The C-Prize

Forget the X-Prize, for first re-entry manned space vehicle (or whatever it was exactly). No, don't forget it, but rather, here is the big problem I want to have solved through a competition. Colic.

We have a colicky baby. But last night I found a link to a forum with fairly old posts about Colic and Breastfeeding and I've been reading various threads in between sleeping and feeding and burping and trying to calm A. And the sense I get just reinforces what has been building for me since being in the hospital for labor, about the need for better research and understanding of complications with natural birth, and breastfeeding problems, and now colic. The doctors and nurses and midwives have answers for the majority of cases, but there are these other cases, on the periphery, which cause so much distress and emotional pain for parents.

The colic thread not only made me realize that we and A fall in the middle to low-middle end of how bad it can be (no projectile vomiting after every feed, or crying for 8 hours straight every day!). These parents are desperate and there don't seem to be many answers. Or, rather, there are too many answers. Acid reflux, hip displacement, food sensitivity (for some, to almost EVERYTHING), not burping enough, soy vs. milk formula, antibiotics, etc, etc, etc. Some work for some babies, and for someother babies, nothing works.

So there (and on countless other forums and websites), we have all of this data. Loads of it. Not complete, by any means, but loads and loads of variables. And maybe, with the right statistical approach combined with focussed follow-up experimental studies on interventions, there is some hope of turning "colic" into a collection of terms, much more subtle and varied, to help all of these people (parents and babies) from having to go through all that pain.

Now I just need to find the right people to fund the prize, and the right people to design the competition guidelines to get some great researchers working on this. Heck, even if 100,000 people donated $10 each, that would be QUITE the prize for this type of competition, right? And to put something like that together to solve a problem that affects so many women and babies would be pretty cool. Finally, something for the ladies.

Yup, C-Prize.

The post I desperately want to be writing

I sort of knew I might not get to all those other "future posts" I mentioned last time. Baby A. takes a lot of work. More than we knew. Until recently we just sort of hunkered down and bore it, wondering how all our friends had gotten through this.

Crying during and after feedings, pushing away from breast feeding after 2 minutes and needing to be physically pushed back to start again, lots and lots of intestinal gas after every feeding, keeping her up and not letting her get her sleep. Hours of colic.

And then our midwife got to the "end of her Latin." She had no more ideas for us, on whether to go just bottle (breastmilk and formula) or just breast (to get the baby used to it and not pushing anymore). We should talk to a lactation consultant. And other people. Her huge funds of knowledge were spent in our case. She was cutting us loose and wishing us the best.

Crap.

Around this time I started wondering if maybe there was a milk allergy in the way. The midwife gave a few ideas about how to start looking into this. And then, after a night of just breast milk, A got a substantial meal of formula all at once and projectile vomitted all over the floor and my mom.

Ok, time to get this figured out. The medical system (including midwives) is not meant to solve our baby's problems, not if they are uncommon. The system is good at solving the average problems - poor sucking latch, my overall health, etc. But it doesn't handle those statistical tails very well, and so far, that is where I seem to hang out when it comes to babies. In terms of fertility (where the gynecologist didn't know to send me to a specialist as quickly as she should have), pregnancy pain (where the osteopath didn't catch that my underwear was just too tight around the leg and causing the nerve pain), delivery (where the midwife and doctors on that first shift were not as focused on a natural birth), breast feeding (where the lactation consultants tried their 3 options and then declared that "breastfeeding isn't for everyone"), and now with A's big pains and tummy problems in that little body of hers. Poor thing.

So who is supposed to solve this? I think we are. That is our role as parents, at least partially, to flag those 3-sigma moments, and to push for them to be solved.

Which brings me to the post I wish I was writing. I would like to be making the "after X weeks of colic and abnormal amounts of crying, we realized that Z was the cause of it all and we're now finally calmed down. A sleeps and eats well and spends very little time crying. Thank god!" I think I may be able to make that post at some point, and not just "when she outgrows colic." Because I'm not okay to just call it colic and label her a fussy baby. I want to work on anything we can to ease this time for her, to make it better.

So I've stopped eating dairy products and we switched to a supposedly less cow-milk intensive formula. I'm also (although this seems more urban legend than so well supported) keeping a food diary to see if something else I eat is causing that gas pain. Which means I have eggs and ham for breakfast, but none of my beloved milk products, and now I'm also a bit suspicious of citrus, or chocolate, maybe onions? What have I been eating this whole time she's been home and having problems? Is it a short timescale issue where my current meal influences her next one? Is it longer term dairy (since there are some issues in my family with this)? Who knows. But we're trying to figure it out. With charts and timing.

And it seems to have improved, although having 2 grandma's and an aunt here doesn't hurt one bit. But A seems calmer with less fussy periods. She actually gets to sleep for 2-3 hours at a time, and this means she can be awake and alert and calm at other times, looking around at the world. And we seem to be getting more sleep as well as more calm time when we're awake. So maybe I'll be able to make that post soon.

Not yet. But I've got hope.

And a bowl of almond butter and a banana for a snack.

Life with a newborn

And a blog with a newborn.

Baby came 2 weeks early!

We were not quite ready!

Born last Sunday afternoon after 17 hour labor:
-water broke starting 24 hour clock to deliver before infection risk went up

-skull facing my spine - extra pain

-possible problem with size of head vs size of pelvis

-finally took epidural for pain (didn't plan or want to, but couldn't scream out
any more pain even on a LOT of laughing gas), which slowed down labor

-speeding up labor again would have required pitocin which increases contraction
strength and pain

-but epidural didn't work on left side. at all. even after pulling out part way

-chief anesthesiologist would allow second epidural try because of risks of something

-could have tried another local spinal anesthetic to finish labor but only gave me 2 hours
to get it all done

-if baby couldn't make it in this time would have had to do C-section under general anesthetic (breathing tube, more possible complications, not awake to hold baby right away)

-chose C-section on local spinal in the end

Beautiful baby girl A: Future post - Perfect others

Wonderful week in hospital under care of amazing nurses: Future post - Becoming a mother

Horrible time with breast feeding in hospital among doctors and lactation consultants who didn't quite listen to me or try to figure out my options. Finally at home with postnatal midwife successfully figuring out how to help me feed without teeth-clenching, shooting pain. Future post: Maybe you're just one of those women who can't breastfeed.

Over and out.

The size of the container

I thought that, as usual, it was about 6am. I've been getting up then, getting my multivitamin
and getting back to sleep. But no, 3:30am and there is a bird singing somewhere in the dense fog outside. Not that that woke me up, but i was really hot so I opened a window.

And now I'm up, and waiting for the juice and half a pear to digest enough that I can lay back down without the heartburn. In the meantime, I've been to a number of websites, and found this great visual blog on NYTimes.com:

http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/bathroom-art/

Anyway, back to that heartburn thing. I need to eat more because I'm not gaining as much weight as I should be right now. However, given that my stomach is currently about the size of a mandarin orange, it can be hard to fit much more than a mandarin orange in there at any given time. So I have to pace my eating. But this then means I need to pace my laying down, too. And since I can no longer lay on my back (too much baby weight makes breathing hard), and stomach lying has long ago exited my repertoire, and side lying is not so effective at making my back feel better or keeping me propped up, I have entered a strange minimization problem. Eating spaced out, but napping spaced out more. (And thinking about the correct usage of lay and lie is definitely not on the list once those issues come up.)

Which brings me to all the advice out there about enjoying things now that will be impossible when the baby is here. Like quiet dinners out with M, or sleeping a lot, or the feel of the baby moving. I understand these will change, at least intellectually I do. But at the same time, I can't have more than a mandarin orange at one time, nor is sitting for a long time all that comfortable, so I'm not sure which quiet restaurant I'm supposed to choose.

Taking "a last trip together" has also fallen off the list. Sure, I get that this will change once the baby is here, but too late. I sleep in the guest room right now because the mattress topper supports my weight better. I need to nap in the middle of the day. I don't feel very comfortable in upright train seating. Walking gets my back pain going. I'm not sure there is a destination left that is really that appropriate for me, other than the guestroom.

