Our Munchkin turned one year old on May 13 and even now I hesitate when people ask me how old she is - she is still just my baby, it seems impossible she should have been with us for the past 12 months. It feels like she is very close to taking her first few unaided steps - she cruises along furniture like there is no tomorrow and uses her baby buggy to whiz through our increasingly crowded apartment.

Our Munchkin will start attending daycare in August and I am far from ready to let her go. Alas, I have no choice in the matter, as I have to return to uni to complete my Masters. Next May then, I will have to return to work as well and I’d prefer to have uni behind me at that point. I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like trying to juggle work, uni and family life with a toddler. We shall see how all that will work out, though, as we seem to have a bit of a problem even finding an adequate childcare facility. There are so many things involved that I can’t quite seem to wrap my head around - I am running in circles and at this point simply can’t make the decisions that need to be made.

Before this tiny little nonsensical post turns into even more of a ramble, I will leave you with new pictures of our littlest baby girl.

First, for all to see, a picture of the birthday dress I made for our Munchkin:

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Things in my head have not been great recently and I just have not been in a blogging kind of mood.

I have been feeling overwhelmed, what with all the job hunting and the lack of disposable money. We have been running a very very tight ship for the last wee while and have not been managing very well.

Right now,  we need to look into how we are doing things and what we need to change in order to move forward again - because right now, we are feeling stuck in oh so many ways.

So I compiled a little list with some explanation on what I would like to do (the Lassie will probably want to write her own). Read the rest of this entry »

I have felt terribly miserable and quite sorry for myself lately, so I didn’t really think I had anything worthwhile to contribute to this here blog. Seems a bit silly not to blog about personal and/or the more difficult stuff in our lives, in hindsight, since this blog is in fact a personal one - it would seem there’s no need for me to force myself to remain on a subjectively perceived appropriate level. So I’ll just take things as they come now and see where that takes me blogwise. Anyhoo, on to Baby News.

Our little Munchkin is so incredibly active right now, she pulls her tiny self up literally everywhere she can grab hold, walks along furniture and ‘talks’ a lot. She seems very interested in people, especially other little children, smiles and waves whenever she sees them.

On that note, I find the mentality of people in Berlin revolting most of the time. Our baby is so friendly and eager to interact and very often, people notice, but can’t be bothered to show any kind of friendly behavior. Yesterday, for example, the Laddie and I took the Munchkin to a park near our house. She was just really happy to be outside and contently looking at people, when she saw a mommy turn the corner with her little boy strapped in a stroller. My little girl stood up on my legs, smiled at the boy and waved at the mommy. The mother just looked at her briefly, then looked away again and walked past, never even changing her facial expression. My baby looked after her in a sort bewildered manner and eventually shifted her attention to something else.

This kind of thing really does break my heart. It happens more often than I care to admit, but I just can’t get used to this kind of indifference. It’s beyond me how anyone can behave this way. Whenever I see other children do things like this, I can’t help but smile, no matter my mood on that particular day. I personally find it terrible that my child is introduced to the ‘real’ world this young.

Berlin and her people have not presented themselves particularly child-friendly to me within the last year or so, if I’m honest here. Right now, the Laddie and I frankly feel sick of the Berlin mentality and the technicalities of big city life. I’ve had to keep the Munchkin on my lap all this time at the park yesterday, simply because there were things lying on the ground you don’t want to imagine your child getting close to. It’s so sad that we can’t go anywhere with our baby where she could play and crawl around freely, without her parents anxiously hovering over her all the time - it just feels so restrictive.

The Munchkin has just fallen asleep and I have tons of things yet left to do, so I will leave you with pictures of our little sunshine. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Month a new gym opened up almost around the corner from our apartment. I checked it out and it had all these brand new machines, sleek setup and Les Mills body course series things (if you’re a fan of Dietgirl, she might have mentioned Body Pump and Body Combat, that’s Les Mills). As is usual, you have to pay 20 Euros starting fee and then 19 Euros per month on a one year contract.

The monthly fee at my current gym (McEvil) is 17 Euros. I know it’s a teensy bit more for the new one, but hey, this new gym is two trains and three kilometers closer to home than McEvil! The catch is that I tried to cancel McEvil to join this new gym. I asked one month before my contract was rightfully supposed to end if I could cancel when it ended. The gym girl said:

‘Sorry, but you have to give six weeks notice to cancel your contract and since it’s now four weeks until your contract ends, your existing contact will be extended for another six months, meaning you won’t be able to quit until August’

White noise…Red Face…Hulk MAD!

That’s exactly how they get you! Read the small print, people, don’t fall for it like I did.

So a week or two go by, I have had my aforementioned look at the new gym like a kid pressing his nose on a candy store window and I finally just had it with McEvil.

I was training one night and as I was doing my stomach crunches with my back on the bench, I could see and hear the section that’s blocked off (up to head height) for the women to use their own weights. The section is there so the women will always have these weights (seems the other gym members would take them?). Anyways, three guys walked in - yes, into the women section -  and they started talking. I couldn’t hear all they were saying, but at some point I heard a loud sniff and a grunt.
Pardon the pun, but that’s where I draw the line.

It happened in full view of the trainers, who just kept doing that thing where you overly avert your eyes.

