Not Dead, Just Hibernating

I'm running a little behind. And the photographs are in exactly the wrong order; sorry about that. They are mostly self-explanatory, at least.
From bottom:
1) Mandarinli ('Mandy') in the Weihnachtsbaum
2) Mandy in the tree, attacking a chocolate mouse
3) Peppercorn, trying to blend in, failing to blend in
4) Offspring, making annual Snow Goon
5) View from office window
6) Peppercorn, fishing.

Now! This is a writing blog, right?
So.
I have stopped submitting anything temporarily. I am a strange sort of mental lummox, and can't seem to remember that the important thing is the writing bit and not the getting published bit, so I am not submitting before summer, just writing. Writing writing writing. At the moment I am only writing crap, but at least I am writing. I can't seem to remember how, can't seem to open that vein at the moment, and can't tell if I'm trying too hard or not trying hard enough. This leads to desperately boring activities such as writing a list of the items on my desk. I don't dare write about any of the characters in any of my half finished stories, because they are all against me anyway and won't cooperate.
My mind even goes blank when faced with EE's engaging cartoonery. Of course, it's always possible that Evil has installed a mind-suck virus to dupe the minions he lures onto that page- I wouldn't put it past him, but I'm blaming the whole thing on

WINTER

which I hate.
The mere fact that setting all my manuscripts on fire would produce heat is an almost unbearable temptation.

Bookworms

Last weekend we went to the Gnomengarten. It's a sculpture garden with the most fantastic things, as well as the most fantastic person, Jürg Ernst.

The offspring liked this top one because the bookworms are so cute. we liked them all, but I am a sucker for anything that includes duckweed. Don't know why. It was a lovely day!

Cranky

Let's just suppose I'm in despair.  Does Clarion do a mid-life crises special?  Should I just get a tattoo, like some people?  I could just change the blog title to "Will Whine for Free."

Really, I don't know what I'm complaining about, exactly.  Nothing's really wrong, I still have a better life than, say, 90% of the planet, socio-economically speaking, and yet there is something lacking.  I have blogged about the lack of real-life writer buddies a lot (I'm too lazy to look for the links, though) and try as I might, I still can't come up with any solution that doesn't involve leaving this country.  Don't get me wrong, Bloglodytes- I love you guys.  But there's just nothing like someone who lives 10 minutes away threatening to come and bludgeon you with a 400g block of Switzerland's Finest if you dangle one more sodding preposition or switch pov twice on the same page.  Then there's the warm fuzzy feeling of being able to offer such supportive bludgeoning services in return.  I'm not asking for solutions to this problem- it's pretty insoluble unless Kelly Link or Neil Gaiman moves in down the road (Ah, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!) but I just need to whine.  We now return to our regularly scheduled sommer.

Which includes:
1) Wishing my cat would come home :(
2) Teaching Prima all the math and English her pos teachers have failed to teach her over the last few years so she can have a good start in the new school.
3) Trying to keep Middlekid and Thirdling from killing each other- now that Middlekid is going to the upper school, puberty/sibling rivalry seems to be in overdrive.
4) Trying NOT to declare Switzerland to be the most boring country on the planet.  Yes, the Alps are gorgeous, now GET OVER IT, already, and realise that Heidi makes lousy company!
5) Going to visit this guy, who should be cloned and seeded all over Switzerland, because he makes great company.

Sorry to be so grumpy in such fine weather, Bloglodytes.  Must be the donut deficiency talking...

I Feel Like a Washcloth Someone Left on the Motorway

I'm feeling a bit wrung out and run over. Maybe there should be hyphens in those. I'm too kaput to check, that's how bad it is. Buffy the bushy-tailed rodent would be angry and I don't blame her (see? see? that should be 'wouldn't' not 'don't'!)

Oh, nevermind.

Hi Robin, and everybody else. The rest of the exchange thing went ok. It was frustrating sometimes because it was clear that Randy was bored, but the French kids seemed to have been trained (Prima heard this from other kids in class) never to say what they want so we spent a week guessing. Prima spent a week in France, with Randy's five year old sister wrapped around her leg. The little girl cried when she left. Prima had a great time with her French family and some fun with her class but...

We are changing schools again. I know there must be some nice kids in her class, and I know that Prima has developed a rather defensive, hedgehog like manner (no offense, FHH; you are the softest and cuddliest of hedgehogs except when action is called for) so the kids in her class are only partly to blame. The defensiveness puts a lot of kids off, and we are trying to fix this. Not easy to teach natural self-confidence to a thirteen year old- since I have zip myself. But I've had it with the few spoiled alpha rich kids that seem to set the tone for everyone, and from the few parents meetings we've had. Well... I would probably feel differently if I got to know them better, but at first glance, my instinct is to avoid them like the plague.

Anyway, there is a list of French to be learned for the new school (haven't looked yet to see how much they overlapped), and we need to see if she is at the same place in math, so it will be a busy summer (six weeks instead of five this year, though, which is good). Sorry, bloglodytes, I know I'm rambling awfully, but my head feels like a coconut with a bicycle pump hooked up to it. A couple more notes before I drag myself out to the garden shed to write:

1. Our cat is missing. This is really putting a damper on our summer fun. She's not fixed so we're desperately hoping she just out having a good time and will come home full of kittens, but we fear the worst. It's been more than a week.

