Hi, I'm Stupid

So DrBob's 40th birthday is next weekend, major big deal and all, and do you think I can come up with any decent ideas for a present? Can I bollocks. The gypsy knife-sharpeners ruined our bread knife a few months ago, and replacing it was a good idea. DrBob said he might buy a new one and I said "NO! You may NOT buy a bread knife!" I wasn't even quick enough to use the usual standby of "erm, we've...uh, done f-fine with this uh, crappy one for awhile, might as well save our money, eh?" Which is our long-established Secret Code for "no, that's what I'm getting you for [insert upcoming gift-occasion here]." Urk.

So yeah, I bought a bread knife intended for his birthday, last Thursday. The VERY NEXT DAY was San José Day, the anniversary of the day we met, and he had a gift for me. And I had...a gift for him! Yes! A lovely bread-knife! Wasn't I thoughtful? Okay, back to the drawing board on the birthday thing.

Chapter two, part of his San José Day gift to me was an Arctic Monkeys CD. We like them, they're good. Not much later I found out they're going to play here in May. Did I scamper off to the internets and secretly buy a couple tickets to give him on his birthday, to indicate that he is still all rock-n-roll, even at 40? Did I bollocks. No, I immediately IM-ed him to say hey, this concert, cool, should we go? He says he can't decide, he's so busy, I should decide for both of us, and that is when I think hey wait - I need to come up with a birthday present whippety-quick, he gives me concert tickets for gift-occasions all the time... wait ... it's coming to me ... a thought ... hang on ... two ... plus ... two ... hang on, I've almost got it...

But of course, I've already told him.

SIGH. Can I get a DUH?

more opinions about me

Mama? I love you, but you're just a little bit evil.

-the Sniglet

more opinions about dinner

He: Mama, what for dinner?
Me: Chicken noodle soup! Homemade!
He: Aww, why you hafta everytime make things I don't like?
Me: No, this is great! If you're sick, it'll make you better, it's like medicine!
He: Mama. I ate this soup one time and then I got a liiiiiiittle bit sicker.

Ignatz redeemed...this time

Oh, right! I should have mentioned this sooner. Remember the Lost Wallet, With Housekey Attached? Well, um. It has been found, in a place I was sure I'd looked, but not thoroughly enough. In DrBob's drawer.

We have a...a thing-with-drawers (in German it's called a Kommode, *snork*) in the front hallway, with one drawer for each family member. For hats, scarves, mittens, that sort of thing. I did a cursory sweep through all of them, but failed to spot the black wallet in among DrBob's all-black accessory collection, because I didn't really expect it to be there, because everyone in the house knows which drawer is theirs. With one exception.

Yes, things do wind up in the wrong drawers, occasionally, but only - ONLY - on DrBob's watch. For instance, if the Sniglet's hat finds its way into my drawer, it happens on the day DrBob picked him up from kindergarten. We also have a shoe-shelf, and we all put things on it when we first come in, just to get our hands free for shucking jackets etc. We're all supposed to clean our stuff off the shoe-shelf right away, but we don't always. So Ignatz remembered leaving his wallet on the shoe-shelf, but didn't know what happened to it after that. I did posit that it might have gotten swept up in one of DrBob's cleaning jags, but DrBob, angry about the lost wallet, did not appreciate being accused, and hotly denied it.

However. Everybody knows which drawer is whose. Nobody ever puts anything in DrBob's drawer, except for DrBob. When he gets on his cleaning jags, he just wants every loose item out of sight - he does not, um, agree with my filing system, so he just throws everything in the nearest handy out-of-sight place. Frankly, all the evidence points to him this time. Of course he will never, ever admit that he might have been responsible for this, which means he won't apologize, which is unfortunate.

Do not let this lull you into thinking Ignatz doesn't have a problem with disorganization. He does. He never did find his pencil-case, though he managed to replace it with this funny Japanese thing my SIL sent one Christmas when, she told me, she was absolutely without inspiration and just threw some stuff in a box (1: thanks, Shel, those presents turned out to be really useful. 2: here we have reason to be glad Ignatz the Pack Rat never ever throws anything away). He never did find those other two house keys he lost, either, or any number of hats and gloves.

So yes, he is disorganized. But the point I wanted to make is that, while I do believe Ignatz has ADHD, and therefore has challenges to overcome that other kids don't, I also want you to notice that he lives in an environment that exacerbates his problems. Largely due to me, because I have organization problems myself, and I don't want you to think I'm ducking my responsibility here. But incidents like this one really, really don't help. Because if all the evidence points to DrBob, and he authoritatively denies his role in the latest crisis, then either Ignatz's self-esteem will have to take a hit, or else his respect for his father. Neither way is good.

This time Ignatz gave his dad a big hug and a thank you for finding his missing wallet. Nice that he remembered to say thank you, since that's a chronic problem. But I think that means he's shouldering all the blame for this mistake. Again.

Elemmaciltur said...

Go knit and find yourself some peace!

Arrgh. I re-designed the sweater for Ignatz and it's much too small, since he decided to resume that whole growing-thing we thought he'd given up on. So now it's a sweater for the Sniglet. I made the neck too tight and had to frog it - after I cut the yarn, so I'll have to make a bigger neck with not-enough yarn, so more ends to tuck in, which is the single most hateful thing about knitting. See, even knitting can be stressful when I Get Like This.

Don't worry though, I go through these phases. At some point it'll all just go away and everything will be fine.

Also, DrBob is sick and increasingly grouchy. And the yard is full of (frozen, thawed, and now re-frozen) cat poop from the neighbor's cat. And the house needs reorganizing, which means another trip to Ikea, but not until I get everything cleared out and...well, reorganized.

Hm. So all in all, I guess I'm glad that I never got an answer on my job application. Even though it looked like a pretty cool job. I really don't have time for that right now. Of course, not getting a regular job means I should be picking up more freelance work here and there, which will leave me less time to find a regular job.

So now I'm watching the Finns slaughter the Russians (ice hockey - a rerun, no less) and while it doesn't help me get my work done, a bit of vicarious violence is doing wonders for my mood.

battling overwhelm

DrBob had an article that needed proofreading, I got that done yesterday. 24 pages on self-fashioning via the Spanish colonial bureaucracy, urgh. He speaks um, somewhat disparagingly of historians these days, but I keep wishing he still was one. Then I might understand, oh, 10% of what I'm called on to proofread. Oh well, at least he's not a linguist. Speaking of which, I've got a linguist who wants some proofreading done. I'm still thinking about it.

And DrBob's just gone back to a website we translated awhile back and he found a few mistakes. So now he wants to go back over the whole thing, consisting of approximately one skillion jillion pages, which needs me. Um, isn't he supposed to be working on that book which must be done by July or "It's All Over" (whateverthehell "it" is)? Hellew, focus? Plus I've been here so long, doing this one specific thing - proofreading English texts written by Germans - I can't tell anymore what sounds like good English and what is bad English that I've just gotten used to.

My brother sent me some inheritance-related paperwork ages ago that I still haven't read. Apparently I have to deal with the IRS this year, because I had taxable income. Yay.

It's snowing again. I've had this cold for weeks, and am now being attacked by several months' worth of PMS, for no reason that I can think of.

Oh, I took Ignatz to Munich last Thursday! Exhausting, but productive. He went and started growing again, bizarrely - I think he was a size 128 for about three years - so he suddenly needed a buncha new shirts, right on the heels of my deciding that I'm not going to buy quick-disintegrating catalog crap anymore, which means going to an actual store. Of which - dig this - there aren't any in this town! Wah! Not one kids' clothing store, unless you count the used-stuff store, which apparently chooses their open hours via the dartboard method every day. Besides, as my readers with sons already know, between age 6 and 13 or so they totally trash their clothes, so nothing survives to be resold, and the used-stuff stores only have girl clothes in these sizes. So anyway. Due to a very annoying local tradition called Mad Thursday, Dorfener kids - and no other kids, anywhere in Germany - had the day off school. Woot! So that's done. Oh right, and we saw a movie too. Um, Zathura. A science fiction story about why you have to be nice to your little brother.

Training the intern at work has been um, wearing. She's nice, and she's smart, if a bit nervous, and she's not making any serious mistakes. But the job is so complicated that the only way to teach it is to have her do it while I watch over her shoulder and explain each new situation as it arises. Which, it turns out, is basically a recipe for a splitting headache that is now going into day 3 (yes I have taken something for it, lots of something. In fact, hot stock tip here: Advil).

