Old year, new year

A melancholy end to an old old year, ready to be packed up and placed in the basement. The start of a fresh new year, full of splintery shiny new words thrown out to the world in the hopes that the world might pick some of them up and play with them. But be careful. Words can be sharp.

Full moon madness?

Apparently, it's the full moon tonight. Which I wouldn't normally know anything about (unless I happened to go out at night at look up, and even then, I'd probably think, 'hey that looks pretty round...I wonder if it's full yet, or a day or so off?), except that my favorite pregnancy board is now full of posts of all sorts from women who seem varying degrees of sure that they'll go into labor around, oh, now. This goes along with all those who think that accidents happen more, and thus that hospitals are fuller during the full moon. Or that insanity is more likely during the full moon.

This is in contrast to controlled studies, which, if I recall correctly, show no correlation between the full moon and any of those things. Which doesn't mean that I won't try blaming the moon for my moodiness today. But I don't expect to go into labor anytime so soon. I did however check the calendar for all of my relatives for whom I could remember their exact birthday. None of us were born anywhere near a full moon, nor was there a pattern for when we were born, for example near the new moon. I blame it all on confirmation bias (which is generally an easy mark for explaining all sorts of weird beliefs).

The bottom line though, is that I may not believe in them, but old wives tales like this are intriguing (and of course, in some cases, do have a basis in fact). Are there any such tales that I'm missing about the moon?

*Photo credit: http://www.dta.it/gallery/moon_planets.html*

'When there is no more room in hell the dead shall roam the bars.'

I am not normally a big zombie-film watcher. I don't usually participate in events where I would be expected to dress up. I am enormously pregnant, and could give birth at any moment. So, of course I must do this. Actually, because I am enormously pregnant, I must do this. Because, let's face it, what could be cooler than a highly-pregnant zombie?

Would anyone like to join me?

*Photo credit: http://current.com/items/88863566_scandal_intrigue_on_capitol_hill_pregnant_moms_drugs_baby_zombie_uprising*

Today is the first day of the rest of your life

I've taken care of some last minute business, and am now truly ready to embrace being on leave. And I'm more than a bit overwhelmed. I can transform myself, in any way I wish, in this time that I will have. It's the time to start a true interior Spring cleaning (and, why not an exterior one as well while I'm at it).

Is it too late in the season? And where do I start? I'm feeling a deep need for some Camino de Santiago yellow arrows to guide my way.

*Photo: Yep, I took this on the Camino. I have no idea where I was at that point, but this could have been just about anywhere on the way.*

Life is a countdown

Have you ever gone through a time when all you do is wait for things to happen? I seem to be getting in that mode. Of course, I mean counting down for the birth, but not only that. Especially because I don't know when that will be.

In the meantime, I'm counting down the time until I'm on maternity leave. The time until I can stop travelling outside the Copenhagen area. The time when I will send my latest phd proposal out (which will look scarily untouched since the last time I sent it). Until the possible midwife strike, at which point, if it happens (and it seems likely that it will), I'll start counting down until when it might be resolved. Until I am able to get all the things I need so that we are totally ready for a newborn in our house. Until I am just too tired to leave the house.

So, is it just me? Are you counting down anything, and if so, what?

Where I confess to a materialistic moment

I have a strange relationship with material objects. I like many of them, yet feel that I should be a minimalist, without such objects in my life. It leads to some strange behavior. For example, I will buy the occasional big ticket item (like every few years when I replace my laptop computer), but have a hard time buying tiny things, like clothing or music.

So, on the rare occasion when I discover that there is something small that I need, that I must have, and when I then buy whatever it is, it's such a giant novelty, that I find myself obsessively into whatever it is that I've just bought. It can sometimes border on the unseemly.

Such an event happened today. It actually started a while ago with the stunning realization that, in order to be a cool modern mom, it would be necessary for me to get a truly kick-ass diaper bag. I didn't get this at first...at first I was planning on using a bag that I already owned. Silly me. Add to this realization a visit to a big Danish babystuff store, with a store credit waiting to be spent, and you have all the makings of a classic shopper's high moment.

