Lost Month

Now where did May go?

In part, of course, May went to Berlin for a few days, where I enjoyed an art marathon with friends at the Berlin Biennale. Another part of May went to Amsterdam, where I thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the Eclectic Tech Carnival that I co-organized in Linz last year.

What was more or less overlooked along the way was that I became the mother of a grown-up son: Christopher turned 18 on May 28th. Although I had discussed it with him beforehand, I'm afraid I must really be a terribly negligent mother for not celebrating such a momentous occasion with him. On the whole, it seems that Christopher became an adult (at least legally, officially an adult - I haven't really noticed much difference yet) very quietly. I'm not quite sure what to think about that.

I think I am also noticing a certain pattern: every time I go anywhere at all, I seem to end up three times the period I was gone behind in my work. In other words, I am now over three weeks behind schedule. Once again, I am convinced that our calculation of time is no longer working and needs to be reformed.

At some point in May, Christopher managed to pass French. He gave an oral presentation about May 1968 in Paris, which he obviously enjoyed preparing, and since talking is what Christopher does best, it went well enough to ensure a passing grade this semester. We are all hoping he might also be able to pass Spanish in the same way with an oral presentation on the Spanish Civil War, but that remains to be seen.

In the meantime, he needs to pass a math test tomorrow. Since Friday the house has been full of teenagers studying math together, but yesterday evening they all went off to watch the soccer world championship match at a public screening together. Today I was rather amused by Christopher's concern that he didn't receive my text message last night. I keep a text message stored in my phone that says, "Where are you and when will you be home?", which I regularly send to Christopher – and now increasingly often to Patrick as well – generally some time between one and two am. Since it was Saturday night and everyone had been working hard and clearly needed to unwind a bit (especially Seth was getting quite wound up about math problems), I didn't expect anyone to be home at a reasonable hour, so I didn't bother sending the message. However, Christopher has meanwhile so internalized this message that he says it has turned around now, and he starts worrying about me, if he doesn't get a message that I am at home worrying about him.

Peter left for San Francisco the day after I returned from Amsterdam, so it feels as though I really haven't seen much of him this month. The boys have done a reasonably good job taking over for him. Yesterday Paddy and Seth quite efficiently took care of the weekly grocery shopping for us, and today the boys made Wiener Schnitzel with potatoes as a nice Sunday lunch. However, Christopher still does a better job on the kitchen than anyone else in this household, at least when he is home to do it. Somehow it seems that the boys are especially cooperative about taking over household chores when they are studying hard. Peter will get home from San Francisco tomorrow, then I think we will all more or less stay put in Linz, at least for the rest of June. I'm afraid it will take me that long to catch up again on work.

April is the cruelest month

"April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land"
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Spring has always been a stressful time for us. Since Peter always needs to have instruments ready to show at the international early music exhibitions in early June, which he then delivers to his customers after the show, he is always under a lot of pressure to have the instruments finished in time for the varnish to dry properly before he goes. This year he also went to a show in Japan, so he was under even more pressure to finish.

It has always been a busy time for me too, due to the annual rhythm of major art exhibitions, for which catalogue texts and PR texts need to be translated. This year I have been working on an especially large exhibition project with a team of translators, but since things didn't quite work out as planned, by mid-April I had a crisis on my hands.

So ... no blog updates since March.

Fortunately, Peter was able to take Paddy with him to Japan, which Paddy enjoyed so much that he is not at all happy about being back in Linz now. Fortunately for the rest of us, he took a lot of pictures and put them up on Facebook, so that we could all follow their trip and comment. I think Paddy has a different link, though, so that people without a Facebook account can also look at them.

Last weekend I was at a conference in Vienna, trying to finish the last translations in between listening to interesting lectures and talking with interesting people, so I wasn't here to say good-bye when Peter and Paddy left. It felt odd coming home to an empty house, but then Christopher and I had a good time together at the Crossing Europe film festival.

The film festival ended on Sunday, Peter and Paddy got home Monday evening, and now it is already the last day of April. I still have a number of translations to finish, but everyone who has sent me translation work this week has specifically pointed out that they don't expect me to be working on May 1st. Spending International Workers' Day working would be a sacrilege that I don't intend to engage in.

So now we have a long weekend to enjoy as we start a new month that will hopefully be more enjoyable than the last.

Christmas? What?

It has been several years now since we have gone away for Christmas, even longer since we had visitors here. Without people gathering for Christmas, it just isn’t really very exciting. However, I hadn’t actually completely repressed the whole idea – until this year.

Without the happy anticipation of visitors/visiting to look forward to, we have at least started thinking about Christmas and getting ready for it in the past after Peter delivers instruments in early December. This year, however, after Peter delivered instruments the first weekend in December, I went to Amsterdam last weekend, and I wasn’t really in any position to think about anything other than work and preparing for the meeting in Amsterdam before that. Now I am slightly shocked to discover that Christmas is supposed to happen next week.

The next problem, of course, is that the boys have school every day until six in the evening. No one really expects me to go shopping by myself, do they? I’m also not quite sure how we might manage to obtain, set up and decorate a Christmas tree at a time when Peter is not here, but the boys are. Our timing is all off.

I missed the point when it would have been time to send packages to the US, because I was only thinking about what I will take with me in January. I did get one package at least as far as London (I hope), which I gave to a friend I met in Amsterdam to take home with her and mail to Kemble from there. That might work. Whether or not the one single Christmas card we send each year might arrive before Christmas now depends on the efficiency of the Austrian postal system – any bets on that?

I wonder whether my sons are hoping for Christmas presents this year? That might be a bit tricky.

Christmas without visitors is seriously lacking something!

Seth and Paddy bake a cake

Seth and Paddy bake a cake
Originally uploaded by aderieg

For some mysterious reason, Paddy and Seth decided to bake a cake today.