2. My daughter got a 4.5 in English. For those of you familiar with letter grades, that's about a C. For a native English speaker, this is ludicrous. The teacher said she graded her harder and gave her different tasks because she is a native English speaker, but you don't give a kid who already knows algebra trigonometry to do and then give them a crappy algebra grade if they can't hack the trig, right? I mean, to the rest of the world, it just looks like she got a terrible grade in the first year of English as a foreign language. Won't miss the English teacher, that's for sure. For the birds, this is. Like Yoda, I sound. Donut, I need.

3. Happy Independance Day, Americanskis out there!

Now don't just sit there- go write something. (Preferably in the comment trail ;)

French Kid Update

Le French Kid, AKA Randy the Unpronounceable, has arrived. We have made the following observations:

1) He folds his dirty laundry.
2) He speaks three words of German. We are still trying to figure out which three.
3) He's very shy, and mumbles when he talks (which is rare enough). He only mumbles in French.
4) In the event that the subject is brought to smile, (we have only managed to elicit this phenomenon once) he has killer dimples.

Even though we are supposed to speak German to him, Bearded One took pity on him and tried to speak to him in French at dinner last night; the kid is 12 and it was a 10 hour bus ride. (Their driver got lost and wound up at the Hospital. Prima's teacher went to rescue them and guide them to the school. It was eight by the time they arrived back at our house.) Anyway, Randy did not seem to understand Bearded One's French, which is scary because Bearded one had nine years of French in school and worked in the French speaking part of Switzerland for two years speaking what he had always assumed was French.

Will keep you bloglodytes posted on Randy's progress. Perhaps we can get him to fling his dirty socks at the laundry basket like a normal kid by the time he leaves.

Junior Polyglots and Fun with Babel Fish.

We live in the German speaking part of Switzerland. Prima's school has come up with a mad scheme to truck a bus load of kids over from France for a week and deposit one in our house. We'll call him... ok, lets call him Randy. He seems like a nice kid. Prima wrote to him (in French) to ask him what he wants to do when he's here. He wrote back in German. Any senior polyglots out there?

"Das Schokoladenwerk werde wirklich sein, weil wir dorthin mit der Klasse nicht gehen. Sonst für dich, werde du gern haben, nach Paris zu gehen, wenn du dort noch, nicht zu gehen. Wenn du noch nicht kennst, ist das nicht ernst, wir werden sehen, wenn du kommen wirst. Auf Wiedersehen und in in ein in den Wochen."

So. This doesn't entirely make sense. We decided to run it through Babel Fish and make it French again to see if it made more sense:

"Le travail de chocolat sera vrai, parce que nous n'allons pas là avec la classe. D'ailleurs, pour te, tu auras volontiers aller à Paris, si tu là encore ne pas aller pas. Si tu ne connais pas encore, ce n'est pas sérieux, nous devient voit, si tu viendras. Sur revoir et dans les semaines."

Prima claims it makes more sense this way, but I don't understand a word of French, so we ran it through again:

"The chocolate work will be true, because us n' let us not go there with the class. D' elsewhere, for you, you will have readily to go to Paris, if you still not to go there not. If you do not know yet, this n' is not serious, becomes us sees, if you will come. On re-examining and in the weeks. "

This is going to be an interesting week. Reckon Randy talks as good as he writes?

Rainbow Cupcakes!

I'm so bummed that we had exactly the right number of these cupcakes, so I couldn't cut one open. 25 went with thirdling to school (happy birthday thirdling!) and there are five left for her actual birthday on Saturday- seemed a bit much to make another cake for Saturday, and then *another* one for her party on Sunday, so we will have these cupcakes. I will cut one open then and see if it looks as cool as I think it's going to.

In writing news, there isn't any. :( back to the writing board.

All Blogs Were Quiet

I've noticed lots of my fellow bloglodytes going quiet lately, including myself. There is the usual year-end hullaballoo, ill children (Middlekid is home ill now), ill selves and general lethargy brought on by winter cold and grey. On top of that, someone rang my doorbell about half an hour ago to let me know their shutting the water off because of a pipe break.

Here's a cybercookie from me and the wee ones for all of you, no matter where you are or what your faith. Extra cookies for anyone who is kind enough to pray to who/whatever they believe in that Middlekid doesn't start to barf before the water's back on.

Oh, What Fun!

