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That’s how I feel these days. Ms. “I do all the organizing around here single-handed.”. Blah. You know I actually don’t like organizing, tidying and having huge to-do-lists, though one can’t tell when looking at my life. For the past few years I have been trying to trim down Christmas. But that’s been real hard. And with a child in the mix it is even harder. He loves Christmas. Even I like some Christmas traditions.

But I don’t like to have that much to remember and to do. I already have almost all the gifts for Christmas, I don’t do Christmas cards, but still I have to remember dozens of things to bring to the kindergarten’s Christmas party. On Friday at 5. Again I had to ask two students to come in on Thursday so I could go to that kindergarten thing. I thought I was smart when I signed up to bring only juice and water for the buffet. I have to remember to dress my son in a beige t-shirt and beige leggings to go with his tree costume for the Christmas play. We’ll bring the guitars. For this I will have to actually practice Christmas songs because I’m not that good a guitar player. But at least I refused to bring my keyboard. I was very proud of me when I told the other parents that not only I refuse to act in a CHRISTMAS PLAY THAT THE PARENTS ARE DOING FOR THE KIDS, I also told them that I couldn’t attend the rehearsal. Because that’s the time when I will be teaching the students I can’t teach on Friday.

What I’m really pissed about is not the fact that obviously other parents have either far more time (which I doubt) or far more Christmas spirit (for sure), no, what I’m really pissed about is that every single parent that I spoke with didn’t want to act in the play. None. So I was real clever and suggested just singing a few songs and be done with it. Then I didn’t go to the meeting the parents had in the bar and the next thing I hear is, “We’re doing a little something so that the kindergarten’s owner won’t be angry at us.” WHAT? I’m not a kindergardener anymore. So let her get pissed at me. She won’t kick out my son for that. And the very next thing I heard was, “Oh, we thought you could just be the (I don’t even remember what role they had in mind for me) and we’ll be meeting on Thursday at five.” Well, you might, but I won’t.

What I don’t get especially is that both the PTA women organizing this whole thing are single mothers with jobs. – Maybe they don’t need to sleep. Or they are just very bad at saying no. For which I’m quite grateful, because otherwise maybe I would have had to be a member of the PTA. Just when I was about to foolishly volunteer for it the queen of the kindergarten picked another mother by saying “You look like you want to volunteer!” with a big fat fake smile on her face.

But the frelling kindergarten Christmas party is not the only thing on my mind. First I have wisely picked this time of year to start eliminating my energy drains. I have asked De of sober briquette to be my partner in crime and have been working on my anti-procrastination list since last weekend. Then my son happens to have the very convenient birthday of the 17th of December. This year there will be a children’s birthday party in the mix. This will be my first. The past few years we kept it simple. I bought a cake, defrosted it the night before, there were birthday candles, cake breakfast and the unwrapping of presents. Later my MIL would come down, refuse a piece of cake with shouts of “How can you eat something sweet for breakfast! I could never eat cake in the morning!” (Never mind that about 75 percent of the nation eats something sweet for breakfast.) Then comes the ritual “But only one piece! Well, if you insist I’ll have one in the afternoon.” complete with more unwrapping of presents. That was it.

This year there will be five other preschoolers in the mix. I bought paper napkins and some decorations. I will have to bake a cake this time. My son wanted chocolate muffins with m&ms and that’s what he’ll get. Then, on Monday there’s the cake to bake to share with all his kindergarten friends. And then on Tuesday I will have to have the big suitcase packed so that hopefully a nice man can bring it to my parents. Because we’re going by train and this time I’d like to travel without all my son’s Christmas presents on my back.

