wondering...

I am still wondering what I will be when I grow up (if I ever grow up)? Somehow this life now seems like an interlude to something. It goes too smooth now, too easy. In heart I am a very ambitious person. (Am I really or do I just think I am?) Here I am with one BA and a teacher certificate. On the way to another BA, two years gone, one more to go if I start again, and I think I should, feel bad letting this one hanging around. Then, I would like a MA degree, an Phd if possible. And then what? By that time I will be 70 and no time left to become famous world wide.

I should have started right in the beginning, after highschool. But then I didn´t have the stamina or the resources so I took the easy way out, I got married and had children. And some more. I wouldn´t want to have missed that. A friend of mine in Germany is a professor, no children, but not famous either, not where I live at least.

When I started working in old age I got the lick of money. What a luxure to go out and buy THOSE boots because I like them. To give money to the children when they need it. To buy whatever without asking anybody. I like my work. I also like the people I work with. So I would not be really happy about stoppning to work.

I love to learn and I can do it, I am a little slow remembering names and dates but I have other knowledge to compensate. I got a lot of As.
But then: there is so much to learn. And so much more. Where would I start? How far can I go? There is always somebody better, cleverer who knows more than me. That for competition.

And: There is a lot I know already and am impatient about listening to it again. Looking over some offers there is included a course about families of handicapped children you hvae to take. I AM a family of handicapped childen. I am nearly 60 and in classes often I knew what the teacher would say next. In between there are pieces of gold and you start thinking in a new way but the time in between! All the papers you write, the work you do and then they are in a box in my bookshelve. I´ve got lots of them and still more.

So Point one: I would like to have a title. For whom? Selfish? This needs some more thinking.
A title: somebody else tells you you are good enough to do something. It´s something you can choose to put an your adress. OK, it opens doors to more interesting jobs. Me? At 70? Or even 65?
Follow up will follow. Too much thinking for one setting.

Today

Today was a bright day. I realized that the sun is so high now, it is once again shining into our windows. The winter has been dark, little snow but for one week and the rest of the time heavy, rainy clouds. At the worst time the sun is up for 3 hours a day, just surfacing at 11 and settling down again at about 2 o clock. There is some dawn in between, but is quite dark. So now it gets brighter again- but many months still for summer to come. We don´t have spring or autumn, just a long winter and 2 months of striking summer with midnight sun.
I decided not yet to go to work tomorrow, I still feel a bit shaky though I am out of bed.

Here you get your answer:

I have been in bed with a bad cold for three days now but this morning I am feeling a bit better. I am not at work though.

Finally: here are the pictures

Introducing the new family member to her sons

My beautiful girls

wool work on girly´s night

Our “girly night”: I loved having all my daughters around me, daughters, granddaughter and daughters in law. Experience has shown us that a family and the security it gives its members is of great importance. So it is sweet to look at all of them talking, laughing, working together. We have the great luck that we live so near together that we can meet without great difficulties. So we will meet again after three weeks. This time we made wool work, I have to think of something nice for the next time.
This little girl was born in november and she is, as girls useally are, quite a handfull and needs a lot of attention. So, now it is PINK wherever you look. The first girl of six boys – I am courious to see the next years. Enjoy the pics! Now Monika should be satisfied, such a nice picture!

Pictures tomorrow- Blogger does not want them now.

Question of the week: what is it?

You can see, I have been busy. I hope that you don´t give up on my site. I have much fun reading yours and all around the world.
Last week was full, with extra work and countryside and girly evening but it was a very nice one.



this I knitted

and this too


This I bought

Picture from Iceland

Early afternoon in december

For those who want to see more silly girls:

We had FUN

but it:was COLD!!

Yes, you were right: it was MONIKA!

Saturay Special Guess:

My saturay special guess:
Who is this?

Ask for a little snow... yesterday evening it started snowing and it was so beautiful during the night, like light falling from the sky. And it is still snowing... Here in Iceland most things come in extremes: either there is no wind which is seldom or there is WIND. That´s why only very courageous people wear a hat. But for now we have to shuffel through snow, without wind. One day later: it is still snowing...

Let’s explain: “I have to loose weight.”

In autumn I started to loose weight for whatever reason. Maybe I got a push from inside after good homöopathic pills. Whatever, I liked it. Then I was 89 kg. Now I am 74 kg and still going down. Last week I ran around the tables like a young girl (blush) playing with my pupil. I didn´t even have to think about it, just did it and realized: My, I am running. Big smile.
People ask me how. This is how I did it: Reduce the things I know make me fat (fats for short). No white flour, no white rice, fewest of milkproducts. Rather little of red meat. Let the bread alone but for the dark, whole grain ones. Eat lots and lots of vegatables and still more, fruits if you like. Dried fruits for sweets. Nuts when the appetite grabs me. Beans in all forms. Vegetable soup before the meal. Porridge for breakfast. Lots of fish which we get fresh and easy here in Reykjavík. Yesterday I ate lobster for a change. Never let yourself get hungry – as you know then the body says: help, a famine is coming – and shuts the calory burning ovens down.
How far I will go? I don´t know, I´ll wait and see how far it will carry me. Maybe in the end I will disappear. That would be nice.

