Will we or won't we???

It's been a rollercoaster ride all the way.

I'm dropping by today to say that whether we relocate to America or stay here in Germany is hanging by the thinnest of threads. It's an agonizing time right now.

Wish us luck.

A Womb with a View

My son is the light of my life.
He's very special, and a natural nurturer.

He made this object out of computer paper and tape,
and decorated it with chocolate smudges.
Can you guess what it is?

Why, it's a Womb with a View, of course.

How do you romance your mind?

I didn't intend to post this morning, but a comment on the previous post--from a blogger on another blogging forum--prompted this response from me.

While everyone is entitled to their opinion about what they might consider worthy reading material, it's my own opinion that bashing a particular genre as illegitimate is being pathetically closed-minded. Romance seems to receive the brunt of this prejudice, and yet it's the highest-selling, most lucrative genre out there. What does that tell you? Those nay-sayers automatically assume that writers of genre fiction are largely bad writers writing predictable material.

Sure, in romance the girl always gets the guy (or the apprentice always gets the evil sorcerer several books down the line, or the spaceship commander gets the big ugly alien, or the good guy always dies, or whatever ending is appropriate for your favorite genre--including literary fiction), the journey there is never the same and can hold as many twists and surprises as a Dickens novel.

As for the writing, every single genre out there boasts some excellent writers who can not only dream up interesting story lines, but use language exquisitely to carry the reader along a fascinating journey. By the same token, there are also writers out there who, for all intents and purposes, can't put a proper sentence together and shouldn't be published at all, except that they have fertile imaginations and a great hook that sells.

Just as there are different types of intelligence--and one type isn't any better than another--there are different genres that fit different personalities or emotional needs. A person's IQ isn't lowered just because he or she likes to read about romantic love and steamy sex, or dragons and magic. Just as it doesn't automatically make you a great intellectual if you prefer literary and science fiction.

Read, and write, what makes you feel good, or what inspires your imagination. You don't have to like every single genre, you don't even have to sample from every one that doesn't spark interest. But snobbery and prejudice are so unattractive whatever form they take. They not only severely limit a person's experience, but colors one's character a certain shade of bland.

How boring.

Here's a fun exercise...

Two years ago, I realized two things about my writing:

1. I didn't feel that literary fiction was my niche. I had, and still have, little to say in the way of literary fiction.

2. Almost everything I had been writing revolved around relationships and romance. ...Including, to a certain extent, the horror novella I had recently completed.

In my critique group, I had received many unpleasant comments about several of my stories sounding like a Harlequin romance novel. Since I hadn't read romance novels up until that point, I decided to start and see what I could make of them--and if I could write a romance novel, myself.

Well, I discovered that I actually enjoy reading romance novels, though they sometimes depress me, and I do get tired of them after a few and have to move on to something else for a while. I also discovered that writing romance is fun, too, though I have yet to complete that novel I started two years ago.

While researching romance writing, I happened across the Harelquin website. Not only does it promote its own, very numerous imprints, but it has a free online library where visitors can read short stories that parallel the current novels of the month. It also features a writer's section where there are online workshops, message boards, and, among other things, a Writing Round Robin. One of the featured authors begins a chapter of a short story, about 1,000 words long, and then readers can submit subsequent chapters for online publication every two weeks or so.

I did this once, two summers ago, when I first started out in the romance genre. Of course I didn't get selected. I didn't expect to. But it was fun. And it wasn't until this month, that my timing was right on (or should I say write on?). Not only did I remember to check in on the current Writing Round Robin, but I managed to check just last week, shortly before the new one began. I promptly made my way to the online library and printed up a good dozen short stories to get a good idea of what and how to write. And, I've been having a lot of fun with my research!

So when does the new WRR begin? Well, today, actually, which is why I'm writing.

I just downloaded the first chapter of the new WRR, and plan to get started writing the second chapter this afternoon. Yeah, I'll submit the chapter. And it's highly unlikely any of my submissions would get chosen. But it's good practice, and good fun.

And it's a wonderfully non-committal way to get myself back into writing fiction. I may not get published, but I'm still a winner any way you slice it!

Oh, the summer time is comin', and the trees are sweetly bloomin'...

Oh, the summertime is comin',

and the trees are sweetly bloomin',

and the wild mountain thyme

grows around the bloomin' heather.

Will ye go, lassie, go?

This is the chorus to a song close to my heart. We sang it a lot at the Ren Faire I worked as a musician.

I got these lovely flowers for Mother's Day. My husband took my son out Saturday morning (everything's closed here on Sundays) to pick out my flowers.

