karma chameleon

I´m not normally a person lamenting and moaning a lot about how many things in life go wrong and how unlucky I am. 

But this week I must have fucked up my karma somehow (still feeling happy though - I´m just that sort of a tumbler):

• found out that my bank soon will charge for paper bank transfers - just after I fought with them for weeks in order to get send new pre-printed forms. Well, can bin them now :-/
• in England supermarket chain Waitrose won´t give out free coffees in the cafeterias for loyalty cardholders anymore - so far I used this a lot and it saved me an awful lot of coffee money, bastards! Don´t introduce a scheme like that to axe it again after a couple of years.
• had sort of an argument with my closest friend
• missed the opportunity to meet up with another friend 
• a blogger meetup I wanted to attend in Wiesbaden was cancelled
• a patisserie in Frankfurt I loved the look of for years and wanted to finally go to next Monday to buy something has closed down
• my favourite Thai bistro in Frankfurt has re-decorated and changed the menu (and the prices, of course) which upsets creatures of habit like me
• and the highlight: got a 50€ note stolen out of my wallet in a restaurant and ended up having my friend paying for me while I searched like an idiot...humiliating

I know, I´m still lucky as those are all very much first world problems but still - it can only improve again from now on I hope. 

Have a nice weekend everyone and take care of all your belongings :-)

the sound of silence

In case you wonder why it is so quiet here over the last days/week - no, it´s not that the Scrooge that I am has suddenly become all festive and is celebrating a lot. No way. No hope there.

The reason behind my muteness is...I´m just not getting anything written.
I have plenty of time, more than enough ideas and topics for posts, but: everytime I sit down to blog and open the website I just end up playing Candy Crush...for hours...( level 543 doesn´t happen on its own you know)...or get distracted/annoyed by my husbands need for tv...or decide I should make some tea...or eat some chocolate...or get a message on Facebook...or or or...procrastination. I´m so good at it that it even stops me from doing this I actually enjoy!
The more I have to say the more I appear to stand in my own way and remain silent.

When suffering from writer´s block it is usually recommended just writing anything to fill this awful blank sheet/page will help.
So read this and understand it as my first step towards eloquence and speech diarrhoe again.
See you again soon!

PS: The photo has been put onto here just as I know how much more readers can be attracted with random cat content, it´s me being calculating :-)

diamonds are forever

In March this year I went swimming in Wiesbaden together with my husband as we regularly do during the colder months.
While I make a point of always taking off my engagement and my wedding ring off I never worried about my dainty white gold necklace with the small diamond pendant.
A present my husband gave me earlier on in our relationship, the necklace was still very new as I had managed to rip the old one.
When leaving the pool I suddenly noticed that the necklace was broken again (without me doing anything!) - it was liying on my shoulders...without the diamond.

We had a quick look on the floor but looking for a 7x3mm large item in a large swimming pool full of people is equal if not worse than the search for the proverbial needle in the haystack.
We left feeling quite down. I tried not to get upset as there is really no point in worrying about something material but still, the mood was spoilt.

In the following week I exchanged some mails with the thermal bath in case something was found but as expected, nothing.

This week now we went swimming again.

In the pool I re-arranged my swim suit as you do and felt something unusual, what can I say, between my legs. It was small, hard (I will get some very interesting traffic here soon I´m sure) and I first thought it might have been an earstud that somehow got caught there.
Then I realised it.

My diamond pendant had got stuck between the fabric and the liner of my swim suit!
Was with me all the time!!
Survived another pool, several rounds of breast stroke and two washes!!!

I told my husband, he had a feel (isn´t it good no one really sees what is going on under the water surface sometimes?!) and I carefully retreated to the changing room to get my treasure back and store it safely like Gollum.

Even though I´m an atheist you sometimes really wonder...I mean, how high was the chance for this to happen?

We left exhilarated and happy.
And are looking for a hopefully much stronger necklace now.

treasure-hunting

Earlier this year I had one of my more strange ideas again - we were planning to spend a few days in Mallorca again in early October and a good friend of mine was going again in early September as every year - wouldn't it be fun if she would hide something, a "treasure" somwhere and send us on a quest to find it?
Well, as I normally stick at least to my odd ideas I told her and she, being as mad as me, agreed and henceforth planned what to hide and where to hide it.
Time went on and in September, while sitting in her garden for a BBQ, she handed me the lovingly decorated treasure map...

