Rika's Column

Viewpoints

2011-12-27T10:23:00.002Z

Apparently I am an ignorant cow! The last time I have been called names was at the playground, but then: I haven't been really stubborn since then either.

It was during the run-up to Christmas, the festival of love, and it was at a car park. Car parks and good mood rarely go well together, I however was quite happily minding my own business. This business being to find a got spot. See, I am not good in parking my big trunk. I am fully capable to do all this reversing into a slot thing, but that doesn't mean that I like doing it. Hubby is different. For him it is a sport to be the smoothest, swift reverse parker that was ever seen. I am not like that; my aim is to find a slot to drive through, and as usually slots are aligned in double rows, I needed one where two nice wide slots behind each other were free.

And there it was, the perfect slot! Unfortunately on the wrong side, typical. The angle much to tight to get in. The plan was hatched to go round and to tackle it from the other side, hoping that no competitor with hubby-like skills would swoop in buttocks first.

Lucky, I was! Gently and carefully I manoeuvred the snout into the first of the slots, another car in front of me went past, I straightened the car and was half way in the second slot when I saw the rear of a car entering.

Stand-off!

This is where the stubbornness came in. Blood pressure rising I decided to defend my slot. I could have easily reversed into the first, perfectly fine slot, but then I would have had the hassle of reversing out of it later. And... I was as good as in already. So I just sat. Admittedly I would have felt better giving up, being the bigger person; ...I wouldn't be sitting here writing about it... This lady however seemed to be perfectly capable to reverse into any other slot, and there were plenty of them. There was only one that suited me.

She charged backwards a bit, I could hear the motor howling. Rika sitting stubbornly. She tried it again... the poor thing! By then every sentiment for the festival of love must have gone up in smoke. She dashed out, parked two slots down the row... she is good, she was faster in hers than I was in mine... well, maybe I am just really bad... However, by the time I left the car a really red face shouted across the car park, insisting repeatedly that I belonged to the species of milk producing creatures, that I stole her parking slot and that I swooped in from behind.

Well, she doesn't know me; as depicted before: When I drive there is no swooping, at least not in car parks. I however give her that: She could not have seen me. When she drove past, all she would have seen was a car in the first slot. Usually we do not notice if somebody is in the car. Car in slot means: parked! Thus to her it must have felt like somebody swooping in.

Each person's story represents the truth from their point of view, hence we were both right, and both wrong. There is no clear answer of who should have owned that slot. I used my stronger position to win - I was not blocking the street while waiting for her to give up - but that doesn't make it right from her point of view. There is one thing though that puts her entirely into the wrong: If we were to swap roles in this story, I may have closed my door a bit harder, I may have mumbled some swear words into my scarf, but I would not have called her names.

And next time I will give up. I now know that I can defend what I think is right, but sometimes it is just not worth it!

The aftermath of Christmas presents...

2011-12-25T15:06:00.000Z

We don't do Christmas presents! Not anymore. We actually don't do Christmas anymore. We are an old couple without kids. There is no good reason to clean the house to then mess it up with a tree, the hassle of shopping and cooking and ... and then one has a lot of time around ones hands and decides to go... shopping. Isn't there this lovely new mall where the Olympics will take place? Stratford! Yes, that's it! Let's go!

And then we buy gadgets. Important ones. I actually wanted flat shoes for Lindy Hop lessons. Yes, that's right... FLAT shoes... for me! Unfortunately the trainer insists in flats which I don't really have. I then however, couldn't get myself to buying ugly shoes, so I turned my attention to a wrist watch. Not having worn one in ages I had lost track of the market situation, though.They are either pretty yet impractical, or partly practical but the most ugly, huge monsters imaginable. So I gave up and we entered hubby's temple - the Apple Store.

For some weird reason items of a certain value have to find an allocation to some sort of event, and hence we each got a little something as Christmas pressie. Ha... we are not doing Christmas, my ar..!!

Now: Each present worth its money has to show its value instantly and my Nano touch which works as a wrist watch - who needs Swatch & Co if there are iGadgets - is outshone by hubby's little black box, the 'apple TV'. It's not bigger than a sardine can, but shinier and it hooks up with all sorts of other iDevices to play their content on the telly; additionally it offers a lot of other stuff directly via iTunes... don't ask me details, all I know is that there are a lot of colourful buttons to press and then nice things happen on the screen, some of which cost money. I don't think hubby entirely trusts me in this, he enabled the kid protection allowing shopping access only via password. Hmmm...

So now we watch TED talks on the telly. You should really try that with the one where they bring a real human brain on stage with the spinal cord still attached... gives a whole new dimension to Christmas morning.

I had seen Jill Bolte Taylor's talk about a 'stroke of insigth' before on the computer, but I have to say that it is quite different on the big screen. It now becomes a family experience and being able to talk about it afterwards brings new aspects to the talk. For this particular one this means, that I want to know more about the matter. If I could understand better how these two sides of the brain work together and if indeed my suspicion would be right that hormones are causing havoc there, that might explain why sometimes I feel so bloody unfocused. This is a Christmas pressie that hasn't been invented yet: The iFocus!

Merry Christmas, Dears!
Love

Life is a Biscuit

2011-10-23T18:29:00.000+01:00

This is a cookie to my American friends. A cookie however, is a typical American species, rather big and sturdy; teeth breaking at times. A biscuit is the more fragile relative from the European continent, rather delicate and pretty. I guess if life were a cookie it might be easier to live, but maybe more boring as well.

So imagine at the beginning of your life, sitting bang in the middle of your perfectly shaped biscuit, nice and round, all smooth, and drifting through space. Soon you will get up to explore and you will find that it wobbles. Quickly drawing back to the middle you will learn where the centre of gravity lies - it is you! As you keep exploring your biscuit you will find that inviting people onto this platform will help to keep the balance. If you all move in perfect harmony, you all have the freedom to explore and to enjoy this life together. You might even discover that attaching other people’s biscuits to yours will make it sturdier.

Biscuits are not easily navigated, though. Harmony might come natural at times, but usually negotiations are asked for. Some people manage perfectly fine for all their lives and live happily ever after, but most of us will find that there are always people, with whom the balancing game does not work. They either move to fast, too slow or into the wrong direction, while others might not want to fix their biscuits too tightly or not tightly enough. Usually this does not happen out of deliberation. We just live at different speeds, were raised in different cultures and use language in different ways. Whatever the reason, all of a sudden the balancing act involves you doing the splits, a lot of running around and continuously being alert.

From all this commotion the first cracks appear in your biscuit... see, told you: Life would be better if it were a cookie, but 'No!' whoever was in charge decided to choose a biscuit.

... and it is getting worse. People will move away from the cracks and will reach the edge. There they will see interesting things: loads of other biscuits, interesting, pretty, cool or idyllic. The ones who daringly peer through the cracks see the same wonderful picture, and some of them may be tempted to risk the jump off the margins or through the crevice.

Drastic action is required, a wall needs to be built around the biscuit, cracks have to be fixed, and maybe it is a good idea to tie some people down.

... and out we get the pegs and the ties, and we hammer them into the ground, and often too late we realise that now it is us who is breaking the biscuit. But what can be done? We keep fixing and fixing. Some cracks we are able to mend lovingly, for others there is just no time and we paint over them.

... and so it goes for a while: short periods of relative happiness when we think that we nailed it are taking turns with frantic repair work, until one day we are exhausted and unhappy and wondering: What the heck am I doing? Life cannot be about building walls and fixing cracks.

... and more questions are whizzing through the brain: What happened to my lovely, pristine biscuit? Who is to blame? Could it have been avoided? What to do now?

The answers lie in the beginning: The centre of gravity is YOU! You and you alone will have to be the person to win back stability.

Oh, how often did I try to find the ones to blame? I had to learn that it was Me. I voluntarily did the fixing and building and running, nobody asked me to. People joined my life and without asking them or myself whether or not they were good for my biscuit, I accommodated their needs. I did not make clear the rules that apply for docking to my biscuit. I didn’t even know the rules, so how can I blame others.

The way forward is the simplest and the most difficult task at the same time.

The past needs to be the past. None of what is gone will come back, and hence assessing what is left is the first step to healing. The aim is the truth; no sugar coating, no excuses.

... and then comes the big thought experiment. The right questions have to be asked: Why did I do all the fixing? What am I scared of? As a matter of fact ‘What is the worst case scenario?’ What if I would let go? My biscuit might break – ‘Would I really mind?’, people might leave or fall off – ‘Would I feel guilt, or loss?’ ‘Do I want to desperately cling to people who don’t want to be with me? ... sitting on my fragment of biscuit drifting through space, ... time to think,... time for honesty, ... this fragment would be MY fragment, my responsibility and my freedom. How bad would the worst case scenario actually be? However painful the process: the answer to this question holds all the building blocks for honest negotiations.

... and then the work begins. Ever so carefully yet confidently a set of rules will have to be established. Balance can only be achieved by negotiation, either through talking and listening, or testing and observing, and although bits of the biscuit might break off as some people decide to leave, one might find that biscuits with edges are actually quite nice to be on. They show style, and experience; they are reliable and easy to dock to. One might even find that more people than expected would like to make an edgy biscuit their home.

My new motto: The first step to avoiding the worst of cases is to face it and to accept it as fate!

Male VS Female Cheating

2011-10-07T13:28:00.000+01:00

I don't know if this piece of wisdom is of any relevance, but after years of observation I can reveal: Men and women are cheating differently. Yep, they do!

The early stages of a cheat appear to be pretty similar, but...

See, there are only few scenarios out of which a cheat arises. There are the cheating characters, who just can't help it; it's their nature. They come in male and female and I didn't take those into account. As for the others, they usually live in long wearing relationships which either have become boring because none of the partners has evolved, or they have become imbalanced because only one of the partner evolved, or they have become speechless because both partners evolved but in different directions. I guess there are only very few people who make it through by either not getting boring, or by developing into the same direction.

For the cheat to happen it then is important that opportunities arise. This is when first indicators appear that there are differences in the cheating behavior of the sexes. There are the opportunity seeking characters, and there are the ones who just jump when the opportunity is there. We will find both types in male and female, I am however claiming, that females are quite good in creating opportunities in very subtle ways. It will look as if the opportunity was just arising but in reality a meticulously planned strategy was in place to make it happen. A strategy, that is well suited for the cheating male, who usually rather gormlessly stumbles into it.

The differences between the sexes become prominent when they get discovered and it is time to pick up the pieces.

The female cheater will be aiming for one of three outcomes:

Leave me all alone, I'd rather be without man (more often than one might think),
staying with the old relation,
staying with the new relation.

And although she might appear rather emotionally torn, she will consider her options very carefully. Opposed to common wisdom she rarely will go for what her heart, so full of love, will tell her. A change down the social ladder might only be considered when she herself has a quite good income. Although women are hoping to have found the prince of their dreams, they may have a hunch that this furnace of love will fade and that there is a high possibility that some time in the future they will be stuck in the same boredom or speechlessness again. Should it happen, one will want to be in a good position.

The aim however is always a clean cut. I have never heard a woman say: Oh, I love you all, can't I just pop in whenever my schedule allows?

This seems to be the male attitude in solving the cheating situation. History and other cultures ooze from stories about men with several women, and whenever the conversation turns to this subject the male eye starts to sparkle and a certain jealousy becomes obvious from their choice of words used in said conversation.

The male cheater aims for only one thing: Filling the gaps!

While the woman is holding on to the dream of the perfect partner (... and if she doesn't find it then rather 'no partner') the male has a lazier approach of just collecting women who complement each other.

There is a quote, no idea where it comes from, and it reads: 'A woman should be a lady when in the parlor, a cook when in the kitchen and a harlot when in the bedroom.' The fact alone that this quote exists, shows that women are seen in specific roles and it gives an indication that men quite like the idea of choosing three women if the one is not doing the job properly.

Men however are ... men. A female would not write a job description: 'Be a Casanova in bed, handsome and presentable on social occasions and useful to the household.' Although this is a fine description of her prince, she is quite realistic in her expectations. A woman usually is already quite happy to get 'one' out of the 'three', while doing her best to display the full set of roles expected from her, to satisfy this imperfect specimen she agreed to marry.

What we can learn from that? 'Cheat more', 'Cheat less', 'Don't marry', 'Do marry', 'Have more orgies'... I don't know!

Why don't you tell me?

Just Thinkin'...

2011-05-26T08:28:00.000+01:00

Not having been thinking a lot recently, hence my silence on the blogs, but this one crops up again and again:

What's a luxury?

I've been shopping a lot lately... yes, I know: a confession video is long overdue... and yes, a lot of the stuff I don't really need, so I can happily admit to the luxury crime.

But take my cleaner! For some reason I myself still think I shouldn't have one. I am a healthy woman fully capable of removing my own dirt, and potentially I would even have the time for it - but I don't want to!

I want to spend my time differently. I want to explore things, I want to write, I want to meet people and get inspired to explore even more things, and I want to meet people to inspire them - and I am really good at that. A cleaner gives me all these things. So why the heck do I have to feel guilty?

My cleaner is a star, she wasn't as blessed with an education enabling her to do something else. Well, she actually worked in health care but can't do that anymore because it broke her back. Cleaning houses allows her to work at her own pace and she likes to be in the service sector.

So she is happy and I am happy and at the same time we both do our business.

Could it be that luxury is a term coined out of envy? Is anything that makes me happy or makes my life easier a luxury, just because I have the money to pay for it?

I call driving a Merc or having a yacht a luxury; not cooking but going out for food I find luxurious... but only because these things are not for me: I wouldn't want to do it and because for me it's not worth the money.

Now my luxury lifestyle has enabled me to find a new aim in life. All the explorations and networking eventually is going to pay off in proper currency: I enrolled in a course to become 'Personal Trainer'. I have a new career prospect while my dear cleaner earned herself the money to pay for the visa and the trip from the Philippines for her daughter.

Long live luxury!

Murphy is still biting

2011-04-08T09:24:00.000+01:00

This is a rant! I am not sure if I am pre-menstrual or menopausal, our English summer is taking place during this very week, and I have not seen a bloody bit of it, collecting overtime at work instead, and my bodybuilding competition is getting closer and I am in panic because I just can't focus on it. I had another week during which I didn't train. Great!

Well Mr Murphy claims that everything that can go wrong will go wrong, for me it is more: Pile on her shoulders as much as you can! Maybe it's Murphy's brother biting me.

I have set myself all those challenges, because my environment at home and work was calm and comforting for such sort of thing, and hence I organised my life accordingly. It seemed to be good timing to push the envelope a bit more and to find out where my limits are. Well, I learned that for sure: They are here and now!

See, everything was sorted and discussed at home, work was wonderfully boring and then, all of a sudden home and work changed drastically. I feel that I should be three people: A full time entertainment enthusiast, a full time business woman with a drive for a career and the will to work overtime for it, and the Rika who wants to write blogs, do photo shoots and bodybuilding competitions.

Does it always HAVE to be like that? Really? This is going on my nerves.

I had occasions like this twice before in my life. I had just braced myself to build something of my own, wanted to become a business woman in my own little company, even had visited courses on bloody boring accountancy - and then we moved to England. The second time round I wanted to become an artist/inventor/craftswoman and make that a business - and I got offered the BT-job that initially scared the hell out of me, so the idea died.

Although I am hoping that I can make the one or the other of my recent activities a business, the whole thing was meant to be a self improvement exercise. I wanted to learn some skills and gain a bit of confidence and most of all, for a change I wanted to practice patience and determination. For a change I wanted to be able to stick with something and not give up like the two times before.

It is so easy to say: 'Oh I moved', 'I got a job', ... and hence I give up. Nope, not this time!

Mr Murphy's brother is testing me big time, though. It could not just be the case that my husband would discover a new life coming June, when the bodybuilding competition is over, so that I could discover it together with him? No, apparently not, it had to happen last fall, just when I had to pull things together.

Apparently it had to happen last fall as well, that new tasks were offered to me at work. I could have said no, but they were interesting and it is nice to be asked. Others have to beg on her knees for good jobs... Those tasks have now reached a culmination point ... two month before the competition. Hmmm?!?!

See, each of these people needed to live my life are in me, and I love every single one of them, just not at the same time.

So, somebody please tell me : This determination thing - where should I focus it on? I feel like burning the candle from both ends at the moment. If I drop one... would I still be determined? Or do I have to pull through all of them to fulfil my initial challenge of self improvement... ah crumbs... let's hope it's just the hormones talking!

On that note:
Have a wonderful weekend!

A Columnist

2011-04-05T07:36:00.000+01:00

I started reading a book. Nothing unusual, one might think, but for me it is as I have not been reading in a long time: Too much other stuff to do - like writing.

So I thought: Then at least read a book about writing! I had started others of this kind before, but they reminded me of school and off they went into the rear end of the book shelf. This one is different. Although On Writing Well is written by a writer who is a teacher as well. He writes about other writers who do everything the opposite way he does, and is acknowledging those approaches as valid as his own. And that made me think about what kind of writer I might be.

A lot of the things he suggests I am already doing, although not confidently enough. So I feel in good company while learning my skill. But that does not explain what type of writer I am. And then, Monday morning, sorting my little chores for the day, mind floating, it occurred to me that 'I am a columnist'.

Yes, I know, I even have written a book with my columns in it. That is not what I mean. I am a columnist in my lifestyle as well. I always visualised my life as a scene from a sci-fi adventure movie. There is a huge opening in the ground, bottomless, and for some reason hot and glowing... it seems that I have a vivid imagination, I probably should attempt writing a novel. However! My task in life is to get to the other side of this nothingness.

I have observed people building little bits of land right to the cliff edge where they are standing. They do that by learning things which seem sensible at the time. They look for the bit of the cliff edge that suits them best and by staying with the subject and specialising they are building a solid bridge to the other side.

That's not me!

I have been looking for the right part of the cliff several times and my choices turned out to be very crumbly. Then I found an interest and pursued it for a while, building a column in the middle of the vastness. And on I went building column by column, some of them are a bit short, others a bit high. Some I was made building, and they seem to be a bit crumbly, too. Meanwhile I was walking up and down that cliff not getting anywhere, still hoping to find the perfect spot for a bridge. The bridge builders already were far ahead.

And now, in the last phase of my life, I realise that some of the columns stand rather densely, they are starting to become part of a whole. I can jump from one to the next, and from where I am standing I even can see the solid and the crumbly ones. I have options to choose from, while some bridge builders have hit crumbly ground and have to go back. Jumping is still a bigger risk than going steadily, but it is more fun, too!

So no wonder then, that I have become a columnist.

Unexpected Appreciation

2011-03-31T06:30:00.000+01:00

I am not sure if I will get this finished, as I messed up my wrist today while copying and pasting stuff from one form into another. Hence I am typing like a two year old who got hold of an old typewriter: let your hand fall with fingers stretched and hoping for a good random hit. Probably that should be the way to write anyway. I have a hunch, though, that after a while my neck will follow my wrist... oh well, others had greater hardship to bear for their art.

Talking of art: a lot of my thinking still evolves around photo shoots. Together with a new photo shoot proposal I got notice today that the DVD with the pictures of the last one is in the mail, and then another email dropped into my inbox asking for a shoot, too. This lady is in demand and this lady is flabbergasted due to the fact, that in parts she is in demand for reasons which are a bit beyond my understanding. OK, most of the guys like the red hair, the more that it poses a photography challenge - too much light on it and everything in its proximity looks red, too little and it looks dull - I can understand that. And I can understand that my cleavage has advantage points. Although the bosom part of it is rather limited, the muscles seem to make up for it in a good way.

One of the things I cannot comprehend, though, is that quite some attention is paid to the rear end. Oh, don't smirk... the interesting thing is, that it is not any old rear end, but mine, the very one that caused a myriad of tantrums and hysteric breakdowns which poor hubby had to endure, and it is the one which even got its very own article ... and not because it is so gorgeously pretty...

The other thing is the pale skin. I thought people were just kind when they used the term 'fair', my dad used to call it 'cheesecake'. In front of the camera this all of sudden becomes a desirable feature, and from the pictures I can tell: It works.

Wow!

This is a photo therapy of a completely different kind. It is therapeutic to watch myself through the eyes of a photographer, and all of a sudden I do not see paleness but reflecting light and contrast. It is an approach to amending the body image which I can only recommend. I find it a wee bit difficult,though, to apply this method to the rear.

Getting Shot again!

2011-03-25T07:37:00.000Z

I need more clothes! If I keep doing those photo shoots I definitely need more clothes. The very first shoot with Babul saw me in clothes which I am not that keen on anymore. When I started 'Project Rika' I was so disappointed to find out that my colour scheme basically was 'dirty', or 'earthy' how it is called, to give the fact that bright colours are not suitable a positive note. See, that is another confidence thing: These days I don't care a ...!

Of course I would not go into a business meeting of undertakers wearing an outfit that would make their eyes water, although that might even be the right thing to do for various reasons... However, I know all too well that in certain circumstances one has to play with the rules. Want money from a banker? Play their game and wear sophisticated!

All those years back I really learned my lessons. I know my shapes and I know the colours that go for which occasions. And like in any other subject: Once you've learned your basics you are allowed to push the envelope and start breaking the rules. OK, it really does help that I don't have to win a reputation ... or a good reputation, that is... anymore, hence I actually have places to which to wear all those colourful things I buy; not just for photo shoots.

And now I need more!

It is starting to become a task to determine which outfits to give to which photographer. Well, Babul is a glamour guy, that is fairly easy as usually not a lot of clothing is involved. The type of clothing to use in order to not end up in the page 3 department is difficult to find, though. Then there is Chris; well, again not a problem. I need to buy a decent posing bikini anyway, which should suit him well for bodybuilding photography. Matt who did the lovely burlesque/theatre style photos which I used as templates for Columnbina already booked the purple corset, asking for everything purple in my book... and Barry is in a 'moody/dramatic' phase which either asks for black or ... well... again... not a lot.

Hmmmm!? Is there a theme developing which goes into a direction of less clothing rather than more...? That could save me a lot of money.

However, at least I have black stuff now. At the beginnings of my journey, black was a forbidden fruit! Black is the colour of the undecided, the thing that always goes together, and which is not questioned in any situation, not even a summer ball. For quite some years I didn't have a single black item in my wardrobe and only a couple of years back it got introduced again, together with vibrant colours. And this will be today's theme: Everything colourful! I hope Rob will be happy with my choice.

Well, spring has arrived after all, Easter is approaching. It should fit the bill.

... and tomorrow I am off to Camden Market - I really need to do a travel blog about it, it is fabulous - and cross fingers I will burn another hole into hubby's back pocket by making the credit card smoke!

Give March some Relief

2011-03-15T07:49:00.000Z

It is such a wonderful feeling to be needed and cherrished, isn't it? I however never guessed that the company I work for could not survive without me. If all of a sudden the responsibility for thousands of people is pressing on ones shoulders it becomes a wee bit unbearable... Funnily enough, everybody else is feeling the same; so where is all that work coming from that needs to be done so urgently, as otherwise the company will get into utter disarray?

It is the most hated month of the year: March! End of Financial Year!

Everybody is exhausted from a long winter and everybody is in need of a bit of sunshine and cheerfulness, and then all the nitty-gritty bits about which nobody had cared all year round, need to be done by the 31st. Come 1st April, nobody will care a pound of sugar about it.

And now I am wondering if the people from Comic Relief thought: 'Awwww.... look at all those sad workforces, exhausted from a long winter and overworked, let's cheer them up! We should have a Red Nose Day!' It is half a year after Children in Need, and three month after Christmas. They might even be ready to give us their hard earned pennies for the fun we are providing.

Yeah, right!

See, my company decided to become a sponsor this year and set itself a target. Now, our managers seem to only know one way to reach targets - they set up score cards, meaning targets are broken down into smaller targets and dumped on the units below, and so on and so on. A standard mum would call that: Delegation! And if done right, none of the initial target will stay with the top level where it started, and all the rest is to be done by the bottom feeders of the system... that is me!

Well, to be fair I understand that substantial contributions have been made on the top level, accounting for the 'Relief' bit of 'Comic Relief'. People like me are responsible to provide the 'Comic' part of it, which given that we are in the month of March - see above - is the most difficult of all tasks.

Additionally our managers don't seem to be really good in maths, which worries me a bit. See, if one would have a target of let's say 1000 pounds but one has only 500 people in the company, and given that a standard donation might be £1, and even if the managers - which traditionally in a company are fewer people than the work forces, although it sometimes doesn't seem to look like it - even if they would add those 'substancial contributions', and given that there are people who would not donate at all... I think you are catching my drift, and even your 5 year old could do the math and see that one has to stretch to make ends meet.

What can I say: As usual, I got called into the game quite late to do a bit of fire fighting for a few untied ends, meaning units who didn't show their face yet. I count that as either good for my reputation - 'She is able to pull those things off' - or as bad for my reputation - 'She always has a bit of time around her hands'. Hmmm?!

However, the important point is that I am late! People already have been donating several times and I am supposed to get into their pockets...

So for next year I have a couple of suggestions:

Comic Relief people: Reconsider the date and do it in April. Ever heard of April fools? It even fits the scheme.
Companies: Let the work forces donate just the amounts they wish without making them harass each other, and for a change let your managers make fools out of themselves,...oh...?!

Still holding my ground!

2011-03-11T06:25:00.000Z

My day job is really trying hard to make me not pursue my personal matters, but I am not giving up just yet. So I am sitting in my car right now, scribbling in my little notebook that is supposed to take my brain snippets from the sewing course.

I have to say: Should this happen more often I really have to practice my handwriting. However, today I have to use every minute I can get hold of. So, what is it what I want to tell you...?

Nobody has bought my book during the past two days, but the days are getting longer. Not that length of the days would have anything to do with my book sales... just mentioned it as an observation of approaching spring, and in order to be positive. Eventually I am getting to the sewing course, taking place in the middle of nowhere, fairly quickly due to the better sight, to then sit in the parking lot scribbling in notebooks, writing material which later may be used in publications... I am going circles here...

... like the rather mushy matter in my head. I started off this morning at 5AM to make it in time for dance class at 8. Viennese Waltz... that must have given my brain the first unfortunate spin and then the day moved on to organising an event for Comic Relief which, if done under time pressure and when a thousand other task are awaiting attendance, is not a comical affair at all. In a short while I will be thrown into the world of fashion, threatened by the task of amending a cut pattern... meaning a lot of measuring... that's gonna be interesting. Well, the outcome of it will be, given the messed up interior of my head.

Gotta go dears, the master of scissors and needles is calling!

Ta ta

Still a Confidence Thing

2011-03-10T05:57:00.001Z

I thought publishing a book would be hard! Now I have to realise that taking the criticism for it is even harder. I realise that I am becoming utterly defensive... defensive is not good, defensive the way I feel it is the opposite of confident, defensive is counter productive.

So, let's look at the facts!

The book is completely self published,

it never saw a native speaker editing it, and hence it probably has as many mistakes as it has words.
it never saw a native speaker editing it, and hence it completely reflects the way I think, act and talk.

In mathematical terms this would mean that my thinking, acting, and talking is rather awkward. Hmm?! True!

Language wise this reflects in a persistent misuse of prepositions, mixing up tenses, and mixing up the phrase structure. I am sure that somewhere somebody has a collection of phrases in which I turned a serious matter into something utterly ridiculous by messing with the English language.

Does it matter? I don't think it does! At least not in this case.

I do admire people like Victoria Coren or Stephen Fry. Oh, the wit that comes from the precision with which words and grammar are used. I have to admit: I never will get to that quality. At least not in my lifetime. I only could achieve their standards by using an editor. But would this be the right choice, I wonder?

If I were to write a novel, in which the story line has to be crisp, the characters solid, their language precise according to the role they play... or if it were a documentary, aiming to be as depictive and focused as possible, then yes, surely.

My book is neither of those. I needed about two years to be able to classify it. I eventually came across a writer/lecturer who, in one of his articles, elaborated on what makes a good memoir. And then I knew, that's what it is. Every story is a momento, a recollection I wanted to keep safe, or a thought that I have been shifting through my little grey cells over and over again. Some of the stories, although it may not seem so, were born out of hard labour. I would have had to pay a shrink a lot of money for the same outcome. So I am asking: How would I ever be able to let an editor touch those stories? This person who would not know anything about my life, might rightly so ask me what I thought, and what I wanted to express, in order to find me a better phrase... to be honest... I wouldn't know the answer!

