planted to the left?). And it drops friggin' chestnuts everywhere. The loud "thunk" of them hitting is very distracting (and a bit unnerving at night).

This is the view after I had already swept and shoveled the terrace completely clean last week. This is probably 1-2 buckets worth of horse chestnuts. They are actually quite pretty, but inedible, so I set some aside to use in fall decorations, but I haven't come across or been able to think of anything good to do with them. I finally just piled some in decorative bowls and put them out in the vacation apartment we rent out. If nothing else, they are supposed to drive spiders away.




--Nee in Germany has got your conker!

No promises

Rather than go on and on about the blogging or the lack of blogging (boring!), I'm just going to jump right in.

But anaways, when we bought the house and garden and half the hillside beyond the house, we also ended up with a bunch of plants. I'll probably put up some pictures later of the mystery plants from the spring, but here is a photo of one of the types of roses we inherited.

I haven't been able to get up into the garden as much as I would like lately, and it occurred to me that there won't be many more roses to enjoy this fall, so I brought this one inside to put on my desk. Not only is it beautiful, with its ruffled petals and interesting color of yellow blending to striated pink on the edges, but it has a lovely strong smell. I'm outing myself as being totally déclassé here, but the scent is that of the Barbie perfume maker of my youth. (Can't remember if that belonged to Kee alone or if it was a shared toy.)

Now if only roses would cure sore throats. John has been coughing and Hannah sneezing/stuffy for the last few days, but I had managed to dodge the worst of it until I woke up with a sore throat this morning. Not so bad that I had to go back to bed, but still making it hard to concentrate on work, especially since I keep getting up to make more hot drinks. Oh, well, I bet ginger lemon tea will totally cure it this time!

--Nee in Germany has a legitimate business-related use for those Muppets on her desk, I'm sure

Easter's around the corner

...but winter is still hanging in there. On Tuesday, snowflakes were swirling around when I left my office. Urgh!

We haven't been able to do anything outside in our garden, but I did manage to get some seeds into some dirt this past weekend. Amazingly, the hokkaido pumpkin seeds I threw in an empty pot (RIP, poinsettia) have already started coming up gangbusters. After one of the cats (ahem, Eliza) chewed up most of the potted Callas my friend had given me, I realized I needed to protect my fledgling pumpkins, so I brought up the cage Hannah used to keep her mouse in from the cellar and banged it down over the pot. It fits perfectly, with room to spare, so I hope I can keep them alive and uneaten until it is warm enough to get them into the ground.

I had a bit of a shock when I went to plant my geranium seeds, though. Apparently, the farmers are growing them in gold-plated pots and watering them with Evian, because a package of 10 seeds cost me 4.50! I hadn't even noticed in the store when I bought them with a bunch of other stuff. I put them in peat pots in my windowsill greenhouse because I wanted to give them the best possible chance to sprout, so of course the damn peat pots sprouted mold all over. So irritated. Luckily, the mold dried up when I took the clear plastic cover off. The cats haven't made a habit of getting up on that windowsill, so I have my fingers crossed that the open greenhouse remains unmolested. Today I saw that I have about 3 geranium seeds sprouting. Go me! So far that is 3 bucks a plant (since I bought 2 packages of seeds).

On further thought, I'm not going to post a picture of my Easter wreath, because it looks rather crappy. Instead, I'll post a picture of my most successful wreath to date: Halloween!

I think next year I'll stock up on some Easter chocolate and attach it to the wreath like I did with the Halloween chocolate.

If we get out of the house tomorrow, I want to take a picture of the little fountain down the street decorate for Easter. John was going to try to get us reservations to eat Easter fish, but no one answered the phone at lunch.

--Nee in Germany forgot to buy white eggs for dying

No rest for the wicked

I was planning on just lying around, maybe doing a little cross stitch, but of course my love of puttering put an end to that today.

After going online for a little bit this morning, I balanced our bank account--which meant chasing receipts and bank statements up and down 2 flights of stairs since I couldn't find them all--and paid some bills, including re-upping with the cat-sitting club and the youth hostel association and paying John's speeding ticket. I also went to look at my recently paid off student loan online. I'm hoping I'll get something from my  lender soon indicating that they are aware I don't owe them any money, but I'm not holding my breath.