On our third day in Mallorca we headed for Calas de Mallorca in order to find it, didn't look too hard.
Well, as most times, it turned out to be not as straightforward as it looked on paper but with the help of my more logical thinking and more determined husband we made it!
Found a carefully wrapped empty cigarette box in a bush nestled between houses, inside was a 5€ note, a business card of a local bar and the invitation to spend the money on a coffee there and say hi to everyone from her and her family.

Thinking about this makes me so much happier than any ridiculous christmas present could ever make! We have created a happy memory even though we were hundreds of miles apart.
Friends are important but slightly nutty friends are the best.

PS: On our walk back to the car we had a very strange experience.
Henry Mancini's "Baby Elephant Walk" was playing loudly from somewhere and seemed to follow us but we could see no car, no ice cream van, no nothing that could be the source if this.
My friend thinks it might have been the aerobic class in a nearby hotel but honestly: who does aerobics to this tune?!? Creeeepy...

thousand

1000 posts published on this blog

Thank you for reading and commenting and remaining loyal for the at least next 1000 posts

(there won't be a prize draw but if you happen to be in London or the Rhine-Main area of Germany let me know and I will buy you a drink :-))

I want to ride my bicycle

Fee from "Fee ist mein Name" has written a lovely post about her obsession with taking photos of bicycles whenever she spots a picturesque one. The funny thing is that her relationship with two-wheelers is a slightly traumatic one after she came off her bike as a child which lead to a badly scratched half face and made her look like the phantom of the opera for a while.

Her post inspired me - I suddenly realized that I have a fairly large number of bike photos on my hard drive too!
Here is a random collection retrieved from my data vaults today, I'm sure there is much more if I would look harder.

And now comes the punchline: My relationship with bikes is not exactly a troubled one, no, I cannot even ride a bike!
I best start thinking about secret wishes, fears and desires, compensations, my id, ego and super-ego now...;-)

procrastinating pleasure

Does that sound familiar to you? You buy the most amazing, beautiful, chic and expensive pair of trousers - and then it collects dust in your wardrobe as you don't wear it. You are sparing it for a special occasion! Don't wanna ruin it, waste it, desecrate it, waiting for that special moment that in most cases never comes.
One day in the future we want to wear it and realize it now looks frumpy, doesn't fit anymore or has been devoured by moths. And then we have should to put it on ebay or donate it to a charity shop we probably will put it back into our wardrobe mausoleum in order to be prepared for that precious moment in the future when our body-shape will change and this particular style will come back into fashion.

In the past I have had moments of clear-sightedness and put some of my shirts into a bag ready for the next Oxfam shop and what did my husbann say? "But I thought you like this one!" No, actually I don't like it at all but I have been wearing it so often in order to give it some wear so I will finally be able to get rid of it. How stupid is that???

I have noticed this irrational behaviour in many other aspects of life as well.
I buy a book. It is by one of my favourite authors, hyped in the media, about a really exciting topic, I'm longing to immerse myself in it - only to put it on the shelf to read it later. So I have something to look forward to. Reading boring stuff instead to get it out of the way with and achieve some feeling of achievement.

Using up endless piles of cosmetic testers while the expensive high-end product perishes away.
The lovely slice of soap from Lush shrivels away in the drawer while I'm working through my stack of hoarded hotel soaps. Not watching the film you recorded months ago so I work my way through important but utterly uninteresting to me films...or "Farmer need a Wife".

Psychologists come forward please - what makes humans behave in such an irrational way?
Why can't be resist the nice things but then stop ourselves from enjoying them?
Probably one of the most first world problems of them all...

to explode or not to explode, that is the question

I´m in Germany, as always I´m trying to make the most of my time while being here before I head to my English exile again. Go to theatre, eat at my favourite restaurants, sort out eye tests, bank appointments, and, most important, meet as many friends as possible to catch up and be social.

Easier said than done (I vaguely remember I talked about this before) - matching busy mums, hard working office heroes and people from sometimes further away than 200km.
But it works, sometimes better, sometimes worse.

Then there are my two old "friends" from school, from now on I will refer to them as the two Graces.

