Out of chaos, order.

When I am stressed, I love to roll coins. Yes, I know something could be read into that: the ability completely and discretely finish a task and result in a final and visible product is soothing. It's actually something I remember doing with my mother when I was small. She had a bank that one pulled a lever on and made "ching" and was only open-able at some vast sum. So it was a great treat to be able to open it up and to roll the coins and then perhaps go to visit the bank and deposit the rolls. To stand in line and hear my mother chat with the cashiers and perhaps bump into neighbors. That time still exists in parts of upstate NY and I revisited it this month.

One of the maddening things about Germany (to me) has been my inability to roll coins and then to get rid of them. My local bank branch offers me a large plastic pouch and tells me that I would need to drop the bag off at a different location. This has been annoying me and filling up honey jars with coins because I just can't get rid of the smaller ones, even carrying around a very heavy change purse. So I brought a bunch of change rolls back from the US and the coins above in the lower row are 5¢, 2¢ and 1¢.

The upper row is American change, garnered from different corners and bags: that's amusing because I actually rolled over $60 of coins while in the US, while downsizing some storage boxes. I visited my local bank branch, the one where I have had a checking account since starting to bank my birthday and babysitting money, multiple times to both deposit coin rolls and deal with the fact that my not-used-in-Europe ATM card had been purged from the system.

I'll put the rolls aside and the US money will go back with me the next time and the Euro cents will accumulate until I have time next week to take them into a branch that will actually take change. Next week is my last before my German course starts again, so maybe I'll actually even find a bike-able branch.

With a heavy heart.

Although the start of our vacation in the US was pretty terrible, we did have some decent times, that I hope to finish writing up soon, particularly with family in Upstate NY and friends downstate, as well as the week we came back and went to the German's family reunion and then Neuschwanstein.

But when I finally came back and sat down and started to look through my Google Reader, I noticed again that a blog I have been reading with great enjoyment had not updated in two weeks, and that Curtis hadn't been feeling well when he wrote his last post.

I had been reading his blog when he was on LiveSpaces because I had been reading his late wife Ellen's blog. I hadn't really started to blog in earnest when she passed away and I was sad because she was such a nice person. But I am even sadder now, to realize that Curtis passed away after his post and that I did not realize it until I got home and, worried, read the comments on that last post.

Curtis' next to last post, which includes
Have you ever noticed how quiet it seems to get after a nice blanket of snow covers everything? Well imagine you are out in the woods and there are no major highways nearby nor are there any houses close and here you are skuched (there's that word again) up under one of these spots. Can you hear the quiet? Most people say you can't hear quiet but that's because they have never really heard it. I have and it's so calming but to me back then it was just the way it was suppose to be. You are sitting quietly and occasionally you hear a plop as a big clump of snow falls from a nearby tree. You hear the beautiful singing of the cardinals in their bright red coats which are winter birds and the peeping like music of the smaller birds. Then all of a sudden you hear this whooshing sound as a great owl comes soaring by with it's masive wingspan cutting through the air and then it gets quiet again as it glides away. Listen closely and you might hear a crunching sound as a deer approaches and it's hoofs cut through the fresh snow. It can't see you hidden under the boughs of the tree but it catches your scent and alertly looks about with it's ears up and then makes this loud snorting sound as it prances away only to stop a short distance from you thinking the danger is past and starts once again rooting through the snow for morsels of food hidden beneath. You too have dug beneath the snow in places to find these red berries we always called Creek Berries and eat them the same as the deer. These are the times when you would more than likely find some critter hidden under these trees. I have found numerous birds, squirrels, rabbits and an occassional fox hiding there. Even with the protection you would start to feel the cold and then you would move on taking with you those videos in your mind of what you saw not thinking that they would be there some 50 years later just as vivid as that very day.

Yes just sitting here watching the rain on the monitor and thinking back. Back to that time I have treasured for all these years and sometimes I find myself wishing I'd had off spring to tell these stories to but I don't so all I can do is leave them out here for anyone interested. Funny how the mind has these things stored away just like a hard drive. It took man years to develope the electronics such as the hard drive to store information on probably not realizing he had one with him all along.