Mrs Next Door wants to give up her English conversation class and asks if I would like to take over. Four students, one hour a week, €20 per class, so I would have to teach...er, about 35 classes, I think, to make up what I paid for the TESL course which I have never yet used. I should do it just for that, so the course will not have been a total waste. At the moment, though, I don't feel like it would be wise to take on yet another thing. If I got a pet rock, it would probably die of neglect in a day or two. I have a few days to decide whether I want to teach the class, and should probably not make the decision in my current, crappy mood.

I have lots of other things to be crabby about too, but this has gotten long enough. Even I find me tedious at this point.

is it just me...

Nearly every girl figure-skater has included this move in at least one of her routines this Olympics. Excuse me, why are they all doing this? Is it graceful? Is it attractive? No! Every one of them looks like a dog at a fire hydrant.

almost....

alala --

[noun]:

A level headed person who always makes the wrong decision



'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Sorry for the long silence, I'm feeling like a flaming poisonbitch and didn't want to share the hate. No reason, probably just hormones.

a small problem with watching hockey on TV

I'm not really a TV person, though I don't pretend this is any kind of virtue, which I think differentiates me from most non-TV people. It's mostly circumstantial in my case: most of the good TV is on in the evening when I don't have time to watch it, and I'm much too disorganized to remember things like what day it is, so I never manage to see the same show twice.

And while I don't think I'm better than people who do watch TV, I do try to limit the kids' access somewhat, just because I strongly suspect that if I didn't impose limits, they'd never do anything else. So those are, more or less, the reasons why we have such a tiny television: TV doesn't feature largely in our lives, and we don't want the kids to get too fixated on it. Plus, there are few attractive yet affordable televisions, and the one we thought was cute happened to be also very small. And mostly I don't mind having a small TV, except for two weeks every four years, when Olympic ice hockey happens and I can't see the puck.

Dangit.

You are from Seattle...met Dr. Bob and moved to Germany?

Yeah, ~d and Linda both asked about that. Right, some people don't know that story. I get to tell it a lot, and I never know which parts to include. I don't want to leave out any important or interesting details, but I don't want it to be all long and boring either.

I'm not really from Seattle itself, but from its catchment area. You know, every small town has teenagers who can't wait to graduate and move to "the city". Well, Seattle is our "the city". And unless you're actually from Seattle or thereabouts (or, oddly enough, Japan) you probably won't have heard of my hometown.

So anyway, um. Uh, 1993 was a really bad year for me, and I uh, went a little crazy. Lost a couple jobs, wrecked a romantic relationship, did some scary risky stuff, traveled a lot, and basically acted like a person who had nothing to lose. Which I wasn't, so that was really stupid. And part of that was that I just sort of... up and... went to South America. For no particular reason, with not a lot of money and no specific plan, just this weird restlessness. I went with Cindy, a woman I barely knew, and when we landed in Quito with our Lonely Planet Ecuador guide, another tourist (Nigel) noticed he had the same book as us, and asked if we wanted to share a cab into the city. We snagged another tourist (that was before the Ph.Ds (yes, two of them), but he eventually became Dr.Bob) in the airport, and a third (Anders) attached himself to our group as we were leaving the airport.

And the five of us were all there for different reasons, with different destinations, but we kind of separated and recongregated in various constellations over the next month. This is where I can easily bog down in extraneous detail, because some of the story is really cute. But that is the gist of how Dr.Bob and I met. The story comes up often because I am a Foreign Wife, so people are always asking me "So, did you meet your husband in the States, or here?" To which I reply "um, neither!" And then the whole sordid story comes out.

Incidentally, we lost track of Cindy and Anders, but we're still in touch with Nigel. He's visiting us this weekend, in fact.

So that's how we met. How we wound up here is an even longer story, pieces of which will find their way here, over time.

Does he know he's disorganized?

Someone - Vicki? I can't find the comment now - asked this one. I asked him. He said yes, he knows, so I asked if he knows because we keep telling him, or does he know it for himself. A little of both, he said. I think he realizes he's disorganized, but figures it's just a basic feature, like being thin and blond, not a choice. Not something he can or should work to overcome. He used to shrug and offer "I'm just lazy" as an excuse for not cleaning up after himself. Heh. No, I didn't let him get away with that one. So he stopped trying to use it as an excuse, but he didn't stop being lazy.

So there are two possible explanations for what is going on here, in my extremely unprofessional, huge vested-interest, totally subjective Mama view. One: he genuinely does not give a rat-butt about losing his stuff, flunking out of school, living off his parents forever (SO not gonna happen), and basically being a failure by current social standards. Or two: his self-esteem is so battered by the constant criticism from parents and school authorities that he's retreated into a kind of learned helplessness, where it doesn't even occur to him that he can do anything to change his situation. The therapy is supposed to help with that. I don't pry too much on that, usually just ask how it went. I should probably set up an appointment to talk with his therapist soon.

One problem with Ignatz is that he really takes the criticism on board, but not the praise. I know that one all too well: my dad was very, very critical sometimes, but also sometimes nice. My mom was nothing but supportive. Guess which stuff I internalized. So I understand where he's coming from on this, but it makes it very hard to do any kind of balanced discipline. We do praise as well as criticize, but he doesn't hear or remember the praise.

Oh, and? Another coup in his project to supply everyone in town with a key to our house. Yes, he lost his house key again. Third time. And this time his wallet was attached to it, with his insurance card in it. I thought, if I attached the key to a chain wallet, and he could actually fasten it to his clothes, that it would be harder to lose. It's things like this that make me really paranoid. To lose something that's big, and chained to you? That really takes effort. Not to mention that he didn't even let us find out about it for nearly a week.

Yet again: argh.

It's raining

I read somewhere recently that the People Responsible For This Stuff (the city and state officials whose job it is to keep count of things like snowplows and sandbags) are exceedingly worried about the floods they expect this spring when all the snow that has been accumulating over the last four months melts. I read elsewhere that the weatherdudes were predicting a solid week of rain. Looks like it started today, so we could see those floods pretty soon. Dorfen will be safe, due to a very nifty system of canals that will channel the excess water to an artificial pond - the system was designed by Mr Next Door's grandfather, actually. But I remember the terrible floods that happened in late summer 2003, and I'm concerned about conditions elsewhere.

Also: I ordered the cowboy rainboots sent by slow/cheap mail, since I was certain I had at least four weeks before it warmed up enough to rain. So not only are we looking at a potential environmental and humanitarian disaster, but I find myself without suitable attire for the occasion. Oh, no!

Are we ever going back to the States?

That'd probably be my number-one FAQ, actually, and it's really a hard one to answer. Put as simply as I can, we have to go where the jobs are, so if someone offers Dr.Bob a job in the States, we'll have to move. If he finds work here, we stay here. The American academic community is much, much better than the German - even now, with those morons trying to shut down liberal professors, and federal funding headed down the toilet, it's still better than the monument to ass-kissing that is German academia - so it would be good for him to be there. But Germany is a lot more family-friendly. Speaking of families, we have lots of relatives here. I have family in the States, but none of them are near a university that would hire my husband.

Hee, sidenote: back in 1996 when Dr.Bob started the Ph.D program in Madison Wisconsin, the German friends and family were all, "Aren't you happy to be moving back near your family?" at me. Uh, yeah. My family's mostly around Seattle. We do not consider 2000 miles "near".

So basically, professionally speaking we would both be better off in the U.S. We would make more money, we would pay fewer taxes. But as a family, we are better off here, because we actually get to see our kids from time to time. Americans work too much.

I am certainly more comfortable in the U.S. I really hate how difficult everything becomes when you have to do it in another language. I hate even more how this does not seem to be the case for other expats. I miss my family a lot, and my friends, and also stupid things like Target and decent peanut butter and roads that are a bit wider than the cars. I miss the Pacific Northwest like you wouldn't believe. Everything about it. But the kids have an extended family here, and after five years they have really put down roots. Moving them now would be hard on all of us.

I try to visit about once a year, if I can manage it. It gets more expensive as the kids get older, but I can also work more as they get older, so that evens out, more or less.

But as I said, we have to go where the jobs are. If some university in the U.S. offered Dr.Bob work, we'd go. We'd have to.

