Yet again, I find myself slightly overwhelmed by basically anything and everything. I am neglecting my studying, because I keep remembering one million things besides my exams that should to be done very soon, then proceed to start taking care of three things at once and never actually finishing the first one of them.

On my list for the next little while:

An Easter Basket for the Munchkin – I finally found a nice tutorial for that, now I am still missing a few nice fabrics.

The Munchkin’s birthday outfit – I have yet to find a nice pattern for that.

Birthday bunting for the Munchkin – at least I have figured out which fabrics I want to go with. Now I just need to make it.

A snuggly blanket for the Munchkin – the cloth for that has been lying around for ages, I just have not had the nerve to do it so far. I’d like to have it finished by her second birthday, though.

Paint the doll bed for the Munchkin’s baby and make bedding for it – again, this has been standing around here for a while, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Three more of the bags I showed here recently – two for other people, one for myself. These bags need to be finished this month.

Easter Decorations – I want to sew a few birds and maybe make some fabric eggs somehow. Not quite sure how yet.

I absolutely have to manage to be disciplined about my studying again, though, so I am off to make a quick list of things to do for tomorrow. Which I will then place somewhere visible, safe in the knowledge that these things will still be there for me to take care of AFTER I finish my study period for the day.

Should I ever manage to complete any of this, this here blog will be where you will see the pictures to prove it.

I’m still fighting my way through the books. The Lad and I are still both jobless. Our little one is sick (again) and hasn’t been to Kita in a few days. I can’t seem to drag myself away from my self-absorbed whining long enough to make any sense in writing or otherwise.

Technically, there is lots for me to do, though. A bunch of little sewing projects are awaiting completion – hopefully I’ll manage to actually finish some of them at some point. A friend asked me to make one of those for her:

Other than that, I have our Munchkin’s birthday outfit to think of, a snuggly blanket, doll clothes and doll bedding, bedding for the Munchkin, birthday bunting…the list goes on and on. So much to do, so little time!

Speaking of which, I’ll go ahead and write a nice and fresh To Do list for myself now. Maybe that will make me feel more inclined to tackle my various projects and less like I am just turning in terribly dull circles.

After days of fruitless searching for my lost uni notes (the result of two solid weeks of research and studying), a bit of crying and a lot of swearing, some self-pitying whining and general hysteria, I have come to accept the cold, hard facts. My notes are gone, I have no idea where they went, the premises have been searched to no avail and I need to get over it.

This morning, the Lad gave me a good talking to after I had yet again succumbed to the gloomy mood I’ve been in ever since I discovered the disappearance of my research material. While I am by no means the most efficient and organized person in the world, I have never before lost any of my uni stuff. Retracing my steps has proven useless, as I apparently have the memory of a goldfish these days. I remember sitting on the couch in the evening, going over my notes, getting up to deal with some laundry and…that’s it. I have absolutely no recollection of anything after that point.

Well then, it would seem there’s nothing left for me to do than to just start over again. Lovely, can’t imagine anything better than that. Yes, I will of course get right on that. After I have attended to the very important matter at hand.

In the spirit of true procrastination, I have proceeded to make waffles – the German version, of course, sprinkled with powdered sugar. The house smells fantastic and I have two pairs of eyes on me this very minute, imploring me to get a move on and serve up. So, being the good housewife and mother that I am, off I go to fulfill my duty.

Surprisingly, the studying is actually going really well so far. Knowing my luck, I probably jinxed it just by saying that. In any case, I am unusually organized and feel  good about my progress. I am hoping to settle into this new routine and accept it as my new lifestyle for the time being, as I don’t see myself actually done with uni before the end of the year. My research so far has resulted in a list of about 200 books that might be of interest for my exams, I might just try to reduce that number a tad today.