Hannah informed me when she got up that her bed was broken. It turns out that the frame is just a tad too wide (or has warped) for the [box spring], and when she rolled over in bed this morning, it all shifted just enough to make one side fall through. John got out his drill and some wood screws and got the bed frame tightened, then we got some shadow-box style shelves up on the wall, and finally I dragged an under-used bookcase downstairs for Hannah to put her school stuff in. I put her to work cleaning and straightening her room, and in just a couple of hours, it looks tons better. She's still got 4 or 5 unpacked boxes at one end of the room, but those are items that are either too big to fit in the limited amount of storage space she has in her room, or are stuff she's not willing to part with yet (a big box of dolls, etc.). Last summer, while we were packing in preparation for our move into the house, Hannah was adamant that she did not want to get rid of *any* of her stuff--"don't throw away my childhood!" was her line. *sigh* Needless to say, none of "her childhood" has gotten unpacked or has otherwise been sought after, hence the leftover boxes.

Yesterday I hit the home improvement store and 2 grocery stories, and I had thought I'd be starting some seedlings today, but it was *snowing* when we got up, and I just didn't feel like wandering down to the cellar in the wet snow (too warm to stick) to fetch dirt, seeds, and my window-sill greenhouse. I've got to get out on Monday and Tuesday, though, so maybe I'll fetch that stuff on my way back in.

Since John agreed to make chicken enchiladas with the millions and gillions of corn tortillas the Lauries brought last month, I promised to make a salad, so I guess I better get on it.

Nee in Germany bustles when she walks

Busy busy

It was 5 degrees below freezing when we got up this morning. Oh, Winter, why are you still hanging around?

Freya got spayed on Wednesday and was already able to go up and down the many stairs in our house Thursday morning, and she joined us in bed Thursday night. She seems to be making a speedy recovery.

Still waiting for our bulb flowers to come up, but when it is -5C overnight, I don't blame them for taking their time. I'd like to start messing with the easily accessible part of our garden, but one end of it is full of brush that needs to be broken up into kindling. I got 2 loads (of Ikea bags) done just before Winter returned, and the pile looks just as big as before. John wants to burn the brush that's up on the steep slope, but we need to talk to someone at City Hall about permits and timing and such.

I have so much grading to do. Urgh.

I bought a grapevine wreath (I think?) and have been redecorating it each season. Hannah helped me pick out some cute plastic eggs and papier mache carrots to put on it, and after an extensive search, I managed to find some Easter ribbon I deemed acceptible. I will put up a picture later.

--Nee in Germany made baby steps

Too weird

I set up a blog for one of my classes, and while troubleshooting something for a student, I discovered that I had already created a blog for my other gmail account, although I do not remember doing it. Behold!

Why I decided to create a revenge blog from the perspective of our (now deceased) cat, I'll never know.

Well this is embarrassing...

Hello? Anybody still out there? It looks like my last post was in April of this year, so I don't blame people for wandering off to more lively pastures in the meanwhile. Lots has happened since April, but maybe I'll just hit the highlights for now.

We bought a house and moved 20 km away.

Goodbye, old house!

Hello, new house!

In the midst of all the packing and paperwork, we shipped Hannah off to spend August with our family in Texas and Louisiana.

She enjoyed herself and was spoiled shamelessly by all the family.

We got a kitten that John has christened Freya. She is frisky and friendly and a welcome change from Eliza, who has ensconced herself in a closet since the day we moved in, *7 weeks ago*.

We decided when we bought the house to rent out an apartment in it as a vacation apartment. It occurred to me that I now officially have 3 jobs: a half-time teaching job, a part-time freelance translating/editing job, and an infrequent (so far) job as the proprietor of vacation accommodations. Whew! No wonder I'm so busy!

Now that I've broken the blogging ice after my lengthy dry spell, I'm not going to make any outrageous promises about blogging every day. That would be crazy! (given my track record.) Instead, I figure that if Mimi Smartypants can manage it once a week or so, so can I.

-Nee in Germany took the day off

Hermit twins, activate!

John and I have been pulled out of our hermit-y ways recently. John went to a conference in Freiburg and brought back a friend and colleague from Texas.



We had a nice visit for a couple of days before he flew back out.