I think they're the most beautiful flowers I've ever seen. My son decorated a card with three sunflowers on it. "This is Daddy, you and me," he said when I opened it. On the flap of the envelope, my husband had written, "Für unsere liebe Mami... Because you are the only angel that lives on earth." The inscription brought tears to my eyes, because it was a rare declaration of the depth of my husband's affection.

My husband also gave me a new backgammon set. Our old one is a glass board with glass stones which we got from a Folksfest carnival two years ago. I've been wanting a real, fold-up board ever since, so it was a lovely surprise. The day was relaxing, quiet, pleasant, and we got a good many games of backgammon in, as well! We're pretty well matched as players, so it's always a toss-up who'll win.

Black moods and sesame-seed bagel cravings...

I can't even blame my mood on the weather. Today is my favorite kind: impending rain and thunderstorms accompanied by a nice cool front.

To everyone I know, I'm an anomaly in this respect. I love rain, clouds, mist, thunder, wind, dramatic weather of the cool and cloudy kind. It comforts me. It rests contentedly behind my eyes. It doesn't burn my skin or make me sweat or hurt my eyes.

So, it's not the weather that's making me crabby, either.

I don't know what it is. When I awoke this morning, I felt pretty normal. But The Mood descended over me like a black shroud as I was blow-drying my hair, when my son sneaked into the bathroom and stood quietly beneath me. When I lowered the arm holding the hair dryer, I bonked him on the head with my elbow.

"Ouch!" he said. "Be careful, Mommy."

I was irritated that once again he had snuck in without knocking, a habit I'm trying to break him of. He's getting too old to walk freely into the bathroom when Mommy is in there doing mysterious Mommy things. Like taking a shower and personal activities of that ilk. I tried to be decent about it, but the irritation leaked through when I said, "Sweetheart, darnit, knock before you come in!"

And then I was reminded by him, for the umpteenth time this morning, to call his kindergarten teacher to find out when the fireman is expected to arrive for the kindergarten demonstration.

Today is speech therapy day, and normally we skip kindergarten (which is like preschool, and daily attendance is not required) on Tuesdays to concentrate on that activity. But the fireman is coming, and my son didn't want to miss it. So, I had to call to find out when he was coming, so we could work that in before zipping off to speech therapy.

And it was that final reminder that pushed me over the edge. I didn't want to be reminded again, and it wasn't even 8 am, yet. I didn't want to deal with phone calls in a foreign language and kindergarten and firemen and speech therapy and my diet, and my son's inevitable begging to take him to McDonad's as we sometimes do on our way home from Tuesday speech therapy, and cleaning the kitchen, and changing the sheets and doing more laundry and folding it and spending the afternoon trying to reign in my son's energy to sit the afternoon learning to read, write, add and subtract, and the further inevitable begging to play our favorite computer game afterward...

And so, that's why I'm crabby. Oh, and I'm sure PMS might have something to do with it, as well. Nice synchronicity, there, she adds wryly.

And so I thought I'd use the downtime--before picking up the boy from KG to bring him to our appointment--to do a little blogiting. And you know what? I don't even feel like that, today.

The clouds just broke open with lightning and thunder, and I think I'm just going to sit back and play my computer game for a little while. Haven't played it in weeks. Maybe it'll take my mind off my bad humor and my empty tummy.

Secrets Kill

A common secret that shouldn't be common, nor a secret.

Secrets kill your spirit, your mind, your body.

Last year I came to understand that the my greatest weapons over emotional abuse inflicted by a partner battling his own inner demons is to no longer respond to his outbursts, and to open my mouth and tattle.

Responding to verbal abuse creates justification for the abuse. And if you let the other person go on without visibly getting worked up about it yourself, you go a long way toward minimizing the situation. Eventually, the abuser gets an earful of his own blathering and backs down when he understands that you're not a sufficient sponge to soak up his feelings of inadequacy. He shuts
up because his words echo back to him and he hears their ridiculousness.

Useful phrases in my repertoire, when I start to get worked up in spite of my efforts not to, include:

Why are you shouting? and
Come back when you find something worth getting angry over.

In reference to my last post, my husband and I are both concerned about our son's readiness for German AND American first grade, both of which have very different requirements. Our son already meets his German requirements, which are minimal, but my husband is desperate to ensure our son's academic success in Germany, in the event we stay put. Germany is far less forgiving of students who don't excell early, determining as early as age ten whether they are university material or not and dictating the direction of each student's education accordingly.

So, to ensure that our son has an advantage over every other incoming German first grader, he wanted me to teach him to read in German this summer (in addition to a year's worth of American kindergarten curriculum which we've been desperately cramming the last few weeks) he told us that our son could no longer watch TV or play our nightly computer game after hours of afternoon of studying, and that I could not read any more books.

My infuriated response was to write about it in my previous post. But I kept quiet to him about it (because I also recognized his need to start a fight), and his mandate was never enforced.