Blogging the Olympics

Somebody's doing that, right? Probably several somebodies, I can't be bothered to check. Yesterday was some men's skatey-thingy - um, figure-skating, and I wrote something incoherent and then deleted it. The gist was something like oh my god what the HELL is he wearing? But now I'm watching men speed-skate in their bizarre little stretchy outfits, and I am increasingly convinced that they are NOT wearing something. Namely, underpants. Ooo, it's some kind of relay too, so when a new guy comes on, the going-off guy gives him a big ol' helping shove on the butt. The Church Lady would have a fit.

Thanks, Dr Internet, for the conjunctivitis tips. I will put them into action as soon as I can track down a chamomile tea-bag. Bet Mrs Next Door has one. I got this from Ignatz, though, and he's all better already, so even if the chamomile doesn't work, I only have a couple more days of this.

Great stuff, chamomile. I remember filling the kitchen with chamomile steam to clear up baby Ignatz's stuffed-up nose.

not a great start to a day

Bleah. My left eye is red and puffy and oozy and achy - I woke up several times in the night to find that my eye was glued shut by gunk on the lashes. Yuck. Dr.Bob says it's "augencatarrh". I haven't google-translated that yet, but I think it means something like "eye-snot". Anyway, apparently it will go away on its own, or I can go to the doctor and get eye drops. €10 copay? Nothanks! Guess I'll wait.

I have to go to work today! Am I supposed to put makeup on this thing? I have to meet the new webmaster looking like a prizefighter! I was going to go to curry night, too. But I feel yucky. Not flattened, but coughy, sneezy, generally icky.

Also. I have the dreaded VPSV: Very Persistent Song Virus. And what do you do with such a song virus? That's right, you share it! Click at your own risk. Well, actually you'll have to click twice, once to get to the page and then again to hear the song. So there's still time to turn back! Right, you've been warned. From Emma Bull's blog, I give you: yet another gem from the mighty Weird Al. And like Em says, listen all the way to the very end.

Enjoy.

cleaning out the attic, metaphorically speaking

Wow, my blog.txt file is getting full. Every time I open it, it makes a noise like an old man getting out of bed. I should throw some stuff up here.

Here are a couple of charming bits of information ganked from Kelly...

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	6.1
Mind:	5.8
Body:	7.8
Spirit:	4.8
Friends/Family:	6.5
Love:	7.3
Finance:	6
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Okay, I have absolutely no idea what that says about me.

You Are an Espresso

At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung You drink coffee when: anytime you're not sleeping Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

Kelly's an espresso too. We were college roommates. You can imagine the fun we had.

In a Past Life...

You Were: A Gorgeous Magician. Where You Lived: Mongolia. How You Died: Natural causes.

Who Were You In a Past Life?

Oooo, I like this one. I was gorgeous! And Mongolian!

Nothing tomorrow, because I have to go to Munich and Do Stuff, but thursday I will answer the other two questions: are we ever going back to the States, and whathehell is up with that kid. Actually, I can answer those both right now: I dunno.

hm, what was that thing...?

I spent the entire weekend and most of today sweating bullets over that job application. Gah. Did I mention how much I absolutely hate this process? Seriously, between job hunting and dental work without anesthesia? Um, gimme a minute... no, I need more time to think about it. I'll let you know when I decide.

Anyway. With a little help from Dr.Bob - actually a little? It is to scoff. He did the whole thing for me. Which is not to say I didn't try, I did. I wrote a whole cover letter, IN GERMAN, and sent it to him for proofreading. He rewrote the whole thing. So, um, guess I still have a way to go with that whole "Learning German" thing. (Yes, Nate. Air quotes.)

Hm. Digress much? Oh right. The job application. It's done. The email is written, the resumé and various certificates are online. I'll send the email in tomorrow morning at eight, so as to look all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Yeah, right. We all know how I really look in the morning - hey wait. We don't! Most of my readers have never seen my morning face! Hah! (Shut up, Kel)

Didja get that? It's done! More or less! It's good practice! You never get the first job you apply for, right? Probably not. But still. I finished something excruciating and I am drained and exhausted and need a big ol' break. Huh? What's that? Did you say...HOMEWORK? Oh yes, that is due in about two hours, isn't it? Have I even looked at the assignment? Uh, that would be a 'no'.

Right! Off to do that, then! No problem, no problem, plenty of time to sleep when I'm DEAD.

this winter in pictures

If you follow this link, there's a Sueddeutsche slideshow of the conditions in eastern Bavaria. Vorheriges Bild means Previous Picture. Nächstes Bild means Next Picture. You should probably be glad you can't read the captions. Especially the one about the school bus driver who died of a heart attack while driving a busload of kids. I think the kids are all okay, but Jeez.

We are. So lucky. To live here. And not there. I sure wouldn't want to be on top of my house, trying to clear the snow off before the roof caves in.

but I'm much better now.

Your Inner Child Is Sad

You're a very sensitive soul. You haven't grown that thick skin that most adults have. Easily hurt, you tend to retreat to your comfort zone. You don't let many people in - unless you've trusted them for a long time.

How Is Your Inner Child?

I mean, I was like that. As a kid. But I'm fine now. Honest. Don't worry, okay?

this is going to turn into a shoe-freak blog any day now

Okay, I was going to give ~d first shot at this image, because she's the one who found them, but I just ... couldn't ... resist! Darrgh!

Are those fabulous or what? Boy, if I had a daughter... muahahaha...

But sigh, I couldn't possibly get them for myself. I already have a pair of embroidered purple satin Chuck Taylor All-Stars that I never wear. Because they're too nice and I don't wanna mess 'em up. I couldn't find a picture of them on the net (guess my google-fu is not strong enough), so you'll just have to use your imagination, sorry.

Did you get the boots?

People ask questions and make Very Helpful Comments in my comment section, and I always mean to answer them, really-truly, but... I... don't. Other things happen, I get sidetracked. Gee, can't imagine where Ignatz gets that whole disorganized-thing.

So I wrote an entry answering the three latest questions, and it came out desperately long and tedious. I'll have to break it down into chunks, or lose my audience. We'll try one question per post, yeah? It's the only way to keep me on track, I think.

So yes. I ordered the boots, um, yesterday. The paisley ones. The blue ones are certainly jaunty, and they remind me a bit of my Mom's art, but remember those old Highlights magazine bits where they showed a big picture with lots of little things hidden in it, like a key in the bark of a tree? Right, well, I look at those artsy teal boots, and I see... pizza. ~d is right, the paisley ones are more versatile.

Later entries will answer questions about Ignatz and whether we will ever return to the States, but I am still slogging away at that job application. Gark. Must go do that.

more scary weather

Did I say it was only snowing a little? Well, it was, but it continued doing so ALL DAY, so there was still about 8 inches of snow for me to clear from the driveway and front walk. This picture isn't here, it's a bit east of here, in Lower Bavaria. Yep, some bad craziness, and it gets badder the further east you go. Y'all might remember that ice rink roof collapse in Bad Reichenhall last month that killed 15 people? There was another one, worse, at an exhibition hall in Katowice, Poland. A grocery store roof in Töging caved in a couple days ago, and a school in Austria had to be evacuated on Wednesday. No one was hurt in the latter two, fortunately, but other places have been less fortunate. The snow is too wet and heavy this year; and usually we have periodic warmups that melt some (or all) of it off, but this year it's just been accumulating; and snow that sticks usually starts in January, but this year it started mid-November. All that means that roofs meant to take the normal burden of a subalpine winter are just not up to this.

Oh dear.

snowed in

Okay, there was no Thursday blog entry because I am a total hosebag, and that's all there is to it. Um, not to say that anyone else is a total hosebag for not writing on a Thursday - because you all have, you know, lives and stuff - but I have sort of set myself the goal to Blog Whenever I Can, and when I fail to meet the standards I set for myself, I get to be a hosebag.

On Fridays I have all the excuse I need, because I go into Munich to work at the AHF and don't feel right about blogging on company time. And today I was going to meet with the New Webmaster (yay! They found someone! That's another entry in itself - the entry, incidentally, that I should have written yesterday) and then we were going to plan our vacation with H and G, which is yet another entry. Wow, yesterday I didn't write because I didn't think I had anything to write about. Stupid, much?

ANYWAY. No go. None of it, because the roads are insane. Because it's snowing only a little, but the wind is so fierce that it's snowing sideways, and there are a lot of places where you can't even see the road. And trucks are stuck. We got past the one in Isen, but the one in Mittbach thwarted us (and the snowplow that was trying to dig it out) and we had to turn back. Mr Next Door didn't make it to work today, Mr Down-the-Street's car was smushed (he's okay, but they have to buy a new car now), school is cancelled because none of the bus-kids (which is half of the students) can get into town, and it's chaos. Dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.

