Public Reading

Nature Girl just finished practicing reading a text passage out loud from Philip Ardagh’s book, House called Awful End (in German). She has to read it out loud in school today. Her sixth grade class is participating in the regional public reading contest. Which, eventually leads to the national contest.

Her father, an Italian immigrant, managed to make it to the national finals in his school days. It’s lovely to see how the tradition carries on.

I know they have spelling bees in the States (see recent films, here and here), but what I’d be interested to know is whether public reading contests, debate clubs, and spelling bees are still popular in other countries.

Originally, weeks ago, Nature Girl chose a passage out of the German translation of Margaret Atwood’s Princess Prunella and the Purple Plum fairytale. Nature Girl is an absolutely brilliant reader and she reads this particular piece beautifully. She practiced diligently for the last four weeks. Then she comes home on Friday in tears and tells me that she can’t possibly read the piece out loud because the guys in her class will mock her. The piece is too baby-like. Arrrrggghhh! Her friend, M., read out of a children’s book and the boys laughed when she was reading the text, even though the text wasn’t funny. (Oh, how I despise these mean and vindictive boys (it is always the same three boys in her class) who posses no talent but that of being able to mock bright and intelligent girls.)

So, it was Friday, and Nature Girl had two days to pick out a new text, practice it, and feel confident enough to shine on Monday. Talk about a drama (she is part Italian). I won’t go into the trials of our weekend. There were many tears of frustration (mine), defeat (hers), and, did I mention frustration (the whole family really) until a good alternative text was found.

I would like to express my thanks to Philip Ardagh and the translator, Harry Rowold, for writing such a wonderful series. The four books of this trilogy (go figure) are each in their own right brilliant. And even though it was difficult to decide which passage from which book, once done, Nature Girl did shine.

Cross your fingers that she will read well and feel she managed to do her best.

Beautiful Autumn Weather

It’s a sunny Sunday! What a lovely occurrence that is.

Just looked out our living room window and saw a group of homeless making their way to the cathedral around the corner from our place. The eleven o’clock mass is nearly over. When the congregation leave the church, the homeless are waiting with their hands held out asking for money. The first time I saw this I was rather surprised. I don’t know quite why; after all, the homeless are asking for Christian charity, something they’ve been doing for centuries. I wonder whether this also happens in front of churches in other countries.

I have to return my friend’s BBC Pride and Prejudice DVDs today. So, you guessed, I watched it again in its entirety yesterday. Even on second viewing it was a delight. Sigh! Colin Firth was (is?) very good looking, wasn’t he?

Have you ever noticed what a real test of manliness is to get dress up in the trousers of that time and not look disadvantaged? If you can look good in them, then you can really look good in anything. Wickam had terribly skinny spindly legs and no butt, and Mr. Darcy’s friend, Fitzwilliam, was quite hippy. And, rather disconcertingly, there were these odd dangling bits to be seen at times. I guess men didn’t wear jockstraps then. (Maybe it is the old ballet dancer in me who prefers everything a bit better packed.)

Sorry, it’s Sunday, must think of more sober things. Or do I mean spiritual? Whatever. So I will now spend an hour in thoughtful occupation and go take a long walk along the canal with a friend and breathe in the beauty of this fine autumn day.

Pick Up The Phone

Saturday morning has just arrived. Time to go to sleep. Time also to put in the collage I’ve been working on the last few hours into my blog. Topic of the collage doesn’t make any sense; it is just a patchwork of images. Doesn’t really have to work, does it?

Spent long hours talking to family and friends in far off places and in between I just dabbled with Photoshop. I think I have to go beyond the quiet meandering I’m doing at the moment. It’s time to study some good tutorials.


Have you ever noticed how far off places make communication sometimes difficult? My sis and I figured out that email doesn’t necessarily make the grade. Our laborious attempts to make ourselves understood in emails, or with skype (I’m still too self-conscious), or IM-ing, remain just that, laborious. None of these media work as efficiently as just picking-up-the-darn phone. Ironically, this is something we figured out at the beginning of the 90’s, yet we somehow have to figure it out fifteen years later.