***

I can’t shake a certain feeling of guilt and even shame over the fact that the main reason I am pushing myself very hard on the study front is that I want to be free and ready to do more than think about baby number two. What does that say about me? I couldn’t even begin to explain how my priorities have shifted ever since our Munchkin came into this world. Of course, recent events also contribute to that mindset. The only thing I feel sad and frustrated about in that area is that all the cliché assumptions have turned out to be accurate. Are you a young mother and potentially have the intention to have more children yet? Well, then better deal with the fact that you might not be the most desired type of employee for any kind of company. Throw in our current economic situation and then see how likely it is for you to actually get any kind of job at this point in time. As much as that makes me want to scream about the injustice of it all, this is a truth I face daily in conversations with the German ‘Ämter’ and friends or acquaintances who are going through the same thing. The most common reaction to my lamentation is a sympathetic nod of the head and a woeful ‘me too’. My aunt recently even asked me whether I was sure I wanted to have another baby at all, with things being the way they are in the world.

***

The Munchkin produced tooth number seven yesterday! Luckily, she does not seem bothered much by the process, she just drools a lot. Perusing the teething chart that I keep for her, I noticed that she seems to work on new teeth in four week increments. Odd that this would be happening in such regular intervals, isn’t it?

***

The Munchkin seems so eager to converse – it must be frustrating for her that most of the time we don’t really understand what she is trying to tell us. She just stands in front of me, pointing and babbling, as though she wants to say ‘Damn it, woman! Are you even listening to me??’ I am dying to know whether her first intelligible sentence will be a German or an English one.

***

It’s our Munchkin’s second birthday in May and already I have sewing projects under way, more or less. Before that, though, I am trying to make a strawberry costume for her for Fasching – a festivity I despise, as it is commonly taken as an excuse to get hammered for days on end and people generally behave like idiots. Our baby only celebrates Fasching in Kita though and every child will be dressed up, so I will get over myself and make my baby into a cute piece of fruit. I am not sure how that will turn out, but if anything remotely wearable is thereby produced, I will make sure to post a picture. With the help of the lovely Audrey’s hat sewing instructions, nothing much could go wrong, surely?

***

After nice temperatures of minus 17 degrees Celsius in the last few days, more icy weather is predicted for the near future. Side streets here are not really gritted very well, so every day we’re sliding to Kita over thick patches of ice – a circumstance which at first I found amusing, but by now am mildly annoyed with.

***

No news on the job front. We are doing what we can to keep excessive frustration and feelings of despair and worthlessness at bay, but the situation is certainly none to rejoice in. I am unsure as to how to proceed, really. For now, we can only just plod along, do what we have to do and all that. Not very satisfying.

***

Off to hit the books, my daily allotment of 30 minutes online time has come to an end. Have a great start into the weekend!

And with this, we’re back among the living. Sort of. For the past week, everything in our household just ground to a halt due to a particularly nice bout of stomach flu. Neither of us had ever experienced something like that in this severity and it hit us very hard. Let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty – I’ll spare you the details. We’re all somewhat weak yet, but things are definitely improving.

Tomorrow marks new beginnings for me. I will officially exit my maternity leave – induced state of hibernation and start studying for my Masters in earnest, which seems to require a great deal more organization and scheduling than I had previously anticipated. Hopefully the plans and lists that I have drawn up this weekend will help me get back on track quickly. For the next few months it will be Educational Science for me day and night. Luckily, my chosen topics are quite interesting, so I hope I’ll at least manage to procure a little enthusiasm for what I will be doing over the next while.

Also tomorrow, I will weigh myself and assess the cortisone damage to my body. I very desperately need to focus on my weight loss again. Something or other seems to always get in the way of that particular goal and it just really needs to stop. I’ll just have to accept that life is messy and chaotic and times – but that does not give me an excuse to constantly derail my own efforts to live healthily. The general plan is to reduce portion sizes, not buy any junk, drink more water and increase my fruit and veg intake. I’ll take it one day at a time.  The hardest thing right now will probably be to deal with my sugar cravings in a sensible fashion, so I will focus my energies on that particular thing for the next little while. I keep reading that said cravings become less frequent and will be less intense after about two weeks, so I am hoping to make it through that period of time without giving in to temptation.

One thing I am quite worried about at this point is my overall level of energy. Because of the cortisone treatment, I have been extremely alert and productive over the last few weeks. Now that I am off this stuff, I am beginning to feel my concentration waver again and my general worn out feeling is returning rather unpleasantly. I will see how things progress in that area, but I have the distinct feeling that I will be talking to my GP about this very soon.

