Double-Half
or One Ten without ham

So, yesterday I finally made my way to the market, to see Inge (german), the woman who made it seventh at the Olympic Games of Cheese!

I bought Mumme-Cheese! Yes. Very yummy!

Mumme (german) is a local product. In former days it was alcoholic, a beer. Until 1736. There they decided to make it without alcohol and the popularity went down. You could have guessed ;-)

But - it is still is there! We even have a Mumme-Mile now!

And here is the cheese - topped with raisins:








It even has an english name, according to Wiki: Brunswick Mum! Ambiguous, no? ;-)

The whole day, since about noon, people are performing opposite the apartment at the cultural centre Brunsviga (german).

Very, very obviously I am not an arty or cultural person! I feel stepped upon! I feel like running outside and pull the energy out!

This is art, screaming???? And, will you believe it - there are even people listening, here´s the proof!



Boy. Am I getting old? I´m just like my father and I never wanted to! But... this is not art to me! Genes. It´s the genes. I´m sorry!

"A US citizen in Germany", by Carol Kloeppel - that´s the book I´m reading at the moment.
And I learn weird things here, about the US!

In the US you have a top sheet. It seems to be a sheet that is stuck under the matress. Hello?!!! I could never ever sleep with my feet being stuck under a sheet like that!
Is this true, a top sheet is used? Even in summer, when it´s hot?

And our pillows are "huge"? They have the usual 80*80 cm (31,5 inch). I know nothing else - and I want nothing smaller, too!

Coming to numbers, the author asks if we are so bored with our language that we play ping-pong with numbers.
36. Thirty-six. We say sechs-und-dreissig, "six-and-thirty".

Ok, that may be weid, but hey! We´re just maybe funny, but the French are real weirdos here! They gave me a hard time with numbers, really. Everybody who complains about how Germans do number-talk, please go to France!

Everything is ok til 69, soixante-neuf, sixty-nine. 70: soixante-dix, sixty-ten. Wanna go for 80? Quarte-vingt, four-twenty, 90, you can guess, quatre-vingt-dix, four-twenty-ten, and four-twenty-ten-nine (quatre-vingt-dix-neuf) for 99.
Now you go into the tube and find out which tram is yours on which platform at what time.
Ha... I am thankful I had to go through this only in the language laboratory! In Paris I had French colleagues with me, luckily!


Anyhows – it´s fun to look at your country through the eyes of a foreigner!
I laugh my head off here! So, Carol asked two men to move their van out of the way. Her daughter had been stabbed and she needs to fetch her home.

She could tell by the faces of the men she made a mistake.

Yes. There is a difference between erstochen and gestochen! First one says you´re definitively dead, mostly by a knife. The second is when a bee pricks you - which has happened to her daughter.

Fun hours to come!

The author lives here now for 15 years, seems the place is not too bad after all.

Have you ever thought about how a stranger with a foreign language and other habits might see the place you live in?

I´m not Going Slightly Mad, I just stumbled over just yet another piece of ... art? honoring Freddie.

It´s the exhibition "View Basket: Art Bought Online" at the Hayward-Gallerie in London showing a Lego-Bust of this unique genius.

I wouldn´t want to have that at my home, but I think it´s an awesome gesture.

... like real mail, thank you Red Dirt Mummy for sending a souvenir from your last holiday in Exmouth, WA (it´s the biggest)! :-)

I will now not only think of dishwater when drying the dishes, I will also think of Coral Bay´s crystal clear water where you just hop in, swim a few meters and then "lie" in the water watching the coral life forms and oh-so-colored, amazingly beautiful fishes!



And I will remember how the Ranger´s dog probably ate up my left contact lens at he Rest Area right near Exmouth.
How came? We came from Coral Bay, certainly, and it was getting dark already. In Australia that means zooom! and it is dark! So I stored the lenses away without cleaning them.
Next morning, took the right one, cleaned it, put it in the eye, opened the other side, my mind was wandering somewhere... saw the cleaning stuff and emptied the container like I always did – cleaning means: Lens is still in eye, usually.

That was the moment my brain snapped back in – oh no! I just threw my lens away! In the "dirt"!
Being on all four with only one good eye, the Ranger came and his dog thought I was in for a funny game. Bye-bye left lens! Ow, well. I´m off contacs now anyhows.

