Alone

S and the boys and have gone to Germany, for 5 weeks, leaving me here (not for all 5 weeks, I'm off to England). My life has suddenly lost it's structure. For the first time in I've forgotten how long (actually, it's probably 5 years and 2 weeks) I don't have to get up in the morning at a certain time - like when someone shouts "Daddy, is it daytime?"

It's like driving around without a map lady. I'm unconstrained - I can go anywhere I want to go, but I don't know where I want to go. Some mornings, I get up a 6:30, and go straight to work - I shower, eat breakfast, drink coffee all at work. And there's no reason to go home. (I read another blog recently where someone wrote about infinite time - because of the nature of our jobs, it's never finished. If you gave us an infinite amount of time, we could use it all up.) So I can go home at 10pm, if I want to (and sometimes I do.)

I hope that's not making it sound all bad. Because, at least to start with, it's not.

Have you ever seen that email that people send around? I've just tried to find it, and I can't. It goes something like "Do you feel tired all the time? Listless? Lacking in energy? Do you feel that you are getting older, and there isn't enough time to do the things you want? Do you and your spouse spend time just talking any more? have you wondered what is wrong? The answer is: You've got children."

I thought I was just getting old or something, but sudden, I find that I don't have to fight the urge to go to bed, starting at 9pm, and usually succumbing by 10. I can stay up late. And I can still get up at the same time. I don't know how the boys manage to suck the life force from me - but I've realized that they do.

Tomorrow I'm going to go on a bike ride. Not to go somewhere, but for fun. Just to go out. I can't remember the last time I did that, but I'm prepared to bet it was slightly more than 5 years and 2 weeks ago.

Who am I?

I was walking past the swimming pool this evening, where some children were swimming (surprisingly). They shouted "Hello Alex and Danny's dad!"

That's all I am now. It's what I've become. It's like a few years ago, when women got married, and became "Mrs John Smith", or whatever.

(Bad?) Medicine

S and the boys (and Oma and Brigitte) are going on a flight to Germany, via London. (Well, strictly, the flight is to Amsterdam.) So today, I went to a travel stuff shop, which had all kinds of travel stuff. I went in, and slightly pessimistically asked for a German-US modem adapter plug. They asked if I wanted West German, or East (West) and new style or old (I'd already investigated this, and wanted new). They rummaged under the counter and said "Just the one". Which I thought was quite impressive.

So while I was there, I bought a step up voltage adapter thingy, so that our hand blender would turn with slightly more enthusiasm. On the counter they also had some travel pills "Reduce jetlag! Sleep better!" I investigated more closely, and in smaller letters it said "Homeopathic!" so I put them back.

Then we went to the pharmacy. Partly to buy more cheap toys (pharmacies have enormous quantities of cheap toys - I've bought one of pretty much everything they have for less than 2 dollars, so that every 10 minutes on the flight, S can whip out another toy that they have never seen before. At least for the first 4 hours) but mostly to see if there's anything that is non-homeopathic/non-herbal/non-illegal/ethical that we can stuff into the boys. I went to the 'consult' counter, and explained my problem. I expect a tirade about my parenting skills - something along the lines of "You expect us to sell you powerful pharmaceutical products, products which have been developed to aid sick people; you expect me to use my years of training in pharmacist school; and you want to drug your children , all to make your life a little easier?" But he didn't say that. He said "Benadryl - aisle 8, on the right."

So I looked at the Benadryl (it's an antihistamine), and it said "Warning: may cause severe drowsiness". However, the smallest bottle was 4 ounces, and you aren't allowed to take more than three ounces on a plane, so I bought the bottle, and some strips too.

When we got home, I read the rest of the warnings. The third one said "May cause excitability." Fantastic. So it's either going to knock them out, or give them ADD. And we don't know which, until we try it.

Wipers

I spoke to someone today, who had lived around here for a while, then moved away to Washington, DC, for a few years, and was now back. They said that before they moved away, they didn't realize that you had to replace windscreenshield wipers.

Toast

In Germany, they don't eat sandwiches. This might seem like a problem only when you are in Germany (what do people eat for lunch, if they don't sell sandwiches anywhere?) But it can also prove a problem when you have Germans visiting, who try to help.