Off to deal with a huge load of paperwork that needs to be mailed tomorrow. Joy!

The cortisone treatment is wearing on and I still find myself unable to get any kind of proper rest. The clock to my left informs me it is 2 am. Whenever I, slightly shocked, realize yet again just how very, very little sleep I have gotten since I started taking all those pills, a part of me marvels at the complexity of the human structure.

I do not feel tired and I cannot seem to wrap my brain around how incredibly much I have achieved in the time I would have otherwise spent sleeping. It’s somewhat scary, actually. On the one hand, I am suffering quite a few of the side effects commonly associated with cortisone and I am terrified of potential long-term consequences. On the other hand, however, a few things have actually improved for me and that in itself is even more terrifying for different reasons. Unfortunately I am afraid I cannot report increased hearing capabilities among said improvements. One can only hope.

In other news, I have now officially joined the unemployed masses. Indeed, I have finally been bullied into leaving my company of almost five years. Recent negotiations with my bosses were focused around what the company can ‘offer’ me as a young mother of one while our economy finds itself in the crapper.

Nothing much, it would seem, because surely, I would not ‘feel satisfied’ to do basic office tasks after previously working as a counselor and translator? Also, since I am physically unable to work ‘late afternoons and evenings’, aka outside Kita hours, there is really nothing anyone could ‘offer’ me. Pardon my overuse of what may seem like random quotation marks, my head is still reeling from the weird phone conversation that in the end led to my premature goodbyes as far as my work is concerned. I was offered a rather laughable severance payment and I took it. No more of this crap. Oh, country of mine! Do you seriously wonder why your birthrate is declining? I scoff at this never ending lament!

On a slightly brighter note, my professor of Educational Science has finally approved my exam topics, so hooray! In your face, stagnation and frustration – and it only took  about two months to obtain a reply to my emails. German university system at its finest.

While we are on the cheerful topic of the bitterness I currently feel about my homeland, I went ahead and changed our ‘About Us’ page a teensy bit, just to clarify how our particular Berlin connection came into existence. All for you, Isabelle, of course.

Very well then, let’s give this sleep thing another try.

My ear infection is turning out to be a bit of a complication. I had to go and see a specialist yesterday, as my hearing did not really seem to be improving. It turns out that the nerves in my ears have been damaged – the infection has basically poisoned them. I have lost 25% of hearing in my left ear and 5% in the right. The 5% are seemingly negligible, but the 25% are worrying. I was given a local anesthetic and my ear drum was cut to drain the fluid out of my ear. I am now taking 100 mg of cortisone every day, doctor’s orders – which is also the reason why I am sitting at my computer at 4 am today. Nice side effects, no? There is a possibility my hearing will return. If it doesn’t, however, it seems I will have to get a hearing aid. I still can’t believe this. I am perfectly aware that this is not the end of the world, but I am 29 years old. Is this kind of thing not to happen a lot later in life? The Lad managed to put things into perspective for me again by reminding me of the two little ones (twins) in the Munchkin’s kita class who are dependent on their hearing aids at the age of two. Still, I am struggling to deal with this new development.

Confined to the bed with something apparently close to pneumonia and the mother of all inner ear infections, it would seem that there is ample time for me to post. Unfortunately, a long period of hesitation has proven yet again ill-advised for me, as the only result is a tangled, messy heap of confused thoughts, completely impossible to be formed into coherent sentences. Upon inquiry, my random topic generator has produced ‘employment ramble’ as choice of the day, so here goes. Please forgive my febrile musings.

The Lad is still looking for a new job. So far, so anxiety-inducing. I suppose we were hoping things would just somehow fall into place and we would be spared the whole unemployment benefit (please fill in eleventy million forms and tell us where you hide your money) experience.  No such luck – the next job center appointment will take place this week.

While we are on this particularly joy-filled topic, I feel compelled to add that my bosses are still trying to dispose of me. My ‘Elternzeit’, as the maternity leave is referred to in Germany, will end in May this year.