And as for the baby kicking, or the being pregnant feeling, I get kicked a lot. In all sorts of directions that don't make for fond memories - lungs, ribs, cervix. And I can't remember what it was like not to have this belly. So I know it will probably be the same when the baby is out and I can't remember what it was like to have this belly.

My point is, even though people can say that greater suffering is coming, with lack of sleep and exhaustion and never being alone again, they also say I can't imagine what those things will be like. So how am I supposed to enjoy this time in some way that makes up for the coming time. I have nothing to compare it to. I can't sit here and flip back and forth between pregnancy back pain vs. sleep deprivation. I can only know the discomforts of now.

There was a book I first read in highschool, about life in a concentration camp (don't worry, I'm not about to compare any of this to that....not really), written by Victor Frankl. I think it was called Man's Search for Meaning. And I think he was the one who talked about suffering as gas-like. In that it fill whatever container it has. That you can't say someone who suffered one thing suffered more than someone who suffered another thing, because suffering expands to fill us up. So I have a minor ache or pain, and you have something which involved going to the hospital. Since I can't experience your pain, my pain can fill up my container (me, my experience of pain) as fully as your fills up your container. I have nothing to compare to.

I don't think I explained that very well, but the point is this. I can't experience any postnatal things right now. I can't even imagine them. I still do appreciate people giving me a heads up on some last things to relish. But it isn't worth me trying to relish them as if I also knew what postnatal land was going to feel like.

So I'll have to settle for being excited about sleeping on my back, and being able to drink a whole glass of water just before I do it. Or about being able to walk up our hill without back pain later. Right now, my container is shaped differently than it will be in a few weeks, so for now the best I can do is imagining my current aches and pains and minor complaints being gone. Instead of feeling like I should be enjoying this time more.

I'll do my best, now and later, to enjoy life as much as I can, and put up with the container-full of whatever it brings.

My dog thinks like a 2-year-old human.

I was reading this article on NYTimes website about yet another study that has "surprised" people by implying that animals, in this case dogs, are smarter than we thought.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/weekinreview/01kershaw.html?_r=1&em

I'm starting to get a bit tired of the way these articles go. Always this surprise, or stated surprise, that humans aren't so unique, that we aren't somehow different than "all the animals." Duh. We are animals. And invariably, the dog or crow or parrot or elephant being written about gets compared to humans as if we represent some gold standard. They have emotions "like us," language skills "like us," or problem solving skills "like us." In this one, they study how many vocabulary words a dog can learn and talk about how dogs can be as smart as 2 year olds.

Two year olds don't exactly get wide recognition for being extremely smart. Neither do they sniff out cancer and impending epileptic fits (another thing the article talks about).

Why can't dogs, or dolphins, or primates, or any of them get respected on their own terms. In terms of the things they have evolved to do, and humans just get added to the animal list as yet another example?

It reminds me a bit of Aristotle's going on and on about how the female is inferior to the male, and her body represents some sort of "failed" male, where even conception was considered successful if it produced a male and flawed if the child was female. And if you start there, well you sure have a lot of studies you can do which will continue to surprise you, about how women are almost as "rational" as a 15 year old male, or almost as strong as a 12 year old male, etc.

The point is, which I've made a few times now, that even medicine can be biased in terms of what is normal, and in the case of women and giving birth, having that "males are the norm" view hasn't helped much. It may sound like a silly complaint from me, but extend it to something like breast development and take male anatomy as the norm (ever wonder why males even have nipples?) and complete the phrase "women's breasts are like _______ male breasts." What is even the point? Obviously silly.

So back to dogs, or rats, or whatever other animal is in the news as being "more human than we thought." Maybe it would be nice to look for some other way of comparing animals (including humans), just to give a slightly different viewpoint. Otherwise, it seems like animals are only as worthy of respect if they can be shown to be kind of human, and honestly, given all the other news headlines, I'm not seeing the undisputed upside of human behavior or intelligence or any of it.

What I love most about the pupper, in terms of her skills, is that she is always asking for what she wants. In this way, I often feel much less "honest about wants" than a 5 year old dog. I worry, I weigh the consequences (real, but more often imagined) of what I am about to say. I spend so much time not just saying what I want, that the pupper is my role model on this. She asks, takes it in some sort of stride (like not pouting or lashing out) if she is denied what she asked for, and then 2 minutes later, asks again.

Her napping skills are pretty fierce, too. Someday, I want to learn to nap like a 5 year old dog as well.

Bright "fall" color in Zurich

We took a long walk last weekend, on Saturday, because M had to work on Sunday. This was one of those walks that has no other purpose than taking a walk and seeing a new part of the city.

One of the buses I regularly take passes by the river where a lot of brightly colored trees stand. So I thought we'd ride that bus for a bit, get off and walk to find those trees. It wasn't the sunniest of days, but we did see a lot of color. Even if not all of it was from those trees.


There were trees.





But we also stumbled on a great stretch of walls near the river, covered in really colorful grafitti. The kind that I'd love to have someone do on a vinyl shower curtain for our bathroom (ok, not now that we have the colorful rug perhaps, but when there was no rug it would have been great to have that much color!).
You can see M and the pupper looking in the other direction...apparently dogs don't really get grafitti. At least not the visual kind. She leaves her own "tags" in many parts of the city, just with a different kind of "spraying" mechanism.




And then at some point, we started seeing people actually doing the grafitti. Of course, my first instinct was to think "you can't do that!" But I had just beeing enjoying what was up there already, and it seems like these walls are constantly being changed. Maybe every weekend, maybe more often?

There seem to be some rules, as individuals have some set amount of space to start spraying over the previous artwork. They work slowly, stepping back to look at their work. And the stuff they come up with is beautiful. I thought it was. Especially on a chilly, kind of grey day.

All the bright red orange things in the apartment

Somehow, I guess in a quest to lighten up the white walls and grey tiles in the apartment, we started collecting bright orange/red accessories. Like this cutting board - there is also a red one.






















And these pillows which sometimes sit on the back porch and sometimes on the dark grey sofa.














Of course, we've had this rug for a while, and that may have started the whole process. Matching the crazy orange red in the rug.








And what better way to accentuate that rug than with....a bright orange-red table.













Because, honestly, the red/orange table lamp over on the side was feeling lonely. It needed the company.
















Which brings me to the bathroom, which, like the kitchen, started out all white and grey (and remember how I really liked that red water kettle in the bathroom?).





Well, now there is a lot of orange/red in the bathroom, right down to some hand towels and even a toothbrush I got at my last dentist visit.


Who says there is no recovering from having to return a really great orange-red water kettle. Didn't leave a mental scar at all, or any sort of purchasing behavior which might imply a desire to "regain" that color elsewhere in the house.

phew. That's good to know.

Happy Halloween.

And speaking of perfection....

I've decided to fail. Now this isn't exactly brought on the really funny website called www.Failblog.org, but I could pretend that is where I got my inspiration. Still, in my last post I wrote about perfection, and I realized that I've been working on everyday kind of failing recently.

Take today, I failed to stop playing Bejeweled after 10 min. And yesterday, I failed to make a roast chicken for dinner when a friend came over and we just had pizza and some tomato cucumber salad to eat instead.

Often these failures just happen and, after the fact, I try not to give myself a hard time about them. Certain cases are harder than others. But at other times (and this is what I'm working on increasing), I decide ahead of time to fail. Like with the pizza vs. chicken. Or with not having a spotless apartment for visitors to come to. Or, on a larger scale, I decided recently to fail at writing an article from my thesis.

Now that one is a big fail for me. But it has been hanging over my head, as something I've wanted to do for a long time, and it was just making me feel bad. No matter what otherwise productive good day I'd had, I still hadn't started on an article for a peer reviewed journal.

But who am I kidding? I did the research in a department which wasn't mainly focussed on either that topic or the methodology, it was not really in any of my committee members' specialty, I'm not in a research group now and really have no mentoring for that kind of project, and I don't plan to go into academia anytime soon. So it really isn't that big of a fail considering the circumstances, and my days are really much more pleasant when I decide that it is off the list. (That is another nasty feature of this...I sometimes have to decide to fail on the same item more than once).