P.S. Do you remember when email was separate from Internet services?

No Time

Time: the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.

Does this definition make any sense to you? Do any of us know what time is? In the last years, I have the feeling that most of the people that I know, myself included, only know what No Time is and not what Time is. Which is odd when you consider how many expressions of time there exists:

Father Time, allotted time, available time, time used, need more time, a waste of time, doing time, the first time, a good time, a rough time, in time, time planned, scheduled time, timed to go off, perfectly timed, to be timed, about time, against time, ahead of time, ahead of one's time, all the time, at one time, at the same time, at a time, at times, before time, behind time, behind the times, for the time being, give someone the time of day, half the time, have no time for, in (less than) no time, in one's own good time, keep good (or bad) time, keep time, lose no time, no time, in no time, on one's own time, on time, out of time, ran out of time, pass the time of day, time after time, time and again, time and tide wait for no man, time immemorial, time is money, the time of one's life, time out of mind, time was, (only) time will tell, ahead of time, ahead of one's/its time, all the time, at one time, at the same time, at times, behind the times, for the time being, from time to time, in good time, in time, many a time, on time, time after time, ofttimes, spare time, free time, part time, full time, scheduled time of departure, estimated time of arrival (ETA)…

More and more we are living our lives with a sense of having absolutely No Time on our hands. Last year, I reread the delightful novel, A New Kind of Country, by Dorothy Gilman. It is the story of Dorothy, a middle-aged newly-divorced American suburban woman, who move up to a small village on the Canadian east coast to reassess her life and priorities. Somewhere in the book she contemplates this idea of time and writes a long rich list of words focusing on time.

In her list she used the word “spare time” and I registered a flash of mental recognition; in the sense of – I once knew what that word meant and even used it myself in normal conversation. But that was before I had Nomad Son sixteen years ago, the first of two children. Since then I don’t think I’ve used the words, spare time, once. Which is a shame.

As far as I can gather, this whole concept of having No Time has evolved in the last twenty years or so to a degree that is utterly idiotic. We all doing so much, working so hard and so many hours, running around like a chicken with its head cut of, burning the candle at both ends, desperately trying to meet deadlines, sleeping less, being stressed out, burnout... What message are we sending out to our children, family, and friends? Most likely, that we have no control over our time; we are not the masters of our time on this earth… pathetic really.


It takes courage to reflect upon your day-to-day existence: stand naked with all your mismanagement, disorganisation, false priorities, and unrealised resolutions. It takes courage to invest time and effort in learning to Live Slow.

We have to gather our inner resolve and go on the offensive. The first step towards claiming our time for ourselves is to stop saying expressions such as “Sorry, no time, I’m terribly busy, etc.”. There was a time when, “Sorry, I have no time” was considered a rude response. Did something change along the way? Has it really become socially acceptable to say such phrases?


The second step I’ve started to take is, what I call, the “Lower Your Standards” step. Don’t laugh. I am very serious! There are so many things that we feel we have to do, but in reality if they don’t get done, our world, or our family’s world, will not fall apart. So, given the choice of clearing up the messy hallway or chatting with Nature Girl (my daughter) or sharing a cup of tea with a friend, I tend to chat or drink tea. And I don’t stay up later that evening and clean up the hallway; which means our hallway is pretty messy all the time. Lower your standards.


The next step I am learning is the “Learn to say No” step. This is a hard one and I am nowhere near being able to do it, but I think it will be a great time saver. Don’t you?

Can you come up with other steps I could take in this journey towards living slow?

My Bad

Last week, during a meeting at a women’s club I belong to, I got my fingers slapped by the club president. Another member, who lives in Hamburg (over an hour away) sent out a general invitation saying, if anyone felt like it or had the time, she was giving a brunch the next weekend and she’d love to see us. I didn’t respond to the invitation because we get general invitations from various people or other clubs all the time; other than going to our monthly meetings, I am not interested in attending other activities.