Two weeks before my flight: "Hiya, just to let you know I will be home for three weeks and my calendar is still empty so pick a date :-)"

~silence~

After I landed, Grace 1: "How about this day?"
(ONE fucking day out of three weeks!)

~silence~

after approx. 10 more emails, answered within 2hrs from my side and within five days from theirs

me: "That is the date! When and where?"

~silence~

Two days to go, Grace 2: "Oh, oops, I don´t have time on day x, have to find a different day!"
(yes, as I´m such a sad little creep who has nothing else planned now for her last week than sitting at home waiting for someone to take me out)

Tomorrow is day x, I haven´t heard of Grace 1, I haven´t replied to Grace 2.
Turned down other friends as I had a date.

I´m pissed off. BIG TIME.

I´m disappointed and hurt, I don´t expect to be the center of attention but a little bit of "Oh, you are here, so good to see you again" doesn´t harm and should come easy amongst friends.
Of course I´m the student, the one without the busy job so I´m not allowed to have a busy schedule myself- if I moan about the sheer impossibility of setting a date I take the blame "I never know if you are here/have time - it's always so complicated" (it's difficult to find out things like this in times of email/Facebook/phones, texts/letters, I understand that)

It has absolutely nothing to do with how busy you are - it is entirely up to you and your priorities.

The question now is - remaining silent, giving up and hoping for things to improve or die off?
Or writing that one email saying everything I wanted to say for years now? And then hoping for improvement or the end including having to swap sides on the pavement when accidentally meeting in town?
As you might have guessed by now, I love to provoke and speak my own mind but I'm no good at confrontations at all.

Why do we hold on to those who obviously don´t care about us (a rhetorical question, I know I should have ditched them a while ago)? Are you maybe stuck in a similar relationship were you hold on to something that isn't there anymore?

PS: And I promise, this will be the last post about this - no matter what I decide to do, it either will improve or be over now...I hope ;-)

Update: Grace 1 emailed "Yes, we can meet but I'm quite sick" - am I a monster now for having replied "Yes thanks but no thanks"?

hyvää viikonloppua

well, I did try my very best learning Finnish four semesters long but didn´t achieve much :-)

Technik die begeistert

Here I am sitting, blogging, drinking tea and suddenly I hear music...

...it is coming from somewhere in the house, it sounds very cheerful in an artificial way as if an old-style Gameboy would be left playing, I know the melody

After a few surprised moments I get to the bottom of this -
no Gameboy, no ghost and not my mind telling me that I´ve lost it completely now, no:

It´s the new washing machine telling me that it is done!

Amazing

Don´t judge a book...

...by it´s cover! At least this is how the saying goes.

Easier said than done I think...in life and especially in book shops!

Browsing the second hand book market on London´s Southbank with a friend we suddenly found out about another thing we have in common.

We both hate book covers that show the poster of the film version!
Those editions corrupt my own imagination, they are degrading the novel to a form of script and they have those awful photo sections in the middle.

So everytime when I read "Soon to be a major motion picture" on the front I stay away and search for an older, "normal" edition on the shelf.
Anyone else agreeing on this one?

Booooh!

Yeah!

(don´t ask me why I chose "The Hobbit" as I got bored by the book and hate the film)

God save the King

Sitting in the park, reading, enjoying the warm September morning sun.
I´m turning over a page, look up and there she is as I remember seeing her in the yellow press:
Prince George´s Spanish nanny...with the bundle of joy waddling beside her, William and Kate´s son, the future English King.
I start shaking, I want to take a picture but hesitate as I don´t wanna be rude, don´t want to upset anyone and destroy the moment.
I pretend to read, I can´t stop staring though. I take some photos when it is nearly too late, pretending to look at flowers.

Little George is playing with chess figures that are his size - if I would be a sleazy journalist I would conclude "already a great strategist".
I walk away, a bit wobbly on my legs, ecstatic...I will never forget this encounter.
London, I love you.

wormery

I can't imagine a day without being tormented, entertained, amused or at least accompanied by one or more earworms - snippets of songs that suddenly appear in my head, stick there, and then make place for another one.
Sometimes I can understand their origin - a song that played in a driving by car, a radio advert or the song that woke you as an alarm in the morning.
Other times it is completely random. Suddenly this melody pops up and there it is.
Of course it is never a full song, no, normally it's one line that "plays" in an endless loop in my ear.
It's not something I ever thought about lots but recently I talked to someone (can't even remember who it was - probably my current earworm at the time was just singing too loudly) and he or she said "No, I don't often get them".
I wonder now, is it not normal to have music in your brain pretty much all of the time when you are awake?

