about cakes, buses and exes

Do you know those days on which everything that can go wrong does go wrong? Only for me it has not been day, it’s been a week!

And though I do have to admit that not everything went as wrong as it could, most of the past week did not go according to plan. 

It all started Thursday when my car pool left for home a day early and I had to pack all my stuff and clean up the flat in 30 minutes! I tell you, that was a major change in plans considering I wanted to stay a week! Have you ever tried packing for one week in 30 minutes? Minus the time you need to straighten up your apartment? Well don’t. It’s not worth the aneurism.

Oh, I forgot to add the part where I was just about to make handmade pizza. Thankfully I had only finished the dough when I received the “Be ready in half an hour!” call. Not so lucky was the part about me not having eaten all day…

Also not lucky was that I had planned on working on Friday! I missed out on that, which means more work for me during the next two weeks, because the office will be closed between Christmas and new years. It is a mystery to me why everyone wants to stay at home during that time! Okay, so most students will probably be home, but if you look at it objectively that is the best time of year! No one will even think of bothering you in the office. If you have stuff you have always wanted to get done but never managed to get to this would be the perfect time. Anyways the office will be closed and I think that is stupid!

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid!

Even if I probably won’t even be in the city that does not mean I can’t through a temper tantrum about this. I just hate it when people take away my choices! Maybe, just maybe, I would come to work during that time. But no. They don’t even leave the decision to work, or not to work in my hands.

Considering the rest of my week, this might be a smart move though. The decisions I made lately did  not turn out well.

Of course I already mentioned how I ‘broke’ my mobile. (It’s working again!!!) 

Then I went to buy some felt for a project I’m working on right now, but none of the stores had the fabric I was looking for. I also went to another diving store which also didn’t happen to have what I wanted. Or maybe I just didn’t exactly know what I wanted. However, it left me immensely unsatisfied.

Then I accidentally took my mother’s car keys home with me. It was right before she would have usually finished work when I noticed and I had to do the whole bus ride back into the city. One hour of time ( 30 minutes home + 30 minutes back into the city) gone. Unusable! Lost for my life forever. Actually it was a bit more than an hour if you consider that I had to go o the ATM  because I was out on cash and last time I checked our bus drivers didn’t accept credit cards. Of course all ATM’s were either in use or out of service, which just happened to be bad timing because the bus that had just brought me from the city was late and the one going back was just turning the corner. Of course I missed it. How could it have been any different?

Though the woman from the travel agency looked a bit funny when I asked her whether I could use her phone to let my mom know about the incident she was nice enough to let me call after just a tiny bit of pleading on my part. This is what happens when you don’t have a mobile! Everyone who says they could live without one is a Pinocchio-nosed liar! I felt like dying a few times during that week and I don’t even use my mobile all that often. In fact I ignore it most of the time, as my friends and family will be all too happy to assure you. In an annoyed voice of course. Ignoring my mobile all too often also means ignoring them.

So I waited 20 minutes for my next bus, froze my butt off doing so and made my way back to where I had just come from. Thankfully my mom took it with humor. 

Then I was baking a cake for my mom’s birthday and somehow managed to splatter the dough all through the kitchen. Somehow, I don’t know how (I was looking somewhere else entirely after all) the mixing bowl just fell off the counter while I was one handedly mixing and the mixer just continued turning. I don’t know why it did that. Stupid if you ask me. Most of the meringue mass though stayed in the bowl, so I didn’t have to do everything over.

The other good thing was that I didn’t get any on the walls, or I would be dead now. The kitchen was a mess though.

There were a few other minor incidences like my ex-boyfriend, whom I have not seen in a while but am still very good friends with, thought it was more important to go party than to meet up with me. He had to “meet a girlfriend”. Hello-ho! I know this is just a tiny bit selfish and delusional because we are separated but I still want to be number one on the list of people he wants to meet! Especially since that meeting had been set a week in advance! Some of my friends back from school filled the gap in my otherwise pretty tight schedule very nicely, however. I’m sure I had more fun with them than I could have had with any man! Scratch that. We had more fun than I could have had with my ex-boyfriend, the jackass! 

