Lady Adventure

Once upon a time (yes, another one of those posts) a few years ago, I saw a documentary about dolphins kept in captivity and trained to take part in dolphin shows à la SeaWorld. There was footage from a show on the Spanish holiday island of Ibiza, and as the audience left, the German film crew stopped people and asked them what they thought about the conditions in which the dolphins were being held.
"Also," said one portly German lady, "ich finde, der Delfin hat einen sehr glücklichen Eindruck gemacht!"
(Well, I think the dolphin made a very happy impression. )
At which point, I exploded into a rant, Liamo-style: How did she know? Was it the dolphin's smile? Did he wink? Did he raise his eyebrows jovially? Did he wave or make jokes? No, he did not because He! Is! A! Dolphin!

Liam is my father. He can - at the drop of a hat (or even as your trilby descends downwards) - launch into a lecture (rant) about any number of hotbutton issues. I have not only inherited his hair and freckles, I have also inherited many of these same hobbyhorses. Just as text (letters, cards, emails or advertising copy) written in the voice of a toddler by adoring adults makes my hair stand on end, I also dislike it intensely when people project human thoughts and emotions on animals.
"I went home last night really worried about my tax returns and when I got in the door, my Shih Tzu Lucy just looked at me with her big brown eyes, and I knew she was thinking, 'Don't worry about your tax returns for 2009, concentrate on 2008!'" says my colleague.
I bite my fist.
The real conversation between woman and Shih Tzu went like this:
Woman: "Oh, Lucy, my tax returns are late again! I'm going to get into trouble! I'm going to have to pay a fine!"
Dog: "Blah, blah, blah, Lucy. She looks a bit sad. I wonder if I'll get fed now? Blah, blah, blah."

Of course, this only applies to OTHER PEOPLE'S PETS as the fact that my parents' dog has already starred in several of his own blog posts will attest. My parents' dog, Zuppy, is a very intelligent and sensitive creature with excellent communication skills. In fact, my father and I recently analysed this picture over the phone:



I can't believe I've just typed this post. I'm blaming my father for this one. (And Zuppy, the manipulative cad.)

Some time ago, before the book 'Fifty Shades of Grey' became well-known in Germany, I came across it in the English section of our local bookstore. I picked it up, read the names of the two protagonists (Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey), instantly became overcome with the scent of cheap Harlequin romance and returned it to its heap. See, I am a notorious cover-judger, despite the proverb's exhortations to the contrary. On a bad day, I have flung books back on their pile for bearing the two most pretension-laden words in the publishing industry: A Novel. As in, 'Ballyhoo. A Novel'.

Now a film based on this book is hitting the cinemas over here and, sadly, there are abundant clips of two (to me personally) unattractive actors (though I'm sure they're very amiable people) bonking their way through a pedestrian plot. I have no intention of reading the book or watching the film: aside from the fact that I don't want to assault my eyes, my own life reads like a chapter from the aforementioned Novel. At least, I think so - I haven't read it, so I'm not entirely sure. But I'm the only female in a house full of males (albeit, two under three years old), surely that's something similar?

Tell you what, you decide. And, because everyone I know who actually read 'Fifty Shades of Grey' claimed they only "skipped to the good bits", we'll just skip to my good bits as well. Brace yourself, readers.

Our eyes met across a cluttered room. I approached him slowly, my bare feet almost soundless on the unswept floor. Wordlessly, he reached out and tugged at my t-shirt. He touched it to his lips and let it fall on the floor.
"Please," I whispered.
He didn't take his eyes off me, but pulled the straps of my bra, his fingers playing with the clasp. He tossed it after the t-shirt.
"You can't do this," I said.
But it was too late. He grabbed my knickers and held them aloft, triumphantly, then bit at the lace with his teeth.
"Enough!" I cried and pulled it off him. "I've just folded those clothes!"
I really shouldn't let the baby play with the laundry basket.