The boys had a birthday party, on Friday (which I've nearly recovered from enough to write about). We wanted to make sandwiches, and B, Oma's pal (whom I am supposed to call Frau Kaiser; S thinks it's OK for me to go into her bedroom and rifle through her underwear looking for stuff I'm supposed to take to work, but not to call her by her first name) decided to help.

But (and I know this is hard to believe) she didn't know how to make sandwiches. She took each slice of bread, cut the crusts off, cut it in half, diagonally, and buttered it, and then tried to cut a slice of cheese so that it fitted. Then she put it on the plate. (Yes, that's right, she didn't put another piece on top). I think S tried to explain that sandwiches involved two piece of bread, so she then made sandwiches, but by basically the same procedure, cutting the crusts off each slice, cutting in half, and then cutting a slice of cheese so it fitted, and putting them together. I tried to explain in my rather feeble German "Erste machen, dann Schnitzen" but she just carried on. S thinks that that is because she was so shocked that I called her by her first name, she was unable to listen to anything else I said. I think it's because she didn't have any idea what I was talking about.

The German word for sliced bread is 'toast'. The German word for toast is 'toast'. This kind of makes sense - if you don't eat sandwiches, the only use for sliced bread is to make toast, but it's caused confusion before - such as when Oma writes 'toast' on the shopping list, and the only kind of toast that they sell in Sainsbury's is that hard French stuff, so I buy it, and she can't understand why there's no bread, and I can't understand why she didn't write it on the shopping list. Anyway, we all woke up late this morning (not quite recovered from the party), and so we were in a hurry. I usually get slices of bread from the freezer, leave them to defrost on the breadboard, and do other stuff while they defrost, then I make sandwiches for the boys.

So I do this, as normal. But when I turn around, Oma has toasted them. She thinks this is normal - after all, I got toast from the freezer. So, I try to explain that I didn't want the toast toasted, because even though she thinks it's toast, I think it's bread, and I'm going to make some of that weird foreign mysterious food called a sandwich. So I get more bread from the freezer, put it on the breadboard, andgo about my business. Now, with leaving time mere minutes away, I go to pack the boys' lunches. But, yes, you've guessed it, my bread is in the toaster, and is nicely toasted. I fling it into the sink (Oma gets it out again, a few bubbles won't allow her to let good toast go to waste) and get more frozen bread out of the freezer, which I make into frozen sandwiches.

If I were to go into a bit of self-psychoanalysis and introspection, the reason this offends me so is because of an incident that happened (naturally) when I was a child. I think that a number of incidents involving packed lunches have scarred me, and this is just one of them. (Another involves my yogurt breaking open, and me being upset about this, while other children look on and laugh because I pronounce if to rhyme (almost) with Bogart. My mother was Canadian, and so said yogurt this way - I've speant years fighting the urge to call it yoagurt, and trying to remember to call it yoggert. A f then we move to America, and I have to try to call it yoagurt again, so our boys aren't scorned at school for being weirdo outsiders.)

But I was going to tell you about the frozen bread. I was (I'd guess) about 13 and we were going on a caoch trip to Londom. (I think it was a own twinning thing, where lots of French/German people came to stay, and we had to do something to amuse them). So we made egg sandwiches. And we (well, mum, let's assign blame where it's due for the psychological damage this caused) thought we should freeze the sandwiches. That way, when we arrived in London, they would be cool and pleasant, not warm and disgusting. So, we arrived in London, and prepared to eat our cool yummy egg sandwiches. Except they weren't cool, they were frozen.

We left the sandwiches on the coach, thinking that when we got back for the journey home we would have cool, delicious sandwiches to eat. When we got back to the coach, the sandwiches had attracted enormous amounts of condensation, and were soggy balls of mush. And I was sad (and, obviously, damaged).

Names

Oma has come to visit, and she's brought a pal, Frau Kaiser.

This introduces one of those bizarre name problems that Germans have. S and the boys call Frau Kaiser, Frau Kaiser. I'm not sure what Oma calls her. But the question is, what does she call S? She can't call her S, because that's too informal. But she can't call her Frau H, because that's Oma. And that's too formal, when Frau K is older. And S isn't Frau H. She is Frau Dr H.