In the meantime, I inquired of our son's speech therapist and kindergarten teacher about the best techniques and tools for teaching reading to German children, and they both stoutly insisted to let the school do it. They have their methods, and it's best when everyone starts off on the same foot. I told my husband this, and while he wasn't happy about it, never pressed me further. That's not to say the bug won't crawl up his ass later on and I won't get another earful.

But the pressure is off for the time being.

And I never even stopped reading, as if he could stop me.

My husband's problem is mild compared to other abusives. He's very caring, sensitive, thoughtful and responsible to a fault. He's an injured bird done wrong by his parents. and the result is a common Jeckyl-and-Hyde syndrome. But that doesn't make his behavior right or justifiable, and it doesn't stop me from feeling desperate, infuriated, and even depressed at times.

I work hard to make our marriage tolerable in our present environment. I work hard to remain in touch with my Self, in spite of my husband's occasional attempts to rob me of my individual identity. I work hard to instill in our son a sense of love and gentleness, and to help him understand that his father's behavior is sometimes inappropriate. And I work hard to ensure our son understands that he is boundlessly loved not only by me, but by my husband as well.

I try not to let this side of my life bleed onto this blog. I don't want sympathy--there are a lot more people who need a lot more help than I--but sometimes I need an ear to scream my frustration into.

And I need to get it across right now that it's wrong to assume that all people who receive abuse from their partners or spouses are weak and passive, uneducated or unintelligent, and take it all lying down. Abuse is a secret, insidious disease, and it is far more common and reaches into far more social sectors than you might believe.

And if you find yourself in an abusive relationship, start telling people. It's liberating and empowering. It strengthens your deepest belief that you don't deserve it. It makes you stronger to begin taking steps to better your life and your spirit, however you choose to do that.

Keeping secrets will only kill you.

Earning my right to read

I must earn my right to read, if you can believe that...

My son and I have been desperately ill the last ten days, and we're still not out of the woods.

Well, he is. I'm not. And now my husband is home sick, too, and will be home for the next week.
But I have learned one thing: Hot Toddies are not only yummy, but they really do help sore throats, which is my current ailment, caused by fever and unstoppable coughing the last week and more.

But that aside, my husband has now declared that I have to earn my right to read a book. As some of you know, I've been home schooling my son to prepare him for American first grade in the fall (the German system starts the basics a year later). So far, he can read several English words strung together in simple stories. I'm very proud of him, but he still has a ways to go to meet our goal.

But now my husband is feeling slighted that our son can't yet read German words, an issue which will be addressed when he starts German first grade in the fall. (Assuming we don't make it to America.) In spite of countless teachers informing him that our boy more than meets the requirements for first grade admittance, my dear hubby insists that our son MUST know how to read German before September. And to add and subtract. And to write upper and lowercase letters. (Those last two are already getting covered by our current home schooling.) And to ensure that I accomplish these things, he said I am not allowed to read any more books until our son can do all of it.

Talk about pressure. On me. On our son. Talk about utter assholery. And now I have to deal with his constant presence until he returns to work next Monday. So goes another week without writing. And I'm reduced to reading under the covers with a flashlight, just like a kid.

On another continent, I would never have put up with the bullshit that I do. I often marvel at how far my head was up my bum when I got married. Shoulda coulda woulda.

I write too much, and it's keeping me from writing.

No really, I do, and it does. If you've ever gotten a letter from me, you'll understand what I mean. My letters are LONG. I often plug away for an hour or more, going from one topic to the next, recounting every last detail. This is a stubborn compulsion of mine, because I am utterly convinced that, without all that background information, how can anyone fully understand and appreciate the impact of what I have to tell?

It takes every ounce of will to keep a note just a note. To keep the kb count of an e-mail below 50. Sometimes I can do it, and I walk away very proud of myself. Most times, I give in to my natural inclination and end up glued to the computer with my son imploring me for my attention, "Mommy, Mommy..." and me saying, "Okay, just a minute." And that minute turns into several, which lapse into an hour... You get the picture.

I don't write letters very often, anymore. I have a lot of friends and family, and I hated getting stuck at the computer, compulsively vomiting forth every detail of my anecdotes countless times, trying to make each letter unique. Against my moral judgment, I started writing mass e-mails. But no one likes those very much, and I got a few hurt responses. After I joined Blogit and understood how I could make a blog into something other than a boring ol' daily diary, I started a public blog. This is specifically intended to repost some of my less incriminating Blogit blogs for friends and family to read. If they wanted. Without having to plod through five pages of an e-mail. And they could respond. If they wanted. Pressure off, right?

