Archives for July 2009

On turning 42

July 27, 2009 by Susanne 3 Comments

When I still was in school my birthday always happened during summer break. Always. By the time school started again it was like a distant memory. Always a bit odd to celebrate it weeks later.

Now I’m a bit more grown-up and living in a different part of Germany where my birthday always happens in the last week before summer break. This year on a Monday. Which somehow feels wrong. At least my morning student moved her lesson (for her own reasons) but in the afternoon I almost had to work from 2 to 8. (I know it’s only 6.45 now, another student had to cancel.)

My new bad habits of not phoning friends, not sending birthday cards, not commenting on blogs, and working all day long means that I haven’t received that many birthday wishes so far. (My father sent an e-mail and I talked to my sister on the phone. Oh, and a cousin of mine sang “Zum Geburtstag viel Glück” on my answering machine. I think I might be ungrateful.)

On the other hand I was woken by my dear son at 7 with the words “Happy birthday Mama!”. I’m still trying to teach him that the “Don’t wake me before 7, please!”-rule does not mean he has to wake me precisely at seven but it was nice nonetheless.

I’m told that he didn’t want to draw me a picture but then he had the idea of giving me a meditation session. We fitted that in somewhere around 12 today, we met in his room with our cushions, and he had organized a candle, and some incense, and had drawn all the curtains. We sat there, the three of us, for a moment of much needed peace.

It had been my husband’s idea to leave our son home from kindergarten today. The two of them went out on their bikes to cut flowers for me. So sweet.

We had cake for breakfast, and went out for Asian food for lunch. I still haven’t had any champagne yet which is a shame but I’ll get to it later, I promise. It’s already cooling in the fridge.

I just looked at the post I wrote last year for my birthday. I wrote that I had been looking longingly at spinning wheels on the internet. Well, guess what I did today? I know, I already have a spinning wheel but I’d like to have a travel wheel. And since I have received generous gifts of money from both my husband and mother-in-law I’m almost halfway there. Of course, being me I’m already planning to order one tomorrow, and then save the money for it later. (The reasoning behind it goes like this: If I take my birthday money, and the money I’ll earn by teaching that one student all through summer break, and the money I put away for the piano, I’ll have enough. And the wheel will be here in time for the next spinning meeting, and I don’t have to pack my wheel into plastic bags again (the other spinners were already laughing at me last time), nor will I have to sew a bag for a wheel that I won’t be lugging around much longer.) Very reasonable, isn’t it?

Apart from those nice little printed pieces of paper in envelopes I also got a heap of books because this time when my parents asked me about what I wanted for my birthday, not only did I say, “You know, I have an Amazon wishlist,” I also added, “Maybe my sister will help you with ordering something.” Because while my father has been having a computer since the late 70s he is still on dial-up and using a browser that doesn’t do java or flash or anything. So my dear sister helped out and I got a lovely package filled with books. I already started reading “How to be Idle” nodding my head at every other paragraph, and reading parts of it aloud to my husband.

When I woke up this morning I planned to write about how crappy the last year has been, how bad I feel about my weight gain (I have an ipod application that tells me I have gained 5.4 kilos in the past year.), and how I’m still tired, and meh, and not making any music or writing stories and such. But now that the day has gone a bit further along I feel much better.

So now (I have taught my last student for today in the meantime, these blog posts sometimes stretch out a bit.) I will go to the kitchen, to my dear family, open that champagne bottle and celebrate a bit. For about half an hour until it’s time for my son to go to bed. And then some more after he has fallen asleep.

A short break from parenting

July 23, 2009 by Susanne 4 Comments

My son has been away with the kindergarten for two days now. Most of those who will be starting elementary school in fall went to a hostel in the Alps on Tuesday morning and will return today, Thursday, in the afternoon. It has been a really great time for me and my husband.

I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks now. It’s not that I actually wanted to get rid of my son, it’s just that I imagined an almost three day break from parenting to be quite delightful. And it was.

This time I managed to pack in advance and without stress, I think I’m getting better at this traveling thing. We ended up having to borrow the biggest suitcase my mother-in-law owns for his things. We got a list of things to pack, among them hiking boots, rubber boots, regular shoes, and house slippers. Three times everything and about as many towels as I would pack for the whole family. The list wasn’t unreasonable though, it just took care of possibilities like him getting wet or dirty every day.

When I sent him off on Tuesday I once again was struck by the tendency of modern society to make everything into a huge drama-filled event. Fortunately only one child started crying when entering the bus but there was a lot of forced smiling going on with the mothers. Instead of dropping my son of with his suitcase in tow, like I had imagined, I got to stand around for half an hour. When the bus finally disappeared around the corner I overheard several other mothers talking about how hard it was to let their precious children go away on their own for two nights. And I thought, “Huh?”

