Beloved Reader,

I just want you to know that I am working on several posts. They mean a lot to me and I can't wait to share them with you.
But my life keeps getting in the way. I can't find the time (and when I find the time, there's no energy) to get it written. The children, the cats, the laundry, exercise, organizing the family trip in June, Facebook (I admit it, it gets done first, but it's quick and low quality), the curtains (still not hung) and housework (only the bare minimum) have come first. And 25th.
It's killing me. I want to write. I MUST FIND A WAY.
Until then, I remain,
Your RC

Those pesky thoughts

It's 3:30 again. Oh, no.

I had a thought yesterday that maybe I was at peace with my life and myself since I was able to sleep through the night after my last 3:30am wake up (or, as through the night as is possible with three small children and two asshole cats). But I guess I was just really tired.

Because here I am again, kept from sleep by these pesky thoughts.

I can't even imagine summer. A time when my feet and hands aren't cold, when I can slip on my flip flops to go outside, when I don't have to struggle Mia and Aidyn into four layers of clothing to leave the house. When the sun will bleach out the carrot and tomato stains. When I don't have two hours of dark in the morning (or five on an early day like today).  When we don't have to readjust the car seats every other time for coat volume.


I've discovered what "blog" really stands for. It's an acronym: Baggage Left Online (un)Guarded. This is where we leave those briefcase bombs waiting to go off in our psyche. Our issues, problems, scars from the past, we shove them into a box and hope they won't escape. But now, with blogs, we can open the box in cyberspace, freeing ourselves (hopefully; those issues have a funny way of finding home no matter where you leave them), assuming  that our past isn't hazardous to others.

Today is writer's group. I wanted to rewrite the crap I wrote for last time and continue the story. But I haven't done it. Nor have I finished reading the story I'm supposed to critique. Guilt all around.

I want to write. But after a day of being a mother my words seem to hide. Or I'm just so tired I can't find them. Sometimes something inspires me, but usually my evening is just writer's block and Dexter or The Mentalist.

Waah.

Frustration

I always love listening to my 80s music. I am transported.
 
Nostalgia.

But every time, I ask myself, what do I miss? The 80s? My life? Me? What do I wish I still had from then? Is it the music? The friends? The innocence?

I think it's the simplicity. But not the simplicity of the time; the simplicity of our age. We were teenagers. No, I don't mean to say that this is an easy time. It's a horrible time: full of change, uncertainty, fear, emotion. We're so overwhelmed by life, and by ourselves, everything seems like a huge hurdle, and we either want to cower before it or destroy it. That's the simplicity: it's all about me. MY fear, MY emotion, MY hurdle. And although I don't know what to do with these things, I have a certain power. Teachers, parents, adults want to make up my mind, but in the end it's ME and I decide.

No, it's not simple then. But it looks simple now, looking back.

*Although it's hard to say, really. Because we always remember good times, even when the times weren't good. Especially when there are enough years between then and now. And between now and the 80s, there are a lotta years.*

We just watched The Big Chill, whose German title is The Big Frustration. The title seemed appropriate, watching it as an adult. The Frustration of Now. Now vs. Then.

As teenagers, and much more in college, we discovered ourselves. We chose who we wanted to be. We fought for our new-found identity. We were sure that we knew who we were.

But then, some years later, we found ourselves in relationships. It was no longer about ME. It was about US. And we said NO! We are not WE. I will always be ME. I am not US. And then he left. Hmph.

So we gargled the WE and then found ourselves parents. No discussion there, it's no longer about ME. It's not even about US. It's about THEM. Shit. So we ask ourselves: Who the hell am I?! I was going to change the world. I looked at the man in the mirror. I was, I was.

But now all we do is keep everyone else happy. Not at our own expense, maybe, but we've put all of our wishes, our hopes, our dreams, our EARTH-SHATTERING GOOD INTENTIONS on a back burner so that we could have a family. So where does that leave ME?!

Stripped of our privacy and without a world to save. Okay, maybe we don't want to save the world, but we'd like to relax a little. Have a drink, dance to some 80s music. SLEEP. Have an opinion that has nothing to do with feeding, raising or tolerating a toddler. ENJOY LIFE. It can't all be about self-sacrifice.

Optimistic me is sure that it's not. But I'm still not sure who the hell I am or what the hell I want to do with myself. And I DO know that I don't have time to figure it out at the moment. Maybe next year...

The Light

Yesterday, instead of again trekking the main shopping strip here in Stuttgart and eating at our semi-comfortable regular restaurant, the wee ones (the two wee-est since Big Sis was at school) and I walked an extra, I don't know, kilometer (after walking about 2 kilometers), to eat at a café which was listed on the web as "child friendly." I'm pretty sure they claimed the existence of a play area and high chairs.

Was I disappointed? No. Mia and Aidyn ate a good lunch in relative peace. Because of the high chairs they made available to me? No. Mia sat on my lap and Aidyn sat on the bench next to the table. I don't know, maybe they were just hungry. My food was great - and I was able to eat it in relative peace. Because of the fantastic play area with all the latest toys for 15-month-olds? No. No play area. But since the café was EMPTY and we were sitting on a step that they could go up and down (and up and down and up and down) and near a ramp which they could go down and up (and down and up), they were occupied long enough with little effort from me that I could enjoy my food. My only regret is that I didn't have a glass of wine with lunch. But I always hate when things deteriorate into chaos (which is not unusual) and I'm sitting there sipping wine. What a mom.