So this is my timeframe:

• tomorrow we’ll borrow my MIL’s car and got to the big city to try and get the audio mixer repaired on warranty (bought back in February, wish me luck)
• I also will have to look up muffins recipes and to make a grocery list for everything we’ll be needing until our departure in ten days
• the rest of the day I’ll teach (blissful structure)
• on Thursday I’ll teach from morning until evening and in between I’m going to do the big grocery shopping
• also I’ll practice playing that frelling christmas songs on the guitar (Oh, and transpose a couple of them, they are way too high.)
• on Friday I’ll completely panic, think about what to wear for two days and then decide that it’s too much of an effort to change
• then I’ll teach,
• afterwards the frantic struggle to get to the party on time with everything we’ll need
• on Friday evening collapse with drink after putting over-excited child to bed while screaming (child, me or both – we’ll see)
• on Saturday start panicking wildly and bake cakes
• decorate house at midnight
• on Sunday have usual birthday celebrations
• then totally freak out
• have lunch with overexcited son
• between 2 and 5.30 have five other over-excited preschoolers in the house (I think time will be passing quite fast at this point. Just getting all of them to wash their hands and got to the toilet before having cake and juice might take up to 20 minutes. Of course I’ll see to it that they got to the toilet first and wash their hands afterwards – with soap.)
• after cleanup and putting now really over-excited kid to bed I’ll
• decorate yet another set of chocolate muffins
• on Monday morning find a way to transport said muffins to kindergarten (again juice and water, maybe I’ll take the bike trailer)
• then go home and try to find clean clothes to pack
• pack
• panic
• teach students
• on Tuesday: spend whole day waiting for the guy who’s supposed to fetch my suitcase
• Wednesday: don’t forget to bring 2 € to kindergarten for puppet play the children are watching that day
• Thursday: start packing for Christmas travel
• Friday: teach endlessly
• Saturday: get up at dawn, pack rest of things, catch train (This includes the traditional fight between my husband and me on our way to the train station. A nice tradition we shouldn’t miss.)
• Then sit down in train. Change trains at big city, relax, eat lunch on train, change trains again, and again (special holiday connection)
• arrive at parent’s home
• mixture of mild panic and boredom until we return a week later(which reminds me to put my groceries for our traditional New Year’s eve meal on my grocery list for this week)
• begin New Year,
• make a vow never to stress that much during Christmas season again.

Repeat again next year.

But you know what I’m grateful for? That this year I’m not the one who has to organize the actual Christmas stuff. No tree, no decorating, no grocery shopping, no wrapping of Christmas presents, no cooking – nothing. Because for the first time in years we won’t be spending Christmas at home. That might be a good thing. And even though my son thought different, we won’t even have to pack the Christmas tree.

Technorati Tags: time-management, to-do-list

Well, sort of. I have a huge to-do-list sitting on top of my desk, I’m a little hungry and there are a million things I “should” be doing right now, but I have been called by my friend De and of course I have to show up.

What wedding do you ask? Well, it’s about making a commitment to change the world. Which I already have done. So I don’t think, my husband will mind my polygamy in this case. Since we’re both already married to each other and the music, well, I wouldn’t mind if he was about to do this either.

The wedding gift should be a post about whichever social cause we feel passionate about. You know that I never write about things social or political. That doesn’t mean that I’m not passionate about them. And gay marriage is not even in the picture anymore, since it finally is legal in Germany. (And I was wrong about gay marriage not being possible in Bavaria. It is. And the couple in question is now expecting a child. I’m so excited!)

The social causes that I believe in are quite abstract. I believe that every person should be able to have choices. That every human being should be fed and sheltered and loved. That we all should strive to become more spiritual and kind. That the only way to change the world is to change me and become a better person. I believe in non-violence. I’m a feminist.

What really hit home with me was the Margaret Mead quote. Jen wrote:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Yeah. Among other things I have studied cultural anthropology, and that gave me the hope that social systems are not just set, they are created by people through mutual agreement. This means that people have the power to change them. As a German it has been very important to me to believe that people can make a difference. You know, I come from a long line of people who didn’t stand up for anything. The people who maybe didn’t agree with the Nazis but they didn’t do anything against it either. I can understand their fear, and I don’t know if I would stand up or not. I even hope that I never have to find out, but I pray for the courage not to shut up and look away. The most courageous things my one grandfather did was not joining the NSDAP. That was a courageous thing to do. Just imaging. He was a communist, but he never talked about it. My other grandfather was a baker and he gave bread to people who didn’t have the coupons for it. Nobody left the country, nobody was thrown in prison, they all just ducked and hoped it would be over soon. And it is. Fortunately.

