oloriel | Entries tagged with rambling

This night, I dreamt that I was driving the kids home, but we couldn't use the usual road, so I had to take exceedingly long deviations that all ended at another road block because of yet another mudslide or yet another damaged bridge. In the end, the latest deviation took us down to what looked like the seashore (although my rational mind decided that it must be the Great Dhünn reservoir because we don't have any seas around here), and the road along the shore was flooded, but there were cars going in front of me and I just anted to get home at last, so I figured it would be alright, and then suddenly the road broke away and we were underwater and, presumably, drowned, because that's when I woke up.

My region isn't actually that badly affected by the torrential rains and floods, although curiously some uphill suburbs have been affected (more than, say, downtown Cologne which is right along the River Rhine). Maybe those marsh areas were there for a reason and the city shouldn't have declassified them for building? Just a thought. The bridges down in the valley have, for the most part, been damaged (some have been clean swept away O.ó), but those are pedestrian bridges. On Sunday we did have to take a detour because one of the road bridges was blocked, and I expect that's where the dream took its inspiration from, but we didn't have to drive through actually flooded streets at any point.

Well, very briefly, while we were in Normandy. The rainstorm that later devastated parts of Belgium, the Netherlands and central Germany parked its ugly ass there first, probably to soak up some more sea water, but it also rained on us the first two days of our stay before it moved on north-east, leading to some flooded streets while the sewerage tried to catch up. BUT all water will eventually follow the call of gravity down into the adjacent sea, there's a reason why the towns and villages and fields sur mer are all raised above the roads, the fields can hold a lot of water if they have to, and it's a sparsely settled, rural region (Bayeux, the largest town, has one third of the inhabitants of my (small!) home town). Back home, more and more free fields (even the marshy ones) are getting sealed and built on, and that means that the water has nowhere to go. Which doesn't make the losses any less awful, but many of them are the results of decades of mismanagement and turning a blind eye on a) pre-existing weather conditions (WHY DO YOU THINK IT WAS A MARSH) and b) exciting new desasters brought to you by humanity.

It is also a problem when people still think that actively taking measures against the consequences of climate change is defeatism (or too expensive). Awareness and self-flagellation alone will not save us. Do we need to lower our CO₂ emissions? For sure. Do we need to invest in flood and heat protection etc. to deal with the damage that cannot be reversed anymore? Damn it, yes!

Some people complained that the reservoirs were "too full" even before the rainstorm, but after last summer was so arid, you can't be surprised when reservoir management holds on to every single drop of water. Now they overflowed (or in some cases dams were opened to let the water go in a controlled manner), which I understand is shitty for already soaked places downstream, but let's be honest, if the dam bursts, that's even shittier.

(By not entirely coincidence, climate change and the extreme/unpredictable weather conditions that result from it were the last topic I covered with my 10th graders in geography before they left school for good. I couldn't have asked for a better demonstration, but somehow I can't be pleased.)

Anyway. It has been A Summer.

As it was, the dream wasn't really about the flood, of course. My final exam is now just a month away and I haven't gotten nearly the amount of prep work done for it that I wanted. In part, this is to blame on going to Normandy for a week, Erfurt for two days and the Black Forest for a long weekend. You're never away just the time you're travelling, there's also the packing and other preparations. All of these trips were much-needed breaks, but they did take away from my prep time. In between, a week was spent on restauring our wastewater wetland (NOT as a result of the rains, but because the rhizomes of the reeds were starting to push out the gravel after 10 years of growing), which also required my help and again tore me out of the core curricula and school laws brainspace. It doesn't help that the stuff I have to write is thoroughly boring and redundant, and I have to try and make it less redundant while still satisfying all the formal requirements, which may be an impossible task. And next week the new term will start, so all the remaining work will have to be juggled alongside regular school work. Joy.
It all adds up to, I guess, dreams about drowning.

The problem with such dreams is that the sense of doom and despair stays with me for hours after waking up, even when the whole thing has been safely identified as a dream, and I need to actively think myself back into the dream (which, for obvious reasons, I Do Not Want) and mentally continue the storyline in a way that leads to a safe ending just to exorcise the damned thing.

Meh.

Crossposts: https://oloriel.livejournal.com/598906.html

... and I've admired the super-organised (neatly handwritten or printed! in a nice folder/kit! like these lovely kits you see on studyblr!) displays of other people's Bingo preparations. They're making me feel sadly lazy and inadequate. (Let's not even mention that I'm no longer entirely certain that I remember what cards I've claimed! I hope I'm not forgetting anything major that I typed into that Google document and then deleted from memory.) I've just got a lazy digital folder on my computer in which I've saved the cards (a week after claiming them, which is why I don't remember for certain whether they're all the ones I claimed >_>) and the stamps, and also a document. The document contains a table in which I've listed all prompts by Bingo number and card, and tentatively wrote down an idea if I already had one. It's not even in Excel! It's a plain dumb Word (well LibreOffice Writer, same difference) document. That is because I am (despite only using digital media for this) not actually tech savvy. I'm just lazy.

Still, in case anyone else is intimidated by the neat and efficient kits, here is Lyra's Lazy B2MeM Track-keeping Method (which is more or less an adapted version of Lyra's Lazy Thesis Writing Method). Maybe it'll help someone who is new to this and knows they won't manage to prepare (let alone maintain) a neat analogue folder...

( Pics under the cut )

It will be interesting to see whether I'll manage to actually participate much at all. The school year is hotting up and we all got additional duties on top of our regular teaching, due to stupid ~quality management~ stuff. I've got to help knit a new inclusion/diversity concept (basically, What are we already doing at our school to help students with special needs? What else do we need to do? What can we do better? And Who is to blame? Which is exactly the job you'd assign to a rookie with half a year of experience at this particular school AND with teaching in general, haha. I'm part of a team so I don't have to do it all by myself, but it's still... challenging. Plus working on a different group for the educational concept, which I'm also totally predestined to help develop... not). Just regular teaching is challenging enough! And the next holidays are still over a month away! ;_;

But that's a different ramble for a different post (that probably won't happen)...

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: https://oloriel.livejournal.com/588286.html

I have a fat nasty blister in the palm of my right hand (of all stupid places!) so I can't keep on digging. And besides, it's finally a rainy day! Time to sort through the pictures of the past month and, instead of digging in the garden... picspamming about the garden, yay!

Some before/after shots of the ~~complete and utter chaos~~ veggie garden at the beginning of July, and at the beginning of August, after a month of drought. (Note that our region at least had a very fine spring; others are less lucky...)

It's not supposed to look like that! The beans in particular are a shocker. I specifically chose a type of runner bean that "brings good yield even in wet summers" because summers in our region are typically wet. Of course, they didn't like this summer at all. That's what I get for making rational decisions when buying seeds! Usually I'm like "eee these beans are called Vermont Yellow Eye! like Vermont where

dawn_felagund lives! we can be sisters in beans!" or "lol these chickpeas are called Tulliola? MUST HAVE" and to be honest, neither of these irrational choices have disappointed me so far.

But let's focus on the postives and have some nice pics instead. Most of them were taken in early to mid-July, before it got so bad)...

( under the cut, though, to spare your f-lists! )

Current Mood: cheerful
Crossposts: https://oloriel.livejournal.com/583042.html

Now I've been home for a few days, I feel compelled to ramble about DF some more, so here goes.

Ever since I've become a mother, my LARPing has been reduced to a minimum. So, because I didn't want to get out of touch entirely and also because I love the planning, discussion and preparation almost more than the actual event, anyway, I volunteered for the "OOC council" of people who organise stuff for the Grey Camp behind the scenes in order to (say) have a tent for the library, decorations for the Grey shrine, and other stuff that will definitely be needed during DF but won't be there if nobody thinks of it beforehand. Most of the year, that just means asking around who will take care of what project, modding the forum, and meeting up with the rest of the council via Teamspeak once a month so we know what else is going on.

But as a member, I am also strongly encouraged to travel there in advance (DF officially starts on Wednesday, with check-in on Tuesday; the OOC builders and planners arrive on the preceding Saturday so everything is set up by Tuesday evening). In previous years, I didn't do that because family. This year, I figured that the kids (and their dad ;)) have to be able to cope without me for a couple of days. It was... frustrating. Most of the time I was just sitting around waiting for work to arrive. Then it would arrive all at once on the last day. So it felt like two days wasted and one day stressful in spite of my early arrival. Adding the heat (the team who built our camp gate and pallisade worked through the nights because the days were too hot to do heavy lifting and screwing shit together under the merciless sun) and I was sick and tired of DF by the time my family arrived (late, because the trailer we'd rented turned out to be damaged and some last-minute repairs were necessary, to make things worse).