Once I had written about it, the problem was gone, I eventually could move on, I had gained another bit of freedom. I guess, that I am just am not willing to look back. Now that I have learned, through those very stories, how to keep my outlook forward, nothing will make me go back just for that little bit of compliance towards the English language.

So the question for me is not how to create the perfectly phrased book, but whether or not people understand what I am saying. An English colleague read the teaser and his instant response was: Oh, that's sweet! I can hear you talk when I read this. And when I explained my dilemma he responded: 'I do understand it perfectly fine!'

What else would I want to wish for?

An inspirational woman

2011-02-23T07:42:00.000Z

I have this piece of writing sitting around as a draft since a while, and after having elaborated on my opinion in regard to beauty yesterday, it feels just right to finish it now. I saw this woman for the first time in a drawing. A painter who I adore had used her as a model. I was so fascinated by the face that I investigated further, found her name and then Google exploded: Just try Carmen Dell'Orefice and google for images.

Why her? There are so many others who changed how we see the world, like Mother Teresa, Jane Goodall or Dian Fossey. I do admire them, I do get inspired by them, but I feel so small compared to what they have achieved. Never will I be able to reach their potential.

So, what is so different about this woman who is just a model, the most vivid depiction of superficial?

She is still there at age 79. She is making her living in a job where age matters, and she still is a supermodel. It shows that beauty is not just an outer layer. Grace is a word often used in context with her name.

See, at almost 50 I am starting to ask myself if I will still be able to achieve what I want. I have so many ideas and wishes and most of them rank around performances and creative stuff. However vain this may sound, I am longing for a bit of publicity, I'd like to cause a bit of a stir here and there. I didn't choose that as my life's dream from a shop shelf. It came to me quite naturally, and as things are now as they are, it would be quite useful to have a body in good working order with a certain appeal to go with it. And occasionally it feels like running out of time.

You may wonder why on earth I am aspiring to doing all this now, and not some decades ago when age wouldn't have been an issue. Well, interests change:

I will never forget when my mum asked me at age 10 or 12 if I would like to have a subscription of a fashion magazine as one of those traders were at our doorstep. She meant so well and I declined; I feel bad about it now. Money was short at our house and this offer was of an extraordinary treat. I even remember what I did when she asked. It was a searing hot summer and I was weeding the roses in our garden. I guess that I remember so well, shows how touched I was by this gesture, but I was so little into fashion that I declined nevertheless. And today I would kill for becoming a model or being able to design my own fashion... Will I be able to still achieve it?... Of course I will... If I really want to, I will! And this woman shows me that there doesn't have to be an age limit for any business!

And although she is very beautiful, and always was, this is not what makes her success. It is her charisma and her style which make her later pictures even much more powerful than the younger ones, and which have been radiating even from the painting I saw. It is confidence that wins the game for her, and this is not something one has, or has not. It can be gained! It is the confidence that inspires. Well, probably that is what I am actually after: If I could inspire only one person to achieve something they never thought possible... That would be a legacy, wouldn't it? And the age thing? Well, if we could take age out of the equation, then we would gain time. This woman shows that one is never too old to do anything. Only the sky is the limit!

How important is Beauty?

2011-02-22T08:29:00.000Z

A new TV show called Beauty & The Beast triggered a thought: How important is beauty to me?

The show pairs a pretty person from an industry promoting beauty with a person who is rather seriously deformed, either by genetic disorder or accident, to see how they discuss the matter. The show is actually quite well made and I was wondering how prejudiced I am.

So I imagined myself in an interview and being asked this question: How important is beauty to you?

And here is my, as usual, elaborate answer:

Beauty is important! It is important because that is how society works. And it does work like this in all cultures. The beauty signals may be different, but they nevertheless are there. Beauty opens doors!

Beauty alone however does not work. A beautiful face combined with a nasty personality is usually quickly uncovered as a nasty personality... the beauty aspect vanishes. On the other hand, a friendly person who is lacking beauty, but has style and panache, and who is doing the best out of what is there, will eventually get the doors to open as well, and they will stay open.

Hence it seems that for a person it is more important to not just focus on beauty as the most obvious and visible asset, but to get to know ones assets altogether. True to the motto: Know your assets and use them to your best advantage.

Additionally it is important to be aware that assets have varying shelf lives. There are the ones which one is likely to keep, like smartness. Only in severe accidents or illnesses one might lose it and then one has problems of an altogether different kind.

There are the ones, like money, of which one should know how they got acquired, how they can be lost, and how they can be regained if one would wish to do so.

And then there are the ones one will lose for sure, like beauty. Age will kill it, and although age bears a particular beauty in itself, it is not of the kind that opens doors. There are no two ways about it, that there will be a time in life when cuteness will have left, and one might want to aspire having it replaced by something more durable by then. Trying to preserve it in desperation quite likely will lead to being a tragic figure... the examples in the media are plentiful.

So yes, beauty is important and if one has it, one should use it as long as it lasts. It however is as important to bank on other assets as well. The ones, who don't have beauty, will have to build those assets a bit earlier in life, which might actually give them an advantage over the formerly beautiful faces later in life.

Life is not fair? Well, sometimes it is!

I learned something...

2011-02-21T08:19:00.000Z

... yes, I think I did!

See, there are those people out there, who seems to get everything done, they dance through life, everything seems to be so effortless, and success always falls into their lap. How do they do that?

The other day I got a glimpse of it: I had put some iron into the fire from which the prospect developped to do some things I always wanted to do,and then they all happened at the same time. Typical: For once I don't have to work hard to find the opportunities, and then everything is cramped into just a few month. And for once I didn't use this as an excuse to not get started and jumped on the chances provided.

Then panic kicked in: Deadline for book approaching much faster than expected, sewing course turning out to be so interesting that one wouldn't want to miss a stitch and starting to do homework, while book illustrations were screaming for attention; dance class taking up twice the number of hours due to actually not being to bad at it and wanting to stay ahead of the game, while... see above... and then the all demanding training for the bodybuilding competition, for which I still don't have a clue how to pose, let alone doing a one minute posing routine to music, plus getting pricked for vaccinations ever so often as the icing of the cake will be a trip to Sumatra.

All very nice things to have ahaed, but there was an entire decade of nothing really substantial happening... well, we bought the house back then, that was exciting, but after I decided to become a secretary life became somewhat was less thrilling. And now all those things are happening, bearing the prospect of even more excitement in the future, given that this phase would be completed successfully.

So, I decided to get a cold. Feeling rather under the weather I dragged myself to dance class, hoping that hubbys strong shoulders would compensate for my weak legs. And then the amazing thing happened: One of the biggest of my problems got solved!

In the attempt of getting a rest I started chatting with the trainer, mentioned the upcoming competition and my dilema with the choreography and there it was: One of her team had done that before. He choreographed a routine for a bodybuilder about three years ago. Being utterly thrilled about this door opening in front of me, I didn't ask if she won, though!

However, sometimes it's worthwhile to stop bothering and just let things flow. Successful people seem to just trust that things will happen if they are worthwhile to happen, they put loads of irons into the fire and when one is ready to be hit by the hammer, then they go for it.

We will know in a 3 month time, whether or not I will be blessed by success ... but who knows? We might not know until much later,even. Whatever the outcome, I will have met new people, and they will know me. I will have new aliances in this networking game, as will they. Even in case of a failure I might win in the end, as this experience might be just a little piece in a much bigger puzzle which I don't even know yet that I am playing it!

Politeness backfiring

2011-02-02T06:13:00.003Z

Why can politeness be so annoying at times? I always thought politeness is a set of rules to make social life easier. One knows how to greet, how to farewell, to talk, to walk, to eat, without offending others. Right?

Nope, actually!

The key word is 'social life'; enter a different society and completely other things are considered to be polite. Hence looking from a different angle, then this implies that those rules of politeness discriminate against individuals who behave differently.

Due to my recent Bodybuilding challenge I have entered this sensitive territory of 'food stuffs'. I have to very carefully monitor what I eat and when I eat it. So for example I do go to restaurants which have a variety of different food and if I have a days notice, as I then can plan for it. If I am invited to pizza I will join the party for the social aspect, but not eat, as every single ingredient in a pizza is off limits for me. I am entirely happy with it as I am not missing anything. I do not feel like being on a diet, as I am eating balanced and would actually love to eat like this for good. There is just that tiny little hiccup: I am not the norm.

Politeness dictates that the host has to offer food; it dictates as well that the guest has to take it!

In not eating I am breaking this rule and an explanation is requested. This is fair enough, I started the game and I am willing to do my bit to remedy the situation.

This however is where my ranting actually begins: In my experience I not only have to provide an explanation, I have to take the mickey out of myself, I have to put on a show to entertain everybody with my ridiculous ideas, I have to be prepared to go through questioning similar to inquisition, and even after I have done all that, food and drink is offered to me in regular intervals so that I have to feel ridiculed over and over again.

If I would not eat for religious reasons, none of that would happen. One does not touch religion, does one? The politeness rule 'do not offend or tease religious people' trumps over the rule 'one must offer food'. Some years ago vegetarians or vegans had similar problems. Since this type of diet became fashionable and has created it's own society the rules have changed. Unfortunately there is no trump rule for people on a personal challenge.

The interesting thing is that generally I am getting admired for setting myself a task, people are claiming to support me, but as soon as I am touching social convention all this is forgotten. I would like people to understand that politeness is a good thing, but that it has the power to discriminate if not used sensibly. The polite thing would be, to break the rules!

Beliefs

2011-01-21T07:11:00.000Z

Am I religious?

NO! I am certainly not!

I worked hard to not be. There however is this question that keeps cropping up:

What will I leave behind?

It may be vanity that I want to leave a legacy, and not just a material one. There are however so many things which people do, indicating that they feel the same. And that keeps me wondering if firstly, that might be a rather natural thing to wish for and secondly, if that is not basically the main thing about religion? And what is religion, faith, belief, anyway? And why are there so many words for basically the same thing? Do people want to destinct themselves, like spiritual belief is religious, political belief is not, a leap of faith can be anything...?

Those are concepts much too big for my little brain. Philosophers have been fighting about those since man came into existance and started thinking. And yes: I said 'fighting'! Haven't so many wars started with: If we don't defend what we have - estate, culture, beliefs - how can we then leave something behind, where is our legacy? We all want to be referred to as 'our ancesters' by future generations.

So by thinking about my legacy, I may have committed to some sort of belief system. And be it my own... which might, would it be joined by enough other like minded souls, well be a religion... Maybe it's as easy as that!

And what do I belive in? Similarities, understanding, common sense, that sharing can provide 'the whole' for everybody rather than dividing into parts. And in regard to the legacy thing? I believe in the atoms and molecules I am built of. The thought that I will be rotting away one day and that a tree might find me utterly nutritious is rather reassuring. It means that the world will go round without me in it. And if before that happens my corpse should be found worthy enough to take bits and pieces from it to benefit somebody else, it would make me proud. Well, it would if I were there, but you know what I mean...

The 'me' I am looking at in the mirror every morning is nothing but borrowed molecules from nature:

Let's use it as efficiently as possible,

Let's keep it in good working order, and

Let's join the Organ Donor Register

I did!

Boycotting Sugar

2011-01-06T07:16:00.000Z

I am giving up sugar - again!

I am definitely not a creature of routine. However well I feel with a certain lifestyle, I just like to get tempted into treating myself. This treat always is a short lived pleasure, and in regard to sugar, it always makes me addicted. So I am back to The Big Sugar Experiment, the 3rd or 4th time or so, since I invented it. But does it matter that I fail once in a while?

Not really, I am telling myself. Well, I do age a bit more every time and it gets more and more difficult to keep the sagging pouches around the chin, knees and belly at check, but when having reached the limit in grumpy sluggishness, the sugar experiment is my trusty friend that never fails to bring me back to life within a week.

I now have included white bread as well. I am baking my own bread from rye and spelt, but if I don't have it available I am resorting to other dark wholemeal breads rather then the yummy cheese rolls. Firstly, I found that white flour has a similar impact like sugar... might there be sugar in it? Secondly, I am eating it greedily and fast and hence too much of it before I realise that I actually have overeaten, and it doesn't bring me far through the day; I am getting hungry so quickly again usually followed by a graving for sweets. So for now I am sticking with the old rough bread.

Well, I am in a position to report success already! After just a few days I do look and feel leaner, although there is no change on the scale or the ring above the hips that can be pinched between fingers. It just so feels as if everything that got a bit deranged within that belly-blob now has found it's way back into the proper position. Yay!

A nice side effect is that at one point the one or the other pound will come off as well, and not just because of saving calories, but because the lethargy has gone, and one voluntarily moves about more. USG - Here I come!

Back to normal

2011-01-04T07:19:00.000Z

I don't think it is coincidence that a lot of the 'Grumpy Old...' series are broadcast during the Christmas break. Although it is rather nice to meet some people and to have the one or the other party, I think it's the word 'break' or 'holiday' that is deceiving. Those days never feel like holidays for me because the weather is bad and I feel trapped inside the house, hence all the plans to get stuff done within the house, which usually doesn't work out either.

This time it was a migraine stealing the last few precious days away. You know how grumpy I get when I can't write, but looking at a computer screen was not an option, and house work wasn't either. All that moving about and bending head over to sort things into cupboards and shelves... not good!

So I was hanging in front of the telly listening to a range of Agatha Christie crimes which I already knew. Thank God for bad TV programs on that occasion, as this gave me the opportunity to keep my eyes closed and still being able to follow. It however gave me the opportunity to listen to all the adverts as well, and I remembered that I had come across a certain phenomenon before: Weight loss adverts! They always crop up after new year tapping into the 'New Year resolution' mood of people trying to make a quick buck.

Despite my mushy brain I couldn't help but notice a change though, the trend goes towards even less responsibility needed from the buyer, plus a more long term dependency on the product. Whereas three years ago the adverts focused on devices which supposedly help you measure and control your body weight, like body fat scales, they now are entirely replaced by organisations telling you exactly what to eat. Weight Watchers & Co are BIG, I'm telling you. I admit their stuff is practical as there are tons of lists and rules readily available, and with help of computers it is easy to find the information needed. I am just wondering if the amount of money is worth it, given that one could have it for free. I talked to my niece who at age 20 entered WW and who liked it... the lazy girl. She told me that all you have to do is to stick to the number of points you are allowed to eat per day and follow the rules on how to combine foods the right way. Interestingly enough the number of points is 20, while the number of calories an average woman can eat is 2000. Did the WW people just divide those by 100 and expensively sell that as a new scheme, I wonder?

Well, I have to go into my kitchen, weigh the recipes I cook and divide by the number of portions I just created, in order to know how much each dish will set me back. That is a one off process which I do for my favourite recipes and which probably cost me an additional 20 minutes. WW already did that for their customers, which is handy but takes the learning out of their brains and hence the responsibility off their shoulders. A business concept only works if customers are kept dependant on the product, right?

And now the next level is reached: Get your diet food delivered to the house. There is one company pushing this idea into every UK household via telly ads, but when I googled 'diet food delivery service' Google almost exploded. Wow! I am in the wrong business. I was still stuck in the times of 'Meals on Wheels' for elderly people who had enough money to afford those soggy potatoes with instant sauce drenched mince meat.

Actually, the dishes in the adverts don't look any better, although the one or the other slice of alibi carrot is sprinkled in. Who in their right mind would actually believe that something cooked in an industrial kitchen, driven around from house to house until eventually your portion gets to your door step, and that then is to be re-heated could be of the same quality that you would cook fresh at home?

Oh my, nothing has changed, has it? So things are truly back to normal then. Happy New Year!

Happy New Year 2011

2010-12-31T13:48:00.000Z

... just organised.

Well, it's established now that we still know how to throw a party and my theory about age, lifestyle and timing issues has been put to the test last night.

All the conditions were right, at least for my side: It's the holidays so I am well rested, it was a planned party so I was prepared. Night owl and sleep organised hubby was rested anyway, only our young movie crazed friend didn't have time off work and since she is still maintaining her student lifestyle the good girl had a few dips in her stamina.

Raclette - Letting people cook their own food!

The party started at 7PM and we had planned for a few experiments so it was expected to go on for a while, what I didn't expect was clock showing 5:40 in the morning when I went to bed. I was a very awake happy bunny which could have gone on and on. At one point I was asked by hubby to shut up and let the poor people leave as said dear friend showed severe black rings under her eyes. Whoops!

So preparation does work, and to have a partner in crime makes things more fun. After so many years together hubby and I have developed our roles so intuitively that even the cleaning up is almost done already. And our experiments worked. We made a Feuerzangenbowle. It is a rum drenched, mulled wine flambé which inspired the only German Cult movie that ever existed. It almost has the status of Rocky Horror Picture Show, and hence needed urgent following-up on. Some ten years ago hubby insisted he didn't like mulled wine and hence the device to prepare this spectacle of a drink was left back in Germany, silly us! Who would have thought that taste changes and one would need it again.

A profane cooking pot with steam inset had to do, the sugar cone was replaced by a pile of sugar cubes, with a bit of luck a 57% rum was secured from an off licence shop - less would not burn - and topped up by a leftover of 80% Stroh rum which has a wonderful aroma, and the faint recollection of the ancient recipe consisting of oranges, lemon, cinnamon, clove and cardamom was bang on. And so we held a match to it and it worked! That smell, the blue flames, the burning ladle for adding more rum to keep the sugar burning and caramelising... bliss. Next year we definitely will have the proper gear!

Happy New Year 2010 to all of you!

Hedgehogging

2010-12-29T12:28:00.009Z

I don't know how the English call these days located at the no-man's-land of time, in German they are named 'between years', and I think it describes it perfectly fine. Christmas is still old year, but those few days leading up to New Years Eve don't count for anything really. And that is the reason why I don't particularly like the winter break. It feels like insomnia. One has a wonderful long night of sleep ahead, and one knows that if one could sleep, one would wake up a very happy bunny, but then there are those restless periods, and the thought: If I sleep now I have still 6 hours, that's still good, isn't it? Well, now it's only 5 hours ... I really have to sleep now...

The Christmas holidays are the same. 10 Days! Bliss! I could get heaps of stuff done, especially that we are skipping Christmas - and then it sort of never happens.

Since the dawn of time I have this weird idea of hedgehogging. Hedgehogging is not just hibernation, it is hibernation with curling into a ball and raising all the defenses. I dearly love my family and friends, but I have this dream of not seeing and hearing anything of anybody, with the computer being my only channel to the outside world. Computer is non-intrusive, it doesn't ring and I don't have to respond instantly, hence I am allowed to slow down my brain. To open an email is like opening a parcel to me. I choose the time, I have my cuppa ready, I zoom into the right frame of mind for that person and then I enjoy. Telephone calls: they never come at a convenient time. The rule in the olden days: Don't call before 9AM (breakfast), between 12 and 1PM (lunch) and after 8PM (news at the telly) don't apply for me. I have an irregular lifestyle, I love it when I get an SMS with an appointment request for a phone call which I then may or may not respond to.

Oh well, I could just not take the call, but then hubby will, passing the phone on while barging into a precious thought which I just tried to note down and which now is fleeing. Another thing are short notice party invitations. Since everybody has time to kill between years all those 'let's get together for a nibble' parties are cropping up. Very dearly meant, but not for the woman whose only thought is hibernation.

I know: Christmas is not a good time to wish for such a thing with everybody trying hard to achieve exactly the opposite, but it is the only time of the year when I can get 10 days off with just three days of annual leave. So I keep trying without being truly successful, yet.

It all starts at Christmas Eve: Shops are closed Christmas day, so let's buy a few things on Christmas eve and tidy the house at least a bit. One day down!

Christmas day... a gazillion telephone calls, writing Christmas emails, fighting of dinner invitations, friend coming over for afternoon tea and some facebook and telly. A good day actually, a lot of human interaction out of the way, that looks promising for the rest of the time.

Boxing day, self chosen trip to town. Hubby wants to buy his Christmas present and a bit of fresh air doesn't hurt. Three days down.

27th dinner invitation to a restaurant.

28th eventually a day on my own. Hubby is still chasing his Christmas gift and a few other gadgets, and hence went out... Then, several SMS, emails and phone calls asking for advice, mum calling... crisis, hence fair enough... I lost track of my article and thanks to blogger's auto-save (how I love blogger) at least it was not lost. Altogether not the calm day I had hoped for, but at least sorted the charity money and some wardrobes...

29th, today: Running late but at least got an idea for a good rant. The rest of the day is for planning a dinner party of my own, it's a tradition that we have it on the 30th and it is planned in... if only the other days would be entirely mine...

30th, I will like it as I like cooking, laying tables and so on. So, no hibernation but a day played by my rules.

31st, tidying house. 7 days down!

That leaves me with a prospect of three days to get everything done that I wanted to do. Like cleaning the fish tank and the aviary, preparing my book for publishing, planning for a photo shoot for illustrations, doing a few illustrations already, cut music for my posing routine, probably start practising a bit, shooting a 'Jeans Tutorial' for ILP. Well, that's possible in 10 days but not in three, and now I am getting into this insomnia-like state of: If I would do that now, then I would at least, but then I haven't..., should I rather..., no probably not a good idea,... sh... getting a headache now...

Well, it at least it only cost me three days of leave! Let's look forward to a break around Easter... Argh...

Everything Out!

2010-12-21T10:14:00.000Z

... that doesn't pay rent.

During the latest Christmas dinner a friend, infamously known for his provocative questions, asked me: 'How do you fight?' Hubby, sitting next to me spontaneously answered 'Yes' while I, as spontaneously, answered 'We don't!'.

Given the slight grammatical slip in the response, I have to add that hubby never was able to filter important information out of the noise as it occurs when many people chatter like geese. Nevertheless, I was a bit concerned about the state of our marriage given the discrepancy of response to such an important question. So very gently, as if reminding a family member with a degenerative brain disease, I said: But darling, we never fight...?!

He looked at me like waking up and as spontaneously as before he said: 'Oh, thought he said "fart". We do that!' Heavily nodding his head.

Again, I was a bit concerned about the state of our marriage, but at least the conversation had moved on to a different subject which however turned out to be as interesting for said friend as the previous one. So now we are entering a somewhat dangerous terrain of perception, reality, and possible embarrassment. The friend claims that for a long time he truly believed that women were not capable of farting.... how sweet, he thought we were like angels! But believe you me, we are very airy creatures of a different kind. We are just a bit more subtle then the usual male, and we usually have better fine motor skills - let's not get side tracked by the question why that might be - and move on to revealing my very personal view on the matter.

Yes, I admit it: I used to be sneaky. One still has to choose locations carefully, though. Crowds are better than small numbers of people, especially when one can move about a bit. In the gym one either needs to be alone on a machine and looking very grim when working out so nobody dares approaching, or one should position oneself close to a group of big blokes, nobody will ever suspect the lady. But the ultimate fart location is the elevator, don't need to explain that, do I?

Noise control however is a must and I had gained mastership. My mum never managed to keep silent and used to jump up and run out of the room ever so often. So the incentive was high to get the hang of it. Imagine my surprise when I operated my finest moves in public and all of a sudden ... Pheeet! Whoops! How? What? Why? I felt like our dog at home who left a fart while sleeping and jumped out of his bed like bitten by a tarantula, eyes wide open of fear of the strange invisible thing in his bed that makes noises. This public incident was the end of my sneaky career. I don't know what happened, but there was no going back.

This new situation needed an entirely new approach. Whereas I used to hate loud music in the gym I now am rather appreciative, and the favourite fart spot has become close to a loud speaker, preferably with big blokes around. And negotiations with the husband became necessary. Previously we were rather considerate to each other, but there is nothing worse than stomach cramps from those bloody healthy veggie meals. Options are to interrupt the movie, leave the comfy arm chair and blanket behind to visit the only room truly appropriate for the task, or to just let go. You now know the outcome of those negotiations, which brings me back to the state of my marriage: Bloody brilliant, actually! And No! We really do not fight!

Is it Murphy?

2010-12-16T07:22:00.000Z

Oh my goodness, Murphy's law even has its own website. For about half a year now I have my own version of it:

Since I decided to do the Bodybuilding competition I had more restaurant invitations and food temptations than in the past 5 years together.

It is truly incredible. We used to very rarely go out for meals - couch potato would be the appropriate term. Once I decided to do something that would give me the figure of a young woman - how wonderful! - and that would need all the determination possible in regard to food control - how frightening! - we all of a sudden started to travel and to develop a social life, including all the associated restaurant visits and food challenges.

Now, that half of the time until due date has passed and only 29 weeks are left over to reach my goal, I find myself in the worst week of all. Two Christmas lunches, a night out with friends, and a Christmas cake party all in one week.

So the thought jumped my mind that I might as well get something good out of it and to promote my blogs. After all I am meeting a lot of people on those occasions, and now that I got my new business cards... and then I forgot to take them with me. Hmmm! So I at least tried to show off vocally and bragged exhaustively about my 12 blogs when one guy asked... Why are you running "12!" blogs, and before I even could think about it another one said: To avoid the unlucky 13!

Ha, see! Murphy won't get me in this one!

Advantages of X-mas lunch

2010-12-15T08:11:00.000Z

... over X-mas dinner, or 'When is a gathering a meeting?'

See, at work we have these Christmas outings with our teams and until last year I was having dinners. Dinner sounds important and sophisticated, lunch is merely a quick bite, or so I thought. There are three advantages of lunches which jump to mind instantly. Firstly, the organisers of a lunch will avoid the discussion of whether or not spouses are invited, secondly, one doesn't have to see for a babysitter and thirdly, one actually gets the benefit of a half day off if the meal is booked for the end of the lunch serving period, stretched nicely with coffee and chat, to then be moved seamlessly into the pub.

The new team with which I went yesterday have researched the matter for a few years now and have developed it's execution to perfection. The location was Salthouse Harbour Hotel in Ipswich, where the atmosphere is beautiful, the food is delicious and the wifi for free. No, I of course didn't use it during dinner, but they have this lovely coffee place with plain view of the waterfront where I like to take my coffee breaks from the heavy work of shopping and which was the place where I did my first flight into the internet cloud. This is the perfect place to wait for the rest of the party to arrive.

Feeling nicely fed after a pleasant lunch I was prepared to go home and to work a bit more... and then we turned right... the car park is left... and then we walked a little bit... and then we turned right again, up the stairs and found ourselves in front of the bar of Isaacs. Did I say half a day off? What followed was about six hours of hard work! I learned about weird feet and hands of my colleagues, which bones were once broken, revealed that for the bodybuilding competition I will have to wear a tiny bikini, and we of course briefed each other some work related stuff. Great thing about Isaacs is that it has secluded corners. Eventually we had an entire room for ourselves which was actually big enough to fit us all in. Tomorrow we will be back to the boss's little office, cold and without drinks served and we will discuss the same all over again - the work stuff, not the feet, only then it will be called a meeting.

Unusually enough I arrived back home later then hubby who was at the movies, and hence I will cut it short now, I have a few chores to attend to which were scheduled for yesterday afternoon, and then work is calling...

A gap in the flow

2010-12-10T08:46:00.001Z

I need a butler, or one of those boxes which didn't make it as an invention at the 'Lion's Den'. It's a box which is to be positioned in front of the house so that the postman can get to it, which is big enough to receive rather big parcels, and which has a lock that only the postman and oneself can open. Come to think of it: Neither the floor lamps nor the protein powder would fit into any box... it would have to be the butler.

Oh.... it's horrible! I love Internet shopping and as soon as I press the button I am starting to get nervous. Tracking the order, remembering which company is using which delivery service, estimating when they might be coming round to our house. Some are bothering my neighbour who is so kind to substitute for a butler, some just shove it through the cat flap, while others are very strict and only leave parcels in a specified place on demand.

What am I going to do? Most of the depots are at the other end of town, it would have been nicer to go TO town for shopping, meeting girl friend for a coffee and having a good time meanwhile. Trouble is that most of the stuff is not available in town, and rather heavy to carry.

There is a new business idea! We need local networks of homeworkers. People who are chained to their houses for a good reason and who have a big garage... a big empty garage - that could be the crux of the project, I don't know anybody with an empty garage... oh well, they could make a bit of extra money from taking on the parcels of us buzzing around types, and even could charge a bit extra for out of hour retrieval of the goodies. I would be happy to pay for it, it's still cheaper than a butler.