But I feel that this is one of my biggest obligations towards the world. As a German I have to see to it that something like that can never happen again. I belong to a nation that caused World War II. Teenagers today don’t think about that at all. I don’t think they know much about the time of their great-grandparents. Or the war. And I’m glad that they don’t. I really am relieved that I can travel abroad and don’t have to meet people telling me they hate Germans in general, because they fought my grandparents. But I think it is important not to forget. To speak up.

Wow, who would have thought. I don’t know if this is a social course but peace is a very precious thing and worth living for.

So count me in at the wedding, as I said. We’ll drink champagne, we’ll dance and sing and change the world for the better.

When I still looked forward towards NaNoWriMo I wrote a couple of posts in advance. this one didn’t quite satisfy me. But now I know why I like Buffy. The German blogger USA erklärt (that’s explaining the USA) writes:

Dieses Blog geht von seiner Natur her selten auf andere Blogs ein, aber manchmal passieren dort schockierende Dinge, die man einfach nicht ignorieren kann. Dazu zählt das erschütternde Geständnis von Anke Gröner in der vergangenen Woche, dass sie noch nicht Buffy the Vampire Slayer gesehen hat, bekanntlich die intelligenteste TV-Serie in der Geschichte des Mediums. Ja, die Anke Gröner.

Well there is a renowned German blogger who wrote that she still hadn’t seen Buffy. And the author of “USA erklärt” posted something about an episode of Buffy. And he wrote that Buffy is “the most intelligent TV series in the history of this medium. There you are. I often wonder why I bother with thinking myself. For everybody who remains interested here’s my try:

I promised to post as soon as I could say why I like “Buffy – the Vampire Slayer” so much. that’s not the only TV series that I like; there even has been a time when I was addicted to sitcoms, especially “Roseanne”. I love Star Trek. I love it so much that I even watched “Voyager” and the not so inspired episodes of the new “Enterprise”-series. But when it came to Buffy I was really irritated. My husband then helped me getting it. He came into the living room while I was watching Buffy (one of the better scenes with Buffy, her mother and Spike). I told him what I was thinking about and he said:

“Maybe you like Buffy so much, because it’s just good.”

So I could just stop here. I don’t want to convince the whole world. But I was really irritating that I like a show that’s geared towards teenagers. (When my husband first met me he said I had the same taste in movies as a 14-year-old boy. Since then we have found that my taste is a little broader than that. (And he converted to Star Trek.)) So, after seeing the first three seasons of Buffy in non-chronological order I can say this:

• Even if most stories are about high school they don’t stay there.
• The show became more complex and interesting the longer it ran.
• There are stories longer than an episode.
• There’s great love of detail.
• Characters are multidimensional.
• Everything is possible. (Imagine finding a way to make plausible how the main character can die twice and come back again without losing me.)
• Everything has a twist. Love scenes turn funny, horror scenes turn funny, there even is a musical episode without getting ridiculous. (And yes, there are love scenes turning horrific too. And it’s seldom un-funny. But always suspenseful.)
• There are a lot of puns.
• There is a lot of symbolism but the stories function anyway.

Now you know why I never could do this type of thing in school. There is a lot of details but nothing really conclusive. So I come back to my first argument:

I’ve seen the show for four and a half times and I still can’t wait to see the next episode.

And I’ll have to wait for that a little since I have a date with my husband who likes his movies a little more artsy, we’re going to watch the second half of “Down by Law”. That’s how far you come when you have children (and when you’re sensible): You have to watch a movie in two installments. (And sometimes it just takes three days to translate your blog-post from German to English. Sorry.)

Technorati Tags: Buffy, thinking, TV, vampires

I did it, my NaNoWriMo-novel is finished! Today I took my laptop to the library, so there’d be no distraction. Well, though I almost froze to death there (okay, maybe only a little) I managed to write almost 3,000 words. And this is what I got – insert drum roll –

I’m so glad, I’m finished. I even wrapped up the story, though there are discussions about what to eat in there that take up more words than the end, but who cares, I never said it was going to be a good novel. The earth was rescued from doom, one of the policemen fell in love with an alien that had been kept in the cellar of the police building, one very big and green alien combusted, leaving only a little (or not so little come to think of it) heap of ashes so the world could be saved. (Don’t worry, it’s soul is still living in the core of the earth and feels quite well.) So I actually wrote a novel in which no one was hurt.

