what I like to do while jogging

I have this weird feeling I've written this before, but maybe just because I've thought about writing it?

What I like to do while jogging:

- mental arithmetic, preferably complicated (if possible, something to do with the minutes and the steps on my pedometer, and the time, and various distances posted around me)

- go through in my mind the family's and my own personal upcoming calendar and dates and discover conflicting dates (I don't actually like discovering conflicting dates but I like that I can do this at this time and potentially deal with conflicts before they arise)

- watch other people's beautiful, huge, tiny, yappy, black, white, old, and young dogs

- discover new sections of the rather enormous Grunewald (I'm avoiding city streets as much as possible and keeping to the woods for the sake of my knees - I'm so happy to be jogging again and don't want to have to stop again)

- plan events, parties, gifts, trips, and pieces of writing

When I'm walking I tend to read or talk on the phone if I possibly can; when I'm jogging I cannot do that and I really don't like to do the iPod thing (my family would say I don't know how but that is just because I haven't wanted to) while jogging, so therefore the only thing left to do is to think!

things are sold in different stores here

a week ago today (so also on a Sunday) Max fell off his bike and scraped himself badly. After cleaning him up here with what we had and could scrounge from neighbors, husband wanted to go to a pharmacy to get bandages and tape - I found out online which ones nearby were open (an issue in this country - but they do have a system that there is always one open in every area on Sundays) - anyway, found out, we went there, the woman had prepared things based on our phone call ahead and talked to us through a tiny vertical slit in the door and handed us things that way (husband said to me: what if we'd wanted to buy something really large?) - it all worked out but my point here is that somewhere in the conversation, husband said to pharmacist, well, if I want some disinfectant, I can just get it a drugstore, right? She looked at him in disbelief and laughed quite unkindly (snorted maybe) - and said well, I can't imagine that or why they would have it there. (He didn't say "a drugstore", he gave the name of the local one, Schlecker - of course it isn't a drugstore because they don't sell drugs but it's the kind of store that would in the States!)

I, meanwhile, have not been able to use my pedometer for several weeks - and why? Not because there's anything wrong with it, but the battery ran out, and I even brought extra batteries with me but we don't have the right kind of tiny screwdriver and I don't know where to buy it. In the States, I would, again, go to a drugstore, wouldn't I? Or a hardware store! But there don't seem to be hardware stores here really, and again, the drugstores do not have screwdrivers! (A friend suggested that I could take the pedometer and the new battery to a watchmaker who would have the tools and could open my pedometer and change the battery for me. I suppose I could do that. So I have to carry the pedometer and the battery wherever I go in case I pass a watchmaker?)

What they do have at drugstores: shampoo, paper napkins, energy bars, tampons, candles, plastic flowers - and of course herbal tea for colds, tummy aches, sleeplessness, etcetera. I know, because I kept looking for those herbal teas at the grocery store, silly me, in with all the other kinds of tea they do have at the grocery store - and I thought it was odd, because I was so certain that I remembered that Germans love to have all kinds of herbal teas for their ailments. But nothing. Not at this grocery store, not at that grocery store - until finally one day I went in to Schlecker to look for tampons or paper napkins or umbrellas, and there were rows upon rows upon rows of herbal teas for ailments! (Also, there I stumbled upon liquid Ultra Slim Fast - sadly, not the bars that I liked to get in the States.)

And then, supposing a person should want to get a haircut, and a person should also want to deal with the unpleasant and unsightly and oh-so-unfeminine extra hairs growing all over her face. Well, in Bloomington, Tamara did it all in one shot at Boomerang. In all fairness, even in Berkeley I couldn't seem to get it all done in one place, but as a result I discovered a wonderful Iranian woman with a place on Adeline, below the Berkeley Bowl, who did the most fabulous waxing I've ever had - cleanest, quickest, most painless, most thorough. (Why, oh why, did I not go back to her when I was there in March?) Here in Berlin, though, no such luck. I've been once since I got here and it was in a big fancy high-ceilinged old prewar apartment, where the waxing lady had three or four assistants, all of them, like her, garbed in starchy white full-body aprons, and three or four separate rooms, all with high uncomfortable waxing tables to climb up onto. Am I giving the impression I didn't like it there? I didn't, I really didn't. It hurt, and they were unfriendly, and I came away with my face completely reddened, and they missed a lot of hairs. So I've been avoiding since then . . . 