Wrong. My posts are often long-winded, because every story has important backstory and important details that are oh-so-necessary for a reader to attain a full appreciation of the bottom line. I struggle to keep my posts to a manageable length, and I walk away from the computer a happy camper if the word count is under 500 (I'm currently at 345, so I'm doing pretty well). For me, blogging is partly an exercise in being concise. And much like dieting, I still often fall off the wagon and give in to those natural tendencies.

But what I'm wondering is, Why can't I write this effluently when I'm working on a piece of fiction? Okay, it's extremely difficult for me to write a short story less than 5,000 words. It takes a lot of effort. And the more I write, the longer each story gets. My latest reaches about 25,000 words, and had outgrown its original short story status and now wears size Novella jeans. And it's a good story, too. Not a pleasant one, but it's my favorite and the most developed.

But here's the crux. With this disease of verbal diarrhea, why can't I write a whole novel? Why doesn't one pour out of me like a letter or a blog? Why aren't I as compulsive about getting down all those neat ideas I have (at least a dozen) and churning out novel after novel like some people do? Why can't novels be my medium of strength, rather than blogs and boring letters?
I need to excercise that muscle, is what it probably comes down to. I need to retrain my storytelling to flow undammed down the ravines of fiction, rather than overflowing the gulleys of personal experience. There's a lot of energy spilling out of me when I write. It's the same energy that I feel when I create music. I think it can be coaxed to flow as effortlessly through the fictive part of my brain, as well. Can't it?

Unfortunately, just like going to the gym or popping in that Pilates DVD, there's a lot of discipline to be developed, too. Like dieting and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, creating fiction takes work. Blogging is like sitting down and eating a Snickers. And it's all too easy to succomb to temptation and take the path of least resistance.

I better get started on that excercise routine.

Maybe I'll start on Monday. After coffee. After writing a blog.

Oh, and by the way. Don't ever call me unless you've cleared your calendar for the afternoon, or have mastered the art of gently and expediently guiding me through my long-windedness.

Hello. My name is SilverMoon, and I'm a verbaholic.

(742 words, by the way. Could be worse...)

A Brilliant Idea

I'm forming a new tactic in the Moving to America campaign. My husband is concerned we won't have enough cash to fund the venture. And as I lay in bed a few hours ago pondering this dilemma, I remembered something my mother and I talked about a couple months ago. Why not send me ahead to find a job, get health and car insurance and our son's schooling squared away, and send him money every month until we get our finances in order?

Isn't that a great idea? Before I leave, I could go through our stuff (half of which is still in cartons from our move last year) and sort out what to keep (a few sentimental items) and what to throw away (most everything). Then, my husband can take care of selling what's saleable, including the car, since he'd be doing all that on his own, anyway. And assuming our son goes with me, our expenses here would be cut in half because I'd be living with my parents and not accruing any.

That would work, don't you think? Huh? Don't you?

Now if I could only sell my husband on it...

When You Piss and Miss and Miss the Mess

Ten days ago, our bathroom sink sprung a leak. Actually, it’s been weeks or even months that the thing has been leaking. Up until the moment I noticed that there was a pool spreading from beneath a set of shelves into the main area and heard water freely running down the elbow pipe, I thought the constant wetness on the floor directly beneath the sink was because of sloppy hand washing. You see, my son is six and my husband loves to flop around in the water when he washes his hands or takes a shower and lets it drip everywhere. Between the two of them, I’m always mopping up the mess on the floor. So you can see how I could have assumed the fault lay at the feet of the Y-chromosomes I live with.

So it was ten days ago when I noticed a serious pooling problem, beneath those shelves. And after a little nosing around, I quickly discovered our sink was leaking. Badly. Today, a plumber came to fix it. And when I saw the man walk through our door, I wanted to hide. I was still angry at him about our last encounter, and also horribly embarrassed.

When we first moved here a little over a year ago, we noticed a funny smell in our downstairs toilet. The smell got worse and worse, until finally, around the end of summer, we begged our landlady to get someone in there pronto to check it out. Up until that point, she had been dragging her feet, about the matter, telling us to pour water down the effluence drain in the boiler room to dislodge whatever might have gotten stuck in there. Never mind that I insister to her and to my husband that the smell wasn't coming from the toilet, but from the hole near the ceiling where a small fan used to be.

After insisting the problem would not go away on its own, our landlady finally called the local plumber. He was an older gentleman and a cloud of cigarette smoke wafted about him like a tarnished aura. He stuck his head in the toilet room and said, “I don’t smell anything.”
I insisted there was, in fact, an odor, and a very unpleasant one, at that.

“I don’t smell a thing,” he protested. And there we stood, arguing about whether or not there really was an odor.

I finally pulled out my trump card. “Well, we don’t smoke, and I can tell you for sure that it smells like something died in there. If you don’t smell anything, then you better figure out whether there’s anything to smell at all.”