Not even me. Am I glad, it’s over. And when it’s over it has been fun. I always knew this would be like hiking in the mountains. You know, I’m the one complaining every step of the way, stopping every other step to take a sip of water, driving my poor husband crazy. Then you are on top of the mountain with that mountain view. You’re exhausted, you’re hungry, and sandwiches never taste as good as up there (or beer, we are that kind of people that carry beer in actual bottles up there). But a tiny bit of me knows that I have to go all the way down again and that part stays grumpy the whole time. And then, when I’m back down, sweaty and exhausted and happy, I always say, “Why don’t we do this more often?”

So I raise my glass of prosecco – unfortunately we’re out of champagne – to all the NaNos still struggling to reach the finish line and to…

…next year’s NaNoWriMo.

Technorati Tags: NaNoWriMo

I’m racing to reach the finish line. Currently I’m at 45,000 words. So I might be able to finish on Tuesday or Wednesday. Being so near to the end feels very good. (I guess that finishing will feel even better.) After so many words it seems that finally there is some action in my novel. In order to have something exciting happen I introduced a classic sci-fi concept: Something is threatening to destroy the earth and my little group of people will have to save it. It’s my novel, I can write what I want.

On Saturday I even had a write-in with one of my writing buddies. She lives only a couple of streets away. When I opened the door to her I saw that we actually had met before! (There are no cafés here, so we decided to meet at my place.) We had met at a workshop on, um, sword-fighting. (Sorry, the site I’m linking to is in German, but there is no such thing in the English-speaking world. Basically it is the blending of Middle Age sword-fighting with martial arts.) See, that’s something about me that you didn’t know. And I’m not doing it anymore, because some things have to go. Even in my life.

It is always so nice to meet other people doing NaNoWriMo. People who are doing crazy things for fun too.

There is a local group of NaNos whom I met the week before last. They are doing quite well, two of them even finished their novels. We’ll be having a dinner to celebrate on Friday.

(Wow. A short blog entry. Who would have thought I could do this…)

Technorati Tags: NaNoWriMo

I went to a blog reading on Sunday. To this blog reading to be exact. As part of the audience, in case you wondered. And my husband even let me drag him along. I was a little nervous though because the reading’s theme was “Weibergschichtn” that means “women’s stories” only “Weib” is quite archaic and not PC. (And for those of you who know German “Gschichtn” should be “Geschichten” in high German.) (And my dictionary tells me “Weiber” equals vixens, but I remain doubtful.)

So you ask, “What the frell is a blog reading?” It has nothing to do with crystal balls or so, but everything with, well, reading part of your blog in front of an audience. It seems that only Germans do this. Because – as Kaltmamsell put it – German bloggers are literally ambitious. (Oops. German mistake. They are ambitious to write literature.)

So we went there, both of us, our son in the able hands of my MIL. The reading was at a very reasonable time – 6 p.m. Marvelous for people who are used to have dinner at 6.30 and go to bed at eleven or so. And it was held at a hamburger place. So we even could have dinner there. Since this wasn’t the first blog reading I have attended (but I never got around to post something on the first one) I went prepared. I brought my camera with me, and dressed properly. What, you think that there is no dress code at a blog reading? You are so wrong. Though, to be fair, I don’t think that anybody else is aware of this. You know, these are the times when I realize that I’m living in a kind of suburbia. To the last reading I went in all the glory of my new red and orange frilly and flowered blouse, topped with a lacy, self-knitted silk-cardigan, jeans and my new boots. Wow, did I look out of place! I know that there are people who think that wearing something orange and red would make you look out of place anywhere, specially when frilly and flowery, but trust me, I looked fantabulous. But everyone else wore black. Or grey, or beige (which isn’t even a color). There might even have been someone daring a pale blue turtleneck. Well, I don’t live in the big city anymore, and I don’t belong to the intelligentsia. (The dress code is the one that I have dubbed “I had German major in college.” Well, or architecture. Mostly black, sometimes brown, conservative with a twist and glasses.” I can only counter that with my suburban housewife sportswear look or, sometimes with my “I am a singer in flowing gowns”-look.)

