Ist es möglich, in Englisch zu sprechen?

I may have mentioned before how much I hate talking on the phone. That dislike is multiplied manyfold when it means speaking in German (possibly Swiss German) about anything I'm not well versed in in terms of vocabulary (I'm pretty good at symptoms of illness that toddlers and their parents tend to have, as well as talking about things that are broken in my apartment). When it comes to work-related things, I'm hopeless. I have Google translate open on my browser, but it takes one or two unfamiliar words from the other end of the line to knock me off my game completely and default to "Is it possible to speak in English, I apologize, please thank you."

Today there are two German calls on my list and they are the sorts of things (one for work, related to the university, and one about bank charges and apartment deposit info) that are so hard for me to actually sit down and do that I get to watch a movie if I want if I just make these two calls. There have been so many times that an interaction in German just went south, as soon as the person I'm talking to didn't understand either what I was asking or was classically bad at simplifying their own vocabulary and slowing talking. Seriously, people, have you not ever played charades or talked with a child? You can't just slur all the words together, or assume that I'm just poorly intentioned.

Well, I just made the first call, which gets put in the "good experiences where no one yelled at me" pile. The first person I called at the advertising division answered, was older, I thought "crap, I'm going to crash and burn", and when I asked the "Can we speak in English?" question, said "Nein, Spanisch, Italienish oder Deutsch." I almost cried out in happiness - Spanish I can do. Spanish, I have a personality and confidence in, even if my vocabulary is limited. I can get along well enough, and I don't break out in a sweat. Turns out, he was in deliveries, and the guy in charge of advertising schedules spoke English. And was nice. And informative. And I feel great about the call.

The next one, is our old rental company. And the woman I'm calling is actually friendly, but she is also not of the "I'll meet you halfway with simplified German". So, I have my three questions sitting on the Google translator window, and I'm about to jump off the cliff again.

Here goes.

Taking a personal day

I was all prepared for today to be a learning opportunity for A. She's got a cold, no fever, still up for lots of stuff, but somewhere between me asking her about her throat (still guarding against the strep throat I had last week), and M asking if she feels sick (no! don't give the answer you're hoping she doesn't say!), she asks to stay home because she's sick (in that universal, slightly pathetic kid voice....sniff sniff, cough, I'b sick, baba.).

And since it is summer and I mostly have errands and phone calls to make today, I decide it is a good time to show her what a sick day at home is like. The boredom, the not playing with me, the having to be calm, the opting out of going swimming in a cold pool later today. The watching every Baby Einstein video we have (that is still roughly the level of media she watches).

Turns out, she's pretty happy to have a day off of school, and mostly chill out. And, more surprisingly, turns out so am I.

I'm not able to procrastinate nearly as much as usual. I actually cleaned the whole kitchen during snack time, and have a list of calls I'm working on. It is nice to have the quiet, small company embodied by my kid. And she's doing pretty well with not needing me to play with her all the time.

Not so bad, actually. 

If I could've recorded the smell, I would have.

The dog would have loved it, probably. But as for us humans in the house - the smell of whatever the backed up drain was spewing into the kitchen sink, from the plumbing direction of the washing machine, wow. Intense. And not a good intense like balsam or orange blossoms. Not even the "depends on your personal taste" intense like some people's liberal application of perfume or aftershave. We're talking puuuuuutrid. Foul. Rank. Disgusting. Nauseating.

You get the point. Third time this month the repair guys have had to come clean the kitchen plumbing. This time, they came with an electrical camera and snake. Let's see how long the freshness lasts this time. And yes, repair guys, I know about not putting grease down a drain. I also know I was half-expecting you to pull out a whole, belching goat with that snake and say "Well, see, here's yer problem. Ya gotta goat in the pipes. Ain't nobody got time fer that. Always gonna have problems when there's a goat in the pipes."

The goat might even say that. This kind of goat would. 

Didn't happen. But I did sit in my living room for hours. On my laptop. Attempting to be productive. Checking everything I walked near the pantry whether Computer Guy was at work.

See, we have a view from the dining room into the courtyard of our building. And all the apartments. I think their dining rooms face ours. And there is this guy. First time M noticed him - well, the first 20 times - it just bummed him out. Here was M, drinking a coffee and feeding a toddler and not getting work done, and here was Computer Guy, again, working at his computer. Typing while leaning towards a screen, looking at the keyboard, looking at the screen. On and on for hours.

We come up to have breakfast at 7am or 8am, he's sitting there working. We have lunch on weekends, ditto. Us dinner, him typing. The man rarely stops. But then M realized, the man rarely stops, and pointed him out to me, and I'm now convinced that either he's hiding out and trying to crack some code (a wormhole may appear at his apartment soon) and it would have been better that I not report on him like this on the internet, or he's addicted to some role playing game.