Of course it is weird to have him stay away from home without relatives but then I know he’ll have a blast. And while I do miss him I miss him much less than I thought I would. When all the other mothers went away wiping their eyes I put on my ipod and set the music to loud while thinking, “Yeah! I’m free!” There was a swing in my step and it hasn’t really left me since then.

I’m used to not having my son around all the time. He spends his day in kindergarten until 4 in the afternoon, and then he is at his grandmother’s three days a week. And on weekends he frequently sleeps at her place too. So I really didn’t think that I spend much time on caring for my son. Often I only see him shortly before bedtime, and in the mornings for breakfast. So I went on about my day on Tuesday as usual when suddenly after my last student left I realized that, no, I didn’t have to rush off to fetch my son. I could just stay at home, watch the Tour de France on TV and spin. Very relaxing.

In the evening I waited for my husband to finish work before having dinner. We spent a delightful meal talking and eating. Afterwards we did the kitchen and just when I thought, “Oh my, it’s bedtime.” I remembered that it wasn’t that day. Instead we went for a long walk and still had enough of the evening left to watch Torchwood in my case, and obscure bands on youtube in my husband’s. I went to bed at midnight, feeling slightly guilty for staying up late, and then I realized that I didn’t have to get up in the morning. No alarm clock! I just slept in until 8.30, and woke all rested and relaxed.

The next day again there was time for talking with my husband, eating lunch at a leisurely pace, watching a bit of Tour de France and spinning before teaching, and after work, instead of rushing off to fetch my son to put him to bed before having dinner myself I could just play the piano a bit before eating with my husband. (Wednesdays my son stays with his grandmother after kindergarten and I fetch him in time for him to go to bed. In order to get him to bed on time I postpone my own dinner until 8.30 or something. Usually I start getting hungry around 6.)

I got to watch two episodes of Torchwood this time, knitting away, I went to bed at twelve again, and again, I got up in the morning somewhere around 8.30 feeling fresh and well.

I have to say that I’m a bit shocked about the amount of time and energy I have when my son isn’t home. I didn’t know it was that much. I’m also quite shocked at how peaceful I feel without him. Yes, there is someone missing, and I really don’t want him to stay away, only I suddenly find that my life works better without him.

Of course I spent a lot of the past days musing about whether I am a heartless, and unfeeling person. I watched the other mothers when their children left the parking lot. They weren’t looking elated, they were sad. Or maybe they were just putting on an act, driving home in their cars afterwards, closing the doors to their homes, and pulling out the champagne, but I doubt it.

I find that I spend a lot of time thinking about why I don’t feel like people expect me to feel. Like the “they’re growing up so fast”-sentiment. That’s always uttered with a sense of loss. Like Beck did in one of her parenting posts. And I really believe that she – and all the others – are feeling it, and yes, I even can understand the urge to keep my child close, only most of me shrugs her shoulders and says, “So what?” Yes, he’s growing up, yes, he will be going away someday, and you know what? I love it.

I don’t want my son to stay at my side forever because, frankly, he’s got better things to do with his life. And I’ve got better things to do with my life too. Of course I want to stay in his life. It would be very, very sad to have a son who refuses to speak with me when he’s older. I hope that we’ll always love, respect, and cherish each other, and that we will seek each other’s company.

I didn’t quite know if I should write this post. Because in all this you have to keep in mind that if anyone came to take my son away from me I’d probably try to kill him. We’re speaking of my own flesh and blood, about a person I love more than my life. But still, having a break from being a parent feels nice once in a while.

Oh, and the best thing was when about two hours after the children had left I found two calls on my answering machine (we almost never answer the phone). First was a message from a fellow mother saying, “Oh, you’re not home, well since we agreed on calling each other when the children are safely at their destination…” (I didn’t agree on anything, I didn’t know I was supposed to sit next to my phone until someone told me my child had survived a 90 minute road trip.) The next message started with, “Hello, this is Verena from the kindergarten…” and my first thought was, “Oh God, something has happened!” because why would she call me otherwise? Well, she called to say that – the children had evidently survived the trip. Please, I don’t need an hourly update on my child’s status. Really. I’d like to hear from you if something went wrong. When I hear nothing I’ll just assume that he’s alright.

He’s probably having a great time. He’s surrounded by all his friends and teachers he loves, they have been hiking, and playing, and telling stories, and sleeping all in one room in their sleeping bags, and eating delicious food. And as everybody knows, the only thing better than having a nice vacation is coming back to a nice home again. He’ll be back in about three hours. Until then you’ll find me enjoying my time. And then I’ll give my son a great big hug.

How we make jam

July 7, 2009 by Susanne 2 Comments

I didn’t know that there was a different way of making jam until I started reading American blogs and all I heard was “botulism” and “canning equipment”. Oh, and “sterilizing”.