Along with the beautiful teatowel came some touri-info .. beaming, someone has to invent that now!!!
The Exmouth guide is very well done, with some interesting snippets of "Did you know?..."

Like, "Of the seven species of turtle worldwide, six can be found in Australia, three of these can be found at Ningaloo" or "Manta Rays have the largest brain of all fishes which explains their inquisite nature" (weird that Holden/Opel Manta - at least in Germany – had the reputation of having only real dumb drivers, there even was a movie on it, Manta, Manta (german)), or "The largest blue marlin caught in Australia was approximately 425 kg" – wo-hoo!

Along with this we got the species identification guide of the Gascoyne Region... ow. In Carnarvon we sat for weeks on the old Prawn Jetty, Ingo with his fishing rod, me with heaps of second hand books. It was a holiday in a holiday and we kept coming back throughout our journeys. Ingo caught a Tailor, which we could definitively identify :-)

Also along with it came two beautiful bookmarks that remind us how precious also marine parks and reserves are, have a look here.

Ow, thank you, Red Dirt Mummy, for all the info and sweet memories! Can you imagine our last long holiday/journey was almost 10 years ago????

Your Perth-card got a place right under our Henry the Lion (who´s hopefully soon on the way also) :-)

It happens all the time between May and September, Murder on the Oker (german), with the Oker being a nice river that runs through town.

At the Okercabana (german) you can have a cool drink to hot music, play beach-volleyball, just relax. There are several places where you can rent a boat, there are annual races and... murder.

I wanted to join in, but it is rather expensive.

How handy the company I work for hops in (yes, I voted for it, too!)! Our next company meeting will be held at the Oker with a hopefully nice and yummy dinner in a restaurant at the riverside and afterwards we simply murder all the darn colleagues we don´t like hop on a boat and hear a detective story, read by the local writer - oh, please keep your fingers crossed for a day without rain on Friday the fifth of September - rain would mean just dinner, since it´s an open boat!!

It will be dark by then, also, how "creepy"! YES!

Oh, yes. Autumn is on the way. Getting dark by 8:30-9:00 already, oh noooooo...

Sadly this is without partner. Money isn´t that fat in anymore...

But, hey! It sounds like a whole lotta fun! :-)

Will be the best company meeting so far, I suppose!

Not so fun was so far:

- a walk through Nationalpark Harz (where I grew up nearby. Plus I don´t like mountains! Wanna see where I go!)
- Hang on! Those were two of them already!!! One with the other without partner.
- Fun was a ride on a small closed boat, with dancing and all - partners included.
- Not so fun: Dinner with a roulette table, I don´t like gambling, too exciting for me!
- Just dinner
- Dinner with presentation (several times)

Yes. Working there for 7 years already!

Does your company have regular meetings as well? Was there something you can recommend? Fun part would be good!

Have to add: We´re a bunch of some 50 guys, working all spread over the region, hardly seeing each other. So, regular company meetings are meant to help us getting to know each other better.
But actually all the groups who work together then stick together and have fun. At least we have fun! Mostly!

... says the postcard I have right beside my PC. It has Gerbera all over and ends with "any day you didn´t smile is a lost day" - how true, and seldom this happens! :-)

So we were busy on Sat. First we went to Tedi (german), the two-buck-shop we discovered in Wilhelmshaven, then Pocco, a "cheap IKEA", then IKEA, then real,- (german), a grocer's shop like Woolworths, just not as fresh, then pharmacy and once again real,-, Ingo now has a portable DVD-player he should have had when being in hospital...

In the evening, my Bro and his Girlfriend, Alex, came for a coffee, they had been shopping in town.

Ow, sesh!!!Alex said she can´t see all the details at once, and my Bro added, an apartment like for kids, just without kids.

What am I supposed to think now? Was that a compliment? Are we too colored?

Amyhows! At real,- Ingo bought not only a DVD-Player.
I got these:



And also "Good sheep - wild sheep" - a yarn of six Kinder eggs with two granted to have sheep (so far, two opened, not a sheep!).



This morning I woke cause Ingo left the apartment - very silent (he still can´t sleep in our bed due to the tube still being stuck in his side) - he bought german breadrolls.