Yes, probably I should write something.
First of all I want to thank all you commentors : “Thank you”.
I like getting comments and would write comments on all of your blogs too if I had gotten the time... and something to say. But beside my work I have to knit- a photo will soon come- to sew and cook and loose weight. I have to (and like to) watch over all my children- specially monika, of course (what is she up to now? Haven´t seen her for three days L) and grandchildren. I have to make my christmas home movie for my parents. I have books to read. I like to meet friends. Sometimes I also work. By the way, why did I think I have a boring life?

Our son Marinó: he is living in a great home with his own little flat and five other young men. It is in a beautiful spot and every day they make long walks. They have lots of caretakers and are always doing something exciting: going on horseback, bycicle, on skates, cinema once a month, out to eat, swimming... They got a hot pot in the garden which Marinó loves. During the week he goes to a school, in a special class, again, with his own teacher and only six pupils. We don´t have to pay a penny for any thing of this and he gets the best possible care. They use TEACCH, PECS, behavoir modification. He comes home twice a week for dinner and a quiet evening.
He loves to come home for a visit and he is very satisfied to go home to his own apartment again. I think he is quite happy. We parents are happy. (big smile, evrybody happy) But it is true, for his care I would not want to live in any other country than Iceland.
Yes, I did start to work in a special class because of him- my knowledge of autism. I am really a german language teacher but didn´t get a job as that, ended there (I don´t remember how I started) like it and I am good at it. Between I took two years at the university to become a social worker, not yet finished, I need one more year. But there was lots of psychology and social care which makes me still better at my job.
I started working out of the house only some years ago, because of the kids and specially Marinó who was born when I was forty. (so, now you can calculate, he is 17 years ald now).
Let this be enough for today and have as nice days as I have.

ww weather: wet and white = slab

Outside they are still shooting fireworks to heaven. They start somedays before christmas and will keep on to the sixth of January, the last day of christmas. Waking up from deep sleep I think somebody is cleaning his carpet. A sound memory from childhood when the women used to take their carpets outside and beat the dust out of them.

I bought Stephen Hawking´s “a briefer history of time” and hope to understand it better than “a brief history of time” which I read three times without getting a lot of it.
He starts the first chapter: “We live in a strange and wonderful universe. Its age, size, violence, and beauty require extrordinary imagination to appreciate. The place we humans hold within this vast cosmos can seem pretty insignificant.” I like that. I feel like we overestimate our being immensly.

www weather: warm,wet,windy

How sweet our children were after the holidays. Glad to be in school again it seems to me.
I work as a special teacher in a small class for autistic children. We have 6 children there age 7 to 15. We got two nice bright rooms in a rather small school: about 250 children in the whole. Our work is really one to one, one teacher to one child. As the ability of each indivuduel child allows we go to classes or teach in our rooms. It is the best solution for special children that I can imagin and it is fun to work with. We are a very nice group of teachers and work close together. And we get beautiful results.

Outside it is www weather: warm, wet and windy.

More about us and our daughter:
She is over 30 now and started her slide downhill when she was 14, 15.
She has been fine in between. Everytime she starts again she goes further down, faster.
When it started, so many years ago, shame governed my life. I could hardly look into a mirror: I must have had done something very wrong as her mother. A stunning moment was when our neighbour, a teacher´s wife, a very “fine” older lady, stopped me at the doorsteps. We did not use to chat together like you sometimes do with neighbours. She said to me: ”I see your daughter. I do know this. I was in your situation. It will end some day.” I am forever thankful for her words, for her courage to tell me. To honour her, I tell you, the world, about us.
I often have imagined the picture of many parents sitting together, each pointing to the next person: “your child is like that, not mine”. Each pointing at each other. All these children are our children. Shame is no more an issue for me. Shame is the most useless feeling somebody can have. It is paralizing and completely useless. I think it is better to say: ok. I made a mistake. How can I do it better next time?
I know lots of people who have tried out drugs. I drink alkohol myself, much less now than before. But luckily I am not an alkoholic. Only you don´t know it but too late. When you know you are an addict, you are already there.

Something I know (Just ask our daughter).

Just survived my first working day after the christmas holidays, good luck the children don´t come before tommorrow.
Bought a software for my son: clicker and I am really excited to set up some communications for him.
The rest of this blog please use at your pleasure. Maybe you know somebody who needs to hear it.
Biene


Something I know (Just ask our daughter).
You want to destroy your life?
Go on drugs and alcohol, I garantee you, it will work.