Gaming is serious business!/A rare moment of filial harmony.

Because the Grey Camp miraculously won last year's Drachenfest, I had also agreed to organise a special event to honour the Grey virtues of Knowledge and Wisdom: a sort of IC quiz show. I found two other women willing to work with me, which was a good thing - I could have done it on my own, but of course it was more fun to have comrades-in-arms, not to mention that it all ran more smoothly because one of us could explain while another noted down the results etc. I found a location in the in-game town (which turned out to be perfect) and one of my comrades-in-arms donated the copper money required to rent it, etc. For the tasks, we prepared a couple of questions about DF history, magic, weaponry and so on, and also some hands-on challenges. For instance, participants had to name plants and their uses, or make knots, or identify animal tracks. They had to write down their answers on slate tablets that I had marked in their camp's colours. It was all very well organised! *pats own shoulder*

Fake roe tracks, fake thrush feeding site, actual dormouse gnaw marks

Still, I was absolutely terrified. I am pretty shy and hate having to appear in front of an audience. It was better while I was still at university and regularly had to do presentations, but I've completely grown out of the habit, so my old stage fright has come back with full force. (A/N it's going to be such fun standing in front of a class on a daily basis.) But once the audience had arrived, it just... worked. I babbled too much (we generally talked too much, but then, we are Grey and always want to explain and teach things :P) but didn't freeze up or stammer. We had to improvise a few times and eventually dropped four tasks because we were taking too long, but otherwise, it was good. We got some praise both for our preparations and for the execution, so I am tempted to believe that it actually went well, and tentatively hoping that my teaching experience might go like this, too. :P

There was just one unfortunate development: our Grey Avatar appeared during the show (that wasn't the unfortunate thing), expressed her supreme approval, and invited us to see her later. But then, whenever we tried to visit her, she was busy or absent or otherwise engaged. Personally, I didn't mind - I'm a bit in awe of our Avatar persona; she's one of those tall, perfectly poised, immaculately made-up people (even in the heat!) I find intimidating, so the less occasion I have to make a fool of myself, the better! I just didn't want to be reprimanded for NOT following the invitation - but the eldest of our trio took it very hard. When ultimately it transpired that our meeting wouldn't happen (because it was only five minutes to the closing ceremony), she actually started crying from disappointment. She's my mom's age! On the one hand, it's sort of encouraging that even 60-year-olds can get so immersed in the game; on the other hand, the older people are, the more I feel that they need to remember that it's ultimately just a game, and that the Avatar is not actually an omnipotent being but a very human volunteer who also occasionally needs to pee, eat or *gasp* rest. Also DF days only have 24 hours and a LOT happening in them. But she was as disappointed as if the Avatar had singled her out to ignore her. It had been a tough DF for her, anyway; during the first night, she had fallen over - or been pushed over - in one of the port-a-potties, no doubt a traumatising experience, and our Contest Of Knowledge had been a bit of an escape for her. So that was unfortunate.
Meanwhile, I got the added bonus of finally - after twelve years of attending Drachenfest! - making an in-character visit to the Green camp. A long and complicated history between Green and Grey, but this year we were allies. And whether or not our camps like each other, Green is a spectacularly well-organised and pretty camp. Their garden! I wish I'd had more time to explore that and talk to their head gardener (who was absent while I was there - but the notes he left all over the gardens were HILARIOUS).

View across the field (and surroundings) from the in-game town

I already mentioned the heat. A local ice cream truck drove up to the field every day and, despite working in slo-mo, the ice cream guy can probably close his shop for the rest of the year. Every day, people would queue for his ice cream. (To be fair, it was very good ice cream. there was a soft ice stand in the "town" market which didn't get nearly as much business because it wasn't nearly as good.) Miraculously, the organisers managed to convince the authorities that 3000 LARPers are very responsible people, so we were allowed to run cooking fires throughout the event in spite of the highest forest fire risk level. (Nobody set the surrounding woods on fire, so the organisers seem to have been right.) Of course, temperatures of nearly 40°C meant that there were a lot less battles going on than there usually are. For our camp, it was not a particularly succesful year. We lost our banner early on Thursday morning and didn't get it back until the last second (and not by military action but by ritual, which only barely worked because we managed to get the required number of dragon eggs by Saturday noon. Last year we had more than 20 eggs - and a banner - by Saturday noon). Part of the problem was that during the second night, a crew from the Blue camp snuck into our camp and "blew up" (in-game) our library and other important institutions, so whatever energy we had went into "repairing" the damage and we had no manpower left for plots and competitions. (A lot of people in the Grey camp are very hard to motivate, and this year, due to the weather, it was even harder; those who always do a lot of work partially suffered from heat stroke or else were involved in putting the library and garden and scriptorium back together.) Our allied camps were very far away so by the time they arrived to help, less friendly camps had already taken advantage of the situation. -- The Blue camp won both the final battle and the Drachenfest. OOC, I'm very happy with that. Grey and Blue were close friends for a long time, and although the in-game politics have changed, I'm still very fond of a lot of people in Blue. In-game, we supported Green (who supported us last year) who already won three times, so OOC I was hoping for a different victor. Blue only won once, and as they were still very much in their "no power for no one" phase at the time, they didn't really make much of the victory and it all ended in chaos. So it's going to be interesting to see what they make of it next year. IC, I'm very disappointed that Blue, after their dastardly attack on us, were rewarded with victory! XD

Some spectacular clouds... but still no rain

On the whole, I just wish that I hadn't felt so exhausted most of the time. LARP camping is always a special level of difficult, especially if you're running an institution (the garden) and a contest on the side AND have a family to look after - starting with packing and continuing with setting everything up, everyday camping life with looong walks to the toilet and cooking on fire and wearing a long dress (I reduced my garb to just the petticoats, a kirtle and apron, but it was still sweaty within seconds! - That reminds me of a funny scene! I ran across a guy I know from Ring*Con and other events, but because he was only wearing a simple long undershirt, I was convinced it couldn't be him! He always wears such elaborate garb usually! But it was him. Even he succumbed to the heat.). Making do with whatever we thought of bringing along (and, naturally, realising what we forgot)... and finally, packing everything up again. And then cleaning and tidying it up at home. The kids were constantly fighting each other - they do that at home too, but we can send them to separate rooms when it happens! But we only had the one tent! Ugh! Such a bother. So a huge part of me keeps saying "That's it, no more garden, no more DF until the kids are old enough to go to their own summer camps or stay with granny - or join the Reman* army or the Rangers of Ithílien." But another part of me is already making plans for next year! TBH, I enjoy the preparations more than the actual event. I'll see how I can reconcile these two voices.

But! Since we were camping, we managed to observe the whole lunar eclipse on Friday night! (It was the night preceding the final battle so that was quite a spectacular omen, thank you very much, moon!) We had no idea that it was happening, being cut off from the news, but we certainly noticed. The previous night, we had shown Felix the evenstar and explained that it was actually a planet, and then I had discovered another planet in the sky when he was already in bed. But I had told him about it, and as we went up to the "town" because they've got the nicer toilets, I saw Mars rising above the treeline.... but still no moon? No wait, there's the moon! But it's... very dark. Mars was way brighter than the moon. The moon was way redder than Mars. This Is Not Normal. Felix, I think we're witnessing a lunar eclipse! - He was super excited about that (no wonder, it was quite impressive). Down in our campsite, the moon was still hidden behind the trees, but as it rose higher, the earth shadow just began to release it and we watched until it was a fat, brilliant full moon again.
So that was excellent.

Blurry moon pics, all taken within half an hour of each other.

On the whole, was it worth the effort? Probably. Was it good for me to challenge myself? Most definitely. Was it good to be among fellow nerds? Heck yes. But do I wish I could just have weathered the heat at home? Yeeeeah.

- - -
*like Romans, but Remus won.

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: https://oloriel.livejournal.com/582661.html

Having rambled at length about the greenhouse, I feel compelled to ramble about the garden a bit, because it's been a long time since I've done that and I don't want this journal to fall completely silent.

Besides, there's so much to ramble about. It's been a good gardening year so far. In the past years, we generally had a false spring in March, and then another cold period in April and May. This time, March was cold - uncommonly cold, in fact, with several weeks of severe (for our region) sub-zero temperatures for several days, and April started out just as icy, but when Spring finally came, it came and stayed. This was a bit difficult because processes that usually take place across one and a half months were now rolled up in two weeks, but on the plus side, no trees blossomed only to freeze a few days later. Sure, it all started later than normal... but it caught up.

Mid-May to Mid-June. The incredibly stable scaffolds are meant to provide the pumpkin plants with an opportunity for growth. The wooden frames (no longer visible in the second pic) in theory enable me to twice the number of potatoes that would normally be possible on a patch that size. You can add another frame whenever the plants grow out of the earth (as often as geometry and your arm length allow).