Which leaves me no choice but to stay home and put together a resumé and cover letter for a job I want to apply for. Well, no, I don't want to apply. I just want to have the job, by some miracle that doesn't require the whole application process, which I find absolutely excruciating. Gurk. So um, this is me, stalling. You know what? I'm tired. Maybe I'll take a nap, and put the application together later.

Meh.

the kids' toothpaste...

...comes in a tube that is remarkably similar in shape and size to that of my Body Shop Vitamin C SPF 15 Daily Moisturizer.

No, I didn't actually smear kiddie-toothpaste on my face. But almost.

or maybe these.

Oooo. A dilemma.

I. Need. These.

I can't remember whose blog led me to these, but Oh. My. God! In case it's not absolutely clear from the photo, they're rainboots. Cowboy wellies. Check out the site, there's like a million kinds. What a fabulous idea.

<...scampers off to find out about international shipping rates...>

oh, now what?

So Friday was the letters from school to say that Ignatz is often without the necessary materials? Right. German schoolkids all have to have these little zipper-cases where they keep their pens, pencils, scissors, eraser, etc. On Monday afternoon he lost his. And so he returns to school without the proper materials immediately after we got the stupid letters. Why? He decided to take a different way home from school Monday afternoon, one that did not involve much in the way of sidewalks, slid/fell down a steepish hill, and didn't notice that his pen-case was missing until this morning.

You see? You SEE? Of course he doesn't do this stuff on purpose, but he still manages to do something several times a week.

This is just so depressing.

So we Talked about it, scarily, after dinner. Because there are two things going on here. Firstly, he has trouble focusing. Secondly, he doesn't see any reason why he should. He thinks homework is stupid, he doesn't want to grow up and get a job. I don't know what alternative he thinks there is, but he doesn't like the path that the rest of us follow.

For the first, there are things we can do. Therapy. Maybe medication. Mnemonics and lists and coping strategies. But we can't put any of them into effect without his cooperation, and this is where the second problem comes in. If he doesn't want to do it, we can't help him much. We don't know what to do about that.

I'm a little...disappointed...

Well, the Hawks lost, with a little help. I like to think that I am fair-minded enough that I would also be upset if the Steelers had been on the receiving end of such bad refereeing - yes, I would be upset. That was undeniably unfair, and nobody deserves that. No, not even the Rams. Dr.Bob was so mad he couldn't get to sleep last night. Anyway. Props to the Steelers, they were awesome, and I wouldn't have minded losing to them if it was fair, because I was just so pleased we made it to the Super Bowl at all. But this was uglier than necessary.

That was my first Super Bowl in a pub. It was fun, if loud, but the whole experience would have been better if I'd had a local hole to crawl into. As it was, the game ended around 4 a.m., and I got to hang out another hour in the bar with some very nice people, but also some distinctly creepy ones. Then I had to go to the train station, where I found out that the first train home leaves at 6:19, not 6:02 as I had thought, and from the other train station. So I went to the other station and found my train and got on it and there was some kind of problem that made it leave 15 minutes late and oh man was it hard to stay awake on that trip. But I'd very wisely brought my mp3 player, so the walk home (about a mile) was easily chugged with the help of the Hives. When I got home the boys were just finishing breakfast, and since I had my Doc Martens on anyway, I figured I might as well take the Sniglet to kindergarten. But walking slowly with a five-year-old is um, very different from charging along in time to Veni Vidi Vicious, as it happens. I practically fell asleep on my feet. So that is why I staggered into bed at 8 this morning. And the Best Husband in the Universe did not go to Munich today, even though he always goes to Munich on Mondays, so he was able to fetch the Sniglet from kindergarten and I was able to sleep until 1. I am so lucky.

And that was my football experience. No more Super Bowls in pubs. I'm getting too old for this.

Unless it's the Seahawks again.

two letters from the school yesterday...

Dr.Bob read them, they were upside down to me, so I asked what they said and he rattled it out in German. Um, helpful, thanks. I caught the word "wiederholt", which I think means "repeatedly", and the impression that Ignatz is um, disorganized, often doesn't bring the materials he needs to class, and doesn't complete assignments because he didn't have the right book or something. He has also been moved to a spot in the classroom where no one sits next to him, because he chatters and distracts the others. Constantly, and despite repeated um, whaddyacallits. Hey-stop-thats.

Dr.Bob says the teacher warns the kids that they're getting a letter home, and that Ignatz should have told us. This happens a lot, actually, we think things are going pretty well for him because we haven't gotten any bad news lately, and then bam! (Sock! Bif! Pow!) A phone call, a note from a teacher, something. Always a situation that Ignatz knew about but didn't tell us.

Now. Ignatz In Trouble gets a long lecture from Dr.Bob, who is, let's face it, considerably more, um...intimidating than he realizes. He's big and muscly, and has a powerful scowl, and can talk for a long time about something that has ticked him off. It's not something he wants to hear, so when I try to tell him that he's kinda scary, he tends to shrug it off, or get angry. But Ignatz is a little guy, not given to confrontation of any kind, and frankly? I can see why he wouldn't want to tell his dad. Those lectures are really, really horrible for him. I can also see why he wouldn't tell me, though that's a little different. My main failing as a parent is that I'm completely unpredictable, and he never knows how I'll react. Which is scary in its own way, so as I say, telling us he's messed up again probably never seems like a good idea to him.

Dr.Bob disagrees. The kid gets in trouble anyway, so why wait? Well, I can answer that one. When you have bad news, and you know you'll get in trouble for delivering it, you can find all sorts of reasons to wait. And in fact, we found the letter when we got home from Munich, and Ignatz was safe at the Oompas. Heh. That's the best time to deliver bad news: when you're not in the same town as the person you have to tell.

So anyway. Yet again, the school has contacted us to tell us our son is not doing well enough. I don't know what the hell they expect us to do. Really, if there was anything we could do about it we would have done it a long time ago. But they're all, "Please talk to him..." Hello? Are they seriously suggesting 1) that it's that simple? And 2) that we haven't tried that?

okay, howbout now? Can I panic now?

So, work! Not exactly rocket science, but complex because each case is slightly different. Some of the differences only come up every few months, by which time I've forgotten how I dealt with them last time. I'm still stumbling along, asking for help at least once a day, and I've been on this job for nearly a year. Yeah, one day a week, but still. Many, many tiny details, too many to keep in my head. I try to write it all down, but still, situations come up that I don't recognize.

And now? Now we're getting interns! I have to teach them my job - IN GERMAN. Um, ack?

cool toy

Me on Sunday:

Found this via AKMA (thanks!). Here's how to make your own.

Bad news for people with brothers.

Sorry, guys, but here it comes: I win. My brother - not yours - is the coolest brother ever in the history of the universe, because not only did he send me THIS, he FedExed it so it would get here before game day. That is how cool my brother is, and and there is just no beating that. Ever. Now I will go watch the Super Bowl at the Arc and the other fans will be blinded by how tragically hip and fabulous I am. But if I am hipper than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of a giant of hipness. I so do not deserve this, but I'll take it anyway.

Thanks a million, bro. I will really and sincerely try not to forget your birthday again this year.

again I wonder about my WeatherPixie

Isn't this weird? It looks like heavy fog and a tornado. At night. Okay, the fog I can see out my window, and it is indeed night. But tornadoes? Hardly ever in central Europe. Certainly not at night, as far as I know. And never in the dead of winter. Okay, this pixie gets her information from the weather station at Laim (pronounced like "lime", not like "lame"), but that's not really that far from here. Maybe I should switch to the Munich airport pixie. Anyway. Once again, my weatherPixie appears to be, um, a bit of a stranger to this whole "reality"-thing. Bit like Condoleezza Rice, but with better hair.

waaagh!

You will go to jail for:

Accidentally finding area 51

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

THANK you, cmhl! That is awesome!

More about the special school

I mentioned this before, that there is a school for Ignatzes, basically, about half an hour from here. Specifically, it is a school for "children with above-average intelligence who, due to particular learning or behavior disorders (e.g. dyslexia or concentration disorders) are not well-served by the state school system" (my translation). Sounds pretty much perfect, except for one thing: it's a boarding school, and he's only 11. I know, the English do it all the time, but it's not something that Americans tend to think of first, and I'm not altogether comfortable with him being gone so much.