Not a Cosmopolitan Gal

2010-12-02T06:07:00.000Z

The other day I had one of my afternoons off. Not just off work, but off everything. For me that means an afternoon out in town, not talking to anyone, magazine, coffee place, and since a few weeks, my little netbook as well. The woman never knows when inspiration might strike and an article wants to get out; and since I have gained a new freedom in that respect, my handbag got bigger to accommodate this technical little gadget.

On arrival at the coffee place however genius hadn't struck yet so a decision was made in favour of the purchase of a magazine. Easier said than done: I would love to carry the label 'Cosmopolitan Girl' - it sounds so posh, I like the drink... but the magazine is rather, well... I think it's crap. Everything is about relationship advice and silly multiple choice tests. I rather like InStyle magazine which has a focus on fashion. This is more my kind of research, but... was sold out. So in the end it was a Vogue, which is sort of 'one level up'. Everything in there is a bit more on the pricey end and the fashion is nice to look at but often not very wearable. Well, for an afternoon out, it should be just fine.

And now, please! Can anybody please tell me why women with a gap between their teeth are supposedly pretty? There seems to be a new supermodel on the loose, who looks like a pouting rabbit in a wig. Since I saw her on the front cover of the Vogue - and woohoo, that is something - I realise that she is everywhere now. Please guys, tell me that this is not what turns you on!

And others seem to follow. When I eventually got hold of my InStyle magazine I found gaps in the middle, gaps at the side, massive canines, and the overly full pout seems to be in fashion anyway. The girls look a bit like having fallen into a silicone syringe while parents could have saved themselves a lot of money for braces and given the child the opportunity to become a millionaires... although, if curviness runns in your family you might as well have her teeth fixed.

"Bed hair, a gorgeous gap-toothed smile and lots of red lipstick..."

Emotions!

2010-11-23T06:40:00.000Z

Festive Season - emotional times! So many expectations, hopes, and anticipation:

'It'll be the same as always, the grandmas will start fighting about who has the best recipe and spoil the Christmas dinner: I'm dreading it!'

'Hopefully this year dad and son will come to a ceasefire.'

'It'll be brilliant, the whole family is meeting for the first time in 3 years, everybody is coming.'

And then on the day, all the hell of emotions breaks loose. One has to keep the kids at bay, the family in peace, and the turkey from burning. With several generations in one house old anxieties break open all too quickly; mums are turned back into girls, and dads have to take on the role of boys again, while maintaining face towards their own children.

There is one emotion in particular that I believe is keeping us from growing up. It is preventing us from letting loose of things we can't change anyway, and achieving things we only dare dreaming of in a silent minute when nobody is around:

Embarrassment!

It is used in emotional blackmail, keeping us from doing the right things just because there are others who might point a finger if we fail. Embarrassment does not allow for fun, and it goes so far that we even bother whether or not strangers find our behaviour or flaws inappropriate. I have tried to get to the bottom of it and came up with other columns like 'What's the Worst to Happen?' and 'How Embarrassing!'. Still: What is this fear of being unpleasant to others? I might not have succeeded entirely, but I gained at least some insight: It seems that there are two levels of embarrassment.

Firstly, the one easier to deal with: Embarrassment on behalf of oneself. It is sort of a one-to-one relationship with the audience. It is the feeling one gets when having made a mistake or a fool out of oneself - the stinging feeling of somebody laughing about me, or the thought that somebody might consider me a silly cow.

This one can be negated by laughing. Start laughing before everybody else does. At the beginning it still hurts a bit, but it becomes a bit like stand-up comedy. The better one gets the more people will laugh about the joke, and not about the person anymore. Laughing frees the spirit, and one might dare doing new things, even anticipating failure and already preparing for the joke to have it ready and in place if needed.

Well, and then there is the second level. The one that isn't so easy to tackle, because it involves people one either loves or is dependant on. All of a sudden the relationship is a triangle. I'm talking about the 'Behave! You are embarrassing me!' situations. And sometimes the signs are even more subtle. We get to know the likes and the dislikes of the people around us very well, and in order to keep them happy and pleased we all to often tend to take pre-emptive action by NOT taking action. Not singing, not discussing certain issues, not asking a question, not putting our noses out there. Because all this makes us visible, and once we are visible our mistakes are as well.

As soon as there is a third party involved, nothing is easy anymore. Being told that I'm a silly cow - I can live with that! Listening in, while somebody close to me is told that I'm a silly cow and realising that this makes him/her look bad - That is hard to deal with!

Oneself is out of control, everything now depends on the other person. Situations like those display the quality of a relationship on a silver tray. The reaction - embarrassment, defence, acceptance, laughing it away, ignoring - will determine how much one will be able to rely on this person in the future. It is nipping into the essentials of social relationship: Trust!

So let us laugh a bit more then! Let us enjoy the company of others and take them as they are, it might come back to us the same way. If we all would laugh a bit more, the grandmas might even stop fighting, mums would be mums and dads would be dads, ceasefires might be possible and it might really be great if we would all come together - the only one losing out would be the turkey, though.

Live and Let Live

2010-11-11T06:40:00.001Z

Or: What we can learn from cats!

When our last cat died, a little old black cat from the neighbourhood smelled the vacancy and moved in. On getting in contact with the previous owner it turned out that he was around 10 years old and with her all his life. A slash in the ear and a missing thumb were strong indicators that he knew how to stand his ground, but now that he was getting older he didn’t like the lifestyle change his lady had taken upon her. So when he stumbled over our compost pile with mice, the conservatory with the aviary, and a door with a cat flap, he quickly made up his mind. We called him Vinny.

To his dismay a short time later a stray moved in. At first we thought our Vinny was a mad eater until we saw the white hair that was clinging to the armchair. And then we saw him; a big black and white tomcat. We called him Moritz.

He was a bit pushy, but Vinny didn’t seem to mind too much… plenty of space, plenty of resources to share and every opportunity to stay out of ones way. Or so he thought!

Once Moritz had established that he owned us things got worse. He wanted it all! There must have been a huge fight between the two. Although no visible injuries, Vinny all of a sudden fell into a depression, only ate very little, slept all day, didn’t want to go out anymore and was very grumpy; only wanting to be touched occasionally, but not indicating when this occasion might be. I still have several scars from his attacks.

Cats are not as un-social as one might think. They are even known to live in big cat communities and they have an elaborate system of codes which even work between different species. But Vinny didn’t make any contact for a long time.

So I took drastic action. The house got divided: Upstairs lives Vinny, with night time access to the garden via window, while Moritz lives downstairs with day time access to the garden via cat flap. After giving Vinny a lot of attention and care he recovered and is a lovely cuddle today, although he is still horrified to see Moritz. He usually leaves the house by the front door, strolls around a bit and comes back via his window, with a weird noise that sounds like a dove. Just to tell that he is around again.

The moral of the story?

Vinny had a bad experience and is happy to be back. He enjoys his little territory and when I show him his former kingdom he gets nervous and wants to get back to his castle. So he came out of this mess a little happy cat.

Moritz could have had it all; he could have had a whole house except one tiny spot of the size of a towel where a black little cat would sleep almost all the day. And he could have had it for free, but he didn’t even try. To feel safe he needed the whole territory, and the only way he knew to get it was to fight. Now he only has half a house and the nagging feeling that he missed out on something (he tries to sneak upstairs whenever possible).

I observe the same in people. There are the ones who easily share and often get in return more than they had before. And there are the ones who defend every single bit they have; and for a while they might get away with it; until they meet their master.

It’s the way resources are fought for in companies, the environment is exploited and actually – why wars break loose.

I sometimes ask myself how one can fight the territorial bullies without becoming one. Now I learned that there is hope!

We recently got a third player into the game. He is a funny little character. I just can’t find another word for his behaviour than: Persistent ignorance. A fluffy, white and black, placid chap with a collar and a bell. We call him Bimmel (it’s the German word for Jingle). He has only one interest: Food!

He is doing everything for food, especially the brand of dry food we have; even bracing himself and opposing Moritz. At first he ran whenever he saw him, but coming back quickly to see if there were food left. Now he is not even running far anymore. As Moritz refuses dry food he only guards it without eating, and is wondering why this guy is lurking around in safe distance only hissing from time to time, but otherwise being rather bored.

Vinny knows Bimmel as he is breaking in through Vinnie’s window at night, and these two are getting along very well. And out of this constellation I observed something interesting:

Late evening, Vinny sitting on top of the stairs to be let out. Unfortunately Moritz had decided for a stroll and was in front of the door. Usually Vinny would back off instantly and hide under the bed, but this time he heard Bimmel jingling along and somehow confused the two.

Moritz, totally confused whether to charge upstairs to get Vinny, well knowing that this would mean being told off by me, and having Bimmel standing in his back, not knowing whether or not if this one would give him a beating once he moved.

Bimmel came closer and closer as he had seen me, and I’m basically the same thing as food to him. However, I couldn’t move as I was trapped between the other two. One could tell that Moritz became shorter and shorter to cover his rear. When I opened the living room door for him to get onto his home turf, he very, very slowly edged himself in, visibly relieved that Bimmel didn’t attack.

It must have been the first time in his life that he shared a space with two other cats – and nothing bad had happened. I fed him first and cuddled and praised him, and one could hear the rock falling from his heart.

Vinny: He watched stunned! The first time he saw Moritz backing off, and he definitely found that very interesting.

And Bimmel? Sweet little Bimmel! In his innocent greedy fearlessness he showed the bully where the limits are. And he showed Vinny that there are methods to keep bullies at bay without becoming one. He eventually got his well deserved food - if just this silly jingle wouldn’t wake me every night!

Diaries and Deadlines

2010-11-10T07:37:00.002Z

I am sitting here not knowing what to write, feeling generally rather tired and it all falls into the same great picture: 'I am rubbish at travelling', or 'I am rubbish at everything with a deadline' for that matter.

Since new Incredible Ladies Project with its new freedom of publishing whenever I want, I thought: 'Put yourself to the test girl, you have a Diary blog now, so do diary'. For somebody who usually can't shut up it shouldn't be too difficult to write a little snippet every day, and now I am in this weird time warp that is 'the days before a deadline' and I am becoming a wee bit brain dead, unfocused and hyper at the same time. Travel deadlines are the worst. There are so many things that need doing on top of the usual chores and for some reason the closer I get to closing the door behind me the more they multiply.

I may blame it on my grandma. She planted this thing into my head that everything has to be pristine before one leaves the house - in order to be prepared for worst case scenario. This is embarrassing, but I actually do have this recollection of being told: 'Fresh socks and briefs before you leave the house. Imagine you get into an accident and your socks stink and your briefs are dirty'. It jumps into my head like a ghost every time I go on a trip.

I'd really love to come face to face with the person who thought that this would be a great educational story. No no, dear! You only have to change briefs when you leave the house, in case you get run over by a car!

A similar story goes with that the kitchen has to be tidy and the beds needs to be done to army standards. In case of a house fire! Duh? First thing the fireman probably would see is the bread crumbs on the table and thinking: Look at those messy people, the things I see in my job, have to tell wifey, so she can teach the kids to do it right.

I however seem to have lifted this to a completely new level. I feel this weird urge of having to tidy cupboards, do the garden, polish the shoes - and not just the ones I am going to take, ... And at the same time my body seems to rebel by developing runny noses, funny aches, huge hungers and a general urge for sleep. I know that all this will go away the moment I close the door behind me. So why on earth can't I get over myself and not do all those things as if there is no 'after' the deadline?

Well, it IS nice to come back into a tidy house after a trip, the more that there are suitcases spilling out their nasty contents messing everything up. And probably I just like to moan a bit... and it gives me something to write about, it now is even enough to become a column. That's it: Enough!

My Bucket List

2010-11-04T16:49:00.034Z

I never saw the movie. I didn't know that there was a movie when somebody on Twitter mentioned a bucket list. There must have been something about that one Tweet drifting in the big stream of posts on my screen. Twitter posts live and die with the rules of evolution - the dull birds don't get chosen as mates and hence won't propagate, as won't dull posts. I however still don't understand the appeal of the word bucket list. Since I didn't even know the term I eventually looked it up only to find that it is the title of a film in which a terminally ill patient creates a list of things he is supposed to do before he kicks the bucket.

Now I am wondering why, after quite a number of weeks, I cannot get this idea out of my head. It is an age old concept, so old that nobody even seems to know where it comes from. Ever heard of the saying 'A man should build a house, plant a tree, father a son and write a book before he dies'? Well, that's the oldest bucket list I know of. The English speaking part of the world makes it as old as Plato, who lived around 400 BC, whereas in the German Google world the word is put into the mouth of Martin Luther, a chap who reformed the church in Germany around the 1500s. The lazy buggers left out the book writing, though. I wonder why?

Although this is an imposed list for most of us, and apart from the fact that it is a rather ridiculous one, for the inventor of the list it surely was something very real and to strive for. So why is this idea starting to bug me now, and not 4o years ago during Sunday school when I might have come across this concept for the first time?

Maybe the older one gets, the more confident one gets as well, and actually dares doing stuff, or one knows more about the world and thus is getting more ideas of what the options are. So, without further ado, here is my list:

I want to give a proper speech to a big audience
I want to be on a stage
I would like to be able to dance well
I would like to be able to sing without being embarrassed
I want to have my own fashion line
I DO want to publish a book (the writing part is already done)
I would like to win a prize or an award for something I have worked for
I would like to have an exhibition with my own paintings and sculptures
I want to own my own business and
I want to be successful with it

Those things one should write down at the beginning of life, when one still has the time to actually make it. These days one already has to rush it a bit and might have to consider the one or the other shortcut.

Like with my last list item: I always wanted to

walk in the footsteps of the great Jane Goodall and do field studies with primates.

Well, one would want to have considered taking up a somewhat different education, wouldn't one? Computer Science is not exactly the right line of business, just a thought...

As a replacement I have now booked a holiday trip to Sumatra to encounter the jungle on a four day track with elephants, to learn a bit about what rangers do to survey the national parks, and maybe see Orangutans in the wild. Not entirely the same, but hopefully close enough. On one hand I am hoping for the most spectacular experience of my life, on the other I am hoping to find some flaws like insects, climate, food, lifestyle, anything that would help me to excuse my straying from the original list item. If I could truly say 'This was a fantastic experience, but I am glad that I didn't make it my 'life', then I could cross it off my list and be happy. But what if...

Maybe this list is not just about doing all those things before it is too late; maybe it is OK to do the shortcut versions just to find out whether or not I took the right choices in my life, maybe this list doesn't just have a checkbox but two columns for 'good choice', or' bad choice'.

And maybe it doesn't matter what the outcome is: All that matters is to know, and to make peace with it before it is too late!

How many gadgets does a girl need?

2010-10-25T07:38:00.012+01:00

In the olden days a woman needed a Kind (German for 'child'), these days a woman needs a Kindle (Amazon for 'eBook reader'). Those are very practical little devices which can live for a month without being charged, an utterly useful feature for a device when being owned by a scatterbrain, and apparently they can store more books than I ever would be able to read during the rest of my lifetime. This enables considerable reduction of handbag size and is very much appreciated. The turbo version which comes with its own reading light and some electronic wizardry allowing internet access in the remotest of regions - have to see it before I believe it - only weighs a bit over 500 grams, so it significantly reduces the amount of back pain from carrying several books on a long haul flight.

However, Kindles only work black and white, while the modern woman might want to have the colour experience of the all mighty internet and taking full advantage of a gazillion applications on her iPhone when attending to the sapid cappuccino at her favourite coffee place... or even when at home. I now once in a while am catching myself checking dates and emails on this pocket device while curling my hair rather than switching on the computer. But then...

See, there are those occasions for which the iPhone screen is just not big enough. One eventually is meeting the darling girl friend for a nice chat in town to plan the shopping trip ahead and for that, of course one needs online catalogs and maps. Aw... if I would have my iPad now! We could see things in proper detail and could easily decide whether or not it is worthwhile making our way across London to get hold of this lovely pair of heels.

At the end of the day after having exhausted ones budgets, when all the shopping is done and one is on the journey home, still too hyped up to be able to concentrate on reading, with all those wonderful thoughts sitting in the brain... wouldn't it be lovely to just quickly update the blog and to let the world know what a wonderful day one had? The last of the evening sun comes shining right from behind while the train is rattling along, mind is floating... fingers aren't.

The beautiful shiny screen of the iPad which is so appreciated when watching movie trailers and catalogs is really rather useless with light shining onto it and the admittedly rather big keys of the keyboard are nevertheless painted on the screen. Every shaking and rattling of the train makes the fingers slip, typing blind is not an option. Now it would be wonderful to have my pretty, blue, little netbook at hand. How easily would I have transmitted all my thoughts to the world.

In the meantime the initially shrunk handbag has grown to a backpack while my carrying capacity for shopping goods has been reduced to a minimum. That is why I ususally travel together with hubby, the most important gadget of them all.

The Crazy Old

2010-10-06T19:05:00.001+01:00

I am starting to grasp the concept of the ‘Crazy Old’: As there is no dignity in ageing one can just as well go bonkers instead. However much dignity we grant each other, nature is just cruel and does not comply with any ethical rule.

There is this thing about hair for example. It is getting faint in places where it is supposed to be and appears in places where it is not supposed to be. If you are an old professor, going bald on your head, with hair growing from your ears and nose, this might even give you the image of wisdom and importance. If the same happens to a business man, it is just not working in your favour as much. So for the male half of the population things very much seem to depend on standing.

This is not as true for the other half. Some of you might already know that I have spent quite a substantial sum of money supporting the laser business, in order to achieve a non-European level of grooming for good. Being German, one has to be very careful not to give room to any misunderstanding regarding the side of the Channel one feels rooted into, and finding oneself in changing rooms quite often seemed to justify the expense. Now however, the body, with help of nature, is fighting back, just when I thought I had won the battle.

Not just that unexpectedly one feels rather furry in places, the speed of growth is inversely proportional to what happens on the head. If this trend persists, my calves will soon feature a pony tail while my head will go bold. This means that another substantial sum of money will soon vacate my bank account supporting my beauty parlour rather then finding its way into the apple store to get me an iPad.

Well, nobody ever promised me that life would be fair!

Another thing is sleep. Sleep is supposed to be the activity that helps to keep you pretty; it gives your body time to regenerate, they say. Well, have you ever had a look in the mirror and counted the types of wrinkles you have?

There are the fine ones under the eyes and around the outside. They come from squinting – just wear shades more often - or laughing. People call them crows feet, but actually they can make a face quite interesting. Then there are the ones on the forehead. They show the character of a person. Although these lines all look very similar they give different signals to the onlooker, indicating whether one is a misanthrope or a funny person. But then... there are lines... lines which develop into crevices... and those are usually only on one side of the face and the neck.

Just have a look at your favourite sleeping position and find out which bits get tucked in. This funny line along the side of your nose? Sleep! The weird ring around one side of your neck? Sleep!

The one thing that nature gave us to enable success and happiness, that is supposed to make us feel alert, strong and beautiful, it gives us the most significant indicator of age as well: The sleep wrinkle!

One might try to adopt a sophisticated sleeping style with the face pointing straight to the ceiling and a specialist pillow supporting the neck. This however, stressed the hair at the back of the head even more and makes it go bald much faster.

Toldya, no dignity in ageing. Let’s just go a bit bonkers then!

That’s at least the theory!

2010-08-18T17:58:00.003+01:00

I have a theory. It’s the theory that in order to keep life in order, items need a place. For some people this means that they are travelling light, claiming that possessions are tying down and hence are overrated, others build shelves.

I developed this theory as a teenager when I still lived with my parents, where items never had a place; they theoretically had, but nobody bothered to put them there. That was a shame, as unfortunately we were unaware of the luck we had. Imagine a 20 room house inhabited by three people. After my parents had given up the village shop and pub we had more space than some nobleman, whereas today I have to cramp everything into a house with four bedrooms – and I am fully aware of my luck of having a house of that generous size.

Back then nothing had a place. A big deal of my time went into looking for things and I still have a reputation of losing scissors... and still I am desperately claiming that it was not me, but somehow hubby picked up that line at my parent’s house... some things just won’t go away. So now I have bloody scissors evenly distributed all over the house... as soon as one is missing: It was me!

Oh well, that at least confirms my theory: Life is easier if things have a place.

But it confirms as well that just allocating a space is only one part of the solution. Items seem to have a life of their own, and a mind for that matter. They are rarely seen in the allocated space. Socks for example are pretty good in wandering around on their own, and some clothes seem to have a keen interest in exploring wardrobes which are not theirs.

After the most recent shopping trip which gave my wardrobe a substantial uplift I decided to give the newcomers a behavioural training, and saw it a good opportunity to tell off the old ones. Where I had blouses hanging with blouses and trousers with trousers before, I now started to categorise clothes. The rail now goes from ‘summery and maybe still usable next year’ via ‘too good to give away and may grow back into it’ to ‘office use’ and ‘casual love it’. It then moves on to ‘run down but too comfy to throw away and hence for house use’ and ‘sport clothes’.

Only future will tell if they will comply with those rules. For now they are hanging neatly and I am rather proud. There is still the problem of the wandering socks, however. I think I just saw one whizzing past – gotta go, will keep you posted!

Coincidences! Coincidences?

2010-08-11T15:51:00.003+01:00

What is this thing that happens when one intends to go in holidays or has some sort of deadline that is perceived as ‘doing something nice’, and the world goes bonkers.

Under normal circumstances my statistical conscience called hubby would patiently explain to me that all those connections one makes like ‘less time equals more unexpected work’ are mere coincidences, and that only our perception changes, that we put focus on the bad things because they annoy, thus they seemingly weigh more than the good things and hence tipping the scale to the worse.

But it is not normal circumstances: My statistical conscience already has left the country and I am due joining him in something like 24 hours. The first time in eight years I will be away together with him for more than one night. Since I am looking forward to something really, really nice, I am expecting the chaos in the run-up to be horrendous, and I am absolutely sure it’s not just my perception. I am absolutely sure it is actually happening.

It already started before he left: Everything was planned, house sitter organised, briefing for her scheduled, a major migraine left behind me, joyful expectations ahead.

Then Bang!

Friday midnight after a horrible rain shower, hubby comes waking me with the news that he found our old little cat soaked in the garden too weak to move and that he won’t make it. A good hour later I had nursed him into his death. Although he didn’t have to suffer too much, it was nevertheless one of the most intense hours of my life and sleep that night only was short and restless.

And there went the carefully planned weekend training schedule because the next migraine kicked in. The weekend which was to be relaxed as Detlef was to leave on Monday night at 4 AM was now spent with me trying to sort things while behaving like a zombie and a cat burial in the garden... and after another short night on Sunday there went the rest of the carefully planned training schedule.

OK! Let’s see the good thing: Neither we nor the house sitter will have to worry about the possible death of an old cat while we are away!

Now the good times were surely upon me: One worry down, the house all for myself – don’t get me wrong, I love hubby to bits, but there is nothing nicer than not having to fit into somebody else’s schedule for a change – a holiday ahead of me, and at work only two simple tasks to do...

Well, as soon as I opened the office door on Monday these tasks seem to have created offspring. I rarely had so many people wanting some help with something time consuming. On top of it all I seem to be attached to some electric wire: As soon as I touch my hair I look like electrocuted.

So I have another 24 hours during which I still have to get one work task done, a website update to be published, shopping for the house sitter to be performed, backup keys to be delivered to friends, a leaving-do to be attended, a suitcase to be packed and a shower to be taken... oh, yes and I wanted to sleep a couple of hours as well.

And it is always like that! At least at my house it is... If there is anybody out there who manages to organise travels or pre-event phases without going bonkers: Please get in touch, I need to know your secret!

Re-view, Re-group, Re-everything

2010-08-01T07:50:00.014+01:00

Why, why, why oh why... is life so strange?
Why do we like unhealthy things better than healthy ones? Why do we rather sleep in front of the telly then to go to bed in good time? Why do we understand how it works and still get it wrong? And finally: Why is it that all the good things I do to myself make me feel good and happy and I am still slipping into comfy behaviour for the quick fix which makes me feel unhappy in the long run?

I am in one of those phases again, and it must be boring for you to read it over and over again. Well, this time I at least seem to have caught it at an early stage; just a good month in, so the harm done is minimal. I however know:

It is time to re-group the brain cells!

It is time to become selfish even towards my sloppy self!

It is time to find a solution for once and for all!

I now decided to see this wavelike behaviour as an experiment: Let’s put this woman into her personal laboratory until all the details are known and analysed to then eradicate the cause of this disastrous behaviour.

Experiments always start with a hypothesis. See, and that already is the tricky part:

How to phrase the problem so that it can be re-searched?

Well, let’s just start with:

‘Everybody strives for happiness and too much comfort leads to unhappiness’

The next step is to define the parts of the hypothesis. So, what is ‘happiness’ and what is ‘comfort’? Let us assume that there are three types of happiness.

There is the momentary one; the taste of an ice cream, the visit of a loved one, the success in an exam or a sports event; everything that gives this ‘high’ driven by endorphins and adrenalin. Once the chemicals are gone one is back to square one, and some might even feel it like a black hole until the next project or ‘nice’ occasion comes along.

Then there is imagined happiness. It is the idea of how life would be... ‘IF’. This type of happiness is closely related to the first one, just that it is stretched out a bit. Whenever we reach a milestone we feel a chemical induced high like in case one, but the content stays for a bit longer because previous experience gets projected into the future, the next milestone is not uncertain but possible and happiness sometimes can even stretch from milestone to milestone.

Ahhh, I just said: ‘Content!’ That is more the kind of happiness everybody is after. It is a general state of well being, one is doing things one likes doing on a daily basis, the social and living environment is in place, and little challenges are keeping it interesting but don’t threaten the balance.

Content seems to be a lesser form of happiness, I however believe that it describes best what I mean to express in my hypothesis. This seems to be the more true that somebody who is not happy definitely is not content either, so at the end it might turn out that it is even more than happiness.

So I am herewith re-phrasing and claiming that:

Everybody is striving for content,
A big hindering thing however is comfort,

and in turning it upside down that:

Content equals Effort

Whoops... how did that come about? You may realise that I am making this up as I go along... so these are real thought processes you are observing here... I am keen to see where else this will lead me and if I can bring it to something that makes remotely sense.

So: Content = Effort would mean the less effort one is putting into life, the lesser the chances are that this person will be content.

I guess it is time now to define ‘effort’. It is quite interesting actually that I rather intuitively chose effort as the opposite of comfort. Being German I quite often use a dictionary to translate back and forth in order to find the best word to describe a thought. So I did that just now for ‘comfort’ and my dictionary delivers words like ‘ease’ and convenience’. This hits the nail quite nicely on the head: Those words indicate that one gets something for almost free, there is no achievement associated with it; one may get a good mark or food or even money but basically for no good reason.

Ahhh.... again! Another good word chosen intuitively: ‘Achievement’ seems to be important for content.

Achivement usually is associated with an outburst of joy about the achieved, which goes along the lines of the chemical driven events as depicted in ‘happy-description’ number one a bit further up this article. This description however we found the least suitable for our hypothesis, so why is this argument coming back to it then?

Let’s see what the dictionary throws at us by looking at ‘effort’. It delivers words like ‘exertion’ but ‘achievement’ as well – Ha! So I intuitively got it right! – ‘accomplishment’ and ‘performance’ are other words along the same line.

Wonderful!

This is exactly what solves the riddle - but not the problem, though; human kind has given the same word for something that is a ballast as well as a source of joy, and this shows that throughout history, probably even since the beginnings of mankind, this combination has been hard wired into our brains. We love accomplishment, we love to achieve, it makes us feel good, but at the same time there is the ballast of getting there.

It now dawns on me that happiness can be categorised in a different way as well. I chose a definition that refers to the length of time the feeling lasts. The first group however, the momentary, the instant happiness, can be classed again. I already gave the clue myself in naming the ‘taste of an ice cream’ in the same list as the ‘success in an exam’.

See the difference? They both don’t last THAT long, but one comes effortless the other one not. Those are things that DO make us happy short term but while the latter holds the promise of content if driven further, the first one doesn’t.

We are trading long term content all too easily for short term happiness of the wrong kind.

