Archives for December 2009

Still December, still the crazy, and my son’s birthday

December 21, 2009 by Susanne 6 Comments

I was about to write a post called “things that fell by the wayside in 2009”. But then that was a bit depressing. I also thought I might do a post about the books I read in 2009 but since I already wrote a longish book post not that long ago, well, and 2009 isn’t really over yet.

The things that somehow didn’t happen this year were about all the new good and healthy habits I had incorporated into my life since 2004 or even before that: exercise, healthy and moderate eating, sleeping enough, cleaning, making music, writing, meditation, you name it. On the other hand I’m proud to report that I made music just yesterday, and last week I actually dusted and vacuumed half the house. Ahem. I’m on it, though. I’m slowly picking myself up again, I have started de-cluttering, and if I go on like this, who knows, maybe even my son’s room will be clean before Christmas.

Last week was even a bit more busy than always with my son turning seven on Thursday. Here’s the usual “table with cake and present”-photo,

taken at about seven in the morning without any light to speak of (and yes, that’s a pink unicorn, sorry, but he loves it), and here the “all his other presents” one:

Well, apart from the bike my parents gave him but we only bought that later in the day after school. As you can see my son has a well rounded personality, he loves both pink plastic princess things and manly machine things. I made the doll myself, it’s another Ysolda pattern. My son loves it so much that he insisted on taking the doll with him all day, and her hair is already starting to come apart. Also he says I need to make her a jacket. And a nightgown and underpants. The book on planes is from my sister (and he loves that too), the other book is a collection of poems for children. His new bike was carefully selected to be manly enough for now and the next three years. (And, but don’t tell him yet, he gets loads of very boy-appropriate Lego “Power Miner” things for Christmas.) And because I’m so proud of the doll (I had to embroider the face!) here’s another picture of her. My son named her Gabriele:

I am very, very happy that I could persuade him to skip the usual birthday party with seven friends, and cake, and games. Not only because I find that kind of children’s party exhausting and stressful, no, I distinctly remembered last year when the party was over and he said, “I never want to celebrate my birthday again!” He doesn’t like chaotic and loud any more than I do. Over the year, of course, he forgot all about it and wanted to celebrate at a fast food place, or an indoor playground or some other crappy and commercial place that other children are celebrating there birthdays at. There is even a local furniture store where you can have your child’s party, no kidding. Needless to say that I didn’t want to do anything like that. So I thought a bit. He was dead set on not staying at home (that would have been extremely uncool, obviously), and he’s new in school with only a few, very few friends. So I thought, why not take his best friend to a museum? And that’s what we did. It was splendid. We went to the Deutsches Museum. This museum is really interesting, and they have a special part for children. My son had never been there but his friend had been often, oops. It didn’t matter though, they both loved it and we went and tried things and looked at things and huge sailboats and airplanes and helicopters. We weren’t there for long, only about 1 1/2 hours but that turned out to be perfect. Afterwards I let them choose between cake and burgers, and we had – burgers and fries.

I know, this sounds like it couldn’t have been fun but that’s only the way I’m writing this. As proof I quote my son’s best friend who said on our way back home (exciting train ride) that she wants to celebrate her birthday at that museum too. Ha! The museum does offer real birthday parties as well but, well, that would have required planning ahead. Also more costly than train tickets and fast food. I didn’t really have to pay for the museum because I had bought a 10-block-ticket years ago, and it is still valid.

My son also wanted to celebrate with another friend, one that he knows from kindergarten and never sees these days. He wants to have a pajama party. I dropped an invitation at his place (very late), and still have to hear back. I think this was all too near Christmas so I’ll phone his mother after the holidays to arrange something. That was the deal, two birthday celebrations. But I’m good with that.

So now it’s only two more days until Christmas (we celebrate on the 24th, of course), and I still have to get a tree and a lot of the food. But we decided to make Christmas even more low key than usual, no big fancy cooking either, and so I hope that everything will be nice and quiet. I already go all the presents (yay me!) but I haven’t wrapped anything, and I think I will leave that for Wednesday evening. We’ll have to work until then, quite late in my case unless my students don’t show up as happened today (the three last students canceled and the one before that just didn’t show up). Then on Thursday we’ll get up late, and then put up the tree, and then make some music or knit or something, and then decorate the tree, and then make our special Christmas food that’s supposed to be dinner but I think we’ll just have it for lunch, and then lazily unwrap presents so that my son doesn’t drive us all crazy. You see, in my husband’s family you have to wait for the unwrapping of gifts until after dinner. First dinner, and then the singing of Christmas Carols, and by then the child is totally freaking out. Since I have a very impatient father we used to unwrap the presents at some time in the early afternoon so you could play with your new toys before having dinner. I hope we’ll do it a bit more like this this year. And then he can put together his Lego for hours and hours and the next day and the next, and I will be sitting next to him, help him read the manual and sort the pieces. That’s one of my favorite memories from last year, spending two days building a ultrasonic space ship or something.