Here's a picture of the whole family on the same walk:



This was at the end of the first week of the semester, and I wasn't even feeling crazy. At the end of the second week--still not crazy!--I saw a poster for a Gaelic music concert hosted by the local German-British club and suggested to John that we go. 1. We both like Gaelic music (Scottish music, The Chieftans, etc.). 2. It was very inexpensive. 3. John wanted to go to an organ concert on Sunday, and this was a good alternative, because a. I am not such a big fan of organ music and b. that would have been 20 bucks a head. Ouch! For 3/4 of that price we were able to attend the Gaelic concert, have drinks, and buy their CD. You can hear a few of their songs on their MySpace page: Lily & Co.

This weekend we are cat-sitting, and we also have to get out for a big shopping run across town. That may make me crazy. John caught just part of my conversation with Hannah on the topic yesterday: "Who are you going to kill?" Me: "Everyone in the MediaMarkt." Him: "Oh, ok." Not my all-time favorite place, but I think I am well equipped to deal with it today.

Ok, onward and onward.

--Nee in Germany thanks the 7 dwarves for the sunshine

Goodbye Easter, Hello Spring!

For the first time in a long time, I took the whole weekend off. It helped that I was kind of forced to by the Easter holidays. Here in Southern Germany, it is a 4-day weekend, so we had to hit the store for our weekly shopping on Thursday before everything shut down. I worked a bit on Friday, and then I could do whatever I wanted for the rest of the weekend. The world of possibilities was a bit overwhelming, to tell the truth. But I was able to narrow the list down pretty quickly by finishing a sewing project.



I crocheted the last few rows, wove in the many, many loose ends, and washed the blanket, so now it is ready to go in the mail to another friend whose wife is expecting in June, I think. I'm thinking it should get there in plenty of time, but one should never underestimate the power of the Postal Service to screw shit up.

I also dug out a dishcloth I had started. I am trying to learn to knit, so I have been working my way through a book of 16 different dishcloth patterns. I bought some cotton yarn in bulk, and I think I have enough to make 8 cloths. Which is good, because Germans don't seem to use dishcloths--at least, I can't find any to buy--and ours are getting threadbare. This ends up being a two-fer for me.



Many moons ago, I started recovering the cushions on our dining room furniture but never got around to finishing them. That was the third sewing project I pulled out. Unfortunately, since it was Easter weekend and Germans take their quiet hours *very* seriously, I decided to wait to pull out the noisy sewing machine. But I will probably do that the end of this week or next weekend. Also, all that pinning and cutting of upholstery material was making my hands sore, so it was just as well that I only put in an hour or 2, tops.

The one thing I could work on without making a lot of racket, though, was cleaning the bathroom floor. I have become obsessed with getting the grout in the upstairs bathroom clean. I don't know who planned this place, but the rooms downstairs have light tile with dark grout, and the bathroom upstairs (there's carpet in the other rooms) has light tile with white grout, and it looks grimy all the time. So I bought some grout cleaner recently and have taken to working on small areas that look especially grimy in between my editing work. Then over the weekend I put in quite a bit of time and elbow grease scrubbing that cleaner into the grout and washing it back off. I haven't finished the whole bathroom yet, but the results are much better than I had hoped for. (A few weeks ago I made a similar attack on the shower stall. I guess Spring Cleaning is here.)

Hannah decided that there were certain meals she wanted to eat and she would cook them herself, so John and I are off the hook this week. She made up a meal list and grocery list, we took her to the store on Thursday, and she has been (mostly) in charge of the kitchen. So far, we've had delicious meatloaf and mashed potatoes, homemade meatball pizza, and a pasta dish with basalmico vinegar and turkey that she came up with herself. Talented!

In between all the scrubbing and sewing, I managed to put some time in to get my Animal Crossing account up to snuff. But then yesterday I actually had to work--the horror!--and by the time I was finished and wanted to play a little AC, John and Hannah had the tv tied up with one of the Dan Brown movies. So sad. But Hannah would watch Ewan McGregor reading the phone book, so it was to be expected.

Today I need to work on my course planning. The semester starts next week, and John will be gone at a conference, so I have to have my ducks lined up before then if I want to keep a grip on everything. And now I'm off to plan.

--Nee in Germany makes the other characters on Animal Crossing say "I suck" just because she can

Walker, Texas Woman

I need to get more exercise. One of my doctors basically said I was perfectly healthy but small and noodly and would greatly benefit from getting in better shape. I really thought I had been bopping along about the same, but when I had a chance to get on Wii Fit, it told me I had lost like 7 pounds since the last time I'd been on it, which was back in July. Considering that I had probably put on a few pounds from indulging while in Texas, I probably dropped more than 7 between the time we got back and January or February (whenever it was). Considering that I was sitting at my desk almost that whole time, I wouldn't be surprised if that was all muscle mass.