So for now I shut the memories down and get ready for bed so I can make my way to the office in the morning but it was a nice trip and I only hope you enjoyed it as well. I will still feel that cozy feeling as I nestle my head into the pillow and drift off to sleep pretending maybe that I'm under the boughs of one of those Hemlocks so long ago feeling safe and secure from the rest of the world.

Good Night.

is so lovely that I had wanted to wait until I had a chance to really think about it and to say something meanngful back. But now he's gone and I am so sad for him and for those who knew him and for we who knew him through his words.

It took me a long time to write this because I am sad every time I read that post. It seems that people I care about are dying. Dear friends I have known my whole life, loved family members, even more distant relatives who are part of the backdrop of my life and it makes me think that the time for life as a play rehearsal is over, that waiting and working and hoping that the work will produce a better future is sheer madness: what we have is now.

Now is the time to connect, to let people know that we love them, to enjoy life as is is, every day and not to work and work for a better future while not being happy in the present.

Dear Curtis, thanks so much for sharing yourself with us and for being the sweet person that you were.

http://www.passagesmb.com/obituary_details.cfm?ObitID=167325

A bit of enjoyment

Even though a large quantity of our time was used up very painfully, we were still able to meet friends and family in western Massachusetts and have an "American birthday" party for T1 and T2. They love American birthday cake and I am always amazed by how good a cake from the local Big Y or Hannaford tastes. On 16 hours notice they did a really sweet split between the two themes: Pooh for T2 and Tink for T1.

It was great to spend some time with my brother and sister-in-law and their two younger kids (each a year or so older than ours). It's been a long time.

Our first week of vacation.

Here's a look at some of what we did on our first week of vacation.

More than an item a day while I was away...

This is part of what we "downsized" while clearing out our house in Westchester. A good number of these items were damaged through our tenants neglect in mitigating the effects of water in the basement. There are: water damaged end tables, swings, changing table chair, a grill that they rusted out somehow, some strange decorations, mildew damaged linens, lots of extraneous lumber we had floating about.

Some of the larger and better items aren't even visible here: we deliberately put them out several days before garbage pick up because there's an active "look through neighborhoods" attitude here and folks swing by and grab things.

A better swing and a kiddie seat went before pick up, as did a huge hanging chandelier (too large for my house) that had been given to me by a relative and never used.

Our prior tenants, in a gesture that I found amazingly typical, sold the Sienna minivan that we had sold to them, but left the 4 spare tires (with aluminum rims!) behind in the garage, with the extra running board we had given them (we had damaged and replaced one; they are only sold as a pair). I guess that whoever bought the minivan wouldn't pay as much as they wanted for the tires/rb, so they just left them for us to discard rather than toss them in. One of our garbage guys took them: at $100+ per rim, I hope he gets some $$$ for them (in addition to the tips we gave for the two extremely heavy pick up days).

There's more to come.

Vacation: Not

It's been a crazy month or so.

We started by going back to Westchester county to clean up our house in Westchester, NY for the new tenants. The prior, German tenants, were returning to Stuttgart. Neither our broker nor the tenants, nor any of the prospective tenants, had indicated any issues with the house.

So we were overwhelmed to discover unattended and unreported flood damage, general non-normal wear and tear damage to the plaster walls, a bathroom renovated two weeks before turne dover to the new tenants that was now destroyed (water damage, mold, marble damage), flood and mold damage in the basement (where the dehumidifying system was also set at 35% instead of 70%— or even higher to deal with the unreported mold), furniture which was destroyed and filty beyond belief: it was shocking. From the large to the small: the buckled floor in the basement to the lost remote to allow the ceiling fan/light in the living room to be turned on to losing the privacy pins to the nickel door levers to not replacing a single outside light bulb (we had left them three years worth of compact fluorescents- just not enough of the low wattage for outside fixtures). The list was endless.