Relationships – we like to go for the fling to get the butterfly feel rather then work for it
Fitness – we find a thousand reasons not to do it, smugly telling ourselves that a bit of housework will do the trick, trying to catch two flies with one stone rather then developing a lifestyle that actually will solve a lot of our problems
Food – we are falling for the fast version and the immediate sugar rush, rather then learning to cook and getting in charge of what we put through out bodies
Sleep – we fall for the simple treat of a silly movie or online chat rather than an early sleep

Every single of those miss-behaviours give us a quick kick, but they keep us from achieving. We are like the four year olds in the marshmallow experiment . They were given the decision between one marshmallow now, or waiting a bit and the promise of the second marshmallow. Most of the kids would eat the marshmallow, and well... it seems we are failing similar tests which life is throwing at us at a regular basis.

I at least don’t seem to be able to make this sort of decisions on a subconscious level. So well then: Let’s bring it to the conscious. Developing routines for the things which happen regularly already worked well for me... it is just a matter of once in a while re-minding me why the routine was established. Routines reduces effort as one only has to put in the effort at the beginning until the routine is learned. And for the rest of it: One will have to ask the conscious question over and over again 'Is this quick happy-fix worth jeopardising the prospect of long term content?'

See, we are even in the lucky position that in a lot of the cases we don’t even have to wait for others to fulfil the promise. We are in charge, we make it happen ourselves. You want to become strong, slim, smart you CAN. You want the better job, the independance, the freedom you CAN have that. You CAN do all this by putting in the respective effort. So re-minding myself of the above and asking myself the question 'Is it worth it?' might eventually help train my subconscious to take the right choices blindfolded, and re-lieving you from having to listen to this all over again.

Market Value ...

2010-07-07T22:40:00.005+01:00

Market Value ...

Or - What comes next?...

Or - Photo Therapy Part Two

On: ‘Vanity’ and going from ‘Cute’ to ‘Hot’

OK, I admit: That sounds presumptuous!

To prove my point I again will use a method that has worked once before: The Photo Therapy! I will prove that while the first photo therapy brought me from ‘frumpy’ back to ‘cute’ the second one helped moving me further to ‘hot’, making the photo therapy a sometimes hurtful but utterly advisable and useful tool for self improvement.

Photo Therapy Part One – A Recap

I have been writing about this ‘cute’ thing occasionally already, claiming that being cute definitely makes life easier in many ways. I think it is fair to say that I was a quite cute girl when I was younger and I surely got my share of attention without having to work hard for it.

cute at age 17

Unfortunately I took a detour through the frumpy department at the beginning of my 40s and I was quite sure that ‘the cute’ was gone.

The smile all too often went stale, and the eyes had lost their spark. I know it because hubby used to call me ‘sparkly eyes’, and there was a long period during which I never heard this anymore. Self doubt was ruling life and I truly believed that ‘cute’ had left for good and with it the fun.

I was thinking a lot about which skill or attribute could give back at least some incentive for ‘liking life’. Assertiveness, helpfulness, style,... Style! Style sounds good and rather simple to achieve. So off I went to explore style in clothing, and then thanks to sport style in posture, and later via the first photo shoot style in expression. Since then my ‘Photo Therapy’ idea was always following me around, driving me, advising, pointing...

As long as the eyes of a woman are sparkling, no man will ever notice the wrinkles underneath!

- unknown -

... and at age 44

Now, 5 years on those pictures are worth a fortune for me. Now that I am looking back I can see that for a while I actually got ‘the cute’ back. Another name dear hubby used to call me when I was all dressed up to go out was ‘ Hey Pretty’. All of a sudden I heard it again, and ‘sparkly eyes’ was back as well.

From the amount of pictures I have sitting on my computer now, it seems that I all of a sudden I must have chased the cameras. Before, there were hardly any pictures of me and most of them rather colourless and dull, now even the not so good ones depict ‘fun’. My newly gained vanity seemed to have done me good.

This however was not a continuous state of mind. The most telling pictures are the ones taken at the first photo shoot in 2007 at the gym. They show me in great shape and confidence. From there live moved forward in waves with a little high in 2009 and then a deep dip during winter 2009/2010.

Like five years back I felt time was running out and I felt just old. And again it was Bodybuilding and pictures taking me back on track. And like five years ago Bodybuilding came first and the pictures gave me the confidence to believe what I was feeling already.

Body Image

Body image is a very weird thing. One might lose weight, one might put on muscles, one might transform: The mind still sees the frump, the big rear, the fat legs, the wrinkles. Pictures are able to transform the mind to the same image that the body already has reached.

All those pictures had already shown a pretty, even cute 45 year old, especially when there was a smile; some of them however, already showed first glimpses of a transformation I never thought possible, and I really wanted to explore that further.

2007

2010

Cute means likable, it makes things easy because people respond more kindly on first impression.

Thing just was: As much as I had been missing to be cute, I now wanted more; I needed an edge to it. Well, there are at least two levels to it, I guess. One is being able to be assertive and receiving respect.

This is a nice thing at work and in daily life situations, but there is one other thing I am sure every woman would find interesting to know: Some call it ‘shelf life’ or ‘expiry date’, I like to call it ‘market value’.

The questions are: If I were not married and available on the dating market, on which price range of shelf would they put me, for how long would I have to sit there, and would I sell at all?

There is one thing for sure: I don’t want to compete with the 20 year olds for whom a cute smile and a pout would seal the deal. They are a different league now and this is not my style anymore, but would I have that little bit extra that would make me attractive enough to give me a decent market value?

Don’t worry; hubby is perfectly fine with me posing those questions. I think he even likes the thought that others might desire what he has, he even moved on from ‘ Hey Pretty’ to ‘Hot Chick’; that I take as a first indicator that a second transformation has taken place.

2010

And then the most recent photo shoot revealed this completely new facet of myself, but the finite clue came from two guys who hadn’t seen me for those five years. They were rather amazed about my change of shape, and the compliments already put me on cloud seven. When a bit later I met one of them again he picked up on the conversation and said: ‘My friend said that you look hot!’

Wow!

The next photo shoot is already scheduled... and I rest my case!

Turning into Mum!

2010-06-28T19:58:00.000+01:00

It is official now: I have turned into my mum, or into almost everybody’s mum, for that matter. Weird thing about it is that I don’t even mind.

Whenever I had a problem when I was younger I used to complain about mum-type people. They never seemed to be compassionate, all they came up with was advice while I wanted to shout, scream, cry, tell the story in all the gory details, probably even exaggerate a bit. I wanted to use the full range of theatrical intonation in my voice, and then when everything was said, I wanted to hear something like: 'Oh you poor thing, I know, it’s so bad, I know exactly what you are talking about.' This inevitably would lead to a new round of re-telling the story, wringing it for the last bit of sentiment. Depending on the severity, this could go on for days, talking to different girlfriends, who then would re-tell it between them until it would come back to me. After a while eventually we would run out of steam and the emotional baggage of the issue would have been evaporated into thin air. Some of the problems might not even have deserved that term, so solutions were not actually needed, while the ones needing attention would have been resolved by people with practical thinking in the meantime. Everybody with a common sense would try to move heaven and hell to make this drama stop.

Later in life two things happened: Firstly I moved on to other places and all of a sudden the trusted girl friends had gone, and the older one gets the more difficult it is to find likeminded spirits. And secondly, the ‘cute’ had left the building. See, it helps if one is calling a certain cuteness one’s own. All those rants coming from an ugly face don’t work as well compared to big eyes and a quivering pout telling the story. Unfortunately this advantage fades over time and one realises... Sh... it’s not working the way it used to anymore.

All of a sudden I had to find the solutions myself, or poor hubby had to compensate. He had to listen, and he had to help solve. I only know now, that I mutated into my mum-ish self, how lucky I am to have him. And I got lucky in another respect: I found a mentor! He was the person who patiently listened to my rants for one last time, asked the right questions at the right moment, and made me think.

Well and now that I am done with thinking, I find myself not wanting to rant about things anymore. I want to tackle them head on! Want to get it done and over with. I now find that it is the prerogative of the youth to spend all that time on worrying, ranting and moaning. I am not willing to spend this amount of time on negativity anymore, and although I don’t want to be younger – God forbid – I sometimes would like to have some of the time back that I wasted back then. Now that I am running out of it, I would like to tell all these youngsters... don’t do this! Find a solution and get on with your lives.

Of course they don’t appreciate this advice – I wouldn’t have!

And I am not bothered, really. History, it seems, will stay forever young: It will repeat itself over and over again, and in 30 years time they might read my story and think: Darn... she was right!

Becks Blue Fan Photos

2010-06-18T11:17:00.008+01:00

Those pictures were taken by a photographer friend during an photo shoot which was under the sign of: 'Let's push the envelope'.

Isn't it weird that as soon as we are on a beach in a bikini we don't mind having our photo taken; well, or at least we find it inappropriate to complain as we are showing off our assets voluntarily, but as soon as we take off the blouse in our home and having a photo taken, it becomes rather awkward.

Given that I am planning to enter a bodybuilding competition in summer 2011 for the first time in my life and that I then will have to perform in less than a standard bikini, on a stage, in front of people I don't know, I just had to grab the opportunity of this shoot and try myself.

During a break my friend just kept shooting (BTW: that the label is to the front happened absolutely accidentally, we were just kidding around), so those pictures are not perfect but I quite like them - and well, I like the beer anyway, so I don't mind advertising it.

It now turns out though, that having the pictures taken only was one part of the whole game. The much bigger question is: What will happen if I publish?

I have bikinis of less fabric than this bra... but it is clearly a bra... hmmm?!?

On the other hand... what is the best - or the worst to happen? People might like or not like it, my employer might ask me to take them off the internet - rather unlikely, though - somebody might really like it and give me a job as a model... dream on girl!

So it is now decided that the world might see my bra... and me in it! And drive safely! The beer is almost alcohol free (0.05%), BTW!

Glamour Pix: Guys VS. Gals

2010-06-05T20:02:00.004+01:00

Since I stumbled across Dita Von Teese, and now am planning for photo shoots with various photographers, I all of a sudden find myself talking to them and guys in general about what turns them on. See, the photographers have certain ideas in mind, my muscles are unusual and inspiring for them, and of course they are trying to figure out how far I would go. Actually: I am trying to figure out how far I would go!

There are rather glamorous pictures which I quite like and there are other, very similar ones which I don’t. I could imagine myself shooting something similar in case one, but not in case two. What makes them so different? I decided to think this through scientifically, and I now believe that I figured it out.

I for instance got two photo ideas explained by the guys:

Faceless Nude – a naked woman with a gas mask on
Feline – woman in lingerie licking milk from a cat bowl

Hmm...?! The only thing that instantly pops into my mind is a thousand ‘WHY?’s
Why the mask? Alarm while having sex? Fetish thing? Lost her clothes because couldn’t see properly through that thing? Why the cat milk? Isn’t she having a cup? Eating from floor is disgusting and diminishing...

If I would put myself in the middle of a room, naked with a gas mask on, I would not expect to be taken seriously, or not to be raped for that matter.

Of course I get the appeal it may have to a guy. It has clear signals: Boobs and arse right on a tray ready to go, while kitty says: See, I am there already, may scratch a bit but won’t fight, take me now!

I always thought that under an evolutionary point of view the guys would like the hunt, but I may have misinterpreted of what hunting actually entails. Hunting for them is all about the kill at the end. It is about tuning in on a signal: the stag, the pattern of the fur, the boob, the bum; tuned in like a missile with a motion lock. Distraction would be disruptive, and when the kill can be achieved without the hunt, even better. By all means: It is a fair way of seeing things! Whatever turns you on boys!

It’s just that this is not working for me, and from what I heard when talking with my girlfriends: it is not for them either. So if I would commit to a glamour shoot I would like to have photos taken which would turn ME on, and not in a lesbian way. Sorry to blow another one of your dreams. Guys: ... it’s rarely the male form that does it for us ladies... Again, it is just not about signals. Don’t get me wrong, I like to see some eye candy once in a while, nice shoulders, ABS... but that is not what gets me going! Actually, it doesn’t even matter what the subjects in a shot are – as long as they work well together. Thus the next bit is about: What does ‘working well together’ mean?

A guy’s ‘Hustler’ is a girl’s ‘Mills & Boon’

Ladies need the story telling! ‘Context’ is the key word here. Context exists in two ways:

Context within which a photo is displayed, and
Context within the photo itself.

Reverting back to the ‘faceless nude’ and the ‘feline’, one could argue that in a context less set up these women are not in control, they are obedient and subject to potential abuse. Putting them into the context of a fetish photo book or a themed exhibition it makes sense. Context avoids misunderstanding.

Although I am not opposed to any kind of fetish, this is not what I am interested in. What sets my mind into gear is context within the photo:

The story telling!

A well chosen context can put subjects into charge, and the strength of a subject radiates as strength of the image, creating a strong emotion in the onlooker.

Let me elaborate:

Step one: Imagine a naked woman on a meadow.
Instant questions again: Why is she there, and where are her clothes?

Step two: Put a nice shrub on one side of her, in which her clothes are hanging and on the other side you put a lake.
Ah, of course, she is taking an early morning bath. Hmm, I already can feel the first of the sun rays tickling through the last of the mist, and the soft grass under my feet; I can imagine the cold water around the ankles and the little ‘whoops’ moment when it touches the belly button, and then the big, joyful, tingling splash!

Interesting what a bit of context can do, isn’t it? But we are not finished yet!

Step three: Put a bit of greeneries into the foreground as if somebody is watching her through a shrub.

Whoohoo, a bit of voyeurism... Nice! Getting there!

Step four: Now imagine that she knows that she is being watched.
She can feel the eyes as close as touching, her head swings that tiny bit more when the hair is released, she turns a bit more, stretches a bit further, swings the hips a bit more as she walks into the water; she shows this little bit of attitude and she knows... he is there and can’t have it, at least not right now.

And that is the final turn on:
Time delay!

Not being able to have it straight away. The tease! Which brings us back to Dita.

That is total contradiction to what guys need. To a woman, a single picture with the proper framing and a model with the right attitude can tell an entire story... and it will make her happy!

Now I find myself in a situation where I would like to find out what works for both. Scenarios are needed where the signals are strong, but the story nevertheless is being told!

If you can solve this riddle – who knows? I might even go all the way... modelling wise that is!

Food Personalities

2010-04-21T17:50:00.003+01:00

Food really can be a nuisance for some: One can't live with it and one can't live without it either.

After many years of leaning, observing, trying, and experimenting I however think, that I am starting to get the bigger picture. I wrote an article once in which I suggested to become a graser - people who similar to cows nibble small portions throughout the day - and I am now realising that this is only one part of the puzzle.

I so far have indentified at least two significantly different personalities with different needs to maintain a healthy lifestyle: Grazers and accountants (this is in lack of an animal kingdom similarity, at least I didn't find one). No offence to the profession of accountancy, it is meant as a compliment even. While the grazers are eating when they get hungry, and have to stick with little portions because they are actually hungry all the time, the accountant personality is eating at set times.

These are the two extremes which are repeatedly suggested in literature, internet and TV, as the ones to strive for in order to maintian a healthy lifestyle. This can be utterly confusing as the accountant can't comprehend how grazing could ever work and vice versa. So keeping this information in mind the first question to answer for a food troubled mind is:

What type am I?

Or better: What would be the type of personality which I would be able to adopt?

As for me, I am definitely a grazer. Hence the previous article and hence me thinking that my ways would save the day for everbody else. So let us investigate some of the issues the respective groups are facing:

The accountant food personality
The accountant actually has it quite good. They are the 'take 1 hour of lunchbreak' personalities. Only the time and the portion size has to be determined, probably the one or other emergency strategy for travel or social events needs to be thought through, and life can proceed as usual. Since accountant types lead a rather organised life anyway, for them it is no problem to stick with the schedule and once the body gets used to it, things go like clockwork. Hunger will not occur anymore out of hours, and since they take a dedicated time to break they even will have some recovery time after food intake.

The grazer food personality
The grazer on the other hand is leading a different lifestyle. They either have jobs where they travel a lot, dynamically manage many tasks at the same time, and often they are maiden for everything hence attending to other people's needs. Thus there is no rhythm in the daily tasks around which meal times could be scheduled, and energy consumption varies within the day and between days. Given this lifestyle, hunger kicks in randomly, whenever the depots are empty. The task is to see for healthy food provisions readily availabe as there is no time for preparing a proper meal, or taking a proper break. Additionally a proper meal is too much for the grazer, as it has the capability to trigger sleepyness, a feature not appreciated.

Relationship hiccups
So now we want to imagine the once unhappy food junkie managed to find the matching personality and adopt it. All the rules are set, the adjustments are done, and success shows in a healthier and stronger body. That is when one has to address the matter of social environment: meaning friends, spouses, and family in general.

It will be a successful relationship when they are all of the same species, but they usually aren't. A grazer and an accountant in one househould wanting to stick with the social conventions of having mealtime together depicts a setup that is bound to fail. And here it shows why accountants have it that good: Social convention is accountant oriented. The hard work lies and always will lie with the grazers. They will have to determine certain slots during which they will join their counterpart - e.g. twice a week for dinner - and for the rest of it they will have to go separate ways food wise. If they fail to find an agreement the grazer inevitably will get fat by doing the grazing for hunger plus doing the set meals to please social convention.

Which brings me to another hiccup: I already mentioned that the grazer quite often is taking the role of 'maiden for everything' which more often than not includes the preparation of food provisions for the rest of the office working family. Which basically means that the person who will not take part in the meal is supposed to prepare it. And that is a real nuisance. The only solution I can see is to pre-cook, freeze, and show dad how the microwave works!

Bon Appetit!

My Choice - My Challenge!

2010-04-08T16:52:00.010+01:00

Having done a lot of mulling and moaning during the past couple of month or so, I have now put a new focus on my sport activities. It was a matter of remembering what it was that brought me to Incredible Ladies in the first place, what it was that made me feel happy and successful and healthy. So on one hand I am doing this for myself, but on the other this brought me back to thinking about the charity side of things as well.

Oh my, I have been so grumpy and jealous, seeing all these celebrities running marathons, climbing mountains, waterskiing through the Channel. All these examples of overcoming fear and challenge taking I found more off-putting rather then inspiring. How is a normal person supposed to compete with that? How am I to measure my success against theirs? I am bound to fail miserably. These guys have a public face, they have a team helping them, they have the best of equipment, and of course they are raising huge amounts of money. Why should I work my bud of, almost killing myself in a challenge, if only about 5 people will pat my shoulder, and if I am lucky I may raise 500 quid. One celeb can cover the efforts of about a thousand of normal people. Under efficiency point of view we should let the celebs do all the fundraising.

And actually, it is not just me claiming the same praise for a similar effort; one is getting measured against these achievements. “What? You only did one marathon? Well, here is a pound, but you know - Eddie Izzard has been running 50 of them in one go – THAT is great innit?”

To be honest: I feel like a resentful arsehole now. Because it doesn’t matter how I compare to those guys... and the poor bloke really did suffer!

It is important that

I like what I am doing,
that I achieved something that I couldn’t do before, what gives hope that I can replicate that and become even better the next time, and
that whatever people give me as sponsorship goes to the charity that matters most to me.

Oh, and there we are with the next rant! The choice of charity – I did Race for Life, Cancer Research; after three years it was almost impossible to get people excited about it: ‘We know that you can do it, why are you doing it again?’

Does it matter? I am collecting money for a worthy cause, for crying out loud!

And then I came across the orangutans and I just knew that is what I want to support. Well now I have to defend my choice because I am not helping humans or children. The extinction of a species... hmm, aren’t their more pressing problems in the world?

Fighting extinction – why does it matter?

I don’t have one of those official, scientific answers to that – all I have is a story.

When I was a kid at school we went to a history museum and all of a sudden I found myself face to face with a strange stuffed bird in a diorama: A Dodo. I always was into wildlife and wanted to visit all the places to see all the animals, and so I asked the teacher where they live. He pointed me to a little label that said: Extinct.

I didn’t know what that meant, and so he explained that there is not a single place in this world where this animal is still alive. That they all got killed hundreds of years ago and that the stuffed ones are all that is left of them. It was the first time that something that grand hat hit my little brain. I had not been travelling at all back then, for me this world was an endless resource; how on earth could it happen that something just vanished. I felt for the first time what it means to be ‘too late’, I felt deprived of an opportunity, and later when I went to university they had a museum with a stuffed Dodo. I visited him often and imagined how nice it would be... just once to see him waddling along between trees.

Later my imagination got caught by Jane Goodall and her Chimpanzees, and of course I wanted to travel to Tanzania and live in the rainforest. And of course I didn’t. Well and many years later I bumped into the orangutans on the telly and edged my way closer to the scene of people actually doing the rescue work. I learned a lot about all the issues which make them an endangered species, and I would not be able to bare the thought, that one day a child would be standing in a museum in front of a stuffed orangutan and asking the same question I asked about the Dodo, only to find the same label attached to it.

And knowing what I know now, about evolution, habitat, gene pools, and so on – Now I know how easy it is to make something extinct. We may be next.

And that is why it matters!

Related Links:
Orangutan Land Trust (OLT)
Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS)
Interview with Michelle Desilets about OLT

Taking you back to the roots

2010-03-31T22:38:00.002+01:00

The IL roots that is! I had a few incidents recently which make me feel like stepping back in time to the beginnings of IL - actually before IL. Although I am much fitter now, nothing seemed to be working out. All my wisdom seemed to be long forgotten and even my drive for sport had been lacking for such a long time that I feel rather breathless, powerless and wimpish.

So I decided to read a few of my own articles - if they were any good they should bring me up to scratch again; it's three years after all that I started writing for the site: Time to warm a few things up!

Sometimes it helps to just be aware of how the body works, so that one knows that one is not alone in this, and then there are the little helperlines which can incredibly enhance the chemistry in the body and hence lay the ground for all the rest. And So here is my selection from the body, health and nutrition section:

Well, and when I started writing back then I did so about my sport. See, and there is the dilemma. I was inexperienced and I wrote about what I knew and what was important to me at that time. I quickly realised that my experience is not about sport, but about being passionate - for whatever. And I realised as well that by writing about sport a lot, I already had put off quite a few people from reading the site. In the meantime none of my friends from back then is reading the site because they still think that it is a Bodybuilding site.

I was so desperate to please them and to get them back, that I entirely neglected the sport section. I haven't written about sport in about one and a half years, and the bodybuilding section is still incomplete although I have all the pictures sitting there ready to be processed. Back then I didn't understand how the internet works and how loyal behaviour in the internet is created. Not that I have become better in that, but I surely I have now decided for my lifestyle to focus on sport again, and I will do so on the site as well. Here is to catch up with a few of the articles we have already:

Now I am getting to the bit which a lot of people call 'airy fairy', but which I think is the most honest of the sections. Every article was written at a time when the issue was bugging me, and writing it down in a way that it didn't sound too much like a rant, helped rather well to thinking the matter through. Apparently there have been quite a few things bugging me - the number of articles and columns is really rather big; so big even that there was a point when I gathered the first year's pamphlets, worked through them again and wanted to publish them as a book. Oh yeah, dreams! Of course no editor thought that somebody would want to pay money for the wisdom of an old cow from the provinces. So the manuscript is sitting idly on my shelf. But here I would like to point you to the one or the other article nevertheless:

And then there is one more little article which sort of sums it up. I wrote it almost two years ago and it was to go into said book. Well it's about time to publish it now:-

From Strength 2 Freedom

Have a wonderful Easter time and see you next week all fresh and full of USG!

Iron Ladies

2010-03-17T09:13:00.007Z

There is a difference between being tired and fatigue. Everybody is getting tired at the end of the day, and once in a while we still are after a too short night of sleep. We may feel like an afternoon nap, or a lie in – that’s all rather normal.

Why so tired?
With fatigue I mean feeling constantly worn down. Being tired even when the night was long enough; the feeling that although the sleep was deep and dreamless one hasn’t slept at all. One is able to get through the daily tasks, even finds a laugh when chatting with the girls, but there is always this feeling of having to push through; there is no natural flow, one is clumsy and forgetful and creativity has left the brain.

So one is checking the calendar and is somewhat relieved to see that it is ‘the week before’. Thank God, it’s just one of those months, and there will be payback time: When this will be over the sun usually is shining a bit brighter, even. But not this time! So the search continues: Well, a lot of people have a cold: I may come down with something; it’s almost spring: This change of seasonal climate is stressful on the body and one is worn down by central heating and lack of oxygen.

I need a pill!
The re-installed power walking sessions, however and the garden work are not helping, in contrary: Instead of a rosy, fresh air complexion I look grey like an old bed sheet, the hair is lifeless, and I only have to look at food for it to appear on my thighs. The head clouds are getting bigger and the workload that lies ahead becomes ever more overwhelming: One already has to think about summer holidays and it’s only those few month to squeeze everything in – the garden, Easter, some travels to see family, preparing the BBQ place to be ready for the May Bank Holidays, sport definitely needs picking up and sh... the windows and the garden fence need painting, and all I want to do is to sit in my armchair with biscuits and tea and stare at the wall – even choosing a movie from the DVD collection is too much of a decision. It would be so great to have a pill to make it all go away. Well, maybe there is one:

Iron!
Iron is needed to build the haemoglobin in the red blood cells, and that is the stuff which is transporting the oxygen that we breathe in, into to cells of the body where it gets burnt and turned into energy, so that the cell can do its job.

How it works
The burning process is using the same principles like a fireplace. In order to heat a room or cook some food two things are needed: a fuel like gas or coal and oxygen. Trying to light the fuel in a vacuum won’t work as the oxygen is missing; there has to be oxygen to turn the fuel into energy. This can easily be observed when extinguishing a candle with a candle snuffer. As soon as it is put over the candle, the flame uses the leftovers of the oxygen and then just stops burning.

This mechanism explains where the lack of energy comes from when iron is missing in the body. Iron means oxygen and if it is missing our fire has gone out or is about to, hence the body wants to save the meagre remains for vital organs, goes into energy saving mode and tries to put us to sleep. Additionally it signals for help. Once in a while it might make the heart work hard in the hope to get more blood pumped and hence more oxygen supplied - one then can feel the beat scarily loud and clear, or it may ask for fuel, meaning food, sometimes in the shape of weird cravings. Well, and since the body won’t waste energy to keep skin and hair nice, one might become rather flaky and ‘beige’. Although the typical pale complexion of an anaemic will come at a later stage.

Oh, what a bad combination: Wanting nothing more than hanging around and eating. So why on earth do we lose iron? It’s something really rather solid, how does it leave the body?

When things go wrong
The iron lives in the red blood cells, which when everything goes right live around 3-4 months and then get recycled and rebuild, if something goes wrong the iron gets lost. There are five main mechanisms involved in the iron trade where things can go wrong:

the body is not able to build enough red blood cells to replace the dying ones – then something is usually wrong with the bone marrow,

the body is not able to absorb the iron that it gets delivered with the food – then something is wrong with the intestines, like celiac disease,
the body is in need for more iron, like during pregnancy,
the body is losing a huge amount of blood, like during an accident or operation, or
the body is losing small amounts of blood, like during menstruation.

Regarding the first two, one would not just feel a bit off whack but rather sick. The underlying condition would cause further symptoms and doctors will take care of the situation. Additionally the symptom would probably appear rather quickly. The same is true for pregnancy during which iron levels should be monitored and balance out.

Balanced Diet
Well, when losing a large amount of blood the iron levels are usually the least of ones problems; this period thing however is very, very sneaky! Every month one is losing just a tad bit of iron, and although a lot of information sources are claiming that with a balanced diet one should have replaced the missing bits by the end of the cycle, I personally cannot confirm that. ‘Balanced’ for health people usually means ‘utterly healthy’.

In my book ‘balanced’ reads as ‘mostly being a good girl, but liking my coffees and teas and dairies’ – and those are all things that inhibit iron to be consumed by the body. Meaning that one can eat as much as one likes, but the body can’t use it because a lot of Chemistry goes on between the iron and the foods and hence it is passed straight through the intestines and does not get digested as it should be. Additionally iron from food sources comes in all sorts if chemical compounds and the body is rather specific about which ones it wants. Just nibbling a rusty nail as suggested by some urban myths won’t do the trick.

A warning!
Well, and then of course one has to give a warning that too much iron can be harmful, and even if some additional intake is indicated it may upset the stomach or cause indigestion. Hence I am taking this little pill before I go to sleep when my stomach is not entirely empty, but there is enough time between food and iron intake to not have the two interfere with each other.

My experience
I stumbled across iron a good two decades ago. I was young, I was healthy and I was tired down to depression. At that time I was researching vitamins to find out if they could have a positive impact on my allergies (which some of them have), and when I read the list of symptoms for iron deficiency I thought I had a mirror held to my face.

