Painting time
It's time for another before-and-after-post. I present to you the Rocking Horse. I got it for free at that one successful garage sale a year ago. The lady gave it to me because nobody bought it and to be honest I didn't even really want it for free but I took it, 'cause I'm nice.
I figured I could sell it on Ebay if I ever get to it. But then some months later I thought I could just paint it. I didn't really like the original stain and the horse hair was messy and damaged. At first I had the idea to do a crackle finish and after I had the whole horse crackled I realized I didn't like it. It was too serious, too faux-looking and not the right thing for a toddler. So I had to redo it all and I have to say my motivation was greatly diminshed. Thank god for spray paint though and so the horse was finally painted and yarn was bought to replace the raggedy horse hair.
This morning... Veronika could not get enough of it. And I get the "Mother Of The Century Award".
Posted at 02:41 PM on June 28, 2005 | Comments (6)At two it's ok. Really.
Today Veronika woke up from her nap crying and screaming. I don't know why, it happens sometimes. She had been waking up during her nap, it seemed a little bit of a fitful sleep. It was hot, she was wet and her face a mess from tears and sweat. When I came in she was sitting up in her crib and didn't want to be picked up, didn't want her tiger, nor her Pooh, she didn't want anything but sit there and cry. So I sat in the rocking chair right beside and decided to give her some time. The way her mouth curves is still the same the way it did just when she was born. Her eyes are a little swollen and the eyelids pressed together. It's not fun to watch her cry, but that part I like.
I realized I was jealous. She woke up upset, things were just not right, or they were not just right. Whatever it was she could just sit there and let it all out, the drama, the despair, the disappointment over nothing... or something, who knows. I just wished I could do it too, with the same self-assuredness and conviction. Unfortunately that's not acceptable for adults. Besides, I wouldn't even know how to do it. There are always the reasonable thoughts that explain that this moment is not so bad after all, look on the bright side, be realistic, take it easy... After that comes the analyzing: what am I really upset about, what would help me right now, am I imagining something? And last comes the guilt: I should not let myself go, look at me, what a mess, what would people think... You barely have time time to actually lose a couple of tears.
Instead, when you are two, there are no second thoughts. It is what it is, a really really lousy moment and you live it 100% just like that. You curve your lips, you scream and cry, you mess up your face and your hair and nothing, nothing can make it better. But at two you also know that someone will pick you up and you will have some apple juice and listen to "I'm a little teapot" and life will be like a song once again. Things are a little more complicated later on but the real difference is that confidence and faith which you are so desperately scrambling for as an adult and which at two is as easy as drinking from your sippy cup.
Posted at 08:54 PM on June 25, 2005Homesick: summer edition
Every early summer I get daily flashbacks of summers I spent in Austria or Croatia. When it gets humid and sticky I wonder why I live here, why I left a perfectly weather-balanced continent, where it does get hot in summer but shade always offers relief and you can breathe and air conditioning is optional. The painful thing about homesickness is that after years you've been away, memories always come in strong associations and less in specific events. I am thrown into sights, smells and sounds... tiny out-of-body experiences for just a second when I don't expect it. It's over quick but it always comes back. I can't say I'm not grateful for it, too. It's a nice way to visit, even if just in your imagination.
As a child I had two main images of summer, the one without the sea and the one with. In my head the one at the sea was the "real" summer, as everything else could only be a prelude to it or some nice, but obviously second-best option. We spent every summer in Cres, at least a month, sometimes two. So the time before and after Cres I spent at home, going to the local swimming pool and riding my bike. I wouldn't have admitted it then, but I loved that too. I was old enough to go by myself and when you remove all the embarassing and dreadful details of the life of a 12-year-old you remain with images of a perfect life, the minutes of the day spent between eating ice cream, breathing chlorine and feeling the cool breeze on your wet hair. You will understand why that is a good memory to conjure up when your current minutes are spent on laundry, food preparation and explaining to your daughter for the 47th time that in the car you cannot pick up her bag that just fell because it's too far away and you would rather live another day than crash the both of you into the next house.
The other non-sea summer memories are the ones of me staying at my grandparents' house, usually with some cousins. We were hosing ourselves down in the yard when it got hot and chased scared little bunnies and kittens around. I remember the smell of grass, the sound of my grandma's pots while she was cooking and eating berries in the garden. I know I know it all sounds so typical... "Behold, the golden summers of my youth." I don't care though. What else are memories for? They hold me over the rough parts, like a little escape. It helps with... perspective.