It just feels like everything has been reshuffled and you have to guess, you really have to guess, where anything might be. 

part-time writers' manifesto

At our writing group on Friday Anna suggested our prompts and exercises, since I was completely wiped out from running the seder the night before (and Anna was a hero, since she was the person who stayed and helped clean up after the seder - but still she volunteered to be in charge of our writing on Friday morning).

And she suggested we write a manifesto, and we agreed on the part-time writers' manifesto. Here's my stab (unedited - I know it's raw and there's nonsense in it):

• We can be any age we want.

• We shall never look straight on at our writing time.

• It's all about the hours.

• It's all about the pens and the notebooks.

• We shall wear bright colors on alternate days.

• Every day is a playground of hours; the playground is there to be played in and the hours are there for spending.

• We are the part-time writers of the world so we must, every day, find something to do besides writing.

• Look away from the writing, always; never be caught at it.

• While procrastinating as a writer, learn to play an instrument and speak a language.

• While procrastinating as a writer, read good books, eat fabulous food, and be a mensch.

• Take every day, divide it in half down the middle with an angry fat black line, and write on one side, do something else on the other.

• Learn to recognize your fellow part-time writers - by the pen? the writer's bump? the funny clothes, the faraway look - what? how?

• Become two entirely different people - encourage, egg on, feed your schizophrenia. Watch your other self who lives on the other side of the angry uncrossable line: who is that person? what moves her? do you love her?

• Drive a little orange triangular car where  you have to push with your feet, a la Fred Flintstone.

• Fill up notebooks and throw them away.

• Never rrevise. Never reread. Always start over.

• Never be afraid. Be fearless in writing, fearless in destroying, fearless in never looking back.

• The writer is somebody else.

leaving the house is like writing a blog post?

It's just a theory. Both are sometimes hard for me. In different ways. Writing a blog post is a weird thing where for days I don't (can't? have difficulty?) (my mother just informed me on our video chat my last post was April 2nd, saved me the trouble of looking it up) post, and then once I start it suddenly seems not so hard to do and I can / could / would write five posts, seven posts, ten of them, or two or three super long ones.

But of course that's not very helpful, is it? Nor particularly easy on you, my long-suffering readers. Nor very clever as a way to keep people coming back (the ideal idea, I know that, is to write a little bit every day so you can have a thing you do every day: let me go see what languagemurph has written!) - and my real-life and also blogging friend and mentor elenabella has something she was able to do where she could write them and put them on an auto delay so they post themselves later! (But what I really want is to have posted them earlier - I wonder if blogspot can do THAT for me?!)

Leaving the house - difficult in a different way. But when I returned in late March from my trip to the States I realized that it is hard for me to leave the apartment here, quite a bit more difficult than it was to leave whatever place I was staying in the States. Why? Why?

Because we're so many floors up?

Because once I get outside it is so far to anywhere?

Because before I can go anywhere at all I usually have to put on so many clothes, and then make sure I have so many things (bus pass; money; cell phone; house keys; then, quite often: city map; notebook; something to read, all because I'm going to have to go so far to get anywhere and I never know what might happen; often also snacks of various kinds, also sometimes even my laptop though not usually)?

For whatever reason it takes me forEVER to get going. And as my family knows, I often come back again at least once for something I realize, by the time I get all the way down to the bottom of the stairs, I have forgotten. But one trick I'm trying to learn is to just get suited up for the going out - if I wait and try to do other things first then the suiting up gets postponed and postponed, so I just start putting on the things I need for leaving the house.

childlessness

tomorrow our prodigal eleven-year-old returns from his weeklong class trip. We are so looking forward to having him back and yet hubby and I have definitely been noticing a certain pleasure in the rhythm of life at home with zero kids (Max is off in his own apartment, doing his own things - we've seen him a few times this week but by no means every day, and never for all that long at a time).