Alas, I do not really care for exercising, but though I like Wii Fit, I haven't been able to work it back into my schedule. So I have been randomly doing calisthenics and spastically dancing to try to add some muscle to my flabby self. Hannah probably wishes I would save the dancing for when she's not around, judging by her permanently cocked eyebrow. And I wish I had a solid gold toilet, but what are you going to do?

Once I got the last big job done, I wasn't having to rush home from working in town (only once a week, but still), so I could add in some walking in the course of running some overdue errands. Only, the first time I tried, my knee seized up, bad. It hurt so bad, I wanted to cry, but I had to drag myself to the bus stop to get home. It had given me some troubles when John and I had gone for a walk a couple of weeks ago, but we were walking down a steep hill when it happened, so I chalked it up to walking down a 45 degree angle (maybe not quite that steep, but close). It's happened before, but I thought it was my shoes that time. This most recent time, the muscles above and below my knee were also hurting, kind of a cramped, burning sensation. Total suck-o. But that made me realize that it wasn't my shoes, and maybe it was just some kind of muscle spasm from being out of shape/working for hours at my desk before heading out/dodging dumb-bunnies in the street. Yesterday and today I made the same trip on foot across downtown and was so relieved--no cramp. Even after I loaded myself down with library books and a hardware catalog. But I had had a little extra exercise in the meanwhile...

On Sunday, the weather was gorgeous, and John started feeling cooped up in the apartment (John stir-crazy on a Sunday afternoon? Never, I say!). He couldn't talk Hannah into coming with us (she's on Easter vacation and plans to squeeze out every minute of lazing about she can manage), but the two of us headed into the woods with a camera, binoculars, and an incomplete map. We hiked for *miles* (John's guess was 5). But at one point, after we had been underway for about 2 hours, we spotted some houses through the trees below us and wondered if we were already within viewing distance of the river. It turned out we were *right above our house*. We could see the houses that face ours across the street. I could have cried. It's so hilly, there is no direct way to get anywhere, so we had been circling higher up the hill *behind* the hill behind our house. Luckily, my legs were in pretty good shape except for some soreness in my right hip right up until the point we had to walk steeply downhill. My knees weren't too happy about that, but they didn't try to go on strike or anything, which would not have been fun in the middle of the woods.

Anyhoo, it was a bit cooler than I had been expecting, so I had to drop the pine cones I had been carrying to shy at John when he misbehaved so I could put my hands up my sleeves, but the cooler weather meant there weren't many other hikers out and about that day. We saw 3 deer running! It was so quiet, and they were down below the path we were on, and I only noticed them when John pointed them out, running through the still-leafless trees. It was such a serene scene. I didn't even try to take a photo; I just enjoyed it. But here are some photos of trees, to prove we were there.











--Nee in Germany says there's a fungus among us and cracks herself up

Keeping out of trouble

My most recent sewing project has been a baby blanket for a coworker. He and his wife are expecting a baby boy in a couple of weeks, so I made them this:



When I gave it to him at work today, I neglected to mention that I sat up watching murder mysteries/cop procedurals (or as we call it, "dead bodies is on") with Hannah while I worked on it. I won't be able to see a dead hooker on Law & Order without thinking about soft baby yarn, though.

I threw some seeds into the planters on the balcony, which have started to sprout. I think I've got a couple of kinds of lobelia and some 'summer fragrance' mix. There's supposed to be more winter weather on the way over Easter, but maybe not this far south. I'm not too worried about it, though. If they croak, I'll get more seeds at the grocery store, where I do almost all my seed shopping.

John's making some delicious pork and pesto dish, so I'll be following my nose down to the table.

-Nee in Germany got more yarn where that came from

Bloobity blee

This is the requisite "I'm not dead" post after a 3-month absence. I keep thinking of things I'd like to write about, but then not doing it, so now it feels weird to be writing without a prompt, so to speak.

Work
I finished all my teaching/grading commitments for the last semester, just in time for the next semester to start in 2 weeks. But that means I still have some time to plan out my courses more thoroughly than I did last semester. Having already been through them once, I have more of an idea of what needs extra attention, etc.

