The lyf so short

After the usual three days of celebrations, I'm getting a breather, which I'll use to finally update again.

The lead-up to the holidays was intense. It always is, but this year it felt worse. At home, I managed to make an Advent wreath and bake one batch of gingerbread as December began, but that was about it. Trying to start every week in a quiet, festive way with my students failed spectacularly, because they took my invitation to listen to Christmas music, munch some cookies and generally wake up until 8 am (classes at my school start at 7:35! I ask you!) as an invitation to play tag, use the cookie plates as frisbees, or throw their water-bottles at their co-students' heads. So that was scrapped, and we ended up doing business as usual, which was not much better but at least I didn't provide them with ammunition. :P

With school finally over, we tried to cram some more Advent stuff into the last weekend. We drove to Cologne for some shopping. I got a new winter jacket out of it, since the zipper on my old jacket had broken the other week. (I currently seem to have Bad Zipper Energies because three zippers in three different garments broke in the past month.) The kids enjoyed the big shops with their escalators, but went completely bonkers as soon as there was no escalator or elevator to ride. The busy streets of pre-Christmas Cologne are not a good place to play hide-and-seek! Eventually we went home without visiting even a single Weihnachtsmarkt. It just would have been endless griping and fighting. We wanted to subject neither us nor other people to that.

We made some more gingerbread at home, though.



We also went to our uphill neighbour to select our tree. As usual, he berated me for coming so late, because he thinks you only get a beautiful tree if you call dibs as early as October. As usual, we found a perfectly lovely tree. As our living-room isn't particularly large and not particularly high-ceilinged either, we don't need a big tree, and there's generally always some nice small trees left. We were accompanied by Felix' new friend Nico, whose mother has moved into the empty flat down in the old mill, so there's finally a kid his age living in the immediate neighbourhood. And he shares Felix' passion for toy trains, too! The boys played hide-and-seek in the uphill neighbour's fir plantation, which is the perfect place for hide-and-seeking. Unfortunately Nico couldn't help decorate the tree because I wasn't done cleaning the living room yet.

Which was probably for the better because I found the head of Sir Bercilak in the attic (which I made for the scenic reading of SGGK at Ring*Con 2007) while looking for our tree ornaments, and couldn't resist goofing around with it a bit. I know the Green Knight only actually arrives at New Year's but I couldn't wait.



I'm a fully responsible adult human being, I swear. LET'S PLAY A LITTLE CHRISTMAS GAME!

Ahem.

We did end up with a properly decorated tree though.



Christmas Eve itself was nice. I was still busy cleaning things so I sent Jörg to church with the children, where they apparently misbehaved as much as ever, but that gave me one and a half hours of interruption-free tidying-and-cleaning time. Jörg whined a bit but why do I always have to drag the kids to church? And they're just as restless when I'm with them. He just doesn't notice it because he doesn't feel like he's responsible. Besides, most of his tidying-and-cleaning time went into putting up his old Carrera slot car race track in the attic. While the race track admittedly entertained him, his brother and the kids very much, it was otherwise not particularly helpful in terms of Christmas preparations. (He did clean the bathroom though, and offered to clean the second bathroom as well, though he hasn't come around to that yet.) By the time my parents arrived, our living and dining room combo was mostly presentable. We lit my lovingly assembled Advent wreath for the first time this Advent season. Oh well. XD



We dined on Raclette, as usual, and then Felix played us two carols on the piano! He had practiced them in secret at my parents' place so that was a very cute surprise. He also did a great job in distributing all the presents underneath the tree. It turned out that my parents had packed the wrong box of presents (which contained the gifts for the extended family visit on Dec 26, rather than the gifts for our kids) so there were not nearly as (overwhelmingly) many presents as there usually are. My parents were angry with themselves, but Jörg and I agreed that it was actually much better that way, since the individual presents that they did get were appreciated much more. I'd already agreed with my aunt that we'd hand them their presents from her family after Christmas, so they don't get lost under heaps of other things. They got further presents on Christmas Day at my mother-in-law's, and their presents from my parents yesterday. Spaced out like that, it worked a lot better.
They're also going to get a bunk bed from Jörg and me... once the transport company delivers it. (Tomorrow, I hope?)