As for the next year I have decided to start the new year right now and my goal is to become happy again. That will be interesting. I have already started, and I hope to gather momentum even before New Year’s Eve. What about you, did you have a good year? A bad one? Something in between? Usually it’s something in between, isn’t it?

PUB or Pile of Unread Books

December 8, 2009 by Susanne 4 Comments

A friend of mine has recently started writing a blog about books and cats (in German). I’m always mightily impressed by her list of unread books. Now, don’t get it wrong, it’s not that she’s only reading for pleasure, she also gets send books to review, so in the end she has enough books on her list to justify sorting it. Me, on the other hand, I only read for pleasure so my pile is much lower than hers. Meet exhibit A (Note that German titles are printed the other way around than English ones. I’m finding this annoying. And no, I won’t place the German books face down, no way.):

But then it occurred to me that if my pile of unread books is really that low, why is it that every flat surface of the house is littered with books? And why do I never finish reading anything? And why does it take months for me to finish a book, even one that I borrowed? And why am I running out of bookmarks? Well, meet my PPUB, my Pile of Partially Unread Books:

(After taking this picture I found another one innocently hiding on a shelf. And then, after writing most of this post I found yet another one in a pile of knitting books sitting on the floor plus at least two unread knitting books.) I used to have a shelf dedicated to unread books, and I used to have only one or two books in progress. Now there is this pile on my desk, and the pile in the kitchen, plus the extra shelf in the kitchen. (What, you don’t have a shelf in the kitchen for books that you are currently reading? How odd.)

So, first to the unread books. There is from top to bottom (The links go to librarything, this post took ages to write because my nifty little Amazon helper plugin isn’t working. Otherwise there would have been pictures as well.):

Odd and the Frost Giants – well, it’s by Neil Gaiman that’s reason enough for me to want to read it. It’ll probably get read very soon. It’s also a very short book.
The Lake of Dead Languages – I think that Meno recommended this. Several years ago. It has been sitting around since then and I just didn’t feel like reading it.
Until I Find You – I bought this because I used to eagerly await every new John Irving novel. Then I read the first paragraph and since then haven’t felt compelled to really start it. Especially since a friend told me she didn’t like it.
Buddhism for Mothers of Schoolchildren – Received this two days ago. I have shown restrain and not started reading it, despite wanting to.
Mein Urgroßvater und ich – This is a book I used to love as a teenager. There was some talk about it in the German blogosphere a couple of weeks (or months) ago, and I decided to buy it. It will be great to read with my son but not now. I’d like to reread it on my own, though.
Green Lantern 47 – what to say, I have a subscription to Green Lantern comics. It will take all of 15 minutes to read it but my problem is that I can’t have my comics lying around where my son can see them because he gets scared very easily. (That’s a topic for another post, by the way.) So “Blackest Night” with pictures of people fighting and zombie-like aliens, well, I better keep that in my room which means I never read it because in my room I only read stuff on the computer. I’ll find the fifteen minutes eventually, though.
Respect the Spindle – When I heard that Abby Franquemont wrote a book I absolutely had to have it. This one is likely to be read first. (And it’s a great conversation piece. I have showed three students how one makes yarn on a spindle because the book has been lying around on my desk. That means I showed them how I make it, they didn’t want to learn themselves, but still.)
The Craftsman – it did sound interesting when Jo wrote about it on her blog. It was a birthday present from my parents.

My problem is the pile of books that I started but never finished. The problem is similar to having a lot of UFOs (that’s UnFinished Objects in this case) in knitting. You get all excited and start something new, and you do this so often that you never get around to actually finish anything. As for my knitting UFOs I sat down in October and finished almost all of those things whether I felt like it or not, and now I’m down to very few works in progress and feel much better for it. I have this gnawing feeling that it might be time to try something like this for books. I buy a new book, I get all excited, I start reading it, and then it gets stuck in a pile or two and another, newer book sits on top of it. Part of the problem is that books are so stackable. My pile of partially unread books contains (again from top to bottom, well almost I forgot some the first time):