It turned out that not directly responding to the invitation was a nono. During last week’s meeting, the president spoke sharply to us all (looking the whole time directly at me), basically saying the invitation warranted a response and “even a child would know better”. I reacted as I always try to when I make a mistake; I apologised and said I hoped it wouldn’t happen again. Then I dismissed the matter. The fact that the president was quite bitchy about the situation didn’t concern me; it was her problem after all.

Last night, a good friend of mine (who was not at the meeting) said another friend of ours (who was at the meeting) called her up and ranted on to her for two hours about a situation. It seems that this ranting friend assumed I hadn’t registered the insult and she was really upset at the president for using such bitchy tactics. This resulted in our ranting friend carrying around her upset for the last week and having to talk herself blue before letting it go. I am not sure what is more of a insult, the bitchy critique on the part of the president or my friend’s underestimation of my language competence.

P.S. I've just reread this story and it does seem wandering and convoluted.
P.P.S. After living and working in Germany for nearly 25 years, my German is fluent, though grammatically inaccurate. Unfortunately, my command of the English language has diminished abysmally over the years. Oh, how I wish it were not so!

Almost Halfway Point

Well, we are almost at the halfway point with the NaBloPoMo project/contest. I decided spontaneously to participate in NaBloPoMo because I hoped that an intense writing spurt might stir up new ideas and steer me away from just writing mundane uninspired entries in this blog.

It’s harder to blog than I originally expected it would be. I’d written a diary relatively regularly for upward of twenty years and I’d also written and read quite a few ship logs. When I heard about blogs, I thought it would be like writing a ship’s log with a personal flair.

My blogging experience has been more like living a day-to-day relationship than the above-mentioned mental exercise: it takes a lot of love, patience, kindness and tolerance. Those rare moments of lightness and effortlessness have to be wrestled out of the domestic tedium. I’m surprised at how effectively writing everyday is helping me to get the creative juices moving.

Yesterday, snoskred of Life In the Country wrote about (here) how she and her friend/partner, Sephy, are trying to go through as many of the NaBloPoMo blogs as possible and leaving behind comments. What a lovely idea this is. It’s a way of encouraging others as fellow shipmates and not competitors. I’m going to try and read through and comment on a few blogs as well.

Wonderful Trailer

Just saw this trailer to the movie The Painted Veil with Naomi Watts and Edward Norton in the main roles. What a fantastic trailer it is. Or can it be a good trailer to a fantastic film?

Certainly making good trailers is an art from in itself. I’ve seen good trailers for bad films: where all the noteworthy jokes are comprised into the trailer making the task of viewing the film superfluous. And, I vaguely remember seeing trailers that didn’t do the film justice. What I’d really like to know is which great films had great trailers?

Becoming Invisible

The other day I mentioned my mother’s theory of Mr. Wart-and-All. Now, I’d like to mention a phenomena my mother told me about growing old. She said, about the time she turned 60, she started to get the impression that she had become invisible. A special type of social invisibility: lack of notice, lack of inclusion, and lack of interest in her wellbeing by her fellowmen. When she walked down the street, people rarely looked at her; when standing behind a store counter, salespersons often ignored her; flight attendants began to give her looks of impatience or even a gesture of general rejection when she requested a drink; and, in particular, young doctors’ eyes spoke out blatantly “Well, what can you expect?” whenever she resited symptoms of an illness.

She felt the change didn’t so much have to do with the people themselves, but with a society that obviously finds elderly people unattractive, uninteresting, annoying, or financially undesirable. She said at first she was very annoyed at the fact, but as time went by, she just turned sad and discouraged.

I’d love to be able to tell you that she discovered a wonderful and useful method of attracting attention and is presently living happily ever after. No, this didn’t happen. Instead, the sadness and discouragement slowly wore away at her self-confidence. She resigned herself to the fact that other than people she knew, others didn’t acknowledge her existence, and then she started becoming invisible to herself. Now, fifteen years later, she doesn’t want to be photographed, she never ever looks in a mirror, and she does not welcome any attention or complement about her appearances.

