womazzle

Mind of Steel

2012-01-23T14:06:00.003Z

Marriage is probably something best left to the more job-oriented folks with preferably the least amount of emotional entanglement. Especially if the job involves caring for third parties, i.e. children. For that, a cool mind and good negotiating powers are paramount. Any sentimental weakness can quickly escalate even the smallest issue. Tidying up now or later, one bedtime story or two, my turn or hers...all of these marginal confilicts could be easily resolved with less emotional baggage rumbling along on the conveyer belt of family life. In fact, I would suggest that children might want to be rotated from one marriage arrangement to another to spend only a minimum of time with their biological parents. This would ensure the output of more independant, well-adjusted, problem-solving oriented human beings, fit to get into a cab at 2 am to catch the early flight out to be at the meeting on time to maximise rewards for the family enterprise while the partner single-mindedly and undeterred gets the other half of the job done, weekly activity coordination, household accounting, food allocation, cognitive development charts and oil change. Truly, who needs love when they have marriage?

No Free Lunch!

2012-01-20T18:21:00.003Z

Just like there isn’t a million dollar cheque waiting for you once you forward all your bank account details to the unknown email address in you Inbox, there are no free lunches when you go to buy three-for-one packs of neon-blinking toothbrushes, bargain dishtowels, party favors and on sale porcelain Easter bunnies. Somebody always pays the price.

F'n A

2012-01-17T15:43:00.002Z

Jules: How did the people who found all the letters match them up? The little "a" looks nothing like the dumb big "A". Who came up with THAT??

Oh what fun...!

2012-01-06T18:27:00.004Z

Zoë and I just spent another afternoon with dear old Salman Khan. His youtube videos just crack us up.

This time, we had him explain the periodic table to us after we were left speechless last night musing about covalent and ionic bonds.

We couldn’t help grinning about the cool ‘guy’ lingo in explaining the odd on-goings in the outer shell of transitional metals...Notice....? It’s catching on!!

Cheating my way through chemistry exams in school, I always had the nagging thought that I might be missing out on something really interesting. But why weren’t my teachers like Sal? Instead, I was diligently copying chemical formulas off my palm, marveling at the secret code.

I had chemistry off and on for three years and later on it reappeared as organic chemistry in my biology classes. It would have helped immensely if I had watched that six minute video on the periodic table in year 7. Only neither youtube nor Salman had been conceived of then.

But, hey, this is a new generation!

Have fun!

Testosterone

2012-01-04T10:30:00.000Z

What a riveting and worthy subject to spend all those billions on that are currently wasted on conferences, proposals and campaigns on climate change, depleting resources, pollution, and poverty. Not to mention violence, war, torture, and genocide.

In the Distance of a Night

2012-01-01T09:48:00.002Z

And here we are on the other side
minds bedazzled drunken and laden
on the morning of that last night

With speech slow and memory quiet
what we promised lingers
in the darkness of one long night

Some words may be drawn to light
but more still will be left behind
in the distance of a night

What Makes a City

2011-12-31T14:34:00.004Z

Arriving into Charing Cross on the South Eastern, lingering on Trafalgar Square, watching performance artists in Covent Garden, standing in St. Paul’s Cathedral, catching a double decker on Frant, or simply going for a picnic in Hyde Park, one can’t help but think that this is truly one of the gratest cities in the world.

What makes a city more than just a place with many people is the way it moves throughout the day, the constant flow of energy through its arteries, the pulse of life that never stops.

At its best it is a finely tuned machinery where anyone can go anywhere at anytime and enjoy any space. Whether traveling below or above the ground, walking or roller blading, in a riksha or on foot, whether catching an early show in the West End or resurfacing from a club in Soho, tea at the Ritz or dinner at Royal Albert Hall, whether walking on the Mall, through Chelsea or Belgravia, this is a city that grips you 24/7.

Unlike Paris, London never sleeps. Unlike New York, London is bright, open and green. Unlike Chicago, London ends and the fields begin.

Over the last four years, London has become my favorite city in the world. It’s followed fairly closely by Lisbon and I love Rome. Also, I don’t mind a weekend in New York, but for me this is a ten out of ten. What’s yours?

To you all...

2011-12-26T17:19:00.002Z

...a very merry Christmas! May you have been spared troubles of travel, the terror of tantrums and the torment of trickle tart!!!
Loads of love and good wishes to you all and all the best for what lies ahead...

Winter Solstice Greetings

2011-12-22T10:17:00.002Z

December has been good.

There has been a lot of happy anticipation, christmassy stuff going on around the house, music, paper stars and chocolate calendars. The cookies are baked, the cranberries are cooked and the duck is ready to be picked up tomorrow . The house and garden are covered in twinkling yellow lights and lanterns dot the way up to the house.

Matt is mildly bewildered at all the activity around him. He is still in his London routine, but he does like to settle down at night with a shot of Porto and the open tin of biscuits on the table while listening to Zoe’s very own rendition of “Noel” and take it all in.

This is good and it is these little sentimental niches that get us through the winter of life.
Junko’s memorial service is tomorrow.

The Ladies...

2011-12-18T21:32:00.007Z

Right as you walked into the “All Must Go Christmas Sale”, you knew that rummaging through tables laden with best deals would be a mistake, because really what you should be looking for was the ladies’ room.

But then, it was simply too good to pass up on and coming back later would be such a waste of time and anyway it was just going to be a quick browse, ten minutes tops.

NOT. You know it.

And as you urgently stagger out of the store an hour and a half later, mowing down unsuspecting bystanders left and right with super-sized shopping bags (because, and you knew that as well, there are no restrooms other than the grungy employee ones, with the unmistakable off-coloured rim and three sheets of toilet paper sadly dangling from a cracked dispenser), you will curse yourself.

The closest facilities at this point are at the museum cafeteria across the street, where the coffee sucks, but really, you don’t really have a choice anymore. So, dodging mad cabs and double-decker buses, you cross the street in the fading light of a rainy December afternoon and, while avoiding uncomfortable shocks to the system, you daintily leap up the steps to the museum cafeteria. You get your coffee in record time, plop your bags down at a table near the loo and...

...get in line.

Because there is a line. There always is. And you know that too.

Whether we like it or not, we ladies end up spending considerable time at airports, the movies, rest stops, and other public places in line to pee. Right next door the gents buzz in and out of their hive with little ado.

I have often been tempted and a few times driven to sneak into the adjacent door... And really why should we be put through this tedious wait time after time? Really, it boils down to this: We gals have a lot of business to deal with once we get into the stall. Apart from hitching up layers and layers of fancy attire, peeling off delicate pantyhose and frilly undies, there are such things as feminine hygene products that can produce a significant logistical challenge!!

In addition, each stall requires an individual approach, depending on the presence of a hook to use for coats and purses, the mechanism operating the disposal bin lid, the cleanliness of the seat and availabilty and kind (sheets of roles) of toilet paper available.

What comes first, where and how to dispose of unwanted items in a discreet way while also clinging on to the afore mentioned layers of fabric that should not come in contact with any potentially soiled surrounding surfaces. All of this while not dropping either hand bag or hygene products on the floor.

In some cases a blatant oversight on our part might require back tracking a few steps in order to retrieve urgent items, in other circumstances there may be a risk of spilling purse contents onto the highly suspicious bathroom stall floor. Under these aggravated circumstances, where strategy is of utmost importance, time is of no consequence.

Seriously, hasn’t the word gone around? Are all inerior architects male? Or is this but another one of the curses of womanhood?

Like I was saying...

2011-12-10T17:36:00.001Z

"The social progress of a society can be measured by the social position of the female sex."
Marx

Oh Say Can You See

2011-12-09T22:20:00.001Z

Did you know that until 1978 a woman in the US could be fired from her job if she was found pregnant? Only in the nineties was there a law past that entitles a mother to up to three months of maternity leave - unpaid, of course. As of 1999, still a majority (30) of the U.S. states treat marital rape as a minor crime. Makes the New World look pretty old, doesn’t it?

God Bless the Hillbilly...please!?

2011-12-07T11:33:00.002Z

It’s a curious thing that there is a tendency among people, and the groups they form, to cast a most favourable light on themselves. The cohesive “we are the good ones,” which in U.S. jargon translates into “God Bless America,” is the cradle of a pervasive double standard. It leads to all sorts of ill-guided approaches in dealing with “the other” and can go as far as causing acts of violence on both sides. Terrorism, persecution, sabbotage, boycots, and ultimately war are all outcrops of double standards.

While admittedly simplistic, “God Bless America” has become a powerful slogan that sanctifies virtually anything, America stands for. Under the great mantra of “we are the chosen ones” only few Americans ever question the underlying tenents of the blessed U.S. of A.

As should be obvious to anyone, this fateful arrogance has over the past decade caused a great deal of misery for Americans. Gone crazy consumerism combined with a testosterone driven everything-is-possible attitude has knocked US credit rating down to a most embarrassing AA rating and families bereft of their adored plywood Mac Mansions have taken to camping in inclement conditions.

It’s a good thing Wall Street is under attack these days, but the clean up should go deeper than that. Surely, it’s uncomfortable and will be the cause of much anxiety but it would be a worthy exercise and, who knows, maybe God may bless America again...some day!

On the other hand...

2011-11-29T19:23:00.000Z

...considering that we are whirling at 67,000 mph through a vast and pretty much empty space, seven billion sixhundredeightythousandeighthundredsixtynine humans on planet Earth is a comforting thought...

My Fall

2011-11-25T17:49:00.003Z

I don’t know how your fall has been so far, but mine has been exactly that: a deeper than ever tumble into the depths of motherhood...ah, and just as I have sat down here to whine about it all, in comes a phone call from Zoe...and off I go to pick her up because she missed her ride - did I say too much?