As a glimpse into my potentially abnormal and weird soul - here is yesterday's playlist:

in the morning it was this, no idea where I picked it up (but I like it)

later and only for a short time it was, another "favourite" of mine (I can't even click on the video now otherwise it is back and here to stay)

for an even shorter time it was this because the traffic lights beep in the exact same rhythm

then  popped up, why? No idea...

to bed I went with the help of, a re-occuring friend

Tell me, are there similar parties going on between your ears?

PS: I know that earworm is not exactly a standart British word but "catchy tune" or "haunting melody" simply don't have the same ring to them. 

What is a weekend?!?

Wishing you all a lovely and sunny weekend :-)

(imho still one of the most funny photos that ever circulated around the online world)

pretty ugly

When it comes to fashion I have no backbone.
I read about the newest style craze in a magazine...I think "That's horrid...I see it on a blog...I see it on another blog...I think "Hmm, not sure"...I see it on someone...I see it on someone else...I think "I have to have it. NOW!"

Someone else suffering from this condition?
Whatever I deem ugly first, as soon as it has reached the fashion hall of fame at least for a while, I want to have it.
This time: white Arizona Birkenstocks.
I love Birkenstocks and spend pretty much my entire summer in them now.
But the white ones always seemed only appropriate for health care workers.

Well, when I saw fake ones on offer at Aldi this week I had to grab a pair (the last one! Seems I'm not alone...).
And now I look at them and find them wonderful...wonderful and ugly but nevertheless cool.

I think that's what you call a fashion victim.

Let me know: any trends you classed as ugly first and then fell for shortly after?

Think I will wear them to London first...not sure Wiesbaden is ready for them yet...

cakes go pop

A friends post on Facebook about her struggle with producing pretty looking cake pops showed me one fact again: I´m a greedy and lazy lady.

I have a cake pop maker!
And do you know why? So I can make bite sized cakes within minutes when I crave them - no decorations, no sticks. Batter gets mixed, pops get baked, pops get eaten - done.

Before the whole Pinterest and Instagram thing took off I didn´t know what a matter of fact person I actually am :-)

Why do this...

when you can in no time at all devour those:

The 32-Year Old who Walked Into The Shower and (Nearly) Disappeared

Last week my husband and I went to Sussex and pitched our tent at the Housedean Farm Campsite.
It was a wish of me to spend a little more time in and around Brighton again - since we got married there pretty much exactly six years ago it had been daytrips only.

After a nice and relaxed afternoon stroll through Hove and some fish&chips on the beach on the first day we survived an unsettled night as the storm was blowing unhindered over the field and was working on tearing the tent down.
The next morning was rainy and grey - time for a shower to get the day started.
A special feature of this campsite is their open air shower. You obviously don´t get seen from the outside but there is no roof so you have the proper outdoor experience, especially when it rains.

I flipfloped to the facility area, shut the door with a hook from the inside and did what one does in a shower.
Short-haired as I am and practical as I can be (emphasising the can here) taking a shower usually takes me no longer than five minutes in total. Just as it started to rain again I was ready and dressed, grabbed my stuff, unhooked the door and...the door didn´t open. I pushed it, I slightly shook it, nothing.
Fuck.

Through a gap in the wooden door I could see fellow campers walking past but I felt too awkward and embarrassed to shout for help.
So I stood there, waiting for my husband to search for me, waiting for a good idea how to get out of here again.
Getting rained on, listening to the French teenagers on the other side of the door, wondering what "I can´t open bloody door" is called in French, knowing I would never say it anyway.
Cold...angry...miserable. Cursing the shower, the site, the trip, the entire world.

I felt like Michel´s Dad in "Michel aus Lönneberga" written by Astrid Lindgren (called Emil i Lönneberga in English and the Swedish original) when he gets locked in the toilet and stuck in the window after attempting to escape. He eventually plots to blow the whole toilet up...so did I!