Brussels sprouts look ridiculous when they're going to seed. (OK they always look ridiculous.)

The kids are getting into mischief and snacking on the first ripe currants.

In theory, this is the patch for herbs and medicinal plants. In practice, I'll probably have to move them because I need more veggie patches. Garden planning is four-dimensional...

I keep trying to grow broad beans because they're such a classic, but they're not doing particularly well in my garden. The leafy goosefoot is finally doing well though. (What an ugly name. In German, it's called strawberry spinach, which describes it a lot better, because it's like... a spinach plant that grows red berries?) For years, I treated it as a weed until I read somewhere that it was an old vegetable plant, and then I tried to get it to grow again and it was sulking. But last year I got a few plants to grow and ripen, and their offspring clearly feels welcome again.

Yeah, you know what plants have coped really well with this year's Himring winter? Figs. Szechuan pepper. The mulberry tree.
You know what hasn't? Leeks. Beetroots. Most cabbages. The irony is not lost on me.

In case you were wondering, I keep my crops mixed on purpose. Firstly, because I don't have much space and if I used every patch for a monoculture, I wouldn't be able to grow half the stuff I want to grow. Second, because a lot of plants actually influence each other in positive ways, either because they use completely different nutrients or use space differently or exude hormones that the other plants need or discourage various pests. Mind you, there are also plants that vage war on each other. Onions don't do well next to (or right after) legumes, for instance. I have made a long and clever list (not my own research! I'm relying on the work of the Benedictine nuns in Fulda, because they've got the time for this kind of stuff) of good patch partners and bad patch partners and necessary crop rotations. But there are always surprises that the good nuns haven't listed. Probably because they work more tidily than yours truly and don't accidentally leave potatoes in the soil in autumn ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I love my heritage peas. It is completely beyond me why people ever thought it was necessary to breed edible peas with boring white flowers, and inedible sweetpeas with lovely colourful flowers. Get you a plant that can do both!

Potato pyramids. As you can see, the wooden frames are by now completely covered in potato foliage.

The beans are coming along OK (they only germinated two weeks ago). The beetroots are more interested in growing foliage and flowering than making nice round bulbs this year. Pffff.

Chickpeas and amaranth, because sometimes I am an experimental gardener (TM). Visible in the back: two nectarines that started growing in the compost a few years ago. I put them into the regular garden with no protection other than the wall behind them, and they've been dealing with our harsh (TM) climate just fine so far. Sometimes I suspect that a lot of plants are a lot more versatile than agricultural lore lets on.

Yeah, I grow some cereal on my tiny patches. It started as an accident (some oats started growing after I used horse droppings as manure; some barley and buckwheat started growing around the bird feeding station. Yeah, I know buckwheat isn't a cereal, but it's used like one, so whatever), but now I'm doing it on purpose. It's not enough for any serious kind of use, but it's fun and decorative and I can waste my gardening space in whatever manner I see fit, so there!

As you can see, not all of my patches are doing so well.

Being done with the currants, the kids are now looking for woodland strawberries. - I'm still super proud of what I did with what once used to be a grassy slope that was next to impossible to mow. No more lawn-mowing necessary on the perennial patch! Take that! (And yeah, we still have to restore those stairs... and the wall.)

The kids didn't want to wait until Drachenfest to go camping, so we pitched the tent in the backyard. Why sleep in your bed when you can sleep on the lawn? (To be fair, during the hot past weeks, the night air was a lot more pleasant in the tent than it was in our living room. And we were treated to an absolutely spectacular light show when the heat and humidity finally exploded in a nightly thunderstorm!)

- - -

There, wasn't that fun! For me. Hurr hurr.

In other news, I'll be teaching ten hours of English and four hours of Geography at the Secondary School after the summer holidays. Pretty sure this was the right decision. It's only half the classes (and thus, half the money) I would've done at the Elementary School, but let's be honest, the latter would probably have been five times the stress at only twice the pay. So it's probably the right decision. (Feeling guilty on behalf of the children at the Elementary School though. Damn it.)

Current Mood: calm
Crossposts: https://oloriel.livejournal.com/582347.html

I accidentally ended up tutoring the daughter of a friend of my husband in Latin. Originally, Jörg had been helping her with chemistry and maths, and then it turned out that she had trouble in Latin, too. Jörg decided that this was a job for me, the language specialist. (This is funny because he took 9 years of Latin in school, and finished it with the German equivalent of A+.) "But your linguistic intuition is better!" ... Not in Latin, love!

Anyway, I met up with her and we translated a bit of Caesar, and... I hardly dare to admit how much fun it was. Honestly. It was a joy. (For me. Probably not for the poor girl.) Three hours passed and I honestly thought it was one. Then we met again the other day and spent another two hours identifying verb forms and phrases. I came back totally psyched. Good grief. I just hope it'll help her. (She's got most of the theoretical knowledge, but forgets it as soon as she needs to put it into practice. It doesn't help that her last teacher allowed them to use an online dictionary and didn't keep them practicing declensions and memorising principal parts so she's got next to no practice in identifying these.) Her parents seem to hope that having practiced twice will be enough to save her grade, but honestly, right now she needs someone to regularly sit down with her and remind her to stay calm and look for the main verb and be mindful of cases and tenses. Which I wouldn't mind doing. We'll see.

- - -

In the light of our devastating financial situation, and because Jörg won't be able to work for another couple of months (or to be honest, at all in that company), I applied for teaching positions at various elementary schools in the next town over. (NOT for Latin. They're not teaching that in elementary. For English.)
Now, I am not actually qualified as a teacher, and I'm not all that certain that I'd be a good teacher, either (so many students at once! help!). But our federal state is currently so desperate for teachers that they've opened the field for people who studied anything vaguely related to the subject and have anything resembling teaching experience, so I figured I ought to try. (Also, I needed to show the husband that even I, the world's greatest procrastinatrix, could send out a couple of applications on short notice so he, the world's greatest getting-shit-done guy, should stop dragging his feet about writing his own.)

And I really hate writing applications. Halfway through the process, my brain starts going "oh you don't really want this anyway, so you can as well stop wasting your time" and ultimately I won't even know whether I do or don't want the job and which part is just my executive dysfunction raising its ugly head and which part is actual, reasonable thinking. Do I want to teach? Do I want to teach at THAT school? Can I, responsibly, impose my chaotic self on poor, innocent, helpless students? Can I fake being a functional adult human being in front of a classroom of troublemakers every day, every week? While actually getting them to know and understand stuff?
Oh well, they won't respond anyway.

Well, one of the five schools invited me for an interview. (They must be truly desperate. Which surprises me, because this is one of the nice schools. Maybe they're just inviting me for the sake of variety?) Partial success! I am not prepared for that! What do I do if they don't hire me after that? WHAT DO I DO IF THEY DO? What do I want? I am not ready! (Is anyone ever?)

The truth of the matter is, I really do enjoy teaching and knowledge. But can I handle 20+ kids (and their parents) at the same time? I have no clue.

EDIT: A second school called... HELP

Current Mood: nervous
Crossposts: https://oloriel.livejournal.com/581820.html

My grandfather passed away yesterday afternoon.

This is only partly true. My grandfather, the man I knew as my grandfather, all but disappeared about 15 years ago. Sometimes bits of him would resurface. Not always the good ones. He could be tyrannical, belligerent and terribly stubborn. But in his good moments, he was super-proud of having great-grandchildren. He enjoyed the same jokes he had loved earlier. He was fond of parodies of the classics. Ich sei, gewährt mir die Bitte/ in eurem Skatclub der Dritte. - Sieh da, sieh da, Timotheus,/ die Ibiche des Kranikus. - Er zählt die Häupter seiner Lieben/ und sieh, es sind statt sechse sieben. - O tempora, o Moritz. That was the kind of humour he thrived on. He loved Loriot and Heinz Erhardt. Back when Jörg was introduced to him and he asked where Jörg worked, his reaction to the place - Essen-Kupferdreh - was "Oh, the part of Essen that's named after three animals! Kuh, Pferd, Reh!" He loved puns and malapropisms. In his bright moments, he read newspapers and discussed what he read in them with his sons. He was opinionated, and discussing things with him was never fun even if you agreed. But in those moments, he knew what he was saying and what was going on.

In his less bright, but still lucid moments, he wished for death. He always dreaded fading into dementia, loosing his sense of place and self and the present, and that was exactly what was happening to him; and when he noticed, he said that he hoped he would be allowed to leave this world soon.
He was thoroughly Catholic, so he was waiting for permission to leave. Those were his words. "Allowed to leave this world". "Get called home". All of his friends had gone before him, his wives had gone before him, and his siblings, too.

