Moths to a streetlight

What a tiring thing, it seems, to be constantly flying towards the light, at 1am, bouncing off it, and then coming back for more. How long do those 5 months per lamp do that for? Is it just an hour per month and then they've gotten out of their system and go snuggle into moth-nests somewhere? A nice, cool leafy plant or tree, maybe.

Or do the same moths keep going, around and around and around the whole night until they just die of exhaustion?

Let's hope it is the former and they're all just getting their daytime frustrations out at the streetlamp elliptical machine before going off to sleep.

A change in the weather

Well, at least I hope it is coming. It has been a cold, cloudy, wet summer here in Zurich, and this coming week is supposed to finally be getting above 70 F. And after all that low-sugar drama last week (which I am still trying to keep up a bit, while M joins in for his own reasons), I realized last night while I was doing dishes that...I was doing dishes. While M gave A her bath. I wasn't on the bed, just trying to recover for 10 minutes enough energy to put her to bed without all my body screaming to go to sleep. That I had enough energy and was just feeling, well, normal.

And again today. I'm not exhausted by the time we try to put her down for a nap, and although I do sleep for an hour, I haven't been feeling like it is all I can do to make it through the day. How long has it been since I've felt this way? Not even noticing the doing of a load of laundry because my back feels ok and I'm not so tired. Or that I decide to get some dishes done because there is some energy left just after I've had A for a while.

It feels good to feel this normal. Life has not been this normal for a while. My body definitely hasn't. And I haven't given myself a break for that. Until now, when I've realized that I just wasn't up to many daily tasks and I was doing my best to do what I could. I don't know if it somewhat due to the sugar I've stopped eating so much of, but it is also because my back is doing better. I'm still trying to not look at my iPhone constantly when I'm on a bus or tram, and to move around more. And my reproductive system seems to finally be calming down a bit from the miscarriage. I didn't realize how long that could take, either.

 I'm the last one up tonight, as the only member of the family to have had a nap (well, ok, the dog always takes the nap and the early bedtime), and I feel awake. I've started a new book (The Foremost Good Fortune) about a woman who moves with her husband and two small kids to China for a year. And has great doubts about it all, and talks very early on in the book about how she has a place she goes to in her head when she gets overwhelmed by her extremely active 4 and 6 year old boys. So she doesn't yell as much. And the world feels like a smaller place to me again as I hear from someone else telling me her struggles with motherhood.

A is continuing to talk more and more, and as she is really getting good at this potty training thing, she has decided to name her poops according to size. There was a Mama, Papa, Baby and puppy poop tonight. And then after dinner she decided we should all go into the living room and dance to the NPR music broadcast by wiggling, spinning, and shaking our heads yelling "No!" as loud as possible.

It is enchanting to see her own ideas and personality coming out. Her imagination, if you let her have it and just go along with it, and her ideas. A few weeks ago, during some meal, I told her to close her eyes to really taste something we were eating. Probably after a trip to a farmer's market, or in Amsterdam. And she took to it. And completely got on board with the idea. She tell us now sometimes to close our eyes. We all sit there, actually tasting cherry tomatoes as sweet as cherries, or a great cucumber or plum.

Oh! Plum season is back and once again I am in love. I've never liked the plums we got in the US. The purple, sour ones. But here, they are magnificent, and the purple ones are only one of 10 varieties you see for a few months each summer.

It is getting cold on the balcony, and dark. Time to think about going to bed. After all, the old lady who seems to be accompanying her cats (or someone else's cats) on a walk down the street is headed to the little plot of grass at the end of the block where the old man who used to let his dog poop on the sidewalk will be waiting for their evening canoodle (as M puts it), is on her way to the rendesvous. Closing time.