All this while they had turned off the cable and phone (which we had requested to retain for the half month) so we had no easy way to contact anyone. We still haven't spoken to the insurance company officially, although we have talked to our agent and taken hundreds of photos before beginning to mitigate the damage.

There's a 4-6 week lead time on the replacement vanity (special order to be code compliant in a small bathroom) and the marble repair will wait for that. The shower doors will be in stock next week and taken care of then, but our "vacation" was having done/getting estimates for/doing:

• marble repair, floor and vanity top
• ordering a new vanity
• ordering bathroom doors
• plastering and repainting gouges in the hall and three rooms
• completely repainting another after patching holes
• emptying the house of the furniture (previously rented furnished) while discarding the destroyed furniture- we loaded it into a U-Haul and drove it upstate to storage by my parents
  
• ordering a new remote from Minnesota (easily done- the manual was there!)
• replacing all the lost/removed (why?) hinge pins so that the doors would not re-gouge the walls after replatering and re-painting
  
• fixing all outside locks (a screwdriver and a brain)
• having the basement swabbed down with bleach, the mildew mitigated and painted with special paint.
• discarding destroyed rugs (downstairs due to mold, upstairs due to the tenants' fire, which they had otherwise mitigated)
• having emergency landscaping done: we expected to do some things, but having a sumac 14 feet tall next to a bedroom window indicates that in three years they never lifted a finger. They also destroyed grass areas where they had pools or tarps. Luckily, they had no control over the irrigation system or there would have been no grass left.
• there was more, but I get a head ache thinking about it
  

This was after they spoke to the husband, as one German to another, and asked to use their security as last month. Because they assured him of how everything was in order, and because the broker agreed, he complied. I expect that will be a little less than we will be out of pocket. I expect he won't do that again, either. I also think that after the current lease is up, we will be considering selling the house rather than dealing with this again.

After we get back to Berlin next week I can't wait to start dealing with all of this long distance and time estranged to US contractors and insurance companies.

I expect that I will have a lot of additions to my Downsizing blog as well, when I can sort the photos out.

(Here's my favorite shot— the full potty left in the rotted out vanity.)

What I am reading: July 2010

1. The God in the Hive by Laurie R. King: There seems to be a recent desire on the part of authors to cut their novels on such a cliffhanger, it's as if they had written a book, printed it, and taken a pair of scissors to the binding somewhere in the middle. The latest Gabaldon was so much so, I thought that it was a printing error. The last Laurie R. King, The Language of Bees, wasn't quite as bad but it left us in media res. I have been reading the adventures of Mary Russell, an American in early 20th century England who meets (and marries) Sherlock Holmes since it began and I've generally enjoyed it. I enjoyed this book as well, but it (and the last) also felt a little... unsatisfying. Perhaps too many carbs and not enough protein? That is, I'd like a little more meat on its bones.
2. Agent of Change
3. Carpe Diem
4. Plan B
5. I Dare by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
6. Liaden Unibus 1
7. Liaden Unibus 2
8. The Tomorrow Log and Dragon Tide
9. Fledgeling
10. Saltation by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller--- I saw them, I bought them from Baen books by non-DRM download, I read them and enjoyed them all.
    
11. Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews: There are a bunch of paranormal romance series that I have really been enjoying lately. I'm happy with the interesting, tough, intelligent and talented women that are the protagonists of these series and I'm pleased that the men in these series are also intelligent and interesting.
12. The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross: I love this series by Stross. third in the Laundry series (a Lovecraftian spy/administrative).
13. Abhorsen by Garth Nix: I was leafing through some books, getting ready to pack them up and clear some shelves and fell into reading this wonderful finish to Nix' Old Kingdom series (Sabriel, Liriel, Abhorsen) (actually, as I see while looking up that link, he will have more books in this series coming out and I am very glad: I haven't liked his other books, but I love these and the world he has created for them). I'm sorry that the earlier books are packed in storage in the States and I may re-buy them (on Kindle) when the new novels come out. It's a fascinating and strange world, with a world based in technology on one side of the Wall, and a world of "magic" on the other side. Or perhaps, a world of Order versus that of Chaos, where the Charter has bound creatures of Free Magic to act in a consistent manner that defends the living world from Chaos and Death . The Abhorsen controls forces of Death with her bells and Charter marks constrain disorder. But necromancers also can use tomes and music to disorder the constraints. Great characters, great ideas and great writing.
14. Black Magic Sanction (again) by Kim Harrison: I was out, waiting for the kids, and decided to read this, the latest in Harrison's Hollows series, again. A nice satisfying read with solid emotional resolutions and increasing understanding of Rachel Morgan and what she has become and is capable of. Set in a world changed after a mass more than decimation of the human race through an epidemic caused by genetically modified tomatoes, the witches, vampires and other races had to come forward or the world would have imploded. A very good series.
15. Poppy Done to Death by Charlaine Harris: I had been reading Charlaine Harris' work for years before she started her Sookie Stackhouse series (now famous as the basis for the HBO series TrueBlood), but somehow I had missed this, the last of her Aurora Teagarden series. I really do miss her mysteries and apparently she will only be working on the Sookie books from here on: her website says that she has closed the Aurora, Lily and Harper series while contractually obligated to work on Sookie. Very sorry to hear that, because I think her writing is being stretched too far there and her previous characters have been warm and interesting and their lives and issues worth following. This was a good ending to the series, rewarding even, as we followed Aurora through stress, trauma, and family losses to a happy ending for the petite and intelligent librarian.
16. Murder by Number by Kaye Morgan: I have to get some of the fluffier stuff off my shelves. This is a hand-me-down from my mom, because I couldn't do a Sudoku to save my life and I tend to pick up paranormals for my light popcorn reading, not mysteries as I did in the US.

While waiting...

to start posting what will be heading out the door in NY, here's another scheduled post.These shoes have been handed down from T1 to T2, but T2 has two other, much better looking pairs. So (after the photo) I scrubbed the sandals up with a toothbrush to clean them as much as possible and into the Kita accumulation bag they went.I may start a blog just for wine— after all, one of the prize benefits of being in Europe is how many great ones one can buy for about the cost of a soda. This one was so bad, however, that I happily downsized the half empty bottle (I stopped after 1 sip, the German didn't finish his glass): into glass recycling it went.(That's a 2008 Rosemount Shiraz Cabernet.)

A few things

While I'm travelling (and without acces sto the interwebs, I think), here are a few items I downsized before leaving. The usual Disney feeble hanger: garbage. Purple egg that held a tchotchke and for some reason was being held as a treasure by T2 (although she hasn't noticed it's gone...) and a decorative sticker from T1's dresser that has lost its stick: plastics recycling.
And here you see a box. Saved because I generally save boxes, but after three years, I think I probably won't be needing to send it for repair in its original box and it's not a fragile item that needs that box for moving: paper recycling.

Beginning to accumulate

Here are a few of the things that I am accumulating, one item at a time, to give to T2's old kita when we get back from vacation.

• a small Snow White costume, skirt and top,
• a pair of pants- I don't love the color,
• a Cinderella costume in 2 pieces,
• a Cinderella nightgown,
• and finally, a pair of pink camouflage shorts.

I pulled these out this spring as T1 is finally large enough to wear them, but I have issues with these shorts on multiple levels.

First, I think that it is ridiculous to pinkify everything. It's sexist and alienating and I am offended by the pink Lego set that I saw that has fewer interesting pieces than the standard, or blue one.

Next, unless one has a reason to wear camo (hunting, say, or running around hiding in the woods- as I have done while wearing it), I think it dimishes and normalizes war concepts.

Good enough reason for the donation box. Although I think I need to toss these into the Kleiderspende: now that I think of it, I don't think these would be wearable at the Kita for those reasons as well!