Off the Page – recommended by Jo again. I love books about writing, and I thought this one would be great. It is so far, I took it with me on a trip in May, read one or two chapters and never got around to it again.
A New Earth – recommended to me by Christine Kane years ago. First my husband read it and since then it has been sitting here because it requires me to actually think while reading. That requires specific reading arrangements.
The Power of Now – I thought I’d start at the beginning, and read this before “A New Earth”. There is a bookmark somewhere in it, I guess.
Anger – I got this for my husband and after reading it he thought it might be a good idea for me to read it too. And it is. But – the thinking again.
Schulz and Peanuts – I read an official Charles Schulz-biography some years ago, and enjoyed it very much. I have been loving the Peanuts ever since my father brought home six volumes of collected Peanuts strips from Canada. I learned English reading these. (My English teachers were quite baffled by my unusual vocabulary.) Oh, and this one was given to me by my sister. I think for Christmas – last year, I hope.
Zum Buddha werden in 5 Wochen – this was a bit of a joke. I expected to read it through in about two days. That has been month ago. Oh, and the title translates as “Become a Buddha in five weeks”
Use of Weapons – a friend brought this because she thought I would like it, and she is right. I’m dragging my feet though because I resent the “look I’m making this suspenseful in a clever way by mixing the timeline all up, and now you can guess what’s when”-strategy of this book. Of course, if I had read this in my usual state before becoming a mother I wouldn’t even have noticed the cleverness because I would have read it fast enough to not be bothered by this. I’d have raced through the book, and at the end all the pieces would have fallen into place. Like I didn’t realize that “Pulp Fiction” isn’t told in chronological order until my husband asked where the two people from the beginning went. (He meant the couple who robbed the diner.) In my head everything had unfolded in perfect and timely order.
Fatal Revenant – I’m having a bit of a problem not only with fiction these days but especially with epic fantasy. I love, love, love Stephen R. Donaldson and especially the Thomas Covenant books but I’ve been reading this for ages because it’s not exactly an easy read, and – well – I have to look up names all the time which is the thing that happens when you go for weeks without reading it and then want to come back, and then I’m not always in the mood for something that moves rather slowly. I’m sure it is me, again, because I read the first six books of this in no time flat.
The Wisdom of Menopause – I bought this for obvious reasons after my last visit to my ob/gyn. I’m actually reading it at the moment, and it’s getting a bit better since I gave myself permission not to read every single word of it. I am allowed to skip parts that don’t interest or concern me.
Lick the Sugar Habit – this was recommended by Mel, and it is an excellent book. Probably. Only it has been hanging around the house for too long already. And somehow I’m not that thrilled to read about all the ways sugar wrecks havoc with my metabolism. And to be frank, the message is: “Sugar is bad, avoid it.” Maybe I won’t finish this one.
The Mindful Way through Depression – I have written about this before. It is an excellent book, and the only reason I’m that keen to finish is that I no longer think that I am depressed. On the other hand mindfulness helps with several things, not the least life as a whole so maybe it’s time to read this already.
Inside Songwriting – I’m always reading books about writing and writers and then sometimes I hope for more books about songwriting. This was recommended by Vikki on her blog. I saw her post about it and immediately bought it. I took it with me to a writer’s group meeting two months ago, felt incredibly inspired and then sat it down on top of a pile on my desk. I keep moving it to the top of that pile because a) it’s a pretty color, and b) it looks better to my students than having Green Lantern comics sitting there.
Batman – Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? – What can I say, it’s by Neil Gaiman. And I did read the beginning but then my usual “comic problem” kicked in, I can’t have this sitting around where my son or my students can see it. So I basically had to stuff it in a drawer. Or at the bottom of the pile of unread books. It’s nice and big …
Head First HTML– I bought that back in the day when I got serious about blogging, I think it was just before going from blogger to wordpress. It’s not exactly light reading material, more of a course. I did quite well doing the homework for a couple of weeks, and now I’m at the part where I should start learning CSS. With a wordpress blog, and being unhappy about the layout hereabouts it would be a very good idea to learn CSS but then – there would be the thinking again.
Handbuch Buddhismus – a book that my husband gave me for my birthday years ago when I started being interested in buddhism, I am not sure if I like it or not, it is very German, a bit dry and academic, and I never can remember anything (that’s not the book’s fault, it’s me I have read numerous books about buddhism by now and all the names and dates and crucial facts keep slipping out of my mind.

Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? In fact there are more partially unread books in my possession but those are the ones that I have made peace with never really finishing. The books you see here are the one that I still think I will get around to read anytime soon. So what to do? I won’t burn the books and I won’t throw them away. They really do interest me. I think I will organize the books, I already cleared the “unread books” shelf (well, part of a shelf) and now it actually holds unread books only. I will keep one fiction and one non-fiction book in the kitchen, and find a nice clear spot on the floor for the rest, I think. Oh, and please remind me not to buy any more books on Buddhism for me.