Then the lovely Brenda Dayne talked about her quest for self-made jam on her podcast, and I thought I’d rather post this on my blog than jam up her comment-section. I was sure I already had written a post about how we make jam but all I could find were a few pictures of jam-making in a post about my yoga bag. So, this time I hired my husband as a photographer and set out to document our jam making process. It is, by the way, really easy.

The first step, the one that might be a stumbling block for a newbie, is to collect jars. Every time we buy jam, or mustard, or tomato sauce or anything I put the jar and the lid into the dishwasher, and then it goes into a big cardboard box in the basement. We go through a lot of jars here because my mother-in-law makes jam to sell for charity each year. Otherwise we’d have enough jars to store several years worth of jam. If you’re fancy and wading in money you might go and buy jam jars though I can’t tell you where to find some, I only once heard of somebody who did.

Then you pick the berries. In this case we picked almost two pounds of sour cherries that had been quite decimated and damaged by the rain (but this year there weren’t any worms – hurray!), and about three pounds of Josta-berries, a special kind of berry that’s a cross between black currant and gooseberry, excellent for jam. Here is a picture to prove that I actually ventured out in the garden in person:

And these are all of the Jostas that we picked:

We were lucky enough to make it indoors again before the next rain. Also, I have to add that since my mother-in-law is the champion of jam makers we only picked the remnants. After my son had gone to bed I washed and cleaned the fruit. And I borrowed a machine for pitting the cherries. About two hours later I put the cherries (now mostly without stones) in one pot after weighing them, of course, the berries in the other, measured the canning sugar (that’s the important part, you know that sugar with, um, sugar and pectin), stirred everything and went to bed. (Imagine a picture of sugarcoated berries in post here. It was dark, it was ten in the evening and I didn’t take a picture.) The pots are our usual cooking pots, it’s only helpful when they are big so that the jam only fills about half of the pot. But you can do it in a smaller pot if you are careful. Only it’s harder not to spill boiling jam on your stove.

Note that I didn’t cut or mash the fruit in any way, we like our jam with lots of pieces of fruit. Also, traditionally you’d use only the berries juice for jam but my husband likes to have the whole berries in.

The next time you have a bit of time you go down into the basement and fetch the box of jars and the pots of sugary fruit. Then you wash the jars, you rinse the jars (you don’t want to have detergent in your jam, don’t you?), and then you put them into very hot water. That helps with them not exploding when you put the jam in, they are already very warm.

You also need a clean dish towel or two, a wooden spoon, a timer is helpful, and these things (but not the water kettle):

The wooden thing is what we use to mash food; if we had a real masher we’d use that. You bring the fruit and sugar mixture to a boil. When it starts boiling you mash the fruit (see, that saves time in preparation because you don’t have to sit there cutting fruit into pieces for hours). After mashing you let it boil for about four minutes. Then you set up you glasses in a neat row on a towel. You can wet the towel but since our jars just sat in a sink full of water, and we don’t dry them everything’s wet enough. Make sure that you know which lid belongs to which jar. That is essential. Also it’s good to leave a bit of room between the glasses so you don’t knock them over while filling them. There’s no picture of me actually filling the jam in because that’s the very hot phase of jam making. You don’t want it to cool down too much, and so nobody has time to take a picture. But here’s one of the cherries getting warmer (and blurry):

Ladle the hot jam into the bowl (that’s the bowl I use to whip cream. It’s narrow and has a beak (I hope that’s the right word) the bowl you saw in the picture before last, I mean.). Pour the jam into the glasses with the help of a wooden spoon, making sure that there is fruit as well as juice in every jar, and that the tops stay clean because otherwise they won’t close properly. Make them quite full. Then close the lids firmly, and turn them upside down for about ten minutes. (Not much longer because otherwise the jam will be stuck to the lid forever, and forever, and they will be very hard to open later. Ask me how I know this.)

Make your husband clean all utensils, and the kitchen (I had to go and teach a student, I swear), and there it is:

See, easy peasy.

About what I wrote yesterday

July 2, 2009 by Susanne Leave a Comment

I finally did it, sent away the stuff for the classes I’m going to teach next fall. Thanks for your comments,a and offers for help. When I told my husband about that post he said, “But I offered to help you last weekend, and you didn’t want me too!” (He’s right, I’m stubborn.) He also said that he knew I’d do it at the very last minute, that man knows me well. The thing I couldn’t write about myself turned out to be exactly three sentences long. It would have been much easier for me if it had had to be three pages. I do better with long formats – which you can see on my blog, ahem.

I finally managed to write something by writing a first draft in English. My excuse for being more comfortable with writing in English has always been that I’m more used to it because of the blog and the internet but yesterday as I was scribbling down my draft on a piece of grocery list at midnight I thought again and I think that I take writing in English a bit lighter because it feels like paying with toy money. It feels a bit less real and therefore less threatening.

