Slightly random rambling re: today

[oloriel]

Either the magnesium or yesterday's soup (loads of green herbs = loads of iron, magnesium and other good things) seems to have worked; at any rate, Offspring has now returned to his usual activity cycle. Or perhaps he just had a bad lanugo day :P Either way, I am now feeling somewhat less anxious.

My mother gave me the diaries she kept when I was born and growing up, and my grandmother kept when my mother was born and growing up. Rather adorable. My grandmother actually started the diary in Sütterlin script (as late as 1955!), which was initially daunting - I learned Sütterlin in grade 3, and for a while I could write and read it fluently, but as I've never used it, I've mostly forgotten the letters and now take terribly long to decipher them. Fortunately she switched to a more modern cursive after the first entry, although Sütterlin letters (and sometimes entire words written in Sütterlin) kept sneaking into her writing. These days, that no longer happens.
My brother warned that it was dangerous to read these diaries, as surely I'd afterwards expect that my child would develop just as the children I and my mother were (for instance, I apparently skipped crawling, and instead started by walking - with support, of course, because I didn't have the balance yet; and both my mother and I used two-word phrases at 18 months already). That is, of course, nonsense (particularly as Offspring is a boy, and thus even less comparable ;)). Instead, I found them very touching. And reassuring, too. Now that the birth is only a couple of months away, I often find myself wondering how our life as a family will be and whether we'll be good parents etc. etc.. It's good to see that my grandparents and my own parents, who after all did a decent job at it, had the same doubts at that time. And managed to handle the changes and challenges well enough, too.

Also, apparently my father wanted to buy an old farmhouse back then to have room enough for "the child". My mother, somewhat prophetically, noted down "but that will have to wait until later". Indeed! (They actually kept the newspaper announcement for the farmhouse they looked at. Compared to that, our house is downright harmless, although the one my father was interested in was (supposedly) already fully renovated. (Whatever they considered 'fully renovated' in the 80s.) To think of the drama they made when Jörg did buy an old farmhouse! But then, if I had intended to go on the same sort of vacation they made back in the early 80s - driving (!) all the way to Morocco (!) in my mother's (!) jeep - there would also have been panic!drama. Tempora mutantur...)

Outside, everything is covered in a thick layer of bright yellow pollen. We could definitely use some rain by now because not only is all the pollen getting annoying (at least I am no longer allergic, now THAT would be fun >_>) but also because the gardens are getting way too dry. Initially, the hot weather caused all the plants to grow like mad (they're now several weeks ahead of schedule, and our willow trees have never bloomed as beautifully as they did this year), but by now they need water to go on, so there better be some.
The good thing, of course, is that my bees will have absolutely no trouble getting proteins. Good breeding conditions (on minus side, that also means good breeding conditions for the bloody mites). Yes, I have bees again - just in time for the second major nectar (and, obviously, pollen :P) harvest. We'll see whether they'll have produced enough honey for harvesting in June, or whether we'll have to wait for August. (I kind of hope that it'll be the latter - or else that I'll find someone to take care of the June harvest in my place.)

I've been taking flower photos for a couple of weeks, intending to make a spring picspam. By now, the folders span from late February to today, so it appears that (if ever I actually do manage to sort them) this will be the picspam to end all picspams... which no one will have the time to see.

I dyed eggs and made little almond chocolate eggs and strawberry muffins and pansy blossom cookies. Mostly so I have something to give my parents, grandmother and mom-in-law on Sunday but also because we all know that I love rituals and it's good to practice them a little before the baby comes along. I did not find the time to clean the house (the lower level, anyway), but I figure I can do that tomorrow. Or just plead my belly when someone complains. (Hopefully we'll be able to sit outside anyway - but knowing our luck, the long-needed rain will start exactly on Sunday afternoon. Just when we'll have started the barbecue. Because that's how rain magic works, right?) Somehow I was more clumsy than is normal even for me: At breakfast I upset Jörg's teacup (I swear it insidiously jumped into the path of my hand!), while making lunch I brushed the (HOT) handle of the pan with my wrist, and soon after I smashed my hand into a bench that, alas, had been standing there all innocently all day. It'd be all right if massive clumsiness attacks didn't remind me of Bella Swan, and who wants to be reminded of her? :P

I am also overusing the :P smiley today. Don't take it personally.

Comments

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Wow, I'd never heard about all the old German scripts. Sütterlin is fantastic - beautiful, but bizarre! Suddenly the origin of the ß makes more sense when I see how s and z were formed in old scripts.

Hahah, aren't parents so funny when they're remembering our development? My mother used to claim I was speaking in full sentences at just over a year old. Um...NO. (Also, that my first word was "washing machine".)

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Doesn't it? As well as the reason for the relation between AE and Ä etc...

My brother's first "proper" word was supposedly "Mitsubishi". Yeah right. XD

[fallingtowers.livejournal.com]

It'd be all right if massive clumsiness attacks didn't remind me of Bella Swan, and who wants to be reminded of her?

Any jokes about vampiric offspring clawing/biting/slashing its way out of your womb are sort of the logical corollary of this association, but probably not quite appropriate...

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

OH GODS I DID NOT EVEN THINK OF THAT. *twitch*