That latter option is not very likely though, as he can still seem to afford rent for that apartment and is never shouting at the screen or doing joystick moves. So, the part of me that watches shows like the Mentalist is thinking we should not even try to figure out what he's doing because in the season finale we're going to wind up hostages in some Swiss bomb shelter, wishing we'd payed attention to the other apartments instead.

Writing just to write

We live in a new apartment now. In a different part of the city.

All three humans in the house have strep throat, although if the medical forums are to be believed (and, really, they never are), the dog could easily be carrying it, too. Pacifiers, sippy cups and toothbrushes will be discarded and replaced on Monday, when I should also finally be not contagious.

All three humans in the house have spent a LOT of time in said house these last 4 days.

We've done an awful lot of hanging around, random art projects, building with A's new cardboard blocks that my mom brought over for her, bathing, taking medicine, running out of things to do, and going to sleep and starting all over again in the morning. Voluntary quarantine gets old. Then again, losing friend with kids because we went out and had playdates anyway, would be worse, so we chose the former.

You'd think, with life being this slow, I'd be writing all the time. But I'm not. I'm also not reading, or ever in the mood to watch a movie after A goes to sleep. I may have gotten on this kick when my mom and I started packing up the old apartment and there was no time for anything. I've been mentally stimulated to my limit a lot, and imaginary-decorating a new apartment in my head ranks right up there. I downloaded the new issue of Oprah and couldn't do more than look at the shopping pages. I could hardly read the half page little snippets of interesting people and their interesting lives. The book section didn't even merit a stop to read titles. Too overwhelming.

But I've also done a lot of hanging out with my daughter these last 5 days, and that has been a good thing. We are both sick and slower. And I'm getting to practice just being around. And letting go - she was back in diapers for a few days - and I did my best to just let that go.

That's about all I've got right now. I thought I should write something before I just stopped blogging altogether.

Cleaning the pantry

We are preparing to move apartments.

One of the minor, yet strangely satisfying, parts of this is my challenge to myself to cook through the freezer, pantry and fridge ingredients I'd rather not pack, and are not yet expired.

Yesterday, that meant my lunch included whole wheat farfalle pasta, sardines and black olives. With a healthy dose of mayonnaise and lemon juice.

Dinner included fish sticks. Dessert was a compote made from dried prunes, a pear, frozen apricots and the last of the honey. With fresh mascarpone mixed in just to make it truly spectacular.

Also appearing on the cooking-through-it menus have been IKEA crepes, frozen creamed spinach, the last of the ketchup, orzo pasta, baby cereal for A (which has actually helped us in her desire to play at being a baby these days), and canned beans of all sorts. Oh, and two kinds of pancakes last weekend for breakfast.

Could get dicey in the coming week. But, there are still IKEA meatballs waiting to save some lentil soup mix, and at least one batch of Whole Foods' chocolate chip cookies or brownies. Oh. Yeah.

It all comes out in the wash

I mean that as a saying, not literally. Since as an underachiever in the kids' laundry category I am perfectly incapable of getting many food stains out of many a white t-shirt. And those are supposed to be the easy ones. Let's just say that for color-bleeding reasons my laundry loads don't actually see 90 C very often.

But I digress. I picked the title of this post as a comment on my day today, as a parent. The ups and downs, the lucky highs and the tantrum lows. You can pretty much match them, turn for turn, and come out with an average day. Not way better than most and not way worse. And yet, within the confines of its hours, there were all manner of things going on.

My 3+ kid woke me at 4am to help her find her pacifier. I couldn't sleep for the rest of the hour after that. Unlucky.

Found ourselves in the middle of a crowd of mardi gras costume wearing kids and their families (and we happened to all have our animal hats on in case the main parade that is actuallz tomorrow was today) and the steel drum band. Lucky.

My daughter fell asleep in her stroller during the parade (lucky) and then didn't sleep a wink more the moment we got home, 45 minutes later because of missed connections (un-LUCK-eh).

A and I caught the twice an hour bus by running fast, on our way to do some shopping. This driver actually waited an extra 10 seconds for us, which usually counts as a miracle here. Luck-a-luck-a-luck-eee.

A's scooter caught a cobblestone on the way back to the bus home, just at a busy intersection, and I about lost it (un-lucky-ducky). I took it away for the streets, too quickly and finally in that instant and I had a 20 minute tantrum on my hands for the wait and bus ride home. (Now you guess, which category?).

She wanted apricot flavor for dessert and the unlucky broken yogurt in our grocery bag just happened to be the apricot one. At that time of the night, with the tantrum behind us? LUCK-Y.

A flipped off the kids' chair in the kitchen, pretty much while just standing there. Rare and unlu...strike that. This kid has such balance that this was just TIRED.

Bedtime prep went great for all involved. Lucky.

End of the tally, seems pretty even to me.

That smile. That heartbreaking smile.