I told my husband about my feeling that writing in English is a bit less real for me than writing in German (I know it doesn’t feel like that for most of my readers) and he said, “English is your teddy-land!” I don’t know whether you’re familiar with teddy-land, it’s a land that my son invented where all his stuffed animals live. He goes to sleep there because teddy-land is mostly his bed, and my son is emperor of teddy-land.

So, it seems that English is the land where I go to play. I do know that it is a real language and that there are people who speak nothing else but for me it is as if there where teddy-land inside my computer, it’s where all the nice stories and music come from, and they even invented their own language. Plus there are all these nice imaginary people, and there seems to be a lot of knitting and writing in my teddy-land.

Anyways, here is my draft for the short bio:

My name is Susanne. I’m a singing teacher.

I love improvisation which keeps me in the moment, as does mindfulness meditation.

Since I also love to knit I combine the two in mindful knitting.

I told you it was only three sentences. The tricky part was connecting the singing with the knitting, and the meditation.

In German and after several re-writes it turned into:

Mein Name ist Susanne. Ich bin ausgebildete Musikpädagogin und unterrichte seit mehr als zehn Jahren Jazz- und Pop-Gesang.

Mein Interesse gilt dabei besonders dem Bereich der Improvisation, der spontan im Moment entstehenden Musik.

Die Konzentration auf das Jetzt, diesen Moment ist auch das Grundprinzip der Achtsamkeits-Meditation, und dieses Prinzip verbinde ich mit meiner fast lebenslangen Liebe zum Stricken durch “mindful knitting”, Strick-Meditation.

Kreativität hat viele Facetten.

That’s (in toy speak):

My name is Susanne. I am a trained music educator, and have been a singing teacher for jazz and pop for more than ten years.

I’m especially interested in improvisation, spontaneous music made in the moment.

The focus on the now, this moment, is also the guiding principle for mindfulness meditation. I’m combining this principle with my almost life-long love of knitting through “mindful knitting”, knitting meditation.

Creativity has many facets.

See, it turned out to be four sentences in the end.

As for the classes, there will be a lace knitting class (that’s self-explanatory, isn’t it?). I probably will be designing a lace scarf pattern for this, one that starts easy and gets more difficult over the six week class. There will be a class called “knitting as a spiritual way” where we will use knitting as a focus for mindful sitting meditation and we’ll think about how knitting connects people, how it tells stories, and such.

And then there will be the most exciting class for me (never mind that I’m making each of these up as I go along) the circle singing. There will be a one-day workshop where we will be making up songs as we go along. If you want to hear this kind of singing, go to the webe3-site, or go and listen to Bobby McFerrin’s Circlesongs-CD . We’ll stand in a circle, and I’ll make up patterns for the others to sing, then we’ll build patterns upon patterns, and in the end there will be music made by all of us together. If the students are able there even might be a bit of soloing.

So, if you’re living next to M.unich I’d love to see you at these classes. I probably will put up a link to them once they are link-able. The knitting classes will start in October and the circle singing will be November 8th.

Seems that there might be a bit more posting in this place now that the procrastination is out of the way…

Procrastination I sing your song

July 1, 2009 by Susanne 4 Comments

cause I’m living with you all day loooong!

The reason I haven’t been blogging lately (well, one of the reasons but an important one) is that I am procrastinating. I’m procrastinating writing a short bio about three sentences long. It’s due tomorrow. I think. It was like, “And then could you please send us a short bio, a new picture of yourself, and the rest in the next two weeks, please?” And I, of course, always professional said yes, instead of saying, “I’m sorry but I don’t do bios or advertising for myself. I’m physically unable to do so. The last time took me six months and in the end my husband wrote it for me.

If you’re anything like me now would be the point you were heading over to my “About”-page. Well, that’s something I labored on for two hours calming myself with the thought that I can change it anytime. Which I haven’t because my son is now 6 1/2, not 5 anymore. I’d take those lines to introduce myself but they are not appropriate for the job. I will be teaching classes on circle singing, lace knitting, and knitting meditation (don’t ask) in the fall, and I need something along the lines of “Hello, I’m Susanne, and I’m really nice and warm, and also competent and helpful in all things knitting-singing-improvisation-and-mindfulness-related.”

The procrastination, by the way, spread out into the rest of my life. Household, blog, knitting even, spinning, and some other areas I can’t seem to remember at the moment.

The post I did want to write instead of this one will land on the pile of “posts I will write someday when I have time”. (Right now it’s titled “But everyone drives their kids around all afternoon!”.) It would have been a good one but I couldn’t have done it in the ten minutes I have left until my next student arrives.

So, dear internet, can you think of a short bio for me? And tell me why I thought it might be a good idea to start something new again on top of all the other things I do? Oh, and remind me to tell you how I found out that I have ADD…

(And that line in the header is from a song I started to write some years ago. I didn’t finish it of course.)