So, about two weeks later, his thirty-year-old son came to sniff out the problem. His visit was a surprise. I had no idea he was coming. If I had known, then things might have turned out somewhat differently.

I led him downstairs to the strange-smelling toilet. He took one look around and said he didn’t smell anything, either. And wouldn’t you know it, the smell wasn’t so bad that day. In fact, it was hardly there. Still, I insisted that there was a bad odor.

He sniffed around the air vent (I suspected a bird, mouse or bat had fallen into the PVC piping that leads from the bathroom up into the attic where it remains open to anything that cares to fall in there), and said, “Nope, nothing.” Then he sniffed around the base of the toilet, pointed to the floor and said it was urine that was stinking up the joint. I looked to where he pointed, and I saw the unmistakable evidence of drying piss on the floor.

I was mortified. I knew that that morning, after a long night’s sleep, my son had been the last person to use that toilet before decamping to the main area of the house upstairs. Like most young boys, he isn’t always very accurate, especially when still crusty from sleep. He usually tells me when he misses, or cleans it up himself. But this time, he didn’t do either.

I insisted to this man, who has farmer-boy good looks and eyes that make my heart jump, that the pee left on the floor was a one-time occurrence, that it wasn’t the odor of urine that we’d been smelling. Really. There was a distinct smell of dessication going on somewhere behind the wall. Really really.

But the man wouldn’t believe me. He left the house shaking his head, and I, angry and irate, nearly shouting at him to believe me.

And now, eight months later, he was gracing my doorstep once again.

Neither one of us was very happy about it.

He uses a very thick SW German dialect, and it’s very difficult for me to understand him and the many other Schwarzwald natives in our neighborhood. When he spoke, I had to ask him to repeat himself and he was clearly unhappy to oblige. Mustering every last bit of adult reserve I had, I stopped myself from getting snotty back, and silently led him to the bathroom. He spent all of five minutes in there dismantling the elbow pipe and installing a new seal. He asked me for some paper towels, and when I gave him the roll, he smiled nicely at me. I managed to smile back, though I imagine my expression must have looked more constipated than friendly simply because he took me off guard.

When he was done, he politely said goodbye and left. And as I pondered the change between us, the doorbell rang again. I buzzed him in and he poked his head up the stairs and wanted to know if we were paying the bill. I said that I thought our land lady was going to do that.
He shook his head no.

Back on uncertain footing, I asked if he could send us a bill. And of course he said he would.
I know his daughter is in my son’s kindergarten class, because I’ve seen him there twice in the past few weeks. Both times, I did an about face and hurried out the door, feeling the residual anger and embarrassment of the summer before staining my cheeks. I’m not a bad housekeeper, and I certainly don’t let piss dry on my floors if I know it's there. But that one time, it got overlooked. And someone found out.

And I know we were not imagining the stink from the toilet. It’s not as bad now as it was last year. In fact, it’s almost gone, now. And I’m more certain than ever that something had fallen down that impromptu air duct and died.

We’ll never know for sure.

And I’ll also never know how many people now think the new folks on the hill (you never get over being the new folk in small towns) let piss dry on their floors until they have to call a plumber to find out what stinks?

I know I shouldn’t still be embarrassed, but I am. I might be able to face him the next time I see him at the kindergarten, but the memory that he caught me with piss on my floor will never fade.

The Blogital Daughter returns home... to another list.

I've been feeling that creative urge again. It's been far too long since I've felt that way. The urge to write. The urge to immerse myself in the company of other writers, dickering with the grammar gurus and the punctuation police over the intricacies of who vs whom and comma usage.

In much the same way I've missed this particular forum, I've also come to miss my old writing list. It's quite a large list, actually, with members from all over the world. One of the unique things about it is that it is not just a writing list where dorks like me discuss the same boring old drudge about writing over and over again. It's also a list that plays host to a number of critique sub-lists. Fiction, Poetry, Romance, Scriptwriting, Non-fiction, Juvenile, and others I'm sure I'm missing.

A few days ago, I signed on to that list again. Only for the discussion list, however. I don't have the time right now to dedicate to writing fiction again. Blogging, right now, is tons less effortful and more fulfilling than writing fiction. Besides, with posting your work comes the obligation to critique others' works in return. And I just can't handle that at the moment.

But I did rejoin the discussion list. I'll probably keep most of my opinions to myself, as usual, unless something really gets my dander up. And I'll probably roll my eyes at the tight-assed, dogmatic opinions of certain individuals, as usual. But the point is, I'm back on the list.

And it feels good.

Culture Clash: When Homeschooling Doesn't Add Up...