In his bright moments, he was nonetheless proud to have reached the age of 91 and become a great-grandfather. "Due to a kindly field surgeon," he said once - when he was already living at a nursery home because he was a danger to himself and others at home - and then, a story emerged that he had never told before. Grandpa never talked about the war, never told us stories from his youth or young adulthood, and he had never told his sons - my father and his two brothers - either. We all knew that he detested uniforms. He detested them so much that his sons weren't allowed to join the Boy Scouts, who were a big deal in their home town in their youth in the 60s. It even took my grandmother's intercession so they were at least allowed to serve as altar boys, whose red and white embroidered frocks are really as far away from any kind of 3rd Reich uniform as you can possibly get. He was an accountant, scrupulously strict, both at the workplace and at home. More than once, he must have made my grandmother cry because she had spent a few Marks somewhere and no longer knew where or what for. It wasn't about the money, it was about not knowing where it had gone. - My father will inherit less than his brothers because, due to taking his A-levels and studying medicine instead of starting training on the job, he was dependent on his parents' money for longer. A matter of principle. In the late 90s or early 00s, my grandfather bought stock shares that duly lost much of their value, and he refused to sell them and salvage what was left of the money until they had AT THE LEAST! reached their original value again. (Needless to say, they never did.) He loved classical music and had an impressive collection of CDs, and he would never listen to the same CD twice until he had listened to every other CD. I don't know whether he thought the other CDs would be jealous if they didn't all have their turn before there was a second go. But that was the sort of principle he was obsessed with.

Anyway, when Grandpa's memory went and he forgot that he didn't talk about the war, a story emerged how he had been shot through the buttocks, somewhere on the Eastern front, and a kindly medic declared him Too Ill For Transport. He missed the transport ship that his bataillon had been scheduled for, and while he was still in hospital, they heard the news that the ship had been sunk by a Soviet submarine. It was a famous ship, too, but I forgot the name. In that moment, he clearly felt that his existence now, at the age of 91, was his personal victory over the misfortunes of war. He was later taken into war captivity by the Red Army, something else that many didn't survive. He still knew the name of the town in Thuringia where it happened.
Then he regretted that it would be too hard to go there, to see what it looks like today, because of the border to the GDR.
...
Then a moment later he would talk about his expectations for the upcoming election and how it was likely that there would be another Grand Coalition, and he was in the present again, and in the mind that Did Not Talk About The War.

He was not a great man, the sort where you read the obituary and think "Wow, I wish I could have known this person". He was a doting grandfather, but he was also bossy and stubborn and selfish. I already mentioned that he drove my grandmother (who died of cancer when I was 11) to tears over the household accounts. He also drove my aunt, the wife of his middle son, to tears because she wouldn't cook the soup exactly in the way that his mother, or maybe my grandmother, did it - all the greens in huge chunks so you could easily fish out the bits you didn't like, and there had to be cauliflower in it. She had chopped up all the veggies nicely, like civilised folk do. It must have been a terrible drama. (I did not witness any of it, btw; they happened off-stage and while I was very young or before I was born.) My mother was spared from this fate because she was never an enthusiastic cook and gladly left this job to my father, who of course knew how to make soup the Only True Way.
After my grandmother died, Grandpa eventually married again, a woman he met on a bus journey, who was so comically subservient and overattentive that my cousins, my brother and I couldn't help making fun of it, but it wasn't really a joking matter. I'm sure they loved each other, but they were not good for each other; he would've needed someone who took no shit and didn't do every little thing for him. But they were happy, apparently, until she fell prey to Alzheimer's and rapidly deteriorated until she died, about 15 years ago.

My grandfather, too, deteriorated, but in his case it happened slowly, bit by bit. He was aware of it and hated it. He wanted to be "called home". He found it hard to live alone, or even alone and supported by a domestic nursing service and cleaning lady. At the same time, he refused to move to assisted accomodation or a retirement home because "there's only old people there". When he was finally convinced to try out assisted living, he drew back because "nobody's talking to me". So he stayed in his house until a few years ago, when he started to walk out at night and leave the door open and smashed furniture and it was clear that he couldn't stay unsupervised, nor in a regular old people's home. He moved into a nursing home close to his youngest son, whose relationship to his father was the least strained at the time. We visited once or twice a year, and generally saw each other for his birthday and Christmas. He was, as I said, very proud to have great-grandchildren, although he never managed to learn their names. But he observed how Julian looked just like my brother as a baby, while Felix had a completely different face (he takes after Jörg). The picture on the door of his room, where all the patients get to choose an individual photo, was one of my boys.

We knew that it was going to happen one of these days. In January, shortly before my father's birthday, he had a flare of confused aggression and demolished his room at the nursing home. They tried to adjust his meds, but he only grew more and more confused. He spent most of the day sleeping - which at least made him less dangerous to himself and others. Initially, he still noticed and sometimes recognised my father or his brothers when they visited (or knew it was one of his sons, anyway); then he noticed that someone was visiting, but not who. "We can only hope", my father said, and I didn't dare ask whether he meant hope for a miracle or hope for the end. Anyway, the end has come, and I'm almost surprised that I am crying.
Because the truth is, we didn't really have much to do with each other anymore, and what relationship there was, was purely based on duty, because family ties. Not the happy kind of family ties. My father's brothers, who saw him more often, were stressed out every time.

BUT of course I never said goodbye when he began to drift into dementia. It was a progress, and as such, kept on going on. Now that he has died, it has stopped; and so I have to confront the long, slow farewell. I cried when I got the news, and Jörg observed that it seemed to really shake me. But it is not the devastating sense of loss that I felt when either of my grandmothers died. It's just the finality that hurts. Saying goodbye always hurts. Telling Felix will hurt, not because he was any closer to Grandpa than the rest of us, but because of what it is. (Julian, who was still awake when I got the call, just asked: "So Great-grandpa is not in hospital anymore?" That's one way of putting it, sweetie.) But beyond that hurt, there is relief rather than grief. When Grandpa said that he wanted to leave this world, we would always dutifully go "Aww, don't say that", but I know that I secretly thought, and I suspect that his sons also secretly felt, that he was right. He did not enjoy most of the past (at least) ten years and outright hated much of them.

So now he was, at last, "called home". Whether that's upstairs or downstairs, well, that's fortunately not for me to figure out.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Crossposts: https://oloriel.livejournal.com/581011.html

...which is very sad indeed, I find myself nonetheless sidetracked into a ramble by obits like this:

coming from actual accomplished writers (TM).

If a fellow fan says something like this, my inner reaction is something along the lines of "Yeah, me too, pity there never was a reading/convention near us, or we didn't have the money or time to attend" or something like that. Because sure. As a lowly civilian (i.e. reader), you can't easily meet a big name writer. Legit.

But when it comes from someone who is basically a colleague of the deceased, it feels somehow different and I just want to roll my eyes and go "Well, why didn't you?"
I mean, I'm aware that they don't all hang out in some kind of hip Famour Writers club where everyone is friends with everyone. But if someone like Diane Duane or N.K. Jemisin wanted to meet up Ursula K. LeGuin, I'd think that until a few days ago, it would probably have been possible to, you know, arrange a meeting. Have their agents call her agent. Organise a joint reading or something. Or just meet up for cupcakes and tea and talk shop. You know what I mean.

So when I read "I would have loved to meet her" from, IDK, earthseafan1977 or someone, it feels sincere and sad; but when I read it from someone who (according to my doubtlessly unfair brain) could have accomplished that relatively easily, it causes raised eyebrows.

I have to consciously step back and remind myself that this is not fair. There are probably a dozen good reasons why it never went beyond "I would like to meet her some day". For starters, you rarely actively consider the mortality of someone you admire until it's too late. I wasn't aware that LeGuin was only two years younger than my grandmother, either - she always came across much younger in interviews, or when she accepted that National Book Foundation lifetime achievement award. People like that feel timeless, as if they're going to stay with us forever. So you're not actually aware that time will at some point run out and you should be making that appointment now rather than in five years' time. Sure. It happens. Lots of people never had that conversation about life, the universe and everything with their grandparents that they always meant to have. That may have happened.
Or even accomplished writers (TM) might feel starstruck, and not dare to approach someone who has had such an impact on the genre. In the same way that newbie fanfic writers wouldn't dare to approach what they perceive as a BNF, maybe these writers also felt beneath notice, and would never have considered themselves equals to LeGuin. Or they were terrified that the Grande Dame would have said something along the lines of "Sure, let's meet and discuss your books! You know, I felt that they left a lot to be desired." The anguish! Better not risk it.