Anyway, I'm going to go walk the dog now, and then I'm thinking I might win (instead of failing) at doing some online research, sending out some emails and working on a short little article based on my research which is due in mid-November. I told you I was still working on the failing.

Oh, and tonight I'm making that chicken.

Perfect babies and flawless performances

Remember the movie "Shine" from a few years ago? About the piano playing prodigy who almost got lost to the Australian psychiatric care system? Geoffrey Rush played him as an adult in the movie, but the person on whom it was based is named David Helfgott. Well Helfgott gave a concert
in Zurich the other night and we went to go hear it. And see it.

I know that his playing has not received top critical acclaim, but for my ear I thought it was quite good. I don't know the pieces well enough to tell otherwise. But it was much more of a reflective event for me than musical. He is probably bout 60 years old, he wears a shiny red tunic on stage, and sort of shuffles out to the piano in short steps. But as he goes, he looks at every orchestra member he passes, giving everyone a handshake or two thumbs up, stopping many times before making it even close to the piano. He looks at the audience (who is clapping at this point), giving thumbs up and smiles to half a dozen directions, back to the orchestra and hand shaking, before the conductor gently helps him to the piano bench.

And when he plays, he is hunched quite low over the piano. His lips move, and once in a while you hear a sound coming from him while his fingers pour over the keys. He squints, and moves
his head. He smiles a thumbs up to himself when he's gotten through some piece of the piano part. While he waits through parts with no piano piece, he seems to speak to himself, almost puts fingers to the keys and then pulls back, looks around to watch other orchestra members playing their parts.

You almost start to doubt that when he starts playing again it will be coherent, and then....it is. And smooth, and beautiful.

What is still in my mind about the performance is how different that behavior is from what is "expected." And yet there is no reason it was wrong. But it shocked both the audience and orchestra a bit. He kept violating the "i don't see you here" rule, where the orchestra members don't really acknowledge each other in the way they might on their way home on the tram, and there is almost a glass wall between the musicians and audience where interaction doesn't pass until the applause. He looked at people, smiled, gave his "thumbs up" commentary straight into the gaze of specific people. And this man who lives with mental illness played beautifully.

Right in front of people. In public, out in the open. You don't see that so often. Or at least that is how it felt to me and I found it mesmerizing. And perfectly acceptable.

Whether it was a flawless performance, I don't know. Like I said, I don't have the ear to discern that. But he gave an extremely human performance. I loved it.

Especially since it overlapped with a book I've been reading on the birthing culture in America (and Western Europe) as a rite of passage. Great book by an anthropologist about the loss of control women have gone through in terms of giving birth, and how much of it is managed by doctors in hospitals. How many procedures can interfere with natural birth but are used to make birth seem (this is the key to ritual) controllable and safe, thanks to modern technology. Practices which don't necessarily help the health of the mother or the baby. But that this ideal of a doctor delivering a perfect baby to society (the mother not really being in control, but more of just a carrier) has shifted the focus of birth. It is a great book, especially for a pregnant sociology geek like me.

And somehow, in a stroke of luck, I find myself in a country where most of my options for giving birth are actually more empowering of me than they might have been in the US. And with that same stroke of luck, I found myself in a music hall, entranced by the behavior of a decidedly unperfect baby, all grown up, playing piano. It was wonderful.

Medicine vs. midwives

Switzerland's public hospitals have as many options for homeopathic remedies and natural birth as some US cities might have through birthing clinics. They tend to adhere strictly to UNICEF breastfeeding guidelines (meaning the baby goes straight to the mom to help establish feeding, no being cleaned or weighed first), where some of the private, swanky hospitals do not necessarily. There are midwives in charge of most of the birth process and doctors get to do something mostly when there are complications. You stay in hospital for a 3-5 days after a natural birth, get help with learning to take care of the baby, and then there are 5-7 more law-mandated days of a midwife coming to visit your home to keep helping and answering questions.

My point is, there is a lot of support for doing things with less medication, less surgical interventions, and less help from Nestle.

There is still, however, this divide between MDs and midwives. Some tension about who is in charge, who to believe, etc. It sort of runs along the "medical research says" vs. "hundreds of years of experience with women and with our own childbirth" divide. Which means there are often two differing viewpoints on what you should do about some problem or other.

Dang. Still no obvious right answer. :)

I like the midwife approach on may things, though. And I'm glad to get to take advantage of a system like this, where high-tech hospital doesn't have to mean grey walls and metal instruments. Where I can have aromatherapy and a tub in the birth room.

As a scientist, though, it amuses me how strongly I react to some of the literature from the midwife side. About the efficacy ("a strong effect has been shown") of Red Jasper Stones for contraction pain, or about the "energy imbalance" that the masseuse felt between my left and right sides. I bristle a little at these phrases at first. Really? What part of my energy? How do you define energy? And who has long known about the Jasper stone? How does that work exactly?
My inner skeptic comes out.

But then again, the wording is actually very similar to how medicine says things when referring to research. They use similar language to persuade you to listen to them. And on some issues, like breastfeeding vs. formula, medicine got it wrong, too in the past. And medicine hasn't done too much to explain certain things to us very well when we were having problems getting pregnant. So neither side gets my trust automatically.

And I realized that when it comes to my masseuse (probably not the Jasper stone, though!), I trust her, I like her sense of touch and body work, so maybe she does feel something that is different in my left and right sides that corresponds to the pain in my left and not right. And even if I wouldn't choose to call it energy, that doesn't mean she won't do well adjusting things. I trust her physical sense and don't need to agree with her vocabulary. That used to happen in dancing, too. I didn't necessarily see dance in the same way as a partner, but that didn't mean we didn't really connect on the dance floor.

So you can keep your baby formula (as a given better alternative) and your Red Jasper Stone, and I'll see what I can do about integrating some doctors and some midwives into this whole birthing experience.

Hooked on phonics, worked for my streussel

I'm not a huge fan of fresh pears. Sometimes I like them, but sometimes the skins have this grainy, bitter aftertaste. But, it is now apple and pear season here in Zurich, so I had to try something with all the lovely fruit.

It started with the cheater way of making a dessert - halve some baking apples, take out the cores, and smush the now-empty core area with a mixture of granola, brown sugar and butter. Bake. Yum. Oh, and you can serve with ice cream. More yum.

And then I finally found my Joy of Cooking, packing amidst all the book boxes, and I flipped to "pear." And in there is Pear Streussel Tart....ha HA. I looked through the ingredients: flour, brown sugar (uh oh, not sure if they have that here), chopped walnuts (time to buy that food processor or hand blender thingy), pears, cinammon, salt. Ok, well, if I can find brown sugar, I'd make it.

Turns out, the raw sugar they sell here, in some forms, is very much like brown sugar. Especially the raw moscovado chunks we bought for the sugar bowl. We were kind of skeptical at first about the specialty foods lady's thoughts about raw=molasses, but it is definitely full of deep dark color and flavor. Side note: the middle-aged store clerks, pharmacists, etc, here are worth learning to trust. These people have not only had many years' experience, they actually apprenticed initially for their jobs. Twice now (with the brown sugar, and with some foot creme) they have utterly shamed our "no that can't be right" attitudes with their quiet but firm certitude. Yeah, trust these folks, otherwise you're kind of just cheating yourself.

So 2 weeks ago, pear streussel tart #1 got made (sans pastry crust on the bottom), and it was spectacular. Didn't last too long either with random forkfulls being taken from the dish in the fridge. The only issue I had was the cutting in of the butter. I guess I gave away the butter slicer I used to use for scones, and there I was, using two knives pretty ungracefully to get small pieces of butter to put in the streussel ingredients. And it really didn't come out all crumbly like the recipe said it would. So some parts got butter and others didn't. Hmmm.

Well, today there was time (and pears) for another streussel. I pulled out the Joy of Cooking again, and started reading the recipe. Maybe I could put the butter and other ingredients into the little hand blender container and pulse it all into.....hey wait.

Wait, it says "melted butter"....

Huh? Oh, like soft....no, then it would have said "softened" genius.

Yup, melted. So, like, liquid.

Oops.

I guess that explains my problems last time.