I also finished a big editing job and got it out the door. Now I am editing an additional long chapter for a book I had finished editing 2 years ago but that has still not gone into print. I am making steady progress on it and should have it finished sometime this week.

I've still got bits and pieces coming in as part of the huge translating job John and I did over the winter. Luckily, the bulk of it for the most recent batch is for translating in the other direction (from English to German), so a colleague is doing that for me.

I also got a heads up on a translating gig from a colleague at the hospital, but I was so busy at the time that I really couldn't take it on, even though it is on a topic I am interested in and thought I could do a very good job on. So I was pleasantly surprised when the person replied that she would get back in touch later. I think that, being relatively new to the freelance business, I am still trying to overcome the urge to hoard work, even if taking it all on would negatively impact my quality of life. I am also trying to be realistic with myself when it comes to assessing how much time a job will take. So it was a big step for me to tell her that I was busy until X date, knowing that I could be losing the work. Her response, though, was confirmation that I had made the right choice, one I will be less nervous about making again in the future.

When I am in the middle of a big job and am trying to spend my working hours on that and nothing else, I start to feel like I am fraying around the edges because I feel like I am losing sight of the big picture. When I finished that last big editing job, the first thing I did was straighten and clean my office. That improved my mood by leaps and bounds. (It also helps that I'm getting lots of direct sunlight in my office these days. Ahhh!) Now I am trying to schedule my work following the motto on my friend's fortune cookie: Always under-promise and over-deliver.(I had also read a less succinct version from an editing colleague, but this makes a nice sign in my office, along with "Don't be an asshole" and "Is this bullshit?" I like to practice tough love with myself.)

Non-work (I am sure there are finer distinctions I could make between my various activities, but this is simplest.)
John got me a Kindle for xmas, and my lovely MIL sent money, so I invested it in a Kindle subscription to a southern German newspaper. I LOVE newpapers and magazines, but there are just not enough hours in the day to get through all the articles. I have been staying up later than is my wont just to flip through all the article titles for the day and to read 10 or 15 of the more interesting ones. Thank the 7 dwarves it doesn't include the Sunday edition, or I wouldn't do anything but read the newspaper all weekend.

Instead, I am reading Debt, by David Graebers, also on my Kindle. I am also crocheting a baby blanket for a friend, and I am amazed how well the two work together. The blanket pattern is very simple, so I don't have to look down very often, and once I got the Kindle balanced where I could read it without twisting around, it stayed in place, unlike a book. Every minute or so I have to remove my hand from my crochet to "turn" the page, but that is just a matter of pushing a toggle switch on the side of the Kindle. It's working great!

Now that the ice is broken, I'm going to make an effort to post more often. I have some ideas of what I want to post, so once I get a little organized, I should be getting more content up.

Nee in Germany needs a sandwich

Rolling along

It takes a while to get out of bunker mentality after you've finished a big job, but it is slowly coming along. I got out a couple of pieces of paper and started making various lists yesterday, and a lot of things have actually gotten crossed off the lists this weekend. Of course, today I am sore after vacuuming every nook and cranny in the house (except my office, dammit!) and squatting to clean a couple of spots on the floor. But groceries have been bought, overripe fruit has been transformed into tasty cookies, and the paper and cardboard of the shopping season have been wrangled and will be going into the recycling shortly. John even took down the xmas lights from outside and got the xmas ornaments box sealed and ready to go down to the cellar.

Hannah is preparing for the last of this round of tests (roughly midterms) at school, with quite a bit of prodding from us.

John and I have 3 weeks left before classes are out. I'm looking forward to the break. I wasn't planning to continue teaching but have changed my mind and have agreed to 2 more semesters. We'll see how it goes. I have received the results of my student surveys already but haven't looked at them yet. I guess I will wait until the end of the semester to see what they had to say.

I have had quite a bit of other work come in, so that was the basis for the second list, just to stay organized. I feel more in control if I have a list, so I am hoping to get everything done in a timely manner with the help of a single piece of paper.

I need to start keeping a piece of paper to list items to post about, so each entry is not a repeat of the one before. We are just that boring, I am afraid.

-Nee in Germany is a worker bee

Blog or work? hmmm...

By my long-term absence here, you can tell that work won out over blog for most of fall 2011. But now that the big job of last fall is done and I have some grading to catch up on, blog can take its rightful place in the pantheon of work-avoidance tasks.