This is a sad and discouraging development. And so I’ve been contemplating what sort of alternative strategies I can use in the years to come, which might produce another outcome. For instance, last week I stopped looking at younger women and concentrate instead on women my age or older. It’s amazing how much I’ve discovered in this short period of time. What “works” when it comes to being attractive and elegant and fashionable when you are older is accessories, accessories, and accessories.

If your glasses, shoes, purses, and scarves are (relatively) new, attractive, and elegant, then so are you. It’s not about age or figure, but more about presenting yourself authentically. Oh, I forgot haircuts. Go and get a haircut at a chic salon where you can count on them giving you a beautiful modern cut. Also, I saw some coats and jackets which were made with really interesting material, and not bought off the rack at the nearest department store. They made the women (and one man) very stylish looking.

My dearest wish, given the opportunity to grow old, would be to learn to experiment with my wardrobe. Something I haven’t managed to do up to now. So, I am going to adopt a you-never-know-until-you-try attitude, instead of a can’t-teach-old-dogs defeatism.

A Discredit To Womanliness

I spent the whole day watching the 1995 BBC TV mini series of Pride and Prejudice, with Colin Frith and Jennifer Ehle in the main roles of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. What a completely silly indulgence this was. And, oh, how I enjoyed it!

What I really enjoyed beyond Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle’s performances, the performances of nearly every other cast member, the costumes, the photography, the sets and locations, the dancing, the music… have I missed anything? What I enjoy beyond all these major artistic merits, is the fact that the only female actor who was a skinny was Mary Bennet a decidedly miserable, unattractive, doomed for spinsterhood, younger sister of Elizabeth. All of the other women in the series were nicely formed and nicely featured… young women possessing womanliness.

I do not want to do Keira Knightly any injustice, but her retched (Freudian slip, I mean wretched) skinniness should have disqualified her for the role of Elizabeth in last year’s movie production. It is as if a producer for historical movie about the famous Ethiopian long distance runners decided to cast Anthony Anderson for the part of Abebe Bikila.

The only women who were so thin in Jane Austin’s time were overworked, grossly undernourished, sick, or dying. No one during those times (and a majority of us in these times) would have found such a skinny person attractive.

When will Hollywood ever get it? If a woman’s rips are showing both from the front as well as the back, if her collar bones can act as ski jumps, if her hands are red from lack of circulation, the woman is not fashionably thin, she is sick and dying. And if she says she eats like a horse, don’t believe her; she’s lying. No matter how good these women are at acting, get them help, but don’t cast them in a role of an intelligent, feisty, womanly woman.

Mr. And Ms. Warts-And-All

Many women, in their middle-years, when looking in the mirror are often, unpleasantly, confronted with an aged stranger: their own bodies… Ms. Warts-And-All. Once confronted with this stranger, we look the other way: much in the manner of looking the other way in a bus when someone begins to rant and rave in an un-seemingly manner. Or we have a jerk- knee reaction in a cover-it-up-and-it-will-go-away sense. We cover up the grey hair with dye, our thinning hair with artificial curls, our sagging breasts with armoured bras, hide our expanding waistlines underneath long potato sack linen blouses, the list goes on.

When I mentioned this fact to a friend a few weeks ago, she said we have to learn to accommodate ourselves to our changing body. This notion of accommodating something or someone reminded me of something my mother told me many years ago.

My mother, now 77 years old, said, in her generation a woman married one man and then woke up in bed with another. The Canadian women of those days tended to marry their Prince Charming. Their Hero. Someone who promised to save them from being an old maid; swept them away from their restrictive parental homes; promised them that they would never have to go out and work; make babies with them; and basically assured them a happy and contented life.

Eventually though, they’d wake up one morning and there lying beside them was Mr. Warts-And-All instead of Prince Charming. Then they were faced with the task of getting to know and, hopefully, love this new person. Sometimes the women were lucky, sometimes not.

