nothing but trouble

about cakes, buses and exes

2011-12-05T23:55:00.000+01:00

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!?

2011-11-28T00:18:00.000+01:00

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

2011-11-20T23:17:00.004+01:00

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!

sharks in pools - the journey continues

2011-11-12T23:45:00.007+01:00

As you can already guess I went snorkeling again. A new pair of fins, another borrowed snorkel and I was good to go.

That I am writing this means that I didn’t drown, of course. I didn’t even come close this time. In fact I managed most of the exercises. (Yay!)

This time I learned how to blow the water out of my mask. After all that happened the last time I found this particular exercise to be rather easy.

There was a lot of diving involved as well, which turned out to be a stupid idea. In truth I got a bit carried away. After the normal exercises worked so well I kind of totally forgot that I still have that annoying tympanostomy tube in my left ear. (It’s been there for five months so you might understand how I tend to forget about it once in a while.)

So I turned once around myself while diving and thought for sure my eardrum was torn into a thousand shreds. It wasn’t of course but it hurt like a son of a bitch! For the remaining 15 minutes of the training I cleverly refrained from diving again.

I just cannot wait for that thing to come out. After all this time I will miss it. Not. It will be like a part of me is missing. Not. I swear I am so used to it by now that my head automatically takes this strange angle as soon as I step into the shower just to prevent the water from entering my ear.

Of course that didn’t prevent it from entering in the pool, duh.

Because of that rather inconvenient fact I ended up paying a visit to my otorhinolaryngologist (ear doc for short). I don’t know how they managed it but instead of the usual three hours plus I only had to wait one this time. Thankfully the doc said everything looked fine and assured me she had a really good look into my middle ear (creepy) and that there was no water remaining inside my ear.

If nothing else the feeling of my eardrum being ripped apart has made me realize that I will have to be more careful the next time I go snorkeling. At least it won’t be much longer until the tube is gone for good.

So how did I know there were no sharks in the pool? This time I did not only know because they didn’t snack on me. No! With the help of my totally fogless goggles I actually saw there was not one single shark swimming around my ankles. The simple trick is to put some toothpaste into your goggles, let it dry and then rinse them. For good measure I followed that treatment by rinsing again, using mouthwash this time. Add some spit to the mix before entering the pool and voila: you will have clear sight to watch all the cute little fishes swimming around you (or, as in my case, your fellow snorkelers).

Of course that doesn’t help when your feet keep floating around the surface. Thanks to my new fins, this time was a lot better than before.

In fact the beginners were so good our instructor decided to let us join the advanced snorkelers in training next time.

I am sure his decision was not based on my performance.

Though I did do a lot better than last time I still sucked. This is also why I am not sure how I feel about the prospect of swimming with people who are so much better than I am. I swim like a snail and not many people can compare to that.

Well I guess the others will just have to wait for me. After all it was not my decision.

At last! One thing that’s not my fault, hehe.

the monday sugar low

2011-11-07T21:58:00.005+01:00

On the way back home yesterday, the guys from my car pool ate all my cookies! And I worked so hard to bake them. They were cinnamon-waffle cookies and my favorite kind right now. I will admit that this does not amount to much since my taste buds change their mind as often as my brain and stomach do. Still, the result is that I want those cookies and that there is none I can stuff into my greedy mouth and moan about.

All right, they did not eat all the cookies. Manly because my mom kept about ¾ of them at her place. Seriously! I should have taken them all. She even looked at me funny when I filled up a box for myself.

I baked those damned cookies! They were supposed to be mine! Mine! Mine!

Hey, it’s not like I don’t share. She can keep the freaking cookies but I am allowed to take some for myself, right? Especially since I won’t get any more for at least three weeks.

Maybe she made the dough and ought to have her share. But she can make new ones any time! And I was the one who baked them, one at the time for 1 and a half hours!

That’s my need for sugar speaking right now.

Okay, so it is my own fault that the guys ate up all of my (though fairly small) share of those yummy cinnamon cookies. After all I offered.

Yesterday it didn’t seem like such a big deal.

Right now however, I really, really want one! Need one!

All I have left now are those yucky pretzel M&Ms my sister bought for me. To tell the truth they don’t taste sooo bad. Somehow, though I can only eat one or two at a time before they make me feel sick.