Hmm, but it would be so good for him to be around others like him, and with teachers trained to deal with distractibility and disorganization, who accept it as normal instead of judging and criticizing. He could be normal. That would be so good for him, not to feel like a freak all the time.

So anyway, we've debated about this for over a year now, and finally decided we should at least call the school, make an appointment, check it out, not commit to anything, but find out about it. And oh no, it's full-up and there's a huge waiting list. I don't know how we didn't foresee that, given that it took nearly six months to get an appointment for him to be evaluated by a psychologist in Munich, eight months to see a pediatrician, and after that, a year before the child psychologist here in town could clear a space in her calendar for him. We already knew that there are too many kids with problems for the amount of help available. I don't know why we didn't apply that knowledge to this school as well.

So we'll send in his paperwork and get put on the list. There is a slight chance that they might let him in sooner if he totally bombs out of regular school.

Mhm. He can either limp along for seven years at this school that is a fine school yadda-yadda, but is not right for him, and not very good for him. Or he can crash and burn and then, maybe, have a chance at a better environment. Fucking hell, those are our choices?

Well, yes, I guess so. I guess there are limits to what is available and that is the situation we are handed, and all we can do is deal with it the best we can. Time to think about bootstraps.

found something

Well now. I've had a post in the works for quite some time about the vast amount of so-so bookage out there and the difficulty of finding something that will capture Ignatz's imagination when there is so much out there that is just not. that. good. And occasionally I find a really good author and I go visit her website hoping she will lead me to other really good authors and she's all "I really love the Magic Treehouse books" or whatever. Sigh. No. Because we need and deserve books that are all that, and those books are only half that.

But anyway, this post I've been working and working on still doesn't say what I want it to say in less than a kajillion words and I don't want to make y'all read for hours and hours. Upshot = a good book has style and substance. A good premise is essential, okay, but a writer also needs to love language, needs to dive into it like taking the Nestea Plunge, roll around in it, and cough up words you would otherwise never have learned.

So here, via slacktivist, is Litline's 100 Best First Lines from Novels, and you may not agree with them all (I don't), but if you read through them you can get a sense that sentences have balance, and the right word makes all the difference, and a good idea by itself is not enough to carry a book. The best writers know this. Well, lots of people know this. Very few know how to do it, though, which is too bad.

Incidentally, great writing isn't limited to Great Works of Literature. From my 5 Guilty Pleasures meme awhile ago, some of the authors I mentioned in the bit about genre fiction have that gift. I'll let you know if I find any more.

Anxiety, much?

We're going to try Ritalin on Ignatz in April. We'll give it two weeks. That is The Plan. Here's me plagued with doubt. What if the side effects are really horrible? Do we cut the dosage or decide it's just not for us? What if it has no effect at all? Do we up the dosage, or do we decide it must not be ADD after all? What if it enables him to focus at school but turns him into a boring little Borg drone? Then it's not worth it. But what if that's just because the dosage is too high or too low? How much tweaking? For how long do we have to test each tweak? What if it causes insomnia? He already barely sleeps. What if it suppresses his appetite? He already barely eats. What if it helps with the academics but makes his social behavior worse? Or vice versa? Will we have to go through this whole process with Concerta too? Cylert? Dexedrine? Methylin? Strattera? Wellbutrin? That could take forever.

I don't even want to medicate my kid. Seriously, I can have a headache for 24 hours before it occurs to me to take an Advil. I just don't tend to think of medication first. But people with similar problems say it's helped. It might help him, and he needs help. He's suffering, and not in a character-building way. I don't remember her exact words, but Mrs Next Door said something like "Stop criticizing him for things he can't do anything about. Either give him something that will enable him to be what you want, or accept him the way he is." Man oh man, is she ever right. And of course I would tend toward the latter, but the world is not going to accept him as he is, and he has to exist outside this family as well. He goes to school, he forgets to hand in tests, he forgets the rules, he can't restrain himself from talking to his classmates, and those all have consequences. Those consequences fuck with his self-esteem, his behavior deteriorates even further, et cetera. Know what I just found out? He didn't hate hockey. He liked playing, he was proud of the things he learned. But the team picked on him because he was small and slow, and getting picked on made him hesitant and even slower, which made them pick on him more. Et cetera.

Anyway. I'm just venting, okay? We will try it. He's in therapy. We will call the special school and set up an appointment. We are doing all we can. This is just the stuff that cycles through my head while I wait to fall asleep.

once again, I wock

Got this from my teacher today:

Really nice job on the Final Exam. Your grade is a 4.0. Your answers were very thorough and clear. You did an excellent job in the course, and will obviously receive a passing grade.

Wow. I did well on the exam. I'm a little...surprised. But very, very pleased.

Gentle Guidance for Husbands

The Sniglet finally has his very own room, what was formerly Dr.Bob's sanctum sanctorum. Which means He Who Must Be Taken Seriously has moved in with me, and now it seems my bedroom/office could use a bit of spiffing. The piles in the corners, for instance, have got to go, and the whole mattress-on-the-floor thing is also a little too college for a pair of suburban parents beginning the slide into middle age. Today I needed to change the sheets and I noticed we don't really have enough bedding. And I could use a desk. So yes. Housy things must be purchased, and we all know what that means. Come on, sing it with me...

IKEA

That's right. The single greatest threat to marital stability in the Western World, Houseware Hell, Particle Board Unlimited itself. And he did say we need to go and get some stuff. Some time. In the future. Not now. That's okay, I can wait. And while I wait, the Bob the Builder sheets are on his side of the bed.

Muuahahaha...

Oh, yes. Winter.

Yet another annual tradition that I'd managed to forget about. The heater's broken. Again, yes. Mm-hm, every year since we moved in! Fortunately we rent, so we don't have to pay to get it fixed, but if I were the landlord I'd be pretty annoyed by now. Anyway, the fixit guy came yesterday (at weekend rate$, oy vey) and fixed it, but this morning it was down again and Dr.Bob decided to wait and call tomorrow. On weekdays they charge slightly less, and the problem is apparently a part that needs replacing, and you'd never get that done on a Sunday, so even if we called the fixit guy back in, basically it would cost the landlord a bundle and achieve nothing for us. We would still be without heat for an entire day. In the winter. When it's like 15° out.

Annoyed? Of course not! You all know how much I loooooooove being cold.

It's a very big, very international company, and apparently I could get in legal trouble for making some general statement about them involving words like "useless" or "garbage" or even "duh". So let's put it this way. Our heater was made by Viessmann, and it has broken down every winter, four years in a row. Draw your own conclusions.

a somewhat-sick child

Nothing worth complaining about, of course, especially since the Next Doors had some vile stomach virus last weekend, and with a newborn in the house too, eyuurgh. No, the Sniglet just has a little cold, not a big deal at all. But I still kept him home for two days. Tuesday was a no-brainer - it was their "Wandertag". This is a German thing: every so often, the school or kindergarten takes the kids on a long walk, through a forest or to a sunflower field or something, for the whole school day. A nice tradition, when it's not colder than a welldigger's ass (thank you Mr. Waits), but can we get real for a minute? Lately, you go outside and you can feel the blood vessels in your face freeze and snap. And call me an overprotective helicopter-mama if you will, but even a slightly-sick child should not be marching around the woods in subzero temperatures for three hours. So I kept him home on Tuesday.

Keeping him home on Wednesday was more in the nature of a public-service decision. He refuses to blow his nose, and forgets to cover his face when he sneezes, so I can just see him blatting snerkies all over the kindergarten train-set. Way to make friends.

And that really is about all we've had going on. The Peanut had his appointment with his shrink today. She does some kind of play-therapy, so all he ever reports is "We played Monopoly" or some such. I try not to press him for details, it seems like I should try to make this whole process as stressless as I can for him. Besides, she'll tell me whatever she thinks I need to know at my appointments.

oops, clarification

Yeah, that was ambiguous, wasn't it? Okay, not ambiguous, it very strongly implied something that is not even slightly true. Very sorry. The Seattle Seahawks are going to the Super Bowl, not me and someone else. I meant we in the sense of our guys and not someone else's guys. I will be watching it in a pub in Munich, though, so I'll still be missing the commercials.

