family

Somehow there’s always such a lot to do

September 25, 2024 by Susanne Leave a Comment

I went to bed half an hour late, did not sleep all that well but my sleep app still said my „readiness for the day“ was great, so – okay.

I wrote my morning pages and then went on reading Miss Phryne Fisher. I actually finished the book later in the day and started the second one right away. (Autocorrect thinks „Phryne“ is not a word and should be „Pharynx“, tsk.)

So no yoga and no meditation. I measured my blood pressure and it was too high. Again. Maybe I should have done yoga and such.

Husband was stressed out and I had high hopes of finding time to do some publishing tasks and finally clean that washing machine. But first my husband started yet another load. Which was sorely needed, there were big piles of dirty laundry in the laundry room.

I did the usual morning things including trying to finish the mystery shawl but there are still oodles of ends to weave in and then it will need blocking.

Since we were out of some rather essential things like vegetarian cold cuts, chocolate and spaghetti (husband didn’t have the time to go grocery shopping over the weekend) I did both a health food store and a supermarket run.

There was lunch:

Meanwhile husband was so stressed that he had to lie down before lunch, then only ate three bites and threw the rest away. There was talk of changing things so that cooking wouldn’t be as stressful. We’re all in favor.

Then I had a short break during which I ate too much chocolate, hung the laundry up and asked the boy to do the dishes. One of our conversation themes during lunch was that the boy is not doing his share of chores and housework. Of course, right now he is in the hot phase before another exam again but there is always something and he is an adult after all.

Then there was all the teaching until 6, I saw that the optician had left a message (I can pick up my new glasses today, yeah!), so I called them back, started writing this post, ate dinner, made a plan to finally clean the detergent drawer and run the machine with a washing machine cleaner, and also descale three faucets while deciding to leave the book cover feedback for today.

Then I met the boy who said, „Oh, I’ll take a shower later.“ And there went all my water-related plans for the evening. My husband showed up and talked about planting less stuff next year and to cook less complicated meals to simplify our lives and minimize conflict which sounds like a very good plan indeed.

I sat around playing solitaire for a bit, read some stuff on Twitter and ate more chocolate while idly talking with the boy on and off until I finally managed to watch another episode of „The Rational Life“ while knitting a second gauge swatch for the Westknits KAL before going to bed.

Today should be a bit less stressful. I hope.

Back from our annual trip to my parents

June 20, 2011 by Susanne Leave a Comment

We spent last week visiting my parents in Northern Germany, and I thought you might like a few impressions from that trip. The weather wasn’t that gorgeous but we only got rained on once or twice. We were unusually active that week, went to the pool twice, borrowed bikes from an aunt of mine, and had a little bike tour on the day before leaving. Of course that was the day it rained but we only got mildly damp so all was well.

So we went to an open air theater and saw a production of Pippi Longstocking:

My mother’s roses on the living room table:

Our son got to play with my cousin’s Lego train set:

And my mother’s garden full of roses (I have a thing for roses but I’ll spare you the other rose bush pictures):

At the place where my parents live (not where I grew up but where my mother grew up), there’s a genuine castle on a hill right at the town center:

Castle entrance:

Inner entrance (whatever it’s called):

The keep (I think):

Courtyard:

Different view:

Where you get your tickets (we didn’t go inside this time):

Castle with sheep (You know I had to take that photo don’t you? And no, I don’t know which kind of sheep this is or where to get the fleeces, sorry.):

Castle from the other side of the hill (I know it looks as if there were a forest but there’s actually a park a bit further down):

And that’s it. I didn’t take the camera with me on the bike ride, I didn’t take any pictures while playing mini-golf (my son’s first time), and I totally forgot to take pictures most of the time.

Now I’ve one week left before resuming regular teaching, and I really hope to pop in here once or twice in the near future.

Vacationing at home

April 21, 2011 by Susanne 1 Comment

After a busy sprint towards Ester break we’re now enjoying a somewhat more leisurely pace, my family and I. Now usually at the start of any kind of break I tend to freeze, and get paralyzed with choices, and plans, and such, and this time I thought I’d learn from past mistakes and make the transition a little smoother.

We also, usually, tend to make big plans for projects of all sorts, and then in the end, spend all our time off work and school at home, each of us in his own room, doing things alone. Which is quite enjoyable but then we do like to spend time with each other as well. Even if we sometimes need a little reminder.

So this time we started Easter break even before it had begun by thinking about what things we’d like to do, and possibly when. And fit those things around the appointments that were already made in advance, like my writer’s meeting next week, and my husband’s rehearsal, and important soccer games that have to be watched on TV, and also out wedding anniversary next week. (I’ll be out that evening, at the writer’s meeting. Yes, it’s alright, I got clearance by my husband, and I plan to go out with him some day next week instead.)