John and I took on a BIG translating job that was due in mid-December, and as the deadline drew nearer, we found ourselves putting in 40-hour weeks on the translating in addition to our teaching jobs (him full-time, me part-time). It was hard to enjoy the holiday season when our normally cheer-inducing advent's calendars

...were reminders that we were one day closer to our doom. DOOOOM!

This is what my office looked like afterward:

All those bits of paper taped on the glass to the right are the various items that were completed over the course of our project. They started on the pinboard behind my laptop and got taped on the glass when they were done. And of course there was always a new bit of paper to take their place, until xmas eve, that is. Booyah!
Hannah was basically a feral child during this period. (What else is new?) She is getting so grown up that we could trust her with things like arranging for take-out for us or cooking dinner. She really was a big help.

I barely had time for keeping us clothed and fed, much less cleaning or baking, but I did manage this:

Those are the poinsettias I forced. Luckily, they live in my office, so when it started to get dark in the late afternoon, I would just throw a couple of plastic blags over them to block out any other light and keep working. Then in the morning, pull the bags off and work some more. The red one has bigger, showy-er blooms, but the pink one makes up for it by putting out smaller blooms all over. I didn't think the pink one would manage it this year, but it was just a slow starter. I probably didn't pay more than 3 bucks each for them at the grocery store back when I bought them, and I actually have no idea what I am doing with them. I think you are supposed to let them "rest" with a cool period after they bloom, something something, but I just keep watering them all year round.


That's what I do with the mystery citrus, too. Now I know not to freak out when the leaves fall off despite the watering and some sticky, webby stuff starts showing up on the tips of the stems. Neither of those things has killed it yet. And now I have 2 new mystery citrus plants.

I threw some seeds in my balcony planters upstairs, but then the wooden railing on the outside edge started to break apart, so I set the planter on the floor of the balcony and forgot about it. Imagine my surprise when I peeked outside and saw a little tree sprouting. I scooped it into a pot, and after a while more little trees started sprouting out of that pot. The rest were pretty puny, so I recycled them, but this is what I have left for the moment.


I got a Kindle for xmas, and now I am off to add something to it, another worthy work-avoidance task.

RIP, Missy (2001-2011)

We lost our 10-year-old cat, Missy, on Tuesday. She had been getting thinner, which we hoped was due to the new feeding regimine, but on xmas day she started breathing heavily. An hour before her appointment at the fill-in vet (ours is closed over the holidays), she had some kind of seizure and died.

The wound is still fresh, and we all find ourselves on the verge of tears at different times as we go back over what we could or should have done differently regarding her care, or we find ourselves looking for her at times when she could be counted on to turn up.

Hannah called her a furry puddle, and sometimes I called her an annoying asshole, but she was a good cat, and we are all already missing her companionship. As I have pointed out to John, Hannah and I are effectively pet-less since Eliza won't let us touch her. We are hoping she will come out of her shell a bit more now that she is an only child, so to speak, but she has spent a lot of time under the bed since Tuesday whenever we go to check on her, so it is hard to say.

RIP, Missy. You will be missed.

Less Golden October

I have been stupidly, horribly busy pretty much since we set foot back in Germany after our Texas trip in August. Hence the lack of posting. But I am taking a few minutes for myself this morning before I have to start the next batch of insanity to put up a few bits and bobs.

When we got back from Texas, my plants were in surprisingly good shape, although the few tomatoes on the vine had problems probably related to the uneven watering over the previous month. So I chucked those and went back to watering regularly and my little plants, all grown from seeds, started really putting the tomatoes out.

I waited until the weather forecast said our Golden October was going to be over to pick them, but now I've got a good couple dozen (large) cherry tomatoes ripening in the kitchen.

Hannah totally cracks me up. One Saturday, she woke up extra early, even before the cartoons were on, so the only thing on tv was informercials. When I asked her about it, she said, "Yeah, now I need a Nicer Dicer and some of those pills."

When we were in Texas, I managed to buy the last of the supplies I needed for a Halloween cross-stitch project for my very own, but I have been so busy that it has languished in a corner. I finally had to admit to myself that I just won't have the time to work on it before this Halloween. I guess I should put it away properly so none of the bits get lost before I can start work on it.

I am going to be teaching 5 classes this semester, which starts tomorrow. I'm kind of regretting signing up for this gig, but there is nothing for it now. I've already told them, though, that there is little chance I'll want to be hired on again after this semester, so that is one less thing to discuss at the end of my contract.