I won’t have this kind of thing so close to me…I mean, it’s a powder! What if it’s pushed into the air and I ingest it! Or I use those weights (not that I am allowed) and then for whatever reason transfer it to my mouth!

No, I won’t stand for it.

Wanting to cancel my membership right away, I at first said that I was moving back to the UK - they said that they want written letters from all sorts of places, so that’s a bust!

Thankfully though, I have *cough* suffered a back injury *cough* which has stopped me from being able to go to the gym, according to my doctor. Hopefully this will get me out of McEvil.

The downside to this is that I can’t go to the other gym until McEvil confirm that I have canceled, moneywise it’s just not doable.

With all this, I have fallen behind again terribly and I don’t feel good at all. I need the gym back As Soon As Possible!

Here’s what the rocking horse looked like after I applied the first coat of paint.

I didn’t really think it looked quite white enough, so I put on another layer of white.

Almost done now, I think. I ordered a bit of cloth to make a pillow from. As I’ve never sewn anything properly before, this might turn out to be a bad idea, but I’ll try my best.

The Laddie and I are otherwise trying to deal with a lot of problems right now, which is paralyzing in more than just one way. Jobs, money, studies, childcare, family, friends…Everything just seems to be going downhill. In the midst of it all, we are trying our best not to let our Munchkin feel any stress or strain. A monumental task at the moment, really, a draining exercise. Hopefully things will look up again eventually.

Here’s what the rocking horse looks like right now, after the sanding action:

I will try to paint it on the weekend - I hope it’ll turn out ok!

As I’ve had sort of an emotional meltdown today, there won’t be any other updates just right now, but I will try to post again sometime this weekend.

This weekend, I’ve been busy sanding down a wooden rocking horse that I bought on ebay - for our Munckin, naturally. Here’s what it looked like when it was delivered:

I’ll go and get white paint for it this week. After that, I am not sure what to do with it, I’d like to add some sort of a floral pattern, but can’t seem to decide on anything. Hm…I’ll post progress pictures soon. Hopefully.

Last Friday my aunt died of cancer. She was a heavy heavy drinker and smoker, so it really was not a surprise that she would encounter health problems at some point. I know this sounds callous, but when you see someone like her, who lives for her addictions, you tend to expect the worst.

She was suffering very badly from a tumor in her neck and her liver, so in the end she was in a lot of pain and died what seemed like a sudden death. One day she was ‘fine’ and then hours later it was clear she would die. She was brought to a hospital, given a large dose of morphine, fluid filled her lungs and she passed away.

I have trouble getting upset about it, though, which on its own upsets me. I mean, I loved her as my aunt, she was always nice to me, but I can’t help but feel glad (although glad as a word here is too happy) that she is no longer suffering.

Then I look to my Gran. Within the past few years, she has suffered great loss. My Grandad died of dementia, which has partly been attributed to smoking and working in the coal mines (blocked arteries reducing the flow of blood to the brain). This was my first funeral, just so you know how long this tragedy has evaded our family. It’s a time I will never ever forget! I love my Grandad so very much and his death still weighs heavily on me.

My Gran lost her sister only months later, which to me is just horrifying. Just as my Granddad died, she was in Edinburgh, trying to cross the street and by accounts someone was trying to force this 80+ year old woman across the road. She fell and broke her arm amongst other things. The Lassie and I visited her in hospital after my Granddad’s funeral to let her know how it went and to see if she needed anything. Typical Auntie A, she was waving her arms around with metal pins sticking out, saying everything was fine and she’d like some sweets while she watched Emmerdale on the TV. A few weeks later, she died from an infection she received while in care.

At my Granddad’s funeral (or more specifically, the day after), the Lassie was talking to Auntie J (my Gran’s daughter) and she complained about a pain in her arm. As it turns out, she too was suffering from cancer. Auntie J died about a year later almost to the day.

My Gran’s last living daughter was Auntie K, who I’ve already talked about.

We have had a mix of people there - Superhero strong, old and frail, overweight and way too thin. All with various issues like smoking or drinking (with the exception of Auntie A, she was a saint!). What should that tell me about life?

For me it is to stay healthy and to get there in a healthy way. Don’t wait until tomorrow to do it. Force yourself to get there! Seeing the huge hole that the deaths of these people tore into our lives, it seems more important than ever to spend every moment with your loved ones as happy and healthy as possible, to make sure you leave more happy memories than you leave negative ones.

The scale read 118.5 kg/261.2 lbs yesterday. This would mean a loss of 0.5 kg or about 1 lbs for the last week. I seriously need to stop obsessing about numbers so much. It’s not doing me any good, especially considering all the other stuff that’s going on in my life right now. So instead of getting discouraged by my weekly weigh in, I will pay more attention to the overall healthy eating - snacking continues to be a problem, although we rarely have any ‘problem’ foods in the house anymore. It’s more a well worn habit that I need to break with.

I have taken a couple of very bad ‘before’ shots a few days ago. I am hoping I will be able to take progress pictures not too long from now. I can’t even remember what it felt like to be in the double digits - all I know is that 1997 was the last year I saw something below 100 kg on the scale. It’s depressing, really.

Anyhoo, the Laddie is at the gym again tonight and I will have to take care of some paperwork now. A lovely way to spend a Saturday evening, no?

But at least I do know how to work a TV… Something like this would happen if I tried to get the washing machine to record ‘the office’!