But even so. DETROIT, BABY!

onward

So I staggered to bed at 4 a.m. after the NFC game, and set my alarm for 11:30 to be sure I'd get up in time to pick up the Sniglet from kindergarten - Dr.Bob got up with the little vipers at 7, so I didn't have to. Yes, I am well aware that I have the Best Husband in the Universe, thank you. Anyway, I slept through all that. He did wake me at some point to tell me he was leaving for work, at which I opened one eye, croaked "We won!" and flomped back to sleep. Since then I occasionally break into a little happy-dance, or feel compelled to shout "Detroit, baby!" but mostly I've got it under control.

I finished the Final Exam for the database course, which was mind-bogglingly worse than the Final Project which I had thought could not be topped. Life is full of surprises. If he doesn't send it back for revisions, I am done with the course, which would call for a "yay", but I'm so wrecked by the whole experience that a feeble "whew" is all I can manage. The course was fine, materials good, teacher great - zero complaints on that score, but I was just so wildly out of my depth. Not to mention overwhelmed by outside events that bore no relation to the course but still affected my work some.

Which makes it all the more important that I get a job in database administration right away, quick before I forget everything. Except that oops, the very husband who was all keen for me to have a career and get out from underfoot and all that is now...not so much. Because around here, jobs are mostly in Munich, and if I have to commute every day, I'll be gone a lot, and more childcare and housework duties will fall to him. This is not bad per se, see Best Husband comment above. But he has to finish this third book by July or some unspecified form of Career Death will result, so for the next six months he really does need to be writing every minute. Getting up with the kids is a superb thing, because it enables me to sleep more, and gets him up early so he can start working. But it really is the most he can do right now.

In my snarkier moments I used to say that he desperately wanted me to have a career until he found out that it would require me to leave the house occasionally. But I'm not so snarky these days, probably because I'm getting enough sleep.

So there's the conundrum. By July I will have forgotten everything I learned in this class, I promise. By the time I got to the Final Etceteras I'd already forgotten everything before lesson 4 (of 8), to my chagrin. But I'm still webmastering. Still taking the ambiguously-named Web Techy-Thingy course. Still working for the AHF on fridays. Still helping my husband be a translator. Kinda, maybe, still a bit on the busy side, to be looking for another job. Sigh. I guess timing is everything. Anyway, techie-types don't actually remember ALL that stuff, they just keep their reference books handy. I'll just be using my reference books a bit a lot more.

WE'RE GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!

First! Time! EVER!

Woooot! And I can't even jump and down and scream, because it's 3:30 a.m. here and I don't wanna wake the guys.

hooray for Austrians!

Because they're showing the NFC final on TV. It's times like this I wish I lived in Munich itself, and could go down to the Arc and watch the Hawks kick some Carolina butt on a big ol' Satellite sports-bar TV. But it's a school night, and the trains don't run between midnight and 6 a.m. and I really can't be gone all night under the circumstances. But at least I can see it, thanks to the Austrians. Woohoo!

I'm getting tired, though. It's been a really long time since I stayed up this late.

one piece of progress

I talked to He Who Must Be Humored, er, tuesday maybe, and pinned him down on the Ritalin thing: we're going to try it for two weeks in April. Because the kid's just about to start up with the therapist again, and we want her to be fairly well-acquainted with him so that she can help us assess its effects. We'll also be conferring with his German and English teachers, both before and after.

And then we'll know.

ten things you didn't know about me

I didn't know them either until just a few minutes ago! Annotated by yours truly.

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Alala!

1. Alalaology is the study of alala. (Try saying that three times fast.)
2. Neil Armstrong first stepped on alala with his left foot. (She was asleep at the time, and didn't notice.)
3. About one tenth of alala is permanently covered in ice. (Yeah, my toes.)
4. Humans share about fifty percent of their DNA with alala. (Wow. I would think it would be much less.)
5. The first American zoo was built in 1794, and contained only alala. (That, actually, is not altogether impossible.)
6. Every day in the UK, four people die putting alala on! (That's right - you try that with me, I'll open up a can o' Whupass!)
7. The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised their visors to reveal alala.
8. Alala is the smallest of Jupiter's many moons!
9. Some people in Malaysia bathe their babies in beer to protect them from alala. (Hah. That would SO not work.)
10. Wearing headphones for an hour will increase the amount of alala in your ear 700 times. (Eeeeuw!)

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

Ganked from Amber. I just couldn't help myself.

how to study

Aaargh. He got a C on his German test. *Sigh.* This sucks on many levels. He could do so much better if he would just put some effort into it. But he does have a problem with apathy, and I can sorta see why it might seem hopeless so why even try. Plus which, I'm not altogether sure he knows how to put some effort into it. Did you know how to study for a test when you were 11? I didn't. Even now, with all the studying I have to do, sometimes the information just doesn't sink in. I have a few strategies for getting around that, and I could probably teach them to him, but then we run into the apathy problem. I've tried showing him little tricks for focusing his attention or remembering things, and he's all, yeahwhatevermama. And, canIgonow?

The other level on which this sucks is it gets the Lord and Master all hair-up-his-ass, and he lectures the boy, who - face it - tunes out after the first four words. And he rants to me about the whole thing, which, Hel-lo? That is MY son you are gritching about, shut your face before I hit it with a brick. The fact that it's his son too? Does not make it anything like okay. It makes it worse.

So now there's an impending math test. The LnM will be in Munich the night before and morning of, so I am instructed to "remind him to at least look at the stuff". Hey kid? Go look at your math stuff.

?

?

*sputter, sputter* What? That wouldn't even work on someone who doesn't have ADD! Not for the first time, I feel the urge to ask my husband if he's even met this child.

my new favorite word

wingnutterance

Brilliant.

Meme again

Tagged again! Hoohoo! Okay, here's the meme:
Ground Rules: Write a blog entry about your Five Guilty Pleasures, state the rules clearly, and tag five people to carry it on.

You cannot imagine, and it would kill me to tell you, how hard it was to limit this list to just five. That's right, I'm a freakshow.

1. Okay, since I was tagged by a fellow knitter, number one will be Knitting. It's so tactile, so rewarding, so fun. The rhythm is lulling, and it keeps my fidgety hands busy. I especially love knitting plain ol' jersey in the round while I read - in fact, it really helps me focus when I have to study. I love cabling. Unfortunately, I buy a lot of yarn that I don't wind up using. I have a real problem throwing anything away. None of my relatives are really into hand-knit stuff, and I don't knit quite well enough to sell it. Hence the guilt. I really do it only for myself, because there is no one else to benefit from it.
2. Genre Fiction! Novels! The fun kind, not the weighty Block o' Literary Merit kind. What lit-snobs call "trash" and I call a cracking good story. Jennifer Crusie, Lois McMaster Bujold, Elizabeth Peters, Jasper Fforde, Christopher Moore! Hahahahaha! I'm not sure why I feel like I should be Improving My Mind every time I pick up a book. I'm not sure why these books are less Improving than some big depressing tome where everybody dies. But still.
3. Movies. Same as above, the fluffo stuff. I don't go to be scared, or to provoke thought, or to jerk tears. Poignant, my ass. Make me laugh or gimme my seven bucks back. Nyah.
4. Chocolate milk. Yeah, me and the nine-year-olds. What can I say? It's yummy.
5. Blogging! I spend way too much time on it. I read other people's blogs and am so impressed, and then I come to mine and think, meh. But still, it's a compulsion. I wish I were a better writer, and I guess that's where the guilt comes in. People make me laugh, and I do my best to return the favor.
   

Tag five people! In a wholly optional and non-binding way, of course. Um, Kris, Kel, Amber, and Linda. Sound good? Oh, and Gene, because dude! Write something! It's been like a month already.

Thanks, E! That was fun.

Other things you should know, if you don't already

Kilian's been diagnosed with ADD, and the principle that Parents Must Present a United Front is being severely tested. El Husband and I have very different ideas about what's going on, and we've had a lot of fights about it. For the record, he's won every damn one.

In a nutshell, there is strong evidence for a physical component to ADD's etiology, and I think it might be worthwhile to try Ritalin. It has helped in some cases, and might make a difference in his ability to concentrate and remember things. There is all kinds of conflict Out There about this, and I don't want to get into it here. Yes, I've read both sides. Yes, if there's a chance Ritalin can help, I think it's worth a try. If it doesn't work, at least we'd have tried it and we'd know for sure. Even if it did work, I don't think it would be a total solution because of the attendant psychological problems.