In conclusion, of course writers are people, and life happens to them in the same way that it happens to readers. Which is a good thing to be aware of. But I did need to actively make myself aware of it. Because my first reaction was, nonetheless, "Yeah right, then why didn't you!"

Bad Lyra.
(Sad Lyra.)

Current Mood: contemplative
Crossposts: https://oloriel.livejournal.com/580287.html

I made a fanmix for the SWG's 40th publication anniversary celebrations (am I ever going to stop pimping this? PROBABLY NOT) but couldn't get Spotify to work for me until yesterday, so now I'm super duper late to the party (though not as late as I am for the Beren & Lúthien famix, haha). Is that going to stop me from spamming your f-lists with it? Obviously not! Here are 40 (of course) tracks I chose especially because they more or less cover the plot of the Silmarillion, from the Ainulindalë to the Rings of Power and from the 1970s until now. (I tried to find songs that fit the actual contributions, but that turned out to be too hard.)

And because this is LJ (or DW, respectively) and I can do long rambly posts here, I will TALK about my egregious choices, too!

( So here's a cut to preserve your sanity )

And there we are. "Here ends the SILMARILLION. If it has passed from the high and the beautiful to cheesy ballads and inane pop titles, that was of old the fate of Arda Marred."

Hope you have fun with my eclectic and occasionally questionable taste in music!

Current Mood: cheerful
Crossposts: https://oloriel.livejournal.com/578182.html

Sooo it has been brought to my attention that I should have posted this here as well as on the Tumblesite, which I should have realised by myself but didn't. Since I am reasonably pleased with this one for a change, I'll gladly use this chance to repeat my ramble. Better late than never, I guess.

Because this time, I can actually do a walkthrough of the Artistic Process (TM)! Usually, I paint in A4 and only do one scan of the lineart and one scan of the finished thing because I am teh lazy. This time I painted on A3 paper to have enough space for everything, which meant I couldn’t scan it at all. But I was so terrified of messing the whole epic thing up that I took photos of it after every major step. (How I would have gotten these grainy shots back onto A3 paper in order to try again is a puzzle I would have tried to solve if I’d had to. Fortunately, I didn’t.)

So I shall ramble you through How Lyra Paints Stuff... now.

( Click if you dare! )

Current Mood: accomplished
Crossposts: https://oloriel.livejournal.com/577255.html

... man, I go on vacation for a week and the world goes completely mad. I expected some of it (but not this much!) and thus stayed away from the news in my happy little Alpine valley, but coming back and catching up isn't fun either when there's such a clusterfuck to catch up with. Boo.

But the holiday, on the whole, was nice! As nice as travelling by bus (= twice the time) and with a group of senior citizens (I know, I know, one day I will be like them and then I'll so regret my youthful arrogance) can be. Fortunately, aside from the journey and meals, it was more a family vacation with my parents, the mother-in-law and the kids (poor Jörg couldn't get off work and had to stay at home). To be honest, I hadn't particularly cared to go, but my parents so wanted to treat their grandchildren, and since Felix starts school this summer and then won't be able to take part in such a trip outside the school holidays, we went. And it was nice. I didn't get to do any skiing due to the kids, but I got to take some nice walks (and photos). I reanimated the old camera I'd bought in Japan for the purpose. I know my cell phone would have taken higher quality pictures, but getting pics from the cell phone to the computer is a bloody pain and I'm not gonna face it for 30+ pics, no way. So we'll all have to deal with the flaws of ten year old technology, oh woe.

( Picspam & rambling under the cut, as always )

Well, wasn't that fun! And now, to paraphrase JD from Srubs, I'm back to a world full of bad presidents, oaths and gonorrhea. URGH.

A pic a day is not feasible for me, but in order to keep posting, I'll try to do a picspam (or at least a single pic to ramble about?) per week. We'll see how that goes!

We've been having snow, on and off, all year (haha). That is, it's been snowing, then it's been staying for a day or two, then it's melted away, then it's been freezing, and then it started to snow again. No big cumulative masses of snow, just enough to delight the kids, powder the landscape and cause a couple of unnecessary accidents on the roads.

Today is another snow day. But as I've already posted several snow picspams in past years, I won't do one (now, anyway). Instead, have some pics of the cold spell that hit us last week. We weren't hit as badly as some other regions - never less than -10°C - but we've had some very pretty frost in the garden. Which is as good an excuse as any to show off my measly attempts at keeping a garden in the first place. ;)

( Here be lots of pics )

Things are looking very different today, all underneath a nice cover of snow (like so). But showing you snow wouldn't have allowed me to ramble about the garden so much. So yeah. Now I'll go fetch firewood because while it's warmer than last week, it's still pretty cold...

Current Mood: content

and the Advent season is upon us and soon the year will be over. Felix keeps asking why the year went so fast. I don't think I ever felt that years were going by too fast when I was that young. Birthdays were over too fast, yes. Vacations were over too fast. But years were endless things, and I would not for the life of me have dreamt of feeling in November that the year had gone by too fast. (After all, still a whole month until Christmas! We'll never get there!)

As "getting into the spirit" goes, I suppose this weekend was a good start. On Friday, I actually went to the cinema with my old Ring*Con pal Judith and a couple of friends. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. In 2D (bless) and English (double bless). Which I quite enjoyed, despite having to spend 50 minutes for finding a parking lot (Friday evening in Cologne, I should have known). It turned out not to matter, because the movie started half an hour late. Also, something had gone wrong with the booking so instead of sitting in the penultimate row, we sat in the second row. Maybe that was why a lot of the camera movements were too fast for my brain to parse.
( Potential spoilers, so tread with care )

On Sunday, Felix' Kindergarten had a stall on the tiny local Christmas market and I spent two hours helping to sell stuff. (After first having spent an hour searching for my parents. Oh well.) Personally, I think it showed that we only learned about the stall, like, three weeks prior to the fact (which was, in fact, when the decision was made) so there was no unifying theme to what we were selling. So people were maybe drawn closer by the large folded paper stars, and then discovered that there were no small paper decorations. Or they were attracted by the knitted plushies, and then found that we didn't have other knitted things. Or they saw the cuddly pillows and then saw that we didn't have other retro sewn things. In the two hours in which I was there, we made maybe a hundred bucks.
But as all the things we sold were donations, and the stall was free for charitable institutions, I suppose it was enough of a success to repeat it next year, with maybe a better plan and more time to prepare. At any rate, it gave me a reason to go to the very picturesque and sweet Christmas market in Lüttringhausen, where, in spite of growing up one village over, I had never been before.

After last week's temperatures moved around 10°C, this morning's -2,5°C came as a bit of a surprise and the car was completely frozen. Time to clear the barn enough to use it as a garage again. (At the moment, the driveway is full of firewood that has yet to be chopped.) I still haven't managed to prepare the garden for winter, there's still stuff that needs to be sown and beds to be covered and stuff. But, yeah. I had to do a lot of writing last week (not NaNo-related, alas, but money-related) so I couldn't use the mild weather. And I'll return to that writing now, too. No rest for the wicked...

Hope the 'mericuns (no-maj or otherwise ;)) had a good Thanksgiving weekend. Also hope you'll get your electional eff-ups figured out and sorted... :/

Current Mood: okay

As has become my wont, I've neglected my annoying mother blogger habits terribly. Julian is now in a very exciting stage of language acquisition (two-word phrases and a rapidly expanding proto-vocabulary) so I should be taking notes all the time, but the sad truth is - I don't, neither online nor offline.