Memories for me have the additional dimension of space. I don't live now where I used to live when I was 7 or when I was 12 or when I was 20. None of these places have stayed with me. When I travel in space I often travel in time as well. When you pass the same street corner for 29 years every day, it's hard to make a memory of it, because it's still there, in your life, right now. On the other hand if that street corner was part of your life between 1983 and 1992 only (random years, I'm giving an example), when you come back to it, you will have specific associations. Sometimes I feel like a really old person. You know, when you're around 80 and walking through your neighborhood and saying things like: I remember... here, where this parking lot used to be, that's where we went to church back in 19....."
I miss the cool evenings in Europe. Here sometimes the air seems to have grown roots in summer, it never moves, night or day. I like heat but here it brings you to your knees. I miss the different vegatation and the different smell of the air. Luckily this summer I will get to feel it again.
Posted at 12:06 PM on June 23, 2005 | Comments (2)The Coalpit Hill is alive!
It is true, Austrian women do wear Dirndls at all times, it is just how they are deep deep down in their hearts and souls. They can't help it. Here is Veronika, yodeling in our backyard. She really is that cute. She is.
(Thanks to Kathrin for the lovely lovely Tostmann Dirndl.)
Uh, yeah, about that...
Cruise proposes to actress Holmes at Eiffel Tower
"Yes I proposed to Kate last night ... because it is very beautiful and romantic here." Cruise said.
....
Really, is there anything I can say right now?
Posted at 07:05 AM on June 17, 2005 | Comments (3)Forget Paris
The other night I finally finished watching the last season of Sex and the City (thanks, Netflix). Not that I've ever been a big fan of this show, ok, I enjoy watching it, but my feelings on it are mixed to say the least, but the last two episodes were some of the worst television I've seen and it's supposed to be HBO, not TV!
After building their success on the show by basically cementing four stereotypes/caricatures of four women they decide that in the last episode it is time to let all characters grow in a completely different direction, sometimes opposite to what they have been the entire show. It's supposed to show us how they all evolved and stuff and so we can find closure real quick in the last couple of hours. It all turns out to be mushy mush, reminiscent only of the worst uninspired mediocre Hollywood endings and nothing more. Whatever. But the real coup, the tip of the ice berg for me was all that Paris sh*t. As a European I am so so sick of America's blind infatuation with whatever they believe Paris is, or of the handy melting of every single European stereotype with the French nationality. If I see Paris as an instant promise of unending romance in one more American movie I am going to p.u.k.e.
Let me explain. So our heroine, Carrie, falls for Aleskandr Petrovsky (played by Mikhail Baryshnikov), who is Russian of course, and also an artist and also he takes her to Paris to live in a fancy hotel with a view of the Eiffel tower! This alone is supposed to make every American female viewer reach orgasm, because, ohmygod how romantic is that?!! So she is just in seventh heaven, what with the sleigh rides and the poetry readings and the diamonds "the Russian" - as she calls him - showers her with. I mean who doesn't go for fairy tales at 17, uh, 37? But anyway, once she arrives in Paris she is obviously completely enamoured with all this, well, European stuff. Only then the Russian starts forgetting about her and we arrive at Part II of the American Paris/Europe fantasy: Turns out, Europe is weird and so are the Europeans and also their dogs that are allowed in the store and poop on the street and nobody picks it up and they all speak Foreign and are like, totally arrogant and they smoke! It's like... Europe is nice and all but it's not really real, like, it's nice to visit, but not to live, to live it's just way too... European, you know? And so then Carrie breaks up with Baryshnikow and her American cowboy (the New York kind) comes and rescues her and relief washes over her face, because he speaks English and is so down to earth and you can just feel all the hamburgers and big cars that lie in their happy happy American future together. Free from all the European dog poop. And the smoke. Ewww!
Am I exaggerating? You bet. As if I wasn't tired already of Carrie's supposed "search for real, over-the-top, breathtaking, inconvenient love", now they suggest this love would naturally, so obviously have to be found, where else? - in Paris of course! In the arms of a brooding Russian artist! She spends 6 seasons sleeping with guys she picks based on criteria like a) he is cute or b) he makes me feel cute, and then she is always so surprised they are not real-love-material! How dare they! There was nothing behind all that cuteness! Weird!