 I lay spread--eagled on the bed. He towered above me, a glint of menace in his eyes. He lowered his face to mine, so our eyes met, lashes almost touching.
"Bouncey-bounce," he said in a threatening voice. His breath smelled of cookies. I cowered beneath him.
"We've spent the past twenty minutes bouncey-bouncing," I protested weakly. "Mama's exhausted."
He cupped my face in his sticky hands. "Bouncey-bounce," he repeated. It was not a question, it was an order.
There was no way out.
We bounced.

"Aren't you a bit old to be jumping on the bed with a two-year-old?" my husband enquires casually from the door.
"He made me do it," I say.

"No!" I cried. Relentlessly, he pushed it in, deeper and deeper.
"Stop!" I said and tried to push him off. He was remarkably strong and I only succeeded in shifting his weight a little.
He grinned and wriggled it around. I shrieked and cried for help.
None came.
Finally, summoning all my strength, I pulled his finger out of my nose. He laughed evilly, his chubby digit extended triumphantly, the bald head of this nine-month-old brimming with possibilities: Mama's face was just full of stuff to explore.
So he poked my ear.


It was quiet. I breathed deeply, afraid to make too much noise in case he would find me.
I hoped in vain.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" he thundered. He had a paintbrush in one hand and a rubber duck in the other.
"How did you get in here?" I protested. "The door was closed!"
"Oh, yes, he can reach the door handles now," my husband called from the kitchen. "So remember to lock the bathroom if you want some privacy."
Privacy? The very word seemed to inflame him. He looked at me, outraged.
"ARE YOU ON THE LOO?" he asked. "WEE-WEE?"
I tried to get up, but my ankles were bound by the underwear pooled around them. I struggled to pull up my clothes and replace the toilet seat before the rubber duck and the paintbrush went for a swim.
Incredibly, I succeeded.
"Maaaaaaaaaamaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" he roared.
I had to do it: I used the safe word.
"Elmo," I said. "Will we listen to an Elmo song instead of playing with the toilet?"
Sniffling, he marches off, leaving an upturned rubber duck lying forlornly in his wake. 

And so on for another thirty chapters. I'm thinking it would have a widespread appeal for parents and parents-to-be. I think the protagonist - 40-year-old woman with yoghurt-stained trousers and the vestiges of a bad haircut - would speak to many people on a lot of levels. What do you think? Should I be prepared for Hollywood to come calling?

It feels as if someone just turned a giant spotlight on me and I've been struck with stagefright. I feel a bit shy, actually. Faced with the vastness of cyberspace, I'm speechless. Or textless. Or postless. Or tweetless. Whatever the youth are calling it these days. As you'll quickly gather, gentle reader, I am a blog virgin. A blirgin, if you will. Be prepared for aimless bumblings around cyberspace and galleries of poorly-shot photos. And you'll have to look at them and admire them (just imagine that I'm five years old and have just shoved my first finger-painting into your waiting hands. Oh, yes sirree, my photographic fingerpaintings are going on the cyberfridge for all to see.) Yup, that's what you're in for.

It's a freezing cold Bavarian night and I have - wait for it, wait for it - not one, but TWO hot water bottles waiting for me in bed (one for my back, one for my feet.) As I write, wispy snowflakes are drifting down past my window, caught in the light of the streetlamp. I'm wrapped up in a crochet blanket, sitting at my laptop at midnight on a January evening... re-reading all of this and realising how romantic it all sounds. The reality is, I'm freezing to death because I'm sitting in a draught, my husband, aka Mr Gingerbread, is next door slaughtering Orcs and dragons with a bunch of nerds who really ought to know better. And I'm following the lazy downward path of the glittery snowflakes, knowing that I'll be shovelling the little buggers off the front path at six a.m. tomorrow morning.

We were told a huge snowstorm was heading for Bavaria but so far, we've been spared. If anything, there was a slight thaw this afternoon: all my snow-shovelling at seven o'clock this morning was for naught. I feel a bit cheated. Not that I'm complaining - there's still enough of the white stuff to keep us going for a while:

But, still, Mother Nature and I will have to co-ordinate ourselves better. What's the point of falling out of the bed at an uncivilised hour on a Saturday morning, if she's going to do it for me anyway?