It's also different, quite different, from going on a vacation without the kids. 

Anyway, we're looking forward to having Felix back but we did take a moment today to meditate on the ways in which the rhythms and relationships are really noticeably different when it is just us.

Play-reading group again

Last night was play-reading group at Sabine's, and I chose The Importance of Being Earnest because we needed something funny for April Fool's Day and just in general, right?

Anyway, it was great. There were 7 of us, and 9 parts but two very small indeed (the butler and the manservant, though I couldn't quite tell the functions of butler and manservant apart very well). Max and I were the only ones who hadn't ever read or seen the play performed - others had seen it, some of them, four or six times. Anna had even played Cecily (whose part I assigned her last night unknowing) already, in high school.

Because we're flipping from winter to spring, and because daylight saving time (which they call summer time here) has kicked in, Sabine's not-quite-attic apartment - at any rate, it's at the top of her very tall apartment building, right up under the eaves (I have no idea what eaves are but they seem to fit right there in that sentence!) - was flooded with afternoon light when we appeared at seven p.m., through her windows and streaming in onto and through her lovely balcony. (It had always been pitch black when we arrived before.) A lovely spread of things we'd brought to share (though Sabine really provides a lot and spoils us), fun reading, the poor smokers went out onto the balcony at the end because Sabine knows I have a hard time in a smoky room.

Sabine's six weeks post-knee-op and not quite supposed to be off her crutches yet but sometimes she can't quite stand it anymore. The spring air and light and beginning warmth are making everybody a little giddy. Max showed up in shorts and a T-shirt - even I had been getting looks and comments and all I did was wear sandals - next time we're going to read something in German. 

Reading, reading, getting caught out and reading some more

Sorry about the continued Janet Evanovich stream but I do have to just say - after I'd picked up that first one and read it in Claremont, I went looking for more in the Ontario (California) airport when I was on my way up to Oakland - and found lots, in all the bookstores. Several of them had one, two, and three in the series (One for the Money, Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deadly . . . !) and then the most recent and then apparently she's written a bunch that are outside the numbered series.

But I only bought One and Two because I thought . . . oh well.

And then after I read number One and was a little underwhelmed; but then read Two and had such a fun time reading it - then I thought, well, I'll try reading something else I bought at the airport - Confessions of a Shopaholic. Maybe it'll be a blast. And I went out with my red shopping cart in my right hand and the book in my left hand and my blue-rimmed glasses turning dark in the sun under my black cap to the grocery store and bumped into not one but two neighbors who asked, What are you Reading? And I was mightily embarrassed, because I had to confess I was reading such lowbrow stuff and I realized, I didn't even like it, in fact I couldn't actually stand to continue reading it after a few pages.

So then I decided to go back and get more Janet Evanovich for my quick-read fixes, and started looking around for the book group book, which had been supposed to be delivered to me here in Berlin by an Amazon subsidiary but hadn't arrived yet (Paradise Reclaimed, by Hallday Lexness) and the other one I ordered at the same time (Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett, which I had gotten for Cynthia and Diane in the Bay Area and recommended for Claudia in Chicago but had not yet read myself!) - anyway, long story short (or anyway, not quite as long as it could go on) - I ended up ordering a bunch of books through the library service here, so I'm very excited to see what comes. Little Girls, another book by wonderful Elizabeth Bowen who wrote The House in Paris which I read on the plane on the way back to Berlin, came the very next day. The book group books aren't here yet and Evanovich may never come - but I've got plenty to read. I've also got my Les Murray Translations from the Natural World, wonderful amazing book of poetry recommended to me to give hubby at Christmas by Don Berger, our resident poet here - I pick it up and read a poem here and a poem there - and Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking, which I haven't quite dared to start yeet.

And fabulously, there is always another New Yorker coming.