Because I just happen to be a naturally nice person (cough) I told him he was free to join us if he wanted to but to leave his lady friend at home. In the end he showed up for a while. Without a female in tow of course. Better that way I tell you. My girlfriends had already offered to scratch out her eyes. I believe it is only natural that I feel immensely satisfied over this show of loyalty.

What I was not so satisfied about was the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach after they talked me into eating a McFlurry Snickers. Not for me again anytime soon! Instead I will stick with the only true thing in the frozen milk product department: Frozen Yoghurt! Which I find nearly impossible to get in this country.

To top that week off my guys from the car pool totally forgot that they were supposed to pick me up. Again. I’m starting to get just a little pissed at them.

The good news: My dentist says my teeth are fine and my oculist says I still see nearly 100%. Since I do feel kind of blind at times I believe she is lying. I have not quite figured out how or why but for now I will just be contented with having saved the 300 Euro I would have otherwise had to spend on glasses.

who needs lakes, pools or toilets when you have a handbag that can do the job!?

My mobile won’t turn on. Whether that is because it’s out of battery or because it got pretty wet is anyone’s guess. I sure as hell don’t know. To be sure however it went on the heater to completely dry out before I try to turn it on again. I was also given the advice to put it into a bowl of rice and then onto the heater. However, I cannot be sure how reliable that advice is, since it was given to me after the consummation of quite a few glasses of hot spiced wine. Wasted people tend to be more unreliable than their sober alter egos we get in contact with in everyday life. Since my mobile didn’t fall into the toilet or went swimming in any other way (no, I did not fall into the water while just happening to carry my mobile at the same time, either) I decided to try just drying it on the heater. No rice or other groceries involved. Except maybe the chocolate wandering into my mouth. Comfort food, of course. Though I stayed mostly dry I believe I deserve a little reassurance right now! Even if it results from a bar of milk chocolate with cocoa-crème-filling!

So this is how it happened:

My day started out so good! I went in and out of town without spending a cent and the backache that just won’t give me a break was aching at a more or less bearable level. On top of that I got a heat plaster for my back and some pizza-quiche-food thingy for free! I should have known right there that it was too good to be true.

When I went back into the city to meet a friend at the christmas market in the evening, I decided that I really needed to take some water. I like to keep something to drink with me at any time. Experience tells me that dehydration is a bitch and I hadn’t had much to drink all day, so I was a little more desperate than usual.

Not drinking enough tends to cause me to get a really bad stomach ache and having that in addition to the back ache would have seriously pissed me off. As it is I already feel like a broken old woman that was beaten with a baseball bat a few times too often!

No need to deliberately add to my suffering!

Since it was impossible to get anything else on short notice I had to settle on sparkling water. Sadly we were out of small bottles as well so I used the one left from my ice tea that morning. Again, I was lucky. Again, no suspicion. (See a pattern here?) Anyway, I filled some of the water into the small bottle so I wouldn't have to carry 1.5l all night. Smart, you would think and you would think wrong.

That was not the best idea I’ve ever had.

When I sat in the car, my bag in my lap, I suddenly realized that something wet was dripping down my leg. Turns out the bottle was not made for sparkling water or sparkling whatever in general. My only luck: it was just water. I would have been screwed had it been juice or coke or lemonade!

Thankfully I also got away with only a few damp spots on my legs. Neither my bag, nor my mobile where as lucky.

Thanks to my mobile not working I nearly missed meeting a friend, but we managed somehow anyway. In addition to all of this, my favorite waffle stand has been replaced by a fried-something place! (Yuck!) How am I supposed to get through this christmas without it? 