There would be a chance to climb over the side but then I would be sitting on the roof of the toilet block, not somewhere I could just appear gracefully and make it look like the most normal thing to do in the world...
Where the fuck was my husband?!? It was at least 30 minutes ago now that I had left the tent. I could see him waiting, unsure what to do...I was so angry, I could be dying here without anybody noticing!

Eventually he came to my rescue and let cold and wet me out again.
It took me a while, some tea and tears to recover.

Later that day we had a look together at the evil shower door again.
It turned out that the door had an ordinary shed door mechanism that shuts itself when pulled and in order to open it again the doorknob needs to be slightly turned.
It turned out that aprox. 99,9% of the population would have had no problem opening that door.

I´m just a hopeless case sometimes, not practical at all!
But gained a story for the grandchildren now.

sportsmanship - the absence of Sportsgeist

The football worldcup is over and done with, I survived again without watching a single match and don't feel as if I missed anything.
If I'm not interested in football all the other 3 years and 360 weeks between world cups I see no point in suddenly pretending it.
What irritates me and always has so are the phrases that you can read everywhere today "WE are proud", WE have done well", OUR boys".

Hmm, call me a nitpicker but they are certainly not MY boys, I'm not proud of people I wouldn't even recognize in the street and I certainly haven't done well ( last night I spend sitting in the bath tub looking after my sunburned skin - not sure that counts as an outstanding achievement really).

Don't get me wrong, for a change this is not a rant - I noticed football passes quicker if I ignore it than if I get angry (the wisdom that comes with age I suppose).
 But I seem to be part of a small group of people who are 100% lacking any form of sportsmanship.

Last year Sebastian Vettel got the title three or four races before the end of the season, my Dad said what I thought "Does he still have to take part in those now?!?"
As a Brasilian player last week, can't you just say "Had enough now, you are winning, bye bye"??
If you are unfortunate and get injured during a match, isn't it better if it happens in minute one so you can leave and sit by the side?

It won't suprise you now that attending sport events during school for me was mostly a case of going there, showing my face to the teacher and leaving again after about five minutes. At least I never pretended being ill!
I'm not a fighter and doubt this will ever change.

So, what is your opinion on this? Are you maybe too a person lacking this particular spirit?

feeling beige

Last Friday I spend time at the airport again.

I love airports - that promise of unlimited possibilities, the people from all over the world, the hustle and bustle and the feeling it will never ever sleep.
As much as I enjoy my time there when I´m just a visitor strolling around and having my coffee, I feel strange when I´m an actual traveller on my way between one home to another.
(Going on holidays is a different thing, in those situations airports are still just exciting)

The feeling that overcomes me everytime again is best described as neutral.
I´m sad to leave one place I call home, I´m looking forward to be at the other home.
Both emotions seem to balance each other out so I´m left feeling neutral.
Not happy, not sad, neither wanting nor missing anything, not curious, not bored - just neutral.

An emotion that is fairly unusual for me, I´m normally enthuastic or melancholic and angry or happy but hardly ever "neutral".
Neutral doesn´t inspire me to do anything, when I look at my diaries I can tell you exactly that I´m only productive when I´m excited or sad.

My husband and I once laughed spotting the shop sign of a kebab place saying "Neutral Kebabs" and were less than convinced to get any decent food there.
One of my friends always keeps out of any ongoing argument claiming that "she is Switzerland, she is neutral" and drives me absolutely mental at times.

So this is my Sunday ramble about neutrality - if I bored you I apologize, I´m not in transit between two countries anymore so will have enough emotions again soon to write about more entertaining subjects :-)

Agapanthus...

...or memories from the island of spring.
In 2006 I went on my first ever "proper" holiday together with my other half to Madeira.
As the island is not exactly a shopping hot spot I decided to buy something slightly unusual as a souvenir:
An agapanthus plant or, to be more precise, a plastic bag with a wizened shrub bought last minute in an airport shop.

Since then it has been a rocky road, it hasn't grown much first and sometimes had to survive with very little water when I'm not at home.
But now, for the second time only, it has rewarded me with two beautiful and long lasting blue flowers.
One of the best souvenirs ever that currently makes me happy every time I look out of my bedroom window!