Back again... So, on my way back from school, I also picked up Julian’s bike from the shop and a pint of milk from the store since I never leave the house for just one errant - I can’t, I virtually would have to quit eating a sit-down meal all together. As it is, I only have one of those a day anyway.

I have given up on breakfast ever since the daily fights over the bathroom began...I could have changed my routine a gotten up earlier to resolve it, but that would mean earlier nights on the other end and since I only get to see Matt in the evening, I decided to go for plan B...a protein-joghurt shake on the run.

So let’s see what else did I accomplished today...? After a brisk and very wet walk to school, I sold used children’s books at the canteen to raise $$ for the class trip and after 1.5 hours had brought in a whopping 17.00GBP!! When there was no further hope of talking an unsuspecting fellow parent into buying an almost new copy of Winnie the Pooh, I hauled the sad rejects back and decided that maybe class trips are over-rated anyway.

Next was the wash - three loads - the dishes, chili con carne and a futile effort to fix the recessed lighting in the kitchen, which ended up tripping a fuse and subsequently also blowing out the fridge which shrewedly went into defrost mode over the rest of the morning.

Next I wrote on a monologue for yet another fundraiser - this time to restore the clock house - an epic endeavor. But this one should be fun, given that it can’t possibly be any worse than the first one I staged. There came a moment during that performance when I actually thought that to cut my losses, I should just drop the microphone and put the house on the market. That was last month.

Since then, I had the flu, travelled to Lisbon for a reunion where nobody showed up except for Matt, watched the school musical five times in a row (because Zoë, after years of being cast and recast as a Viking, finally scored a female lead), and made lanterns, a dragon head, and seventeen calendars depicting every inch of our existence in order to quench any requests for pictures - forever!

I also made three sour dough Friendship Cakes that nobody wants to eat because they suck (don’t ever get talked into making a cake called Herman!), and nit-checked diligently every Wednesday as ordered by the school nurse...actually I skipped the last two times....

Anyway, my fall has been a blurr of maddening hyper-activity tempered only by a few hours of restless sleep here and there with my face esconded between seven downy purple pillows, that and a walk through the olive garden of São Jorge.

I don’t know where it all will end...it says pride comes before the fall but I wonder what comes after?

Broken Dreams

2011-11-23T11:02:00.003Z

Our wish for freedom, mobility, opportunity as well as our search for happiness define what we consume from cars to musli and ebooks.

But almost more importantly, they define the well-tuned marketing machinery that fuels our consumption habits. Because virtually anything can be marketed as ticking at least one or two of the boxes.

A car may promise freedom and mobility in one ad and maybe opportunity and happiness in another. And the same is true for most things ranging from soft drinks to life insurances.

Most successful of all, smart phones have quickly become our new best friends because they seemingly tick all the boxes. After all what could be more perfect than a gadget that gives you instant access to virtually unlimited information, entertainment, and people?

Like children in a pink cotton candy world, we are living out our sweetest dreams with the one difference being that we usually pay for them.

But what happens, when they brake, because they usually do. What do we do when the pictures from our Blackberry don’t load onto the iMac, what if the slide show we spent hours on froze and folded? What if that brand new car has a clunky gear shift, or the five star dishwasher is slow? What if the dream we bought doesn’t work?

Usually at that point the nightmare starts. We spend endless hours searching for warranties in old cardboard boxes and browse through endless online chats and waste many agonizing minute explaining in detail the truly frustrating experience to a blatantly indifferent Bangladeshi.

In the end, more often than not, we end up putting more money down to purchase the new and improved version, the upgraded dream, and hope that this time surely it will last....

Mug Shots

2011-11-17T22:04:00.002Z

When you wonder how and when bankers became bankers, or why some people are just in it for themselves, just think back to your high school class. They were all there then and they haven’t changed: the notorious liers, tricksters, bigots, socio-paths, and...yes, loosers, their mug shots are all neatly lined up in your yearbook and those of your friends. People don’t just change over night even if your average Newborn Christian will swear they have found the light. Well, yes, maybe in their closet.

Too Much of Nothing

2011-11-10T12:45:00.004Z

We all bemoan the impending death of the bookstore and yet I admit, I haven't supported one lately. For one, the only ones that survive in today’s online ordering business and Kindlemania are either the very specialized ones, the secondhand bargain ones or the nondescript “whatever sells” kind.

When I browse through the titles on the shelves, I can’t help but feel a strong urge to yawn at the sight of yet another teenage fantasy triology, celebrity memoire, ten-steps guide to utmost riches, love, and/or happiness, or else a trite fivehundred page romance novel. Boring!

Where are the witty short stories? Where are the daring one volume only best story ever books? Where is the content? What I see has all been there before.

Authors and their agents apparently have to keep trends and mass tastes in mind because their publishers are struggling to hit their numbers (or so they say).

Some of the best authors probably keep their stuff in the drawer, because the story they tell is a quiet one, one that doesn’t have Hollywood potential. I guess they could always self-publish on line. And there goes the idea of the independent bookshop.

In our village, we have five cafés and ten restaurants. I guess virtual eating hasn’t come en vogue yet.

Chop Chop

2011-11-07T14:38:00.004Z

Every time I ponder the issue of our explosive population growth, I cannot help but blame virtually all of humanities plagues on it. From poverty and gender inequality to war and genocide, from urban sprawl and globalism to global warming and rising mountains of rubbish.

Resources are being depleted rapidly and our lives are becoming more desperate in a race for the last remaining ones. Anxiety is the widely shared sensation of the twentifirst century whether we are able and willing to admit it or not. We are struggling for our survival like a hoard of newly hatched sea turtles racing to reach the surf before being scooped up and gobbled down by some unknown predator.

Any species will come under pressure when its population reaches a certain size because only the fittest will survive the harsh struggle for scarce goods. Usually it’s the food supply that becomes increasingly limited, consequently leading to rivalry and ultimately starvation of the weakest members.

Sounds familiar? Many parts of the world are experiencing exactly that. And those lucky ones who live in more prosperous and well-managed corners of this planet acknowledge that luck can run out.

Who has not worried about work being taken over by a cheaper foreign competitor, or a university place given to a more industrious student. And so, as we all compete for impressive grades, ever longer CVs and measurable personal achievements in the hope to outcompete those who would like our share of the pie, our life quality in this desirable part of the world begins to sink as well.

Tiger mothers are a good example. Just forty years ago, with three billion fewer people clogging up the system, a book such as Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn for the Tiger Mom,” for example, would have been regarded as the sad testimony to a full blown Angst psychosis instead of ending up on reference bookshelves across the world.

Yet, today we wonder whether she might just be right and even those who question her vindictive methods may consider signing up their children for an after school chess club and music theory tuition. Surely a slight competitive edge wouldn’t hurt, right? After all, what, oh my, will happen to us, once Aids will stop decimating the African subcontinent and China further eases its one-child policy....? So better scamper along little hatchlings as long as you can...

PS Boo!

2011-11-04T14:37:00.004Z

Over the last days of October, human population on this planet has reached seven billion i.e.7,000,000,000 !! Cities in the ‘developing’ world are bursting out of their seams, with the urban poor living in squalid quarters feeding off the refuse from the more fortunate. Schopenhauer once compared the earth and humanity on it to a churning ball of iron with a cooled crust covered by a growing funghus - us. Boo!

Bloody Brilliant!

2011-10-31T15:10:00.002Z

Mom, cool, look!! I have got a nosebleed. I can be a bloody ghost tonight!

Virtually Anywhere!!

2011-10-17T13:52:00.003+01:00

Never before has the use of time been as much in our control as in this day and age. With the absence of wars and famines and the arrival of more and more time-saving contraptions over the last two centuries, people in industrialized nations are finally in the enviable position to be able to decide what to do with a good chunk of their time every day.

But choice has never come easy. What is the best way to spend the time, for instance, saved by shopping online instead of pushing one’s own cart through the ailes? Let’s say it amounts to about an hour a week that can be “gained” that way.

Suddenly, everything seems possible: a thirty-minute pilates workout, singing, yoga or maybe cranking out some home-made bread...

However, usually we simply end up doing more of what we’re doing already. In this case, we are most likely going to use that time to bounce around the virtual world a bit longer. We might check our mailbox, pay a quick visit to e-bay, or see what’s new at itunes. Or we may want to stop for a hand of poker, read the Financial Times, or watch a replay of last night’s game.

After all, it’s right there and most likely it won’t require a shower once we are finished with it. Virtual is quicker, cleaner and can be quite gratifying. That one hour has suddenly grown exponentially in it’s output. Instead of making one phone call to tell my friend that I am doing my groceries online now, I can post it on facebook and tell the whole world.

But just as the car brought everyone mobility and thereby the option to live farther away from work and extended family, what is happening today with every hour that we invest in a virtual environment, we are removed from the actual place that we inhabit.

We can be virtually anywhere and it’s up to us to make the best choice.

'Cause yo never know what'ya gonna get...

2011-10-07T14:13:00.004+01:00

I stopped by the violin maker today. The bridge needed adjusting and I was in a good mood to spend a little time and money on a job that meant nothing to the world, but all the world to Lea, whose little fingers had been straining against the tough metal strings.

As I stepped through the wooden gate and walked along the mildewy roses over to the work shop, I felt slightly undeserving, given that all I was carrying was a Chinese-made 3/4 violin and no musical genius to claim my own.

This feeling was compounded when I opened the door to the cramped shop and found myself surrounded by dismembered wooden bodies, pins and a variety of glues. Everywhere around me were unvarnished curvy bits and pieces of a 3-D musical puzzle.

I was greeted with great delicacy as the violin case was taken from me and the fragile body extracted from its entrails and dexteriously inspected. And while the specialist’s eye hovered on it and the over-sized hands spun it adroitly back and forth, he explained the various approaches for the cure and also pointed to other musical patients in the shop who were in his expert care.