And now I have to get back to chipping away at my pile.

-Nee in Germany wishes she had a Time-Turner like Hermione

Boring...boring...but not gone

After a whirlwind, uh, four weeks through Texas, we are back home and getting back in the groove. Although we haven't picked up our keys from the catsitters yet. Another thing to put on the to-do list.

Hannah is attending tutoring every morning to make up the hours she missed (and we paid for) during August. This is actually a very good thing, because it is getting us back in her school routine early, which should make next Monday, the first day of school, less painful.

Yesterday I met with the gastroenterologist to get the low-down on my upcoming colonoscopy. I already knew about the procedure through the power of his own web site, so it was basically the assistant telling me everything I already knew, giving me a prescription for the pre-procedure drano, and taking some blood, which hurt like a bitch. Surprisingly, I didn't bruise, but it wasn't fun. It made me think back on my pregnancy wistfully, because my OB had a phlebotomist who must have come down from heaven on a cloud, she was so good.

John is going back in to the office today. Classes don't start until October, but he needs to take care of a few things and go by the bike shop to buy a new bike chain. His broke right before we left on vacation, so his only exercise for the last week has been jogging and washing dishes.

The cats were healthy and whole when we got home, although Missy seems to have lost some weight. I can now feel her various bones through the fur. I don't know if there was a problem with the feeding schedule while we were gone or if the low-fat cat food we bought is finally showing results. In either case, she now looks more like a regular cat and less like a landslide of fur.

John and I have very full to-do lists for this fall, so we are going to be busy busy, but I think I prefer it that way.

Nee in Germany is glad to be back out of the Texas heat

Hello and goodbye again

Well, it appears I have been absent from here for more than 7 weeks, and I just came to say I'll be gone for another 5. Texas here we come! But to tide you over, I'll just post a few pictures of us.

Toodles!

Insert witty title here

Since last I wrote, Hannah turned 14 and had a small (thank you baby jeebus) sleepover to celebrate. She is now powering through her birthday money by swimsuit and sandal shopping, although we are still tussling over the height of the heels on the shoes. Fourteen still seems too young for stacked heels, although 15 sounds a-ok. I found a good compromise at a shoe shop that was having a summer sale, but they didn't have them in Hannah's size. I saw I can get them online, but she'll have to agree.

I was saved the indignity of accompanying her and her 3 friends to the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie by the expedient of making up some shopping I had to do (it wasn't THAT pressing). Karma came by and kicked the shit out of me for that; no sooner had I procured some tank tops and a new blouse for myself than my right knee went on strike. I think it was the shoes I was wearing. Anyhow, I had a book on me (of course) and was able to find a bench off the beaten path to sit on and get a little pink because I had forgotten to put on my day creme with sunscreen. Then I limped halfway to our rendevous point and sat and read a bit longer until it was time to go, by which time I could walk again, although gingerly. For that, I was rewarded with some Pizza Hut pizza, our old birthday stand-by.

I'm in a minor panic about a shit-ton of work I've got bids in for or have already agreed to do. I've got two book-length editing gigs signed up starting this month and going through mid-October. Then there are 2 large (and I mean LARGE--800+ web pages and a technical report) translating jobs that I've put in for. If you don't hear from me any time soon, it is because I am working my butt off or hyperventilating in a corner.

I did manage to procure some software that should help me with the translating jobs, though (if I get them). That should take some of the pressure off. A tad. A smidge.

I'm still going to physical therapy, but there's been more exercising and less massaging recently. It is taking some getting used to, trying to adjust my posture and stuff. You wouldn't think that just holding your breastbone in a different position, or your head, would make you so sore, but you'd be wrong.

My balcony plants are growing and making me happy. Except the bunch on the top floor that the cats have been nibbling on. Assholes! At least it is raining right now and sparing me the need to water today. But I have to get out and get groceries, so that is less fun. It's only a light rain, though.

E. coli is messing up my grocery planning. There's been a bad outbreak here that's been traced to imported cucumbers (and maybe tomatoes and lettuce) from Spain and also Holland, I think. Cucumber and lettuce (with ranch dressing) are almost the only vegetables Hannah will eat, so it is really putting a kink in my shopping list. I am waiting for her to get home so I can get her started on studying for her physics test tomorrow before I leave. I need a hot drink while I wait.

-Nee in Germany is unraveling at the seams, but just a little