I got a much too big present (again) - a food dehydrator that I've been secretly lusting after for several years! - but fortunately, this year I was forewarned. They had sneakily addressed it to the mother-in-law for transport, but as it happened, she wasn't at home when the postman delivered it. So I took the HUGE parcel in her stead, and because the packaging said EXCALIBUR in extremely unsubtle letters, I sort of figured out what was going on. Jörg was sad that his surprise had been spoiled, but I was rather grateful for it. Last year's massive gift of a greenhouse caught me completely on the wrong foot, and I'm glad that I had some time to mentally compose myself for another massive expensive gift in a year of money struggles and a mutual agreement to "not give each other anything much". Jörg says it's only fair because he invests a lot of money in his hobbies (brewery and shooting) all year round, which is true, but it still feels disproportional.

On Christmas Day, we had a reasonably calm day at home. Jörg and his brother drove to Dinslaken to pick up their aunt, and in the evening we feasted over at the mother-in-law's. Julian got some LEGO and Felix got an "easy electronics" starter kit that he enjoyed thoroughly. Yesterday was the least pleasant part of the celebrations. For one, it was with my father's side of the family, who are just... well, they're all lovely people, but we just don't have much in common, and it's always a bit tough to keep a conversation going without either a) loosing them intellectually or b) getting into an argument. Then, we were sitting and eating all damn day long. So Jörg and I decided to go for a little walk around the neighbourhood (even Felix wanted to come along! But none of the others), which was extremely necessary, but unfortunately I took a wrong step while being distracted by Things That Have Changed and sprained my ankle. Now it's swollen and stings like hell. Argh. It was nice to see one of my cousins again. I know I keep saying that, but it's so weird to meet these cousins every couple of years and see how they've grown! In my mind, he's still very much the five-year-old who accompanied my parents and grown-up me on holidays, and for whom I simultaneously read and translated Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix because the book hadn't yet appeared in German and he wanted to know how the story went on! Now he came driving in his own car, with a girlfriend on the passenger seat, and can read English books all by himself. He's preparing for his black belt testing (in Judo) and recently enrolled in university, studying biology and history to become -- a teacher. He's a grown-up! I'm getting old! XD

And now we're at home. Leftover Day! Yay! I should be tidying up upstairs, but I also need to prepare my classes for next year - I'm planning to try a different working mode with my fifth-graders, which requires a lot of advance preparations but will (hopefully?) put more focus on cooperative learning and group projects finished (to some extent) at their own paces, so perhaaaps it'll make everyday classroom life easier. (Once they learn using indoor voices and not throwing water bottles, at least.) The ninth-graders will be doing a three-week internship in January, so I won't be seeing much of them, but I'll probably have to do a lot of subbing during that time. Someone is always sick! I'll also have to restructure my geography curriculum. I've taken a lot of time for teaching orientation and map-reading because I feel these things are important, and because I only see that class once per week and a lot of Wednesdays happened to be off days this term, I haven't even started on the second main theme for this term. Term ends on January 25th, by which time they should be familiar with the rural/urban dichotomy and the corresponding economic, ecologic and logistic phenomena.

But I felt compelled to post on DW first. After all, I always complain that nobody updates their DW these days. *ahem*

I hope all of you who celebrated something had lovely and enjoyable holidays, and all those who didn't celebrate anything didn't get too much festive crap stuffed down their throats! Here, have some weird woodland alien fairy angels to finish this mess of a post!



Happy Rauhnächte!

Yet again, there would have been so much to talk about last month, but the posts didn't happen. But as picspams always seem a good way of remembering stuff and rambling about it, I'll do a holiday picspam! While the holiday season isn't entirely over yet, so this is still relevant! That way, we'll also catch up with the kids? I hope?

(Pics are f-locked, so if you can't see them, that may be why.)

( Image-heavy, bla bla, click on preview will lead to full-size view, you know how it works )

Oof! Quite a lot of text for a picspam. I clearly should have done that photo-a-day meme that was going around my f-list in December. At least in a modified photo-a-week kind of way. A resolution for this year, perhaps? I clearly find it easier to talk about RL stuff when I have a pic to show with it. Hm. Must ponder this. But for now, we're done!

not even in a bad way - Christmas Eve was, aside from the Christmas pageant which was pretty much as embarrassing as I'd expected, and aside from a completely pointless argument between my grandmother and my brother, pretty perfect. But oh dear, so many presents. Total overkill. Felix, of course, got the most of them, but I suspect I come in second. I'm happy and grateful, I swear, but it was rather overwhelming. Also, cue feelings of guilt because if I get so many presents, I should have given just as many. (I don't think I did.) I also got loads of Christmas cards (I sent none and expected none). More guilt! [/graceless grumbling]

Christmas proper and Feast of Stephen had their ups and downs, particularly the latter. It's a massive First World problem, I know, but it can't be denied that on the third day of feasting, you kind of stop appreciating the good food and rather wish that it would just stop. Also, more pointless discussions, this time with my father as (part of) the guilty party. Oh, man. It's so easy to watch these discussions from the outside and think "Dudes, just agree to disagree and find something else to talk about or get away from each other", but if you're caught inside, you just can't find a way out.

