Cybertron Flower

I'm back from Madeira - which also explains why I was not around and commenting for the last 10 days. Sorry about that.

It was great to disengage for 10 days: hiking, food, sleep, a new landscape, lizards everywhere, puffy Madeira finks almost eating from your hands, roads to steep for my comfort (and in one case also for ♥'s), the sticky feeling of sunscreen on the skin - photos to follow, I need to sort through them. Unfortunately, life did not solve itself in the meantime, so I'm still in what feels an endless waiting loop. I guess there is nothing but to deal. So, plans for this coming week, at least until Friday:

• Start eating my way through the contents of my freezer. There may be a chance that I don't need to yet, but the one that I need to is much higher. Also salads. I've missed them on Madeira.
• Wash and iron and sort through some of my clothes, think about what is really worth transporting again and what may be not.
• Medical paperwork. Nothing serious, just getting money back.
• A dinner out with friends. Maybe also meet other two friends, but there may have been a misunderstanding in terms of dates, need to clear that.
• Write that public talk for Dortmund. How comes it's almost time to give it? In general: organize Dortmund. Get in touch with everyone. Finally get a timeline for the panel + talks that I need to attend.
• Be really nice to my feet. (I needed eight band aids at once at a point during the Madeira trip. Ouch.)
• Break in new shoes. I really want to take them with me on that crazy trip in May (well, in less than two weeks ...), but I should not without being sure that I can walk in them for a whole day.
• Wash my rainjacket.
• Work on color-color paper. That thing needs to happen this summer, no matter what.
• Visit Amsterdam on Monday.
• Do the Madeira finances. (We've been keeping a spreadsheet with all our spendings, so this should be easy. Just need to remember to do it.)
• Travel requests for Tübingen and London. Accommodation Tübingen.

And as an amusing side remark: when I left Madeira today morning - or rather noon, since my flight was almost two hours late because the incoming flight had to land on the neighboring island due to winds (turns out, Funchal is one of the most dangerous airports in the world where pilots need extra training) - it was plus ten and raining. It's plus 22 and sunny in the Netherlands, everyone is wearing summer dresses ...

I was supposed to give a talk tomorrow - kind of lucky now that I planned to make the slides (or adapt the ones I had from a similar one) tomorrow on the train, since it just got cancelled. And by just, I do mean at half past ten at night. They've been nice about it and I could still have given it, but people would not have had the time to chat afterwards, at it is mainly about that scientific discussion that I care most. Oh well, trying again some time in March.

(Btw., I am moving in June/July, not April. Which is a big relief. Also means that we don't have to cancel our Madeira trip. And we may have just booked Crete. Well, it's a holidays for ♥ and half-holiday half-conference for me, but so is life. At least he get to snorkel without me getting bored or him feeling guilty for leaving me alone.)

What else? I did run this weekend. Actually, I was so upset on Friday night, when it looked like all my carefully laid travel plans for Tübingen, London and Crete would fall together because of a stupid thing I cannot not move if I want to keep my job (offer), that I went out and, for the first time in my whole life, perhaps, and definitely for the first time in my adult life did run five minutes non-stop and 16 minutes overall. Yeah, week four of C25K. Building stamina for hiking. And once I got home ♥ helped me to unravel my appointment knot. I still spend three weeks traveling somewhere every second day, partly getting up at 5 AM and partly getting home after midnight and still end up missing some of my favorite people visiting Germany, but there was no way around it ...

Otherwise this Sunday was a lot of work and procrastinating over work and being upset about people not being reliable or at least not admitting that they don't have time to do something (I mean, I offered to take over that job on Friday - but you told me that you can do it! So don't waste the whole Saturday with having done it half-heartedly in a way that made me repeat everything D:).

OK, OK, enough about being upset. You know what helps me when I am? Repetitive movements and Terry Pratchett audiobooks. Cue this:



Yes, those are Pokémon cross stitches. I'm going to buy smaller embroidery hoops and use them as frames and give those as presents to my two Pokémon-playing friends, who like this kind of crafty stuff themselves.

And if any of you - there is always a chance, right? - wants any, let me know! Preferably with a choice of a few of your favorite pokemon. Or even just one if you feel strongly about it. A group (say all evolution steps or all eevolution or ...) would also be cool, albeit it may be hard to find the right pattern. I'm dreading the moment the Articuno is done and it is definitely going to happen before the current book, "A Hat Full of Sky" is finished.