The beast within

Turns out that turning on the air conditioner (yet another concession to increasing age and decreasing ability to sleep off a rough night well into the morning) was the way to sleep in Istanbul. It continued to be a gorgeous city, although never that well suited to travel with a toddler in the near 90 F sunny days. Not enough playgrounds nearby. And I think M was more than a bit worried in a big, new city, and wound up trying to constantly establish a 6 ft circumference safety circle around A. Good luck with that in a city where even the mosque guards can be found cooing to a baby, giving him their walkie talkies to chew and slam on the carpets, and later young women take the same baby for a walk always within sight of his parents. The people were so lovely and kind, and loooooooove children. Their own, yours, that one over there, all of them. There was not much personal space for A to inhabit when everyone wanted to pinch her cheeks. She declared in the middle of the trip "I no like Esstanbul," which I'm sure was not referring to all the gelato she ate, the birds she chased or the food she happily gobbled up. M and A and Aunt P had a tour guide show them around for a few days while I was at the conference.

I finally hit my stride at said academic gathering. My poster was moderately attended, I chatted with a handful of attendees, at coffee breaks and lunches, I hung out with the Brazilians. It was okay. I had time to think about my own research and where to take it from here, and went a few steps forward during the meeting, listening to the various English-as-a-second-language speakers' presentations. Know what? In a meeting like that, where even the native English speakers are working hard to keep up with the galloping change in accents that roam the span of each session, more text on slides is a good thing. As is reading directly from a slide. I'm a convert of the extreme context specificity of the "little text; no direct reading" rule.

Once I got home, work is again slow, and so I feel the same. And in an ill-advised google search of Candida Diet (something I might at some point need to consider, due to a combination of the d&c after the miscarriage and probably the cortisone shots), I am once again reminded of why "we don't do google searches on medical problems", children. Ugh. Look it up - you can eat beef, eggs, macadamia nuts, and peppermint tea. Oh, and eventually work your way up to yogurt. It is depressing, but not as creepy as all the folks discussing it on the forums (children, if you didn't obey, and actually did the google search, for the love of Pete at least don't read the forums...). They are busy writing things about the Candida Die-Off in which the candida is described as being angry at you, who are not offering sugar on its altar of gut and other parts destruction and attacks you. And you feel like crap.

So guess who tried a mini-version of no caffeine (coffee beans and tea leaves are moldy, apparently), sugar or carbs today? Someone with a death wish who really should have known better, but thankfully had daycare for both child and dog at midday. And then drank black tea finally. And then had a pizza and ibuprofen for dinner in hopes that the sudden flu symptoms (huge headache, aches, nausea, and I kid you not, even leg pain from my back) would go away. They did. I'm chalking it up to either caffeine/sugar withdrawl, or the ability of ibuprofen to handle flu symptoms. And pretending I didn't read anything about angry microbes.

In either case, I will most likely be offering white bread and jam and coffee to "the beast" tomorrow for breakfast. M replied to my texts about how horrible this felt by telling me to "feed my Trill." Nerd.

A ridiculously romantic city

There is this shamefully full moon hanging over this ancient city of Istanbul, where it feels like the last 1000 years of history got put through a blender and dropped onto the streets. I've chosen well this time, and not cheaply, and we have a balcony view of the Bosphorus, the Blue Mosque, and the Hagia Sophian from up on our crowded ancient hill across the water. The seagulls have a different accent here, and the cas are everywhere but quiet. The women are fully covered in black robes and scarves, or stuffed into knockoff designer clothing that is skin tight and teetering on platform stilettos, or something in between and not either of those. The male waiters at restaurants coo at A, and smile and pat her belly after she's happily eaten most of what we've randomly chosenfromthe buffet. Fathers and 12 year old brothers hold newborns in the passport control line at the airport. We live right next to a hammam that is the landmark taxis know best around our neighborhood of modern stores and ancient homes with secondhand clothing shops run out of a spiral staircase. People are warm, friendly, which makes up for the fact that they don't understand as much English as I've gotten spoiled on in Zurich. I know I'm being misunderstood and vice versa, but it doesn't make me feel disconnected like it might in a cold place. The good will of people carries me pretty far. I'm up at 3am, taking a break from a bed full of husband and warm, snuggle-my-head-in-your-neck toddler. I can't sleep well here. I didn't sleep well in Amsterdam, either. It is taking an awfully long time to realize I can't travel like I used to as a single woman. Or single teenager. I'm at a conference, but it is hard to be able to fully participate, even at my half-conference level, when I have others with me. I don't know how to do this. Also I look up some more at our ridiculously romantic view, and listen to the crazy talking seagulls, and hope this gets me tired enough to sleep.