It's even more attention-getting because I have no intention of using it until I go to the hospital to give birth, when it will be my hospital bag. And it'll be a long wait, because I'm in love now. I didn't bring it out to dinner with a friend, but then mentioned it so many times, that my friend finally asked why I didn't bring it with me. I then declared my love for my bag to Thor many, many times, until I believe he stopped paying attention. I'm considering bringing it into bed with me. I'd show it to you, but then I'd have to take my eyes away from it to focus my camera. But you can see a photo of it here. It's much cooler (especially on the inside) than you can see from the link, though.

Coffee with Venus

I'd blame this fascination on my present condition, except that I've been fascinated with her for a long time. On my Christmas holidays, circling her in her protective glass case in the Natural History Museum in Vienna, this fascination was solidified.

I want to invite her to coffee, to find out who she really was, if she was real, or an idealization, or a combination of the real and the ideal. I want to know if she is a representation of someone who holds a special role in her society. Of course, I want to know if she's pregnant (I don't think she looks pregnant, but some seem to disagree with me). I want to know what she thinks she represents.

In the meantime, I made do with having coffee with a group of real women, who symbolize themselves, and good conversation, and support. I did not feel I was missing out on anything, though the Venus of Willendorf apparently couldn't make it.

The value of money

So, now, thanks to this podcast, I now understand why I, generally not a big spender, am so willing to fork out big money on baby things. Because it makes me happy. Yes, apparently, money can't buy happiness...unless it's money spent on someone else.

And it's true...I find myself gazing upon all my purchases, organizing them neatly in various places in the apartment, with what can only be described as joy. Yes, this is about nesting more than anything, but if I hadn't spent the money on someone else, then I wouldn't have any nesting material, now would I? It will be even more exciting to see the items actually being used.

*Photo: Not having any photos of anything that I've bought for the baby, I'm revisiting her clothing collection. Everything in this photo was a gift from some person or group of people. Who are all presumably happier as a result of their baby clothing purchases.*

Boring Easter weekend

So far this weekend, I have done the following things. Your challenge is to make them connect to Easter in some way.

I've gotten about 28% of the way through a large proofreading project. The project itself is fairly straightforward; however, proofreading always makes me feel as if my eyes are bleeding. I have great hopes to have it finished by Monday evening, but I'm not so sure I can do it. Because of the bleeding.

I've bought a lot of diaper items. Cloth diapers. And diaper inserts. And diaper pants. And diaper wipes. And diaper creme. Oh, and disposable diaper liners. I've put those items that need to be washed before use through the washer (twice, actually), and they are now hanging to dry across from where I now sit. I also demonstrated to Thor how to diaper a baby, using a stuffed animal as the baby.

I've done only a bit of cooking, and even less cleaning.

I've chatted, blogged, and hung out a very short time on Facebook.

And I've uploaded an Easter appropriate photo of a church, on Møn.

Now, it's your turn. What have you done so far this fine weekend? What are your plans for the rest of the weekend?

The value of snoring?

It's funny what strange words one can pick up when in a foreign country for only a short time. In Thor's case, it's so clear that he learned what few Spanish words he knows from doing the Camino de Santiago. He is able to order breakfast ('bocadillo con chorizo y queso', 'cafe con leche) and a drink in a bar ('cerveza', 'vino tinto'). At one point, someone taught him to say something along the lines of 'this village is the most beautiful I've seen on the Camino', which apparently got him a lot of kudos and the occasional free drink, but I'd imagine he's since forgotten that phrase. And I thought that was it. But not quite, shown by his now addressing me in the morning as 'roncadora'. Only someone spending night after night in refugios would pick up the term for snorers (as there were a lot of them in the refugios!)

Yes, apparently I've started to snore. Which is not the end of the world, after all most people do so in certain situations (like when they have a cold). But it's gotten me wondering, why would humans have this snoring tendency? From an evolutionary perspective, it would seem to be a really bad idea to draw attention to ourselves when we're sleeping, and therefore can't defend ourselves from attack.

It's possible that snoring is a recent phenomenon in history (which could be if there is a connection between physical condition and snoring...maybe in ancient times, snoring wasn't as common because people weren't so out of shape and overweight). It's also possible that we snore less than our ancient ancestors, because evolution favored those who didn't snore as often, but that snoring a bit still remains.

