Home here and there

November 1st and here we are again. I participated in National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) last year and I had so much fun doing it. It was a real happiness boost for me during the shorter days even though it was also a lot of work but I so appreciated the connections happening. My online friend San over at the in between is mine is getting us organized again and I really want to give it a go a 2nd time around. She has a list of this years participants and also the ones from previous years.

Lesson learned from last year: 30 days is not enough to form a habit. I wanted to blog more but life had other plans. I have this tendency that if I have a lot on my mind I can’t or don’t want to talk about online I usually don’t at all. No worries, we are doing fine.

But onto a better and brighter month ahead! I did not make any plans for posts yet (I probably should have) but if everything fails I can always carry over my #project365 from Instagram. I enjoyed taking a picture each day this year. This is what I liked about Instagram in the first place – the pictures that give you a little glimpse into daily (or not so daily) life. Sometimes I had to play catch up because there were days filled with work where I just did not take a picture and I got tricked into creating a reel twice I believe but I almost made it.

I look forward to lots of reading blog posts and getting to meet old and new “faces” in the process.

I suspected last night. There was a very strong smell in the kitchen. I threw out an old container with coleslaw but had cleaned afterwards or had I? I cleaned ones more but the smell still lingered. And I was tired, oh so tired. I usually turn the lights out by 11pm or midnight but was dozing off around 10pm already. I was feeling fine so I told myself I am just tired and probably missed some funny smelling leftover somewhere.

5:15am – I walk up with my right temple beating meaning the warning signs were right after all. Maybe I should have set my alarm to 4pm? It takes about two hours for the medication to properly kick in so that would have helped considering the main alarm goes off at 6am (and yes, I know that going to sleep at midnight leaves me with only 6 hours sleep which is not enough, but that is for another day). I get up and take my migraine medication (a triptan) and rinse down the taste with 2 ibuprofen (doctor recommended) and lots of water. For good measure I apply some tiger balm to my temple and neck and go back to sleep.

6am – The morning alarm goes off. Two hours are not up yet so the head is still throbbing. I hit snooze three more times before getting up for good. Breakfast for the kids and coffee and cereal for me.

7am – I slowly feel the pain abate. I take a hot shower even though the water feels like pin pricks on my skin (one of the side effects of the medication for me) but it still helps wake me up for good. Lunches need to be packed and one of the kids reminded to get ready (so thankful for my independent teenager). The kitchen still smells funny but apparently it’s just me who smells it.

7:45am – Load up the car with me and one kid and off we go. Grateful that I treated myself to a monthly parking pass this month. Headache is gone now but oh so tired. I make it to work alright.

8:30am – Sitting at my desk at work I contemplate what to do (or not do) today. Because I always feel slightly exhausted even after the pain is gone I tend to be more clumsy and slow. Since my work includes chemicals and biohazards I want to be sure I am up to the tasks ahead. Deciding on the cell culture room and some very easy tasks. I need to pay extra attention but I can do this!

10:30am – I finally starting to feel more like myself. So far I did not make any mistakes so all is well. It’s my lucky day.

Just for some general context: I had migraines on and off since my teenage years. They stopped in between to really kick back in during my early 20s when I got properly diagnosed. I am not sure if it’s done the same way but basically they ruled out any other neurological problem and my symptoms are textbook pretty. I have the pulsating pain on one side of my head (worst behind my eye), darkness is my friend and I am nauseous if the pain is too strong. I tried relaxation techniques, acupuncture, beta blockers, not eating certain types of food, cutting out alcohol – nothing of the then available preventive measures seemed to help. The acute medication did though (to the extend described above on most days). Apparently for me it’s mostly hormonal and related to weather changes. When we first moved to Northern California the very constant climate helped get them down from weekly to monthly what was a big relieve at the time. During both my pregnancies and two years after I did not have a single one. It recently got worse again with almost weekly attacks. There are some new treatment options out there but for now I am hoping it will calm down again eventually.