There has been a lot of talk about cakes recently, because in the play "The Last Days of Humanity" that most of my household is involved in, there is a horrible scene where the "officers" eat cake as they sign execution orders, and while Sascha is being marched off to be executed, Alex is sent to fetch the cake. As all the extras have different responsibilities for props (Christopher is in charge of the prostheses), Alex is responsible for ensuring that cake is there every evening and that it is edible, because one of the "officers" does actually have to eat it. This has not always worked out very well. For that reason, there has been much discussion of cake among the extras that come and go at my house, and Sascha baked a cake himself that he brought to the performance the other night when I went again.

However, that was not the reason why Paddy and Seth decided to bake a cake today. They may know why, but to my knowledge no one else does.

For a long time, Paddy enjoyed decorating American style cakes, although he was less interested in the actual baking part, so he still has a lot of cake decorating supplies that Grandma, Amy and Kris sent to him over the years. Seth and Paddy together were surprisingly efficient (although I think it is mostly Seth, who is second only to Peter when it comes to household efficiency): they checked the recipes, went shopping for the missing ingredients, made a breathtaking mess in the kitchen and on the table, and finally ended up with a cake intriguingly decorated with a picture of a voodoo rag doll and no mess.

They stood for a moment rightfully admiring their work, and then Paddy said cheerfully, "Right, let's eat it then. Who wants a piece of cake?"

Everyone who was offered a piece of cake was a bit startled and questioned whether he really wanted to eat the cake immediately after going to so much trouble to make it. Paddy naturally asked, "Well what else should I do with it?" Naturally he took nice pictures of the cake to go into his collection (although I have no idea where his collection of cake and marzipan figure pictures is now), and it was not intended to be taken to the play, so eating it was the obvious thing to do.

That being the case, I made tea and we sat down together at the table to eat the cake. Once he actually had a knife in his hand, however, Paddy suddenly found it surprisingly difficult to cut into it after all. Eventually, though, we had cake with our tea, and it was very, very, very sweet. Since the recipe for the icing is written in Grandpa's handwriting, Paddy was thinking about how nice it would be to be able to share the cake with Grandpa, who would probably actually appreciate it, so Seth got hear all about Grandpa as we ate cake.

It is not a very big cake, but I somehow suspect that it is not going to disappear as quickly as cake usually disappears at our house. Nevertheless, it was an interesting way for Seth and Paddy to spend the day.

More pictures (just mine, not Paddy's) here

Enough Food for the Last Days of Humanity

This morning I had to rush to get to the shops in time before they closed at noon, but I just made it. At the butcher's shop, when the woman started packing everything up for me, I had the feeling I had bought enough to feed a small army. Then I realized that I actually need enough food to feed a small army.

Literally a small army.

A considerable number of people from my permanent and extended household have been cast as extras in an elaborate production of a play called "The Last Days of Humanity", which opens on July 18th. Although Paddy is playing the role of a newspaper boy proclaiming one victory after another as the world falls apart, the rest are all cast as young soldiers in World War I.

So while Peter is exploring ways to defy the laws of physics (or at least Austrian traffic laws) to fit all these young "soldiers" into our car to transport them to rehearsals, in between rehearsals we also need to feed them, at least some of them, at least some of the time. In addition to the exchange student from South Africa who is staying with us one more week, someone mentioned in passing this morning that the boys' friend Seth from Ghana is also moving in with us starting this weekend. It is a good thing that school is over now, so we don't have to worry about everyone getting a shower in the morning by seven, but getting everyone out of the house by ten is probably still going to be tight.

As far as the coming week is concerned, we figure we will simply deal with whatever happens, whatever needs to happen. While everyone else is busy preparing for The Last Days of Humanity, I will be relinquishing all household responsibilities to assume responsibility for all the women coming from all over the world to take part in the Eclectic Tech Carnival. Since bringing the Eclectic Tech Carnival to Linz was my idea to begin with, I figure that makes me responsible, although I am extremely grateful to the wonderful women I have been working with, who are actually making this happen. I just make noise, but the others actually get things done.

But now at least we have enough food for a small army and The Last Days of Humanity, so we are all set.


Addendum: I have been practicing taking pictures with my phone, and I'm not very good at it, since I can't actually see what I'm doing, but since I started a Flickr account for one of the projects I am working on, I have been putting some of them there. Pictures of pancakes for part of a small army tonight: here

Touching down at home base

We have all been busy recently, but for the moment we have all touched down at home base to regroup, so to speak.

Over the weekend I was in Vienna taking part in an exhibition and a day of presentations. I was so nervous I was in pieces before I left, but in the end I had a great time, and I think my part actually went surprisingly well:
cyber feminism past forward
There were so many cameras there that I assume pictures will start showing up eventually.

A few hours after I got home Sunday afternoon, we all went to the train station to collect Christopher returning home from the European Youth Parliament in Potsdam. At this point Christopher is still wandering around in zombie mode, but he did manage to post a brief account of his experiences there:
Christopher's comment
He also brought home the last issue of the little newspaper that was produced there every day, in which he was named as "the most unique delegate". I think it may be safe to assume that he made something of an impression. He also mentioned that the Irish delegates liked his tie, which I like to imagine would please his Grandpa.

Peter is working hard, of course. He is always especially busy this time of year, when he has to finish instruments to deliver in early summer. A photographer spent a day in the workshop with him, though, and has produced some nice pictures:

Peter in the workshop





Meanwhile, Patrick has been busy at home. At some point he took it into his head that he wants to be a barbershop quartet. All by himself. He is not quite there yet, but he has in fact – rather surprisingly – managed to turn himself into a trio:


So life goes on ...

Thanks to everyone who asked whether we are all back yet and how we are doing!