Looking it up hasn't helped much (Googling 'snoring evolution' gives articles on the evolution of snoring in individual cases, such as from light snoring to heavy snoring to sleep apnea to impending doom, and 'why do we snore' provides discussions on the biology of snoring), and now I'm really curious to know why we humans snore. I did find one theory that humans evolved to snore in order to scare off wild animals, but I'm not convinced. Another theory says that it has to do with sleep/wake patterns in group hunting animals, and snoring being a signal for sleep, which is somewhat more logical...but if everyone is sleeping at the same time, how would anyone snoring first help? Wouldn't it be enough just to see some starting to sleep?

So, I leave it now up to you, dear readers. Let your imagination, and/or your mad researching skillz, run riot. What is your theory on the evolutionary advantage of snoring? In the meantime, I'll be heading for bed, to hone my new-found prowess as a roncadora.

Just a bit (of) Kinky

I was halfway to the grocery store when it started to rain. I never run when it starts raining. I just keep to my same leisurely pace and try to walk between the drops. You get about equally wet either way, but if you run, you look stupid. If you walk you just look crazy. There's more dignity in crazy, and it's also less strenuous. (Kinky Friedman, "A Case of Lone Star")

I'm not usually one to write down a quote or a line. I'm actually the type to be sure that I'll remember whatever it is later when I need it, and then forget about whatever it was mere seconds after. But when going through a stack of (in some cases, very old) papers, I found this quote, which I had written on the back of a receipt (from somewhere in Portugal, which means the quote writing was done pre-2001).

I don't remember anything about the novel (except that Kinky is marvelously funny, and witty, and punny), nor do I remember what inspired me to find the book (in a bookstore in San Francisco), find the quote in the book (which I seem to recall I found surprisingly quickly), and write it down. But it ages well, the quote. It seems like it could apply to just about any uncomfortable situation, not just rain, and it's an image and an idea that I've been trying more consciously since re-reading it, that of walking between the drops. It does just seem to epitomize the dignified approach.

Short-timer's disease

Yes, I am suffering from it. Which means that it's going to be a long six weeks until I go on leave. In the meantime, I've been making a list of what to do with the time I have between when I stop work, and when I become a parent. Here are some highlights:

1) go to a spa for a couple of days (this is the one I dream of most, and I hope I can do it)
2) clean the house really well and
3) get rid of all unnecessary items so that I can
4) turn a corner of one room into a nursery (we don't have a whole room for this, just a corner)
5) blog, maybe even write longer posts
6) make a month (or two) of frozen meals
7) buy any remaining baby items, and talk myself out of buying too many
8) write e-mails to everyone I haven't written to in a while (so, to pretty much everyone)
9) exercise a bit (nothing too strenuous, some of my pregnancy yoga)
10) work on my proposal some more

Am I missing anything?

(Actually, after looking at this list, work doesn't seem so bad after all! No, just kidding...I'd much rather do these things than go to work at this point. Which is odd, as I really like my teaching at the moment, and some of the stuff I like less will be handed over to my replacement very soon.)

The restaurant beyond the end of the universe

From the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. As delineated by Douglas Adams.

It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian 'chinanto/mnigs' which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks' which kill cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.

What can be made of this fact? It exists in total isolation. As far as any theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is right off the graph, and yet it persists. Old structural linguists get very angry when young structural linguists go on about it. Young structural linguists get deeply excited about it and stay up late at night convinced that they are very close to something of profound inportance, and end up becoming old structural linguists before their time, getting very angry with the young ones. Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs.

From the restaurant beyond the end of the universe. As experienced by Thor, in (actual reconstructed) conversation with a server in a cafe/bar/pancake restaurant in Amsterdam:

Server: Can I get you anything to drink?
Thor: Yes, I'd like a gin and tonic.
Server: (looking a bit confused) A what?
Thor: A gin and tonic.
Server: Oh, a gin.
Thor: Yes. And tonic.
Server: (looking more confused) Gin and...?
Thor: Tonic.
Server: (looking a slight bit alarmed) Oh. I'm not sure we have that.
Thor: Well...maybe I'll just have a beer then.

Apple for the teacher

There are some days, quite regular days, where it occurs to me that I really am a teacher. That after however many years of being in classrooms, something has become an integral part of me.