Okay, focus on the positive!
- Short surprise trip to Nuremberg, which is a pretty city at any time of the year. Surprisingly enough, the Christmas market wasn't too overrun, either.
- We got the house cleaned - well, to be honest my mother-in-law did most of it - and Jörg removed some hi-fi equipment from the living-room that's been standing around gathering dust pretty much forever. Suddenly, our living-room is twice as large! He also painted a stretch of kitchen wall; funnily enough, this makes the whole kitchen look cleaner and better.
- We actually got that done by the 23rd. And all the shopping was done, too. So the 24th was actually a relaxed day! (Maybe that contributed to the fact that the evening was almost all-around enjoyable.)
- Lovely presents. Books books books books books! And carders and a spindle! And a wardrobe! (!!!) And a bracelet that I've been pining after for a couple of years AND NOW IT IS MIIIIINE!
- Felix loved the present he got from my grandmother. This is especially fortunate as I first had to convince her that it was actually something worth giving - a little indoor slide. She was worried that he would only use it this winter and then be too old. Then it was really hard to obtain, because although IKEA claimed they were bringing it back into sale in December, they didn't. And the used ones people were selling all were in inconvenient places, like Berlin or Munich. (Unlike most IKEA things, this slide can't be packed flat, so all sellers insisted that you pick it up at their place.) Then I found one on e-bay that was for sale in Cologne! And I managed to win the auction! The family who sold it explained that their son (of six years) would have loved to keep it - not as a slide but as a cave - but they had to make room for new toys. So I knew that my grandmother's age worries were unfounded. But I worried that Felix might not immediately take to it - he often takes a while to try out new things. But when Jörg brought the slide in and put it in the living-room, Felix immediately climbed on and wouldn't stop using it for the rest of the evening. (It's a miracle he didn't throw up!) So my grandmother felt that she gave him the greatest gift ever, which is what she was looking for. Phew!
- Lovely cards! As I said, I hadn't expected any, so every single one was a surprise. Thank you, lovely people, and I will try to get back into the Christmas card habit next year. (OH NO IT'S A RESOLUTION!)

In short, all is well. But I feel exceedingly lazy, so I'm not going to read a week's worth of entries on my f-list. If anything important happened in your lives or there's something else that you think needs my attention, be kind and link me there? Or tell me in comments. I'm going to read those. (And react, too!)

I hope you all had a merry and a bright Whatever-You-Celebrate-At-This-Time-Of-Year!

I'll try to be a better (more attentive) LJ friend again now, srsly.

(Or Guys, guys! to the three guys in the audience.)

YOU KNOW WHAT.

There's a copy of Thorin's Map in the Hobbit Art & Design book and YOU KNOW WHAT.
THERE ARE MOON RUNES ON IT THAT ACTUALLY ARE ONLY VISIBLE WHEN THE LIGHT COMES FROM A CERTAIN ANGLE. (I discovered them by chance because our living room lights are totally weird.) HOW AWESOME IS THAT.

VERY AWESOME, THAT'S HOW.
(In fact, the whole book pretty much rocks, except for the Radagast bits, which are way too Discworldly for my humble taste, but YMMV.)
No, I still haven't seen the movie, why?

Other than that, hello world! My brain is completely fried from Christmas preparations, Christmas celebrations (including a horrible, horrible pageant), family, a most embarrassing plethora of gifts and, above all, FOOOOOOOOOD. When I'm not trying to keep up with stuff, I come up with horrible, horrible jokes like this one



Told you, brain fried.

But (at this point) mostly in a good way.

To you all, HAPPY HOLIDAYS, including (but not limited to) Christmas, and if you aren't celebrating anything yet (or anymore), Happy Time of the Week!