Things that help me get through the migraine day:

• Sleep, sleep, sleep
• Tiger Balm on my temple and neck
• A quiet room
• Herbal Tea
• Heating Pad for my neck (cold compress as you see recommended lost of places – not so much for me, so you just have to try)
• Taking the medication early enough

It’s okay, I am okay. I did not want to complain, I just wanted to share. If you have them, know that I am sorry and that you are not alone. If you have recurring headaches the first step should be a visit to your doctor to try and rule out more serious issues and to find solutions. It may be tricky but you might be able to discover triggers which you potentially can avoid. The American Migraine Foundation and the National Headache Foundation have lots of helpful resources including information on medications and therapies. There is hopefully something out there that will or already is helping you. I learned to live with it but I probably will never get used to it. I still feel a little guilty when I have to call in sick at work because of it or feeling bad because I barely manage to take care of my kids and have to leave it to my husband. It’s still like missing a day out of your live so for me that is probably around 40-52/year.

I can’t believe it has almost been a month since I last posted. January sure went by in a blur. I think there is something to the beginning of the year that always pulls the ground away under my feet. The holidays had been so lovely not having to do anything (or at least very little) and back to school and work through me into the full of it. I was also lost in thought on some topics that bothered me. My daughter is starting high school after the summer and all of her best friends applied to private schools whereas we are planning to send her to the local public school. Some of her friends’ parents are not happy with the academic aspect, some are worried because of safety (there were a couple of lock downs in the past year). I had long talks with her if she would be interested in private school but she says she is fine about going to the public one. I admire her resilience. Part of me questions our choices and part of me is just sad and feels a little betrayed. All this may stem from my own high school experience what was ok but could have been better. The school system in Germany is very different but I ended up as the only girl from my town at a new school and I had a ruff time in patches – no fun. I so hope she is going to have a better experience. I also have pretty strong feelings about the whole private school system. I sometimes wonder what the public system would look like if all the money that people pour in the private school education would benefit the public system. Dreaming of a better world, sigh. Dealing with all the emotions made me retreat for a while.

What I have been doing and want to keep up for this year is project 365 on Instagram. Posting an image a day an adding a short blurb if I have time for that seems way more achievable these days. Stephany and San are also doing it and I am enjoying see some more pictures on there again instead of the reels which are so popular these days. There is something with moving pictures that draws you in and I tend to spend way more time on there when I look at stories and reels. It annoys me to no end. It also annoyed me to no end that one reel snug in there but oh well. So today here are the first 27 images from project 365. Are you using Instagram and/or other social media? What are using it for? I also have a Facebook account but honestly only keep it because I am still part of a buy nothing group and various other groups where I sometimes find helpful information. Instagram I like because it helps me with my sewing projects, to find a new pattern I want to try and to see how it looks on other people. I also still keep up with some friends on there (remember the old days when Facebook was a place for that?) and to see what is happening locally. I also have a LinkedIn account for work but deleted my Twitter account recently. I am tempted to also delete my Nextdoor account but keep it for the occasional neighborhood check-in. I mostly try to stay off on there. It was a good idea but people are so argumentative and sometimes mean that I can’t stand it.

What do the pictures tell you? They remind me that there was a lot of rain in January, that we had a power outage, that I started baking bread again, that there was sunshine and delayed Christmas presents, time spend in the garden and on diy projects (knitting, crochet and wreath making), that we dog sat and that I went on some walks in the neighborhood. What it does not show you is how busy January was at work. I agreed to teach two undergrads who work in the lab and it took some getting used to to integrating their schedule in mine. But it also is a lot of fun even if it requires so much talking all day long. It does not show you the time it took to write e-mails to my son’s class regarding an upcoming science camp or the time spend shuttling the kids around to new classes (pottery and gymnastics). My daughter had a competition with her jazz band and my son had his second junior black belt test in Taekwondo. All very exciting. It does not show my inner struggle with the upcoming switch to high school or that I have been keeping up with my exercise better than in previous years. I managed to go to the gym or on a run 2-3 times per week what is a step in the right direction. One of my former colleagues mentioned on Instagram that she does not know how I do it all but I guess it’s an explanation why I have not been on the blog for almost a month. I will be back, promise. But tell me, how was your January?