(I melt the butter and pour over the sugar, nuts and flour, and start mixing with a fork)

Ha. ha ha. um, ha. Yeah, that would be the crumbly texture I didn't get last time.

So much for speed reading when it comes to cooking.

I finally got one and it was gooood.

A creme-berliner. Basically a donut with no hole, cut in half, to make a heavy custard burger. I had one yesterday. Bought it at one of the main grocery stores here. Same place I bought the 2-pack last week. I had one and a friend had one. It was good, it left powdered sugar on my lips.

But that pack I bought last week? I didn't get to taste either one of them. Because there I was, showing the same friend around the apartment, putting out a few things for tea when she visited, and suddenly realizing that the dog was no longer trying to get my or her attention.

Hmmm.

Where was the dog, anyway?

Answer: in the kitchen, somehow very quietly having pulled the little plastic container holding the creme-berliner OFF the counter, onto the floor.

It took the dog a maximum of 15 seconds to single-pawedly eat what it took the two of us humans about 1 minute to do. The pupper did, however, also come out of the experience with powerdered sugar on her snout. Just like us.

15 seconds, and there were no more creme-berliners, and just a creme-filled dog. Lucky for her it didn't affect any digestive or "potty time" issues later that day.

So I'd been thinking about those little pastries the whole week, M even bought me a jelly filled one in town last weekend. But now that I've had the creme one, no contest.

That is one smart dog when it comes to stealing really yummy food.

When am I supposed to walk around in circles on the bedding?

I live in a foreign country, work here, have a dog and husband and bills. Oh, AND A BABY ON THE WAY. And I'm still waiting to feel like an adult. To work on bills ahead of time, organize social life more consistently. Let's face it, to do anything that isn't last minute. Isn't that supposed to be part of "nesting" that pregnant women do? Aren't we supposed to suddenly turn into hens with well organized, donut-shaped piles of little twigs and sticks?

Or is that the mistake I'm making. That nesting just means I suddenly have a bed where the sheets and pillows are arranged for maximum cushiness? And no extra bills are done, no little jars of muesli, beans, and spices are labelled neatly, ready for all the new recipes I'll try, no huge transformation has happened in how my to-do list goes from Orange Alert back to normal?

Because let's face it, I'm proud of the new mega-couch and all, but how far can I stretch the feelings of accomplishment from the furniture/organization blitz last weekend? I mean, I get to claim it (like a dependent on my taxes) only once. Then I think the idea is that I have to do some other stuff to claim I'm being productive.

Ok, it isn't so miserable as all that. I have done a few things late Sunday night, and even got to the butcher's on Saturday (nice man, speaks enough English that I'm ready to go in there for more humanely raised meat from a person I can ask all sorts of questions to) for a great piece of roast. And used that in my godmother's Le Creuset pot.

Funny, the things you choose when you get to pick something from a person's belongings after they pass away. I have no idea what she used to cook in this bright yellow pot, but I'm sure they were healthy and simple, and partly responsible for her long life. And now I cooked something from a butcher in a small village in Switzerland. It was nice. And since I'm not religious, it was one of the closer things to a ritual of continuity (from her to me) that I participated in this weekend.

Ok, so I participated in a a continuum of cooking this weekend. And listened to one hour of a radio show I like from Canada. So I have my few things to claim I was productive about (neither of which removed any paperwork from my life). Maybe I can just be okay with that. And look for a photo or two to put up so this post is a bit more upbeat....



This is a photo that M took, which I really like, of one of Gaudi's residential architectural projects in Barcelona. We were there a few weeks ago, and I had just enough energy for one outing a day, consisting of maybe 2-3 hours of walking/sitting, a nap, and a nice early (8pm say) meal. Very different way of being a tourist from when I was a teenager or in my 20s. And the one tourist thing on my list was to see the cathedral that Gaudi designed. I'll post about it next time, with the few photos we took of the still-in-progress structure. It has been in progress for, what, over 100 years? It doesn't hurt that it is spectacular, down to the concept and inspiration. But there we were, both having seen it 7-10 years ago, seeing it again. A bit more done, and yet still 17 years from completion. There is something about its completion timescale being longer than a human life that adds to the feeling of awe and (strangely) comfort I felt being there.

Gold in the pantry

There is a restaurant in Chicago called Toast. We went there for lunch one day and I remembered one of the things I miss most about the US - breakfasts. With great coffee (even though I don't drink much right now), and great food. Take this stunning example - stuffed french toast. One of each flavor they had: mascarpone, strawberry, and chocolate. With powdered sugar. And berries. Ooh, and look at the fresh squeezed orange juice. I could go on and on...

Not quite the same here in Zurich. Although, they do seem to celebrate the concept of brunch, and Bohemia has french toast on the menu, there is something a bit missing when there is muesli at the buffet and not, well,....that stuffed french toast. No, actually, they do okay when there is a brunch on Saturdays and Sundays. But you can forget the all-night diner and eggs (with tater tots!) at midnight.

So what do you do? Well, you stock up when you visit the US. In my case, you stock up at Whole Foods' baking aisle....whole-grain buttermilk pancake mix, chocolate chip cookie mix, blueberry muffin mix, wheat germ. Oh, I'm sorry. That is what I do. Maybe you just crack open a cookbook, but when it is a Sunday morning, all the shops are closed (all day), you just barely got your shopping done on Saturday, there isn't a bakery open in the whole city and you live outside of town....I whoosh open the pantry, and pull out a box of gold.

Last weekend, it was the pancake mix, carefully measured out so we only used 1/3 of it. I had one egg left to put in it, and then I sliced some of the apples we had. Lovely. Even had maple syrup found at a local store. So good. Someday, the blueberry muffins will make an appearance. If you happen to be over for breakfast that day, you're pretty special. But just know, I may make them just for me and M, and it doesn't mean you're any less special if they are not on that day's menu.

Gold, I tell you. And tastes like home.

I do really like big cities.

A few weeks ago, M and I went back to Chicago and it reminded me how much I like big, vibrant cities. Now, Chicago just happens to have amazing architecture (seen from a boat, a car, walking, the "L", pretty much anywhere. Like this view of the newish Millenium Park downtown from the new bridge that goes up to the new modern art wing of the Art Institute.
They had free open evenings all summer long, on Thursdays and Fridays. The collection of visitors was impressive - regulars, tourists, local families with small kids who may not have been able to afford the high prices during regular hours. And the space is lovely - light wood, huge windows looking out to the park and the skyline, spaces to sit, and to grab a coffee - as M and my cousin D are doing here. The spaces to sit and socialize, discuss the artwork or anything else, were really the nicest addition.
Zurich has its own spaces, but for now, they are not inhabited by friends or family, so they just don't seem as inviting. With time, I have faith that this will change.

Laughing gas

Earlier in the week we went to a 2 hour information evening about the university hospital here in Zurich and its maternity ward. It was all in German, with some photos projected on the screen, which meant that I tried as hard as I could to guess what the photos were about while M tried as hard as he could to understand what they were talking about, and we assume the pupper tried as hard as she could to stay in her crate for the first time in the new apartment. Once in a while, I caught a word I could understand which resulted in some interesting moments.

Blah blah blah blah placenta blah blah blah apple tree blah blah blah. Smirks from the German speakers in the audience. Yeah, I guess you can bring the baby placenta home and bury it in the garden, marking it with a plant or tree. Since we're renting, I'm thinking that option is not one we'll pursue.

Blah blah blah laughing gas blah blah blah. You can get laughing gas during labor.

Blah blah, blah blah, cheese, blah blah. I guess that is what they call the gunk that is all over the baby when it comes out.

Blah blah Kaiser-blahblah, blah blah 20% blah blah. So Kaiser is the same term as Caesar, as in C-section (I'm not even going to pretend I know how to spell it out). This was the part where the image of an operating room was. Complete with wide awake woman, and sheets preventing her (and us in the audience) from seeing what they were doing on the other side. Hmmm. Maybe this is where you opt for the laughing gas so you don't think too much about what is going on behind the sheet. Or maybe laughing is not really the motion you want to be inducing at that point.

All in all, it was a start to thinking about this baby that is on its way. Gave me questions to ask the obstetrician, and some more thinking to do.