The psychological problems. Hm, yes. Chicken-or-egg debate, that one. Are they the cause of his behavior, or are they a result of his condition? I say the latter: his inability to function at the level of his peers is wrecking his self-esteem and making him act out. Da Husband says the former: some buried inner conflict his making him have ADD. I advocate trying ritalin or some such to see if it can help him focus, and then working out some coping strategies to help him get around this limitation. I hope that if he can function better, he will feel better about himself, and some of the depression will lift. Husband advocates sending him to psychotherapy to locate the source of this inner conflict that is making him depressed and apathetic and forgetful. Frankly, I expect that after two years of therapy, the therapist will tell us that his ADD makes him unable to function at the level of his peers, which is wrecking his self-esteem, and she recommends ritalin and coping strategies. And we will then be where we could be now if a certain spousal unit would listen to me.

The other thing is that he is "Gifted", a term which I hate. It is not just a gift: a 130+ IQ is also a curse for a kid in an ordinary elementary school. Especially when that kid has behavior problems. (No, the behavior problems are not just a result of the giftedness: we checked.)

So that's the background to our problems re his relationships with everyone in the family, his steadily slipping grades, why he dropped out of hockey and broke his mother's heart, and why he keeps getting in trouble at school. He was diagnosed shortly before his tenth birthday, it took us a year to get an appointment with a therapist, we are trying to figure out what all our options are, and that's about where we stand now. Just so you know, because this is sure to come up from time to time.

long, depressing post

Well, it's open-book, and I suppose technically I have until february fourth to finish it, so that's why I'm blogging right in the middle of my database exam. I should get it done, just to be finished and able to move on to other things, but I can't concentrate.

Ugh. Son1 keeps hitting Son2. Son1 is 11; Son2 is 5. And no matter how many times we explain it, S1 just can't seem to understand why it's wrong to hit somebody smaller than he is. So he keeps doing it. This morning Two coughed as One was passing, and One hit Two, hard, in the middle of his back, because "he coughed on me on purpose". I snapped. I screamed at him until my throat hurt (gee, how dignified, and we wonder why he doesn't respect his mom...) and I slapped him a few times too. Not hard enough to hurt him, but still, not very nice of me. Not nice, she says...sheesh.

Firstly, it is not legal or ethical anymore to beat, starve or shun children, and outside of those options, I can't think of anything that hasn't already been tried, to no avail.

• Time outs? Tried that. It does help to defuse a situation, but it does not lead to any change in behavior. Besides, I can't levy a 10-minute time-out five minutes before he has to leave for school, and we already know that delaying consequences doesn't work.
• 1-2-3-Magic? On 3, you have to impose a Consequence, and finding workable, effective consequences is where the problem is.
• Lecturing? We do that. He hates it, but he doesn't change his behavior.
• Natural consequences: I like this one, let the results be the punishment - you break a toy, now you don't have it to play with, what have we learned today? But there are no natural consequences to beating on people smaller than you. That's why so many people do it.
• Logical consequences also sounds good. Consequences imposed from outside that bear a logical connection: if you break curfew, then you can't go out tomorrow night. If you fight over the TV, we turn it off for the day. Etc. Well, the logical consequence of hitting a little person would be to be hit by a bigger person, wouldn't it? But of course, it also demonstrates that under some circumstances hitting a smaller person is okay, and we don't want to teach that.
• Sticker charts and rewards? I can't keep track. I've tried this one so many times, and it always falls apart after a few days. I run out of stickers. I don't have any change. I promise I'll get to it later and then I forget. This is one of the reasons I suspect I may have adult ADD, because I simply cannot behave consistently from day to day. I've been trying, and failing, for years. And I'd be willing to blow along like a tumbleweed for the rest of my life, accepting my chaotic nature as part of my unique charm, except that it makes me a Not Very Good Mom, and I'm messing up my children. That's a consequence I can't accept, but Just Try Harder isn't working. And getting help is impossible. I can't even get anybody to believe me.

One friend helpfully told me, "I just wouldn't put up with that behavior." When I pressed for details, i.e. what exactly does that mean, what do you do that constitutes not-putting-up-with something, she simply reiterated that she would Not Put Up With It. Umm, thanks for some completely useless advice.

Secondly, and secondarily, of course it is morally wrong to beat, starve or shun a child, and of course I know that. But to be brutally honest, I'm beyond caring about that at this point, and the real reason I don't try it is because I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work.

I always said my first job is to protect my kids from anything that might hurt them, and when I feel they're threatened, Mama Bear comes right out. But how do you protect one of your children from your other child? When you want what's best for both kids, and those goals conflict, what do you do?

weather

John McCrae said it long before me:

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.

Admittedly, he was talking about the Kaiser's armies, but I face a more implacable foe - the weather. And now that Mom is gone, the task of bitching about the weather falls to me. It's grueling, gut-wrenching work, but someone has to do it. Besides the English, I mean.

All righty, let's jump right in, shall we? It was COLD! Hideously cold, for days and days, I swear I could feel the blood vessels in my face bursting every time I went outside. Ack! Clear, though, the sky and the frost-covered maples across the street were very pretty. Then yesterday it snowed a bit so I sent the Demon Spawn out to shovel sidewalk and driveway and while they were at it, the sleet started and undid all their lovely work. Then overnight it warmed up and rained and turned all that sleet into slush, which then froze solid. We had a giant pile of heavy, slushy snow fall off our garage roof, that had to be cleared so we could get the car in and out of the garage. And now it's all killer-slippy, frozen slush, and worst of all, it's COLD again! Aaagh!

And the worst thing? It's still. Only. January.

I've changed my mind. There is no more ambivalence: I want that job in Lubbock.

random

Um, backstory: one of my Christmas gifts, from Firstborn I think, was a computer accessory kit that included, blessedly, a number keypad - the only thing I miss about having a laptop. El husband thinks I'm crazy, but there you go.

Anyway, Secondborn is fascinated with it and wants to sit on my lap and press numbers, so I opened a .txt file for him to play in and he typed all the numbers. Then he said he wanted to type another number and I said go for it kid, and he said, "It's a number that's not here on this paddington!"

Which I will concede is only mildly cute, but I typed it in the .txt file so I wouldn't forget it, and now I want to close that file (there is no reason to save a bunch of random child-generated numbers), but that quote is in there, and I have to put it somewhere. So here you go. The depth of my commitment to you, my readers, is... no, let's not finish that thought.

Brunch, he said.

That brunchy-thing He Who Must Be Humored went to, for a friend's 40th birthday? Yeah. He got there a bit late, around 4 p.m., and just called me now (10 p.m.) to say he's leaving. A brunch. From 4 to 10. PM.

Hello, Germans? I think maybe we should clarify the meaning of the word Brunch? As in, even this far north, even in the dead of winter, a meal eaten after nightfall is not brunch. No, not even in Spain. Okay?

and of course I forgot...

to mention my brother-in-law's birthday today. Have a good one, bro.

since wednesday...

Thursday: I scrabbled together my last assignment and the dreaded Final Project, made them look reasonably nice, edited out all the swear words and turned them in. This doesn't mean I'm done - if either thing doesn't get at least a 3.0 I'll have to redo it, and there's still the exam to survive. But even so, it means there is light at the end of the tunnel, and if it is the headlamp of an oncoming train, well, at least the situation will change soon, one way or another.

Also went to a concert, Art Brut - great show, and I highly recommend them to... um, well, gee, do I know anybody who likes that sort of thing? Aside from my illustrious husband and his über-cool friends. Talking of whom, we were supposed to meet them at the concert hall. So we step in the door and I say however will we find them in this poorly-lit, crowded room, and he says "Easy. Head toward the beer." Sure enough, we walk five steps toward the bar and bump right into Sam. And Carsten and Tobi find us two minutes later. Wasn't that convenient? A benefit of keeping your friends for thirty years, I guess.

Friday: work.

Saturday: a Clean House! All by myself, because Himself is off to some brunchy-thing for a friend's 40th birthday.

Sunday's forecast: another tricky assignment for the webmaster gig, and whatever Assignment 2 is for the WebTech course - I haven't even looked at it, how bad am I? I wanted to go to Stitch-n-Bitch in Munich, but it's far too cold to leave the house. Ever again.

So I guess the best part of my weekend was Thursday night. It'll do.

Howbout you?