After many days of excessive eating (whine - there are so many delicious things to eeeeaaat!), Daddy Gingerbread, the husband and I decided to take a walk in The Nature. We went up to the remains of a great big hill fort called the Rock of Dunamase, with spectacular views over the surrounding countryside:






The walls are more than two metres thick in many places and, standing in the bitter wind atop a high hill on the first day of January, we shuddered at the thought of the hardship people endured when the fortress was inhabited.

 

Having had a brisk walk up the hill, we headed home for a cup of hot tea and a slice of toast.

Let me preface this by saying that I love my husband. I really, really do. He's big, friendly chap who laughs a lot and is generally both a gentleman and a scholar. That notwithstanding, he occasionally careens close to death without even knowing it.

Take last Friday, for example: I was heading to Munich straight after work. I didn't have much time between getting home and leaving the house again, so I was twirling like a dervish, gathering up papers and folders and memory sticks and pyjamas and toothbrush. Seeing my distress, Mr Gingerbread decided to "help" by making me a cup of tea - but his idea of helping is to direct my attention to his solicitiousness by engaging me in a no-win game of Twenty Questions:

"Would you like a cup of tea, my little gingerbread sweetheart?" he says, as I rush by, trailing a pair of tights and an armful of books.
"No thanks, honeybunch," I reply.
"Are you sure? I can make you one if you like."
"No, no thanks, really."
"Are you sure? Really? Because it's no trouble."
"No, honestly, I don't have time for a cup of tea."
"I could make you one and just put it down beside you."
"No, seriously, no, I don't have time. I have to leave in five minutes."
"In five minutes? When does your train leave?"
(note that I've told him about four times in the past 24 hours when my train leaves. Seriously.)
"At 12:15. It's ten to twelve now. I don't have time, thanks."
"No time for tea, then?"
"No - look, I'm too stressed for tea."
"Right. That's a 'no' to tea?"
"Yes!"
"What? So you do want tea?"
"No!" I snap.
Miffed, he withdraws. Then sticks his head back through the door:
"How about a coffee? A quick cup of coffee?"
"NOOOOOO!"
"Okay. No tea. No coffee ... Juice?"
White-knuckled, I turn to him and hiss, "I! Don't! Have! Time! For! Beverages!"
And he turns his huge, bright blue eyes on me and looks hurt. I instantly feel like a piece of poo. So I apologise profusely for being an Evil Gingerbread Lady. He gives me a hug, then holds me at arm's length, looks me deep in the eyes and says, completely earnestly:
"So you really don't want a cup of tea, then?"

Grrrrrr.

But here's something I learned the hard way:
Mr Gingerbread snores like a tractor. It's a deep, vibrating snore that makes the entire bed shake. I've developed a way of turning his not-inconsiderable bulk over in bed so that I don't even wake him: first a poke in the ribs, then a swift roll over on to his side. I often used to lie in bed in the middle of the night, listening to his nasal trumpeting, wondering whether marriage vows prohibit pushing a snoring spouse out of bed at 4:13 a.m. Then last Christmas he ended up in hospital with a pulmonary embolism and a nasty bout of pneumonia. I lay in a silent bed in a silent bedroom - and guess what? I really missed his array of nocturnal grunts and snores, the cacophonous build-up to the final snort before starting again with a contented little wheeze. And as I lay there in the deep darkness, I realised that I loved his snoring. All things considered, I really did. So if he decides that the most appropriate way to demonstrate his love for me in situations of high stress is to follow me around with a teapot, I really should appreciate it, because a day might come when I'll regret all the cups that went undrunk.

PS: When I returned from Munich on Sunday night, he met me at the door with open arms.
And a cup of tea.

Growing up in Ireland, choir lessons with one of the good Sisters of the local convent were an inevitability. Sr Rosarii had the dubious pleasure of teaching me and sixty other uniformed wee ones to chirp out a selection of hymns in English and in Gaelic for all manner of liturgical events.
"All things bright and beautiful!" we'd yodel enthusiastically.
"All creatures great and small!
All things bright and beautiful,
The Lord God made them all!"
Which I always felt was kind of unfair, because anteaters, blobfish and komodo dragons are neither bright nor beautiful (and, certainly in the case of the blobfish, you wouldn't want to be stuck next to them at a dinner party as far as scintillating conversation is concerned) but they never got a mention in any of the hymns we sang. But that's another post.