How much mental energy does it take to try a new bus stop?

We just came back from some extended travel and spent the day yesterday recovering from jet lag. Well, actually, yesterday was for just making it through until evening. Since I'm up writing at 12:45am, I guess it didn't completely work in my case.

It was chilly outside when we got out of the arrivals terminal, over-stuffed bags intact and import taxes on new kitchen knives and dog bed paid for. Autumn chilly. My sweater and scarf felt warm and cozy instead of headed straight to the laundry basket from a sweaty trip. Great weather - cool and sunny. The dog wasn't due to be dropped off for another 4 hours when we got home so we took a nap and then headed to town for some groceries. And it wasn't sad like I had thought it might be. I didn't miss the US as much as I feared I would (this is where we had spent the week, my first time back since the move here). Many things were familiar, some things were novel, but good.

Eventually, the pupper was brought home from the sitter around 5pm, and we realized there was no dog food, so off to the central train station! We took our usual bus plus tram route, but on the way I noticed, one stop from the usual place we switch, that some trams which go downtown leave from one stop earlier. And I mentioned to M that "maybe we should try switching at that earlier stop some day."

And even though we were both starting to feel tired, and hungry, and slow, this notion wasn't that stressful.

Not like it would have been a month earlier, or even last week when we were frantically preparing for a trip away. I know this point may be obvious for most people, but it really does matter how many new things you have going on at once. When you have 20 things on your list of to-do's and most of them involve health insurance, bills and taxes, taking a new tram from a new stop is just not in the picture. It is too much to keep track of. Same goes for when you have just moved to a new place. If I don't even know where the grocery store is yet, I'm not looking for the quickest way there, just for one, sure-fire way to get there.

Again this reminds me how much there is for people to learn in a new class or museum exhibit. And how the simplest little piece of information can feel like it is made of granite and not about to swiftly hop into your brain anytime soon if you're already saturated trying to learn the overall landscape of information. Context makes such a huge difference. There is no such thing as an "easy" fact.

I thought that this kind of thinking was mostly relegated to academia and high-power jobs (law, medicine), the putting down of someone for not having known something "so trivial." But the reason I bring it up here is that it is also all over one of the forums for expats in this country. I, and many new members, routinely get textually disciplined for having asked a simple question that we "should have taken more time to figure out yourself first." Just like in physics when a professor used to say "you should really go think about this question more and then come back and talk to me."

Great. I'll go do that. Shall we say I go for 17 minutes? How about 23? When does "more" get fulfilled and I have earned the right to come ask you again? I know, I know, sometimes a student hasn't engaged with a problem "enough." And apparently, sometimes a person new to a forum has not sufficiently demonstrated that they have paid some sort of dues. But these are pretty subtle distinctions. This doesn't mean that there won't be people who you feel try to take advantage of your answering questions. I guess, for me, this just means I'd like to stop assuming that someone doesn't deserve an answer or help. I can say that I don't have time to answer a question (although, writing that statement takes as much time as answering some questions), but I think that snap judgement that the asker hasn't earned the right to an answer....well, that is something I think is much less fruitful.

Good luck to me actually putting it to work.

I'll get some photos posted next time.

This post was brought to you by the letter "a"

Four days and 2 wireless routers later, I am finally connected to the internet without a cable. Now, since I have just made this work (with no controlled strategy other than "keep unplugging, resetting, rebooting, etc), I'm not going to declare anything more than temporary victory. For now, there is wireless in the apartment.

For later, let's just say I've stocked up on my favorite chocolate. Which needs no electricity, no cables, no firmware updates (unless, of course, it gets too warm, then I just "reboot" it in the freezer), and is always available. It doesn't even ask me to choose between German, French or Italian before eating it.

I'm a bit suspicious, actually, of the electrical outlet over on the other (let's call it "fishy") side of the room. The desktop, with its frankenstein adaptor, won't power on over there. The first router which came with the cable modem gets all manner of bad reviews on forums, so I'm just going to eat that cost (because the customer service for that router gets even worse reviews, and at $0.08/min for crap help), and for now pretend that the new router I bought over the weekend was never having problems. But I'll also maybe stay away from the "fishy" side of the room and its outlet, until we have an electrician come over. We'll need one for a number of odd jobs anyway - adding outlets, installing ceiling lights, and now I'm thinking, for checking the existing outlets. Who knows, maybe the last tennant here was 95 and used only the occasional lamp.

While I've been working and reworking the various computer-related components here at 3am, the freakiest sounds started coming from the street downstairs. Like a dying animal. At first I thought (and M thought) that it was a cat having gotten hold of a hedgehog. The pupper didn't thought anything other than "bark, bark loudly, because that sounds disturbing!" We saw a hedgehog the other night at the dog's pee spot, in the dark, standing perfectly still hoping the dog would eat it. We made sure that no one was eaten. Anyway, I thought now one of the cats got one. But when I looked out, there were only 3 small cat-like things running down the road after each other. I don't think the first one had a hedgehog in mouth. I hope it didn't, anyway. And if it did, I hope it got a mouthful of spines to teach it a lesson. Hmmm, maybe it tried to get one and got hurt? Who knows. I'm hopeful to not find any dead hedgehogs tomorrow morning.

Oh, hey, we did find one kind of whimsical thing for the living room over the weekend. So, let's just say that this post was brought to you by.....

Yes, it is backwards. I know. I just got wireless internet working after about 6 hours of trying random stupid things and not knowing what I was doing. I'm going to let you just deal with a backwards "a" for now.

Summer sounds

First night at the new place, the minimal IKEA lamps are doing their best to light the apartment. You have buy your own ceiling fixtures, so there is no light in the apartment save for the kitchen and bathroom and what you bring with. We'll get ceiling lights later...great, one more decision. Or, five more, actually.

Some of the daytime sounds (of buses, construction, and traffic) have settled down now, and there is a mix of night-time-city (and trains!) and crickets coming in through the windows. You can see part of the living room view, with the flash of the computer screen in the way. The view of the more industrial spaces of town glow in red, green, blue letters and signs. I don't think I've ever lived with this kind of view before. It is kind of calming even if it is of the city. At night you can actually see something even if the sky is overcast. And it is nothing close to the street my bedroom butted up against (ooh, there goes a clickety clack of a train) as a kid.

The dog has finally given up her post at the balcony, waiting for that black kitty to reappear, and is now sacked out on some pillows. We had a small accident on her bed, when she was in a moving van in her crate, so she will have to make due with big floor pillows and, horror of horrors, sleeping on our bed. And we were going to be so good about moving her to the floor for the whole night once we got here. Oh well, when the nice new bed gets here, I think she may just opt for that anyway.

Still haven't met most of the neighbors, some of whom (apparently) smoke. It really still puzzles me how a people who eat better than us, exercise more than us, are more fit and into sport than us are still so much into smoking. But, I guess this is Europe for you. (stop smoking, neighbor person.)

It was a good day - another load of stuff to the apartment, dog went to daycare, I went to work, found the big grocery in our little town, got a lot of odds and ends for the apartment, too, got at least the ethernet working, made dinner, took the dog out, set up the rest of the IKEA chairs and lamp, and now I'm just relaxing.

About that walk with the dog. There is a little plot of green just a few minutes' walk from here, and I sat there for a while, as she rolled and did her business. And from there, you can hear a herd of goats' bells. Kind of a dull, tinny sound. Reminds me of the trip we took up to the alps. Lovely sound, don't know if it bugs the hell out of the goats. Still, even this close to city noise, there is a bit of countryside left around us.

Normal-sized garbage cans

It has finally cooled down enough to sleep by 5am tonight, which, of course explains why I've woken up now. Apart from my nightly bathroom jaunt (the bladder is still having much in common with that of a hamster's), I woke up to both the pupper and the baby moving about. Maybe they are both dreaming hard. From the dog I hear thwapping, and paws on cloth moving in strange rhythms - perhaps she's just circumnavigating the new apartment in her head. It has a round-track feature, from one room to balcony to another room back to first room which both the dog and B's toddler had fun with yesterday. I also learned that recently-learned-to-walk kids can navigate little steps down in floor height and large doorway speedbumps. So the dog is dreaming up a storm, probably also happy that it is cool air coming in the window finally.