We've had a tough night previous, on the way to bedtime, the little A and her Mama. And now we are dressed, and on our way to school. Not the first bus that I like better, but still going to be on time. Things are good. We are walking.

"I will go to kindergarten, too, mama!" she says, huge grin of imagined joys splashing across her face.

And although my first reaction is to smile with her and ask "You will?! Will that be fun?", my second reaction, what seems like only 1/2 a second later is this deep ache in my heart.

For all the things that kindergarten won't be like. For the kid who might bully her (I never consider she might one day be the bully). For the teacher who won't understand what she is trying to say and doesn't give her the benefit of the doubt. For whatever unidolphincorn she thinks will be the class pet, drinking their snowflake water and fairy-dusted snacks. For the let down.

I should just let her have the thought. And I do. But I should let myself see her happy now, and not see myself in that toothy grin, announcing I'm going to have a second child (and then having to announce later that that didn't work out), or that I'm moving to Switzerland and then hitting the reality of living in a foreign country with no family network.

I guess that deep ache is for my dashed hopes.

And yet, for those moments, before reality set it, I was happy just imagining. So maybe it is okay to just be happy in the moment of expectation, and then take life as it comes.

I'm not sure. She, just like I, takes it very hard when things aren't as she hoped. Her excuse is that she is a toddler with a still developing brain. My excuse has yet to make it to the foreground.

We round the corner, headed for the stop of the bus that will take us up the hill. We talk about the possibility that she may get to "in front", as she always hopes to sit on the buses. From sitting in front at 8:45am, to a no tantrum bedtime - even though we come close when I've told her again not to pull a toilet roll fixture (I have very important priorities, you see) and she slaps my face with both hands, and I leave and she cries. But from somewhere I haven't been able to draw on other nights, I let her cry for a bit without yelling at her, and then come back to ask if it was a mistake. We wash her hands, get her in pajamas and a blanket-rich stroller for the night ride to walk the dog one last time.

Bedtime is mostly smooth, definitely smoother than last night. And I realize writing this that maybe the unanticipated joys of one calmer evening, brought about by intention-driven actions on my part, more than makes up for the disappointing realities of beautiful dreams.

Happy Valentine's Day, A. 

Better angels, beatin' up some cranky angels: the parenting pay-it-forward challenge

I'm reposting most of what I just wrote to some friends, because I'd like to keep it on record, and have a place for comments for people to contribute.

Time to start giving each other props for moments we should be proud of as parents.

I just saw a mom alone weather a massive tantrum calmly in the grocery store. At rush hour. While all judgy eyes were watching her. Bought her chocolates and candy and found her upstairs and gave them to her and told her what an amazing job she just did and how hard that was. I didn't get her candy as a present, so much as for a jolt of sugar, which is what I would have been needing at that moment. 

And although I could tell she was surprised and touched by my gesture of carbohydrates, the statement of how well and calmly I thought she did, and in front of all those people, seemed to touch her more. She smiled and said, "wow, I didn't think I was doing that well." Her friend (or whoever it was she was talking to when I caught up with her) was kind of stone faced, which I'll just ignore. Anyway, as I walked away to jump on my tram, I was the one in tears. I guess because that could have been me and I don't always manage to ride out the entire tantrum without raising my voice. Or because it felt a bit good to see another kid behaving as out of control as mine does sometimes, and see it from outside, that it is the situation and not the parent, making things worse. 

It takes so little in the way of staring, scowling others to stop us from listening to the better angels of our nature when it comes to difficult parenting moments. So many people have so little faith in our best intentions. And yet one person, sitting on a plane next to me and my squirming toddler, or on the playground, telling me they understand and that they don't mind, that all kids go through that or that I'm doing well, to give me that extra bit of resolve to keep calm, not yell, not get self-conscious. Or a smile during a tantrum that implies "I've been there."

There is a "pay it forward" crafting post going around Facebook, that I love. So in that vein, I'm challenging myself (and anyone else who is up for it), to tell ONE parent or caretaker "good job" this month, when you see them struggling but doing a good job. Because lawd knows those screaming kids aren't going to tell them. And neither are the scowling people who'd probably be hitting those kids in the same situation.

I'd love to hear some experiences that people have in doing this. Please post in the comments, and let me know if that isn't working. 

The color of mindfulness is blue (glass, apparently).

I was in the middle of an hour-long cleaning blitz, trying to get things cleared up enough to get to the bill filing. And to an hour of focus on work matters. Part of the new year's resolution. I'd been doing really well already - A had made M call me on their way to school to remind me to brush my teeth. Resolution #2, check.

10 minutes was going to take care of the kitc....smash. Blue glass bowl shards pretty much flew everywhere. Into the sink, under the sink, into the dishwasher, into the living room, probably into the closed refrigerator, too. I'm expecting to find those later.

I have to say, there is nothing more focusing than trying not to cut oneself on glass.

Ok, that counts as my mindfulness practice for today.