And for the next fifteen minutes I felt treated like a beggar in a ball dress. Seeing this much expertise and delicacy applied to wood in order to ensure its exquisite sound enhancing quality, the many steps from material to mastery was in all truth humbling.

I couldn't help but think that whoever decides to spend this much time and energy on a project with an often uncertain outcome must be a) a compulsive crack b) a visionary, or c) a parent.

Why else would they do it...?

I am a believer!!!

2011-10-04T22:22:00.004+01:00

Last week I thought it was all over. Some joint in my hip other than the hip joint (do I care to investigate further??) got stuck and so did I. It hurt like Rush Limbo and I had very clear visions of life in hell. In my utter agony, I sought advise from a witch doctor in the village, also known as cranial osteopath because she was the only one who could see me that day. The promise of someone acknowledging the years of abuse to my skeletal frame through pumping out children, hauling them around on one hip and installing them in car seats at all kinds of odd angles, seemed good enough to me to at least try this option.

Well, forty GBP and a few swift strokes above my mysterious energy lines later, I am healed. And amazingly enough, relieved not only of the obvious pains that brought me into her lemon grass imbued practice on a gusty October morning, but also of an incessant fatigue that had plagued me for months. Therefore, I can only encourage you that if you ever were to consider holding a gun to your head as a benign way out of your misery, you may want to consider looking up a cranial osteopath first...

Zzzzzz

2011-09-26T21:29:00.003+01:00

I have been really tired lately. If other mother folks weren't reporting similar effects of back to school routines on their coffee consumption, I would be worried by now. Coffee is my drug of choice, and an absolute must. I have never liked it much and I can only drink it with half a pint of cold milk added (try to tell that to anyone at Starbucks), but drink it I will and in copious amounts. Yet, I am usually out by 9:30pm. Which reminds me...gotta go - it's past my bedtime!

Trouble is Good!

2011-09-18T11:55:00.004+01:00

Michael Moore is looking a bit more tired these days. Like a much handled comic, he looks slightly frayed, creased and worn on the cover.. His eyes betray the years of trouble that followed his Oscar speech, when the blind masses turned on him. But is is good to know that trouble can be worth it and that there are always just enough people out there to appreciate it when someone takes on the ungrateful role of speaking up. His new book "Here comes Trouble" goes on the bookshelves tomorrow and I hope it will be a much handled item. Keep up the good work, Michael. I don't know how you do it, but keep going!!

Well, Jules, this is what you do...

2011-09-06T21:01:00.007+01:00

...you make them earn their keep!!! And this fence better be painted when I log off or else!! Hey, wait a minute, where are you off to now? I meant you, you spoiled little scum tossing dung beetle...

Oh Boy !

2011-08-24T20:33:00.003+01:00

Is it fun having children? I am a bit nervous that it's not...
(Jules)

Off Again

2011-08-12T22:50:00.002+01:00

It’s 11pm and the time remaining until I have to get up again is less than four hours -that’s when the whole airport madness starts. In a way, it’s like Christmas, you dread it but you also can’t do without. It’s the summer holidays. Everyone we know has already left or will be leaving shortly.

The countdown is running, carry-ons are bursting with pens, paper, books, ipods and juicepacks (....they won’t make it very far through the airport, but one can always try), suitcases have been acrobatically weighed, lists diligently checked, and alarm clocks woefully set.

Just a few minutes ago, Matt launched a final desperate campaign to take the labtop along after all, but was blocked, since the only way I intend to surf in the next three weeks is on my belly.

But, I’ll keep in touch somehow, because surely Fred will have some insights on Obama’s plight, the Arab Spring or plundering UK kids that are worth sharing...

Jules gets it

2011-08-11T23:03:00.002+01:00

I have to make my life a good one, because I have only got this one.

Coming About!

2011-08-08T21:37:00.003+01:00

I took this picture of the girls last week. What a fun day that was! I had spent the afternoon training on a bigger boat, a Wayfarer, which to Popeye’s (my instructor) pronounced dismay I kept referring to as the Windfairy - but then, what princess comes up with the names anyway?

I don’t know exactly what made me sign up for the course to begin with. I don’t like boats and I don’t care much about the people sailing them, but I guess wating in a parking lot for the girls to get done was even more dreadful and so I thought, signing up was acutally a good idea.

Four days and a close call with the divorce lawyer later, I would say, sometimes it is worth considering waiting in a parking lot for a couple of hours.

Why Matt had to take me out on the dinghy the day after I got my little certificate, when actually everyone else was taking their boats out of the water, I don’t know. But then, it’s not like he took me for a wee on a leash. I could have barked at him and stayed home, but somehow, I thought, he knew what he was doing.

But then, that would mean taking the mad out of Matt. And without that we probably wouldn’t be sailing together still after twenty years.

These last days...

2011-08-03T14:21:00.006+01:00

I have been out shackling halyards, tacking jibs, and cleating and uncleating all sorts of ropes...uh sheets. But even after three days of an intense sailing class, I can't confidently say that I have a secure grip on what I am actually shackling.

When it comes to rigging the dinghy first thing in the morning, I usually excuse myself to the bathroom, because I am afraid I might break something. The other guys - and they are all guys - don’t seem to have that problem. They will shackle, cleat and hoist anything.

The instructor with his tanned lower arms - a blue anchor next to “Hold Fast” tattooed across the left one - is the image of popeyed masculinity, the kind I usually try very hard to avoid. And yet, there I am thrown onto the shores of our village reservoir pretending that I am reviewing my bowline knot just one last time before I too will lay hand on that blue vessel that’s sitting in front of me like a dead moose.

All changes, however, when we are on the water. There I reign, because under the smoldering summer heat I can’t wait to capsize. I don’t mind close contact with that natural element. In fact, I crave it.

And so, once tossed onto the choppy waves, I wield the rudder with fearless aplomb, I holler my carefully rehearsed sailing lingo at my crew, and I pray that just once the boom will knock one of them over while we come about. Just once.

It's pointless -

2011-07-30T10:48:00.003+01:00

...but it can also be really really good.
LIFE !

Viva Vita!

2011-07-23T22:18:00.002+01:00

Again and again over the past years I have come across amazing and yet little publized, in fact often sidelined, literature produced by women. I am currently reading “All Passion Spent” by Vita Sackville-West, a friend of Virginia Wolf. However, she reads like a Tolstoy, although more concise, and humorously disects the gender oddities of Edwardian England with a poignancy and clarity as if she were alive today. Of course, that kind of writing is uncomfortable for many and rarely is kindly reviewed by literary juries...

Do you smell that...?

2011-07-18T20:28:00.005+01:00

It's one thing to get hit again and again by this fetid blast of negativity every time "la gran famiglia" moves into the picture. It's another to pretend it's the latest Hugo Boss.

God Bless...

2011-07-14T21:26:00.002+01:00

So if most people in fact do like fast food, Discount Stores and prefer a gym with a sizable parking lot to a brisk walk through the neighborhood, it comes as no surprise that the “free” market economies of the world look the way they do: paved nearly door to door with a most eclectic patchwork of gas stations, parking lots and stores in the efficient style of giant shoe boxes. Obviously quick and easy does it - at least for most of us.

Between Here and Zurich

2011-07-06T23:10:00.002+01:00

Airports make me feel out of place. No matter how much time I have spent there, I can’t really get used to them.

I feel like I am walking naked through a chocolate display. Everything looks neat and tidy, ready for consumption, if only it weren’t for me bending over to help myself to one of the tasty bites.

My carefully chosen outfit suddenly seems to wrap around my rear end like wet toiletpaper, the tired straps of my skin colored bra are showing and my carry-on looks like something not even the cat would bring home; I could use a tan, my hair is floppy, and my nose is a size 14; I spilled coffee over my trousers, my fingerprints are all over my glasses and most likely I forgot to peel off the sales labels off the bottom of my sandals. Shall I go on...?

As I look around me it’s clear that I am the only one. Everyone else seems effortlessly perfect. It’s like leafing through a magazine and hoping that extensive airbrushing was applied even to the smallest detail.

Toned thighs extending from seemingly haphazardly draped skirts, lazy hair flowing down well appointed tops matching eyecolor and shade. Cartier jewlery, Prada sunglasses and all sorts of the latest electronic paraphernalia make me feel distinctly uneasy. Why oh why can’t I...?

But then, I have a lovely personality.

What the boys are up to today....

2011-06-30T11:40:00.002+01:00

Every time I log on I browse through the main Yahoo headlines and then move on. I rarely click on any of the news links. For me, it's a bit like checking through the kitchen window to see what the boys are up to, whether they are chasing the cat, killing each other over a shovel, or pissing into my rain barrel. It's always sort of the same stuff.

Painfully Plain Pleasures

2011-06-27T10:27:00.005+01:00

Theorists disagree about the number and quality of our basic emotions. Some list as many as eleven (Arnold), while others reduce their number to only four or five.

One study (Parrot 2001) lists six primary emotions, including love, joy, surprise, anger sadness, and fear which lead on to a longer list of secondary emotions such as longing, pride and exasperation, which again connect to an even larger list of tertiary emotions (for a complete listing go to changingminds.com).

I like to keep with Marrow' approach who limited the list to two basic emotions, pain and pleasure. However, I would like to qualify this by adding that both pleasure and pain often are merely anticipated. Whatever secondary or tertiary emotions may be connected to them, more often than not they are not based on the actual experience but rather on an perceived or anticipated experience.

Pain or the anticipation of pain is, of course, directly linked to our feeling of security and how we estimate our chances of survival.

Belonging to a group, being accepted and valued by its members, for instance, plays a very important role in our human evolution. This is true especially for women, who due to their vulnerability as physically generally weaker and reproductively more involved sex, have been (and in many environments still are) very dependent on protection through others.