Still, I'll try to sum up.
As I said, Julian's vocabulary is growing rapidly - he'll come up with new words every other day and surprise us all by suddenly naming things that were just generally called "da!" ("there") a few hours ago. He seems to be immensely satisfied that he can (sometimes) communicate succesfully; when we understand what he's trying to tell us, he'll shout "Ja!" ("yes") and bounce on the balls of his feet very empathically.
A lot of words, quite adorably, currently end in -ie, making them sound all sweetie and cutie: For example, "soppie" (Socke, sock), "jappie" (Jacke, jacket), "apsi" (Apfel, apple), "pitzie" (Pilz, mushroom, as well as pizza and pretzel), "tassie" (Tasse, cup), "nunie" (Nudeln, noodles), "matie" (tomato), "saufie" (Schaufel, shovel or Schaukel, swing), "nitie" (Knete, playdough) and "wassie" (Wasser, water). "Auch" (too) has become a very important word, as have "mit" (with = along with), "los" (let's go) and "weia" (weiter, go on).
He has come up with names for more than just Mama and Papa, especially "Ama" and "Apa" (Oma and Opa, i.e., grandma and grandpa, but also used for other grown-ups), "Fesie" (Felix), "Bitie" (Ingrid, apparently, who is also "Ama"), "Dursie" (my mother, Ursula, who is also "Ama"), "Mack" (Marc, Jörg's brother). So far, he doesn't consistently use one name for himself, although I think he means himself when saying either "Ujie" or "Mimi". But "Ujie" could also be my father (Ulrich = Uli). I called myself Mimi when I was small and it remained my childhood nickname, so that would be doubly adorable!
The red-haired doll both children love to play with is called "Maitie" while the other doll, Curry (or Carisa, as Felix has more prettily named her), is "Bebie". "Bebie" can also be any other child (baby). Mr. Darcy is "Dathie", but 'náro is just "Mow!"
In fact, most animals are "Mow!", unless they're "uff" (woof), "baaak" (quack), "pie" (peep) or "maah" (baa).
Favourite foods have a name: Aside from Apsi, Noonie, Matie and Pitzie, Julian is very fond of "nanie" (banana), "saf" (Saft, juice), "tie" (tea), "bok" (Brot, bread, as well as Prost, cheers), "Mais" (corn) and "yogga" (Yoghurt).
Recently, "bau" (build) has acquired the additional meaning of blau (blue). However, red or green often also end up being called "bau". The only other colour Julian consistently identifies is "gebb" (gelb, yellow).
"Auf" (up, on, open) is still an all-purpose preposition, and can also mean "light" (being switched either on or off) and window or door (being open or closed). However, closing a door or pulling the curtains is "zack" (wham or whoosh).

Cars and other things with wheels - "brrrr", "too-too" (choo-choo), "hup-hup" (honk-honk), "tüta" (Tatütata is the general onomatopoeic word for "ambulance siren" in German) - remain his main field of interest - on pictures as well as in playing. He's a very proficient bobby car driver - actually, Felix learned how to properly ride his bobby car from Julian, not the other way round! He also immediately understood how to use the balance bike Ingrid got him for Christmas, even though it's too tall for him. People already say that he'll need to join a junior racing team. :/
That said, he now also loves "buch" (book). He points at things he wants you to name, names everything he can say himself, and cheerfully tells each page "ba-bai" before turning it over.
When he wants to cross the road, he stops and says "hinks, echt, hinks" (links, rechts, links = left, right, left). He doesn't actually turn his head the right way, nor does he genuinely check for traffic, but he knows that it's something adults and big brothers do!

Because Felix so frequently speaks English, Julian has picked up some of that: He counts "fai, sis, sebbie, ey" (five, six, seven, eight) when going up or down the stairs (which he does, quite safely, on his own), he excitedly shouts "oh no!" and "oh yes", and when he has built something, it's a "taua" (tower). He says "look!" when he wants us to see something he's doing. Oh, and then there's "ba-bai"! Julian says "ba-bai" (bye-bye) - and waves in the most adorable manner. (Admittedly, "bye-bye" is a lot easier to pronounce than either "tschüs" or "auf Wiedersehen"!)
When he's annoyed, either for real or in play, he'll say "boah, [name]!" in a very reproachful tone (boah, Mama! boah, Fesie! boah, Maitie!). When he's really annoyed, he'll clench his eyes shut and shout "Weg!" (away!).
All fricatives are pronounced with the most adorable Fëanorian accent (i.e., a gentle lisp).
He's as stubborn as ~~his mother~~ ~~father~~ ~~brother~~ all of the above.
He'll be two at the end of the month! Good grief!

Felix is doing well. He appears to have recovered from the kindergarten experience. It was a noticeable development (including weird things, like suddenly being able to eat rice with sauce again - it sounds silly, but it really seems to be linked to the trouble in kindergarten, like he was lacking the "spoons" (...) to deal with mixed flavours in top of that.), a noticeable relaxation and change in behaviour (for the better!), so I am more certain than ever that it really was those teachers that caused a lot of the difficulties. It was definitely right to pull him out. He's got a place in the Montessori kindergarten in my birth town from August onwards. At the moment, we get to go there once a month to introduce him to the place, the kids etc. - it'll become more frequent as August draws closer. He seems to see it as some kind of test, so he really tries to show off while he's there and comes out completely exhausted after three hours. During these three hours, however, he completely wowed the teachers at the Montessori place. Even they couldn't believe that he's only four-going-on-five.
I know it sounds like I'm bragging but I'm honestly not. It's not fun when your kid intellectually behaves like he's in second or third grade, but socially and emotionally behaves like the four year old that he is. The kindergarten teachers are familiar with the problem and sympathetic (as well as saying that it's "typical for these bright kids"), but most other people are utterly unwilling to accept "fucking fours" behaviour from a boy whose favourite toys include MS Word and Excel, who can read and write in two languages (using correct orthography in both cases) and who constructs rather complex sentences (again, in two languages). Le sigh. I understand the difficulty; I find it difficult myself! But it's something that just has to be accepted, rather than questioned again and again.

But he is no longer as fragile as he was a month ago, and that shows not only in his general behaviour, but also in an increased willingness to compromise and cooperate.
His current obsession is streetlights. He has named several different forms of them and he knows exactly where every single on of them stands, both around our usual haunts and in places that he's only ever seen once. He also draws lots of pictures of streetlights, including details like the anchoring cables or the exact shape of the lampposts. The most important thing is colouring in the light, of course! He spends a lot of time thinking about which colour the light is and trying to reproduce that colour.
(So we've got an emotionally troubled, stubborn, rather bright child with a propensity for language and a fascination with artificial light. I SEE NO DANGER IN THAT WHATSOEVER.)
Unfortunately, he has inherited his father's teeth, so we had to pay two visits to the dentist in the past weeks to get his molars fixed. Being his sensitive self, the noise and sensation of the drill and suction thingy were probably far worse than the toothache, but at least it's over now. :(

And that's that! No, of course there's more to tell, but I don't have the time to write it all up now. Maybe later, maybe never, as usual. Meanwhile, have a picture of cute baby animals. In fact, have two!

This kid was born last Saturday on the sheep paddock across the road. It's visited our garden a couple of times since, because it's small enough (and curious enough) to squeeze through the fence...

The lambs standing up are triplets! To everyone's surprise, they were born without complications and without human ~~interference~~ help, swiftly and quietly in the night. The ewe is feeding all of them, too, which apparently is always a gamble even with twins, let alone triplets. I didn't even know that was possible. I'm in awe of that ewe, pun fully intended, haha.
The lamb that's lying down was born a day after the kid. It's not really recogniseable in the pic, but it's taller and sturdier than the triplets - no wonder! But they're SO ADORBSLE! The whole neighbourhood is in love.

And that really is that. Ba-bai!

Current Mood: busy

So I joined a group of pilgrims on Saturday.

OK, that sounds more spectacular than it was. It was a quicky pilgrimage (from Beyenburg to Cologne) and I only took part in one stage of it (the home stretch between my town and Altenberg cathedral). But it was on an actual real proper pilgrim's road. (If you follow it long enough, you get to Santiago de Compostela. If you don't stop there, you can get to Cap Finisterra. If you don't stop there, you get very wet.) It's for a sample article for a regional magazine about - who would have guessed - guided pilgrimages in this region. (I don't know about other places, but pilgrimages are currently quite hip in Germany, mostly thanks to a comedian walking to Santiago de Compostela a couple of years back. He wrote a book about it which has now been turned into a motion picture, starring, strangely enough, Somebody Else as the Comedian. Anyway, that's why the regional magazine is interested in the topic. It's a magazine that likes to be commercial yet deep. But strictly not religious. So I'll have to write a non-religious article about pilgrimages? Look, I didn't make this up, I'm just trying to deal with it.)

We were ten people, which I think isn't bad for a tour taking place on the first three days of the year, when everybody else is busy recovering from their New Year's Eve celebration. And we were a pretty mixed group, ranging from a hip outdoorsy couple to "normal" elderly ladies to a Klezmer duo. Everybody was older than me, which is fine (I was told that most of the magazine's readers are aged between 40 and 60). It was quite nice, actually. I wouldn't normally go out hiking in the weather we had (drizzle, 5°C) but once we'd got going and once I'd got used to the idea that my glasses just wouldn't be dry, the drizzle wasn't hard to bear. I mean, if you went on a real pilgrimage, you'd presumable have to plough on regardless of the weather, too. You don't really get into pilgrimage spirit on the 19 km to Altenberg, or at any rate I didn't, but it was a nice change from normal. I was a bit worried that the pilgrims' guide would be overbearing and continually giving "impulses" to turn the hike more spiritual, but after one long stop (for singing!), everybody just got to walk along at their own speed, and talk, or not talk, at their own leisure. The impulses were more like "food for thought", which was offered at the beginning of the hike and you could think about it, or not. As it happened, it seemed to fit my situation, so I thought about it. I had time for a lot of thinky thoughts. Which I will not put in the article. I'll try to focus on the experience of the pilgrimage. In this case, it was a limited experience, but that's OK. I can extrapolate from my trip to Japan. (Which was no pilgrimage, but in retrospect featured many of the internal processes often ascribed to pilgrimages.) If I need to. I mean, it's just a short article. But it needs to be extra good because it's sample work, right?