So I gave it a shot, didn’t have any side effects except of a bit of indigestion for a couple of days until the body got used to it, and felt an improvement instantly. After two days my energy came back and within a week I was my old self again.

I took a six week course as advised on the pack and then a couple of years later I ran into the same trap. It happens so slowly that one doesn’t realise it. Other conditions like sleep deprivation due too much partying, work or a cold can have a similar effect and hide the real cause. Again I took the pills with the same outcome: Instant relief!

I then checked with my GP, got off the drug for a month, had the blood levels measured which were in the lower third of the range – so nothing bothersome or unusual – but I already felt the lack again. He then confirmed that should I feel like needing it, I could take this low dose continuously without causing any harm. He as well told me that some people react to lower levels earlier than others, something that I found confirmed in the book ‘Well-being for Women’ by Helen Lawrence (Geddes & Grosset, 2004, p.18)

Regarding the duration of the course it seems that my body is telling me when enough is enough. I tend to all of a sudden forget taking them, so I am stopping intake altogether until the next time when I am wondering why I am so tired and if I might have caught a cold...

Will I ever learn?
This time round I was so proud to have survived Christmas well and thought that this would give me a brilliant head start into summer. Ha, I’d wished! Mid January I started feeling a bit drained, beginning February I had my holidays when I usually slip horribly food wise – what is ok as I am preparing for it – and after that I crushed. I didn’t realise what was going on until mid March when the downhill trend became more and more obvious. Within these six weeks my weight went up about 3 kg adding an additional 21,000 calories to my diet which I now have to get rid of again. If somebody however would have dared saying a word about my biscuit consumption, I would have gathered the last of my strength and would have gone for a kill. There was no control whatsoever. Now three days in I am back to my normal diet without any problems, liking my salt less bread, the eggs and bananas.

Well apparently I am an iron lady in many ways!

Keeping the Romance

2010-03-10T19:26:00.004Z

What on earth IS romance?

We had a dinner party the other day and one of our bachelor guests asked how we keep the romance going. As you know me – my answer wasn’t a straight one, but elaborated around the fact that at the beginning there might be a volcano-like experience of fire sparking and people not being able to keep the fingers of each other. Well I guess that’s what everybody is hoping for and some volcanoes might spark a bit hotter than others.

We all know however: The hotter the fire the more easily and severely one might get burnt!

See, I had a very bright volcano sparking once – no, not with hubby – and that might have been helped by the fact that the guy was Brazilian, and hence exotic enough to be more interesting than others, and hence me being more flattered to be considered a possible mate...

He wanted to have loads of kids and was very catholic – well, I didn’t mind kinds and were merely protestant; and a bit of a free spirit, really! But volcanoes have the weirdest effects: All of a sudden I was reading the bible and was prepared to pop at least five babies – well, I was promised a maid!

And then my steadily burning fireplace named Detlef came along the volcano burnt out with a puff. Apparently size doesn’t matter in fires either.

The next thing to consider is the foundation of the relationship which needs to be established by the time the fire loses its energy. That is the part where a lot of misconceptions are arising from: Everybody is hoping for the fire to stay at its hottest all by itself, and if this is not happening disappointment kicks in.

Some use a ‘fight and make-up’ strategy to fuel the relationship, but one has to be able to take the heat as well as the cold as this will never be a steady flame. Disappointment will be even bigger should the make-up sex all of a sudden taking place in the arms of a third party fire place.

The steady flame solution it to find a common ground, possibly with a house built on it, some kids playing in front, and a picket fence – or like in our case: a decent hedge.

Common ground and similar goals means, that one has to compromise at times and that one has to find the individual spaces. This is a bit like a very long school project: Hard work. And in the meantime one has to work around the nitty-gritty bits of life with unscrewed toothpaste, socks lying around, and garbage that needs bringing out.

While the make-up sex approach surely never gets boring it appears as less sustainable in the long run, while the picket fence people have to be a bit careful not to take the achieved for too granted and once in a while should see to find the fire tongs to stir things up a bit.

Whichever approach works for you: Romance means keeping this fireplace going the way you like it!

So, what are the things that fuel this little oven?

Well, if you are after the volcano version then you might cause a nice fight by forgetting the birthday or anniversary, leaving the toothpaste open and your socks on the floor. Then the jewellery or the flowers after might work to bring you onto the make-up sex road.

But for the steady fire person it’s not just about remembering dates either, it’s what one does with it. To have the secretary send over a bunch and an SMS apologising for being delayed for the dinner won’t work – although some would be glad to at least get that. As I said before: building a relationship is to find the best compromise and a truly romantic gestures would be to arrange a gift around one of these compromises; giving something back the other half gave up in order to make the relationship work.

The most romantic things however can be very tiny and spontaneous and sometimes the giver might not even notice it: It is when the better half is slipping into the others mind, and is just there when needed without being asked.

Imagine me cooking for 10 people short notice, hubby helping with the drinks, and the salad and when we needed something big to put the salad in I blanked... cooking and dishes are my resort and hobby, I buy that stuff, I know where everything is... with food bubbling on the hob and guests arriving soon, I lost the plot. And then hubby left the kitchen mumbling something like: ‘I know....’, and came back with a huge bowl from the bottom shelf that we rarely use. The perfect romantic gesture!

Rituals, Faith and Happiness

2010-03-03T17:35:00.003Z

I like rituals! It was very lovely to be invited for Haldi KumKum to a friend’s house recently. As a child I liked the tradition at our house when on 24th December the Christmas tree was lit for the first time of the season. I would not have seen it by then, mum would open a window and ring a little bell, and I, charged with the energy of a whole day’s build-up of expectation, would dash in only to find that the Holy Child was again faster than me, already had unloaded the presents and left by the open window.

It is a bit different when the whole thing shifts into the clerical area. Churches easily touch me emotionally – oh, these guys knew how to build in order to create atmosphere. But all the humbug that is performed in these buildings is just not for me. While my childhood Christmas ritual was to create a fairytale moment before reality of life would hit hard, church rituals feel like indoctrination to me. I hated the singing and mumbling, the guided concourse through the subject of the week, performed in an old language nobody properly understands. One might say: ‘Well, you go to conferences where a speaker covers a subject in a similar way and might be wasting an hour of your valuable time.’ Correct! But there I am allowed to leave, to question, to discuss, to even dismiss.

Rituals might create an atmosphere of belonging, as a drawback they create group pressure, though. Proper rituals involve more than one person, meaning that if one is skipping the game the other ones usually get upset. This is no different whether you skip your poker round, the Sunday lunch or your faith. Or is it?

For the poker round one usually is replaceable, and if the people one is playing with are real friends, then one still can have a drink with them. Sunday lunch involves family and one is not replaceable, at least not easily. One might only find out the truth of it when the will is revealed and the fortunes will benefit the cat. It however becomes really tricky when faith is involved. Religion always plays with ‘What If?’. I might be in doubt, I might not feel free in my decisions, I might even know that some of the doctrine is wrong – but What If that all doesn’t matter and me leaving the congregation would have the worst of all effects on me, my loved ones, my life and my afterlife – like purgatory, or so?

I could just make my peace with purgatory. I like it warm anyway. And if I would decide for myself that there is no afterlife and eternity, then the problem goes away in a jiffy. But oh no! People who found religious groups and sects know what they are doing. They usually try to get hold of the whole family structure... and all of a sudden the table is turning. Knowing that a mum couldn’t bear the thought of her only child burning in hell for eternity, and knowing that she would deeply feel that thought burn in her heart... Who would be able to do that to her? Luckily my parents were on my side, and even grandma was rather open to criticism of faith. But I got lucky not to have children of my own. Baptism would have been out of the question for me, for granny it would have been hard to come round to the thought of her grandchild not being baptised - What If...

And there we are looking at another eccentricity of those rituals. They help create social status. In the old days a child had to have as many godfathers, best with high status, as possible. Firstly then the child would be cared for and accepted into a network of opportunities the godfathers would provide, and secondly the parents would show to the public that they are closely involved with so many important people. In the catholic South of Germany you can see this phenomenon in the number of forenames a child had. Every godfather would add his and for some reason boys usually have more than girls. I am wondering why that is?

So now imagine me eventually having produced the long expected son, the family would have lined up a decent row of godfathers and I would say: ‘I give a sh...!’

That is just not what you do! The consequences would be that your – and the boy’s – inheritance would go to the cat, all the future opportunities for the kid would be blown out of the window, and your parents including the rest of the family would be dishonoured.

It is one thing to choose social isolation for oneself, but in this case one has responsibilities for another person...

... and this way the church has caught another soul to be dragged through the rituals for further indoctrination.

These days a lot of societies in the world already have changed, or are about to change. It is much easier now to take choices in the Western world, even countries with strong traditions like India see change, and the younger generation is rebelling – and more and more often winning.

Thing just is: One might think that people who these days join religions believe that they were developed to provide safety and protection in their society, and would hence make them happier - or at least that is what they are hoping for. Looking around me it however seems that the advantages and the constraints weigh each other off. I see really happy and really unhappy people at both ends of the faith spectrum. So what is the whole fuss then about?

Not old, yet!

2010-02-24T16:48:00.003Z

I thought I am getting old, and this morning I figured out that I don’t. I mean: I do, but not to the extent that I thought I did... Do I make any sense at all?

See, recently I thought I couldn’t keep up with life anymore. For so many years I have only been arranging myself around hubby and the occasional night out with IL, or dinner with friends, and things were fine. Now some younger people – and with this I mean a quarter of a century younger people – have entered my life and I feel like falling apart.

Don’t get me wrong: I love being around them. It is inspiring and fresh and they are lovely. We cook together and go to the movies and watch movies at our house – it’s just that I am exhausted, my head is buzzing and I am feeling like having aged a decade within a couple of month. This being a development which I am not appreciative about, I decided to question the 'age' conclusion.

At first I thought I might have been too settled, with spontaneous activity being kept to a minimum. I once wrote that one needs routine for the nitty-gritty bits of life to free up time for spontaneity. Had I introduced too much routine? All too often conversations go like this these days:

Question/suggestion: 'Let's go to the movies!'

Me: 'Well, what is on? We could go next Thursday.'

Response: 'Oh no, I meant tonight!'

Me: 'TONIGHT!?... tonight... - ahemm'... gaining time... 'hmm... What is on?'

Response: 'Oh, doesn’t matter! Let's just go!'

Me: ...still gaining time with harrumphing, and quickly thinking about when I have to get up next morning, what I wanted to do that night, how much sleep I had last and will have next night, and if I will survive... 'What time, did you say?...'

Those negotiations usually go on for a while, my cool is gone at that stage, and while everybody is getting impatient, I feel the need to explain myself, what makes the whole matter worse.

When my goddaughter came to visit I knew she would stay for a week and I would dedicate this period of time. That seems to be an important thing to me: Being able to dedicate time. There it was again! The planning ahead thing. Why do I have to plan ahead so much?

Feedback was needed and I interviewed hubby. He tried to be kind in reminding me, that movies never really where my thing. He had a point there, and movies quite often were on the agenda, I however realised that I wouldn’t be up for anything else either. This was a dead end: Was it old age after all?

Now the subject started to follow me. Even Nury wrote a column on '22 signs you have grown up' meaning that you 'got old'. Oh my goodness... don’t get me started.

This at least triggered another thought: What if the theory that children are keeping you young, is wrong? What if they only hold a mirror into your face? What if the solution lies in the choice of social environment? During my holidays I felt perfectly young, sipping my cocktails with 60+ year olds. Blissful moments!

The final clue however came during my morning gym session with my dear friend Imola who is 10 years younger than me. I felt like a spring chicken and hence down the drain went the theory above. And then, while concentrating on my exercise ahead, the mind floated for a split second, and I knew! All of a sudden the burden fell off me and I was one with the world again: It was not my age; it was my lifestyle!

It IS the social environment, but it doesn't have anything to do with age. I am a morning person, and I am surrounded by evening people. With Imola, who is an early bird as well, I felt entirely at ease.

In order to fit into the night owl’s lifestyle I am eating my food at the wrong time of the day, and although I love going to the gym in the mornings I go in the evenings. I like to get up early to do the main housework and pet care, because it gives a clean start into the day – it feels accomplished! I like to sit at the computer early because this is the time of the day when my brain is working well. In the meantime the night people are either in bed or nurturing their morning grump.

I like lunches instead of dinners, but by that time owls only have arrived at breakfast. When they are eventually running up to full speed at night, all I am able to do is to hang in my arm chair keeping hubby company at the telly – something which so far was recognised as a valid and appreciated activity, even if I nodded off.

Now that had changed. All of a sudden I am supposed to be really active at night, meaning that now there is a rather big likelihood of not only performing badly in the gym, but at my morning activities as well. And on top of it all nobody seems to understand why I am such a killjoy when all they wanted to do, is to introduce all this fun into my life. Well, I didn’t understand it myself...

This newly introduced spontaneity is throwing my carefully balanced life completely out of whack. Going to the gym at the wrong time of the day for the benefit of doing something together with hubby is a compromise I am happy to handle, but I cannot compromise on my writing. I can handle spontaneous actions once every fortnight or so, but not several times a week. For everything that needs a shower and hair-wash I’d like to have two days notice, please!

See, and because I am actively voicing my constraints and visibly leaving the scene when everybody else is at their prime, I am a killjoy and weirdo. Owls just passively and invisibly don't show up when I am at my best. Everythging that is not there cannot be weird, and hence they are the 'normal' people.

I am herewith proposing a swap-over scheme. One month I will adjust my lifestyle to the night people and going out with them, and the other month they will have adjust to my ways. Getting up at 5:30, helping with the housework and the pets; when having the morning coffee, I could do an hour of writing, while they do their facebook and internet stuff, and then we could be at the gym by 7AM; coming home by 9 AM to have a shower and a quick breakfast, to then set out for work at 10 – their usual time. On non-gym days we would either do the groceries shopping, or would start work at 8. This way enabled to leave by 4PM we could do some outdoor sport, run errands, or meet friends.

Let’s see who’s up for movies at night, then!

Travelling Skills

2010-02-14T11:29:00.006Z

Madrid Airport...

I was wondering if there are people who are just not suitable for travelling, and if I may be one of them. The other day I was at the movies watching 'Up In The Air' and I quite liked it, and not just because of handsome womanizer George Clooney. Traveling comprises of two parts: Firstly 'being somewhere else than home', which is fine; secondly 'getting there', which is not. Watching the movie I thought that it would be so cool if one could thoroughly enjoy the moving about part of travelling as well. I could picture myself, stylish, assertive, and well organized; jetting around the world, oozing sophistication. Well, today I was thrown back into my real world of travelling.

When I was on the first leg of my flight to Fuerteventura with a pit stop at Madrid I was dreaming myself into George Clooney world – did I pack efficiently? Well, it was alright given that I am planning to have some sport and fun and not just business; my suitcase is perfect, good size and swivel wheels.

Handbag a good size, practical with pockets for everything I need including iPhone and netbook, and shoes easy enough to take off and put on again to be quick and efficient at security. Only hiccup is that I am not a frequent traveler and hence not used to my luggage. At about 4:32 AM this morning I had the shock of a lifetime. I think I have never broken into sweat like this before. I wanted to SMS dear hubby that I made it to the airport and couldn’t find the bloody iPhone which had slipped into the wrong pocket when the taxi picked me up at the hotel - so much for slimline devices!

Realising that the precious device is representing a lifetime of contacts which have no place in my brain anymore I jotted down the most essential numbers on a sheet of paper, which I hopefully will find if needed. Thus relieved I scrutinized the departure board for my check-in information only to find this particular bit missing. Some 15 minutes later it eventually disclosed the information and joyfully equipped with the letter ‘F’ I made my way to the location. Given that I had seen the info flashing up on the board just there and then and that I was close to the point already, I should be one of the first in the queue – so I thought in joining about a mile of people zigzagging their way to the counter. I have no idea how all these people got the news so early. True travelers seem to have the gift of divination.

However, check-in and security went well, and I was soon sitting at the airplane dreaming myself into Clooney-world again. So first rule of travel coolness is to avoid check-ins. Queuing is utterly un-cool. Self check-in is cool! However, due to every numbnut being able to print boarding passes at home, there is a queue at the baggage drop off point as well. Hence no check-in luggage at all is paradigm for efficient travelling.

Now I am sitting at Madrid Airport – which I really loathe – well, at least I am sitting. See, the 'Up In The Air' flair only comes to full shine if you are travelling business class… I am bench; hard wooden bench, and that is where display boards come to play their role in harassing travelers. Their main purpose is to guide people to the correct destination. These days however they have become mean devices which make people wait right in front of them, far away from any coffee place or shop. Only in the last minute they reveal the destination to make people hectically rush to reach their gate. I am pretty sure that there are people sitting behind the security cameras and placing bets.

If one just wouldn’t have different hopes: The boarding pass is already in place since check-in, no passport control since it’s a transfer, plenty of time – one is German after all and always is working a lot of safety transfer time into stop-overs – so what can possibly go wrong?

The expectation is a 2 1/2 hour break during which first thing a visit to the loo is to be executed – brilliant, Madrid has plenty of such facilities – and then a sophisticated cappuccino with possibly a nice little piece of cake is to be consumed, while looking very important using the computer or the iPhone, followed by a stroll through the oh so expensive shops, looking as if one can afford them.

Now, Madrid Airport terminal 4 is about a mile long. It needs something like 20 minutes to get from one end to the other. The board of course only is telling me that I am in the correct terminal, but gives no information whatsoever about WHERE TO within the bloody thing I have to go. So off to the loo, and then a bee line to the next coffee shop. Bloody hell, only coffee late; I hate late. The guy is a decent chap, though and telling me that half way down the hall is a cappuccino joint. On arrival the first half hour is gone, and I am not really feeling at ease. It would be just lovely to know how far I have to go to get to the right gate, the board around the corner however tells me nothing new. It is small so I can’t read it from the coffee shop and me the un-cool traveler is quickly gulping down a hot Cappuccino – eventually a hot one – and a cake, burning my tongue while the rest of sophistication goes down the drain. Repeated board consultation doesn’t bring any news and so goes the first hour of my break.

Maybe I should find an information stand. Later it would turn out that there are two, but of course I am choosing the one furthest away.

There I am told that only an hour before the flight – not the boarding, which is half an hour before – they will know the gate, that it is confirmed now, and this time my letter is ‘J’ the place where I just came from. On reaching the spot I feel nicely worked through, the coat is keeping me warmer than expected and the so reasonably packed bag is starting to feel like a suitcase – while the board still refuses to confirm. Hoping that the guy who told me the gate knows his job I am settling into a chair to write it all down, not without getting up every 5 minutes or so, taking bag, coat and computer with me to check the darn board. Eventually! Confirmation! And a number to go with the ‘J’ which tells me that I am in the right spot. Now I can relax – for 25 minutes of the total 150.

This whole thing sort of spoils the cool look.

... and from the other end!

I walked this bloody hall twice, got rather hot in the meantime and now am looking so disheveled that nobody would ever consider me an example for a cool traveler. That teaches me another lesson: Sophistication needs money. To pull off the Clooney travel style one needs to have access to VIP lounges where everything is taken care of.

Now I am on my second leg and a few thousand feet high up in the air. I am sweating with a vigorously coughing baby right behind me, so be prepared that in a couple of weeks time or so I will be moaning about a cold. See, babies don’t travel business class - only babes do, and handsome guys like George Clooney. I really need to publish this book that I am writing – and you, for crying out loud: Go and buy it! I need to get rich!

Men, Women, Humand kind and the Gods

2010-02-14T11:24:00.002Z

- or: How to cheat properly! -

Who on earth thought it a good idea to use female and male humans as the different genders of the same species. It is as if project management failed horribly when the Gods created the living things. That happens in the best of companies, right? The right hand is not entirely sure what the left is doing and Bob’s your uncle… the production line is messed up!

In the end they must have found that they were left with two species which didn’t quite match and they must have thought: Well, it did cost a lot of money to get them made, let’s just throw them together and see what happens.

After I had already commented on an article about the gender differences in nest building and seasonal decoration habits I now stumbled across another one about cheating. I always thought cheating is, well… cheating. But apparently not.

According to this article women are catching up in regard to frequency – not sure if that is a good or a bad thing – but how the aftermath is handled, that is evolving on a very different level.

Apparently the first thing a woman asks is: ‘Do you love her?’ What already implies one of the problems should she be cheating… love is her measure for the gravity of the cheat. Since a fling is not something that would tear her world apart, attention is something very nice to attract and the ravages of time are not getting any kinder on us, she even might allow herself a little slip and thus stepping onto the slippery slope that leads to love with the initial fling.

Should he be the culprit, she needs a bit of time to get reassured that he only had a fling – of course she needs to see 'the other woman' to figure out her position in this picking order and to establish the appropriate actions to stay on top for the future. That done, she might well be willing to take him back… and a guilty man is a good man!

Now, this article is suggesting that men see it very much differently when women cheat. His first question would be: Did you have sex? In the male world performance seems to be the measure for the gravity of a cheat. The very fact that apparently quality and/or quantity was not sufficiently provided from his side as otherwise the wife would not have strayed, seems to be hitting right into the core.

So now imagine her trying to explain her fling by proclaiming: But it was just sex! Oh oh, that would be pouring oil into the fire.

How on earth is woman supposed to get out of this when the starting point of the quarrel is on such different positions. See, again the Gods didn't get it right. Even the remedy for the intricate situation lies on the different ends of the spectrum and is best depicted with the proverb: ‘A woman needs to feel good to have sex and a guy needs to have sex to feel good’.

A lot of make-up sex might put him at ease, but given that she just broke up with her lover that seems to be an unlikely option for her.

So there are only two things that come to mind to avoid the hassle.

Either: Don’t do it!

Or: Do it right and don’t get caught, for crying out loud!

Winter Blues

2010-02-14T11:15:00.004Z

According to the Telegraph today is the officially most depressing day of the whole year: Winter blues par excellence!

Combine that with an all time low of hormones and lack of sleep, and you will get a rough idea of my mood status – this isn’t anything close to the usual mood swings, this is grown-up gloom. The symptom that might give the best indication of how far up the scale I am, is when shifting gear on my way to the food store sounds like beating the record on TopGear for a round in the reasonably priced car.

So there I was this morning Monday, 18th January, starring at the sandwich bread that just wouldn’t want to transform into sandwiches all by itself and was close to giving it all up – again! Boooohooooo, why am I here? What am I doing? Nobody is interested in my website, why do I bother? Wahhaaaaaa!

I had hoped that my morning coffee with a bit of celeb gossip would cheer me up, and promptly I stumbled over an article on ‘Invisible Women in their 40s’. Well, that DID cheer me up – it’s wonderful to be understood, to not feeling alone in the world, and to know that apparently there are still women out there who might be interested in my writings. Didn’t this article just cheer ME up? I should be able to write one that will pass this cheer on! Unfortunately I then started reading the comments...

Uuuuhhh, please don’t cheer me up by telling me how good I have it! I know that there are loads of wonderful women out there, who are so much better than I am, who have a hard life and are coping without a single moan, and that I should strive to step into their footsteps and that I should stop pitying myself and rather go out to safe the world.

... it’s just.... I didn’t choose to be moody today... and now my coffee is empty and I have to make sandwiches and I don’t know how to safe the world... it’s so big!... whhhhfffff....hmmmm... whhhhfffff... and I’m tired and nobody listens and ....

So now not just carrying my own mood, but the burden of the world, I trudged downstairs to attend to the sandwich problem.

Then I heard hubby in the next room! “I need a HUUUUGG!” ... and then the darling downloaded the IL statistics – ohhhh, risky - ... and found that we are on a steep incline. People DO read, and they ARE interested! And then the letterbox rattled and I got a letter from a Twitter friend telling me that I would be allowed to attend a ‘Primate Enrichment Session’ at Colchester Zoo, meaning that I will be able to see behind the scenes of the Orangutan enclosure. How wonderful is that?

Two lovely people did something nice for me and all of a sudden the day is a bit brighter, and now that it is afternoon even the sun decided to have a look from behind the clouds.

Oh well, life is not too bad after all, and maybe I’m now strong enough to take on a little bit of the world.

Gossip

2010-02-14T11:09:00.002Z

What is happening to me? On one end I am all ‘wildlife experience, Orangutan charity’ –ish and on the other I can’t get enough from TV-glamour-celeb gossip.

From one of the links thrown at me by Twitter I stumbled over the Daily mail website – I must have done before but never cared – but now I am hooked. First thing in the morning when I sneak back upstairs with my cup of cappuccino to sit a bit in my artificial sun, which by the way seems to be working for me, the first thing I look at is the gossip page. Oh, maybe it IS the sun, that Ibiza feel that triggers it?

However, I am thrilled to see 51 year old Sharon Stone without make-up and then glammed up, thinking: Well, a bit of paint does do some good to an old house, I really should learn how to decorate my face for those emergency moments when a big outing is looming.

And I am thrilled to see which funny turns the articles take. Like the one about Fergie - Black Eyed Peas – Ferguson where the headline suggests it’s about her and husband showing up at an event allegedly to brush aside a stripper’s affair claims. The first turn then takes us to her staring alongside famous people in a film of which the premiere saw or did not see – so weirdly phrased that I don’t really get it – a megastar cast, and the last twist explains the lives of those megastars and whether they have singing skills or not, and then the big final: a picture of the whole cast where Fergie – she is incredibly short, even in heals – is fading somewhere in the background. Hmm, and I am working my brains out to be consistent in my stories.

I guess what excites me most however, is that my voyeurism is getting satisfied. Oh, all these wonderful wobblies, and fashion faux pas, all the make-up mistakes and misbehaviours… wonderful how human these celebs are. And bringing their status down a few degrees seems to be bringing mine up a similar amount, creating this tingly feel-good factor. Just that it’s not true; it only levels things out a bit. The decent way to reduce the status gap, would be to work my way up rather than bringing them down. Oh well, and then of course there is this bit of malicious glee that is born out of envy.

But you know what? It’s just lovely to live all these mean little feelings for this brief, half sleepy moment when I am sitting with my cuppa and my light, trying to find the entrance door to the day ahead. Consciousness is not yet fully awaken, which for the rest of the day at least tries to make me the good gal I am supposed and want to be. So with the guards still down it’s only between my computer and me… and the machine won’t tell anybody…, or will it?

Christmas Perfectionism & Compliance

2010-02-14T11:06:00.002Z

'The search for a way out'

I came across a column published in the 'Mail Online' claiming that Christmas stress is home made by women. I have to admit: The author has a point. I was like that, and since I changed it I was always wondering why I feel obliged to excuse my lack of Christmas enthusiasm:

Oh see, we don’t have kids. Christmas with tree and all is only really nice with kids. And in the meantime our house is so cluttered I have to re-organise everything to get the tree in. Well, and our parents are not travelling over Christmas… no, we don’t travel either. We didn’t do that when we were back in Germany. The traffic is horrendous and so many people died in accidents. Our parents never wanted us to travel. So no, we are not going to see our families.

Truth is: I probably miss one single trip to a Christmas market. I'd liked to have a ham roll and a bag of caramelised almonds. But that is enough, anything beyond that is just plain noisy, smelly and exhausting. I’d like to see my parents for one lunch and probably an afternoon tea. And I’d like to have a Christmas tree for probably 3 days. It just creates such a lovely atmosphere. But again, beyond that, the tree is a nuisance taking a lot of place, the cat will smash another few baubles and throw up over the tinsel it has nibbled.

Would I have a traditional Christmas

I would have gained at least 5 pounds - I know that because it happened in the past
I won’t be able to shift this weight at least until summer - which I know about because it happened before
I would have taken at least 3 additional days of my A/L to get everything in place before, and to tidy up after, and
I will be going back to work in the New Year and be happy that eventually everything is back to normal and that I can relax now. Later in the year when the weather is lovely, I will be missing those additional 3 days of leave which I took and wasted, and I know that because I experienced it before.

Thus it will be the 3^rd year now that I am skipping Christmas. Hubby and I, we just don’t go there. And it is wonderful. Well, I did gain weight in the previous two years due to biscuits and cakes during the run-up to Christmas - that stuff is just jumping into ones face from every shelf. This year it’s only 2 weeks to go and I even lost some thanks to the sugar experiment. I didn’t fall into the trap and I am proud of it. Additionally I set me a challenge for end of February – a new photo shoot. I am looking forward to catching up with a few things I always wanted to do: Eventually I will be able to read, to find out how to publish my book, and to start work on the new IL site.