The solution is that Frau Kaiser doesn't speak to S directly, she can only address her through Oma. As in "Does your daughter want sugar?"

Frau K has yet to address me, partly because she doesn't speak much English, but mostly because (I suspect) she has no idea what to call me.

We were in a shop today (The Pinata Store, but that's another blog entry), and after I paid, the woman serving had looked at my credit card and said "Thanks Jeremy". It's like another country. Oh, hang on, it is.

Music at Trader Joe

Trader Joe's plays music in the shop. Nothing unusual there. What is unusual is the music that they play. I've recently heard:

• Big Time - by Peter Gabriel
• Our House - Madness
• She Sells Sanctuary - The Cult (when was the last time you heard that? When was the last time you heard anything by the cult?
• Take on me - A-Ha
• Save a prayer - Duran Duran
• Don't stand so close to me - The Police
  

(I keep meaning to write them down when I get home, so I remember.)

Notice any connection? First of all, they are all from the 80s, and second, they are almost all English (except for A-Ha, and they are Norwegian). I'd like to know who chooses this, and why. First, the staff mainly seem too young to be of that age.

My best theory is that it's the demographic they are after. Who spends the most in supermarkets? People with young (or young-ish) children. And that's people of about my age, who came of age in the 80s, and would say things like "She Sells Sanctuary - when was the last time I heard that? Or when was the last time I heard anything by The Cult").

But that doesn't explain the European-ness. I'm going to have to try to be more systematic. First, writing down all the songs that are played in TJs, and second, going to other stores (there are a couple of others that I go to sometimes) and seeing if they play similar music.

There's a good chance they won't - each store has a 'theme', ours is an airport theme. The checkouts are labelled "Runway 1" "Runway 2", etc, and there are model planes hanging from the ceiling. The other one I go to occasionally has a Hawaiian theme, and has canoes on the walls. The checkouts are called checkouts, and each has a little chalkboard with amusing quotes on it (which, I think, change. My favorite "before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you'll be a mile away, and you'll have their shoes". (Each TJs also has art on the walls, which is done by local artists.)

Reflections

Sometimes stuff happens, and it feels like an earlier memory is being replayed, except that I've shifted roles and turned into one of my parents, and D or A has turned into me. Like one of those training things that policemen do, when one of them has to be the criminal, and be interrogated, and then they change over.

Sometimes these are painful. Only because I think of what I put my parents through, but I guess they are getting a kind of payback now.

When I was little (let's say 5, I don't remember), I used to like doing the washing up. This involved standing on a chair, and pouring water into and out of things in the sink. I wasn't allowed to do it very often. When I got older (let's say 10, for the sake of argument), I didn't like doing the washing up. My parents would ask me, and I'd moan (and I'd imagine that I only did it rarely). Once I asked them: "When I was younger, I liked doing the washing up, and you didn't let me. Now I don't, and you won't let me."

They replied (words to the effect of): "That's because you were toss useless at it when you were younger."

[Sometimes I wonder if that episode in my life is why, when I first had my own unfurnished house, the first thing I bought, and I mean the first thing, before I bought a TV or a fridge or a cooker, on the day I moved in, was a dishwasher.]

Today, A asked if he could wash the plates. I said he could - there were a few in the sink, and having a bit of water sloshed over them before they went into the dishwasher wouldn't hurt. I was reminded of the episode much earlier in my life, when he picked up the washing up liquid bottle (which was only half full) and emptied it onto the counter.

Frat Boys

Here's D and A's pre-school photo (S says I'm not allowed to call it a nursery). D, in particular, looks like an American frat boy (S says he looks like an actor, but I think that's because frat boys try to look like actors), and both look beyond their 4 years and 11 months. Which, naturally, makes them very happy now, but won't when they're 40 and 11 months.

Santa Monica Festival

The day after the Strawberry Festival, it was the Santa Monica festival. At the Strawberry Festival, the boys had been sweetness and light, and had shown amazing stamina. They made up for it at the Santa Monica festival, where they were back to their usual evil selves.