Anyway, the mental picture of Wee Gingerbread swaying in time to Sr Rosarii's baton unexpectedly popped into my head at 3:48 a.m. this morning.
Oh my goodness, you say. How did you know that it was 3:48 a.m precisely?
I'll tell you how, readers. Because I pulled a muscle in my back* and simply couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned (in a very careful fashion of course), listening to Mr G's nocturnal symphony. Drifting off to sleep, only to wake suddenly when I turned the wrong way. Fretful, horrible, half-sleep. I was exhausted. Too exhausted to sleep. Too exhausted to get up. I looked at my watch. Quarter past three.
Right, I thought, one concerted effort to relax. Switch off. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.
I closed my eyes and ... finally ... dosed off ...

Weeeeeeehhhhhhhhhh Weeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhh
Wide awake, every muscle in my body tense.
Not really. Not seriously. Oh, puh-lease: I was being attacked by a flipping mosquito in the night of the first of November. I banged on the light - 3:48 a.m.

So yes, a vision of Little Me in her bottle-green school uniform briefly entered my head as I whacked the mosquito to Kingdom Come to meet his maker, the same one who made all the other things bright and beautiful, all those creatures great and small. Sorry, Almighty Being, but you can keep your mosquitos. If you really must, send me an anteater at 4 a.m. instead.


Edited to add:
Sensing a lack in the canon of hymns, I've penned another verse for the one above. Feel free to add it, if you wish:
All things strange and interesting,
Including blobfish and anteaters,
Komodos and pesky mosquitos,
Are also the Lord God's creatures.
You might have to play about with the melody, but I'm sure no one will notice.

* Yes, Mammy Gingerbread, arnica has been applied.

I bought a sewing machine - yes, that's her, in all her glory. I haven't sat at a sewing machine since my home economics classes twenty years ago. Back then, if I remember correctly, I made a cushion cover. Ironically, the need for cushion covers to hide our eclectic collection of oft-washed-but-still-grubby cushions was what prompted me to buy my first sewing machine ever.

My little sister, who's a skilful dressmaker and designer, told me to buy a Pfaff. Not a Singer. Not a Brother. Not a Janome. A Pfaff. "They're like tanks," she assured me. “They're indestructible.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but any household appliance that comes with the descriptor ‘indestructible’ is immediately to my taste. So I made my way to the local Pfaff dealer, where a charming young lady showed me the wonders of the Pfaff range. Wowee – sewing machines have come a long way since I was last let loose at the pedal. They have a range of fancy stitches and neat little time-saving devices – some even have an on-board computer, like a spaceship. I’m not sure if they’ve been IQ-tested but I’d hazard a guess that they’re at least as smart as a baboon. And they come with a sexy iMac-colour trim: turquoise, cerise, jeans blue, deep purple. They’re the hip sewing machines on the block.

“That’s wonderful,” I said. “But what I want in a sewing machine is basically what a typewriter is to a computer. These models are like top-of-the-range laptops, and I’m looking for the electric typewriter among sewing machines. Simple. Backwards stitches, forwards stitches and maybe a cheeky zigzag. That’s really it.”
She pulled out their cheapest Pfaff model - €380 (about $550).
“It is lovely,” I said, “but I can’t even use a sewing machine so I’d prefer something cheaper to start with. Do you have anything more –” swallow “– economical?”
She scratched her head. “Well, we have a Singer for €150. But it’s not like a Pfaff. It’s not …indestructible.”
Right. And indestructibility obviously doesn’t come cheap. Knowing the wasteland of my finances in the post-Christmas period, I had to admit defeat and trudge back home.

By the time I’d got back home, I'd had a brainwave – Ebay. I’d never bought or sold anything on Ebay before, so I had to click my way through their online tutorial to figure out how on earth the whole thing worked. I found an auction for an older Pfaff model with only minutes to spare so I bid on it. I was outbid. I bid again. A minute to go. I bid again, as did a dozen other people. Refresh. Rebid. Refresh. Rebid. And I lost. Holy cow – people do that for fun?