Well, and as for the excuses… it's a female thing to play down a great thing in front of her girl friends to not make them feel bad. And although everybody seems to love Christmas, nobody loves the run-up to it. I have a hunch that some of my friends might like to have what I have, at least for once, to try it out. Maybe not to the full extreme, only just a little bit. But they can’t. There are the family commitments, the tit-for-tat game that has to be played in regard to gifts, the kids who do like Christmas and are not to be disappointed, and no two ways about it: Food is the pinnacle of hospitality and hence has to be perfect. So I play down my joy about my Christmas lifestyle, allowing them to pity me.

In the end of the day however, we are all responsible for our own actions and I think the Mail column is tapping right into the IL philosophy: If you like it, then go ahead. If you are not happy, then stop moaning and change it. Doesn’t have to be drastic, small changes sometimes work wonders.

So I am wholeheartedly wishing you a wonderful Christmas with your families. Enjoy the festive season to the full, and no need to pity me.

Column Talk

2010-02-14T11:03:00.002Z

Since I am pretending to be a writer, making up concoctions like this one, I discovered that there seem to be certain codes of conduct in place for this sort of writing. Columns are non-fictional in a weird way. One is writing about something that grasped the attention at one point in life and when the time feels right this bit of real life occurrence is turned into a comedy, a farce or a good rant on a very small sheet of paper. Those snippets however are far from a proper documentary, and hence looked down at by ‘real’ writers. Columns are a bit like speed dating, everything shrivelled down to the essentials.

Well, your humble narrator usually is cheating a bit, stretching these dates to the limit. I am not restricted to paper where a column IS a real column – 500 words or so - one can’t drift into the margins. And see, there is another rule: The narrator is always very 'humble'. We are ranting a lot and apparently knowing everything about everything - why else would we write about it? But when it comes to addressing ourselves, we are desperately trying to get ourselves out of the line of fire by pretending not to know a thing while taking the mickey out of ourselves. It is a brilliant way of getting away with things.

And now there is something else I realised: Thanks to the internet we found a wonderful way of bragging. These days columns are often run within blogs where communities form and comments are left, resulting in chains of conversation which sometimes are funnier than the blog itself; so far a reason for me to not run the columns in a blog. See, and then we visit each others blogs and leave comments including links to our own pamphlets, trying to confuse the community and to win them over.

Oh well, at least I do that! But I have an excuse: I am not famous; I have to steal attention wherever I can. Whereas there are some very generous, famous columnists like Nury, who let me thrive on their wave. Out of this a conversation via columns took place on Nury’s blog which I would like to tell you about… well, and it is another wonderful opportunity to brag about myself! Here is:

The story of 'He is so sweet!'

I love it when a story goes circles especially when it happens to one of mine, and especially if this circle contains a lot of praise for me. It all started when I left a comment on Nury’s blog asking when he is doing all this writing. A column EVERY day! And they are all good ones. If I am on a high I can come up with one a week and if I get lucky, then every other is a good one. Hence the valid question: When on earth does one find the time for that?

Response:

Dear Rika, thanks for your kind words--I had a visit to your site and found it great fun. (Click on Rika's name at the bottom of her comment above to go straight to her page.) As for how I write so often, I'm not sure what the answer is. One thing is that I get up early -- six o'clock this morning and straight to work on this site in my pajamas, before getting into a suit and heading off to the office to do my real job. The other thing is the pressure of having readers. Once you know you have a few, then you can't let them down--I'm sure you feel the same!
Nury

Yay! He likes my site… and he is assuming that I have readers... and well yes, the reader thing is true. Although I am writing on a weekly basis: I didn’t miss a single Wednesday in two and a half years. Who knows, there might be someone actually coming back... Nevertheless: Writing in the mornings – what an idea! So I wrote my own column on that matter, called 'He is so sweet!'.

Time went by, about one and a half years of it, when all of a sudden he wrote a column – much funnier than mine – about the same kind of start into the day… hmmm?! That sound’s like somebody had a bit of a lifestyle change… So I couldn’t help but leave another comment:

My dear sweetheart Nury, welcome to the real world!

A good two years ago I asked you how on earth you manage to write all that stuff you are writing, and I got a response: http://mrjam.typepad.com/diary/2008/07/cmon-baby-light.html#comment-122021292

Oh yes! I am German, remember?

Back then this inspired me to write my own account of my sad life: http://incredibleladies.com/Column/Rika/SweetNury.html and reading through it again I now feel blessed; your life seems to be even sadder than mine.

But it gave you a new column...

Posted by: Rika | Thursday, 26 November 2009 at 02:51 PM

And again I got a lovely response. First a lot of praise for other commentators I am not keen to bore you with, and then:

…

Rika, I love your site. Anybody who hasn't been to it -- do make a visit, click on Rika's name in the comment above. She writes really well. You can really picture her.

…

Posted by: Nury | Thursday, 26 November 2009 at 07:43 PM

See, one may say a lot of bad things about the internet, the fake friends luring you into an addictive internet lifestyle, the crimes and abuses. Well, it pretty much depends on how one uses this thing, I guess. This example shows that it can truly connect people across the world, although… Nury is desperately trying to prove that Angela, one of the gang members is real,… and sometimes… hmm…?!? … his pictures look so airbrushed… I will have to go to Hong Kong one day and track him down!

Moaners and Whiners

2010-02-14T11:02:00.001Z

Me being a Gemini sometimes has this weird effect of finding my 'Second Me' standing right next to me, observing. I would love to think that I am floating around like an angel or an airy ghost, but no, I’m just plain silly and non-gorgeously standing there.

Second Me’s duty seems to be to give me a replay of things when I am not really prepared for it, just to tease a bit. Like when I am under a nice hot shower and all of a sudden I am punished with an additional hot flush of vivid, Technicolor-recollection: ‘Oh my goodness, I didn’t really do this, did I?’

From those recollections I realised that apparently I do moan a lot. I seem to be moaning about almost everything; I moan about things going on in the world, at work and especially about things related to me: fat legs, stringy hair, veins, no time, lack of sleep, wrinkles,… You name it I moan about it.

On the other hand, though I am a happy bunny. How do those two things go together then? Now it occurred to me: There is a difference between moaners and whiners.

Moaners are actually people who take a close look on things and have a lot of interests. A bit opinionated, maybe, but generally they want to know how thing work and why they are the way they are. Additionally a moaner talks a lot, hence every question that might pop up while observing, comes straight out of their mouth: ‘Why on earth, is that green and not blue? Why can’t they have street work done at night? Oh my goodness, look at these wobblies, why oh why do women have to have them, sooo unfair!?!’

Now, whiners are usually similarly opinionated, but there is a difference. While the moaner expresses opinions in a firm voice with theatrical intonation, the whiner resorts to a rather high pitched, faint voice as if carrying all the weight of all those questions on their shoulders. They constantly are expecting more questions to crop up adding to the load, what makes them miserable before it even happens. Due to their concerned state of mind they consider themselves the pillars of society - what do I say – of the world, and do they get praise? No, of course not! Not a single: ‘Thank You’. Ever!

See, that is the big difference between moaners and whiners: While whiners consider everything happening in their oh so miserable lives the fault of others which one can’t do anything about, the moaner is not judgemental: Opinionated yes, judgemental no! For them ‘sh.. just happens’ and as far as they are concerned one can do something about it. Moaning is what drives them to make things better, to take things into their own hands. They might be a bit pushy at times, but since their frame of mind is set on improvement they are able to learn and to change their minds about things, something a whiner can’t do.

It would be nice though, if once in a while all of them would just shut up!

My Very Own Sun

2010-02-14T11:00:00.001Z

This morning, Saturday 7^th November 2009, I received my very own sun via Royal Mail Special delivery.

You don’t believe that the Royal Mail delivers the sunshine these days… Think hard! How often did we have sunshine? … and how often have they been on strike?...There you are!

So to make sure you receive your very own you have to put in an online order. Mine was for Amazon and thanks to special delivery I got it after two days already.

My little sun is small, cute and comes with a travel bag – very important these days since even in southerly holiday locations sun is not guaranteed anymore – so better take your own.

Aint it cute?

The reason why I eventually decided to invest into my own was the telly. I tend to watch too much, but this time it was good I did. A doctor was interviewed regarding a common condition which patients complain about in winter: Tired, hungry for carbos, grumpy down to depression. Well I always thought that is how one feels and wouldn’t have necessarily thought about bothering my GP with it. And then I remembered another telly incident. I watched Stephen Fry explaining his depression, and he, being an author and man of the word in general, described it so vividly that at some point I blasted out: ‘Oh that feeling I know!’ … and Detlef – dear hubby, that is – almost fell off his chair. He never had experienced any of this, found it rather interesting that others do, but could not relate to it the least bit, while I was glued to the screen.

Well, depression comes in degrees and it seems that some people have it coming in waves, and some have it coming from certain events. And it seems that people in a depressive phase seem to hide away, so nobody knows, really. Only Detlef knows me when I am down, sleeping all day, or watching telly. I can’t write, well I can, but it’s all rubbish and lacking wit. I am not creative, and if I try – theoretically depression is to give in when the victim is doing something nice – so if I try, I am so clumsy that everything turns into a listless design, smudged and brittle. Photos are out of focus because my eyes are slow and heavy… I’m just useless in phases like those, thus the nice theory mentioned above is herewith put to rest.

Age helps in a way because it made me more experienced. At work I know my ways and focus on the stuff that doesn’t need a lot of thinking, and when I have to meet people I hope I can fake it well enough. I seem to be a lighter case and usually it’s gone after a couple of days.

However, the interesting thing is that I thought it's normal and seeing this doctor talking about it made me realise that it is not! They even invented a fancy acronym for it: SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder

More interestingly even, there seems to be a simple cure – which is to get your own sun. I even had heard about it before some 15 years ago. My in-laws got a rather big device, something like an A3 desk lamp with several fluorescent tubes and depending on the number of tubes, one has to sit in front for 20 minutes to an hour daily. Back then it was a word-of-mouth thing like taking some herbal remedies for all sorts of things. These lights were expensive and bulky so I didn’t consider it further and forgot all about it.

Now I instantly used my geeky husband to research the matter properly and a couple of hours later I found an email with three links describing the most suitable products. Two were still the bulky type using power leads – oh how I hate cables, they are utterly depression enhancing – and one was the little cute less than A5 size battery operated blue light.

Firstly I love blue light. Whenever I see these blue Christmas decorations on houses I go 'Oh' and 'Ah', and given the choice of blue or red LEDs on electric devices I always would choose blue. Additionally it seems to put less strain on the eyes as some people get headaches from the fluorescent tubes. Well, we have to see about that. And we will have to see if it works at all. It is supposed to help against winter blues and jet lag as well.

Main task now is to get it working, it has to charge for an initial eight hours – bahhh – later it’s only four or so, but I briefly had it on using the mains and it is … bright … and blue … so that will have to be it for now. It’s said that after a couple of weeks one is supposed to feel a difference…

Well, until then folks: In good homeopathic tradition of 'like cures like' let's try to fight 'The Blues' with somethig blue!

Now! That is somewhat interesting!

2010-02-14T10:59:00.002Z

The matter if intelligence always fascinated me, probably because I am not. Well, or at least I think I am not because I am in an environment where everybody is so much smarter than me. Put those guys into a group of Nobel Prize winners and they appear pretty dumb, though.

And see that is the thing: We ordinary mortals compare our levels of smartness to the people we are with. Scientist then go into their ivory towers and tell us that they found an absolute measure and this is the only way to figure out whether or not one is smart: Do a test, count the points and there you are, well or not! And because it is fun to openly humiliate people these tests are used in schools and TV shows. Britain is especially good in finding the smartest brain via television which usually has to do with spelling, maths, and the task of recognising things quickly and re-arranging them – and usually I am feeling like crap afterwards.

So why am I coping well in an environment with loads of smart people without feeling dumb all the time – I work as a secretary in an research lab – while when watching the telly and getting asked all those questions my mood is sinking rock bottom?

I now figured it out! And that is why I find this subject somewhat interesting.

The scientists got it wrong, and because they got it wrong for a long time, their ways of handling the matter have entered the mainstream so much that it is hard to get it removed from it. See, in order to measure something you have to define it first - and you have to define the scale you want to measure with. So, if you wanted to have people measuring up sugar you have to make sure that everybody knows how sugar looks like.

Now, there is normal sugar and the brown one and then we have Caster sugar which is a bit finer and then we have Icing sugar which is entirely powdery. If your recipe works on grams you are fine to use a scale. But what happens if your recipe is in gram and you are using a measuring cup? A scale measures weight, and a cup measures volume. If you put a cup full of coarse sugar on a scale it weighs something different then a cup full of icing sugar because between the grains of the coarse sugar there is actually no sugar but air - which doesn't weigh a thing, while the icing sugar is packed much denser and hence you have more sugar in it.

It is a difficult matter isn’t it. When you do your baking you intuitively do the right thing because you have a feeling for it, you already did it a few times and you just know what is right. But try to explain it to somebody else, and then try to write it down for all the rest of the people who you can’t talk to in person. This becomes quite a task, and we are only talking about sugar, something you can see and touch.

And now imagine somebody would tell you: I am about to explain how to measure ‘Intelligence’, Yay!

This person must be bonkers. You can’t touch it, you can’t see it, what the hell is intelligence anyway?

See, and that is where they got it wrong. They didn’t define it right. They thought intelligence is all that stuff like maths and so on; scientists call it abstract thinking. Take trees! Trees are fine, trees are real. I have no problem with counting trees. The number ‘1’ is not fine, nor is the number ‘2’ – don’t laugh, I am trying to be serious here – these numbers represent something else, but the ARE NOT the 'something else'. They are a thin, weirdly bent line on paper. 1+2 is something we can handle because we learned it and if you would add the word apples it even would makes sense, I’d love to have three apples.

But what about?

That doesn’t mean anything to me and never will. Although the bits and pieces surely do represent some real thing, but it is ‘abstract’, it doesn’t look like the real thing at all.

And it is all that stuff that scientists thought is what makes people intelligent. There was one big hiccup with the scientific world in regard to brain related stuff: Instead of trying to figure out what makes people tick the scientists relied on and concluded from their own individual experience and their own skill set. So a mathematicians would measure with maths, while linguists might use word games kind of things and they would hence build a very different theory about the same question, in this case: What is intelligence and how to measure it.

And now it turns out: It’s all not true. Already in the 1970s and 1980s there were a few really smart guys proposing a different definition for intelligence. One of them is Howard Gardner and he suggested a multi intelligence model defining seven different kinds of intelligence in people. This definition looks into the different ways people use to approach the world they live in and how they solve problems. These seven are:

Linguistic – using words
Logical/mathematical – using abstract things
Bodily-Kinesthetic – love to move about
Spatial – translate everything into pictures
Musical – love music
Interpersonal – like to communicate with others
Intrapersonal – may be shy, but very aware of own feelings and self motivated

That already makes a lot more sense. I for example quite like to listen to music, but it is not my way of approaching the world, and although I like writing, words are not my most intuitive way into the world. I am using writing at a later stage of problem solving, but the very first thing that happens when I hear or read something is to translate it into some sort of imagery or colour. It happens automatically, so I am definitely a ‘Spatial’ person. Additionally I am an Interpersonal gal and my Intrapersonal skills are not to bad either

And now I saw a documentary on the telly about all the new computer stuff and what the future will bring and what sort of robots they are already able to build…

... Robots?!?

… robots are important! They are important because they are mimicking human behaviour. The better they get the more scientists actually understand what makes humans tick. And it is incredible what modern robots can already do. They work on a very emotional level, the address cuteness, helpfulness, pity, love and many more things which we don’t usually associate with robots. In this BBC4 documentary on 'The Intelligence Revolution' Dr. Michio Kaku said the one phrase which inspired me to write all this. He said:

Emotional intelligence is the most important form of intelligence we have!

Duh?

Emotional intelligence? Isn’t emotion the resort of hysteric women? Isn’t that the thing that is to be excluded from the business world? Isn’t that the one thing we have to exclude from science to be able to take reasonable decisions? And all of a sudden it is the most important thing we have?

Emotional Intelligence became fashionable when Daniel Goleman published a book in 1995, and I remember that my father-in-law used to tell me about it when I was all too self-conscious about the fact that I was crap at university and that I was about to fail again - did I tell you that my subject was computer science? Me of all people, and computer science... Whenever I was low I tried to promote this idea of emotional intelligence, which nobody else in the world seemed to know about, and I again looked a bit of an idiot who just wanted to excuse another failure.

Well, time has apparently worked for me and 14 years on it is considered the most important type of intelligence there is. And I am guessing the reason for me being so comfortable in a world full of these IT researchers is that I can solve problems easily which they can’t. I might not be able to build a rocket, but there are a whole lot of things I can do better than these conventionally smart guys – and I am the only one there, I am invaluable!

Yay! I like this theory!

See, THIS I just find very interesting. This is something we ladies usually are intuitively good at. This is something we should ADD to the business and science world, rather then copying the boffins and suppressing this wonderful skill.

Off you go girls!
This century could be the era of the ladies!

Nudism VS. Fur

2010-02-14T10:52:00.002Z

What is this with us humans and being naked? Gosh we are so squeamish!

We seem to be so proud of having lost the fur what makes us oh so distinguishable from our fellow primates, and now we go berserk if there is naked flesh on show. Well, almost all of us lost the fur, and although to some body hair has a rugged attraction I am assuming that the majority prefers the groomed look, the more that the remnants of our ancestral skin cover have a tendency to show in areas where they are less attractive.

Couldn’t we just have kept it, made a style out of it and got on with our lives? Would have saved us a lot of money for fashionable supplements and bickering about wobbly bits. But NO! We have to make it part of our civilizing efforts to determine what can be on show and what has to be hidden away. It however seems to be a cultural thing as well: The Germans, for example, have an extremely weird reputation. They are thought to be hairy AND naked…

I don’t know where this ‘Germans are hairy’ thing is coming from. I am pretty sure that they as well spend a fortune on getting things sorted as human culture demands these days. But the naked thing is absolutely true.

I got inspired to think these few thoughts by some holiday greetings a fellow commentator on Mr Jam’s Diary had send. At first the poor thing was shocked to find that on visiting a sauna in the lovely city of Stuttgart all sorts of naked folks was hopping around.

Having escaped the experience alive and with a still sound mind, Angela moved on to the Mediterranean and then made a tiny mistake. She entered the boat of a German skipper who gave her a close-up view on a pretty beach of Mallorca. Not knowing that half of Mallorca is occupied by Germans, again she was in for a bit of a surprise when there were naked people basking like grill chickens in their hundreds.

The same happens when I go on my winter holidays to Fuerteventura. German hotel beach equals naked people, and of course each hotel has at least one pool for the nudes and of course you go to the sauna in the costume you were born with.

And every time I go there something weird happens. I go with the flow and throw off my clothes – and it feels… normal! For once it feels really weird when everybody is naked and you are not; it is much worse to be the odd one out, rather than being naked.

But there is something else. These days it doesn’t feel just normal, it feels liberating. I have written about this subject before and depicted that it can’t be in my upbringing. I had a phase when I only joined in under group pressure and wasn’t comfortable at all – although I looked millions better back then. It must be an old age confidence thing then, and apparently I have become one of these ‘confident due to not having to lose anything anymore’ culprits myself. Hence most of the nudes are not the ones who can afford it, but the amazingly many – oh well, how to put it kindly – oddly shaped people who drop their clothes.

Told you: We should have kept the fur!

Why on Earth does it have to be Ballet?

2010-02-14T10:50:00.001Z

For starters: I am not a musical person! Never was!

My mum is the only person in this whole world who thinks that I have a nice voice, but mums believe their babies are pretty…

In my early teens I was admitted to a gymnastics class and we did all sorts of dance stuff. The thing I liked best was the tight red body with long sleeves and white rim – the ones we wore at school were cotton and had short sleeves. This one was elegant, and I felt very special. I even made it into a performance and didn’t fail my mates. Blessed times! Everything after that was fraught with embarrassment and a lot of stiffness around the hips.

See, in the later teens one wants to be cool – and I just wasn’t. When dancing at parties all the others had these routines like 'The Hustle' and no way could I ever remember which way round to turn. Tried my luck with ballroom dancing, but after a year or so the trainer has certain expectations in regard to the pupil’s performance – well, needless to say that I was not at the top of the class. Same with Jazz dance and any other kind of aerobics. I can never remember the routines and what do I know where left and right is. Since I moved to England everything is upside down anyway. When giving directions I point, but I don’t say.

So, now it is ballet, eh?

Yeah well, although I am not good at it I just like moving to music. So I thought I’d give it another shot and try to actually learn how to do it right. And what is better to find balance and posture than ballet? So one might think.

Off I went to the newly opened dance centre to enquire, got confirmed that it is not a problem that I already missed the first two classes of the term – we proceed slowly – and decided to be back: Monday, 6PM, be early, admission from 5, classes fill quickly.

An hour before I wanted to leave the house I realised that changing there means changing room…oh! … shaving! … oh! … barefoot … feet … oh! …

Made it well in time nevertheless, paid my five quid, changed and met the trainer before everybody else came. Good! Can brief her that I am an utter newbie.

She is very kind, very ballet, half a head shorter than I am and half as thin, very elegant and fragile looking with an English rose complexion and a similarly faint voice. 'Oh yes we have shelves, you can have your things and water in here and no that is no problem that you are new – we are proceeding slowly…' - OK!

Oh my goodness! You should have seen me!

I had my place next to an open window, street noise deafening the one ear while the other one was trying to catch the faint voice. I whished I were a cartoon character to extend it into a satellite dish – not that I would have understood any of the French murmuring. Turns out that these people are doing ballet since a long time, they know the drills, they are just not daring enough to take it to the next, meaning advanced, level.

Clutching the bar with the left hand I had a girl in front of me who was really good and whom I could follow. As soon as we had to turn round to move the other half of the body I was lost. Of course one can’t turn the head to search for the trainer, so most of the time arms and legs were fiddling purposelessly in the air like a bug on its back.

And then the highlight: Ever seen Fame or any other dance movie? They always split into groups and then diagonally jumping and twirling through the room followed by the next group and then the next, and they all look so gorgeous as they jump and twirl… Ahemmm… in the last group was yours truly, … and step step and slide and stop and hop and turn – no the other direction – and hop and step! … Yep! Me! And you know what? I wasn’t the least bit embarrassed. I don’t know if it’s the Omega 3 that I am taking since more than a year or just a newly gained confidence. Probably being older is a good thing: Nobody expects you to be cool or perfect. People are sort of impressed that one tries at all… fine by me!

The next day I had a lovely muscle ache in all the right places – bum, thighs and calves. So I will be back and see if I can nail that task, and if not: Who cares?! At least it does my rear some good!

Update 22th October: Class 2, two weeks later

Apparently I wasn't the only one in need for a hearing aid, and apparently the acoustic of the room gives instructers a hard time to get through. But the dear thing did her best and so the lesson was much better.

And it seems as if she didn't want to put off newbies by correcting them too much - hence me not getting help. This time she jumped in and I felt like actually improving. I now know that I am not too bad with arms, but a crap jumper; that my pelvis is all over the place and hence my balance is lacking and most of all - that I am stiff as a log. Not that I was told, but in being able to follow the instructions better I easily could feel for myself where I am lacking skill.

One thing is good though: I enjoy being old! Nobody is expecting anything brilliant - Yay! For the first time I can make a monkey out of myself without feeling like one. Brilliant!

Definitely will go on!

Confidence & Humour

2010-02-14T10:43:00.005Z

I have come across something that made me wonder if my interest in bringing Bodybuilding into the mainstream might have to do with a very personal quest. I could just do my own thing and leave it as it is, but no: I have to campaign and try convincing people that joining me would be doing them good. Why on earth is that?

See, I am a Gemini, and I always was interested in a lot of things. It however is one thing to have a lot of interests, and it is another not being able to decide where to focus and hence not really knowing what sort of person one wants to be. I don’t mean that in terms of general goals, I mean that in regard to which image to display. Some women are ladies, some are tomboys, some are mums and some are business women – what am I? Well, I’m not a mum, but I had my broody phase.

When I joined all these social networking sites I realized how quickly one gets branded. On MySpace I am a Bodybuilder and a rather blokish girl, an image which apparently has a certain sex appeal and not just for men; on LinkedIn I wanted to present my writing side but they don’t let me get away without a company name. As soon as I typed BT, that was it! I only get connected with BT people, and mainly IT guys contact me. I am not an IT person for crying out loud, I am a part time secretary and I want to make it as a writer – Help!

Where do I belong? In sport I am a rather good indoor rower as well as a Bodybuilder; I like to dress up and I like to go in combat trousers. However, because my shape is a bit different than the mainstream, people wonder if I should dress up in frills and laces, and if I should wear 5 inch heels, and if I should be interested in Make-up. A sport person is not into make-up, right?

Now I came across something very interesting, actually someone very interesting: Dita von Teese. She is a burlesque dancer and she created herself as this person since she was a teenager. She is always the same, on stage and in private. I admire her for her determination, her openness, her style and finesse. She is not entirely beautiful, but she radiates a confidence which outshines the most beautiful supermodel.

When I read her book and how she came about to be the person she is now, I got really jealous. She knew from teenage age what type of woman she wanted to portrait and went straight for it; and then I started day dreaming and bringing things together and then it occurred to me:

In a way she is restricted. She might be able to walk those heels better than anyone else, and she might always look pristine in her corset laced shape, and thanks to the perfection achieved by this kind of focus she might have become stinking rich by now, but she never gets to feel the fun of getting dirty in the garden and the power of being able to lift the weights I do; and I still can lace up and wear my heels. My hands may look a bit scruffy and my muscles may look a bit antagonistic, but I’d make a decent diva.

We both moved out of the mainstream, and as soon as one dares doing so one gets looked over by some; she for her burlesque and I for my muscles.

And although we both confidently claim that we don’t care; can it be that we are secretly wishing to belong?

Can it be that one is creating tasteful perfection so that she becomes a worthy advocate for making burlesque an accepted art form? And can it be that the other is creating a community for herself in which she will blend in?

Well, could be!

But not really, though! At least not for me; the stronger I get, the less I want to blend in. Confidence comes with control over ones body and of course I would like to see more women finding confidence. Confidence leads to passion and from there to success and back to confidence. Dita is a dancer and always was body conscious. I have been fat and don’t have a musical bone in my body; sport is the only way to achieve a similar effect.

And ultimately the best friend of confidence is humor! Judgmental people I shrug off with laughter.

Nothing wrong with that!

You don't know a lot about women, do you?

2010-02-14T10:43:00.004Z

There are no two ways about it: Men and women approach the issues of life differently. I’m not saying that one way is better than the other: Just ‘different’!

It is a bit like talking different languages; misunderstandings are not easily avoided if one doesn’t see the joke in a weird phrase and takes it with a bit of humour. Talking different languages is a rather obvious obstacle while having the two genders of the same species interact should be straight forward, shouldn’t it?

See it is a cultural thing; it is how interaction within a gender works fine and is trained from childhood on, which then backfires when the two mingle. For example take a random problem occurring: The guy will decide on a way forward quickly, without having all the facts and being very confident that he will be able to troubleshoot should it be necessary. It is all about getting into the game, and checking out the competition. Amending the plan as he goes along, he is flexible to changes but prone to mistakes. It is a high risk strategy which is very successful when it works, but very disastrous if not.

A gal would gather all the facts, would come up with plan A, B, C and probably D and then realise that the guy already pulled all the resources. For her it is about planning success and if it is a problem where time is not an issue – or guys are not around - she usually is successful in a very efficient way. Since she has at least three strategies, and knows her stuff inside out she is flexible in a more planned way, hence a high probability for a successful end.

See, depending on the problem both strategies have advantages and are equally successful, it’s just that in mixed teams woman usually are the...slower... backup crew doing the nitty-gritty work in case the male boss misjudged the situation and details are needed, while he is out there showing his face and hence earning the praise.

It is not about which style is more valuable, both approaches are needed to ensure success, it is about how society values the ‘face’ of a project and not the busy bees in the background.