And then it was December – woosh

December 3, 2009 by Susanne 2 Comments

I just taped my NaNoWriMo winner certificate underneath my other NaNoWriMo winner certificates. I don’t know what it is about these competitions, I can’t stand to not win. The rest of the year I’m sitting on my lazy butt and don’t do anything much. But yeah, I did it – again – I wrote 50,000 words in November. The story is about one third done, and while I like the plot and the characters the language is blah, and since this story wanted to be fantasy I need fancy words, and names, and a fake history for their country and there are a few things that have to be made logical.

nano_09_winner_120x90

Of course my plan was to continue on, and make this mad November-dash into a nice little daily habit but so far it’s been the same thing as the years before, I haven’t written one word after crossing over the finish line.

This year I managed to do this as low stress as possible, I was very good and wrote mostly in the mornings, even if that meant turning on the computer at 6.15 and writing 500 words at breakneck speed until it was time to wake up my son. I never wrote late in the evening, these days I’m just too tired for that.

Life conspired against me, and so I ended up falling behind starting the second week. And I fell behind and behind until at the beginning of the last week I was on the brink of giving up. Then I remembered that that’s always what happens, I start out all smug, ahead of the game and then I feel like I can never do it. And then I decided to finish early even, and I had two days where I wrote like crazy. The second of these days was Saturday and that was the only day in this year’s NaNo that I asked my husband to do everything else so I could write. I wrote 6,000 words that day, and I even went grocery shopping, and took a shower. (Not necessarily in that order.)

I also finished knitting my NaKniSweMo-sweater the day after. Now it is sitting there looking at me because I still need to weave in the ends, wash it, get buttons and sew them on. The sweater is very pretty, I’m only afraid it might not fit because the yarn is rumored to grow bigger with washing. Sadly I can’t show you a picture because I keep forgetting to take one while there is still light outside. My motivation for really finishing it is also quite low because I won’t be wearing it for the next months. While it is wool it doesn’t have a turtleneck, and I know from experience that only turtlenecks make me warm enough in winter not to catch a cold. So, this lovely low neckline will be something for early spring.

I found that knitting a sweater in a month isn’t all that hard for me. Even when I start five days late, and I’m knitting something in a fine gauge, that is to say with sock yarn. The knitting was very pleasant and quite mindless. I find that that’s the way to go at the moment, my head is quite full, mostly with mundane and trivial things, and so I enjoy knitting stockinette around, and around, and around. Quite unusual for me.

As every year I find December quite overwhelming. There’s the present buying, and the present choosing for Christmas as well as my son’s, my mother-in-laws, and my husband’s birthday. There’s the school things to do like helping with the Christmas crafting, making and wrapping a nice little present for my son (that’s not supposed to cost anything, nice touch), and about half a million things I just can’t remember right now. We have already reached the point where we don’t go anywhere anymore, and if you’d happen to invite us anytime until February the answer would be an automatic “no”.

I’m still blessed to be teaching quite a lot, and I mean really a lot. For the first time in years I had to turn down a potential student last week. My timetable is full. On the upside that might mean I might get my new piano a little bit earlier. Last week I suddenly had a revelation about the piano. I thought that if I wait until I have all the money to buy it I will never get it. But I could pay it in installments. That’s totally do-able. And reasonable. Yes, it is. So I’m looking at a bright new shiny piano in my future. Sometime next year, I hope.

And my husband will be giving me this for Christmas. It’s a flyer for my spinning wheel. It’s called a “freedom flyer”; that does sound lovely, doesn’t it? A friend already told me about it, and when the new “spin-off” magazine arrived there was an ad in there, and I made my husband drop everything so I could show it to him. I would have bought it right away myself with part of the money I got for teaching those two knitting workshops but then my glasses broke on Saturday, and so that money will go elsewhere. And he (my husband) said, “Does that mean you want this for Christmas?” And I said, “I don’t know, it is too expensive, and I don’t really need it.” “Do you want it?” “Um, yes.” “Then I’ll give it to you for Christmas. Go on and order it.” And I did.

Oh, and about the glasses? Turns out that I’m getting old. Well, I knew that but not only do I need glasses to help me with my nearsightedness, I need reading glasses as well! For now I’m trying to do without but this will get interesting (and quite expensive) in the future.

On the plus side I’m getting new glasses! And they look pretty! And it will be safe to wear them for driving! And I will be able to watch TV again! Because right now I’m wearing glasses that are way old, and the whole world is fuzzy and looks a bit depressing. I spend most of my time spinning while listening to podcasts…