1. L. was here the whole week - it was amazing but I am all talked out and want to not communicate again ever. She is still in the area (but in a hotel not on my couch anymore :() because of a conference so we plan a dinner on Tuesday. And then other friends arrive on Thursday and stay over the weekend, partly at my place.

2. So much great food this week. French-inspired great food and Indonesian great food (rijsttafel) and Dutch pancakes-great food and fondue-great food and great cocktails and great beer/cider and great fresh stoopwaffels.

3. We had a post-colloquium dinner with all women, two of them faculty, another one with a signed tenure track position contract. It was a first for all of us. (It also made the most liked facebook post of mine ever.)

4. Ooof. That's the overall feeling today night looking over to France. (Did you know that Paris is just three hours by train from Amsterdam? I still find it somewhat mindblowing.) Also reading Houellebecq again. (No, that particular restaurant does not exist on this street, at least not anymore, but I've actually been in two of their other locations. Yes, his freaking society analysis is to the point. And if you haven't read anything by him, you totally should.)

5. There isn't a single position I could apply for out this month. Not a freaking single one.

6. It took me several months to work up the nerves how claiming works with my health insurance (we have to pay first before we get the money back) - of course it is totally painless, but gosh, did it drive home that I hate dealing with this stuff. I want my German health insurance back just to never ever have to deal with the money side of it.

7. Are the Sunday Seven going to become a thing? Likely not. But right now they seem a good idea.

-- my grandmother, my mother, me, my father --

My grandmother has been stripped of her name three times and of two years of her life: first time when her first given name was erased and she made two years younger to be able to keep attending school during World War II. Second time when her first name was turned into a Russian one. Third time when, once she reclaimed her second first name after the end of SU, the "Ș" that her name started with (pronounced as a "sh") was written as a "S" (pronounces as the "z" in "zoo") once we moved to Germany (there is no "Ș" in German). She died being two years younger on paper than she really was.

***

In a way, I am more worried now: my mother has been taking care of my grandma at what pretty much accounted to full time (even if taking care meant sitting there for a few hours in the late evening so she would not be alone - but imagine this every day, year after year and think about how much emotional labor that is) for the last eight years. There is a hole in her life she will need to fill now - and she is, in a way, in the very state my grandma was when we came to Germany: retired, without much social contact, not being able to afford almost anything social. Her health is failing and so is my father's.
I more than vividly remember what it means if my mother slides deep into depression. And she is older now, more fragile. And I am not there to deal with it (and can't be there to deal with it; the distance to the people who need you is a steep price to pay - don't ever underestimate it).
I am so, so, so worried.

***

I do not think I will be able to eat döner kebab for a while. I ordered börek when we stopped at the Turkish fast food store the day before yesterday - last time that I've been to Germany, my mother and I bought two döners, because my grandmother wanted one (no, she was not supposed to eat spicy and could not eat half of it at once - but she liked it). So I ate a garlicky döner and spent a lot of time brushing my teeth afterwards because I actually was in A. there for a dentist appointment.

***

I still cry at random moments (it's almost funny - I would not have thought that this would be my reaction).

Do you know how every apartment or house has it's own very special smell? We came home after half-emtying my grandmothers apartment and I breathed in ♥'s place in R. - and then it hit me that I will never smell my grandma's place again. Ever. Ever.

I may be crying as I am writing this down.

***

I was trying to remember a children's book I read as a kid a few weeks ago - and here it was, lying on the dresser. Why was it there? Why did she pick this particular book up, even if it was just to move it to someplace else and then to forget about it halfway?

***

I got some books and the shawl (a blue pavlovo posad style one) she was wearing all the time. There are a lot of things I would love to rescue: the little figurines she cherished, the plush toys. But it does not make much sense, does it? So: some books and the shawl, hoping I will be able to wear it without crying all the time.

My cousin asked for a box of sweets from my grandma's apartment, an open one. I hope my aunt will be able to get it through the Canadian customs.

***

My parents had to downsize a few years ago - from the 3 rooms (not: three bedrooms) 78 square meters (that I and my brother used to share with them, back in times) to 50, perhaps even less, 2 rooms (again - not three *bedrooms*) and low ceilings (I can reach them and I am not a big person - but you take what you can if you need to stay where there is working public transport on the weekends and close to the grandma you are taking care of, given the rising prices). And now the emotionally valuable contests of my grandmothers apartment (the old dinnerware, a ton of her crochetry, books that lived at her place because there was no place at my parents', photos will all their emotional value) are in boxes in the middle of the living room. And I can't imagine where they'll put them.

(Still not sure whether I will be able to reply here. Let's see. And forgive me if I don't.)