It's a dry heat here, too. Just like in Arizona. But there are no air-conditioners or swamp coolers in the apartments. Just fans. Which makes a block of 86 F days pretty oppressive towards the late afternoon. I think both the pupper and I got a little too much joy out of the air-conditioned tram ride home. Luckily, most buildings are also build with thick walls, so the heat inside can be kept down with open nighttime windows and then closing them during the day.

Now the dog is back to just gently snoring, and the baby seems to have quieted down, too. At the same time the dog was dreaming, the baby was doing the same. Or, I thought, showing me what it felt like to be inside a person who was moving so much yesterday. "See? You went here, then there, then turned around, the unpacked on dish at a time and brought it to the table....you walked, like, 2 miles in that apartment!" My other guess is that the kid is just rearranging womb furniture, because there is motion everywhere.

Two other things I actually learned yesterday.

First, how unhelpful the old trams must be for a baby carriage. They have stairs to get up to the seating area, and especially at rush hour there is no elegant way to get in them. I think people do help you, but having a suitcase, two bags and the dog was not an easy load on the older trams. Funny how B had just told me something like this about baby carriages about 5 days ago, and it only really sank in as I was contemplating hauling the overstuffed rolling suitcase up 2 narrow stairs. Always good to get a reminder about how crucial experience actually is to learning. If it isn't personally relevant, it isn't as much of a lesson. This is a good thing to remember when working on teacher training.

The second thing I learned was how big things are in America. Overall, I was fairly happy with what we chose to bring with us (yesterday was the first time in 5 months I'd seen most of our shipped stuff) - the matress, the dining table, a mess-load of kitchen things....and I'd thought we'd need to buy a strainer. Ha! But some things were just comical, especially as the movers helped unpack the boxes. The boxsprings won the "are you kidding me?" competition, since they use bed frames with or without springy support here. And then you get underbed storage. Oops. And then the garbage cans. Yes, I brought garbage cans. And a broom and old dust pan which actually came in very useful after the unpacking of shredded paper and china. But the garbage cans almost physically screamed "we use lots of things and throw even more away, if you can believe it!!!!" I think that is their American-ness coming through. The one I packed for the bedroom is huge by Swiss standards. Granted, some of what they sell here could only hold two clean tissues, or one used tissue, but mostly there are 17 L. bathroom bags and 35 L. kitchen bags which are about $1 per bag to convince you to throw out less. Mission accomplished.

One more day of movers today. Given the garbage discussion above, the option of "movers unpack and take packing material with them to throw out" is a special treat here. You feel like you've just won a big prize. I intend to keep winning today.

Normal

Completely unlike this vegetable

What the hell is that? We had it with pasta last week, and it reminds me of a Saturday Night Live skit (maybe with Bill Murray?) in which 2-3 guys look into the distance, the audience can't see at what, and start....

"What the hell is that?"
"Oh, I know what it is! Wait, what the hell is that?"
"You know what that.....what the hell is that?"

It goes on, for at least 5 minutes of skit. I thought it was pretty funny. Anyway, this strange fractal broccoli elicited the same response in me. Especially in trying to explain it to someone else.

And my day today was nothing like this vegetable. This piece of produce is green, mysterious and kind of disturbing. My day was more busy, sunny, tiring, and long. But, like the vegetable, it came out okay in the end, I guess.

M is gone on a trip until tonight. So when our movers canceled yesterday's delivery of storage stuff to the new apartment, and rescheduled for early tomorrow morning, the ticking time clock began. Will we move into the new place this week? (Kind of depends on whether I can get the internet working....that appears later in this piece). Who knows. Movers are moving a lot of stuff, from storage, from the apartment, all into the new place.

Today started early, had some cereal at 7am, fed the dog, back to bed until 8am, then had to make phone calls to the doctor for new pre-natal vitamins and to change another prescription which got filled with something that contains saccharin (which is evil according to some pregnancy websites). Dog sitter came late, so now my tightly planned day got knocked on its side. I was supposed to head down to the pharmacy, then get on a bus to the local goverment office for our new neighborhood (by TODAY, a letter in our new mailbox told us, even though we haven't yet moved in and didn't have the mail key until yesterday), then take a tram to the post office in our new neighborhood to pick up the box from the cable/internet/phone company that also couldn't be delivered to the place we don't live yet, then up to work to get help with some forms, then....probably home. Oh, and get some money outside that post office to also pay some bills in that post office (yeah, you pay bills in cash at the post office....when you're not sure how to use your online banking yet).

Well, dog sitter came late, around 10:45am, and post offices and local government buildings close for lunch around here. Great. I now had to wait until 1:30pm. I could have done some work but then I remembered I hadn't yet ordered our wardrobe, for the place we haven't moved into yet, which doesn't have closets.

Ok, quick check online, addresses in the iPhone, off to catch the bus to the furniture district to pick out and then order the monster wardrobe. Oh, did I mention the morning dog walk where we scored a 3 (a pee=1, a poop=2) and as I was coming down the little 4 foot hill from picking up the "2" I slid and fell in the grass. On my bum. And my arms got into a bit of a scuffle with the various weeds around. That red, itchy swelling actually went down on its own. Now I just have little red scratches that make me look like I own an ornery cat.

Anyway, I miss the bus, so I sit down to wait for 30 min and read some stuff for work. I then get the bus, switch to a second bus, and walk to the furniture store, find the wardrobe folks, and we have a good 30 min. design session (I thank these people for making my day easier, and for putting up with speaking Ger-nglish), and order the monster. Which only one of my credit cards works for for some reason. Again, whew, just under the wire. Take the 2 buses back to our current neighborhood and jump on a waiting tram, to another tram, to the pharmacy. He only has 2 of the 3 things I need in stock, I get those and jump on another bus to the local gov't office. They are also nice, say that M won't have to come in, but that I need to do some final pieces of work to finish up the whole thing. I then jump on a tram to the post office. And when she bring s my box (which I'm thinking is going to be big enough to put a pair of shoes in),....it is HUGE. What am I supposed to do with that?

Well, I wind up paying my bills, and getting my box outside to another bus, then a second bus to our new stop. And then down the hill. At which point, one of my new neighbors stops her car and asks if I want a ride. I almost say "no" (thanks to many years of being an "independent woman") but then remember that M would really like me to not kill myself when he's on travel, so I say yes. Whew, again. People here are not that bad. In fact, they're kind of nice.

By this point, I've skipped going into work because, no way I'm dragging this box (plus my stuffed bag) to work and then the new place. I get to the apartment and do a little mental happy dance at the elevator, and start unpacking the cable modem, phone, wait....2 cable modems, no that's a mistake,...TV receiver. I concentrate on the modem, because if I can' t get that to work, we're not moving in for a bit. It starts off well, with instructions in English even! I find this out after opening the booklet at random to a page that looks like it is in Swedish. But in the end, the strange, triangle-arranged outlet won't fit both the router and the modem power plugs. Ah well, at least it is almost the end of the day.

I'll go back there tomorrow with cables, some snacks, the dog, and wait for the arrival of our beloved matress, and some furniture. Finally.

Oh, wait, so on my way home, I go back to the pharmacy because I remember the guy told me that the last item I needed would get there 10 min. after I picked up the first 2 items (about 3 hours ago at this point). He happily gets me the package, and off I go, on another bus home, and stop at the little grocer's to pick up a few things to bring as snacks tomorrow. I now have about -6 energy (whatever that means....I mean it to mean low), just enough in me to have a glass of water, take a shower, and catch a nap before the dog gets home. And then the bell rings, way too early to be the dog. The pharmacist has ridden up here on his bike, to tell me he gave me the wrong thing 45 min. ago. Again, people here can be really nice (ok, I know, he can't afford that kind of mistake, but still, it wasn't just a call to tell me to come back....ha ha, yeah right I'm leaving the house again tonight!).

45 min. nap, dog comes home, I make some simple dinner, and sit down to write this entry. What a day. I took 12 different legs of the trip with trams and buses. Maybe I can convince the movers tomorrow to bring up the matress and sheets first, and the pupper and I will just take a little nap while they unload everything else?