My mother said they learnt to “accommodate” themselves. She would say this as if I, a young single woman at the time, could understand what this meant. (I assumed it had something to do with sex, and, like most young women, did not want to think of my parents having sex, or any other middle-aged people either.) Now, thirty years later, I still don’t quite know what she meant with “accommodating”. Did it have to do with fitting in and compliancy or more with adaptability and willingness?

The children of these marriages were very conscious when their fathers, Mr. Wart-And-All, didn’t measured up in the eyes of their mothers. They made their resentment known about how their Prince Charming vanished and left an unwelcomed stranger behind.

And knowing this made me realise that I do not want Nomad Son or Nature Girl, and especially Nature Girl, to think that I carry any resentment towards my aging body. What I’d like is to learn is how to accommodate my new, evolving pre-, post-, right-in-the-midst-of-things menopausal body. Is it impossible for me to look at Ms. Wart-And-All and say, this is exactly as I would have it? For, no matter what type of body I might dream of having at this point in my life, I wouldn’t change one little detail of my being… it is a dear old, wise old, cranky old love of mine.

Growing Old Gracefully

Did you ever wonder why western society makes “growing old gracefully” a difficult task? If you ask practically any adult, whether young or old, what this expression means, they probably don’t have much positive to say. Which I find so odd, since the alternative, not having the opportunity to grow old, is such a daunting prospect.

Let me break down this commonly used expression a little:

Growing: grow into (result of a natural development), grow on (gradually become more appealing), grow up (advance to maturity, arise or develop)
Old: having lived for a long time, long-established or known
Gracefully: having or showing grace or elegance

Can you explain to me why we are doing everything (emotionally, physically, cosmetically, artificially) possible to avoid, prevent, or delay this journey? Isn’t this a great disservice to those people who have served society in general, raised families, and survived many decades of constant change?

No, I am not stupid. I know how difficult, arduous, painful, sad, tragic old age can/will be. Yet, does this excuse us from freely partaking on the journey? If you read any women’s magazines you would think aging naturally must be avoided at all costs.

It’s discouraging, with first page titles such as: “10 Tips to looking 10 Years younger”, “Today’s 40 is Yesteryear’s 20”, “Botox Brunch, the latest Hollywood Trend”. Or some such nonsense. Why shouldn’t a 50 year old want to look 50? And isn’t Botox considered the most poisonous naturally occurring substance in the world? (Wikipedia)

Over the lasts months, I’ve contemplated ways of creatively and constructively celebrating the transition from middle age into old age. I’m not quite sure what form this creative endeavour will take as yet.

Stay tuned…

Fickle Nature

Oh, I’ve got something to confess. This gal is as fickle as fickle as can be.

Not, having a television, I’m a late bloomer to the DWTS (Dance With The Stars) fan club. Surprising really since Nomad Son has been ballroom dancing for over two years now. Nevertheless, better late than never.

So, here’s the scoop: I’ve recently been trying to decide whether Mario (here and here), with is sexy loose hips, is better than Emmitt (here and here), with his amazing sense of confidence and fun. Hips, fun, hips, fun… and then enters Mark Ramprakash in Strictly Come Dancing (here and here). Oh, the silent type… inside of twenty-minutes of youtubing (new verb here in the making) this gal with a fickle nature has decided Mark, the cricket player, has my vote.

What do you think? After seeing Mark, doesn’t Mario come off as a bit slick? Emmitt is still powerfully sexy, but, thank heavens, Mark is not only having fun, he also has those slinky hips.

Almost-Fifty

Last summer I turned forty-nine years old. I thought I would take this year and just say almost-fifty instead of forty-nine whenever I mentioned or was asked about my age. For almost-fifty, in my mind, denotes fearlessness (the ability to say the f-word), a reckless indifference to age (what’s one year plus or minus), and, most importantly, almost-fifty represents a generous gift of time for me to get accustomed to the up-and-coming milestone. What I dearly wish for, standing here on the cusp of a new decade, is the time to dance slowly, tenderly, wisely, buoyantly, with the changes. Something, I haven’t managed to do before in my adult life.