There are other days, not so many in this case, where it occurs to me that everyone is a teacher. And of course a student. That we are all together, and interacting together, so that we may teach, and so we may learn.

To that end, please take an apple. You deserve it, and they're very good.

True bliss...

...is when you can't make it for dinner because of work, but arrive after dinner to find that the host has cooked for you anyway, and heats it up for you. And it's delicious.

And then, just when it seems it can't get any better, you get dessert.

Taking a potshot at the target of targeted marketing

Almost every time I log into my e-mail account, I see the same ad, a single line promising '5 Tips to Lose Belly Fat', hyperlinked to a site which is poetically named www.BellyFlabIsUgly.com. Yes, the ad assures me, 'Stop making this 1 mistake & you'll finally lose your ugly belly fat!'

And every time I see this ad, I have different thoughts about it. The one mistake? Would that be, just maybe, getting pregnant? And do I really need '5 Tips'? I was under the impression that all I really need to do is to wait (as) patiently (as possible) until May, whereupon I will experience amazing weight loss, especially of 'belly fat'. Though, as I think about it, I really am finding it hard to see my belly as fat, or as anything but beautiful.

Really, there must be a better way to match these things up, even if it ends up being not quite so amusing.

My current life in photos

Here is what I'm focusing on most at the moment. You may, and in fact are encouraged to, supply the captions. Or the story line. Or whatever. Answers in an up-coming post, probably in answer to a meme.

If you meet the Buddha on the road...

...take his picture. It's much more civilized than killing him. I met this Buddha on the road into Stege, on the island of Møn. He is clearly trying to inspire me to be more mindful, but I don't seem to be listening for some reason.

A dichotomy between image and words

The Buddha on my windowsill symbolizes peace. Which is to say that he does not fit in with my overall day, marked by annoying appointments, unproductively foreshortened classes, and not least, clogged toilets. Which is not to say that I've had a bad day...actually, I haven't at all. But what could make future days more meditative? All solutions gladly welcomed.

My current solution to all ills is a glass of milk. Actually, several glasses. It's highly effective, but perhaps not very long-term. I'd give a more coherent post, but I'm still traumatized by the toilet clogging incident (I won't go into too many details on that one, but you can take my word for it that it was rather impressive, in a really disgusting way).

All those amazing things in store for us!

I've given a couple posts over to 2007 so far this year, but it occurs to me that I still haven't fully, publicly embraced 2008. But what's more important than 2008? At this point, at least. In 11 months or so, my ideas on this will have changed.

For me, what will happen is obvious, and equally obvious is that everyone is so aware of it. I don't believe I recieved a single Christmas or New Year's card this year which didn't mention how 2008 would be so special for me. And it's true. For all sorts of reasons, not just the obvious one. But it's special for everyone. We cannot even know how amazing the year will be, but must help it unravel like a ball of yarn, while collecting all the presents.

Yes, ball of yarn. Yes, presents. Every Christmas from my youth, we'd wake up to presents, small presents in the stockings, and bigger ones wrapped up underneath (and no, we weren't Christian, but I think my mom just wanted to have the presents on the day that all the other kids got them, there was nothing religious about it in the slightest). At the top of the stocking was the most amazing part...the ball of yarn. Always the exact same balls of cheap Woolworth acrylic, pepto-bismol pink for me, an equivalent blue for my brother. You could see they were in a tight ball, but not quite. There would be things hanging out of them, small things. I no longer remember what kinds of things were in the balls, but think pencils and erasers, matchbox cars, mini-candy bars, things like that. We'd start to unravel the yarn. Things would fall out, we'd see how soon we could guess what that tiny snub just barely showing yet would turn out to be. I vaguely recall my mom making a disparaging comment about how after all the work getting all the big stuff together, my brother and I would beeline for the cheap stuff every year (true, though after the unraveling, we would then turn our attention totally to the bigger ticket items).

So, may your 2008 be a ball of yarn, with small gifts spread throughout. Happy unraveling, and finding, and making a mess of yarn all over the living room. Because that is what it's all about, isn't it?

*Original photo from http://www.stringofpurls.com/About_Our_Yarn_Shop_s/41.htm.*