When kids go to kindergarten in Germany, they start at age three. The basic goal is to socialize the youngsters and make them aware of their surroundings, rather than filling their heads with useful, basic education. In their sixth year, the children begin first grade. This is when they begin to learn the basics. The prerequisite for children entering first grade is pretty minimal. They should be able to write their first name, follow directions, play nicely with others, recognize numbers in dot patters (think of dice), count to ten. Stuff like that. Sounds pretty reasonable, right?

So, when we started talking about going to America, we didn’t really think about what our son would need to know when he starts first grade this fall. We thought that the kindergartens were basically the same: to get the kids socialized and introduce them to some kind of educational structure. But last week, after my husband received his immigrant visa in the mail, it suddenly became priority to make sure that our kiddo has what it takes to enter first grade.

After contacting the principal of the grade school my boy may attend this fall (assuming we really do return to the good ol’ USA), I discovered that he is, in fact, about a semester behind schedule. I had been home schooling him a bit in German, up until this point, just to give him an edge when he starts German first grade. Good thing, too. But he doesn’t have the knowledge needed to advance to first grade in America. He should be reading basic words by now (about 40 of them), writing, counting beyond 110 by 2s, 5s and 10s, calculating simple math problems...

When did this start happening? I don’t remember doing all this in kindergarten. Okay, I don’t remember much about kindergarten at all. My memories of that class encompass Show and Tell day, cookies-and milk snack time, Letter-People. Oh, and I’ll never forget the time I handed in a kitty cat ditto and the teacher called me to her desk to ask why I hadn’t colored it.

“I did,” I said to her, “I colored it white. See?” I pointed to the places where my white Crayola had gone outside the lines and faded the blue outline. My teacher didn’t say anything. But before handing in the page, all the kids at my table had said that I was doing it wrong. That I had to color it a color. “White is a color,” I’d told them calmly. Little did I know...

When I returned to the table, the boy next to me leaned close to and whispered, "See? I told you." The two little girls on the other side of him nodded sagely.

What happened to those days of kindergarten, when the biggest issue was whether white was an appropriate color to color with, or who poked a hole in the inflatable Mr. D (for Doughnut)? I'm now doing hard-core home schooling in the afternoon hours when he should be watching Scooby Doo, or riding his bike in the driveway. Having to rush my child to catch up with the rest of the American kids his age is stressing him out.

And me too. And we're only in the first week.

I've sought the company of others

I Admit It...

Yes, I've sought the company of others. Selfishly and shamelessly. And if I've learned one thing, it's this simple fact: There's No Place Like Home.

No one else can take the place of the one that truly holds your heart. Not cheap freebies, not those who lure you in with promises of variety and intricate gadgets. No one.

No other blogging site can take the place of Blogitland. For some reason, the best of the best seem to have collected here... and we all pay quite a lot, in comparison, for the privilege of writing and reading in this place.

We're writers, though. We're not supposed to PAY to write, are we? And yet we do. We are quite all right with the fact that we get less than a penny a click, and yet we continue to foster our abnormal and co-dependent relationship with Blogitland and other Blogiteers.

How many of us have gone away, and come back desperate to regain that sense of completion we have only here?



Why is that?

I've thought and thunk and thought summore.



It can only mean one thing,



We've succumbed to subliminal messaging. That's gotta be it.



I may continue to wander in search of greener pastures, looking for a cheap lay of land, but none are as verdant and fertile as the fields of Blogitland.

A Surprise Visit from a Distant Friend

Last night, I ran across a friend online. Although I’m online at the same time almost every weeknight, I’d never seen her presence until last night. I met her maybe four or five years ago at an English-language play group in Stuttgart. She befriended me (it usually takes some effort to befriend me. I can be shy, at times!), and we really had some nice times together. We’d talk on the phone for hours, or meet downtown on Königstrasse to window shop. At first, our boys would accompany us, and then they each started Kindergarten so we got to share mommy and wifey stories in the luxury of their absence. I watched her belly swell as she grew a new child, and held that tiny little girl the last time we saw each other.

Her husband, once contracted under Daimler-Chrysler, decided he had had enough of being the ausländisches underdog and not being taken seriously by his coworkers. When he cancelled his contract, he returned to America with my friend and their children feeling profoundly disillusioned, leaving not only Germany, but his profession behind.

I had tears in my eyes when my friend and I parted ways. We didn’t see each other often, but I had an affection for her, and just knowing she was in the same city was a great comfort to me. I was sad when she left, but we traded e-mails for a while. And then the e-mails became less and less frequent. The last time we heard from each other was about six months ago.