Last Sunday we went on out first bike tour for this year. There was a sheep shearing fest at a local museum farm thing, called Jexhof. There were also quite a few handspinners there, representing the local guild. I have recently become a member but have never been to any meetings. So we unearthed the map with all the bike trails, looked up how to get there, decided we’d go late in favor of eating lunch at home first, packed some cookies, water bottles, sun screen, sweaters, and in my case a spindle and some fiber and set off.

When we told my mother-in-law about our plan she nearly fainted. For some reason she thought the museum was so far away it would take us about two hours to get there. Um, no, only a little more than an hour. That’s what we had guessed when looking at the map, and that’s how long it took.

The weather was fabulous, sunny and not too hot. I found that I get easily out of breath when biking uphill due to my asthma but recover very quickly. It’s still a bit weird to me, all the people we meet see a not-young, over-weight woman riding a bike, and gasping for air at the slightest molehill, and I’m the only one who knows that I’m actually quite fit. But I sure don’t look like it.

When we arrived at the historic farm there was a huge crowd. Everybody had brought the children to see the sheep being shorn. We went in anyways.

My son then went to climb trees and do other important things, while my husband was happy to sit in a quiet corner, away from the crowds, and I went to look for the spinners who were sitting in the other part of the yard where the café and most of the people were.

I actually did know one of them, a regular from the other spinning group I belong to, so I stayed and chatted, and watched sheep being shorn, and answered questions of the people passing by. “Look, that lady does crochet!” (No, she doesn’t it’s called spinning, dear.) that woman I knew before even gave me a big wad of Falkland top, very nice and soft and smooshy, and when I ran out of fiber I gathered my family, and we rode our bikes back home.

Sorry, I didn’t take any pictures at all. I’m a bad tourist. Still, it was a great day, very nice bike ride, and it felt like being on vacation for real.

Hurry, hurry, hurry

March 18, 2011 by Susanne 3 Comments

These days I spent most time with my son nagging him to hurry up already. From the minute I wake him in the morning to the time when I put his lights out in the evening our encounters are a string of, “Faster, you’re late, hurry up already.” This is not pleasant. I have come to resent the way he closes the zipper of his jacket or his shoes. It’s taking so much time.

He really is very slow in dressing and undressing himself, and in getting ready for anything. He – like me – has a problem with transitions. He – like me – also has a problem perceiving time. He doesn’t really feel how much time has passed, or how long things are taking. This is a real problem when he needs to get ready for school in the mornings, when he has to get home after school, and when he has to get ready for all his extra-curricular activities. His teacher even wrote about it on his report card. How much she doesn’t like reminding him every single day to get ready, get dressed and get home. Even the women who volunteer to help the children crossing streets are getting annoyed with him because he’s always the last one, and they stay there waiting and waiting instead of going home.

We have tried a lot of things, counting, setting a timer, not doing anything and sending him to school without breakfast, but what I mostly do is this constant nagging. It’s totally automatic by now, and I guess neither my son nor me listens to it. It’s just an unpleasant background noise. Sometimes I wonder why I keep doing it since my son has turned deaf to it anyway but then I found I keep nagging because at least that’s a way to release some of my frustration. So I nag, nag, nag, and then I get angry, and tap my foot.

The other day, when he was telling us that the volunteer women had threatened to report him to the school we thought about how he could become better at this. His problem is that he is easily distracted, and so when he puts on his shoes and clothes after school, and chats with the other children he won’t do both at the same time. He either chats or gets ready.

All of a sudden I realized that he doesn’t have a way to measure how much time has passed. He doesn’t know if he is going fast or slow, he is just doing one thing after the other when it occurs to him. He lives pretty much in his head so the fact that he is still standing there in slippers while most of the other children have already gone home doesn’t register with him. And it doesn’t help that the friend who walks with him is about equally slow.

So we talked it all through and for the first time ever I asked him about the other children. He said there were quite a few who were as slow as him. And we asked, “And do they live as far away as you? And do they have volunteers waiting for them as well?” Turns out that those boys live just across the street from the school. So I asked him about the children that are getting ready much faster than him. And there is one boy, his best friend who gets ready very fast. So I told my son to watch him, and try to match him. And he did, and at least he is only late coming home from school, not extremely late.

The problem is that apart from us and the volunteers waiting for him, and getting worried because there might have happened something to him, he also has two days when he comes home, has 15 minutes to eat lunch, and has to leave for school again. Now, this was his choice. We told him not to sign up for those things but he really wanted to, and so we sit there, wait for him with lunch ready on the spot, and then tell him to hurry up because he’s late.