The festival was interesting - it was designed to produce no waste. Everything had to be either recyclable or biodegradable. S went to buy some biodegradable plates and cups (for A and D's 5th birthday party, which is coming up). The people just wanted to tell her about how great the plates were - she just wanted to buy them. This seems to be a common problem in this sort of thing - I go to the Farmer's Market, and buy cheese. The woman at the cheese stall now recognizes me, and says "Oh, I don't need to tell you about the cheese, do I?" But I digress.

We bought some disgustingly coloured and flavored ice, so that the boys could be hyperactive. These came in biodegradable glasses - there's a photo below, but you can't really see them. The glasses looked and felt so like real plastic (hang on, real glasses, made of plastic, oh, you know what I mean) that I didn't believe they actually were biodegradable - I thought it was a con. I tried to bite the spoon, and managed to make a small mark, but that was all, so I wasn't sure about that either. However, there was someone standing by the bin to make sure that we put them in the compost - so then I was convinced.


They (naturally) didn't eat most of the colored ice, so I had to finish it (at $4 we weren't going to let it go to waste, and I was thirsty). A and D sat on police motorbikes - they were Santa Monica police motorbikes, not California Highway Patrol (as in CHiPs - who remembers Ponch and Jon). The boys didn't mind that though. (Incidentally, the California Highway Patrol is always called CHP).

Notice D's mouth is red, from the frozen ice thing.

Strawberries

V was visiting at the weekend, and wanted to go shopping. But she didn't want to go shopping just anywhere - she wanted to go shopping at the Camarillo Outlet Shopping Center. I have no idea how she knew this existed, but she did, and so we went there. It's like a Designer Outlet Centre, except bigger and more American.

Our initial plan was that V and S would shop, whilst the boys and I (the boys?) played at a park. However, there was no park.

What there was, was the California Strawberry Festival. Very conveniently, they had a park and ride system set up, and even more conveniently, the parking place was the Camarillo Outlet Shopping Center.

So we drove to Camarillo (every day I'm hugging my pillow, almost), and the ladies shopped while the boys rode a school bus to the strawberry festival. A proper yellow school bus, with the flashing lights.

The strawberry festival involved, well, strawberries, as you would expect. But these people took their strawberries seriously. There were strawberries for sale. (By the time we got around to thinking about buying some to take home, most had sold out, and the ones that hadn't had long lines.)

Strawberry lemonade.

Strawberry smoothies.


Chocolate covered strawberries from Oxnard Buddhist Temple. Buddhist temple. Strawberries being covered in chocolate. Boggles the mind.

Strawberry margaritas:

I'm not sure if that's strawberry wine, or strawberries with wine.

But that definitely says strawberry beer.
Strawberry pizza:
And if you weren't strawberried out, strawberry nachos.

Visits

I haven't been posting much in the last two weeks, 'cos we've had two visitors - M came for an interview at Corporation of Current Employment, and V had an interview at University of California.

They were both surprised by how simultaneously hard and easy the interview process seems to be (at least for academic, or quasi-academic jobs). It's easy because people chat to you in your interviews, sometimes you feel you should be trying to get a word in edgewise. You don't get asked a succession of hard questions, or any questions at all. It's hard because it goes on, and on. Both started about 8am - there are no breaks, lunch is part of the process. M was finished by 5pm - well, he wasn't because he had dinner with me, but that hardly counted. V finished with her evening meal at about 9pm, restarted the next morning at 8am, and finally finished at about 4pm.

M and I drove around to some places, so we could take photos of interesting things to show the folks back home. The first photo is of the Hollywood sign, the second is of the beach at Malibu, and the third is a freeway. I'm not sure why we took that photo - it might be because, if you look closely, the sign says Sunset Boulevard.



We didn't actually get out of the car to take any of those photos (as you can see).

V had less time to acclimatise (her interviews started the morning after she arrived), had two days of interviews, and on Saturday (her only full free day), all she wanted to do was shop.

She managed to out-shop S, and we were impressed by her stamina, but that's another blog post. (Or, if you read these in the traditional manner, starting at the top and working down, it's the one you've just read.)

Bedtime Snacks

At bedtime, A wanted milk. Well, specifically he wanted Better Milk (that's warm milk - as in "Daddy, my milk is too cold".. [Daddy puts it in the microwave] "Is that better?" "Yes, that's better milk") mixed with Daddy Milk (which is soya milk) - sometimes they want better milk, sometimes they want Daddy milk, and sometimes they want a mixture.