But lately, she’d been on my mind a lot. I knew I had to write her, but I’ve been less busy than completely preoccupied. You know how that is? So, when I saw her on my Trillian contacts list, I was thrilled. I did a virtual happy dance, threw her virtual hugs, and we IMed for a good hour or so. For the umpteenth time, she offered to kick out their current tenant and rent out the other half of their Ohio country fixer-upper to us. I don’t know that we’ll ever take her up on her offer—or how serious her offer really is—but it’s fun to think of our families being neighbors.

Seeing her again, even if only virtually, did my soul lots of good.

I know this has happened to you

Can you hear my tortured cries across Blogitland?

I just lost my post because my tired old computer farted again.

And if you can believe it, and I'm sure you can because you've all been here before, too, after I got back online I even check to see if maybe, just maybe, my little humble musing got saved and posted after all. Of course it didn't. and so here I am, bleary-eyed and barely able to type without a mistake in every word, trying to make the best of it, trying not to waste my opportunity. Maybe, just maybe, that was meant to happen. Maybe I was meant to write a better post. Maybe about the same subject, maybe about losing posts to the ether.

But dammit anyway! I don't want to write the whole thing over again... I'm tired. I wanna go to bed. And tomorrow, well, tomorrow's another day, and I have laundry to do and toilets to clean and floors to wash and a child to homeschool...

But maybe it was simply meant to be.

Yeah, right. Or maybe, my fingers were just clumsy.

crap.

Could it be? Dare I hope?

I'm happy to announce that, while we haven't formed any definite plans and have not fully committed to relocating stateside, my husband seems to be looking forward to the possibility.

And I couldn't hope for less, at this point.

Yesterday, he spent a good portion of the day on the Internet searching up activities of interest in the Chicagoland area. Soccer (he's German, of course he's going to look up soccer clubs!), swimming, cycling. He searched up a local writer's group for me. He spent a long time looking up first-grade entry requirements for our son. And together, we searched for local Canasta clubs. We found next to nothing that wasn't centered around online playing or linked to retirement communities. In fact, in the first search we did for Canasta clubs, we turned up nothing but pages of obituaries!

I spent a few minutes yesterday and today reassuring him that since we'll be sheltering with my folks, we'd be in a safe position. And, that for once, the burden of earning an income for our family wouldn't be his alone, anymore. Additionally, we already have a car and furnishings waiting for us, so we won't have to buy anything once we leave my parent's nest. Really, we have much more than most other immigrants entering the U.S., although our advantages stem from the fact that America is my homeland, and has been to my family for three generations.

He needs to be handled with kid gloves. It's a big risk he's taking, on a personal and professional level. And he's the type of person that, if he feels he's being pushed, he'll push back and do the opposite of what you ask.

Slowly slowly, he'll work himself up to the full committment. That's the way he works. I have my fingers crossed that this time will be no exception.

I never thought we'd come so far...

Well, here's a bit of good news.

Today, two weeks earlier than expected, we received my husband's US residency visa in the mail.

We've got six months to enter the US before it expires.

I've got half that long to make sure my husband doesn't chicken out and change his mind, and then to get us there in time for the new school year.

Wish us luck, everyone. We need this. My son and I, in particular, need this.

We just need that extra little push to bring us to the finish line. Please send us lots of positive energy...!

Choose Me! Choose Me!

This morning, I had a pleasant surprise. After bringing my boy to kindergarten, I settled down to a cup of coffee and checked my e-mail. I do this every morning not to see if I got any letters from friends, anymore, but to see if, while I slept, someone decided to inquire after my editing services.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I got two nibbles... but they were from two women who wanted me to employ them. I wrote back and expressed my sorrow that I could not take them on, but that I'd like to keep their resumes on hand "just in case."

So, as I waited for my computer to boot up (it took three tries to get online, the tired, farty old thing), I sipped my coffee and pondered the irony of receiving those two inquiries. Could I possibly list them as co-editors, to further entice potential clients to trust my expertise? And as I came to the conclusion that, no, that would not be very ethical, I logged in to my e-mail and saw in the subject line of one: Proofreading and Editing Services.

My heart skipped a beat. Would this be a potential client, or an employment hopeful?

Well, be still my heart, it was a request for my resume, editing examples and rates list. And it wasn't a one-time deal like everything else has been. It would be a permanent freelance position for a big non-profit org. Holy moly. It wouldn't be enough to pay the rent, by any means, but it would be regular work and enough to pad our income just a little tiny bit more. I immediately set to and gathered all my stuff together and e-mailed it away, attached to a nicely professional letter.

Now, I'm not silly enough to think I was singled out for this opportunity. No way. It came from the New York craigslist, so I went there, searched "proofreading", and checked out the competition. I was happy to see that I am in good standing, have extremely reasonable rates (cheaper than just about everyone else), and that I could have copyedited some of those ads and websites myself... though I wouldn't expect any potential client to know that, or else they wouldn't need a proofreader!