You want to mess up your family? Loose your children, suffocate in debts? Smash up your home and fear the next visit of the “drug debts” collectors known to take a finger if there is nothing better to take away? You want a look into hell when the withdrawl kicks in?
Try drugs and alcohol, I tell you, you will get to know these places.

You want to get raped? Wake up in beds you never know how you got into? Pay with a quick fuck for the next load of shit or a roof over your head for a night? Get a disease between your legs, in your most private parts? Itching, burning, stinking? Break into offices, steal from friends and family to get money for the next kick, for a relief of the trip down?
Go, get yourselves a bottle and some drugs, yours is the choice, you will get everything you wish for.

You want to look 50 at the age of 30? You want your teeth to be eaten up from within? Get a sweet little aids virus, an infection of the liver, whatever?
Get a needle and stick it into you, don´t worry, your greed will be so immense that at some point you will forget to check if it is clean.

There is a point where most give up. Many die, willingly or not so willingly. Some, the fewer ones, start to turn around. This movement of turning probably is the hardest work they have ever done in their lives. Ask our daughter. She is there.
I asked my daughter´s permission to write about her. Her answer was: ”If you think you can change one person´s life, write whatever you can, whatever you like.”

What makes me think about graveyards?

Here in Iceland it is custom to go to the graveyard around christmas. I have gone there with my husband for many years, in the old days we took the children with us, now we go alone, grandfather and grandmother. We go to the old churchyard, full of low growing trees and old gravestones. There are his father and his mother who died when he was a little boy. Quite near there are also the graves of his grandparents. We put candles on the graves and christmas tree branches as many others do and walk through burning memories of all the visiting people. Life is hushed there.
My husband´s father married again after the death of his wife and was buried beside his first wife. My husbands halfsister was worried where her mother would rest, feeling her rightful place had been taken away. Yes, how is it in modern families? Who goes to rest beside whom? The stepchildren, fosterchildren, halfbrothers or sisters, ex-husbands and ex-wifes?
I did not grow up with this custom as there was no grave to visit when I was a child after the second world war. Coming from the eastern parts of former Germany, now deep in Polland, all family graves were left behind. Those who died in action during the war maybe had a cross of remembrance, I know about my uncle’s cross in Italy, somebody´s else in France.
The first graves I remember and took part in saying farewell to their ashes were my grandparent´s, three of them and three aunts in two years. Those graves were in Germany. Nearly a whole generation gone. As only the ashes remained the spot was tiny. But it was a beautiful place, with much of heather and big trees, part of the woodlands behind it really. In the old days when I still went to Germany I visited there with a bunch of roses. Now those graves are gone, the family decided to let them go as nobody lives in Germany any longer. I don´t know what became of their ashes.
Walking through the graveyard here at christmas I wondered where the souls had gone to. The place felt so empty, just the memories of the visitors hovering between the tiny trees.
I stood beside my dear grandmother when she died, a long time ago, around 40 years. Of course I was crying, loudly, as I remember. But since than I am not afraid of the act of dying in itself. She let go of a breath and you could hear it was the last one, maybe relief. Since than I know that every living thing lives between two breathes: the first one in, after birth, the last one out. What we put in between them, is it our choice? Is it fate?

me back

I am thinking about re-entering cyberspace.

Why did I dissapear?

Firstly there was this complete breakdown of connection and computer. After a bad spree of withdrawl symptoms I got used to be without my daily chat and got strangely used to it. (Anyhow, how was life BEFORE?)

Secondly, and probably more importantly, was that I decided to hide from life back at the countryside throughout the summer. Oh, I learned that you don´t fool life that easily, it went on without listening to my protests. But being there, I could at least face fate holding hands with my daughter living there and together we somehow mastered life getting to catch us.

Still, looking back, I just lately said: it was a good year. It was exhausting, frightening sometimes, but we got things back on line for the time being. Maybe even I finally reached the point of life where I can live today and let yesterday fade and tomorrow bring what it has in store. It is a very relaxing place and I hope I will manage to stay there.

The last year brought our family a new autumn child: a tiny little girl, the daughter of our oldest son, his second child.
The last year also brought me a videocamera, with thanks to my father, and I discovered a new and time occupying hobby: making family movies. It is fun and rewarding.
The last year allowed me to loose 14 kg and brought me better health and a new haircolour.

Resolutions for the next year:
10 kg still to go.
Organizing a regular evening with all the big girls together. The first date is planned: 25th of january.
Have a “grandchildren day” four times a year.
Excercise to better listen to my mind and body what it is what I need and want. And to react on it.
Write in my blog at least once a week.

Oh, I think, this is enough for one day.