D wanted asparagus. So I cooked him some, and he ate it. (Even the really tough bits at the bottom of the stalk.)

Fashion

In England (and probably Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and all the other bits of the UK) it is (or was, when I was there) trendy to have t-shirts with stuff about surfing on them. The rest of what they said was usually nonsense. But that didn't matter, because no one cared.

Until someone gives your offspring t-shirts that say "Pasadena Beach Club" on them, and you move to California, and go to Pasadena. And your children wear the t-shirts. And you hope no one notices, because it's really obvious that there isn't a beach for a good 20 miles.

Kinderfest

We went to a "Kinderfest und Maifest" today, at Anaheim. (Anaheim is mostly famous for having Disneyland, but it so happens that it was founded by German settlers - it means "Anna's House".)

I'm not sure of the exact translation of "Kinderfest und Maifest" but it probably means something like "Lots of fat old Germans sitting around getting pissed on Bavarian beer and playing music which involves tubas". Despite the emphasis on kinder, there wasn't much for kiddies to do. There were pony rides, and a petting zoo, which had some bedraggled looking sheep and goats, a couple of chickens, and several nervous rabbits, and a bouncy castle.

There was a large tent (the "Festhalle") which had lots of tables and benches, and a stage at one end, where the tuba players congregated. When the tuba players got tired, there was some sort of male voice choir - there was a lot of shouting at the crowd to stop talking, but only from the choir, not from anyone in the crowd.

After the choir, there was the singing of the national anthem - they sang the American anthem first, just to show whose side they were on, and then the German one. Next, came a lot of announcements which involved people going up to the stage for some reason - I don't think it was the raffle, but the acoustics were appalling, and I had no idea what was going on.

The whole place was run and organized by old German people, mainly for the benefit of old, German people. They sold soft drinks from the beer stalls, but the old men selling it seemed to have no understanding of, well anything to do with soft drinks. When drinks overflowed, or they served the wrong one (which was quite regular) they dumped it into the container of ice. I ordered a diet Coke (with no ice), and one turned to the other and said "Ho ho ho, zis man haz ze fonny acsunt!! Ho ho!! He say Coke!"

Anyway, we ate Reibepfannkuchen and Bienenstich and Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte and drank Koestinger Schwarzbier. A parade went by, of people in various German dress, and then we left.

Oh, you'll want to see some photos, I suppose.

German fashion:



German ladeez:

A beer tent, with lots of German people with feathers in their caps:
This was kept at the back of the Reibepfannkuchen (potato pancakes, to you [probably] and I):
We've got a German flag, but we've got an American flag too, and it's higher. So that's OK. (And the one on the left is a California flag.)

Germany Week

It was Germany week at the pre-school. There are 2 (or maybe 3) other children there, who have at least one German parent, but they wisely stayed out of the way of the organizational juggernaut that is S. There was German food, and German flags, and S spent the whole week wearing red, yellow and black (like the German flag - I didn't notice until she told me on Friday).

S made a collage of German stuff from things she'd cut from magazines. One of the pictures was a German model of some sort (Claudia Schiffer?). When we went to pick up the boys from the pre-school, a sticker had been placed over her cleavage - obviously it was felt to be too revealing.

Here's the boys, in their German gear. A on the left is dressed as a fisherman from the North, and D, on the right, is wearing Bavarian Lederhosen.

Elected

I've written before about the pre-school that the boys attend and also here) If you can't be bothered to go and read that, basically it's a parent's co-operative, which means it's owned by the parents. We have to work there, and jobs - things like administration, or putting up the fence, or painting the classroom.

S went to the monthly membership meeting (attendance obligatory) of the boys' pre-school last night, and when she came out, she had been elected president, for the forthcoming academic year. She knew she'd been nominated, but so had a three or four other people.

She also said that she didn't mind being elected too much, as if it wasn't her, it would be some incompetent moron (referring to everyone else), she's trusting like that.

On the buses

We went to the Golden Gate Bridge this evening, on the bus. Sitting opposite was a woman who took our photo. (Don't know why, she asked if she could, and it seemed rude not to). I gave her my card, and when we got home, she'd emailed the picture. That was the third time since I'd worked at CoCE that I've given someone my card - they've been clogging up my wallet (and giving me a sore bottom) for 7 months, for that.