Lyra out. Gotta prepare more FOOOOOOOOOD.
Cheers!

... it's a good time to remember my semi-obscure Middle English fandom.

So I'm sending Lady Bercilak (from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, read it if you haven't yet, there are translations for those who don't want to deal with weird Northern Middle English dialects) to wish you all a merry Christmas. Although the characters of the poem, even Morgan le Fay, are most assuredly celebrating Christmas, I'm sure she'll wish you a merry other late-December holiday of your choice, too, if you so desire...

( At least my watercolours are better than my GIMP skills )

Yesterday was nice and cheerful, but somehow I got a mean sore throat. Have been consuming loads of hot milk with honey. Hope it goes away soon.

- for the rest of the year!

Professor decided to be a normal human being and ask nice general questions about (for both topics) the very first focus I had outlined. Somewhat oddly worded, but I hope my essay fits anyway. Had a wonderful sentence for the conclusion in my head all through the writing process only to forget it when it actually came to writing the conclusion. This is why you should take notes...
Eh well. It should suffice for a passing grade. I suppose hoping for more is graceless.

It's been snowing ever since I came home yesterday. Snow levels: rising! My hopes for a white Christmas: also rising! (Last year, about the only week of thaw we got all winter was the week around Christmas. Very funny.)

Speaking of Christmas, it's become fairly obvious that I won't manage to write Christmas cards this year. Sorry, folks! Next year.

Now, for all those creative projects that were put off or on hold in order to deal with the exams... augh, so many! Almost looks like hard work. And, of course, all those Christmas preparations.

Well, time to get started. ^^

So whose bright idea was it to put diygifts on LJ spotlight... IN THE LAST FEW DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS?

I don't know about you, but I am desperately trying to come up with cheap and easy but awesome DIY Christmas gift ideas throughout November and the first weeks of December, and will hopefully done with it by the fourth Advent Sunday.

Of course I am not - that is, mostly I am, but two people are not getting the awesome things I wish I had, and now I go and see this community. And they have various quite useful ideas of various kinds, I mean srsly. Yeees, I know I could have bought those Bath Bombs at LUSH. Or, you know, just bought a cute tote bag for my mom. But the DIY bit is actually quite important, not to mention so much cheaper

Meh.

Two weeks - even one week ago - I could really have used this.

Now I have lots of awesome ideas.
Tomorrow I must go to work. And clean the house some more (though the living-room is done already! Yay! Except for the tree. But in Communist Protestant Bergia you don't decorate your tree before Christmas Eve Eve anyway, so it's totally ok that the Tree is currently dripping snow in the hallway.

Seriously. When do you need gift ideas? A few weeks before Christmas so you can still put them into practice. When are they too late? A few days before Christmas.

The one time that there's actually a worthwhile community on that stupid Spotlight function and it's too late.

Well, good for all the Japanese who celebrate New Year's anyway. :p

Eh well, at least now I have a lot of good ideas for next year.

So!
Even though it feels as though it's still February because WTF where has the year gone?, it has come to my attention that it is, in fact, mid-November.

Which means I should start thinking about Christmas, shouldn't I.
As per usual, I won't manage to do an advent calendar or anything of the sort, although this time I had an idea and next year I may bring it to fruition (in the unlikely case that I should have the time next year).
But, as in the past years, I am going to write cards! They are possibly (quite likely) going to be late, but still. Can't promise any greatly creative feats either, but getting cards is still fun, right?

So, who wants one? As per usual I am not going to check what each and every one of you chooses to believe in, so unless you specify otherwise, I am going to send a Christmas card. That said, I am also perfectly happy to wish you a happy Hanukkah, Yule, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Turn-of-year, Emperor's Birthday, Hogswatch or whatever else you like. I just need to be told.

Comments on this post are screened, so you can leave your address there. If you don't feel comfortable with that, you can also e-mail me at lyraforeniel (ät) hotmail (dot) com. If I sent you a card last year and your address hasn't changed since then, I'll still have it, so all you'd have to do is give a shout-out that you'd like to have a card again.

So here we go!

The family arrived earlier than planned yesterday so there was no time to leave a Merry Christmas post...
but better late than never:

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas [or whatever else you choose to celebrate] with lots of cheer, love and light!


Our tiny Christmas tree, with my last-minute pottered créche
and all the presents my parents dropped off for later. Jeez, you could've
thought the entire clan was about to come and celebrate, rather than just
seven people!