When I was 19 years old, I went through a long and agonising crisis, which resulted in my quitting my ballet career. Eventually, I went off to study electrical engineering and then moved to Germany, but I didn’t have this Plan B in my back pocket at the time.

At 29, I went through what I like to refer to as a premature midlife crisis (PMC). No lover (let alone a partner), no children, no career perspectives (try being a female foreign engineer in a large very conservative German corporation)… life was more than grey. It was as bleak as bleak could be. To acerbate the situation even more, I decided to quit my job. Plan B: I went off sailing for a year.

Fast-forward another ten-years to my 39th year. Once again, I plunged headfirst into another crisis. You notice a pattern here? This was mainly brought on by chronic sleep deficiency (Nature Girl, at that time one-years old, didn’t sleep through one night the first three years of her life) and a growing dissatisfaction with my profession. Yes, you guessed, I left the engineering profession behind and started out on a new venture.
So, even though I’ve always been a slow learner, this time around I’m well warned. Almost-fifty I am and I can’t even tell you what Plan A is because I’m already working on Plan B.

Note: this entry was made available through Nature Girl, who cooked dinner tonight while I wrote.

Land of Oz

Are the doldrums still getting you down? Why don’t you plan a fantasy or dream trip as if you really mean to take it? Find out who flies to your destination, which travel agency deals in such trips, what are the costs, the best time to go there, contact persons, name of hotels, etc. Something wild and wonderful: travel on a container ship between Africa and China, go sea-kayaking on the west coast of Canada, work as a volunteer on an archaeological team in Tibet. Who knows, maybe your dream trip will come true!

An Artist Hero

Imagine how wonderful it would be to start a blog entry with “Maira Kalman is one of my favourite living artists, and also a friend (though she was a favorite artist before we became friends)”? That’s exactly what Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics did (here). What an enviable man.

Maira Kalman is one of my artist heroes and you can look at her spectacular artwork for free on the NYT Select section this week. I allowed myself to be bullied/enticed into paying a yearly subscription because of Maira Kalman (admittedly, also Bob Herbert, Maureen Dowd, Thomas Friedman, and Judith Warner as well). If you want to to brighten up your world, horizons, and/or spirit take a look here.

Cookie Bake

The best way that I can think to give your sense of smell a big pick up is to bake cookies. Baking is still a very big tradition in Germany. The further south you go, the more they bake.

I used to visit a friend’s family in Frankland (middle-south) on weekends. My friend’s mother would get up early Sunday morning and bake up to three cakes, which the family ate for breakfast (I kid you not) after everyone returned from mass. These were not mix-and-bake cakes; they were starting-from-scratch cheesecake, marble loaf, plum torte, and black forest cake.

The most wonderful and creative baking though is done when mothers, grandmothers, colleagues, friends, neighbours, and children bake up cookies for Advent. These are masterpieces of variety and they are place prettily in tin boxes. Every time you sit down to tea during Advent there is usually a plate with a wide assortment of cookies in the centre of the table.
As all of you know, I am a miserable baker, though I am an enthusiastic cook. Come November, my bad conscience starts to feel the twinges of inadequacy, stupidness, and even-a-child-can-do-this. Nearly everyone I know, old and young, male or female, have started bringing out their Christmas cookie cutters, their grandmothers’ favourite recipes, and traipsing off to the spices stall at to the Saturday market to buy new spices.

Having lived here for ions, I developed two tactics for dealing with my baking inadequacies during this very festive baking season. I either buy expensive English shortbread cookies to serve to friends when they come over and pretend that traditionally my family did the same when I was a child. (A complete lie. Our paternal grandmother made her own Christmas fruit pudding and miniature mincemeat pies and our maternal grandmother made up a marvelous assortment of Christmas cookies). The second tactic is to get my children invited to my friend, C.’s, place and let them do the baking.

The children come home with tins and tins of fantastic cookies and our friend is left a kitchen whose every surface is covered in flour and dirty dishes. Yet, I never get the feeling of being the winner because the children have also left behind the memories of baking together in a warm and cheery kitchen with every single millimetre filled with wonderful smells.