According to this approach, anticipated pain, this underlying feeling of insecurity, can bring on all kinds of emotions, including those usually not linked to pain as for instance in the Stockholm Syndrom (love for an abductor). And, by the same token, it can help explain why in abusive relationships there often is much talk about love.

As to my own feeling this morning, they are definitely leaning more towards the side of pain. And yet, a vague but nevertheless powerful feeling of loneliness earlier today has been somewhat eleviated by a brisk morning walk across the fields with a few friendly faces along the way.

About that Apple

2011-06-23T20:52:00.003+01:00

Zoe just left to go to bed. For the last two hours we have sat on the sofa by the window, watching the Midsummer sky change from an orangy pink to a many layered purple, and talked.

The topic eventually shifted to religion. Surprisingly, while deeply agnostic, I suddenly heard myself praise the power of images from the Old Testament. Images like that of the Tree of Knowledge continue to give me goosebumps. It neatly anchors our perpetual and yet futile search for truth.

A funny thing happened...

2011-06-19T10:15:00.002+01:00

Susan, my dear friend back in Costa Rica, is quite attached to the word “funny” - especially when it relates to the many unforseen events that life keeps shoving her way, you know, all that stuff that happens while one is busy making other plans...

It seems that having kids exponentially contributes to the amount of “stuff” that can happen any given moment. From little things like scraped knees and barfing pets to bigger stuff such as broken hearts and teeth all the way to the really big crap such as messed up relationships and empty coffres and then, of course, the general horror scenarios of sickness and inevitable death.

And while we usually keep a tight lid on the last category, it tends to linger quite effectively in the back of our minds to make us just a that bit more pathetic when dealing with the lesser upsets.

In fact, having kids and being responsible for them 24/7 is one big lesson in mind control.

So, when dealing with Addy’s Downs Syndrome and a non-supportive con ex, “funny” is probably a healthy way of putting it.

I love you, woman. Hang in there!

Twenty-three, twenty-two, twenty-one

2011-06-15T20:35:00.005+01:00

As we are nearing the end of our first school year, I am beginning to drag like a wind up toy on its last leg. Any chance to slow down even further is welcome. I have started to drink Earl Grey (with milk!) - whenever offered.

By the time everyone at home is up in the morning, I usually regret I made it out of bed in the first place. Approaching school, my feet become laden like in a time warp and after drop off, I linger to an extend that seems suspicious to even the chattiest of parents dotting the parking lot.

I will talk about anything - and at length - just to avoid having to trott back up the hill to my mountains of laundry, patches of weeds, and oceans of to-do lists. Sometimes I wonder whether I am lacking some life-enabling gene that makes tedious routines feel like comfort food.

But, hey, this is June and the countdown is running!

Daddy does it...

2011-06-08T14:32:00.000+01:00

Now that’s funny. Xena style body guards and fluttering grey moths all around the “King of Kings,” daddy Moammar, el gran liberador de las mujeres!

But then, women were always good at that...letting themselves be intstrumentalized eitther as sex objects or as madonnas.

Hitler did it with “Kinder, Kirche, Küche,” the Communist movement maintained a stable support that way, Berlusconi tried it, Gaddafi does it.

A bit of positive feedback goes a long way with the girls.

You Suck!

2011-06-02T08:57:00.002+01:00

Peta thinks I am the worst feminist of all times.

“F... you suck at being a feminist!!” she chided me when I dropped off Charlie’s Angels at her house. She has carpel tunnel and is in dire straights for post-op diversion.

And she is not the only one who thinks that I am not true to the cause. But then, I am not sure there is one cause for women. Peta, for instance, thinks that women are in charge anyway and that men are just bloody jealous.

While not that original, most free spirited women that I know, like to take that route - for obvious reasons... Why sour your life with all the shit that’s going on?

To those women - basically all my female friends - I am a prickly thorn. Although they generally agree with my ranting and ravings, they don’t want to hear about it all. Yet, funny enough they scorn me when they think I lapse.

But in all honesty, I speak less for women than for humanity. I just want people to reach their full potential instead of living lives as abused and abusers. And if hormones are in the way of that, I will name fingers and point names.

And, by the way, I do think Natalie rules!

Remind Me

2011-05-30T23:54:00.000+01:00

Away from home for the week, Zoë was sent the “Course Rules” ahead of time. There was little room for doubt about what was expected of the children. This one cracked me up: “All members must attend all meals and EAT. Please, queue in an orderly fashion.”

Anybody there...?

2011-05-24T22:18:00.004+01:00

From “My people have this secret superfast weapon that can destroy aliens” to “Stealth bombers were deployed to target ennemy combatants” it's a rather smooth transition. But whereas in scenario number one, an agitated mom is rapidly closing in on the sandbox to take possession of the secret superfast weapon (sand shovel) while telling the alien to retract his tongue, there is no such institution, it seems, in scenario number two. Instead we see crowds of flag swirling mom's with badges on their T-shirts saying Proud to be a US Soldier's Mom.

Words that Lie

2011-05-22T12:37:00.003+01:00

Why, he wondered, was there such a word as "lie" if lying itself was not allowed. When he came to me looking for an answer, I had to think for a moment. My cynical self had an instant reply ready, of course. About how there are many words that refer to undesirable human behavior and that "lie" was just one of those. But that would have been like flicking the lid off a box filled with nasties. All he wanted, after all, was find some sense in the world. Why spoil a perfectly fine Sunday...?

Twenty-four Seven

2011-05-15T01:10:00.002+01:00

Where did you store that one-liner? You do remember it, don’t you? A couple of days ago, when Yahoo’s main page popped up on your screen, it was right there, the second news headline from the top.

I instinctively turned it into a ratio: Forty-eight women every hour is approximately 1 every 72 seconds...

What I didn’t do was click on the link to read on. I realize that I should have and if only in order to fully acknowledge both the horror of this ongoing atrocity and the researchers’ effort to reach our awareness.

But I was afraid. Afraid of the rage that would surge in me while reading details of the study that puts a cold number to the brutal fact of humanity.

Forty-eight women and girls in Congo are raped every hour, 24/7.

There it was. Information readily available to be locked away in a dark corner of our human experience. A truth to be ignored.

A few years ago a study done by a couple of US professors concluded that rape is not unnatural among human males. The study came under a lot of criticism and after a while I lost track of whether the public and academic outcry was about the sober conclusion, or whether it showed our inability to accept another truth or two.

When...

2011-05-10T16:07:00.001+01:00

...there is a moment to see we seldom look.

Just to say...

2011-04-25T13:29:00.003+01:00

Happy Easter to y'all !!

It's not easy to keep in touch with everyone. And I know, I have been a really lousy correspondent and blogspot friend, but I do think of you all and I hope that wherever you are, you had a jolly good bunny time. I just got done with my third load of chocolate casualties...we were down to swim suits at some point...Love A.
PS Yorkshire is beautiful!!

Spring Escape

2011-04-15T09:25:00.003+01:00

It'll be a week of hiking through the North Yorkshire Dales for us. Let's hope the news of Spring has reached that far...

Move over Guys !

2011-04-14T20:45:00.002+01:00

A recent University of Cambridge study found that there seems to be a positive correlation between steroids, more specifically testosterone, and factors that contributed to the financial crash.

The researcher, Dr Coates, observed what he called a state of mania among traders, characterized by heightened risk taking attitude, increased confidence and reaction speed.

In other words, what he witnessed was a sort of feeding frenzy. And we all know the mess that was left behind. To avoid future bubbles, he prescribed an increase in the number of women and older men working the floor.

Well, there and preferably in other places, where hormones get in the way of rational thinking, I would think.

Too Easy

2011-04-11T21:51:00.003+01:00

It’s pretty convenient to shove someone, and all the little idiosynchracies they come equipped with, into a box, lid shut and case closed.

We do it all the time. It does make life seem a lot tidier, when we can neatly label the boxes and store them in some dark corner of our memory without ever opening the lid
again.

Susan is really sweet but an airhead. The best thing about Cathy is her cooking. Miles can talk miles without listening for a second. Nick is obsessive, Mag a crowd pleaser, Lucy a prima donna.

Even if it’s all true, which it usually isn’t, and even if for a moment it gives us the feeling that we’ve got it all figured out, which of course we haven’t, and even if it would make life a whole lot easier, which ... Yeah, you got it ... it doesn’t. Even if all the ifs seemed reasonably real. It’s not a good idea.

And yet, if you insist on going ahead anyway, at least have the decency to punch some breathing holes into the box...or even better, remove the lid from time to time to have another look.

Life would be boring, if we had it all figured out. Freezing all the variables around us and buying a dog is not the solution.

Go Quota!

2011-03-30T13:57:00.001+01:00

There are many reasons why quotas are no good. For one, they are “unfair” to those they disfavor, but also they are unfair to those they are intended to favor, because they tend to provide fertile grounds for office gossip.

And yet, they do what we have failed to do in any other meaningful way. They break through entrenched networks, racism and sexism, or, more generally speaking, they encroach on hiring practices that for eons now have favored the white male.

In fact, considering women and their particular life cycle which, as we all know, can impinge uncomfortably on their careers, I would actually propose an even tougher quota system.

Given that the most important time for women to make good money and move up on the career ladder is right when they come out of education, a strict quota system ought to secure their swift promotion at that point in their professional lives.

For one, if women get a head start and remain motivated, they may be far more likely to return to their swivvel chairs once their childbearing years are over. But also, it would give them a chance early on in their lives to make contributions to their pension funds.

This is crucial not only for personal but also for economic reasons as most countries around the world, including the US and Germany, don’t give any credit for the time women spent in child rearing - a blatant “oversight” which greatly contributes to high poverty rates among women in old age.

Quotas may not be fair, and they are definitely not a preferred option, but they are a decent plan B, where reasons beyond reasons blurr our decision-making.