But all in all the café experience was a good one. I also learned that they have Sunday jazz brunch, which sounds intriguing. But given its real-life non-child-friendliness, I think we'll have to wait a few years.

The moral of the story? We're not at the end of the story yet. But the moral to the first part is maybe: Don't believe everything you read on the internet.

What I loved most yesterday was that we took a new path. I love new paths. Even if the stuff there is not terribly different from stuff I've seen before, it doesn't matter. It's SOMEWHERE ELSE. And this was really different. I have no problem with window shopping and wishing for material things, but at some point it gets old. I left the shopping zone to find streets lined by monster stone buildings from the 19th century. Of course, I knew those streets and buildings were there, I'd just gotten so used to looking at books and clothes and shiny jewelry that I wasn't aware of all the little businesses at the bottoms of those finely carved monoliths. (Okay I'm sounding like the shallowest of the shallow but this is where habit gets you.) An ad agency, a shop selling a local artist's jewelry, an art gallery. It was inspiring! This was where people were sharing their creations with the world. And I realized that I wanted to create things and share them. I want to create, forge, build, launch! Take my ideas and make them real, then display them for everyone to see.

I realize the naiveté of these thoughts. But honestly when you feel like you're drowning in the obligations of your life, whether they're job or children or friends or whatever, it feels good to get lost in inspiration and see the illumination of your buried passions.

I was so hyped when I got home, I just wanted to talk about it all evening. But of course I got derailed by bath time and dinner and bedtime stories. And he doesn't get it anyway. He's got the job he likes and the family he loves, and and that's enough. He's not pursuing a dream, he's enjoying what he's got. The dreaming is my job.

Yesterday's little adventure was my light. Now I see where I want to go. It could be my New Year's resolution but instead I'm just going to do it.

The secret life of blogging?

A friend and successful blogger told me this weekend that a blog is not a diary: it is not where you share your most personal experiences with everyone, his brother and his dog (if his dog happens to be online). In a blog you have something to offer, something to teach, the reader can walk away enriched in some way by your words.

I'm not so sure.

This morning I was confronted with an ad for [another!] reality show. Bret Michaels, Life As I Know It. You know, the guy from Poison? So I moused over the ad to see the preview and thought, Why?? Who cares about this guy and his life? Because he was famous, I assume. We see people in the news, on TV, on stage and we want to know more! But at some point we lose interest in their faces, bodies or voices, and they (hopefully for them) realize this and either get out or do something new. Maybe they recognize the demand from our voyeurism and start a reality show!

Fair enough.

But what about Big Brother? Or The Biggest Loser? Or The Hills (etc.)? (I don't know if this last is considered a reality show but it looks like one and has had the same effect.) Some Nobody exposes their personal life on television and gets famous.

Now I'm not prepared to do an analysis of the sociopolitical effects of reality shows in the second decade of the new millennium. But I'd like to know: is this what we want? To root into people's personal lives, know their secrets and their failures? Why? To feel better about ourselves? Or is it just curiosity? The insatiable desire to know things just because they're on the internet or television?

I do not know. But with this I come back to my friend's statement. Are blogs the proper venue for discussion of our personal lives?

Why not? It seems to be where the audience's interest lies. Sure, they should be well written, since reading is so more work than watching (therefore we are more willing to watch crap than read it). And it can't hurt to have a moral or informative aspect so that readers can apply this intimate knowledge to their own lives.

But I think that in the end, we just want to know about other people's lives. Hopefully not just out of Schadenfreude, but so that we can learn more about our own.

And besides, we bloggers love to write - and our own lives are our best source of material.

Fall festivity

It was kids' day yesterday (but isn't every day?). We went to another Fest, this time the Jugendfarm Kastanienfest. They did it all: pony riding, paint spinning, bread baking (over an open fire), climbing of insubstantial constructions, the ever-present Wurst, and lighting something on fire so that they could put the fire out.
It was fun.

There was a tiny spider on the back of the saddle. I barely got her off the horse.

International Velvet.

Looking down from one of those insubstantial constructions. I don't know if there were nails and garbage up top, I never went up there. But there was plenty underneath.

Fire! Fire! First we got smoked by all the manure and garbage they put in, then we were nearly charred by the flames. Finally a light shower, just in case we were also alight.

All in all a fun day. Fun with friends, fun with food, fun with fire. What more could we ask for?

Falling

This is the park near our house. There are still flowers blooming amidst the changing leaves. So we have green grass, yellow tree, red bush, purple and yellow flowers. I love when it's colorful.

Chloé in the park. Not colorful, but the falling leaves mark the season.

The dying leaves have taken up residence on the steps.

The church next door. With lamppost, Chloé and dying leaves.

Downtown Kornwestheim, metropolis that it is. But that doesn't matter since they have chosen such fantastic fall trees for this walking street.

I loved this picture in the camera, and I love it even more on the screen. A park bench, a brilliant yellow tree, a lamp on a path in the park. Such beauty surrounds me.