There is a lot of test prep happening in our house lately. My kids both have German exams coming up and my son is participating in his school’s spelling bee. The German tests are mostly multiple choice questions with a listening-understanding and reading-understanding part at different difficulty levels. Some of the answers even I find not completely straight forward but I find that to be the case with most multiple choice tests. As usual my daughter does that independently whereas I basically have to sit next to my son so that he will stay focused. You don’t know how the test will look like but practicing with old tests helps a little to learn what to pay attention to when the actual testing day comes along. With the amount of complaining he does about the actual test, the stupidity of the questions, etc. I sometimes question myself if this is all a good idea but I think I said this before. Considering the amount of complaining and claims of misunderstanding he does surprisingly well on the practice tests.

I can help him with his German but I have my phone and my daughter to help with the list of spelling words. For a good chunk I would not do the pronunciation correctly and sometimes I even don’t know the word – so it is a learning experience for me, too. I told my son when looking at practicing his spelling words he should apply “klotzen, nicht kleckern” what is a German idiom for ‘go big, or go home’ I guess. It can mean to work really hard on something, or to put in a lot of effort (to achieve the optimal result in the end). A “Klotz” is a big block or chunk of something like a wood block or a concrete block. A “Klecks” is a small speck. So he should use a block and not a speck in direct translation. Anyway he seems not to concerned about the whole thing. The last couple of years another girl from his grade won the spelling bee and I fully expect she will do so again (and I think so does he). She has way more competitiveness in her than either of my kids and I am fine with that. To say it with another German idiom “Der Apfel fällt nicht weit vom Stamm” – “The apple does not fall far from the tree.”

Do you have a favorite idiom? I am sure there are plenty in English I don’t know about. I like them and as Amélie said in the movie of the same name (at least in the German versin) “Someone who knows idioms, can’t be a bad person.”

When looking at the translation of ‘Nicht kleckern, klotzen!’ I saw that it is also the German book title written by a public figure I rather not name – I might never use this phrase again.

I am wishing you a very happy, healthy and peaceful 2023!
On 12/31 the old year said goodbye to us with a serious downpour in the Bay Area. It always blows my mind that whenever ‘unexpected’ weather hits the area (and that seems to be true for other areas in the US as well) everything collapses. The drains were sorely clogged up in many areas and we felt like we had to drive through rivers on some roads going into San Francisco that day. We later learned that we actually were fairly lucky. I saw pictures online with people surfing the streets and a section of 101 south of the city was closed. There was an evacuation order in place for another town close by due to flooding. With 5.46″ of rain in San Francisco that day it was the 2nd wettest day on record. Considering all that we were extremely lucky with our small garage leak. There is another atmospheric river passing over us this week with the most expected for Wednesday – we will see.

On New Year’s Eve we had tickets for the “Ramses the Great‘ exhibit at the De Young museum in San Francisco (so that is why we drove into the city what we almost never do). I think it was pretty fantastic and we managed to walk through without major complains even from our strongest museum critic (our son). It’s still on through February 12th if you are interested and you have to get tickets in advance. I just wished we had eaten lunch before we went or at least taken something because there was a long line at the cafe and honestly it was a little too upscale a menu for some of us. I was glad we came a little early to walk a little through the rest of the museum before our timed tickets which was fun, too (at least I thought so). On the way back we decided to have a late lunch at In-N-Out Burger.

The rest of New Year’s Eve was pretty quiet for us. We had raclette for dinner. It’s basically a mini table top grill where everyone has their own little pan that is filled with raclette cheese (or other cheese if you prefer) and other things like corn, onion, tomatoes, bacon, mini sausages, etc. We had boiled potatoes and a dip with it, too. It’s popular to do in Germany even though it originates in Switzerland. After dinner we watched ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home” as requested but took a break to be continued in the New Year since everyone was falling asleep (not the fault of the movie I assure you). We adults tried to stay awake a little longer but fell asleep on the couch only to wake up again after midnight. The champagne we had before dinner gave me a migraine so I was a little extra tired anyway.

I am always a little puzzled why this last day of the year is such a big deal. I enjoyed reading all the word of the year and goal posts (past, present and future) but for now this is just nothing I want for myself. Maybe when I have a little more breathing room in my life I will think about it more deeply.

Now the daily trot has us back – school, work and the likes. Since it is raining this week I picked up my daughter from school yesterday. That meant being home earlier than usual and I got the chance to take a walk outside before the rain started during daylight hours. Sunsets are always something to behold in the bay and I love the views peaking through the houses. If I would make a resolution I probably would say I want to go on a 30 minute walk every day. That is doable, right?