Gunshots

2011-03-23T21:19:00.002Z

About a week ago I tuned into BBC Four for a report about Ivory Coast. We listened to a group of women who had gathered in a square demanding to be heard. This filled me with joy and I was cheering them on from our kitchen with Zoe joining in. Not that often women risk their lifes and that of their loved ones to speak up against wrong doings. But every astonishing time that they do it, it fills me with great pride. However, our chanting came to an abrupt end when rounds of gun fire could be heart. It felt, as if I we were under fire as well. My heart stopped for a moment and I looked over to Zoe. She had tears in her eyes, unable to utter a word.

Hating it...

2011-03-20T19:08:00.002Z

Two point four million GBP is what a UK banker receives on avarage as a bonus each year. At HSBC and the Royal Bank of Scotland, it’s a bit less - just over a million. Still that’s pretty decent for government employees - because that’s what they are now, after they burnt through their money and had to be bailed out with tax payers´ money. Somehow I get the feeling that they really must hate their job, if they think they deserve that much. Maybe one ought to feel sorry for them...

Waiting to hear...

2011-03-17T21:49:00.001Z

I am wondering whether Fred will reconsider his laudatio to nuclear energy or whether in his good old die-hard Republican manner, he will claim that Fukushima is just a big press campaign, launched by the anti nuclear energy lobby.

This is It !

2011-03-16T13:15:00.003Z

It’s happening. Mid-life. At forty-one, solidly arrived on the other shore, life feels just a tiny bit more like a gigantic wet towel. While the twenties were full of arrogant energy, ideas and goals, the thirties abounded in a can-do attitude that resembled that of a frost bitten summit chaser. Joggling double and triple days, childhood illnesses, and family feuds, that decade was not an easy one, and so it comes as no surprise if the aftershocks can still be felt at this end....

There is a mental fatigue now that seems to linger which is only topped by the exhaustion of everyday life that hasn’t let off as babies turned into pre-teens. What is this? One asks while checking ones mid-section on a dreary morning...I didn’t use to look like THAT!! And what’s with the grey curly hairs sprouting everywhere - can’t pull all of them out (or can I?)...not to mention the sneaky woodworm that has slyly dug its way through our faces. Where was I when all of this happened?

These days, long nights are no longer a sign of vivacious energy, but a blatant mistake. Headaches, a stiff back and an acting up ischias are reminders that we need to take better care of ourselves....pick up yoga, pilates, nordic walking. And alas, chocolate is not as quickly metabolized as before and will need reconsideration. Darn.

And then there is our other half - if they stuck around until now. This is the time of reckoning and many will in the end reckon that it is time to move in separate directions, leaving afore mentioned children and mortgage payments in their wake. For those who are more inclined to reconcile, there remains the certainty that this is it. This is their life, these are the recurring issues, and ongoing annoyances and very little is going to change. Not for better but maybe for worse.

Do you remember the Game of Life? It was a board game, that made it onto almost everyone’s shelf in the eighties. Players moved through their fictitous lives in little baby pink and blue cars to end up in either a semi-detached (oops!) or grand mansion (congrats!) at the finishing line, depending on the amount of personal bankruptcies and lottery cash ins they happened to come accross on their journey.

I loved that game, especially the part where one had to spin the wheel to see how many children were to travel along in the car - I always hoped for twins. Well, I know better today. And for whatever its worth, that’s an insight one rarely gains before turning forty.

Human Intarrogance

2011-03-08T19:43:00.002Z

Like a mad charlatan concocting ever more colorful potions of questionable content and potentially hazardous result, we are coming up with outlandish cures for the ailments that are plaguing human civilization. Gene manipulated foods to save the starving millions, nuclear power plants to support their pampered lives, invasive treatments to prolong them....when really the only life prolonging remedy would be to have fewer of us around in the future. But now the US government is cutting funding for Planned Parenthood and hopes to put a dent into the national deficit that way. Another one of those cures, it seems. Let’s just hope it doesn’t kill the patient.
PS Happy Women's Day...

Adelante!

2011-03-03T22:29:00.005Z

So Austria is dying out, and so is Italy, only outpaced by Germany, and so governments there are groping around for ways to get women to crank out more babies, or else Europe the way we know it will cease to exist. Just imagine vast sums of money are paid so young women won’t feel that they have to choose between having a child or earning money. At least for the first years.... They must be just pooping their pants if they go that far! Paying mothers!!!

But what are they so afraid of? Western culture disappearing? People looking a little less white? Languages dying out? Nobody there to cultivate a decent Bordeaux anymore?

Language always changes - as much as the Académie Française tries to keep French pure by forbidding the use of foreign words (and thereby making French an even more awkward language) youth culture will forever be stronger and push the limits. And, yes, that youth will increasingly consist of more and more second and third generation immigrants.

And with regards to our culinary tradition...most of the Bordeaux we drink nowadays isn’t even produced in France anymore, the same with pâté and Pinot and with regards to looks...well look again. A little stirr up would certainly not do any damage.

And what culture is that we are talking about? Countries around Europe seem to be in a race to shed their herritage. Six lane highways are criss crossing the country sides of France, Italy and Germany. Only the poorest regions get spared. Discounters and supermalls seem to have become the main point of attraction. The medieval towns in their forgotten midst are slowly falling to pieces. It’s not where the jobs are, you know.

So while we are slowly morphing into a more or less amorphous 21st century shape, I would say let’s hail any good idea from the outside - the Maghreb seems to be a place where things are happening...open the doors. Let’s just hold on to some of our legal and constitutional framework.

Like that we all might be better off in the end.

And now...?

2011-02-28T17:39:00.000Z

So what’s next? The western world seems to hesitate as if they didn’t want to spoil the sweetness of the moment. Twittering teenies taunting terrible tictators. In a way we all want to be part of it, support, embrace and empower...but then, what exactly do we expect to happen?

Of course, what we want to happen is democracy and free speech, market economy and stable oil prices, but how likely is that to happen? History has taught us after all that revolutions tend to bring forward the next strongman, the next silver back who leads the way, his way, the next loud mouth who knows how to rally the masses behind him.

I wonder what Obama is thinking these days. Has he placed his bet yet? It will be interesting to see what his next moves are.

...no chance!

2011-02-22T20:13:00.003Z

I wonder whether our parts of the world will see a revolution again. Civil disobedience in western democracies doesn’t seem to go beyond strikes and demonstratrations and occasional clashes with law enforcement - usually following European football matches.

Seemingly functioning electoral systems have absorbed the major currents in society. All western democracies have left and right leaning groupings in their party landscapes with minor eccentric parties on the margins.

With plenty of bread and games there is no reason really to risk once life in the name of... say a better world. Granted, some people are better off than others, have better opportunies to move ahead and stay ahead, but generally speaking, very few are starving.

There are state funded schools everywhere, miserable as they may be, thrift shops pick up where more high end retail doesn’t want to go, and there is plenty of nonstop diversion around, for everything else there are drugs.

So, my bet is that we are done with this kind of bonding experience.

Bonne Chance!

2011-02-17T18:47:00.003Z

Revolutions, when they happen, are an amazing event. The momentum of a feeling turned cause and finally movement is a great manifestation of our humanity.

Two years ago we watched students in Iran stand up against a corrupt and brutal government. We all were frustrated when their courage didn’t meet with success, when they became victims instead of victorious.

But in the end, their voices reverberated in the hearts of many and helped to unite people across the region to stand up against suppression. How wonderful would it be if what happened in these past weeks across the North of Africa would travel like a tsunami accross the rest of the continent where brutality of a few limits the life perspectives of so many.

Play it Again...

2011-02-13T13:22:00.003Z

As we decended through the evening sky and swooshed over a land that I knew only form memory, I was taken back in time. Immediately the beauty and otherness conjured up the bliss and ease that were once mine. A life time and a time of life. It was so good to return to Marrakech after all these years. And before we even had touched ground, I leaned over to Matt and whispered, “I want to do this again and again...”

4,000 Camels

2011-02-11T13:12:00.003Z

...and five admittedly pretty tea cups were offered in exchange for lovely me. Matt politely declined. I on the other hand, if asked, would not have been offended at the promise of life under the warm North African sun, with tame monkeys and sinuous snakes at my feet and the lush smell of mosc in the air. Two and a half months of drizzle and down pours on this windy shoal have taken they’re toll...

Just a Fool

2011-02-04T11:41:00.002Z

Every fool can manage a crisis, it takes true genius, however, to cope with everyday life...

YUK

2011-01-22T15:46:00.002Z

When you hear what the film "Precious" is about, you would think it would make you sick. But it’s acutally the Bonus Material with the director, Lee Daniels, and Ms Paula Patton that make you dash for the loo. So this guy gets to direct the film based on the fantastic book "Push" by the author Saphire. The story is absolutely harrowing. Teenage girl grows up being physically, mentally, emotionally, sexually (have I skipped anything?) abused. Two kids fathered (so to speak...) by her father. She is black, obese, and undereducated. Not a winning ticket. The film is shot as if you were in the room with Precious, the girl. But it’s not that jagged pseudo-amateurish camera job. It is acutally just calm. Lots of close ups of faces that speak the unspeakable. Really good. But then only God (“Hello are you out there?”) knows why Lee Daniels and his side kicks have to go and turn the story into a soap opera when they talk about it in the interview. Seriously, get the DVD, watch the film, but DON’T WATCH THE BONUS MATERIAL - or keep a bucket close!!

Brilliant!

2011-01-19T20:46:00.002Z

It should be feasible in this day and age with social networks, twitter, email, instant messaging etc....for word to go around about what I would call a No Knock up Night. One 24 hour period of not conceiving. Worldwide. Can you imagine the powerful message that would send when nine months later, the birth rate drops to near nill for a day? Just one day.