Rest Your Eyes, Clear The Clutter

Those of us living in the northern hemisphere tend to spend a tremendous amount of time indoors during the winter months. Therefore, in keeping with my project of coming up with ideas of how to rid yourself of the winter doldrums, how about cleaning up some of the clutter that has built up in your home or office? Not an easy or fun task, but oh is it good for the eyes and soul to look at a bookcase cleared of those books that you will never read again, or a bathroom cupboard where you can actually can see all the products sorted sparingly and orderly on the shelves.

An elderly Swedish couple I know live in an apartment totally without clutter. He was an architect and therefore everything they own or keep in their place has both design and practical meaning. If you open up their cupboards, the content literally looks like something out of a interior design magazine. Until I visited them the first time, I always presumed the homes portrayed in these magazines were artificial set up. The concept that architecture and interior design is something you live and not just something you put on paper was a new idea. Not that I managed to internalise this idea (hee)!

I continually despair over the sheer amount of Things that we’ve amassed over the years. I am not a hoarder, but just living in a four-person household (two of whom are forever growing taller and whose interests are constantly changing) means clutter forms everywhere as effortlessly as dust balls under beds. No matter what measures I’ve undertaken in the past, we couldn’t hold back the tides.

A few months ago, I asked a friend of mine to help me systematically clear out our apartment with me. This is a paying venture; I sort of hired her as my personal clutter-clearer trainer. She is a tough, goal-oriented, strict drill sergeant. We agree beforehand on a date, time duration, and location (i.e. kitchen, living room, etc.) for our next training session. And like all good trainers, she doesn’t except any lame excuses (it’s my period today), manipulative strategies (there’s a sale going on at your favourite store), or weak attempt on my part to seduce her away from the task at hand (hey, don’t you want to go and sit in a café instead). No, Iron Woman, comes punctually, ignores my moodiness and bad humour, and persistently asks me the tedious question of keep-give-away-or-throw-away.

Over the months we have gone through a few rooms and what a joy it is to relax my eyes on tables, shelves, and cupboards free of clutter. Mind you, at the present tempo, we might just have to start over again at the first room we did right after we finished the last room. For, as in life, no change, even the clearing of clutter, is permanent. Flow and ebb, flow and ebb.

Writer's Burnout

Two bloggers I read regularly (here and here) seem to be finding blogging everyday as part of the NaBloPoMo event difficult. Coincidentally, both bloggers are authors who’ve recently finished writing books. Could they just be experiencing writer’s burnout?

Fashion Sense

Much to my dismay I do not have any fashion sense whatsoever. It is pathetic really. When I was a teenager we were told that intelligent and smart (meaning anything from quick-witted to resourceful to someone possessing street-smarts) girls did not need to exploit their sexuality. Fashion was for women who didn’t know better or couldn’t do better. What a shame this was.

As a result I never learnt to express myself though fashion; I never showed any interest or enjoyed learning about fashion trends (here); and I have only lately begun to appreciate the art of dressing intelligently, smartly, and with style (here). I am very hesitant to actually do anything about it yet (i.e. experiment with my wardrobe). Instead I spend my time looking at fashion magazines every time I find myself sitting in a dentist’s or doctor’s waiting room, and I’ve started fashion gazing while sitting on the bus or looking out of our large first-floor living room windows onto a major shopping street in Luebeck, Germany.

In this city, there is a large population of residences from the Middle East and Asia and some of the women have the wonderful ability to mix the European with traditional touches. This cultural juxtaposition is so welcomed at this time of year, more than any other. For instance, yesterday I saw a woman who covered a dark winter coat with a vibrantly colourful silk, linen wrap draped around her arms in a stylish manner.

If I get courageous enough to venture out and try and flex my weak and atrophied sense of fashion, I’d love to be able to do something like that woman yesterday.

Taking A Bath In The Dark

Try taking a bath in the dark or else with a very little bit of candlelight. It is a lovely sensual experience. Use scented oils or bubble-bath-salts and luxuriate in all the sensations and smells.