Yeah, I didn't think so. Well, at least I have a bag by the door to bring with and that new place is going to have toilet paper. Fancy!

A bunch of big sticks and a huge glass vase

...are currently enjoying a new home in M's office this evening, after coming from IKEA in a big, white van-ful of other things. We rented a van. I printed out all manner of google maps - from home to IKEA, from IKEA to other shop, from other shop to home, from IKEA to home (in case we didn't make it to other shop). Large map for each plus written directions and turn-by-turn maps. At 11am we pulled out of the rental lot near the university. At 11:15am, we missed our turn off the highway. Yeah.

By 11:17 I was done swearing, and about to say how, as navigator, I just hadn't had time to learn to use google maps on my iPhone, when I turned it on and saw a little blue dot on a map of the Zurich area. And it was moving. And we were saved! My iPhone was telling me where we were, as we drove down suburban Zurich streets. It was amazing. I managed to find the IKEA on the printed out map and somehow, turn by turn, that little piece of technology got us to the biosphere of cheap house goods.

We now have a couch on order which is a monster of a sectional, with washable slipcovers. Sweet. And an array of smaller household items (dishes, lamps, patio chairs) which will tide us over as we unpack our shipped goods, remember what exactly we shipped, wonder why we thought it was such a great idea to ship any of it, and figure out what else we need. All the IKEA stuff is patiently awaiting our arrival in the new apartment, nestled in our storage in the basement.

Mission accomplished. I love this phone. M's not so bad either, for having done all of the driving of a large manual van, after a long time not having driven.

"I guess they all shaved for this event"

The Zurich Street Parade...about half a million people come to the city each year for a big techno/house/group costume dance party. Around 11am that morning, we were busy trying to finish last minute shopping downtown before things closed, other things opened, things got loud and it got crowded. We happened to be passing through the main train station on our way to the tram home and got to see a lot of the pre-festivities. There was a stage with music already blasting, police already in place, butt cheeks already showing, and as M commented people all "shaven" for this event. Some costumes, like Snow White and some dwarves, or the bordello angel/devil and their grandmas, had more of a sense of humor. Others, which did indeed require a total-body-waxing, had less. The 70 year old guy with the jungle chief outfit (which did not include boxer shorts), was humorous. And the countless women in all manor of "naughty" costumes just reminded me of halloween in the US. It was a pretty festive mood, everyone laughing, a lot of six-packs and booze bottles, and only a few people drunk. It was fun to jump up and down a bit with the train station crowd. I remember thinking how nice it must be for people to feel like they could just wear what they wanted and let loose a bit. I think I like the Street Parade.

We went home, and found a local channel on TV with live coverage of the actual parade (more like a bunch of semi-trucks with a dance party on top, slowly inching through the streets). By this time the crowd was a lot more rain-wet, drunk, and in making-out-when-the-cameras-are-on-me mode. Meh, I no longer like the Street Parade as much. It took me most of the evening, thinking about it in the back of my head, talking with M about it, to figure out what had changed for me. I mean, it is meant to be about Peace and Love. Ok, let's just say they mistranslated and mean Lust. Fine. So why was it such a disappointment? People had the same crazy outfits on as I'd seen earlier. They were still dancing.

I think I finally figured out that I was disappointed because I had believed it was about dropping inhibitions, and in the end I found it to be very scripted in a way. The women caught on TV cameras were all bumping, grinding, pole-dancing, full-on making out, etc. Many people were way more drunk. There was a more aggressive edge to people shouting. And in the end, I realized that what I had hoped it was, about being who-ever you wanted to be without worrying what your fellow straight-laced Swiss citizens thought, wasn't really what it was about. It wasn't about not caring what people thought about your looks, not with all the skimpy cloth or "just glitter" outfits.

It made me think about what I would have actually considered uninhibited, and some demonstration of "not caring about what society thinks." And I came up with one big thing that could have been different, and made it more like what I had thought it was. People could have had all the same outfits (or lack of) on, but they could have done one thing differently which would have made it a truly uninhibited event in my eyes.

They could have, none of them, shaved for the event. Now that would have been different.

All the things I'm not

This week has been more about work than home-life. I've gotten my keys and office space assignment for the part time job I'll be doing, met the secretary and some other group members, worked on the informal education piece of a proposal, and on the "attracting more women to science" part of a proposal. Even made a day trip to Bern to do part of this. Very cute city. Not much time to look around for touristy purposes, but at least got a feel for the place. It is now on the "we should go back there" list for Switzerland, along with Lausanne.

Tomorrow (ok, later today), however, goes back to being about home and family life. We have another ultrasound today. And then, since we worked on Saturday (when everything was closed due to the national holiday, but very much covered in Swiss flags), we go do some furniture shopping for the new apartment.

And none of this is what was on my mind to write about.

One of the most surprising things to me about being pregnant is how my relationship with clothing has changed. As soon as I knew I was pregnant, actually. Not only did I kind of stop caring so much about looking exactly the right way (which I'm sure could be the topic of many counseling sessions), but more subtle for me and yet more powerful was that I stopped trying to suck in my belly.

Yes. Ok. Some of you have now had a number of responses which are along the lines of "oh please, you've got to be kidding me." But I guess this was the point of the title of the post. It hit me exactly how much I've learned to worry and obsess about all the things I'm not, rather than the things I am, when it comes to body image. I think most women are encouraged to think this way - from clothing ads, magazines, the "I wish I had your....." banter which almost seems to be a required part of polite female conversation, the movies, etc. It is rarely about what you actually are, than all the things that could be different. And as soon as I was pregnant, and knew I was pregnant, I felt like I jumped (or fell) off that "suck it in" train. And it has been kind of nice.

Ok, really nice. I mean, let me be clear, I still look at maternity clothes (or clothes that will fit) and care about the color and texture. I still change what I'm wearing some mornings before I go out. But I do less of that than I did, and I'm sort of freed of even looking at most things on a hanger that aren't mu-mu-dress-shaped. And the fact that I my waist isn't small is completely fine. It may have been a subtle change but it has been really powerful. Partially because even society is on the same page with me - "they" all also think it is fine. And although that is nice, it is kind of like when the judgmental girl (when it wasn't you) at school suddenly stops making fun of your pants because you've broken your leg and have a cast. Or something like that. It is just like some grip has been let go. Like I'm human, but not really. Ok, it isn't that fundamental probably, but it feels pretty good. To not suck it in anymore.

I guess I've often bought into the idea that how I was dressed could change something fundamental about me, and that has pretty much always been proven wrong. Like the day I got married - sadly, that white dress didn't transform me into a better, nicer, more anything version of myself. It was still me, with all my hang-ups and feelings and strengths and fears, walking down that aisle. I guess I'm glad I chose a less expensive option, because I probably would have been pretty pissed otherwise. "$2000 and I'm still me!? you've got to be kidding!"

One of my nieces, J, recently told me a great story about a conversation with her dad. In fact, she told me the day I found out I was pregnant. She was feeling "not so pretty" one morning at school, which made her feel kind of bad. She called home, and her dad answered the phone. Despite being a bit hesitant about whether or not he'd understand her dilemma (I saw her point, it kind of is a girl thing), she told him how she felt. And he had the greatest answer. He asked her "you know how people usually look about the same. People you know, day to day, whether they are in pajamas or a fancy dress, sick or not, they are still uniquely themselves, you recognize them, and they look more or less the same?" "Yes, sure." "Well, the same goes for you. Did you think you looked nice yesterday or sometime in the last few days?" "Yes." "Ok, well, you still look pretty much the same today." I love this story. It is such an insightfully different way to think about how you look on any given day, which is such a reminder that you're pretty much the same looking to many people, no matter what your mirror and psyche is telling you. Great, great explanation.

Keep in mind, I'm not suddenly an enlightened being in any way. I still look at how other people are dressed - I think that is something I'll always notice. I still look at clothes in stores. But I walk around outside and it is perfectly ok how I look, because I feel like I've been given that freedom, even by the most powerful media counterforces. It is a nice, little, safe-haven to exist in for a while. It has made me think a lot about how strong body-image messages actually are. Just like with my status as far as swine-flu is concerned, I'm in a population which is an exception to the general rules applied to people, but in this case, it is rules for how I should look. How much of this is my perception versus outside messages? Who knows. You probably can't really separate that anyway. But it sure is nice to feel like I'm off the hook for a bit.