To be entirely honest (if - doubtlessly - a bloody ingrate), the best - because thoughtful and not useful - gift I got was from my brother: The Folklore of Discworld by Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson. LOVE. Lots of shiny, wise, folklory love inna red dust jacket.
There were some excellent "useful" things, but really I'm a big child and need some senseless, enjoyable fun with my Christmas, no matter how much I can use a new coat or warm socks or money for a dishwasher.
(Husband's-brother's-wife - of all people! - actually came in a close second, with books on wild herbs and fruit and how to collect, store and use them: Thoughtful and appropriate, AND useful without being un-fun.)

Anyway.

Went to the midnightly Christmas service in Altenberg (which has a huge and rather pretty and surprisingly light cathedral), which may well be turned into a new family tradition if I get my say. It was amazing, nicely choreographed, almost medievalish, Catholic (my first ever Catholic Christmas service; I am Lutheran, remember) and... full. Insanely full, considering the nightly hour and that Altenberg is out of the way of everything, really. Various people brought chairs of their own; we hadn't, so we had to stand through the full one-and-a-half hour ceremony.
And yet, enjoyable. Heck, guys, I am a LARPer (AND a student of Cultural Anthropology). I swear church services are really exciting when you know a thing or two about historical rhetorics and ritualology (if that word even exists). So much to analyse! And to be frank, I have yet to see a decent LARP ritual that's fit to hold a candle (hah!) to a proper high mass. Sometimes the difference between acting and acting out can be decisive. And I just like proper shared rituals and ceremonies. As the abovementioned shiny, wise book so beautifully puts it, Legends don't have to make sense. They just have to be beautiful. Or at least interesting.

- But this comes across damn defensive. And I don't really know why I should feel the need to grow all defensive, except I recently had to hear that someone was actually disappointed in me because yes, sometimes I actually enjoy going to church, so now I always feel the need to tag a little "and this is why" onto it. But let's keep the thoughtspam on Faith And Ritual for some other time.

Anyway.

I had meant to make a nice Christmas card for this LJ, as usual. Plans centered on either an illuminated Middle English Christmas lyric or a decorated syntactic tree for "We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year". No time for the former, and my syntax skills are too shaky even for the latter (disgraceful, I know).

So have photos of cats instead.

( Lo and behold, it's a kittenspam! )

Right! Off to the next feast.

Good grief, only two and a half weeks left. Aaaaaah!

I got the first Christmas cards today - thank you so much, nimielle and etoilepb!
(I did not yet dare to check whether there really is a cocoa bag in there, nimielle. There is, isn't there? :D)

Speaking of cards (and this goes to all of you): If you'd like one from me and haven't signed up yet, here's where you can do so. As stated there, please let me know your holiday of choice if it's not Christmas, because I'll gladly wish you a happy Whatever It Is You Celebrate At The End Of The Year but I fail at keeping track of just what people celebrate. Sorry!

Do NOT leave your address in the comments to this here post, please, because unlike in the linked post, comments here are NOT screened.

- - -
In other news, I had a kind of minor lumbago* yesterday (while on the toilet, too, which is a great place to temporarily think that you won't be able to move, like, ever again). I AM TOO YOUNG FOR THAT SHIT. I mean, a lumbago at 25? If I had no back muscles at all, perhaps, but I'm not that out of shape!
By now the unbearable jabbing sensation whenever I move has kind of given way to a constant annoying but bearable pain, so I can walk around and do stuff as long as I don't exaggerate. This is the "minor" part.

Also have a majorly sore throat and suspect it may actually have been the violent coughing that caused the bloody lumbago in the first place. It certainly caused the strained ribs. (Strained ribs from coughing, wtf.)
Why is this happening? I feel so betrayed. I am the woman of the notoriously iron health. I DO NOT DO SERIOUS ILLNESS. Let's remember that, body, ok?

Have a presentation to do tomorrow. Hoh joy.

- - -
*The German term, "Hexenschuss" or "Albschuss" is way more fun. It means "witch's shot" or "elf shot" because apparently in the olden days people thought the pain came from some kind of invisible arrow (which is precisely what it feels like, so there). BLOODY ELVES.² I didn't think my fanfiction was that bad.

²Actually in that book on Anglo-Saxon Magic that I copied in the university library there was a ritual against elf-shot, so the English apparently used the same term until they started stealing words from the Latin.