When I got up, I went in the bag and found this:



A poppy-seed-breadroll - YUM!
With real butter and honey!
Yes, I know, I always claim I don´t like sweets. But... this combination is just great! Exclusive, you might say :-)

Happy - just yet again! :-)

YES!!! Progress is on the way!

When I came from work, the apartment was filled with a yummy smell of fresh cooked food - wow! Later after gym Ingo heated up the rest for me and I tell ya, I guess you´ll kinda never see me eat kohlrabi raw! It tasted so yummy cooked and seasoned, with potatoes and a bit of marge!

But, step by step!
Ingo sat on the couch - hair styled!
First time since Easter (Easter-Monday I drove him to emergency hospitalization)!

He then said he needs new cooking-pots, had seen some at IKEA for our induction cooking field. And a weighing machine (64.5 kg, eek. With 1,84 m... - but, on the way up!). I said, "... bring me a surprise, will ya, please?".

When I came home from the gym, I saw this ultracool lamp:



Beautiful skyline, huh? (you can click to enlarge)
Shows the town I like best after Braunschweig... or as much as Braunschweig! :-)

Originally those two...? frogs with wings were the motive (on the bottom on the pic), but Ingo changed that! :-)

But, alas!

This was not my surprise...

Ingo came with two Kinder Surprise, since I mentioned, awww, they have sheep now in every seventh!
We both got dinosaurs, but it shows: He listens to me :-)

Am I happy we live together now, so I don´t care to whom the lamp belongs! :-)

So! I have the feeling finally, finally there is progress, Ingo is on his way up again!

And maybe we will soon be owners of a small dishwasher, too!
Cause... if Ingo starts cooking on a regular basis... I don´t wanna do the washing-up by hand anymore! Costs more water also by hand.

Am happy! :-)

(title written by my Dad, "Iris as Ingo´s bride").





OK.
I had a cousin my age, named Ingo as well and we were doing masquerade.

But... hehe :-)
When Ingo ("my" Ingo) saw this pic he looked in disbelief! :-)
7 years difference in age were huge at that age, certainly ;-)

Traditional "summer vacation time" is over and my dear Bro had another doc´s appointment in my town.
So I left work earlier (can you imagine the jealous looks? ;-)...) to catch up with him.

Sadly he had to leave rather earlier since he has a new customer. Dunno why, but some people who are half blind without glasses still think they don´t need reserves.

There is a lady who not only is half blind, has no reserves, but has also special glasses which need to be imported from France - as fast as possible, certainly.

So. I think there is no difference if she gets the glasses this evening or tomorrow morning, but it´s all about attaching new customers, right? So I made him leave at 4:30.

We went to the city, had a mid-supper at Subway, caught up, was nice.

Forgot to take my cam, so I put in some pics I just saved by scanning:

See? I just love my little Bro...



(he couldn´t believe it himself, obviously...)

The wallpaper is just hilarious, no??? I love(d) it!
(you can click all pics to enlarge)

This one is also with our Grandma, who raised us. She died six years ago. See??? He´s planning something, no?!



Don´t you think he ever got punished...

See, I´m all fed up!



How about a time-warp?

Here I´m merely 5 months old, kinda, not disturbing my parent´s wedding:



And this is yet another proof I am German:

I was fed with plain bread:



And my Dad gave me... beer!
(the glasses, look at his glasses!!! They were so darn modern back then! And the sideburns - buaha-haha!)



(I have this on video as well - I certainly didn´t like it at all, bitter as it is - but, since everybody was laughing I joined in. It was just that one gulp, so, don´t worry. German kids aren´t really raised with beer ;-)...)

We´re just kept in a box all day... EEEEK! I am so old, the pics are in black & white, can you believe it?!
See the chair??? 70´s, YAY!



Despite being held in a box ... ;-)
Here I turn seven, yay!



And the "little one" today:

So sad. Today I read in the local newspaper about an 84-year-old man who strangled his 82-year-old wife, then killed himself.

He was blind, she was dement and wheelchair-bound. He left a note, "Please don´t be mad, it had to be that way". They lived in a house of their own. Children were not mentioned in the article.
The article goes on every second suicide is committed by senior citizens; they are sick, in pain. The only alternative would be a nursing home – and they know they will be separated there. They cannot cope with that thought.

Hello?! Separated?! They are old, that´s all. I learned that it´s difficult for couples who found each other in nursing homes to find a place for themselves and could not believe it.