Thus it is established that henceforth we are talking about differences in a non-judgmental way – oh well, I may get a bit judgmental at times, but be honest; it’s more fun that way. So let’s get more specific.

Women are highly competitive!

Despite the common business wisdom that women are not good in competing and hence they have trouble in climbing the career ladder, be assured: Women are competitive; more than any man ever will be. Only that their way of showing it differs from the male approach. The full on, mock-fact bullshit is not their style. A woman who enters this arena usually lacks these early playground years when guys practice their skills by fighting over toys and showing off their penises. Additionally she can’t avoid being a woman between men and that’s when the latter feel an itch in a certain area depriving them of concentration. Thus untrained, with men paying attention to the wrong arguments she is bound to become a bitch when she wins, and when she loses, the male world is put back into the right place and she becomes woman instead of business women again.

In regard to social competition there is rarely a mix between genders. For men it means ‘man against man’ in sports, cars, mistresses,… basically about a lot of things one can buy. For women it either means ‘women vs. oneself’, or women vs. women: And it’s about everything one has to work hard for. The title of best mum, cook, gardener, figure and dresser is always at stake and usually being member of several social circles that means a battle on many front lines. Well, we tend to buy things as well, but when we overdo that we have lost in the eyes of our peers already: ‘Look at her! She got another dress and those shoes. Is it really necessary to only buy brands? Bitch, it’s all her husband’s money!’

Guys come home with a trophy in their hands; for the new car the garage gets cleaned out, for the ugly sports cup the mantelpiece gets cleared from the carefully chosen decoration – nothing of the male success can be overlooked. A woman loses an inch around the waist, wearing the new dress – she has to draw a banner across the room saying: ‘1 inch, new dress’; the kids do well at school, they get the praise not mum for spending hours on end doing homework with them; the new pie recipe goes unnoticed because it’s just another dinner; and when she comes out on top against her girlfriends, then she is right to be bit pissed off when there is nobody to put her on the pedestal which she deserves.

Women need to know!

This relates to the earlier mentioned male bullshitting skill. Men can easily, let’s call it: stretch some facts - and can get away with it - with males. This is their way of testing the cognitive capabilities of their competitors. Women always seem to fall short of those cognitive capability because they are not trained to succeed in that sort of test. They have a hunch that something might not be quite correct but they want to get their facts right before they answer and hence they miss their slot while guys just fire back with bullshit. Like in sex it seems that for men it is a lot about timing while for women it’s more about quality. To ensure quality in every aspect of her life a women needs to know what makes her counterpart tick at a very early stage of contact, best even before contact. Hence they will collect information wherever they can in order to have all the pieces of the puzzle in place when needed, and thus women are called nosey.

Women assume!

If they lack knowledge women assume. They are masters in the game: ‘Find the missing piece‘, and their deduction skills are nothing short of a CSI. So guys: be very careful if you are thinking about cheating: this skill and all of the above will blow your cover, in this game you are going to lose.

However, as importantly, they are assuming that everybody else is assuming, too. This is when a great skill can horribly backfire.

For example: Women show affection by doing something nice for someone, like preparing the favourite dinner, make sure that there is always beer in the house, or having that favourite shirt always ironed. This is concept lost on a male brain. They usually show affection at the beginning of the relationship and that has to be enough for the rest of life. Telling the secretary the date of the anniversary so they will get reminded in time, already is quite something. They did commit themselves, didn’t they? What else do we want from them?

Since women can’t accept that, we try to train them to do nice little things to show their love. For example we make them bring the rubbish out by asking: ‘Darling, could you please do me the favour and bring the rubbish out.’

See, they don’t get what we mean by ‘favour’, for them it’s a set phrase and they think that a household task needs to be done – no hidden meaning for them. Now! Woman assumes that he caught her drift and when the rubbish is flowing over again he might pick up on it, taking it out to ‘do her the favour’ hence showing his love… and of course he won’t, he doesn’t have a clue. Over time women assumes that he doesn’t love her anymore since he won’t even do such a tiny thing for her. How is she then to expect something bigger, and wasn’t he staying longer at work last week, and he is always with his mates and never with her… boiling in her own broth and losing perspective she assumes that her marriage is over.

Women have elephant brains!

The tiniest suspicion will sit in a secret organ that science hasn't discover yet and will survive forever. And there is a miraculous sorting mechanism. Even over a long period of time she will know whether or not events are related and she will gather the information. However, this will not go on forever: once in a while steam needs to be let off. This either happens on a monthly cycle when thresholds are weakened, or when the reservoir is full. In this case conversations usually open with phrases which have no answer, like: 'What are you thinking?' Nothing, of course! One can assume - see above - that between tasks men rarely think. So this is always a good starting point to light the fuse.

Learn!

It only needs small things to make a woman happy. However, DO! Don't buy, at least not at the beginning, and don’t make too big gestures unless you have built up to it over time! You don’t want to make her suspicious, do you? Remember the CSI thing…once you are under suspicion you are doomed!

Phrases like: ‘I thought you’ve been very busy lately so I did…fold socks, take rubbish out, sort the newspaper pile…’ will shoot her over the moon. Well, it does help to actually do it.

And you may want to pick up on her cycle in order to know when this magic is definitely in order. But please! Never mention, or you risk instant explosion.

And for the rest of it: Make her laugh once in a while!

Location, Location, Location

2010-02-14T10:37:00.003Z

Location?

I think I am going colour blind! Green, that is.

We all know these urban people, having lived in their city homes all their lives, nature only gets as close as a safari trip to the latest 'in resort' watching the odd giraffe while sitting on their lodge deck sipping wine, and local wildlife for them are the sad flies which manage to hitch a ride into the aircon maintained apartments by clinging to the Prada coat.

They are said to feel the urge to move to the countryside when they reach a certain age. Apparently they are starting to long for some fresh air and some greeneries and the posh country estate, of course.

See I am on the trip the other way round!

Not that I am after Prada coats now, especially not the ones which invite flies to hitch a ride on. No, it’s my escape route that goes the other way round. I might even see a few moving in while I move out.

I was a country girl all my life. I grew up in the middle of the German nowhere, and I loved it. Then I moved to a city apartment – small, and city; and I hated it. I moved into another city apartment – bigger, but still city; and I still hated it.

I moved to England to live in suburbia. Oh, I loved that! Eventually close enough to the countryside and sort of tiptoeing back into it.

And now today my eye-opener which left me green blinded. I was out and about to scout for locations. The photo shoot which is supposed to catapult me to the top of the ‘old, but still looking good’ pedestal is upon me next week and locations were still to be determined.

To my delight the photographer had suggested some rural beachy areas not far from my home, so off I went, armed with my printed Google map research to check things out.

Oh my goodness… Hardly ever have I seen so much green countryside in one place! I now know why we are the laughing stock of the country. In spring it might be still alright with flowers brightening up the space, but in July all one can do it to dive from one green into the next. My last nights dream was haunted by ‘Public Footpath’ and ‘Bridleway’ signs fighting over their rights to stay put.

I saw a lady wearing wellies and a funny hat clamping an empty compost bag to scavenge the freshly cut hedges for ‘material’. Must be some crafts project. THAT would have been me a couple of years ago. Now the site of it made me cringe a bit.

One thing is for sure, I might never be an inner city girl, but the countryside witch is gone as well. Living in the countryside – or in the city for that matter - is so restricted. Country life gives no reason to dress up for miles on end, so the wardrobe wouldn’t even yield a garment to do so, while city appartments are too expensive to waste space for storing wellies and Drover coat, so if the urge for some fresh air would occur one instantly would be stuck in dirt with the heels.

Turns out: My perfect location is suburbia. I need a bit of fresh air but with city proximity. And I always thought that one can take a girl out of the countryside, but not the countryside out of the girl.

Where did I hear that one before?

Oh, I remember now, I heard the ‘other way round’ version: You can take a girl out of the city but not the city out of a girl!

Maybe I’m just watching too much Sex and the City…

Going Cat Bonkers

2010-02-14T10:33:00.003Z

Who on earth has broadcast this myth about cats being independent and easy to keep? I'm sure this person never had a cat - let alone two - let alone two which hate each other - well: One hates, the other one fears!

I was so delighted when sweet, little old Vinny recovered from a weird illness that had kept him in a kind of depression for more than a year. He started going out at night and big bully Moritz had is strolls during the day, what made sense since at night things are calm, no noisy kids jumping around, or bikes whizzing by. Vinny enjoyed is tranquil walks and then he became talkative.

The range of sounds cats do to greet or demand are pretty amazing - and annoying when they are brought to my ear in the middle of the night, just to announce that one is back now, will have a bit of food and that it would be just lovely to have a bit of company for that - and probably a cuddle, because it naps so much better when after food there is a cuddle...

I thought that would be as bad as it gets and given that cat was a happy cat again human owner doesn't mind to suffer.

Well, I can now confirm: It can get worse! Vinny made friends with boisterous Bimmel who was featured here earlier and from him he gained the confidence to go out during the day. Idiotic owner I am I appreciated this new skill: Sunshine is good and healthy, isn't it? However, with Moritz locked away for even more hours he had to get something back - and the one thing he is very interested in is Vinny's territory. So he was allowed upstairs while the little black devil had a nap in the garden.

All this implicates a sophisticated change over routine. It works like an elaborate system of floodgates. Doors, windows and catflap have to be opened and closed in the right order or disaster is looming in form of a screaming fur ball of eight clawed legs and two heads which would make lions proud.

However sophisticated, I didn't really think it through, though! Today the weather was not as pristine as the day before so I was glued to my computer with Moritz happily dosing next to me when I heard moaning noises from the patio: Vinny howling like a wolf!

After feeding and a lot of negotiation regarding possible napping places it turned out: The little buggar was bored!

It is not enough that he is in the place he likes most in a particular moment in time, he likes to be with company; and he is so persistent, showing his most reproachful face, that owner complies, ushering Moritz downstairs and setting the open/close/upstairs/downstairs game into gear for the correct fight save door settings... only to discover that Vinny had slipped out with me again when I got some stuff from fridge in the garage where he found himself a piece of carpet to nap on. Apparently new beds are much more important than company.

So now the garage has to stay open, doors and windows in the house are locked tight what I think might be the wrong setting, I believe Moritz is downstairs but I'm not entirely sure and ... I definitely need more coffee!

How To Be Funny

2010-02-14T10:29:00.002Z

I always wondered what it is that makes things funny. If one would know it would be so much easier to actually be funny.

Recently I eventually got a hint. Nury had published a column about Twitter heavily disliking it. That is fair enough, I know a lot of people not liking it. It’s either just not their thing or they don’t get the concept and hence not knowing how to use it properly.

Of course he got a lot of comments hitting the head of the same nail, and of course I couldn’t help but give my own two pence. I was rather serious and tried to tease Nury a bit to tickle a response out of this funny little community… - and not a single one picked up on it. They all were all rather self indulging in their own ideas of why Twitter should be considered rubbish and creating new imaginary tweet-lines supposedly showing the irrelevance of posts.

And that was when it occurred to me: Things are funny when they are rubbish or go wrong.

This is 'cute' - but not funny!

... ate them all, and it was gooood!

The biggest cat ever on the bird table is - funny!

And NO! He didn't eat the birds, the birds were fed with cat food and he stole it from them.

...or

... a friend just skyped:

"I nearly fell off the bike yesterday - I breathed in a fly and then choked on it and made the bike wobble."

The poor thing! But this is somewhat funny, isn't it?

In regard to Twitter there are all sorts of funny scenarios imaginable if Twitter is considered rubbish. Me insisting in liking it makes me nothing but a geek, and geeks are boring.

So, what else can I do to be funny? Well, I could do more movies. I am pretty rubbish at that, and people seem to like it. I could go shopping more often; that opens up to topics like overspending, buying the wrong things and getting in a fight with the shop attendant.

I really admire people who open their mouths and something funny comes out. Sometimes I don’t see the wit although it is sitting right there on my nose.

Is that old age? Is it the fact that before I hook into my grave I eventually would like to be successful in something? Oh THAT is something I should bank on. I could easily be the queen of un-successful and according to the rules that is supposed to be funny. My life under the funny-meter:

School life - Rather successful, hence not funny at all.

University years - utterly funny, all 15 of them. Beginning with chemistry studies without really knowing what a chemist does and breaking up after three semesters, liking the idea of becoming an architect but being horribly scared of the amount of maths involved and eventually studying computer science without really knowing what a computer scientist does and with an even bigger amount of maths involved... and I didn’t even mention all the little interludes screaming for laughter.

What was I thinking?

Well, without all that I wouldn’t be the person I am these days, and … – see, there the ‘being funny’ thing goes down the drain again – … I quite like the person I am. Luckily there are still a few bits and pieces I’d like to change like the size of my legs and the volume of my voice… so, there is hope for future drollery.

Three Cheers to USG

2010-02-14T10:26:00.002Z

Utter Summer Gorgeousness

A good week ago I received a Tweet: I need to get off the drug! Are you with me sister?

Who can resist such a cry for companionship? Of course I was in!

Less is more is never more true than in respect to chocolates and sweets. Be honest! Be really, really honest! No need to voice it, just answer for yourselves: I am claiming that only the first bite tastes really fantastically good! After that it is the wish to recreate the experience of this very first bite. One might be settling for the silky texture of the chocolate, the crunchiness of the biscuit, or its buttery smell, but the lift your closed eyes to the sky and feel the saliva kick in of this first bite just won’t happen anymore… and by the time one realises the whole pack is gone. That is when addiction takes the place of indulgence.

So a sister needed help to go cold turkey. I already have quit several times hence I am experienced. I know what the sugar does to me! Not just the weight gain, I could live with that - to an extent – no, the grumpiness when I under-sugar and the constant focus on having enough of my drug close by. I needed help myself!

Off we went into our first week, which is over now and on meeting in the gym one could tell that it started to work. Better shape, better spirit, better performance!

We are now entering the snooty stage. Of course I only can talk for myself and actually I shouldn’t as it throws a rather bad light on my ways of thinking. The snooty stage is that feeling of being so much better than all those wimps out there. It however is a very important phase; one is still very vulnerable, and putting oneself on a pedestal makes one not just look down on the others, but as well onto the sad self one has been just that one week earlier.

Thus instead of feeling bad about the unseemly thoughts, one should rather embrace them as an important stage of stabilisation.

Now, we are twittering our support in just 140 characters per post. This restricted one tends to come up with weird ways of phrasing and at one point the toast to ‘utter summer gorgeousness’ USG was coined.

I like that toast! I always wanted to have MY legs – maybe this summer is the summer I get them!?! … and all of a sudden I realised: USG is not about these silly sweets and weight loss, it’s about things that make us feel good, really feel good. If it is chocolates for you – Yes! Have them! But be sure that it is what you actually want.

This afternoon I had the house for myself and I should have been working for IL but my mind went blank. I sneaked into my armchair with my hand grooming set and shoved ‘Sex And The City the Movie’ into the player for some cosy ‘Me-time’. Yes! I definitely do want to have those legs! And I love eating fried chicken straight out of the pan, and I love to sing although I’m not good at it, and NO! I don’t even particularly like chocolate, just - sometimes I forget that!

USG is not about looks, it is all about how we feel and what we really, really like doing to get that feeling. Sometimes all it needs is a bit of sunshine and to listen to our dreams!

PS: This is how the Sugar Experiment came to happen

To Lent or Not To Lent!

2010-02-14T10:25:00.002Z

I don’t understand Lent!

Well, I understand that it is originated in the religious believe systems. I understand that it made sense in the old days when food became scarce at the end of winter, when some resourcefulness was important for survival since nobody could know if the winter would be a long one and when the next fresh food would be available. I understand that it was adopted by modern Zeitgeist people and I know what one is supposed to do during lent, but I still don’t understand why I should do it.

What good would it do me to give something up for 40 days?

If I were to give up something that is not good for me like smoking or promiscuity – what’s the point of giving it up for 40 days? I should give it up for good, shouldn’t I? Or, one could do some travelling during lent to compensate for the losses and stock up on duty free cigarettes and make some contacts for the time after…

If it is something fun to give up, like chocolate or promiscuity – why would I want to deprive myself of something nice for 40 days? Why should I make myself miserable for one tenth of the year? Be assured, you don’t want to be around me when I am miserable; nothing good can come out of that.

Let’s take chocolate! Lent time is the ONE time of the year which only can be survived on a chocolate based diet. For the rest of the year I don’t need chocolate, but during this period of time it is an essential asset for survival.

One is fed up with winter, the sun may be shining once in a while, but as soon as one is cheated out of the house by the prospect of some warmth, it’s still freezing cold and windy out there. So we may decide to get fit for summer and start running, keeps one warm in the cold morning mist. A silly treatment for a body only just crawling out of hibernation; chocolate is the only food that can refuel the energy deprived floppy self, and deliver comfort for the underperforming soul. So for the good of my fellow people: giving up chocolate is not an option.

For the rest of it: I don’t smoke anyway, any other food that is fun I have given up already, can’t give up the computer, because that would deprive you of my wonderful articles – can’t let that happen! So the last of my fun resorts is: The telly.

Since I am a bit of an addict this could be an idea. However, I cannot advertise this option.

Have you ever had a look on how the good shows are distributed throughout the year? In summer, when people are holidays and are out and about in nature they are not watching the telly. And hence there are no new productions done for that period which is almost three month long. Since this is a bit of a dry season anyway: Why can’t I take my Lent then?

Then there is the Christmas season which starts some time in October, thus basically right after the summer holidays. That’s when only really cosy things are on and all the old stuff gets repeated, so no new productions done for this time either.

This is two thirds of the year gone by crappy TV. Eventually in spring right in time for Lent is a slot available where people have the time to watch all these wonderful nature documentaries like ‘Yellowstone’ and ‘Natures Great Events’. Can’t let those slip through, not with the new HD screen we now have. And then there are great shows like The Sex Education Show or ‘Grow Your Own Drugs’ from which I got the lovely chicken soup recipe. I can’t let my health go down the drain by missing out on valuable information like that!

And on top of it all: If all of a sudden we would not watch telly anymore during the only entertaining time of the year, we would bring the whole TV business to it’s knees and causing massive job losses in the entertainment industry. We can’t let that happen, especially not in these credit crunch times.

So I have been browsing websites to get inspired for what else I could give up. I found that there is one thing high up on the ranking lists: It’s Porn!

Oh well, I am having my silver anniversary this year: Feel free to take a good guess whether there is more or less porn needed in my life.

So, you tell me what Lent is good for!

Let's complain a bit

2010-02-14T10:22:00.001Z

Since I am following the QI elves on Twitter I got some ideas planted into my head. They write things like: 'The Elves find this Quite Interesting http://tinyurl.com/ya4b7f' and on clicking I suddenly was catapulted into a surreal world of complaints which suited me just fine at this moment in time.

I have no idea why I was so grumpy that day. Nothing kept me interested nothing was fun, I was tired and ... as I said: Grumpy!

And then the odd thing happened that I got cheered up by other people complaining. The video the elves had suggested was of a complaint choir of Helsinki. And then I got hooked and found more and more. Here is my choice of complaints choirs from all over the world:

Well, I can't sing and I don't have connections to a choir, so I only can make a list of my complaints. Here are my 15 'Why oh Why?'s. Feel free to send me your lot and I will add to it (email: rika@incredible-ladies.com)

Why is the phone ringing when I either:

just dosed off?
only have another 20 mins sleep left until the alarm sets off?
I just dived my hands into the fish tank, yeast dough or something greasy?
the cat just got all cudly and curled up on my tummy and I forgot to take the phone with me

Why do I get tempted by trousers for £10 to do a reality check on my bum in Sainsbury's fitting rooms when I'm down anyway?

Why do I always have to sneeze when the bladder is full?

Why do all electrical appliances beep

when a button is pressed,
sometimes when there is no button pressed
and usually when I either just dosed off, or only have another 20 mins sleep left until the alarm sets off?

Why is it that when I am coming home exhausted I usually have to pee, and I am thirsty and hungry like borderline fainting at the same time, so that I don't know what to do first?

Why is everything healthy causing huge amounts of gas?

Why are affordable trousers always 2 inch too much in the waist and two inch too short in length?

Why is it when coming home exhausted, hungry, thirsty and having to pee, I am usually laden with bags and the key will drop to the ground?

Why does food only spill on freshly washed shirts and tomato sauce only on bright ones?

Why does everything unhealthy taste good and everything healthy taste crap?

Why is it always raining on the mornings when the rubbish bins need wheeling to the front of the house?

Why does the sky turn black as soon as I have the washing on the line?

This is an interesting one and absolutely true. To give you a time line: Getting up at 6 or 7 am wonderful clear sky. Yay! Damned clothes not sorted yet, cat mewing, garden birds looking mad. Quickly feed the buggers, sort the wash, throw in the first load. By 9AM it's finished, by 9:30 it's on the line - still sunny, great! Throw in the next one. By 10AM the first little clouds, around 11 behind the house: grey wall of sky rolling in. Second load is finished and ready to be hanged - inside. By the time that's done, I have to dash because first drops are falling. At 12 the latest it is gushing down.

Only way of getting one load of fresh spring smelling textiles into the cupboards is to wash the night before, last thing before going to bed and hang it first thing in the morning, ignoring any need for a coffee injection or moaning pets. So I gave up and surrendered the garden to the birds entirely.

Why is the car key always in the pocket one is sitting on?

Why are high company shares always down to good leadership while low shares are always down to lack of performance of staff?

Why does a headache always crop up on a weekend or important day. The same is true for pimples and cold sores.

Why oh Why?

Sport and Food

2010-02-14T10:21:00.001Z

Get the choice right

Now, THAT is interesting!

When Detlef looked up from his Sunday newspaper to tell me that according to an article he just read one develops particular food cravings depending on the chosen sport, I dived up from my fish tank cleaning and spontaneously said: Oh, like after swimming all you want is fries.

His answer: Yes, exactly!

Slightly confused from getting something this random right I asked for confirmation; ‘So, you mean: fries particularly after swimming and other stuff after different kinds of sport?’

Yep! Apparently I had got it right! And back my mind floated to the blissful university years where we had figures like goddesses, just that we didn’t know it. We thought we were fat, needed sport and figured that swimming would be fun. We actually did do some swimming and kept the girlish water splashing and flirting with boys activities short. But then the whole effect was reversed due to our rumbling stomachs and the chip shop in the pool’s amenity area.

The first one of us to get out of the changing room had the task to order a big portion each – German style – with loads of mayonnaise and ketchup, or better known red/white. These feasts were just divine since we were really hungry and hence thought: ‘Well, the body seems to need it.’ Just that the shaping up never happened, so clearly something was wrong with this conclusion.

And now, eventually 25 years later a newspaper article would reveal it all, would once and for all explain why I had developed an unconscious dislike of swimming.

It seems that – again – there is some silly hormone called Ghrelin involved. Telling you: Never underestimate these little buggers! This stuff influences hunger, the more of it there is the hungrier one feels.

At the moment they are trying to find out what it is that influences the hormone levels. One thought I that when the body has to work hard to stay warm – like swimming in water that is colder than body temperature - the Ghrelin levels are higher compared to when running on a warm day. Hence the hunger for greasy stuff like fries or heavy butter biscuits.

However, that would explain why one is more peckish after swimming than running, but not why one should be differently peckish. And it is true: After running I never want to eat heavy stuff but just fresh things while after weight lifting you can easily treat me with an egg or chicken.

So it is suggested that your brain guides you to the right food. If you are running you need to be light, no fat and slim muscles hence watery foods like fruit. If you are lifting weight you need big muscles thus everything protein and when swimming your brain might tell you to get a nice protective layer of blubber – like a seal.

Hmmm…

Given that the swimming itself is fun, but not the packing and unpacking of swimming bags, that long wet hair is a nuisance, that one smells like chlorine for a week and that I usually get the allergic sniffles from inhaling the water, I herewith decide that the ‘getting peckish’ bit tips it over the edge and that I henceforth will withdraw from swimming – except if provided with a wet suit and dolphins as swimming companions.

Tweeting like a bird

2010-02-14T10:18:00.001Z

Didyou ever see a celebrity in the street and felt tempted to dash over and say ‘Hello’ like to a good friend? I almost bumped into John Lithgow at a London tube station, whom I had watched in 3^rd Rock from the Sun and had this split second of imbecility when I wanted to shake his hand and give him a hug.

What on earth would want me to do that?

On the other hand people are sending birthday gifts to Miss Piggy – my word, this women even has a page on Wikipedia .

And now there is another phenomenon thriving since about three years now: Twitter. And this little Internet gadget is splitting the world’s population into three. Either one is ignorant and hasn’t come across it yet – what might have hardly happened since almost every idiot is on twitter, while the rest is talking of it - or one despises it as communicational diarrhoea, or one loves it as a brilliant communication tool. Guess where I belong to!

The second group cannot comprehend what the information value of ‘I had a great dinner, now off to bed’ might be, and how it could be of benefit for loads of people – the ones that follow you and listen to your tweets.

While the third group… Hmm, hard to explain, and maybe too big words: But I claim that it is about the feeling of building and maintaining relationships respectively friendships.

Oh no! Don’t beat me up for using the word 'friendship'! I know that friendships are supposed to be deep and meaningful and at their best – forever! But are we really sure what that means?

The deepest friendships will always be the ones formed at a young age. We exchange information innocently and fearlessly, getting a bit disappointed when occasionally used against us, but all in all that crystallises into a small group of friends we are ‘Best Friends’ with. We can call them after 10 years and we will instantly click and things are like in the early days.

And still, there are a few best friends who we lose over the years, and I believe it’s only the ones with a very similar lifestyle to our own, who independently develop into the same direction as us, who are the ones that stay.

What about anybody else? Is any relationship that is not founded in these early secret baring years less than a friendship? And how are friendships maintained? Who are the people we feel close to?

It’s those of whom we think we know! And how do we know? By the little things.

The likes and dislikes, the daily routines and worries, and what they are up to. Social status like house, car, job, family, holidays, hobbies makes us acquainted - as soon as I know if somebody like gherkins but hates sweet corn, gets up early, and had a crappy or happy day I’m starting to feel close.

That’s why people we know from the telly like Miss Piggy feel real and I had the urge to shake hands with a stranger. And that is why people love Twitter. I feel close to my mum knowing that she is about to get her hubby for a bit of housework sharing, I am happy to know that my friend is baking muffins – again - so I don’t have to feel guilty featuring love handles when showing up at our training session, although I had promised to be a good girl.

To create friendship it needs a trust building phase of frequent contact until one might want to pursue to a deeper conversation revealing the real self. I quite see the dangers if that happens in the internet, However I found a few people who I now consider well acquainted and actually would like to meet to take it further - well, and they are living in nice parts of the world...

And in order to maintain a friendship the depth of a communication doesn't seem to be all important; it’s the frequency that makes a difference.

So yes, I am a fan of Twitter!

Follow me!

Tweet, tweet,… tweet,….

How To Train a husband

2010-02-14T10:17:00.001Z

Just to not raise too big hopes, let me say this right from the start: This method is not working for household tasks! I haven’t found a reliable way to train a husband into showing responsibility and dedication for housework - yet! In regard to that matter I’m more relying on ‘try and error’ exercises - I definitely see good progress in certain areas, but the real break through is still at large.

What I have to report is based on case studies rather than proper research; however, there is indication for a method to work for certain lifestyle matters. What one needs is a triangle.

No, not what you think!

Ever heard of the parrot Alex? Again No, you don’t need a pet. Alex was so smart, he could talk, take decisions and do many other things, but like husbands he wasn’t able to tidy up around him. So the similarities are obvious and hence I feel that his training method could work as well for the men sharing our lives.

And how did he learn? By observation!

The trainer would show for example a blue plastic key to another person while Alex would be sitting there minding his own business. Trainer: ‘Blue Key’, putting it on table. Trainer: ’Give me blue key’ - other person giving her blue key.

Blue – small – shiny – interesting! You catch my drift. Alex firstly, wanting to have the key to play with and secondly, liked the passing on thingy, started copying the other person.

He didn’t learn as well when taught directly. He was much better in copying others. That is why kids learn so easily from other children and the telly, but not from teachers, or parents for that matter. Well, and that is why this method is not working on husbands for household tasks; it’s the lack of co-trainers. The only other members of the family are kids who do not respond well to direct training either. One would have to wait until their brains are insightful enough to set a trap. Sort of: Let’s play this game with which we teach Daddy. Once he has learned, you are off the hook and he will do everything we want!