Disreputable

2011-01-17T20:54:00.000Z

There is so much to say, to shout out loud into the busy noise of our daily lives, about the gnarled idiosyncrasies of a woman’s life, that sometimes I wish for the world to come to a screeching halt - just long enough to take a good long look and then, hopefully, readjust its course.

Population growth could be a thing of the past.

Things may have changed, but when I went to school, I was never told about the effects that childbirth may have on my life. There was no mentioning of the part-time trap or of forgoing years of paying into a state pension fund.

Never were issues such as physical and emotional strains of child bearing and raising openly discussed. The exhaustion which goes along with attending to the next generation was a slightly disreputable secret just like worn-out bras.

Menstruation was a biological fact young women had to learn to cope with. In no way was it considered a rite of passage that bestowed powers of reproduction to be both acknowledged and reckoned with. And as far as my sexuality was concerned, the pill was to take care of that.

And so I entered adulthood as a complete ignoramus ready to take on the double day.

Completely oblivious of what that would entail, of course, for I thought, that I was free to choose any carrier and decide how I was going to live my life - ah yes, those mirages of endless opportunities!

Entering university, I had a pretty good idea of how to work towards future employability, but over the years I was sobered by numerous reminders that instead of venturing out into the remunerated work force where glass ceilings, harassment, double days and unequal pay were awaiting me, it may be wiser to stay closer to home and settle for biological fulfillment.

Under the circumstances, certainly not a bad idea. Thank you very much.

And so after having given birth to three children spaced neatly three years apart, I opted out and left it to my partner to play the chicken ladder game. An impregnable uterus is - after all - another disreputable fact, that doesn’t sit well with employers. If nothing else, it defines one as ‘different’ - especially in the more profitable lines of work. And ‘different’ is seldom a good thing - especially when ‘normal’ is defined by the bully.

My cousin once asked me, whether I had wasted my education when opting to become a stay-at-home mother. As much as the question shocked me for its brazen disrespect, I have thought about it time and again and wondered how I would answer it with what I had realized about the myths of self-determination.

Get a job, a hobby, find a worthy cause, some would say. But luckily I don’t need either. What I would like much more is to enter in a dialogue about the most crucial aspects of our lives as women and mothers, some of which need to be addressed urgently.

But here is one more disreputable side about me: I don’t care enough about all of this to lend my time and energy to those who prefer the status quo and will cowardly defend it by all means for fear of even the mildest challenge. And so I wait that some day, a critical mass of people will join the discourse and that the bullies who had their turn will simply disappear.

In the meantime, stay posted for a brilliant idea....!

Gotta try a little harder

2011-01-11T17:06:00.002Z

When the pundits marvel about the hapless war in Afghanistan, they tend to point to a history based on tribal structures and warfare in that region. Accordingly, what we witness today, the stubborn resistance to outside ideas, whether introduced with method or might, is at least in part a manifestation of that history.

I wonder if one might apply a similar analysis to the ongoing trouble in the US. The surprisingly hotheaded approach to basic principles of the common good originated in the minds of people who ventured out into the unknown to find greater freedom.
Whether gun control, freedom of religion, or health care, the issue is not as important as the fact that no one is supposed to mess with it.

At this point, the conservative fraction is reaching a point of hysteria for fear that some of these rights may have to be mitigated for the benefit of the community. So now they point crosshairs in every direction.

The question to ask is how one can turn a country’s historical baggage into potential? How can one introduce a sense of security in a nation that is still fighting the ghosts of the past?

Obviously not just by using rhetoric along the lines of “God bless America!”

Good-Byes

2011-01-08T12:54:00.004Z

To this point, I have avoided funerals, because the one I went to, my grandpa’s, just made things worse. From the onset the pastor had taken over our thoughts and memories and ran off with them. Although he had never met my grandpa, he seemed to have a lot to say about him. Trite sentimentalities and pseudo insights into the complexities of a wonderful person. I had never felt so alone in my life.

So from that point on, I stayed away from final good-byes.

But with J. I felt, I had to make an appearance. For one, it probably wouldn’t have been any good to tell the family that I was probably going to hate their funeral service; and then I didn’t feel good about lying to them either. So, brave little Julian and I went. And I am glad we did.

It was a simple ceremony. Her husband had written the eulogy. And with very few frills and elaborations, he managed to bring her back among our midst. And so what made that terrible day good in a way was that, not only for the first time in my life I had arrived on time for something, which would have made her proud, but above all that everyone who had come was able to reunite with her through these few words, which would have made her very happy.

Small-time Prophets

2010-12-31T18:27:00.002Z

I am sure she would object to the term “prophet,” or rather she would laugh at me and say, “You are so funny, sweetie!” As if! She really is that, or at least one of them: a small-time prophet.

Leading a quiet life, by example. No big words, no crowds of followers, no fame to be gained. They just do it, because they know it’s the right thing to do. Many of them are mothers. And if they survive the hardships of childbirth and financial dependency, of sleep deprivation and subjugation of some degree or other without much complaint, it is so because they see the bigger picture.

And that’s what it’s ultimately about. The big picture! Of course, you know that it’s not about winning a war, founding the next multinational cooperation, or even becoming head principal. But what are you doing about it?

Well step one would be to adopt the golden rule and to live by it - without any ifs or buts. And believe me, children are good at holding you to it.

It takes a lot of work, most of all on yourself. And over the years, I have seen these women outgrow their partners and consequently being punished by them. A sad thing, but often inevitable in the world we still live in.

Luckily, most of my friends live in societies that embrace at least some basic principles of human (i.e., women’s) rights, so they weren’t burnt or mutilated for having become more self-reliant and independently happy over the years.

But a good life, and most certainly a deserved one, it is not. After having been deserted, betrayed and disparaged like other more notable ones before them, their lives are filled with daily hurdles. But as true captains of their souls, they manage.

Now, that’s an example to follow: Self-reliance and moral rectitude in the face of average human baseness. It’s all that matters.

The good news: These women are everywhere and those smart enough in this world will silently follow their example. Yes, I mean you guys!

She Said...

2010-12-30T14:02:00.004Z

Some of the more obvious problems with organized religion is that, for one, the big three and most of the others all have male deities reigning over the lofty heavens. From Allah to Zarathustra, there is not that much gender variety (if we neglect, for a moment, the bare- bellied sidekicks of Shiva et al.).

But beyond that, the great prophets, those claiming to carry on the divine message on earth, were all male - or so we are told. Of course, we know better, but then that’s probably not something to be discussed over turkey and stuffings.

The backlash against women who have tried to impact this world with their thoughts has always been horrendous and continues to be so even today. Death and defamation hit them faster than they would have imagined. And so today, Mary Magdalene remains in the memory of the religious mob nothing but a lucky whore. Her teachings tossed into the Red Sea (...or was it the Black?).

Men are capable of that kind of thing. Nothing new.

And when some women bloggers in Germany today are told by investigators to tone down their messages and make their posts less ‘provocative’ to the sensitive ears of male supremacist, or else to expect their wrath in the shape of profanities and death threats, then it is nothing other than that:

Un-called for male posturing.

Just look at the world on the eve of 2011: Over-population, warfare, religious strive, sexual exploitation, torture, totalitarianism, nuclear proliferation, and melting poles...Not so great, guys! But thanks for flushing toilets and penicillin anyway!

He Shall Wipe Away All Tears

2010-12-26T12:32:00.003Z

Without a construct of eternity or rebirth of some kind, of power beyond our limited means, without a benign entity welcoming us and our loved ones into its bottomless pool of love and forgiveness, death is the end of all and the source of all fear.

That is unless we seek to accept our existence on earth with humility and understand our deaths as mere molecular events in a greater picture that we will never grasp.

Pulling ahead!

2010-12-25T15:35:00.003Z

In a way this is a very special Christmas for us this year. And so, as Matt is clanking away with a hammer on our US mega size turkey roasting tray to make it fit into a UK sized oven, we smile and toast for we have safely landed. Funny to think that it all started three years ago with us sawing apart our king sized bed at 2am one wintery morning on the day of our move to be able to move it up the narrow staircase of our new English home. Merry Christmas to all and everyone!

103

2010-12-20T17:08:00.001Z

Three days of being out with one hundered and three is the best that has happened to me in a while.

Of Things to Come

2010-12-17T20:23:00.002Z

Jules took the news of his best buddy’s mom dying, as a five-year old would. With extreme poise. Death to him is like a vague other-world, one that adults move around in that is infinitely less interesting than his own universe, which is inhabited by gnomes, talking ants and himself among other cool creatures. And to make us all feel better about his friend’s grim lot in life, he added, “When Ricky’s mom dies, she will come back as a little boy to play with him.” When I told J. that, she said that Ricky had come up with a very similar account of things to come, and that she was looking forward to it.

Winter Once More

2010-12-15T09:21:00.002Z

This winter is like all winters
   Soon come and gone
   A succession of days lulled
   By the shadow of time

   Days drifting barely noticed
   Through the twilight
   Of our awareness at times
   Leaving silence in their wake

   Sameness, the never changing
   Fragrance of all days
   Left behind in a moment
   To behold once more

Dale of Sorrows

2010-12-12T18:17:00.003Z

My head hurts from hours of silence. Of not crying.
The children have all seen it before, the swollen eyes, the quivering chin.
The days, maybe hours, while J. is still alive.

Out of this World

2010-12-07T22:50:00.003Z

We had done it again. We had gone and wasted another perfectly good day at IKEA, impulse buying, ordering, and eating way too many meatballs with cranberry sauce. It was once again quite a journey. So much so, in fact, that Julian later on, while bending over a world map in the kitchen, looked up at me and asked, “Where is Ikealand actually?” I knew then, that we had overdone it this time.

Check!