Everyone keeps telling me that I should be glad because this way I won’t eat so many sweets. Ask yourself one question however: Is it worth feeling nauseated for hours afterwards?

My answer is: NO. Which is why I stopped eating them. Please know that this was really hard for me. I hate to see good food go to waste. Especially if it was given to me by someone else. Especially if that someone was my sister, who will surely be disappointed that I won’t (can’t)eat those M&Ms.

However, they handed out samplers of Pretzel-Chocolate at the grocery store this weekend. They had various other choices as well but I neither like marzipan nor rum (or whatever other alcohol they stuffed into those chocolates). So the only choice left was the one with Pretzel and it didn’t taste all that bad. All in all it tasted way better than the M&Ms. Still it wasn’t good. Conclusion: salt and chocolate just don’t work for me.

Long story short: I am still left without chocolate or cookies and I have to study organic chemistry. No one who has not been forced to go though the horror will ever truly understand what it is like to do organic chemistry without comfort food! Makes you want to strangle something! Someone. Your chemistry professor.

The thought of people handing out samplers at the supermarket though is nearly enough to make me stop reading about Lewis-structures and run over to get whatever samples they are handing out and while I am already there, buy some yummy chocolate. Nut and raisin for example. I am really in the mood for nut and raisin!

But for now I will try to restrain this demonic graving for sweets, even if it means to stop studying (sometimes you just have to sacrifice) and instead use the little free time I gained to plan my next holiday!

sharks in pools

2011-11-02T21:27:00.004+01:00

My newest project/ hobby/ general time consumer (I should rather spend my time studying but whatever): snorkeling. This course I am taking is supposed to be a beginners’ course and later graduates to diving. Now, I had never snorkeled before. Please note that when I say never, I mean never ever.

So here I was, not knowing what kind of equipment to buy that would effectively prevent me from drowning during my first hands on experience in the nicely shallow pool of the local gym.

What do you do when you don’t know what to buy? You get yourself professional advice!

First I tried one of the really big sporting goods stores. As it turned out they did have neither my seize fins nor many options to chose from. In addition to that I did not get the feeling that the saleswoman even knew what it was she was trying to sell me. Come on, I didn’t need her for that! I managed not understanding anything fine on my own, thank you very much! What I needed her to do was hand me the right set of fins! Preferably the ones! Perfect fit, perfect rigidity, perfect length. I would not even have asked her to wrap them in a pretty package. I would have carried them home just like that (the better to show them off).Of course I wouldn’t have minded if she had thrown in a breeze of talent as well. I didn’t bother asking, however. After all she couldn’t even sell me fins.

So the search went on. Next up on my list was a ‘professional’ diving store. Now you would believe that the people working there, especially the shop owner (which I guess the guy was since the shop is a very, very small) would know what I was looking for. Sadly the real world has a very crude way of disappointing me sometimes, because in truth it went something like this:

Me: Hi, I’m searching for fins.

Owner: Hmmm.

Me: ?...... For snorkeling and later for diving.

He continued looking at me, not saying a word and I was like: O-kay….

Let’s face it, I should probably have left right then. But hey! Cut me some slack. At that point I was desperate. I needed those fins in one day flat and the choice of diving stores in this area is seriously limited. Waikiki beach this is not!

Fighting desperately for his attention (Hello-ho! Customer anyone!?) I tried to get him to sell me those fins I was so urgently in need of. I explained to him that I am doing a snorkeling course which later offers us to get our diving license and that I was totally clueless as to what to pay attention to when chosing fins.

So he: Are you doing a diving course? (Why, thank you for listening to me so far.)

Me: Well (no)…. First we do snorkeling and later, if we want to we are offered the possibility to get a diving license.

Owner: Will you dive outdoors?

Me: We will start diving in the swimming pool fist and only switch to the lake sometime in May or June next year. BUT we do snorkeling first. So what kind of fins would I buy in this case?

Owner: You want strapped ones then. And you need sock liners, too.

Thinking: at least we are getting somewhere now, I went on: Why not the full foot ones?

Owner: The strapped ones will be better secured when you dive in cold water.

Me: We will be in the pool for at least another 9 months…

Owner: Oh you can use them there too.

Me: Hm, okay. If you say that those are better…If they don’t work out for me can I return them?

Better safe than sorry right?