The Building

I forgot to write about the building where the course took place, in my previous post (which, if you read this on the web page, will be the next one, but if use the RSS feed, might be the previous one, depending on how you do it.)

The building is very guarded. Not as in shy, but as in security guards around. You can't get in a lift without permission, and if you did, it wouldn't be any use, because there are no buttons.

The guard, from the control place, (after checking your ID) asks what floor you're going to, then tells you to go to lift E (say). You get in lift E, and it takes you to the floor. It doesn't even tell you what floor you are at, so that when you pass the people you want to take hostage at floor 15, you can't crowbar open the doors.

We're on the 34th floor - it makes my legs go wobbly when I stand near the window (although it's an impressive view). Presumably, they've thought about earthquakes, but I don't like to think about them all the same.

Flowers in our hair

I'm writing this from a hotel in San Francisco - partly 'cos that's the kind of hip, trendy and up to the minute person I am, but mostly 'cos S and the boys are in the hotel asleep (or comatose might be a better description for S) and the nude male revue up the road didn't really appeal.

I'm here taking a 3 day course, and S realised that as CoCE were coughing up for things like hotels and taxis, all we'd have to pay for was the flight, and we'd have three days hanging out in SF. Well, they would. I'd sit in a classroom and learn about Proc Mixed (if you don't know what Proc Mixed is, you don't want to know. If you do know what Proc Mixed is, it's cool, isn't it?)

Anyway, we booked S and the boys flights at pretty much the last minute, and the flight was completely full. So full that there were hopeful people hanging around to fill up the last seats, and they didn't all get one. Because we'd booked our seats late, and when you buy your ticket, you get assigned a seat, all our seats were in different places. So we asked the flight attendant if we could sit together.

The flight attendant asked if anyone would be willing to move so we could sit together, and a lot of people mumbled at stared at the floor. So, in a stern voice she said "You move, or you sit with THEM", and pointed at A and D. Who smiled sweetly, but had a little glint in their eye which just hinted at the evil of which they were capable. There was a flurry of activity as people rushed to give up their seats, colliding in the corridor and receiving only minor injuries.

The flight was all fairly uneventful (at least from my perspective, as I was sitting about 4 rows in front of S and the boys). Then we landed and got a taxi to the hotel.

The hotel is fairly swanky and new and sells itself as environmentally wholesome in lots of ways - there are three bins in the room for different sorts of recycling, and that sort of thing. (I kind of feel like recycling is such a minor gesture to make when, by building a hotel you are encouraging people to fly/drive to places they might not otherwise have gone, but then I can't complain, having flown here.)

In the morning, I strolled off to my course, while S had the fun of being with the boys in a strange place for a day. We met up for lunch, and then I got back at about 4:30, and we went out.

We got a cable car to the harbour sort of area - I'd try to read about cable cars, but the internet connection here is so crappy, that I can't. But I'd guess that they were pulled by a cable under the road - they look a bit like a tram. There seemed to be two people driving them, and I couldn't work out their roles. One at the back turned a handle, and one at the front pulled two levers. The one at the front seemed to pull a rope to tell the one at the back to do something. I've got a feeling it was brake, but that made me too nervous. The one at the front seemed to pull really, really hard on a big lever when we were going down hills, which made me wonder what would have happened if he'd collapsed or had a heart attack or something.

The cable cars seemed to be about 100 years old, and made of wood. The brakes (which I looked at after we got off) looked like they involved pushing a piece of wood onto the track. (We got a taxi back, it involved less walking and waiting, was quicker and more comfortable, and only cost a little more. Everyone else on the cable car seemed to be a tourist too.)

Anyway, we got to the pier, by which time the boys were tired and hungry, and it was windy and they said they were cold, but they wouldn't put their coats on (they said that that would make them colder), and we looked at the sealions. The sealions were impressive - apparently (I learned from reading the poster) they turned up in 1989, after the earthquake, and have been there ever since. Almost entirely males.

Then we went back to the hotel, S collapsed after having a day with the boys, the boys shouted a lot, had a bath (no bubble bath though :( ) and went to bed. I came downstairs, checked my email, and wrote this.