But that couples who lived together for decades are separated like teenagers is unbelieveable to me.
Just where do we live?! Who decides this and why?! Mostly it´s two-bedrooms anyway!

It makes one afraid of getting old, really. I wonder, do those people who make these decisions want to be treated that way themselves when they come to that age, to that point? Do they actually think about these things?

What do you have in endless nights full of pain if not your partner?! Here is the article (german).

OMG. I just zapped into a report. In Scotland they love Take Away Food. So do we. But... They deep fry just plain everything! Fish and Chips? Sure.
Pizza?! Yep. Chocolate? Yes! Even Marshmellows – here ist the deep-fried Pizza on Wiki ans here is a deep fried Mars bar.

I dunno... Has anyone tried? Can I label that "yummy"? I´m in doubt... ;-)
Sure it can´t get a "health"-one!

And yes, I´m ok again. We needed some time apart - me, at least... thanks again for your support!

No matter what I do, it´s never good enough.

I feel like I just wanna hide someplace, run away, I can no more.

I know I should keep this for myself. I know others are off way worse. But here I sit, door closed and I feel like I need to scream.
Which ,of course, you cannot do if you live in an apartment, in the city.

So. He has been told 40% die of pancreatitis. By whom? Dunno.
His brother told him when they do an operation and it goes well, it´s good. When they manage the same operation going well twice, that´s great and that a lot of failures happen.
That the way Ingo´s pancreatitis develops is a first to them and they are merely experimenting.

And, well, it´s weekend, guess what, he´s in more pain than before. Somehow this was to be expected, kinda, no? It´s always weekend, when there are no real doctors available.
Somehow the responsibility goes kinda over to me, at least it feels that way?
Plus, he tells me he´s in pain since last Saturday. Hello?! Last Saturday?

When I asked if he kept that a secret from the doctors he said, "yeah, I made a little dance for them".

That was when I left.

So much scary information - or rather anti-information and then going all sarcastic.

What does he want???? Does he feel better when I am scared till I can no more?

Yes. I should go over and ask if he needs something. But somehow no one ever asks if I need something. Like, a friendly word for a change. Ok, that´s not true. There are times when he admits he´s nasty and says he´s sorry for it, too.

I can understand that being in pain and for so long makes you that way. But I also wanna be understood. It´s not easy for me either. All I can do is bring stuff, try to stay friendly and help as much as I can - but it just never is good enough.

As if he ´can´t understand that seeing him suffer hurts me also. Being helpless hurts.
Great. Now I got headache.

Would it make me better to post this? Just throw it away?
Maybe soon I can just laugh about how I feel today because everything turns out fine after all?
Can´t I make a jump into the future to see? Do I want that?

Not even 8 am and Ingo is FREE TO GO!

YAY!

He just called me, I´m so happy! His parents will be there at around lunchtime and the afternoon he will be home!
Still one tube in the back and he needs to flush the area himself (eek), but OH-SO-YAY he will be home!

Gotta leave work early to tidy up a bit and decorate with ballons!

According to this site my first name was quite popular in the late 1920 and is on it´s way up since the 1990´s again.
A sure prove that name really was chosen due to one of my father´s professions - being an optometrist.

My second name, which I like much better... well it says

"No names starting with FLAVIA were in the top 1,000 names in any decade".

Well? I like it anyway! And someone even named a car like this :-)



Since about two weeks Ingo´s health status is stagnating. Hopefully this doesn´t mean something goes wrong just yet again.
I just don´t understand doctors. They give no information, they seem not to care that their patients do worry. This sucks.

"Everything began with the worst day of my life.

Good thing no one told me it´s the worst day of my life – I might have refused to leave the house.

I might not live the best day of my life now."

I´m not into romance movies much. German ones usually aren´t good anyway. But this one was good – and the last words of the female hero are just priceless, no?

Why I watched it? I like the female actress, Simone Thomalla (german). Knew her only from a ... tadaaaa... so German: From a Beer-Ad.

And then I saw the male part, Ralph Herforth (german, with pics :-)...) – he played a role in a Volkswagon Golf Ad, played a Dad who is overstrained by his boy´s computer-toys.