Evenings have been getting better, and then I remembered that that was when I told him the exact time when he had to be in pajamas, and then when the lights had to be out. Of course he couldn’t know. My husband and I knew that we wanted him to turn out the lights at 8.30 but nobody had bothered to tell him. The minute we told him he could look at the clock and see how many time he had left. Of course it helps that he can read time now. You can’t really do that with most younger children but with a second-grader you can.

So yesterday evening I sat him down and told him that he has to wake up at 6.45, get out of bed at 7.00, be dressed and ready for breakfast at 7.10, brush his teeth and get ready for school at 7.25, and leave a little later than 7.30.

Well, today it worked like a charm. He did struggle a bit, and then I know it’s quite a tight schedule, but he made it. I sat the clock next to him while he was putting on his clothes, and for once he realized that he does not have time to read or play in the morning. He could sit down for breakfast and instead of me telling him, “You’re late, you’re late, you should be brushing your teeth now.” he was the one glancing at the clock saying, “I only have four more minutes before I have to brush my teeth.”

I know that our schedule in the mornings is a bit too tight but I also know that neither my son nor I are ready to get up earlier than we do because that would mean to going to bed earlier as well. And having more time does not always lead to having less stress. I know that when I have the feeling to have plenty of time for something I often end up doing everything so slow that I have to hurry up in the end anyway.

Of course, now that it worked (once) I’m a bit angry at myself for not realizing this earlier. And I’m a bit afraid that this might be one of those things that work once, and then nevermore. But then I know that when I, as a grown woman, finally realized that catching the 7.05 bus meant leaving the house at 6.55, and that meant brushing my teeth and putting on makeup at 6.45, and that meant having breakfast at 6.15, and that meant getting up at 5.45, and that meant setting my alarm for 5.30 – that felt like a revelation to me. “You mean in order to catch the bus at 7.05 I have to set the alarm more than 1 1/2 hours earlier? Oh, that’s why my timing never worked. No wonder I had to rush and scramble every single morning. Duh.”

Duh indeed. I really hope that I will cease to resent the way my son – slowly and diligently – pulls up the zipper of his jacket. Or fastens and unfastens the velcro on his shoes not once, not twice but at least four times each time he puts them on. And I really hope that I can become more than a nagging device for him.

I know Christmas is over

December 28, 2010 by Susanne 1 Comment

and I’m really enjoying the quiet time we’re having.

I also know that I haven’t written an update on my year of happiness in months, and yes, I will wrap it up eventually. I also didn’t write my yearly “List of books I’ve read” yet, and I don’t know if I will but then you can go to librarything and look up my “books read in 2010″-list.

Christmas was very nice this year, with most of the traditional elements:

the food

the tree (a bigger one this year)

the angels my mother gave us.

I hope you have a quiet time as well.

One week until Christmas

December 17, 2010 by Susanne 4 Comments

So today’s my son’s 8th birthday, and so I stayed up late yesterday to bake and decorate 30 cupcakes to take to school today,

also de-frosted the cake, decorated the breakfast table,

and set all his presents out.

Today I got up extra early, snuggled a bit with said son (my favorite bit of the day so far), we had breakfast all together (for the birthday even my husband got up early). Then bringing the child and the cupcakes to school, all the while feeling guilty because my MIL was out shoveling snow, and then I felt bad again when the teacher asked if I would come and get the tray later. I thought my son would be totally able to carry a tray home from school, especially when it’s empty. (For the tray full of cupcakes, not so much.) Only later did I realize that in today’s culture where walking through the snow is considered cruel punishment most parents would have picked up both the child and the tray. It’s really weird that I have my mom guilt-moments at the exact time when I’m spending all my time and energy doing things for the son instead of me.

Then a bit of drinking tea and chatting with husband, then errands again, now I’m all set with buying presents. Then hanging up of laundry, and running for 30 minutes (indoors!), having lunch with my son and his friend. His friend is about the loudest talking kid I know. When I went to the annex to take a shower my husband said, “Guess what pitch our son’s friend’s talking is.” I said Ab. I was right. (This flummoxes me a little, and makes me proud.)

Then I made them both do homework, then I taught two piano students, then I started writing this and had a piece of birthday cake, then I taught four more students, and then was now.

I haven’t knit or spun any so far. Now I’m waiting for my last student of the day and then it’s beer o’clock.

Tomorrow I will host a Star Wars birthday party. So far I have everything I need for a cake with blue frosting, green colored soda, extra strong paper and elastic for making masks, and a list of game ideas. And origami paper for folding x-wing-fighters. I have the feeling that beer o’clock will come early tomorrow, and that I won’t be doing anything on Sunday.

I have been all bake-y lately, I even made my very first Stollen. Lactose-free and only a trace of fructose:

The end.