Ironically, one of the thinky thoughts I had was that very likely this freelancing-for-the-magazine thing wasn't going to pay off, that it's putting pressure on my schedule that I'm not sure it's worth, and that it might not even be what I'm looking for. So it's quite possible that the very reason why I went on the pilgrimage (hike) is going to be made moot by said pilgrimage. But we'll see. Write first. See what comes out of it. Decide later.

~~Ellesmere manuscript icon used for extra lulz.~~

Current Mood: busy

GUESS WHO WENT TO THE CINEMA!

[This is a big deal for me, OK. Last time I went to a movie cinema was for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I've missed out on everything that was hot ever since then.]

A bit absurdly, the best thing about the movie (which I enjoyed!) was just watching the crawly text crawl up, going EPISODE VII. EPISODE VII, GALS. I was too young to see any of the original movies in the theatre (I was born a few days before Return of the Jedi hit the big screen, just to put things into perspective), but I had just the right age for all the prequels (...). The crawly text and the beginning of a new movie has always been a magic moment, and one thing we all knew when we sat there watching the crawly text go EPISODE III was that this was it, there would be no other movies, no repetition of this magic moment, this was the final farewell to the cinematic Galaxy far, far away. It wasn't just because George Lucas had declared that he'd never make any further Star Wars movies; it was because we'd had to realise that George Lucas couldn't really be trusted to deliver the Star Wars feeling, anyway. (Although Episode III, back then, was better than expected. Today, it still makes me cringe.)
And now, suddenly, EPISODE VII, pushing beyond that frontier and into a new trilogy.

Which didn't make me cringe. It isn't perfect, but it's enjoyable, and right now, that's good enough for me.

( And now we're drifting into extremely SPOILERific territory so proceed at own risk )

- - -
Right. Trying to prepare for Christmas. It's kinda hard because the weather it so Spring-like that I want to work in the garden and just postpone Christmas until it's colder or wetter or until all the work is done. NO TIME FOR TINSEL. I HAVE SERIOUS WORK TO DO, DAMMIT.

Current Mood: excited

... my NaNo rebellion, that is. Because I'm done.

Well, not in the traditional NaNo way of writing a story of 50,000 words. But in the way I'd planned to use this NaNoWriMo. To recap, the plan was to produce the illustrations for two children's picture books I had in my mind. Each piece of lineart would count as 1000 words (because one picture is worth a thousand words). The words of the storyboard for both books also counted towards the final score. But, after 45 illustrations (and about 1500 words of storyboard)... the stories were told. At which point I was personally ready to consider myself a winner, but the number is still 50,000, not "about 46500".

So I went and wrote the next chapter of Golden Days, which clocked in at 4000 words. Problem solved. NaNo won. Just not, as I said, in the traditional way. So you may consider me a cheat. (I don't.)

It's been an intriguing experience. I've taken part in Nano often enough to have several three-quarter novels on my harddrive (some of them longer than 50K words, some of them shorter), and then there's my usual fanficcing where I have also produced shocking amounts of literature, so I'm quite familiar to the process of creative writing. But this year was completely different. Since the birth of my sons, writing has taken a bit of a back seat, so NaNo used to be a welcome excuse to prioritise it for a month's time. This year, it was a welcome excuse to take up a pencil again. Having to produce art on a daily basis after months (practically years) of abstinence was strange and fun. Having to follow a storyline was even more strange. Aside from my attempt to produce a webcomic a few years ago, I've never done anything like that.
It went astonishingly well.

I used to draw relatively often, and I always had the problem that the picture I was visualising didn't match the result, making me more or less unhappy with my art. I expected that the inner critic would be a huge problem this month, and was surprised that it actually wasn't. It's not that I've suddenly become a great artist, or become less critical. But it appears that under the premise of "telling a story through pictures" and "telling a story for children", my focus is different. (This shouldn't be surprising, but it's a new experience to draw stuff that I doesn't make me want to weep at my shortcomings!) Does the picture tell the part of the story it's meant to tell? That's good enough.

With these lowered expectations - and also with the expectation that I'd find translating the story into lineart really hard - I'm actually really proud of a few of my pictures. Well, I'm proud of all of them in that I managed to illustrate two whole stories (however short). But some are very basic. Others are more elaborate. Among those, I have a some that I really love.
I deliberately took some shortcuts, especially when it came to backgrounds. I think it works. I know it's fashionable to put a lot of stuff in children's books' illustrations. I didn't do that. I wanted to tell the story, period. At the moment, it seems to be popular to mix Wimmelbilder with linear storytelling. I'm not sold on that. I didn't want to do that. So I mostly didn't bother with background or just used washes. I like the result. It seems to be a style that works well for me.

In "normal" drawing (that is, in fanart), I find it hard to depict people satisfyingly, especially if I have to convey motion. I thought this would be an issue here, but it really wasn't. Motion, dynamics, even gestures came surprisingly easy for this project. Initially, I thought it was because I simply wasn't too bothered about realism. TATER TROLL ANATOMY IS DIFFERENT. But my tater trolls turned out surprisingly human in their movements. And my pictures, which could have been static for all I cared, turned out surprisingly dynamic. So it's not just that I had different expectations than usual; it's also that I accidentally succeeded at things that I normally find hard.

Why? No clue. Perhaps because even though I haven't drawn in ages, I've kept observing how other artists solved the problems that stumped me, so my subconscious had a bag of solutions ready. Or perhaps because I didn't put myself under so much pressure this time. Or something else entirely. Whatever it was, it worked! Will I be able to apply any of this to future attempts at drawing - fanart or otherwise? No clue, either. It's nice to think so, though.

What I hope I will take away from this is that I still can draw - that it doesn't actually take as long to produce lineart. (And 20 pictures are already coloured, too!). I don't think I'll manage to draw daily anytime soon (even after Christmas). I was a little burned out in the end - the last five pictures were a chore - but then I really enjoyed writing again. The trick's in the mixture, I guess. At any rate, I can't neglect the dishes, the floors and the approaching holidays forever. But I'll definitely attempt to produce a little art or a little creative writing per week. (Unless it's good gardening weather, of course! ;))

Because - and that's the most important part, I guess - I felt like I had found a missing part of myself again. That is, I hadn't missed anything, per se, or pined for creative work. But it made me happy on a deep and personal level to produce stories again. And it'd be nice to tap into that source of happiness more often. Maybe I'll manage to illustrate some of my fanfic. Maybe I'll even tackle the graphic novel adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that I'm dreaming of?

I'm also happy on a less deep and personal level - on a base money-making level, so to say. I actually think I'm good at producing children's picture books. I have enough faith in these little things that I'm already thinking about researching tax regulations for freelancing illustrators and everything! (And you know how much I hate thinking about practical regulations!) Once I'm done colouring all the lineart and putting it together with the text - work I'll do during the "Now What" months if I don't manage to do it at once, I hope I'll find a publishing company that likes these books as much as I do. Cross your fingers?
(I first typed "Cross your gingers". Now that's a mental image...)

[My test audience reacted favourably, anyway! Whenever I sat down with my drawing pad and pencil, Felix got all excited. "Are you painting tater trolls again?" "Is this another picture of Mister Milchstraße? What is he doing this time?" Eeeee!]

Current Mood: accomplished

As always. Applied for four jobs. One job called back and want me to do sample work. Yay? Autumn is coming in so the garden is crying for me even louder than usual. ~~I unearthed a tater troll and desperately need to make a picture book about her. NaNo?~~ Mission Self-sufficiency is still far from being accomplished but still in progress. The weekend will probably bring me new bees to replace the ones that were stolen. (They must have been stolen. Yes, bees sometimes up and leave, but they generally don't take the entire contents of the honey super - frames included! - with them when they swarm, no?) The kids are growing so fast. Kindergarten continues to be a challenge. (A child that can read and write somehow doesn't cooperate well when asked to sit in a circle and name things that are yellow. WHO KNOWS WHY.) Etc. etc.

elenbarathi linked to an awesome article: Be More Successful: New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Do It. While I'm trying to make my sample work extra-perfect, I'm also trying to internalise its content. And probably everybody should. Be happy, that is. IT IS SCIENCE! (Actually, the whole Bakadesuyo blog is full of interesting stuff. So thanks,

elenbarathi!) Seriously though, I find that I've acquired a few attitudes that Shawn identifies in the past years (I'd say that Ich habe mir eine gewisse Entspanntheit antrainiert) and while it definitely hasn't made me more succesful (yet), it certainly has made me more... content? More at peace with myself and my life, anyway. (Most of the time. I relapse into self-doubt, frustration and impostor syndrome regularly, of course. But I get out of it. That's the key, I guess.) So this study is proving me right, which is of course why I'm convinced that it is ALL TRUE!