2010-12-04T11:05:00.005Z

Behold our great contribution to the xmas fair. I scrubbed off twenty labels, Lea cut ten rosemary sprigs and stuffed them into the bottles, Zoe cut out ten turtle doves. I say, it is done! Ten bottles of Extra Virgin olive oil. Let the fair begin...I'll be back later!

1918

2010-11-30T17:44:00.002Z

On this cold November day, my great grandmother Johanna Unger looked at her little daughter Magdalena, whom she had given birth to just a few hours ago, as she opened her dark eyes. An armistice had just been signed a fortnight ago and spirits were high.

Patchwork

2010-11-29T16:36:00.003Z

Over the past decades, family structures have become looser than ever before - at least in the Western world.

And at some point, the term “patchwork family” was coined to describe adults and children living together in relationships extending beyond those of the original biological family - usually after that family ceased to exist.

With a history of wars, famine, poverty and disease, the human family has always been under stress. A significant number of children has always been reared by other than their biological parents. Relatives, the state, and strangers often had to step in when plan A didn’t work out.

A reality that can shape a life forever.

Yet, there are quite a few voices who like to downplay the effects this can have on a child. Patchwork is in, it seems.

Patchwork embellishes the harsh and often intangible realities of childhood in the 21st century.

Of course, I distance myself from those who decry the decline of the “traditional family” blaming it on eroding (Christian) values and the “onslaught of feminism”, but I nevertheless wonder how healthy patchwork really is - and also, how unavoidable it is.

By definition, patchwork is created from the left-overs of a carefully designed and crafted original. It describes a more or less haphazardly stitched together pattern made up from the remnants of whatever it was that fell apart. And patchwork families are often exactly that: stitched together parts of the original families that were worn down by heavy use.

Which begs the questions, who is wearing out the families of the 21st centuries? Why are the pressures such that the seams rip even though there are no devastating wars, famines or pandemics?

Or to be more concrete:

Why do families over night have to adapt to the demands of the so-called global economy? Why does a regular work week in a decently salaried position amounts to fifty hours and more? Why, I ask, have real wages not increased since the 1970s, thereby making it often unaffordable to raise a family of four on one income only?

You know the answer. Someone is skimming off the cream while the masses watch and the patchwork is growing.

Jules knows this:

2010-11-23T17:37:00.001Z

Gravity is green and flat and it sticks.

Do it yourself

2010-11-18T15:25:00.003Z

For a while there I was baffled. As much as I scoured the aisles of leading grocery stores, I couldn’t find it. Store clerks looked at me quizzically when I inquired into the possibility of locating it on one of the shelves. Alone and a bit forlorn, I ambled between long rows of chutney, delicatessen, canned fruit and pickled everything. But nothing. I couldn’t find
any apple sauce.

In the land of orange marmalade, lemon curd, and mint sauce it seemed hard to believe that such an ordinary item as crushed, canned apples couldn’t be found. Especially, since it appears on every pub’s autumn menu, preferably in combination with pork.

It took me three years to figure out why...

The south of England virtually bursts with apple trees. Everyone has at least one in their back yard. On our way to school there are two houses with wheelbarrows parked outside the gate, filled to the brim with cooking apples to give away. All I have been eating at my friend’s home for the past month is bowls of delicious apple sauce with scrumptious vanilla sauce.

So, there you go...there simply is not enough profit margin in apple sauce, when people whip it up in a matter of minutes...all organic and free trade!

November

2010-11-16T17:06:00.004Z

On cold branches lingers
the light of my memories

In dark heavy clouds rests
the beauty of your promise

Zero

2010-11-11T21:32:00.003Z

I have been wondering about what it is that makes fashion so appealing. It would be so much easier to just wear the same old three shirts over and over, and not to worry about the length of skirts, jackets and heels as the seasons go by. Think about all the money that one could safe, and the time!! All those hours wasted in figuring what's in, where to get it, and how to get away with it. Surely purple lipstick is a tough one and long is bad if you are short? Take those low cut jeans, for instance. They were a real pain, I thought, and yet everyone in the last years did their best to stuff their private parts into them (but only just!). But what's that thing about size zero. That's gotta make 99% of women absolutely miserable. A) Who fits into a pair of jeans that their ten year old grew out of several months ago? B) Who likes to lie about fitting into them, and C) Who thinks looking like a victim of starvation is anything else but pathological, unless you really can't help it in which case - go ahead and grab a pair.
But I don't think they had you in mind, when they came up with the design.

Too Many

2010-11-07T19:05:00.002Z

Gotta Produce
Gotta Make more
Gotta get that new one out

Hit the market
Hit the target
Hit that growth rate and be proud

More is better and better will win
‘Cause more is more and more is in

Gotta feed them
Gotta dress them
Gotta get them into school

Get them ready
Get them going
Get them the right tool

More is better and better will win
‘Cause more is more and more is in

Gotta compete
Gotta be sharp
Gotta make the difference

Not to lose out
Not to go under
Not to let go when the going gets tougher

More is better
Better will win
‘Cause more is more and more is in

Gotta check
Gotta see
Gotta go for the best deal

Too many people
Too many for one job
No need to give just ask for more

Witch Friend?

2010-11-03T20:31:00.003Z

As we entered the kitchen, there were thick clouds of purple and green smoke suspended at mid level and a slight but undeniable sulphureous stench permeated the air as Peta pulled the third creation of the day from the oven - a dark blue cake. The other slightly more striking variations in aforementioned hues of purple and green were cooling on the countertop next to a bowl of orange icing waiting for its deployment.

Peta tends to be generous with the icing and it is fun watching her sloshing it on, while uttering little mournful sighs and hisses and an occasional curse. All this was fine and rather to be expected, after all it was the night before H’ween and she was trying out a new recipe, but then she turned to us and cheerfully said, “Almost there, why don’t you grab a plate. You are the first ones to try it.”

And for a moment I wondered, whether our friendship had suffered any indiscernible and yet irreparable damage over the past months. Whether we should maybe sit down and talk...and whether that dark spot at the tip of her nose was really a wart and not just a dollop of stray icing.

But already Julian’s little finger dove into the icing at full speed and vanished into his mouth before I could thwart its swift movement. And I knew I would have to follow suit. No turning back now. After all I had gotten us into this mess.

Well done, Gretel, we will GLOW for years to come!

Is that possibly Clerodendrum Trichotomum, dear?

2010-10-30T05:19:00.003+01:00

I never cared much about where and how I fit into Costa Rican society. It was quite clear that we didn’t, even though we seemingly were an integral part of what makes up Costa Rica in this day and age: foreigners looking for a slice of paradise.

Costa Rica is teaming with gold diggers (it’s main gold is real estate), tax and winter refugees, hippies and wannabes, small-time crooks, and a lot of other colorful characters.

We weren’t colorful - not in that way - and we weren’t Costa Rican, although by the time we left, we had a pretty good idea about what that was. We simply were enjoying a time out, a moment in our lives to figure out what exactly it was that we wanted. A little breathing space. Every one should get one.

Raising a family, it is easy to get stuck with mortgages, credit cards, suburban life and bad coffee. And we knew, we didn’t want that.

But we also didn’t want country clubs, Latin American sprawl and one hundred percent hinterland, which altogether to us were ten times worse than all the bugs fluttering and scampering about combined.

Now, however, that we have found what we want, we are faced with a new challenge:
How to fit in.

When faced with seed catalogues, chutney jars and garden shows, I am quite perplexed. I love the beauty of the English landscape, I absolutely adore the seemingly effortless charm of an English garden and nothing is quite as exquisite as a visit to a manor house, be it in Chelsey or Cheshire, where the good life seems to be enshrined forever.

BUT how is one ever going to be all that, unless you are born that way?

Really

2010-10-28T12:19:00.002+01:00

Thinking about it, all idealism came to a grinding halt sometime in the 1920s, when Communism turned totalitarian, Fascism entered the living rooms, and the world economies were begging for war fuel. The cynical decades that followed where but a reckoning with human nature. We are after all nothing but the pinnacle of the primate world. Whether we make it to Mars, or turn our garbage into drinking water, we are nothing more than a species concerned with survival. It remains to be seen, who is the fittest.

"Can you get in trouble for that?"

2010-10-25T21:14:00.002+01:00

...is what Zoë wondered after she had scanned through my last post. And she is probably right. If anyone actually read my little bits and bites, I would probably receive a lot of hate mail from the Christian Right, including the PR office of Mr. Ratzinger, as well as everyone up and down the Islamic hierarchy...don’t know whether I have offended any Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist....or Jewish person yet, anyway the Mullahs would be up in arms and so would any cookie baking mother, doting husband, and in general people with nothing better to do in life.

So, it’s a good thing Blogspot readers don’t seem to be too aware of this little corner of free speech.

Actually, thinking about it, womazzle was at some point on a black list, I was told by a faithful reader, because when quoting Jules in one of my posts, there was some indecent lingo. I think that’s because I used a word referring to a male appendage used in reproductive efforts. So, yes, I am bad !

Anyway, I like where I am. I do not care enough about this world to climb onto a soap box and holler my wisdom into the noise of traffic or infomercials. Otherwise, I would have done so years ago. I have made my peace with life. No need to struggle much beyond pound cakes and recycling schedules. What I say and write and share with others is just that...me. No need to convert humanity.

Living the good life in one of the most beautiful places left on this planet, I am truly grateful. It is just a shame, not everyone is that fortunate.

For Others

2010-10-24T12:32:00.002+01:00

Correct me if I am wrong, but I see some patterns develop in families around midlife, even if at first glance there aren't any visible cracks.

This is how I think it works: Boy meets girl, girl likes boy. Kiss, marriage, baby carriage, the whole works, and suddenly that degree can wait, the job wasn’t really that fulfilling, the hours don’t work out, boy earns more, child care is hard to get by... And all of this is probably true. Sadly so.