Garden Ghosts

This is being such a weird winter, and our garden has been wretchedly neglected. Ooo, "garden" - false cognate, sort of. In German, "garten" also means "yard". And I guess if you mow it once a week and weed and prune once a year, it's a yard. Anyway, last October while I was in Port Townsend with Mom, and el Husband was here on his own with the kids, of course the annual fall pruning didn't get done. Apparently, Annoying Neighbor asked Mrs. Next Door if she would bug Robert about the pruning, and Mrs. Next Door was all, "Um, I'm sure that when Anna gets back from burying her MOTHER, who just, you know, DIED, they will attend to the shrubberies which so annoy you."

But we didn't, because not long after that, FLOOMP! A winter's worth of snow descended on us and it hasn't really gone away, ever. So all these plants that we usually trim down to about six inches (except the traffic-hazard lilacs) are still huge and looming and ratty and oh-so attractive. Especially the ones with all the dead leaves still attached. Suburban Living Magazine, here we come!

And then yesterday and today have been clear-as-a-bell and sunny and blue and even warmish, in a wintery way. And then around dusk the fog rises, the temperature drops sharply and all that fog goes gnkkkkk- onto every surface. And the giant looming spindly ratty shrubberies are frost-limned and ghostly and almost-beautiful. Except for the ones with the dead leaves. They're still kind of yucky.

hopeful news

There's a job opening for a medievalist at the FUBerlin. Keep your fingers crossed for us, yeah?

Thanks.

side note

Oh by the way, I know I do a lot of grousing about how disorganized I am, so I thought you might like one little bit of happy news in that area: I actually have figured out The Food Thing. I mean, I have a sort of plan for getting food on the table/in the lunchboxes on a regular basis that hardly ever falls through. Unlike the old wait-for-inspiration method, this works, and I've actually been using it for more than a couple days. So I have managed to Get Organized in one tiny little facet of my life.

This is progress. This is good.

and there was much rejoicing...

Oh. My. Gawd, I finished it. Not the whole course, just the Final Project - I still have assignment 8 to go back and do. And the exam, which is open-book so how bad can it be? But the hair-raising, terrifying Final that I was all freakin' about is done. Not perfect, okay, maybe not even good enough, but that doesn't matter because if I turn it in early enough I can get feedback and fix what's wrong. For the first time I feel like I actually might be able to finish on time and BE DONE with the course.

Oh great. You know what this means, don't you? A big, fat I Told You So from el Husband. Argh. Oh well, I'll get over it.

Oh! And Mrs. Next Door is home with her baby, whom I will go and see just as soon as my cold is all the way gone. Yay!

Take this job and...uh, hang on a sec...

I was just thinking today about how I could take the JOB site off my bookmarks toolbar, but I didn't actually do it, which turns out to be a good thing. They haven't found a replacement webmaster. I guess there was a bit of he-said, she-said, some crossed signals and miscommunication, such as can happen around the Christmas vacations. Anyway, Da Husband asked me if I'd consider stepping in temporarily, and I said oo, er, ah, um, oh all right. So there I am. Maybe. If they can agree on my salary. Glad to be bringing in some money, a bit bummed about the free time and brain space I was looking forward to having. BUT it's only a 3-month contract. By March they should have someone else.

And actually, this is probably a good thing. Because my reason for quitting at the end of last year was that I was going to be done with the database thing early in November, and so January would be a good time to look for a job or internship. But Mom's death and the surrounding events set the course back a bit, so I'm still not done. And Da Husband has to finish his book by July, so will have to spend more and more time away from home, so I kinda have to be here. All in all, I probably shouldn't look for a new job until summer anyway.

So okay. Deep breath. Change of plans. Okay.

We don't need no steenking resolutions

The problem I see with New Year's resolutions is that you are supposed to put them into action in January. January sucks. Post-holiday letdown is no time to get all virtuous. Consider:

• It's still dark and cold and wretched out. There are very few reasons to leave the house that justify the half hour of extra socks-boots-sweater(s)-coat-hat-scarf-gloves application. Incipient starvation, maybe. Nothing else leaps to mind.
  
• Icy sidewalks. You could break an ankle walking to the gym.
  
• Diet? Want some fresh vegetables with that? Too bad, there won't be any until March! Hah!
  
• Housework? Cleaning in artificial light always results in streaks, missed spots, and dust bunnies bison that somehow escaped the vacuum, and I'm not going to waste my three hours of daylight cleaning.
  
• Get organized, declutter, unload all your excess stuff? Sure! Perfect weather for a garage sale! Not.
  

Plus I don't know about you, but this is when I usually get sick, and this year I'm bang on target with that. It's just a cold, but still. I am so not in the mood to become a Better Person™ right now. Check back with me in April.

Ho(ly) Ho(ly) Ho(ly)

Whew! Despite the nap, I have managed to finish the middle third of the Final Project From Hell today, so I've decided that I deserve a break. A very small one. No, my lovelies, I haven't been gone, I've been right here at my desk, slaving away at my homework, not even reading your blogs, let alone updating mine. Even though you were never more than a few clicks away from me. That makes it just that much more poignant, doesn't it?

Anyway. Friday was a holiday here, Epiphany in the Catholic calendar. They call it Heilige Drei Könige (Holy Three Kings) in Bavaria, and these fellows go house to house. Yes, there are four of them. No, I do not know why. Ours looked much nicer than the guys in this photo, much spiffier duds. And they sing a song in 4-part harmony and swing a...censer? with burning frankincense (yes, it turns out that is a real substance, though I am still skeptical about myrrh) and play recorders and collect donations for 3rd-world poverty-type causes. And then they write their initials and the year at the top of your front door, like this: 20 C+M+B 06. I think it's a charming tradition, but Mr. Cool (da husband) is of course much too cynical and worldly for such things.

So our house is blessed for the year. We missed them last year because we were in the U.S. on the 6th, and so got no blessing for 2005. Hey, maybe that's why it was such a bummer of a year.

Oh, I also got the first assignment for my webtech course done and submitted. This looks to be a lot easier than the database course. Um, yeah, a grain of salt with those words, please, because I'll probably have to eat them later on.

this is for all of you who freak out when your children say darn

So Mrs. Next Door had her baby, and I needed to find a newborn chew-toy, which is the only reason I even took my kids into the toy store at all. On the way out, I spotted a bag of giant dice and said "Hey look!"

Son2 (the 5-year-old) said "Cool! Arschwürfel (Ass-cubes)!"

Yes. He. Did. The lesson, I guess, is never go out in public with your sons without duct tape.

I know!

I can't believe I was gone so long...my blog.txt file is all huge, because I start all these ideas and don't finish them. Because I want to write well for you, my dearests. I want to be both coherent and concise, and - dare I whisper it? - interesting! I want well-crafted, mindful, thinky-head posts that uplift and inspire you. I might be willing to settle for posts that don't make you scream that you want the last five minutes of your life back.

But I don't have time for that. I only have time to blat out whatever's galloping through my head at the moment, which, after four days, is always "Gah! I haven't written in so long!"

So in a nutshell: My webmaster contract has ended with nary a bang nor whimper. How do I feel? Well, with everything else going on, I guess I'm glad not to have to worry about it, though the site is kind of my baby. Grew it from a pixel, I did. Ah well, onward and upward. It's probably not my last-ever webmastering gig.

I have less than a month to finish more than a month's worth of the database course. The anxiety of this is a sort of whining chartreuse blob on the edge of my vision, which may also be a factor in why I don't blog for days at a time. I'm sitting. I'm typing. It should be homework. Oh right, last night I met a database administrator. Friendly guy, said if I had any questions I could ask him. All I could think of is "Duh, what the hell is all this?"

I've started another course, it began without me noticing and the first assignment is due Monday. First assignments, as you probably know, are always reallyreally simple, but require about 50,000 pages of reading. Hm. An interesting puzzle. I wonder how I'll solve it.

Curry night! Yay! I used to work at the AHF on Wednesdays, but I had to switch to Fridays for about 40 different reasons, and what I missed most was Curry Night - dinner at an Indian restaurant with 30 or so of Munich's anglophone community. Fortunately, about 15 of the 30 are diehards who never miss a Curry Night, so I got to see some familiar faces. That was nice. Almost like having... friends... (cue pathetic wistful music).

All right, I've been up for an hour and a half already, and the kids are coming home soon. Homework. Now. (aaaaggghh! Noooooo!)

Happy New Year, y'all!

Please don't let me drink anymore.