2008 July - Summer

End of July. Germany. The pupils have 2 more weeks to go before they'll be off for summer... and then 6 weeks of doing exactly nothing until mid September!
With report cards around the corner the mood is rather tense at the moment.
The weather in South Germany is more like in April. With sun on and off. Rain and heavy winds, mixed with clouds sometimes. Just crazy.

In our house it's mixed emotions. As I described above my daughter is tense.

Peter is still unemployed, searching a job now for 7 months sure drives him up the wall. This week the unemployment agency makes him participate at a course for freelancers, and he has to get up early every morning, "go to school"...
With his 44th b-day around the corner at the end of the week he's kinda moody and tired at the same time.

Me on the other hand, I'm just down right exhausted. It has been a busy time for me in 2008. If you've followed my status lately you know that we were on two vacations this year already. In January we started the year skiing in Austria, and in June we went on a short trip to the Bavarian Forest. Moneywise we decided to stay home during summer, and we plan on another skitrip in winter, or maybe fall. We might go some place for a week last minute, no clue so far.

But what kept me busy, you all know in the meantime, is my preschoolers/day care kids. I began teaching English to them. 24 children in 5 groups. Each group for 45 minutes per week, but it's 4-10 year old's, and they can keep you pretty occupied at times :)

It's three groups Monday mornings, and two groups Friday afternoons, and it takes me the other three days of the week to prepare all the papers I need to teach them. I even organized a 4th of July BBQ for all of them...

And Peter did his rafting competition again this year, and they made a very good 47th place in the slalom on our famous Ice Channel!

My daughter got brackets (braces) this year, and we're preparing her church Confirmation in October.

A harp concert in Munich was on our agenda, as well as the 60th b-day of my aunt.

In May (holidays because of Whitsun in Germany) I taught English to the day care kids during two consecutive days, which was pretty exhausting!

In June Sabrina had one of her school choir concerts at the local city hall, performing three African songs. They were great!

And we had a couple of invitations, mostly BBQ's to attend. They were all fun, just continue checking out my regularly posted photos about what we do.

So right now I have 5 more classes to hold on Friday and Monday, and then I'm off for 6 (!) weeks, which will give me time to straighten up our appartment (otherwise I will have to look for a cleaning lady *lol*).

You go now and enjoy YOUR summer, as I know I will enjoy MINE!

Keep me posted, and drop me a line every once in a while, okay?

Love my online family and friends,
yours

Regina

2009 August - *Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*ummer...

*Zzzzzzzzzzzz*ummer....

When you get wakened up by a *zzzzzz*-ing gnat at 5:30 am and you could sleep in, you just got an awful lot of time to think about what you could write in a blog.

Ok, by the time I finally moved from the bedroom in front of the computer, the words are almost gone, but… let me still try to give you my thoughts on summer.

If I would’ve to put it in three words, I would say “I hate it!”

Can you believe that I used to actually live in CALIFORNIA for two years? Back then I was younger, healthy, thinner, and I wanted it to work. But for an European the lack of four seasons isn’t a thing one can bear for very long. I mean we had 26°C/79°F in January already, and were sitting underneath the Christmas tree with short-sleeved shirts (!)...

It was also wonderful, you could always depend on the weather, you never had to think about what to wear the next day… You just knew it would be terribly hot again and I loved it back then.

Well, 12 years later, diagnosed with MS since 4 years now, this is a whole new story. I also gained a lot, not that I ever was thin… but I’m way heavier now.

I’m about the most pale person you’ve ever seen, except maybe an albino. My ex-father-in-law used to call me something that sounded like ‘La Vera’ - ‘The white one’ he ment, nice huh? *lol*.

In my early twenties I’ve tried it all to get a tan, all kinds of sun studios, ways of tanning, you name it, I did it. Even carrots, tea, and those tan lotions. I looked like an Indian on a war path at times. Nowadays it’s Peter’s and Sabrina’s job to be tanned for me/instead of me. I mean, tanned fat would be so much nicer to look at *giggle*.

I can’t take the heat, let alone go on vacation in a warm country. Alaska would be the place to be for me! MS added another nice thing: sarcoidosis, which means scars on your skin. For those to go away, I need to apply ointment and those body parts can’t be exposed to the sun (my feet!), just great, huh?

So why do I hate summer? It’s HOT! You sweat around the clock, your body never cools down, but in CA the people were always friendly due to them many happy hormones (it’s called serotonin, like eating bananas or chocolate, hehe).

During my two rehabs (due to MS) they made me sit in a bathtub with cold water for 20 minutes and they would even add icecubes for me. Nothing better has ever happened to me! My symptoms were gone for like 2 hours or so.

I don’t exactly know which nerves in my brain are injured/scarred through Multiple Sclerosis, but obviously it’s some that control the feeling for temperature. Need an example? After taking off my nightgown at night, and I’m close to rip off my skin to cool down, by boyfriend lies next to me, covered with the blanket up to his chin, wearing a warm pj and socks. THAT BAD it is at times!

That’s why I bought myself cooling vests and use ice packs to cool down if the temperature exceeds 22°C/72°F. You got to know that I don’t know a single person in Europe, at least in Germany, that owns an AC (air condition) except at a medical practice.

This day's gnat caught me by surprise, because she flew in the bedroom somehow, and that's the ONLY room in the house with a fly screen in front of the window! *ugh*

I mean I’ve travelled to hot places (it was hotter in Ibiza/Spain, than in Tangier/Marocco back in 2003) where we had 42°C/108°F and I seriously have no clue how I could handle that.

But the very worst part of summer are the bugs! You can never have all the windows and balcony doors open, because we don’t use those fly screens very much. So we can’t have a draft in the house, because anything comes crawling inside: creepy spiders *yuk*, bugs, flies, and… gnats! Those suckers!!! How I hate them. Did you know that they reach a loudness of 20 decibel (just to compare, a running computer makes 10 decibel of sound). I once researched that on the internet. The specialist could tell me how loud they are, but couldn’t tell me how close they are when the human ear senses them.

I wouldn’t mind the stings, although they hurt and itch for days on end, but what ticks me off is simply the noise! As soon as I hear this, and I really know better, I SLAM my hand on the ear I heard the noise with and that now really, really HURTS! If I would just learn, but no.

I must have had a very bad experience with bugs when I was a child. I recall being age 8-10, that I sat at the sandbox and a giant gnat (the ones that don’t sting) flew right on my nose, so all I could see were those giant 6 legs! *yuk yuk yuk*

It still gives me shivers to just see animals with long legs, yes, that includes spiders, and yes, I know that Sigmund Freud said about this, that those people are afraid of their own sexuality, which I’m NOT! I totally freak out about leggy bugs. I scream my head off and then I need a hero to save me! Usually that is Peter, it used to be my mom. My mother is cured of shivers and creeps since she had to spend some time at a camp (like one of those concentration camps back then…), she said all kinds of things, including rats, kept crawling by, and since then she just executes them for me. When I got married it started to become Peter’s job. In California were different species and I can’t recall a single gnat!

Sole good thing: I inject myself Copaxone every day, so the gnat soaking up MY blood will hopefully get poisoned heavily and die of it...

I just hate zzzzzzzzzzzummer so much, can we leave it at that?

Gimme your thoughts on this!

Bye for now.