What follows is a silent contract, the promise that both sides will fulfill their share in the family enterprise, that they both will keep to their part of the labor contract, because from now on they will inhabit separate work spheres, worlds which will rarely meet.

That requires a lot of trust, maybe even naiveté. Because what will ensue is a sort of schism, a gaping abyss which will prove more and more difficult to bridge as the years pass by and misgivings, spoken or unspoken, will be stock piled behind a façade of good will and determination.

And unfortunately, the big picture doesn’t help either. Because as girl redefines her role in life as one devoted to the well-being of the family, and foremost her offspring, boy defines himself through success measured in power and recognition. And while his position in life will receive bolstering through social bonuses in the shape and form of titles, networks, pensions, and bank accounts, girl will live in the shadow of that plentiful tree and - once again - naively consider half of all this hers.

If she has any wits at all, she may have signed a marital contract, insisted on life insurance, and a separate bank account. But most likely, that sentimental streak in her, that little voice that has told her since she was little that she is special, a princess really, and that nothing bad will happen to her, has silenced all worries and lulled her in a cotton cloud of denial.

As the years go by and the parent evenings, stomach flues and birthday parties start grinding her down, as she realizes that children love their dads just as much as their moms even though they do not help with the homework, pick up the dirty socks, and feed the hamster, they may get a little disgruntled at wiping down toilet seats in the evening, emptying dishwashers in the morning and checking the mail for coupons.

And suddenly, while she is standing there in the kitchen, flipping cheese sandwiches on the griddle, and sunflower oil starts to dot the flabby landscape of her worn out sweater, girl doesn’t look quite that appetizing any more.

Surely, there must be something more to life. In Zoe’s class 6 out of 23 children are raised by their mothers alone. The dads have moved on to greener, lusher grounds. Why get stuck in misery? That’s for others.

Baaah!

2010-10-21T20:56:00.005+01:00

Goodie Goodie, ‘half-term’ is just around the corner when school ‘breaks up’ and we get a chance to come up for air from between stacks of cookie sheets and mixing bowls.

However, in light of my rapidly waning enthusiasm for 'special events', I have called off our family trip to Wales since it is not my intention to spend these few precious days messing around with five sets of muddy rain gear in the mournful twilight of late afternoon down poors at the foot of a bleak mountain next to a sheep.

Not so Blissful !

2010-10-13T14:04:00.000+01:00

By now, I have figured out a way to produce eight gingerbread houses for the school’s advent fair; and I shrewdly shifted from baking ten bags of cookies to instead preparing ten bottles of flavored oil. That and the raffle for classes K, 2, and 7...and I am way ahead of the game.

Well done, mom. Well done.

In addition, I dutifully put my name down on several rotas for flipping burgers, clean up etc., AND I managed to go to all parents’ evenings as well as one-on-one consultations. I now know everything about my children, including their attitude to ring time and spelt pancakes.

And even though an episode of bronchitis has dragged us all down these past weeks, everyone seems to be upbeat. Instead of being bullied, Zoe now has turned to bullying behavior herself, Lea is successfully conjugating the verb ‘to be’ in her native language, and Julian is no longer crying in afternoon club.

In fact, on my walk back from school this morning, I felt as proud as a parade of prancing peacocks. I had made it through the first weeks of formal schooling, and that, all things considered, relatively unscathed.

After all, there was only one minor run in with the Kindergarten teacher about head lice followed by a talk with the principal about the Kindergarten teacher, and a visit to the school nurse to improve communication with parents on the same issue, which consequently triggered emails of surprising content and a round of fruitful mediation.

And just as I sat down to have breakfast after the early morning school run, the sun light sprinkling the ivory petals of a bunch lilies...,you guessed it...the phone rang and I am informed that class 2 has, indeed, nits.

Oh well, maybe they are going to pass on my memo after all. It is admittedly a rather outstanding piece of prose, rendered in a beautiful albeit somewhat wistful voice. One of my best, really. Here it is, so you know what I have been up to these past weeks:

If, while checking your child’s hair, you find tiny yellowish grains stuck to the hair shafts, it means there are adult lice around. These tiny kernels are so-called NITS and they are the eggs of the head louse.

Sometimes nits are mistaken for dandruff or sand, but unlike dandruff or sand, they are stuck to the hair and can only be removed by sliding them carefully down the hair shaft, one by one.

You will most likely never see a louse scrambling through your child’s hair, because they are good at hiding, but if there are nits there are lice!

Also, importantly, if you find any, please tell everyone, you have been with in the past week, that they need to check as well!! Someone probably does not know they have them, and that’s how you got it.

.....

Try to be thorough, because if a single louse survives, the cycle will start all over again ....

A Lot Less Fun

2010-09-28T22:46:00.004+01:00

All this time has past and yet all that happened is that Zoe started school. But mind you, school is not what it used to be. Or at least how I remember it. It is no longer a place to send children to be looked after and edified while parents stay in their own separate realm.

The cute little school we found is really great and I generally do like the teachers and their funky approach to education, but how many talks on child development and education can one fit into a five-day week? Don't they ever sleep?

Whereas my parents would never have dreamt of setting foot into my school more than twice a year, parents today are expected to be on call anytime. They are there at drop off, back again at pick up, they host social coffee mornings (ugh!), hold workshops, organize fundraisers, help with school events, they sow, knit, hammer, paint, and bake....

In the first three weeks of my school ordeal, I have been called in to five meetings, I have been named class contact, and consequently written up contact lists, telephone trees, welcome letters, and lice memos, as well as prepared a list of items to prepare in anticipation of the Christmas Fair in November.

Like a giant behemoth the school body and its various swirling long necked heads have gobbled me up like a lemon cup cake. Nothing but a frilly paper cup left behind blowing languidly in the wind.

I am exhausted and bewildered. Why are parents expected to morph into backstage gophers? And, even more astonishing, why do most parents (i.e. mothers) comply? Is it hormones? Or maybe one-up-wo/man-ship? Or is it the fear of being left behind in the dust? Is it complacency, maybe the lack of better things to do? As for myself, I will have to change something - soon, or I am not going to make it to Halloween.

The funny thing is that all along while I was homeschooling, people asked me how I did it, how I survived with not a minute to myself. Easy, folks, easy - and a lot more fun!

Isolated Ideals

2010-08-20T22:38:00.004+01:00

We have taken the ferry to „the mainland“ once again. Leaving Dover is always exciting, since the spectacle of receding white cliffs above blue waters evokes passages from writers and poets as well as seafaring scoundrels and heroes alike. It was a blistery morning and the large vessel was struggling through the whitecaps of the Channel. In the end, the captain decided to take the shortest route across and continue along the coast of Normandy into the port of Calais. Again, we saw white cliffs, this time those on the coast of Northern France, which albeit somewhat less spectacular nevertheless are a powerful reminder that the principle of “splendid isolation” is indeed a British fabrication - after all, it all began as one continent. However, it is a fine concept that may be worth upholding.

Like a Bee

2010-08-11T22:54:00.003+01:00

Jules and his little friend, Ella, came up with a plan the other day:
Julian: Are you still going to marry me, Ella?
Ella: I have to marry many, many times. Sometimes it is like that.
Julian has nothing to offer in return. He seems mildly puzzled, as
Ella carries on:
Ella: Well, you see, I don’t want to be rude to any of my friends.
So, I will have to marry one after the other.
Julian:Me too?
Ella: It’s like that: You go hop over to one, and then fly away, hop on to the
next and then fly away again, and so on and so on.
As Julian continues to be baffled by all this, Ella concludes:
Ella: Just make sure, Julian, that you are the last one I get to.

Tough Job

2010-08-09T06:51:00.003+01:00

Although I usually maintain that doing what you love is the best guarantee that you are doing a great job, I think that there are simply some things, that are just outrageously hard - like being a parent.

At Least

2010-08-07T18:24:00.006+01:00

I am a big believer in turning things around, problem-solving, starting over, seeing the bright side, making the best of it, moving on. But there are days, everyone has them, when it seems impossible to throw that steering wheel around and turn things away from impending pandemonium.

While on a lovely outing with some friends, I was informed that Lea’s friend might have head lice, and that she may have infected us when she stayed at our house earlier in the week.

Everyone who knows me, also knows that I never shed that lice-paranoia after the fall of 2007 when all the kids and I had them. It was hell, because I was by myself with the kids for five weeks, we had just moved from Costa Rica and I was dead-tired. Also, I had pneumonia.

To get rid of them took a lot of time and energy that I didn’t really have to spare. Subsequently, that event has turned me, and by extension the children, into full fledged nit freaks.

We never share hats, scarfs, hair brushes, towels, elastics and the like with anybody, and when we go to the movies, we wear elaborate hairdos and scarfs that cover our heads.

Yet, when my friend informed me last night, I didn’t break down in tears nor histrionic fits of alternating fury and despair. I simply informed her what to do about it. Then, I had cake.

Back home, I got my nit-kit out and went to bed, for Saturday was just around the corner and...as you may know, with me Saturdays are sacrosanct.

But, as it turns out, today was not a good day. Although we managed a surprisingly serene and light-hearted brunch with chocolate croissants, the impending razzia was upon us.

After a routine sweep-up of all the croissants morsels that didn’t make it into our digestive tracks, I got down to the real issue at hand. I stripped beds, bagged toys, vacuumed carpets, washed towels, shampooed kids, bought five nit combs and got to work.

Luckily, it was raining all day. Six hours later, and the tumble-drier still running at high-temperature, our dear neighbor dropped by to inform me, that our car window was down and that with all the rain, that may not be so good. And I thought, I was at least a little lucky with all that rain that day. Stupid me. As I returned to the kitchen a few minutes ago, all the crumbs were back including some yoghurt footprints, and the kids were hungry.

Well, at least, nobody is throwing up yet...