Well, it made for a mostly entertaining show, so I shouldn't complain. But please, let's not try to make some deep and significant statement about real love (in Paris!) at the end of a show that was about... sex and the city. And really nothing more.
Posted at 12:33 PM on June 16, 2005 | Comments (8)FREE KATIE - Holmes, that is.
Everybody quick get this t-shirt!
(via open book)
Another link that will make everybody cringe
Great analysis down to the last paragraph.
Posted at 02:09 PM on June 08, 2005We rent.
My new Time magazine issue is here and it's all about houses and the crazy real estate market. Just in time to remind me where I live. The average house price in this area has skyrocketed in the last few years and while that was great for all the homeowners, it sucks for everyone, who's trying to buy now. It's impossible to get a two-bedroom house for under $250,000, and you're not getting anything pretty or in great shape. It's still better than some other areas in the country where anything that includes a squarefoot of land seems to be reserved for millionaires. The Time articles give a good overall assessment of people going crazy over real estate, comparable to the way they did over the dot-com-boom in the 90ies, but to me this has another dimension to it. It's just a little bit disgusting when housing turns into this high-cost product, available only to the super-rich or the financially crazy (negative amortization loan anyone?). I understand people will go where the money is and there's nothing you can do about it, but really, aren't houses meant to be a place, where you live your life, raise your family or where you can just be, period? Why does it have to become your portofolio? A house should be a home, no?
I grew up in apartments, so I definitely don't consider a house a must, moreover sometimes I even think it can be a luxury. But that's a little ironic in a huge huge place like the US. Europe can claim a certain space scarcity, but here... I don't know. The funny thing is that buying a house always seemed like a normal thing for most citizens here, it's what happens ultimately in your life, like having kids or growing old. It's normal for people, who go to work every day and were spared major life tragedies. Unlike Europe, renting here is always meant to be a temporary arrangement. You rent when you're young and haven't saved up yet, or when you can't get a better job or something like that. Then you buy. But now, things have gotten of out hand, the salaries don' match the house prices, yet the assumption that hardworking people get a house is still there. I suppose if a family has two incomes it's viable, but then again it's not right for that to be the only option. Ironically if both parents have to work to afford the house, then this house will stay empty for the better part of the day and the week. I don't see much sense for me in this. It took me a while to realize what my "position" was since I'm renting and have no immediate plans to buy. There is no way you can ignore the beautiful houses of people supposedly at your social level or the nervousness of those, who are STILL renting. Speaking with other moms, the topic of housing is going to come up at some point at every conversation. Who bought what and for how much and was it the right thing or not etc. I'm not judging anyone, I partake in it myself. Only I've reached the point where I don't have much to say anymore. I don't want to explain myself to anyone and I have no desire to fill that silence in conversation after I say we are renting. It's all backwards. Why do I need to feel bad about my life all of a sudden? Because you don't know what to think of me, since you know, I don't own my home?
I'd love to have a house with a yard. Growing up I dreamed of a yard and a bike. I thought that was just for rich kids. The first bike I got at around 8 and the yard, although small, at 14. I'd love to offer those things to my kids earlier, but if I'm really honest, it's not my first priority. I like where we live and wouldn't move back to Indiana for nothing, not even the fact that now I could afford a beautiful big house there. Ironically when we were still living in Valpo, a house was just out of reach as it is now. I like it that my kids will be exposed to more nationalities and more skin colors than one. They will also see that there are rich people and poor people. We have a gazillion world-class museums about an hour an a half away. And the ocean is even closer. I could go on.
So according to the article I'm this person:"Or maybe you're a renter, paging longingly through listings of ever more unaffordable real estate, praying for a housing-market bust..." Ok, I'm not praying, but I am hoping. After all... what if we bought now and a few years down the road we want to sell and have a $50,000 loss? Shudder. Also, I don't want to chain myself to the house by spending my very last cent on it. Every month when I wouldn't have any money left to go to the movies or to dinner or save up for a vacation I would have to go look at my living room instead or admire my very own bathtub, which I, the owner, own, and tell myself that that makes me SO much happier than any beautiful memory I could be making with my children on a few days spent travelling somewhere. To each his own, but that's not for me. I will happily stay in my rental for the time being. Rent is goin down. The service staff is friendly and they come the day after you call them. I don't have to save up for sudden refrigerator or stove breakdowns. Now if they just let me paint the walls another color than bleached white...