The boy shortly explains and asks, provokingly, "wanna try?! ;-)"
Next minute they´re off in the Golf and he explains all the great features the car has to his son and certainly ends, too, "wanna try? ;-)" A very good-looking, grey-haired, sexy, end-40-man:



See how "frustrated" the boy looks now - and that smile of him, hehe :-)

He played the asshole in this movie, though.
But... those two actors attracted me to give the movie a try.
Again, Ingo´s statement it´s stupid to watch a movie just cause you like the actors failed. Same as having seen one Queen-concert shows it all.

Oh, yes, "Kidnap me, darlin´" from 2006 was the movie, screenplay by Wiebke Jaspersen.

In Ingo-news... Guess he won´t come home this weekend either. He´s off meds now, is in pain and doesn´t want me to come to visit, again, "spend the money for a trip we make together". They still get "stuff" out of the cyst. I don´t want him home unless he´s "safe". But it is kinda hard. Longest we were apart from each other was 12 days, nearly three weeks it´s now.
But. He´s in the best hands available.

Yes. I know. Most accidents happen in household and it´s not advisable to step on a folding chair to take a pic. But, hey, Ingo isn´t home, he couldn´t grump and nothing happened anyway.
Those are hooks who just so fit to the red kitchen wall and green kitchen lamp. I think they will be deco only. And yes, from good ole IKEA.





Yes, my sunglasses:



I just love summer! :-)

I thought it´s a cute idea to store the washing powder in a "mini-machine" :-)

Martin called me this afternoon, before he is now on his way to Sweden for a family-holiday. Ingo has "only" one tube left in his body and he even started eating again.
Very good news.
He thinks Ingo still will - and shall - stay in Luebeck hospital for another week at least.

The doctors there know the facts and he is best looked after there.

Oh, yes, I don´t want to see Ingo in Braunschweig hospital anymore! He should take his time to really heal, to really make sure it´s totally safe.

I know it´s very boring and Martin said, Ingo behaves ambivalently, too. He brought him a book, Ingo said NO! I can´t concentrate on a book!
Two days later he gave him the book back with the words, it was a very good book.

But yeah, he´s sick for so long now, who wouldn´t be a little disturbed and moody?

Certainly I wanted to go to visit Ingo on Sunday. Would mean six hours in the car, but really, that´s ok, I don´t do that every day, right?

Ingo called. He doesn´t want me to come. He said if I was there he would have no chance to go away with me so we can talk privately. He would have the need to tell me so much, would be unable to do so and that would be even more stress.

He then did get rid off the tubes and called me.

Boy, boy, oh-boy.
The first breakfast he got was some food someone else had had before. Will you believe that?!
He objected it and got a new one, along with not-so-friendly words of the nurse.

The breadroll was ok, but he found a bug in the toast. So, no toast.

That can happen, sure. But whilst having breakfast his bed-neighbor needed his bed-pan.

Hello?! How disgusting is that? That is a grown man, can´t he hold it for 15 minutes?!

He´s got something with his lungs and coughs a lot, he´s meant to, on doctors orders. They give him Kleenex, lots of, but since the table is full of food the wife brings all the time... he uses his hands and licks it all up afterwards.
That´s nothing that happens in silence.
He calls the personnel to open the windows wide - and certainly all the wasps come in.
This stopped only after one nurse was stung.

Ingo said, I don´t wanna see that, hear that and I should spare the gas for a trip we make together when Ingo is ok again.

Well, all true.

I told him if he changes his mind, that´s no worries, I´ll be on my way.

Let´s see.

Oh this is oh-so-disgusting, why is it always Ingo who gets such freaks as bed-neighbors and he said, no, Martin can´t do anything in that sector.

I feel bad if I don´t go to visit, on the other hand I can understand Ingo as well.
I´d be the same - but I guess he´d be the same like me now.

How disgusting!

The poor man. I bought balloons already, hoping Ingo would be here next week. Luckily I didn´t make them ready, they´ll have to wait.

Bleh, I feel sick.

Ingo said the nurses like that old fart, cause he´s so charming to them. Yeah, charming, using the bed-pan when someone who can´t leave the bed eats!

A man fuzzing with his keys at the door. With the wrong keys. He steps to the side, I open, show him which is the right one, we enter. Whilst I step up to the 5th floor, he is on comfy ground and cheerfully greets me good-bye with "have a happy weekend!".

Ummm, thanks!

At 6:30 am! :-)