At my office, I’ve been considered an inconvenience and therefore strategically bullied ever since I announced my pregnancy. Now that the end of my Elternzeit is nigh and I have refused to just ‘go and look for a different job’, as I was asked to do during the last meeting, my lovely bosses are pulling out all their stops to keep me from coming back to the office.  The latest news here is that I was asked to accept a severance package of some kind. My lawyer – a friend of the family – whom I consult with frequently at this point, advised me to request said offer in writing. Just yesterday,  I received an email from one of my bosses who proceeded to inform me that she is not willing to put anything into writing and instead wants to call me this week to talk about things further. I am unsure how to respond to that – for now I have sent a reply saying that I won’t be talking to anyone over the phone in the next few days, as my sense of hearing is almost non-existent what with the infection and all that.

In any case, it’s a real shocker that my German employers wish to unburden themselves of me, a young mother of one. Knowing my boss’ sentiments, I did of course see this coming.  It’s not that statements like ‘I will only employ women outside their fertile years from now on’ tipped me off or anything.

What really depresses me in all this, though, is that noone even pretends to be surprised. This is just how it is. Oh well. What a shame. Women, or more specifically mothers, continue to be the weakest link in very many ways and it’s just a universally accepted fact. And, even more infuriatingly, I couldn’t even really do anything about it,  should I feel so inclined, because the Lad and I would be unable to pay the legal expenses.

Right now I am basically just sitting around, waiting for things to happen to me. Good times. Lovely feeling, that. No pressure or strain involved at all. Is it wrong that I wanted to kick my boss in the teeth when she closed an email with ‘greetings in a very difficult time for us all’? A very difficult time, indeed. Especially for someone who has no children and lives off a manager’s salary. The poor, poor thing.

On Monday, the 23rd of November, I got into work like any other regular day. I went to see my buddy J for a quick chat, but only got a ‘Sorry dude, now is not the time’. He seemed somewhat worried but I had no reason to suspect anything, so I carried on with my day. After an hour, curiosity finally got the better of me and I asked J over the office communicator whether he could tell me what was going on. His response was an unsettling ‘Dude, did you not hear the rumors? People are getting fired! I am deleting user accounts as we speak’.

My heart sank a little. I was called to a meeting at 11:30 that morning with no reason or subject given. But the whole team was called and they could not be firing the whole department or even a few of us in front of the rest, surely?

As we all got up to leave, the manager came over and asked me to follow her – to another meeting, on another floor. My heart stopped!

I was taken into a meeting with four other people, two from neighbouring departments and two from what seemed to be management, but I did not recognize them at all. My manager left.

‘As you know, the old CEO left a few months ago and the new CEO has been very interested in saving money. One of the areas he is looking into is personnel and your positions have been targeted for termination.’

That’s right, about a month before Christmas, I got fired!

‘We would like you to sign this document as proof that this meeting took place and also ask you to take this contract with you and return it to us signed before the following Monday. The contract is for your severance package and the agreement of your termination with the company.’

My contract will be up on December 31st. This is really nothing any of us saw coming.

One of the girls that was getting fired along with me piped up: ‘So what now, do we go back to work?’ Management replied: ‘No, we ask you to leave the building immediately, take what you can from your desk and call us for an appointment if there are any personal files on your computer, as you will likely not be able to log in by the time you get back to your desk.’

I remembered that J was deleting users at this point. I briefly wondered if he knew about me beforehand. Of course, later I checked with him and he said that he only got the user names the instant they got to the meeting. My name was on a little queue and he did not see it until I had left the building.

Right now there is a mad rush, looking for work, trying to figure things out, but to be honest, I can’t see anything happening until after the New Year. Everyone is worrying too much about Christmas and their parties to even think about employing new folks.

So, I apply and wait. I started a course on JavaScript (part of web design) which should be a good stepping stone into pastures new.

1. A feeling of self-worth and direction, of ability and capability.

2. A sense of something else, something beyond my misery and the realization that there ARE perfect things in my very own life, even though almost everything seems somewhat off right now.

3. A new job for the Lad.