Back to being busy, in a happy way! Talk to you later (possibly)...

So here's the thinky rambley post.

Due to money issues and family issues and health issues and stuff, I've been thinking about the future a lot in the past weeks.

In spite of the unclear childcare problem (which I suppose could be organised if I actually had a job), I applied for a few jobs. Part of the problem, of course, is that I'm not really qualified for anything specific. That's OK because there are too many things that interest me (museums! publishing! education! specialised journalism! gardening! crafts! history! ---) so as long as I'm not qualified for any one thing, I can try applying for everything (as well as related stuff, like event management or marketing or what-have-you) and see how the dice rolls. Except it just keeps rolling, of course, because nobody looks for a professional universal dabbler.
Oh well.

Occasionally, ideas pop up that have nothing at all to do with my unspecific academic background, or anything I ever planned on doing. For some reason, these ideas like to grab hold, and I think them through a lot, and then never do anything about it.

That doesn't mean I don't believe in those ideas (I tend to do). It probably does mean that I'm a bit of a coward.

For instance, take the most recent one.

Backstory: The neighbouring town - my birth town - has a falconry. Their buildings burned down a few years ago, but they've rebuilt (better!) and made a succesful new start. They're looking for someone to run their restaurant. In fact, they've been looking for half a year, and for some reason, nobody is buying. (The place is a bit off track, but only if you look at cars. It's in the middle of a hiking & horseriding areal, and of course there are the visitors to the falconry who might fancy a bite. You can get there by car, too, no problem; you're just not going to drive by by chance.)

And here I am, getting tempted.

I'm not a professional chef. I love cooking and experimenting with food, but I neither have the training nor, if I'm honest, the stamina to survive in a professional kitchen, so I'd probably burn out faster than Fëanor after he ran into those Balrogs. I'd love running a restaurant, specifically one that provides regional, seasonal and - if at all possible - fair, organic food, the kind that changes its menu every couple of weeks and uses ingredients that have gone all but out of memory, the stuff I'm growing in my garden anyway (there'd be room for a kitchen garden on the falconry's grounds, too). I'm reasonably sure that I could come up with dishes people like. I can cook for maybe 10 people. 50 if we're talking about a barbecue. But a whole restaurant with room for more than 100 people? Ahahahahah. No.

So let's bin that thought, I tell my inner Center of Impossible Ambitions (CIA).

Well, says the CIA, don't do it alone then. Delegate. Employ a couple of chefs and aides and you're just, like, the creative head. You can have everything you want, but you don't have to shoulder it alone.

Yeah right, I tell the CIA. Because as a start-up new restaurant head, I'd totally have the means of hiring good chefs and service staff and what-have-you. Of course. I'm not even fit to get a bank credit.

You'd need money to hire the restaurant in the first place anyway, says the CIA. So plan bigger. Let's be honest, you could try to do it on your own but aside from burning up, the results are definitely better if you've got a team.
Actually, there's a thought, how about making it a refugee project? Haven't you been dreaming anyway about setting up some sort of refugee inclusion project?

Well, yes, that gardening idea, but --

That way the town and country and church would support it, and you'd also do a great lot of good. I mean, even better than the organic, regional, seasonal food stuff.
And of course, there are online kickstarters and stuff. How about trying one of those. Hopefully, the internet is full of people who'd support an organic, regional, seasonal, refugee-including restaurant, even if the banks aren't.

You know, that sounds awesome, I tell the CIA. And I'd like to do that. But what about the kids?

Well, while you're already employing people, how about a day-care lady, too? Maybe your chefs and aides can benefit from that, too. I mean, other people have children as well.

Yeah, I guess that could work, says I. But if I decide for this road, that'd forever close the door to all those academic things I'd also like to do. Like, museum?

Pffff, says the CIA. You could turn your kitchen garden into a Museum of Old Plants. Like, the ProSpecieRara [German Seedsavers] stuff you're doing in your home garden? Do it on a professional scale! You can put your own art on the walls. You can have an exhibition about the history of, um, falconry. FALCONRY. Did I mention that it would be on the grounds of a FALCONRY? Like, you could meet real living birds of prey? Every day? As a job?

What's not to love, I sigh. And you know what, I guess I could run it. But I'd have to get all sorts of information first. About employing people in general and employing refugees in particular. About the necessary requests and permissions and whatnot, I mean, I don't even know what it all involves. About professional kitchen-ing. About professional gardening, for that matter. About accounting. About taxes. About everything. And I hate having to deal with administration, and I'd have to do it on a laaarge scale. All that effing paperwork. And I'm not really cut out to be a manager, either. I mean, all those people I'd have to interact with. And all that stuff I'd have to plan. And I'm not a leader.
Though it would be awesome, if only I could set it up.

Yes, says the CIA. So think about it.

And I do.

And generally, that's all I ever do. Think about it. Enthusiastically and with deep longing. And the idea hangs in the air like a brilliant large soap bubble. But I don't, in the end, do anything about it, because I'm afraid that'd make the soap bubble burst.

(But it would be awesome. If only I could get someone else to set it up.)

- - -

While I was typing this up, I noticed that the museum that I did a few seminars with while I was still studying is looking for a research assistant. So maybe I'll rather just write another application. Because the soap bubble might burst. And because I am a coward.

Current Mood: thoughtful

( Möglicherweise verstörendes Gebrabbel über den Flugzeugabsturz. Und über Selbstmord. Lesen auf eigene Gefahr. )

- - -

Gestern hab ich Jörg in Düsseldorf vom Flughafen abgeholt. Er ist nämlich am Dienstag dienstlich nach Südfrankreich geflogen.
Mittags, da war also schon bekannt, dass in Südfrankreich ein Flugzeug abgestürzt war.

Wir haben da natürlich unsere "lustigen" Sprüche drüber gemacht, von wegen "So sicher wirst du nie wieder fliegen - es fallen bekanntlich nie zwei am gleichen Tag runter". (Uns ist völlig klar, dass Statistik so nicht funktioniert, das muss also keiner in den Kommentaren aufschlüsseln, dankeschön.) Und er ist ja auch trotzdem geflogen (mit Germanwings übrigens). Hin und zurück. Ohne besondere Vorkommnisse.
Und natürlich weiß ich, dass die Autobahnfahrt zum Flughafen und zurück viel, viel, viel gefährlicher ist als der Flug an sich. Aber ich war trotzdem froh und erleichtert, als ich ins Flughafengebäude kam und auf dem Bildschirm sah: Flug 4U9413 aus Lyon: Gelandet.

Wobei ich es, gnadenlos formuliert, echt albern finde, dass jetzt so viele Leute "nie wieder fliegen" wollen. Inklusive Flugbegleitern. Zumal es ja kein technischer Defekt war und kein Versehen. Und zumal die gleichen Leute wahrscheinlich sorglos Zigaretten rauchen oder zumindest Auto fahren.

Aber Angst ist eben nicht rational, und das Problem bei der Flugangst ist ja auch nicht so sehr das Fliegen an sich, sondern der Gedanke, dass man als Passagier nichts tun kann. Im Auto bildet man sich doch ein, durch zeitiges Bremsen, geschicktes Lenken oder zur Not auch seitliches Eingreifen als Beifahrer noch irgendwie Einfluss auf die Situation nehmen zu können (was gelegentlich sogar stimmt) - und das kann man im Flieger halt nicht. Es ist also das Ausgeliefertsein, das einem Angst macht.
Und diese Angst wird jetzt natürlich erst einmal verstärkt.
Das, immerhin, kann ich verstehen.

Current Mood: shocked

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oloriel

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Page generated Jul. 13th, 2025 10:57 pm

The lyf so short

The crafte so longe to lerne

Entries tagged with rambling

The last six weeks sure went by quickly

B2MeM is imminent...

The Garden in July (and early August)

Drachenfest 2018

Things are growing

In (semi)professional news

A death in the family

On the death of Ursula K. LeGuin...

I finally got Spotify running and I have no shame

Making of... that painting I talked about last time

Pic(spam) of the week: Winter holidays

Pic(spam) of the week: The garden in winter

And the world keeps moving

Kids and lambs

Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle/ in felaueship, and pilgrimmes were they alle.

But what's with her aversion to clothing that covers the shoulders?

Rebellion is over

Much going on.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

Jetzt auch hier: Wilde Spekulationen und gnadenlose Verurteilung!