Owner: If you really don’t get along with them.

He didn’t sound too happy that I had pinned him on that. Anyways, I bought both fins and sock liners in good faith, unimaginably glad that I was finally set up for my first snorkeling lesson. Ecstatic really, that I had a ‘real’ pair of fins.

Man, I thought I had the coolest, most awesome fins in the whole freaking pool! Or at least close.

I WAS SO VERY PROUD.

Yeah. Right. Pride comes before fall…..or in my case: drowning.

Anyways, there I was at the swimming pool for the first time with my new fins (goggles and glasses I had borrowed from my future brother-in-law) all excited.

Let’s cut to the chase and see what went wrong:

1: my goggles fogged over within two minutes…. swimming nearly blind is no fun

2. I never managed to get rid of all the water in my snorkel causing me to swallow half the water in the pool by the time we were finished (It was the snorkels fault! Believe me! I tried with my friends and it was just fine! Future-brother-in-law, please don’t be mad now but your snorkel is crap!)

3. those fins I bought…let’s just say the three of us did not get along. At all. When I didn’t lose them their ascending force was so strong I hardly managed to push them beneath the water! lower body floating, upper body sinking? … not a very good combination.

So much for my first experience in snorkeling. Talk about embarrassing!

At least that guy at the store said I could return the damn fins!

I think this goes a long way to show that just because you know a lot about diving, which I am sure the guy did, does not automatically mean that you will make a good salesperson. Sorry Mr. Shop Owner! I’m sure you are a good diver but your ability as a salesman sucks!

I’d hate to think of my experience as a total disaster however.

The bright side: at least there were no sharks in the pool!

Pilot

2011-10-31T13:15:00.000+01:00

Since this is my first post (and my first ‘serious’ blog) I thought I should probably tell you about how I got here:

The idea of writing a blog has been bouncing around in my head for quite some time now. Only I never really knew what I wanted to write about.

My own experiences of course. But seriously! The possibilities are practically endless.

First I thought I might continue with the travel blog I started while being in New Zealand a few years back. The only problem is that I don’t travel that much. Think about it: a big trip once or twice a year is hardly enough to keep a blog going, right? My weekend trips to visit my family or a one day trip to indulge my (thank god) fairly average sized inner princess’s graving for shopping, is hardly enough to entertain anyone.

No, not even myself.

So here I was, thinking why not create a blog on crafts. Now, I know that there are already who-knows-how-many out there and since I just love getting idea’s for my own projects from just those blogs I thought I could do the same. Problem here: I tend to start a dozen projects but lack the time to finish them up. And then there is also the tiny fact that I don’t have enough time to do enough sewing, knitting and restoring to keep people entertained that way either. No matter how much I love crafting the cutest little toys and rattles for babies I don’t have but other people seem to produce nonstop that option had to be brusquely dismissed as well.

As a result I was left researching and, of course, thinking, nearly breaking my usually pretty thick head on what I wanted my goddamn blog to be about.

And then two days ago, I knew! The reason I finally got it was the combined appearance of the following points:

1. I got a Blogging for Dummies book in desperate hopes of finding some crucial information I was missing so far

2. in said book I found a link to this blog: http://mimismartypants.com

3. my friend, let’s call her Anna, suggested that some of the decisions I made actually might have had a deep impact on a person who is very dear to me and just happens to be going through a really tough time (this actually occurred before the two above mentioned points but who cares about details...)

The last point, which took place Friday on our way home from a night playing Sing Star (I miserably lost against my competition in almost every song I sang), is what really got to me. So I thought: If my experiences and decisions (no, I am not talking about the Sing Star part here) can have such a huge impact on the people around me why not share those experiences with others as well!?

Since I love writing and change my mind so often that I have a lot to tell, this should really work out well.

Then, of course, there was this big decision to name my blog: nothing but trouble struck me as a good choice so I simply decided to run with it. After all I want this blog to be about my everyday life with all its annoying, sometimes heartwarming and more often than not amusing ups and downs. Nothing but trouble seems to be the right choice here.

Of course I constantly change my opinion about stuff like this. Maybe tomorrow I want to call it: Life is a … (bad b word) or peanut butter marmalade cookie or something. However, by then it will be too late and I will be stuck with this. Yes well, I guess sometimes life just isn’t fair.