This time I was prepared and so I had donned an olive green jacket to camouflage my red tee. I still wore my new boots and jeans and my red beloved winter coat, because it’s by noa noa and therefore stylish, even if it’s red. I was prepared, I hadn’t come alone because at the first reading I attended I felt a little lonely. The other people had come in twos and threes. They didn’t talk to strangers, apparently. I felt as weird as the two goths sitting at my table. This time on our way to the reading I told my husband, “I’ll be nervous the whole time, and I’ll want to say hello to everybody, and then I will be too shy and very sad and go home.” And so I did. I even had commented on their blogs the days before and told the world I’d be there.

Would you do it? Go to one of the A-bloggers of your country, shake her hand and say, “Hello, I adore your blog. BTW I commented yesterday and I have a blog too.” And then she’d probably look at me and say, “Um. What? Susanne. Um. Hello.” and if I were lucky she’d think to herself, “Oh. The mommyblogger with the diapers. How pathetic.” And maybe she wouldn’t, but now I’ll never know, because I just sat there (in the back! my husband doesn’t like to be up front) and I snapped a couple of photos. (I’ll have to ask permission to put them up though, since all of them are blogging pseudonymously. Something else that almost all German bloggers do, but I don’t. And Martina Kink)

And now I’m doing something wrong – again – in blogging about the blog reading. As isarblogger put it, posts about blog readings are boring, because everybody only writes that everybody else was really “great” and “charming”. Which they were. All four bloggers reading were great, charming, good looking and well dressed. (Black mostly, but there was red dress (shocking!) and a black and white skirt.) They read well, even Miss M. who hadn’t done this before and was a little lacking in the department of microphone technique. (A little tip: with that kind of microphone it is okay to back off a little. This has the additional advantage of you being able to stand up straight.) There were a lot of people in the audience who obviously enjoyed themselves. Oh, the bloggers (now you know why this entry is called “me and the blog reading”): There were Frau Klugscheisser, Kaltmamsell, Martina Kink, and Miss M. Of course I knew almost all of what they were reading, since I have been following the blogs of three of them for quite some time. Miss M. will be a refreshing addition to my list of feeds. (Not that I really need more feeds to read. Currently I’m at 131.)

Blog readings are a little strange. There are only a few texts that stand up to be read aloud in front of people. Especially when they are written to be read in passing. Blogs are more like newspapers than like books. You can make a book out of a blog, but then you’ll have to change things. Or not. There are German blogs out there that read more like a series of short stories like Merlix. All of this got me thinking. I know, I’m doing it again. I should rename my blog “I am mother, hear me think.” Firstly, I am a little jealous. All my ambiguity towards blog readings doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t say yes immediately if somebody asked me to participate. I’d whip out my bra-story in nothing flat. And they all have about a hundred times the readers I have, or more. Nowadays I even feel self-conscious when commenting, because every comment on Kaltmamsell’s blog brings in several dozen people. They never stay though. I think one look at my masthead is enough to scare them off.

So, at the reading I thought about the differences between German and American bloggers (or Canadian maybe). I feel much more like a part of the American blogosphere. I think that it is because of blogher and crazyhipblogmamas and mommybloggers of course. There is no mommyblogger-movement in Germany that I know of. And there is a difference in the way that I am commenting. The German blogs I love – like the ones from the reading – are all a little dry and sarcastic. And when you comment on those blogs you feel that you have to be clever and write something intelligent and funny in a dry and ironic way. When I’m commenting on American blogs I’m all “hugs”, “That’s great!”, and “sniff”. I like both, but I’d rather have some more warmth in the German blogosphere. And no, I’m certainly not the best person to start something like blogher German or German mommybloggers.

I really hope to attend more blog readings in the future, though. It is nice to actually see the people one is reading every day. Even if one is too shy to say hello. (And now I’m probably off for some “link fishing”, since I plan to tell them that I wrote about their reading. After I have translated this to German.)

(And do you know, how long it took me to write this? Two hours. And, yes, I know it’s too long.sorry. But those are the two hours that I didn’t have for my NaNo-novel today. (And do you know how long it’ll take to translate this? Um, no, probably about one hour, since I can leave most of the links as they are. And I don’t have to look up German words.))

Technorati Tags: blog reading, blogging, bogher, mommyblogger