However, we also went to see a pretty awesome musical. So all in all the evening turned out to be quite fun. Broken mobile and all.

the ultimate sport thing

Sorry for staying away for so long. I’ve been on holiday and plainly too busy to blog last week. Walking your way through an entire city will do that to you. Actually I am surprised that I managed to walk so much without getting foot-sick. Until now my feet started hurting pretty much after the first day of a trip like this. This time I managed four days! FOUR! Gosh, I’m proud of myself. Though I am not entirely sure whether it is my increased load of workouts or just thanks to the shoes I’ve been wearing. In this spot: thank you ESPRIT which produces the only shoes that fit my crippled feet without question! You have saved me a lot of time that I would otherwise have spend searching for a fitting pair of sneakers each time I find myself in need of a new pair!

Maybe it was a combination of both shoes and workout, because recently I am doing a LOT of sport. Sometimes I do not even recognize myself anymore (that’s usually when I skip workout). But gym, snorkeling and frisbee?

Am I turning into Miss athletic or what?

Right after snorkeling last week I joined my friend’s ultimate frisbee training. She had to more or less force me. After all it’s not like I would go if it wasn’t on the way home from the pool. To be fair here, I have to grudgingly admit that it turned out to be a lot of fun. Except for the part where they started to play an actual game.

Before, while training how to throw a frisbee, my surprised friend said something like: “OMG, your eye-hand coordination seriously sucks!”

My muttered answer: “No, it’s my hand-eye-foot-coordination.” (I just tend to close my hands a nanosecond too late to make a catch, damn it!)

Usually I am not bothered by it. That’s just who and what I am. From what I hear my whole family suffers similar problems (maybe I could just blame genetics?), which is why none of us ever seriously plays team sports.

Now, I am the unwilling exception. The surprising thing is that I truly enjoyed myself. For the first hour or so. Right until they practically forced me to play in a game. Though it was a short game (just for two points) it was a nightmare. I knew it would be even before I stepped onto the field, because I played once before and back than I had no clue what to do. It’s the hand-eye-foot coordination thing I just told you about. This time wasn’t any better. Most of the time I just stood on the field, not sure which way to run or which way to look. I felt like I was standing in the woods and all I wanted to do was bang my head against a tree I couldn’t find.

On top of that I got the feeling that my friend was a bit stressed out by me. Maybe more than a just a bit. Majorly may be more accurate. And I can’t even be mad at her because I kind of, sort of understand the sentiment. It’s not like I don’t know that I tend to get bit annoying while doing team sports. I just can’t help it. Which is exactly why I have never even tried team sport before. It’s just not for me.

I like the training just fine but actually playing doesn’t work at all. I even get a bit whiny because I hate the feeling of not knowing what I am doing. Even without that I am already making enough of a fool of myself to last a lifetime! This team sport thing however gets me to a new personal high. It just makes me feel totally incapable and inadequate. And here I was, thinking snorkeling was hard on me. Who would purposely want to make themselves feel that way?

Yes, I am very aware that I pretty much just did exactly that. That doesn’t mean I enjoyed it. Or at least I didn’t use to. Which, as I already mentioned, is the reason I usually don’t do team sports.

Because I really enjoy the oportunity of being allowed to throw stuff around for a changed (and because it was kind of fun) I’ll try a few more times. Just to make sure I don’t get any better, not that I have much hope that will happen anytime soon. If there is no improvement I will just sit by in the future, read a nice book and do what people are always best at: Tell everyone else what they could do better!

Before I go that far however I need to weight the disadvantages against the advantages. Maybe embarrassing myself on a regular basis is worth enduring the emotional beating? Maybe I will lose weight!

For someone who claims not to care about her weight I am certainly thrilled by that prospect… Not that there is much hope that I lost any over my vacation.

My new addiction to frozen yoghurt has made sure I have enough calories to burn for the next two or three weeks or so. Not to mention the upcoming christmas cookie season… I am such a sucker for cookies!