Another writing exercise from EE. The brief was to use the first 20 words of seven letters or more from a randomly chosen opening and then write a scene. Really, in a way I failed, because with this many French-rooted millitary words, I gave up trying to get away from the subject of the original text. But it was fun:


Mina SCREAMED as a bean burrito on a paper-napkin PARACHUTE DROPPED into her COCKPIT. Her COPILOT'S self-confidence was SHATTERED, and he BUCKLED as Mina let-fly a barrage of ANTI-ARTILLARY mashed potatoes, which was the best weapon the school cafeteria could PROVIDE. The ESCARPMENT her class had built out of lunchroom tables was already FALLING as tater-tots RICOCHETED like BULLETS against the makeshift SHELTER. BRACING herself, Mina launched a square of non-dairy cheese pizza. The AIRSPEED dwindled when the slice caught an UPDRAFT from one of the cafeteria ceiling fans. Still CLIMBING, it overshot the intended target. To uphold the honor of Mrs. Jenkins class, Mina selflessly THROTTLED Alec Fitzhugh, Mr. Walters' class president, into surrender. Merciful of his AGONIES, she declared victory by squirting him with catsup and took him prisoner. Mrs. Jenkins was pleased.

(from New Beginning 228)

Lying *Will* Haunt You. (eventually...)

One of the things I love about momming is what your kids teach you. They start out with one and only one communication skill- crying. You watch them develop, and watch their body language develop. This is fun, because at some point, they will attempt to lie. They will get better at lying. You will get better at telling if they are lying, they will get better at hiding it, and like virus and anti-virus, both working frantically to develop and mutate faster than the other guy, you do battle.

When my kids were quite little, I would just say, "I know you are lying." Because they were, and we both knew it. They would ask "How do you know?" I was not about to tell them; sometimes I wasn't even sure which bit of body language had given them away, but in any case, I wasn't about to hand over my secret decoder ring to the other side, so I told them, "when you lie, your nose turns purple. Only moms who have been to momschool can see it. Kids can't." (Momschool is something else I tell them about; perhaps I'll blog on that later.) Prima daughter then made my life even easier by casually sticking anything she could find in front of her face when she lied. It was really hard not to laugh. I'd be thinking: it's time to be stern now, don't laugh! And she'd be carrying on a conversation with a stuffed fish in the middle of her face, hoping I wouldn't cotton.

Now. Prima grew out of this, and I'm happy to say we have a good relationship, with very little lying. Middlekid and Thirdling got in a fight yesterday. Both came to me yelling "she did it, she hit me first!" and so on. After the obligatory lecture about 'it doesn't matter who hit who first, no one should have hit second either,' I told them they would have to sort it out because I wasn't there and I would never know the truth. Now the problem; Middlekid said "but mommy, you said our noses turn purple when we lie."
Middlekid is 10. I did not realise she still believed it. I should have; I remember being totally crushed around that age when my mom told me there was no such thing as Santa Clause. And then the Duh-Award drops out of the sky onto my obviously very soft head: This is so totally what I deserve for using a lie to control their lying. Oh, the maternal guilt! You have no idea...

-------------------------------------------------

So. I'm off to the hospital for another d&c tomorrow. Wish me luck, blogland. (place cool, animated frowny face icon here)

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Well, I've become all but invisible here. When I signed up for 3 courses, it seemed a good idea to keep busy. I'm not sorry I did it; I have written some interesting things, drawn some interesting models, and learned some interesting grammatical idiocincrasies of italian.

And the rest of it? I'm no closer to believing I am a writer, or an artist. Why is this so hard? I do things I think are pretty good, but somehow they don't count. What does it take to get over this and just DO. (Forget the Nike commercial; in real life there are loads of people out there, including ourselves, waiting to heckle us like Waldorf and Stettler when we fail.) Yes, I will keep doing it anyway. But why so erratic? I feel like a giant factory machine, responsible for three different jobs. Quick! Fill this bin! It's important! Hurry hurry hurry! Oh, now that one is nearly empty! Quick quick quick! Throw three kids into this, and I wind up jacking all trades, mastering none... I need a cheerleading section. How sad is that. *sigh*

So, here's a tidbit I wrote as an exercise for the class. Creepy creepy:

He dipped his hands into the lake. It was undisturbed and pure- this far north there was little pollution. And it was ice cold, which was good. Ice also had a purity about it. The lake was still obsidian smooth, this early. He made out a sliver of paleness further along the shore; a night heron, standing like a statue, unseen by it's prey. He understood the night herons. His fingers were stiff and red when he took them out of the lake. He fumbled with the oarlocks. As cold as the water was, the lake was clearly warmer than the air; the mist over it was suspended, unable to rise any further. There were depths to the lake never touched by ice or sun. Nearly bottomless. Bottomless enough.
He rowed the boat out. The bottom of the boat was full, with the fishing rod on top, between his feet. Perhaps he would even fish. He heard a splash and looked to see the heron, long bill in the air like a church spire, swallowing it's prey. Good for you. He pushed his brown hair out of his eyes and smiled at the heron before rowing on.

Anyway, just for the record, I'm back to being pissed. Really, really, angry. My kids are still angry. A week or so ago my youngest daughter asked if God killed the baby. What do you say? Then she asked (not kidding here, she really said this) "Is it your fault the baby died?" She's little. She really just wanted to know. She had no idea how much that question hurt. I just said "No, these things just happen sometimes." Well, I can hardly be surprised that she's not satisfied with this answer if I'm not.