Wiping the sweat from my brow and waiting for my heart-rate to return to normal, I realized that auctions really just aren’t my thing. No, I don’t like the element of competition or surprise – I don’t work in the cut-throat world of business for a very good reason. So I found an Ebay shop and bought one for €100. Two days later it arrived at my door. It’s precisely what I’m looking for: it sews forwards, backwards and I have a choice of three zig-zag stitches, which was probably a terribly fancy feature when it first came out. The casing is metal, the case is hard plastic, and I suspect that it is, indeed, indestructible. It’s at least 30 years old and, as far as I can tell, is still in perfect nick. The manual has a range of incredibly quaint black and white drawings, showing what the very latest in spiffy fashions was back in the 1970s when this machine was first sold – groovy trousers with appliqué apples and ducks on them, midi skirts with peasant blouses, and saucy mini-skirts for the more daring. My little machine really is a tribute to the old-fashioned German workmanship of the former Federal Republic, when 'Made in Germany' meant it was actually made in Germany, not made in Asia and assembled in a factory in a suburb of Stuttgart.

So now she sits on my desk. I gentle press the pedal and she chug-chugs. Press a little harder and the needle whirrs in a rhythmic chug-chug-chug-chug, leaving a line of perfect, neat little stitches.

Gentle readers, I believe I’ve just fallen in love.

My sunshine Babette is nearly finished - I just need one more skein of yarn. Naturally, it's the very colour that has been temporarily discontinued and is now on back order... of course it is. Anyway, with just one panel to go, the blanket is very nearly complete.



Impatient with the outrageous tardiness of my LYS' supplier, I decided to start something else. Because we've had a fresh fall of snow - yes, it has snowed again (pause for screaming) - I decided to come up with a nice, wee hat. So I rummaged in my sock yarn and found this one:



Three hours later, it has become this:



The hat is now finished, ends woven in and buttons sewn on - and quite fetching it is, too, if I may say so myself. Pictures and pattern will follow in the next few days!

And just because you're such nice readers, I'm going to give you another gratuitous foodie picture - cookies (cranberry and white chocolate, hot out of the oven. Yum yum!)

When greatly stressed, I tend to be jittery.
Restless leg syndrome. Restless feet syndrome. Restless hands syndrome. One of the reasons why I do crafty things is to keep afore-mentioned restless hands occupied - the rhythmic movement actually calms me and slows my heartbeat down. This week, in order to balance out the hours spent correcting final exams,  I've been making soap socks to use up scraps of felting wool in my spare time.

Basically, these are just knit in the round (she says casually, not revealing all the cursing and temper fits that accompanied the first attempts), and a bar of soap is squeezed through the hole in the top of the little bag before you draw the opening shut. With time and use, the soap sock gradually felts. What happens then, I don't know, because I haven't quite got that far with my own tester soap sock. At the moment it's a woolly, squidgy thing in my soap dish and so enthusiastic am I that I have turned away from our liquid soap to my bar of felted squishiness. Ideally, I would like to make my own soap and I've assigned the task of the scienciness of it to my husband, who owns a lab-coat and goggles, and understands The Gravity of Lye (apparently, when one discusses lye, it is appropriate to capitalise its Gravity and Potential for Damage. Oooh, won't soap-making be exciting?)

Pater Gingerbread's Woodland Stream

Snazzy labels, eh? My husband was a bit perplexed by them: a look of fear came over him ("Oh no, she's stocking up her Phantom Frippery Shop again!") but these soap socks will either be sold at a craft fair or donated for sale at a charity craft fair, so I need some kind of label. Besides, I like things to look nice. You should see my blackboards at school - students use their high-tech iGadgets to snap photos of my beautifully illustrated blackboards (I would do so, too, but my 10-year-old Nokia comes equipped with only three functions: Make Call, Receive Call and Wish You Had A Better Phone.)

The curse of good presentation was given to me by my father, Daddy Gingerbread, who is a (graphic) artist. He paints beautifully, crafts wonderfully, gardens fantastically and makes a banana sandwich that could be exhibited for its perfect precision. I am terribly proud of him (and can only recommend his sandwiches.)