After I sent off my resume and examples, I wrote another potential client who has neglected to send me the disclosure agreement he wanted me to sign, as he promised he would do sometime this week. I don't know if I'll hear from him again, but I gave it a good shot, having called him last week in CA (from Germany) to follow up on his initial inquiry. At the very least, it was good practice.

Then this afternoon, I got a surprise e-mail from a university student who asked me to quote her a price for editing her thesis. I replied, and am waiting to hear back from her, too.
So, maybe something will come of these three good leads. They would all be good projects, affording a tidy sum in my pocket. I've got my fingers crossed...

Where do your friends rank???

A recent post by Strat got me thinking about my high school days. When I was a freshman girl involved in theatre, all my friends were senior Thespian boys (go figure), so I got into all the trouble-making earlier than I might have. I was fourteen when I started drinking, and though I never smoked cigarettes I did smoke pot on occasion. We got drunk in a local forest preserve, then piled into a couple of cars (I remember one time when seven of us in crammed into a tiny, two-door, early 80s Ford Escort) to make for Jakes Pizza or someone’s house for a Wall Party. My boyfriend and his fellow band friends took great delight in sign stealing, and left their mark on streets and public buildings (missing letters, missing signs) throughout the area for years after.

Our school was somewhat more strict than Strat’s, it seems. Absolutely no cola on campus (except for the coke machine in the teacher’s lounge, which we routinely broke into during weekend play rehearsals), no cigarettes (except those smuggled into the bathrooms between classes), no off-campus lunches even for seniors. I remember a few hair-raising off-campus lunches with my friends, too, as well as quite a bit of hell-raising on the weekends. I wonder how much my parents knew or suspected? Even at nearly 36, I don’t plan to enlighten them about those teenage escapades.

We’d remained friends and in semi-regular contact long past our respective graduation dates, through college and most of the 90s. But in the last few years, we seem to have gone our own ways: One of them turned criminal--he was one of the sign stealers and now steals money via fraudulent means, and you can find him in local paper archives. One female friend, who floated on the periphery of our core group, became an exotic dancer where she met her husband, then later got her degree in English at 31.

Another found God in a big way, but still we remain in contact and respect one another’s path.

Two were born again and I haven't heard from them in years, I being the group heathen and therefore damned to eternal hell and below their recognition. I like to think they think of me now and again and pray for my soul. I’d rather have that than emptiness and misplaced pity in their hearts when they remember their female group mascot over whom they were once so protective.

Last week, I uncovered a blog belonging to one of them (reborn about 18 months ago). He’s a talented guitarist whose poetic writing style reminds me strikingly of Strat’s. In that blog, there was almost none of his former poesy. He spoke of mundane matters in a mundane style, except for every other sentence referring to God and needing to devote all aspects of one’s life to Him.

In one of his later posts, he had spoken of feeling uninspired, that the room he had dedicated to his creative and musical pursuits has done little more for him than collect dust. His posts became sporadic. And it occurred to me that instead of using his talents as a celebration of Divinity, he may have chased down the path that causes Divinity to choke the creative from him. Reading his posts made me sad, and it struck me that he sounded less accepting of his chosen path than trying to convince himself of its perceived rightness.

Another, a stout atheist in HS and beyond, attained his PhD in Theology and converted to Judaism while still at university.

And still another remains very much the same as he’s always been: a forty-year-old Catholic, somewhat more bitter than before, still as depressive and self-absorbed as ever, and doesn’t understand why he can’t keep a girlfriend and why he goes so long between. Don’t mistake me. He’s a gentle soul, musical, articulate and creative, and a good friend to have. My description isn't mean, just honest.

I find it interesting how religion has emerged to play such a vital role in many of their lives and has effectively managed to separate us. A part of me resents that I’ve lost to religion two of the people I’ve held dear for many years. Something about that doesn’t seem right. According to people “like them”, someone like me—with no set rules of Divinity to follow, with a propensity toward a kind of nature worship and affection for goddess tradition—is now unworthy of their friendship. I, who have never said an unkind word to them or about them, who have always regarded them with a friend’s love, am now below their regard simply because our priorities differ in this particular thing.

Shouldn’t Divinity should be inclusive, not exclusive? I respect the various paths my friends chose and I don’t begrudge them their methods of filling the empty places in their hearts. I have my own ways, but certainly don’t place them above anyone else’s. The Divine, after all, takes an infinite variety of forms. But it’s a real shame when we feel the need to sacrifice one form of love to embrace another.

This year, we’ll have all been friends for 22 years. Why would anyone want to forsake that? Why would the Divine, in any form, expect one to repudiate friendship? Isn't love supposed to be the whole point?