This is killing three birds with one stone: The children will understand the concept of teaching and meanwhile unknowingly accept to learn stuff about household tasks, the trap setting bit will be a great bonding mechanism between you and your children, and hubby eventually might be picking something up.

However, I was fortunate enough to observ the effect of this training method in regard to ‘How to get hubby fit?’ several times now, and it is miraculous.

This method is even better for guys than for parrots because they are more competitive. As soon as an initial improvement is reached, they work like a Perpetuum Mobile and sometimes they even become rather annoying in their determination. So be aware what you are asking for.

It starts with the undeliberate entrapment phase: Without a husband in mind woman feels horrible, decides something has to change and get’s a gym membership, or starts running. Husband observes and gets interested but is not doing anything yet, woman shapes up and is getting compliments from others, she finds other woman to train with, she can put her improvements into numbers of kg or miles – very important incentive for guys, women talk about numbers in front of husbands, husband decides to give it a shot.

Interestingly enough they will not choose a different kind of sport but the exact same one that the missus is doing. Additionally they will not listen to the experience gained by the wives and will do it all wrong. However, on observing the spouses, they will improve and that is when the perpetuum mobile effect kicks in, they are starting to take over and become a bit of a nuisance at times, since THEIR ambition of course deserves the support of the whole family.

Although their efforts are generally a very good thing, we are now sort of pushed into the background a bit.

These guys are stealing our thunder!

And given the fact that the damn household is still our thing, it’s hard to find the time to put our minds to something else in which we can become the experts before they do.

Oh well, who is competitive now? But there is a grain of truth in it, isn’t there?

If somebody from the outside world would have a look at the constellation: They always would assume that the guys took the lead and we followed – I just can’t have that: Thanks to their testosterone driven body strength they managed to take us over; so at least we want to be the ones who did it first and were the inspiring part!

So, there is no two ways about it - However exhausting it sometimes might be: We have to stay ahead of the game. And the better we get the more they will follow. It’s good for them, it’s good for us!

And now I even have an idea for the perfect household training:

We need to travel more – alone!

The duration has to be just long enough that clean underwear and ironed shirts are running out. Kids and pets have lost the excitement of being served by somebody else, and the house is getting really dirty. And it has to happen more often. Household tasks are a bit like software, while the guys are a bit like computers: you need to restart the software once in a while, or they forget how it works and just idle.

So, let’s enjoy ourselves and let’s take off to new endeavours: It’s for the good of our husbands!

Dangerous Romance

2010-02-14T10:04:00.002Z

Hubby got up early today and thus I had the rare opportunity of watching telly at 6:30 in the morning. While the world is thrown into yet another financial crisis because some prat thought it a good idea to cheat a few billion from the biggest banks he could find, another headline informed me that the DVD of the movie Mamma Mia came out just in time for Christmas.

We definitely have it too good! Still!

Ok, they had a finance guy who gave an interview; however, they actually took the effort to interview people in the street for their opinion on romantic comedies, asking:

Are romantic comedies bad for relationships?

At first I didn’t really comprehend. In what way can they be bad? I only recently found out that they actually may be the one thing saving a relationship. All of a sudden I was all eyes and ears to hear the people speak.

Oh my …, I didn’t think that the people would be retarded – well, at least the one half of the people. I really do hope that this guy is not representative for all of the male population.

He said that women shouldn’t watch too many romantic comedies because they might get fantasies about how relationships should work which will not be achievable in the real world.

Duh?

How daft does that guy think we are?

They interviewed some girls and they didn’t comprehend either. They said: Yeah, well – It’s a fantasy. We know the difference between fantasy and real world.

What this guy doesn’t get is the fact that these are feel good movies. One has a laugh, one has the happy ending, one has some popcorn, one does feel good.

Remember what I said earlier in this place?

A woman needs to feel good to have sex while a guy needs to have sex to feel good. Remember guys: Everything that makes us feel good is for your own benefit.

I'm really wondering if this guy watches porn. In the Sex Education Show on Channel 4 they interviewed teenage boys and showed them pictures of ‘real’ boobs and a ‘surgically and digitally enhanced’ one mixed in, asking them what they think how a real boob should look like.

They all went for the fake one, they all had got their ‘knowledge’ about the female anatomy from the internet, and from their research they had clear ideas on how relationships should work, which – most likely to their surprise – will not be achievable in the real world.

So!

While girls enjoy a good fantasy as what it is – a feel good fantasy - the guys take their fantasies for real and are wondering why things are not working out.

If the guys would stop mocking us for enjoying a good romantic comedy and would catch the drift instead and in the meantime switching the bedroom radiator on, dimming the light, getting some sparkly and lighting a candle, we might just meet in the middle.

Excuses! Excuses?

2010-02-14T09:31:00.002Z

Why do we women always find excuses – or do we?

I have written about this before so it really seems to be something that bothers me.

If we are giving a lift to others and the gears are not shifting smoothly – ‘Sorry, but the car is new, haven’t quite got the hang of it!’

If we have guests for dinner, they haven't even sat down at the table yet – ‘Sorry, I hope you like the menu, I think the soup may be a bit salty and the potatoes are overcooked!’

Guys don’t do that. Guys only respond when somebody says something. Guys don’t point the fingers on their own mistakes pre-emptively.

That’s why guys rule the world – and may I say: using poor management skills more often than not – and we don’t.

I believe there are two mechanisms behind ‘pre-emptive self blame’.

Firstly, we don’t cope well with criticism. Oh we can take it all right, that’s not the problem; but the way we phrase our responses is not ‘male – suitable’.

Boss: The delivery was delayed!

Woman: Oh yes sorry, I realised, there was this thing, and then happened that, and on top of it all happened something else,…

Man: Yes I realised, I will have a look into it so it won’t happen again.

While the guy is only acknowledging what the boss just said and is responding with a commonplace, we are explaining the situation and at the same time giving detailed information on how to avoid mistakes in the future.

Implicitly we are saying that we will manage the involved departments better, and that we will incorporate contingency time for emergencies. Oh, we are so far ahead of them – and still, the male half of the world thinks that we are excusing a fault – and the more reasons we give the more it sounds like excuses to them.

Since woman is out of control in this sort of conversation she came up with the cunning plan to put the blame first. So in pre-emptively accusing herself she at least stays in control of the dosage of blame and excuse.

However, men just think it’s silly behaviour, and since she is committing so many mistakes she is even admitting to, she shouldn’t get promotion.

Second mechanism: It works between women!

Women don’t see these reasons as excuses, but as suggestions or ideas on how to fix something. Those ideas are free to be picked up by other women and all of a sudden one is in a brainstorm for even better ideas.

Again – we are so far ahead of the guys!

Instead of common places we have the solutions and are offering a platform for even better ones – and it all goes down the drain because the male world doesn’t understand our way of thinking.

I’m telling you: Since I am using the male approach with the guys and the female approach with the ladies I have become really successful.

Can you imagine me shutting up? Well, it works for them! They are so happy not having to listen to my voluntarily provided information anymore. So I'm using it for myself and create my own success instead of throwing it into their laps.

Oh, and one other thing is very important! One has to praise oneself more often. Women have a tendency to say: ‘We did…’ when actually she did it all by herself. Usually the female half of the world lets all the others shine as well.

Guys don’t do that. Even if the whole team worked on something: The one who presents it, is the one who will be wearing the feathers.

Hence!

Acknowledge your achievements, be it a half marathon, a business deal or the beautiful dinner you cooked. You fought your own mind and made it - no matter what, you wrecked your head over the numbers and negotiated hard, your potatoes are just perfect and no salt is missing!

Give your girlfriend a call at night and tell her all the reasons and what happened when, but in the situations and with the people where it matters:

Just shut up, look straight into their eyes, say: ‘Yes, I know! And I will take care of it!' …smile, … and walk away.

You’ll be the Queen of the castle soon!

PS: I am talking of Alpha males here. The kind one usually finds in managerial positions. There are a lot of nice guys who suffer the same fate as the ladies, and there are some ladies who adopted the Alpha male behaviour so well that now they are called bitches.

Seats Have Needs, Too!

2010-02-12T19:40:00.001Z

A seat has a purpose! An interview with a seat which hasn’t been sat on for a while would probably go something like this:

Interviewer: How do you feel these days?

Seat: Well, pretty miserable, you know – rather useless and unwanted.

I: What about luggage and bags, you surely had those?

S: Oh, don’t get me started on that one. They scratch my fabric and pinch and poke. People are so inconsiderate these days. I don’t mind a little handbag, but the other day I had a huge travel bag…

I: …considering that you are at an airport…

S: … yeah? What about airport. Look at me! (voice close to screeching now) I’m a perfectly fine seat and there is nothing nicer than a round soft bum sitting down (almost crying now – must be a female seat) … they just don’t love me (definitely a female).

I: But the other seats must have the same problem.

S (sobbing): Nohoohoo, it’s always meeheehee!

I felt terribly sorry for the seat and hence thought that this matter definitely deserves some attention. So when I was travelling the other day I decided to do a bit of research and it turns out that I might be onto something.

The matter is definitely best to be studied at airports. It happens at trains and doctor’s waiting rooms as well, but it shows most vividly at airports, respectively the gates. Several long rows of seats arranged back to back, with an entry to one end of the room and an exit to the other.

First person to come in is quite likely to take the seat furthest away from the entrance and facing it. Probably torn between the option of being able to see the exit or the entrance, the choice quite likely will be the entrance. Nobody else is there to cover the rest of the room on the lookout for enemies, so better be close to the exit, far away from the entrance and being able to see the whole room. The next seat will be covered with luggage to keep others away.

Second person coming in: Damned, best seat taken already; next best would be opposite end of the room as far away as possible from the other person AND the entry; at least with the benefit of being able to see the exit and the other person. Other person will be able to see danger arising from the entrance and indicate by body language. The next seat will be covered with luggage to keep others away.

Third person is in a pickle, but will most likely chose the seat that halves the distances between the other two, thus somewhere in the middle of the room turning the face towards the person considered least trust worthy from the looks of it. The next seat will be covered with luggage to keep others away. Well, actually person three would love to cover seats to the left and the right, but that would be too rude - so rather sneakily choosing the seat a bit closer to the other two people. That is still bearable, but makes the rest of the area smaller and hence unattractive for newcomers while the luggage is placed towards the front.

And so it goes on, always halving the distance between people, exit or entry under the constraint if somebody nasty would stare at ones neck or somebody trustworthy is facing the other direction to cover the back. Sometimes groups come in. They are braver and cover an area that fits their size best, plus one seat for luggage left and right.

It’s amazing how quickly humans can process this data and find their seat.

Another animal using this sort of behaviour are apes. Well, they usually don’t carry a lot of luggage, and they usually are not found at airports, but there definitely is a ‘cover your back and your exit’ attitude when they choose a location to rest. Having a big tree to lean on is not just comfy, but gives protection.

Hmmm?! The layer of typically human behaviour called civilisation seems to be rather thin if we are still relying on techniques used by our very far ancestors. In restaurants one often finds mirrors around the walls now. That doesn’t only make the room look nice and big, but gives the guest who ended up sitting with the back to the rest of the room a means of observing the same and hence feeling more comfortable.

On my trip I realised that this need for safety and protection must be a very strong one. Despite several ‘empty’ – luggage packed – seats at my gate, a whole lot of people were sitting on the ground lined up along the wall. Not a single person asked for luggage to be removed to free up a place to sit on.

So our poor seat from the interview seems to be one of those naturally unwanted ones. One should advise a move to Asia. I talked to a friend and he said that in some Asian country, if there is only one seat taken in a bus it is rude NOT to take the seat next to it. That should really please our little friend. No empty seats ever.

But why is the behaviour so different? How can it be, that these people are so much more relaxed about being in a crowd?

I can only guess, but their strategy might go along the line: ‘Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer!

Present, Past & Future

2010-02-12T19:36:00.001Z

The other day I was asked what sort of website I am running – and as you know me – I instantly opened my mouth to answer… and got stuck!

What sort of website do I run? It’s definitely about sport and nutrition… but it’s not a fitness website, is it?

It’s definitely about body & mind things, but it’s not a spiritual, psychological or airy fairy site either. Well, a bit airy fairy maybe - I talk a lot about being happy, and how to get there.

I have come across a few people who proclaim that ‘living in the present’ will do the trick and is the ultimate way to happiness. Not sure what that really means, and enrolling in discussions with them usually doesn’t bring any clarification either. It seems to be a lot about ‘not dwelling in the past’, ‘not worrying about the future’ and ‘enjoying the moment’ – Yeah, try that when you have the runs!

I came across some people who live their lives like that, and come to think of it, I did in the past, hence me not having a proper pension at age 45. Well, what can I say: Most of these people are not really happy bunnies and some of them are in serious trouble and stumble from one disaster into the next.

I used to just jump onto every idea and enterprise that sounded promising, not really weighing the benefits against the risks. Thus I tried to be a chemist, homeopath, nurse, computer scientist, IT-business woman, owner of an arts and crafts business, Avon representative and I was thinking about training as milliner, interior designer, hairdresser and teacher – I might even have forgotten about a few things that I tried. Yep, I always was quick in my decisions and if something cropped up I was on board.

If this is ‘living in the present’ – that didn’t take me anywhere, really. Well, I am claiming to have remnants of skills from that period of my life, and a friend is actually daring enough to try me next weekend as a hairdresser. Will keep you posted on that one.

All this non-achieving inevitably led to dwelling in the past, usually resulting in an outcry of: ‘Why me? Again!’ when another enterprise went down the drain, and endless telephone calls with my friend about the unfairness of the world and all the occasions when it happened to me.

Dwelling means staying on and revisiting the same thing over and over again. The trick is not to revisit incidents, but to find the telling things they have in common. It’s the looking behind the curtains that make the past so interesting. Leaving the room with a door banging that makes the wood split, on which one will catch a splinter the next day, or throwing the scissors which don’t curl the gift wrap properly so that it breaks the jar with marbles in a room which is a mess anyway and glass and marbles are everywhere so one can’t go to the party for which the damn gift was to be wrapped in the first place – one could at least have thrown the gift wrap instead.

This clearly is an anger management problem. So no point in dwelling over the occurrences – it’s the build up of steam that needs addressing. BTW: The glass fiasco had an instant healing effect on the steam problem. After that I’d rather chose to go into sulking mode instead – much less messy.

As for the worrying about the future: the only thing I always was good with has been money. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I have a Scrooge McDuck personality – at least I hope I have not - but I always had a clear idea of how much I earn, how much I need and how much is left over for spending. Although I didn’t get round to planning for the later future dealing with the pension problem, I at least didn’t have any debt building up and then of course I had dreams. Wanted a car, I love pets, for pets one needs a house,… and a garden… Oh yes, a garden! And travelling would be lovely.

Planning ahead makes sense. No point of planning a big party for friends on the 24th December when all your friends are German. Again knowledge comes in handy, since Germans have their exchanging gifts on the 24th at night and meet with the family.

Thus I pretty much changed from a ‘jumper’ into an ‘organiser’. In my heart of hearts I am still a chaotic person, but I tamed the beast and it becomes me. Now for me ‘living in the present’ means: revisiting the past to find the information needed to plan my future in order to be able to enjoy the present when I get there.

Cheese and Computers

2010-02-12T19:34:00.001Z

They may start with the same letter and they both might stink at times, but more people buy cheese than computers.

Sometimes it is as tough business to buy cheese as it is to buy computers, though. After having taken a number from this almost invisible little thingy located on the counter at the opposite end of the queue, I queue. Initially I thought this number’s task is to define my place in the queue so that I would be allowed to roam free until it is my turn.

Wrong!

Roaming is heavily frowned upon. On my way to the end of the queue I try to get a peep at the cheeses, to see if they have what I want. Need a big chunk of mature Gouda – in the shelves they only have these pharmaceutically small doses of awkwardly shaped cuttings. Cheese is all very yellow, thus the first attempt of predicting my success of actually getting what I want failed. However, I have a rough idea of how the counter is organised now, so I sneak out of the queue with this embarrassed grin on my face, bowing submissively sidewards, and trying to find the holes which are displayed in some queues at about waist height when all the attendees have about the same height and feature an hour-glass figure. But usually my queue consists of alternating pear and apple shaped people, perfectly matching into one another’s gaps like a jigsaw puzzle, to thoroughly deny any glimpse of the goods of my desire.

I guess I very much resemble a hunchback on begging tour. I’m sure if I would carry an empty paper cup people would put coins in it.

Having failed again, I sneak back to my place only to find that the gap has closed – by now my blushing matches the colour of the alarm light on a burgled house and the annoyed shovelling of feet and trolleys banging into each other make the according noise when reluctantly the rear half of the queue edges backwards to let me in.

… and of course they don’t have what I want, as I find out 20 minutes later.

The other version is that there is no queue, but three people behind the counter. One is cleaning, one is slicing something, one is chatting to the others, one has to attend to the meat counter, and one has to get something from the stock room. No, I didn’t miss-count. They multiply while I’m waiting and their biggest skill is to ignore me. It needs at least a crowd of three to get noticed.

But see! Cheese is cheap – well, cheap-ish depending whether you buy continental or not – however, computers aren’t! Whether you buy continental or not.

While with cheese I still can go back to the shelves and grab some of the awkward pieces, or I can re-invent my recipe and buy some other cheese – the store still makes the business. And even if I would make a mistake in buying the wrong thing, it would be a small loss in money and we might have to eat tomato sauce instead of cheese sauce – which is healthier anyway.

Computers are different: One wants to get it right first time. One can’t just replace one product with another as one goes along.

The other day we eventually wanted to buy my little travel computer. I had put a lot of thought into what I really need and Detlef had researched it thoroughly. We went to John Lewis, London, Oxford Street … and had to queue. Well, that is not an unusual thing to happen since every computer department of any shop only has exactly one person who knows remotely about computers. All the rest of the staff is just for show and only knows how computers look like. Their job is to point to the only person who knows.

We didn’t need to know. We knew already – we came to quickly spend a lot of money on a certain product.

So we arrived, waited until a shop attendant became available to either show us to the shelf or to the one person who knows where the shelf is, but he showed us to the service desk where we could put down our name – their version of drawing a number – and then, as opposed to the cheese counter, we were free to roam.

We didn’t want to roam – we came to quickly spend a lot of money on a certain product.

Having waited until a group of vacant shop assistants had gathered behind the service desk, customer names were shouted. Now it turned out that it makes absolute sense not to allow any roaming whatsoever. Customers don’t seem to have a sense of direction and while roaming they just drift off into ‘never again land’ – and so did we. We wandered off without the burden of having to carry anything, and wandered straight into the next Coffee Nero for some cappuccino and chocolate cake.

I still don’t have my computer, I’m now going to wait until my next trip in February, by then the prices might even have dropped, and I will buy via the internet.

One would have thought that shops know by now what is needed to make a customer happy and to put them in buying mode. They spend a fortune on the right fragrance and music for their shops and refurbish it all sparkly, and then one unfortunate little manager can spoil it all by reinforcing a list – how silly is that?

Games! Games?

2010-02-12T19:31:00.001Z

Oh I hate games… all sorts of games. I had completely forgotten about it since I luckily don’t live a playing environment.

My first recollection of playing a board game is one of a board flying through the room, plastic pieces all over the place, me throwing a tantrum of titanic dimensions and a flabbergasted grandpa stating: “Never ever will I play with you again!”

That was at the age of five.

Is it me being a single child? Or is it just me?

I never owned a Monopoly game, but we had a box containing those usual culprits like ‘Double Mill’, ‘Chinese Checkers’, ‘Ludo’ and some others. I dreaded birthdays when I knew that there would always be some idiot suggesting a game and I had to get that damn box out. I quickly took care of this problem by losing a good deal of the stones blaming it on the dogs which we luckily had.

In my late teens it was the fashion to play card games. I never got the hang of them: Skat, Rummy, Canasta – Who can remember all the rules and their exceptions and not mix them all up?

And I can’t bluff!

On one hand one is compelled to become a lawful citizen of society: not lying, not cheating and respecting other people. And then they are inventing card games where one can practice the skill of lying, cheating and rubbing salt into other peoples wounds when they have lost the game.

‘Did you see how I won that? That was brilliant! Admit it, I completely destroyed you! You never should have pulled that card – what a stupid move that was!

At age 18 I was invited to a card game evening. Very odd actually: friends of my parents invited me and my dear boyfriend at the time to a social get-together: Dinner and cards. No idea why. It felt a bit like an initiation process into adulthood. Having my tantrum throwing past sitting in the back of my mind, knowing that I would have to behave well since feedback would be given to my parents, and given that I didn’t feel grown up at all I arrived in a rather shaky condition – what doesn’t help for fluent conversation and bluffing through card games.

I hate to lose, I really do! So on one hand I couldn’t help but assume that others would feel the same way and on the rare occasion that I was winning I felt so bad that I apologised so often, that not the losing but my servility made them uneasy.

When I was losing on the other hand I was building up pressure levels which easily could have fuelled the Orientexpress from here to – well, … the Orient – and the only available release was a comical one towards myself. So the whole experience of social card play became the nightmare that had been anticipated.

I should be grateful for the experience nevertheless, since this was the night when I learned that it is best when one takes the mickey out of oneself, and it might be the reason due to which I at least became remotely funny, giving hope that you may be saved from utter boredom right now.

However, I promised myself to never ever play again!

The original set of cards!

I started playing with them
33 years ago

There is one exception tough – while my grandpa kept to his promise and left me alone with any further social game attempts, it was grandma who tamed my tempers with a good game of Solitaire, or as we called it Patience.

My dear grandmother had a rather schizophrenic personality and it became increasingly difficult to get along with her in her old days, but she was a brilliant card player. She played a two player version of Patience – and patience it needs. Although the aim still is to win against the opponent, the main objective is to resolve the game.

If you don’t work together to resolve the game...

...nobody can win!

What a wonderful lesson for life – ‘Two Player Patience Workshops’ should be made mandatory for managers!

A Little Rabbit, Death and the Mind not Minding

2010-02-12T19:29:00.001Z

Ooompf, this is going to be an awkward one, and fear it will throw up more questions than answers.

First one could be: Why does it always have to be me?

Humans love that slightly theatrical: ‘Why, oh why, and why me?!’ Don’t they?

This should actually be an easy one – most of the time there is a simple answer:

Why me to bring the rubbish out? It’s your turn!

Why me to end up with a silly brick? Because you always choose to date those!

… and if there isn’t a simple answer?

Well, just don’t ask the question. The comments in Nury’s column suggest that there are gremlins sitting at breakfast and thinking about how they can get you. But I don’t really believe in gremlins. I believe that there are things that are just happening. One day to me and the other day to someone else. Just that we have more information about our mishaps and we recall them more vividly – hence the feeling of accumulating them.

So I’m not posing this questing although I’m very tempted!

Here is it is, the incident which triggered this urge: I killed a sick rabbit today. It was not the first animal, I had to kill some mice because our silly cat left them half dead in my living room, and there was the odd sparrow for the same reason.

Now it was a rabbit and this thought of: ‘Why me again?’ briefly shot through my head. Since this isn't something I do on a regular basis a lot of thoughts were buzzing through my head and I had to write it all down. However, I was not sure if I should post it. It could be upsetting for some of you, others might see me as a woman with killer instinct and not visit the site anymore...

But as usual: Once the mind has a focus on a certain matter it sees similar incidences everywhere. For example I zapped through the TV channels and came across a stand-up show with Jimmy Carr who was making jokes about death, and that there is a positive side of everything; 'The fun one can have at funerals, that life goes on... not for the diseased, obviously...' that sort of thing.

Apparently there are people who see a comical aspect in death, so I'm not feeling too bad anymore to tell the story:

I had seen the poor thing yesterday and felt sorry for it, eyelids swollen into a big mess and severely undernourished. Today it had been dragging itself across a car park, and when I was about to leave a guy came waving across the street claiming that I had run it over. Gosh, imagine my shock. I hadn’t seen or felt a thing… It was alive but in a sad condition. It had Myxomatosis: both eyes swollen shut, a watering snout and was barely able to move. Whether it was hit by my car or not, this little thing didn’t stand a chance of survival, and so I killed it. It is now lying under a lovely rosemary bush, and I hope I did the right thing.

On my way back home in the car the mind started to float and all these thoughts popped into my head:

Why do I feel like having to defend myself?

Is it because a wild rabbit it is so much bigger than a mouse or a sparrow? They are considered vermin after all.

Where do I draw the line in pity killing? Rabbit, cat, dog, ape, human?

It is socially accepted to eat meat, so is it OK to have others killing even bigger animals on my behalf?

If I were on an island and hungry, would it be more or less ok to kill the rabbit and then to eat it?

If I would have promised not to kill because I were of a certain religion, or for whatever else reason: Would I have decided the same way?

... and then without a warning the weirdest thought of all:

Hmmm, it’s still smelling like rosemary here… good! I will be able to connect this incident to something nice and not gruesome: After all, rabbit goes well with rosemary.

Duh? What was that?

When I told the story to a friend, she had the exact same thought. We just couldn’t help but laugh. It seems that the blanket of politically correct civilisation is rather thin, since the human brain just doesn't bother about what kind of thoughts it comes up with.

In the end of the day all the questions are revolving around the subject of ‘respecting life in general’. A fly should have the same right to live its life as does a human! Nevertheless, how easily do we kill a fly.

So, does size matter, after all?

It’s all a bit in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? If one has a proper job as a comedian it’s even OK to use these thoughts to make a living. They thrive on the awkward edges of manhood – and we love it. For a brief moment it takes the scare out of our own mortality.

I’m beginning to realise that it is all less about death itself - it doesn’t scare me anymore – it is about the ‘When?’. As long as we don’t know we are not really bothered, as soon as we have a deadline – see, all of a sudden this common word gets a rather macabre aura – as soon as we know we become all nervous about it.

So let’s enjoy what we have left over from life. Let’s see the good things in it and during times where we think that there aren’t any: Let’s make them happen!

Why is it never enough?

2010-02-12T19:28:00.001Z

I mean my performance: However well I do, it never seems to be enough!

I just realised that the last week is gone, and I think I did well… but I have no clue what I’ve actually done. It was busy, stuff needed been organised. I time manage and I work hard and I call in help when needed… and still. Not enough!

It seems that everybody is affected by this phenomenon, since all my friends are buzzing around like bees. So the question arises:

Is there too much to do altogether, and have we built our world the wrong way?

It’s not just women, is it? And it’s not just adults, it’s the kids already. These days are even more stressful than half a century ago when kids like me had time to roam the countryside and dream up fantasy worlds. But event back then the pressure was on: If one did well at school – ‘Well done, but THAT was just primary. Wait until next year; you will have to take it up a notch.’

Duh?

Can’t it even be good enough for a brief moment? These days it has to be at least a gold medal at the Olympics for it to count as ‘good enough’. For the rest of us: We got us dishwashers and washing machines to safe up time – and we have less of it than ever. At work, one does one’s best – but it would be lovely if one would walk that extra mile. And whenever we think that we just caught up - something unexpected happens.

Do I actually sound very grumpy?

Well, I do – I guess! I’m usually the first one claiming to know the truth about self improvement. And yes, I still believe that it is a good thing to push some boundaries, to get out of an old routine and to see if things can be done in a more beneficial way. But one sometimes has to pull a break as well.

Some people claim that we own too much, that letting go of possessions will free us up. Well, that’s not for me, really. Lack of possession might give me freedom in some way, but it will take away my peace of mind on thinking about my not too far in the future ‘old age’.

Others claim that living in the present and not clinging to the past is a solution. Yes, if I’d throw out my old baggage, get rid of the memorabilia and free myself from all the anxieties rooting in my earlier years, I might be a rather free spirit and all the emotional holdbacks wouldn’t restrict my actions and thoughts anymore. But again, my past is what I am! Without my past, the good and the bad things, I wouldn’t have the experience to cope with the future. Again my peace of mind would be taken away on thinking about what kind of person I want to become, and how I want to be remembered as, when I’m hooking into my grave.

I believe that taking a break is about finding time to make the smart choices. What are the possessions I really need? What is it that makes me happy? Which of the old baggage is restricting rather than encouraging? Which loose ends should I cut off and which ones should I tie to my life?

If this world is not the world I want – then I will have to do my bit to change it. That’s the biggest task of all, but the one worthwhile going for!