Now I need to go back to sleep and rest up for all the caring I'm going to do later today about how my aparment will look. Suck it in, sectional and wardrobe! Sigh.

The grafitti in my neighborhood is famous

Our real estate agent forwarded this to me (in German), after I asked
him about the art...

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Naegeli

How hard can it be to pick a water kettle?

That's what I thought. I went to walk around some deparmtent stores in downtown Zurich yesterday, looking to buy an electric water kettle, in anticipation of our move to an apartment which will not be furnished with everything we need. There were white and black ones, and metal. The brands (like Braun or Bodum) which I recognized seem to start at around $70. Well, okay, I know that some things are going to be expensive here, and I want something that will last us a long time.

White, black, or silver. That's not so bad.

And then I went to another store and was confronted with this.

The colors! This is where my slightly tacky sense of taste will need to be tempered by M's more refined vision. When it comes to picking eyeglasses, I'm always shocked by his choice, think it is too weird, and once he gets them I think "wow, those are really nice!"

So maybe he can do the same for picking a water kettle, I think. Ok, so the kettle could be the one really colorful item in the white, grey floor and grey/blue granite counter kitchen. I secretly (well, not anymore now that I've written it down) liked the purple one which is really more pinkish in color than the photo, if I remember correctly.
So here is the kitchen again.


And the floor in there.





And the counter top. Now we've wanted to add some color, just so that the long, grey winter isn't completely depressing. But is a purple (or red) kettle too much?

Yes, these are the trivial questions that occupy my mind when it isn't thinking about learning in museums, the goal of an exhibit on a satellite, or my status as a member of a "sensitive" population during Swine Flu season.

The inner dialogue as I stand before the rainbow of Bodum water kettles goes something like this..."The kitchen seems a bit....straightlaced for a lot of plastic/rubber color, doesn't it? But we'd like to have an apartment which is more eclectic than matchy-matchy. Maybe this just means I need to be careful on which items are colorful. Well, at least there is only one thing to decide on as far as color goes. The yellow-green water kettle could be nice, too, now that I think about it. And then all the other, standard appliances we get in silver maybe. Yeah, that would work. Whew. Ok. Maybe this won't be so hard after all."

At which point I turn around and see....

Gah!!!

We'll split the fondue and she'll have the....um...cowpies.

We spent a number of days in the Swiss Alps recently, in a little town named Leysin. It is a very popular skiing area in winter, but full of gorgeous mountain hikes and not so full of tourists in summer. It lies at about 1600 m. above sea level, and some of the hikes took us closer to 2000 m.

It was really lovely. The town isn't so small that you need to eat in the same 2 restaurants over and over, but not so big as to feel commercial. Our B&B room gave us a view not only of mountains but of a glacier, and a 10 min. walk into town.

Let's just say we spent a lot of time walking.

The dog, of course, loved it. I can't even estimate how many grasshoppers perished in her wake, but to see her bouncing (literally, as if she was a lamb, or in the water) around the long, grassy fields was pretty magical. It became clear very quickly that she was just bouncing for fun. She would make these large loops, around us, off leash....boing, boing, boing.

There was one downside. Regarding the dog. These luxurious fields of long grasses were sometimes shared by Swiss cows, in their summer pastures (happy happy cows!), with their bells on, making cowpies. And apparently, this is a doggie delicacy. Or at least for our dog it is. So every once in a while, boing boing boing would turn into burrow nose, and eat. Yuck.

The fondue, with cheese, and bread and apples/pears, however, was quite nice. And those french swiss know how to make some really nice pastries.

One last thing which stood out for us in contrast to some hikes we were used to doing in Arizona was that there were a number of trails which, after 1-3 hours, led to a restaurant. A nice one. With full meals, beer, wine, coffee, desserts. What a great way to break up the hiking and hide out a bit from the really strong sunlight.


















The dog didn't seem to mind the bread snacks which took the place of her cookies when those ran out, either. Although, for getting enough cold water on the trip, she had some ideas which differed slightly from ours. We were of the water bottle and doggie dish camp. She, while happily drinking that, was of the dog-in-cow-trough camp. Sorry about that, cows.

One of my favorite scenes of the whole vacation was one I decided not to take a photo of. There was a field on the way from our B&B to town which we passed most days, and one rainy evening there were two large, black, long-haired creatures in there. My best guess is yaks. They looked like VW sized guinea pigs with the long hair down to their toes. One male, one female, standing side by side, up the hill. And the female was just slowly, calmly licking (grooming maybe?) the chin of the male, who watched us walk past. It was such a sweet scene somehow. So yes, the yaks were my favorite.

Washer dryer included

We've found an apartment, so we're moving. Not that far. Over the course of the next 6-8 weeks we'll be making our way a bit north, closer to M's work, to our new apartment.

It has its drawbacks - a bit far from downtown Zurich, and not quite a full guestroom. But, then again, there is a washer/dryer in house. No sharing, no scheduling, no hauling wet stuff from the basement to dry on racks in the apartment. No remembering to book a laundry time. And hopefully, no 2.5 hours to wash and dry one load.

So once we get our things delivered we'll only need to purchase a few extra things....dining room chairs, living room sectional, bedroom furniture, kitchen everything, desk, bookshelves, and on and on. No pressure.

And then the re-registering with local office comences, for us and the dog, post address change, utilities, and get this, probably we have to buy and have installed all our own light fixtures. People here take their chandeliers when they go. At least we don't have to install our own kitchen.

We're excited, though. Oh, and did I mention the washer/dryer?

Potty time = art walk?

There is a 6-8 block loop we do with the dog sometimes when we take her out for a walk. It goes past our local little grocer, down a block towards town, past a school, up to the little triangle of grass where she goes "potty time" and "poopies" and then back towards home. On the way it passes a small art gallery. On the side of the art gallery, in the first photo here, is what looks like grafitti. It looks spray painted. But then you see that it is also covered in plexiglass, as if the art gallery folks wanted to safeguard it. Huh. Ok, maybe some grafitti artist did a show there once and was asked to leave some art? I like it, kind of reminds me of Miro. M says he thinks more of Picasso when he sees it. No, neither of us studied much art, so that is our "depth" of knowledge from which to pull comparisons.

I used to walk just to the grass triangle, straight and only pass this piece. But then, as I walked around the city, and finally found the little detour that became our loop walk with the dog, I started seeing more of what I think is the same person's work. As far as I can tell. And this isn't in a grafitti-ridden neighborhood. We're living in a slightly uppity part of town right now while apartment hunting.
Not far from the art gallery piece, is this one, on an apartment building front door. And again, looks like when they painted the wall a light blue, they left the original tan color where the drawing crosses from doorway to wall. As if to preserve it.

And then down by the school where we stop with the pupper, is this one, which M says looks like it is opening or closing the door with one limb. And again, none of it is painted over.














Finally, one of the last ones I've seen in this area, on what seems to be a residence.

I like them. They don't depress me, or make me mad that someone defaced a building. The are all on surfaces that are painted and could be repainted to cover up the image.

One last thought, though, now that I wrote that "potty time" is where I see these pieces. When we first started toilet training the pupper, we were told to pick a word or phrase (someone else I know uses "whizz") and say it over and over again while the dog was pee-ing so she would start to associate the word with the act. And honestly, I don't think the pupper gets a single pee in now without one of us whispering "potty time, potty time, do your thing, potty time" in back of her. Of course, potty is a colloquiual name for the toilet, and I'm not sure which came first, the word or the portable, plastic, concert venue outhouses called Port-a-potties. Probably the word.

My issue? Well, now that we live in another country, we've wondered if we should teach the dog any commands in German. And the other day I passed this, at a construction site near the apartment.

Yup, it is a "Toi Toi." My question is, should we start asking the pupper to "go toi toi" or should we just leave potty time alone? I think I opt for the latter.