20Jan / 2012

Das Akkordeon

A kind friend has given me an old accordion. I haven’t figured out yet what kind it is but it looks as if it may be a German concertina, it is rectangular and wooden and has buttons.

It is old, it once belonged to Russian soldiers left it at my friend’s grandparents’ place after the war.

I can’t wait to play it. I almost took it out of the bag right there in the restaurant where we were having lunch, but it is the best sushi restaurant in the neighborhood and her baby was already crying and I’d like to go back there someday. So I don’t know if it works yet.

You know how that is when you get a new accordion and are dying to try it out? But you’re there in a restaurant and can’t? So you promise yourself, as soon as you get home? And then you remember that your wife is getting home from a grueling business trip to Japan tonight so that might not be a good idea, either?

Someday.

Also, I can’t actually play the accordion. That is, I don’t think so. I’ve never tried. We’ll see!

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22Dec / 2011

And the streets will flow with whiskey

M was in Innsbruck, which is beautiful in snow and rich; the advent markets there are fancy and bookstores plush but the mountains around it are high and somewhat overbearing, and the hotel was a dump. His wifi barely worked. He befriended two silverfish in the bathroom. He named them Gregor1 and Gregor2.

Then it was decided that his little group would drive back to Vienna in the middle of the night, in the snow, which was crazy. But doing crazy things, he discovered, can launch you into an alternate universe. It did that night, he saw unusual things like rows of trucks stopped to put on chains, or whole flocks of them sleeping in rest stops and gas stations until the storm passed; or maybe they do that every night. And German police asked them for identification, M’s little group, and advised against eating at that truck stop and M wondered why. Was the food bad? The service? The clientele?

And M slept a little, and the others, except for the driver, and they arrived at 2.30 in the morning and he finally got to sleep at 4 and woke up in the wrong universe and he’s still trying to figure it out. Everything is pretty much the same, but only pretty much.

His daughter’s street flows with whiskey. Or smells like it at least.

His other daughter is a little bit funnier than before. Driving into town, he tells her about a friend’s trepidation at bathing in a spa said to have special curative powers for gynecological diseases. Gamma says, the waters supposed to cure diarrhea are probably pretty bad, too.

M thinks he has all his Christmas presents in time this year. Definitely the wrong universe.

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14Dec / 2011

Of course with alcohol.

Alpha is in Kyoto getting a massage, or something, so Gamma was kind enough to accompany me to a concert last night at the Konzerthaus in Vienna, where the Klangforum Wien performed Donatoni, Brice Pauset and György Kúrtag. It was quite good, if you want my in-expert opinion. We subscribe to their concerts, and are really enjoying this year’s series. I fall asleep a lot, I feel bad about that. It’s like borderline narcolepsy. When I have trouble falling asleep at home in my bed, I imagine I’m in a concert and I usually fall right to sleep. It’s because I get up so early, I think, and then have a long day, and then go to the bar at a hotel that shall remain nameless for legal reasons before the concert for a drink, and not any sort of condemnation of the music. Also a little more oxygen in the atmosphere inside the concert hall wouldn’t hurt.

Gamma is 14. She joined me at the bar last night. I had a beer although I wasn’t really in the mood for a drink, because they won’t bring you peanuts if you don’t buy a drink. Gamma ordered a strawberri daiquiri. With alcohol? asked the waiter. Sure, said Gamma. She let me taste. It was very good. That is something I find agreeable about Austria, they’re not all paranoid about carding people who order drinks.

Another agreeable thing about the country is that its president also subscribes to this modern music concert series, and sits two rows in front of us, just him and his wife. Either that or his security detail is so good that they’re invisible. Last night Gamma went over and said hi to him.

I think it’s neat to have a president who enjoys new music and is accessible like that.

And it’s also neat to have kids like I do.

Even my cats have been friendly and remarkably sane lately, except for the senile gray cat, who is as nuts as ever.

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30Nov / 2011

How to not punk yr kids

I didn’t have the heart to get even with my daughters for fooling me. Part of the problem was that I am too soft-hearted to freak them out when it came down to it, and part of the problem was that I am too wise to start an arms race with them, because I can’t see that ending well for me.

It was not for lack of ideas. After consulting with a friend, I had two plans that made me laugh until I cried, just thinking about them. An administrative hell plan for Beta (notice of eviction containing a grammar error (she is a stickler for proper grammar, among other things) and a contact # that puts her on perpetual hold, while Pachelbel’s Canon (of which she is sick) plays eternally); a medical hell plan for Gamma, requiring her to (among other things) collect urine samples and stool samples daily for a week.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, of course. There were lots of fun, custom-designed details, like the stool-sample-kits would be especially constructed to be impossible to open.

For example.

But I decided not to go through with it.

It’s not that I choked. See the above.

After it became clear to me that I would not do it, I shared my plot with Gamma.

She laughed and laughed. A while later she told me she was sorry I had not gone through with my plans, because she had a really good idea now to get even.

Yes, sometimes the wisest move is no move at all.

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18Nov / 2011

World prematurity day

Yesterday, 17 November, was World Prematurity Day. I saw a discussion on Mefi where a list of the things that can go wrong was mentioned, and I remember how terrified I was when Beta was born seven or eight weeks early because I had seen the same list. So much increased risk for so many conditions. You’re just gobsmacked when you go in and see the tiny child in the incubator for the first time, hooked up to wires and tubes and the doctor gently explains what to expect and what to fear.

It gave my opinion of medical technology a real makeover. Until then I had seen it primarily as a way to expensively and questionably drag things out at the end of things, but it made a real convert out of me.

I have written about this here before, so I won’t go into great detail, but it is important to me to point out, in case some frightened young parent stumbles across this by chance some day, that while all of those risks are real, things can also go very, very right. Both of my daughters were born prematurely, and they are both healthy, brilliant, original, wonderful, funny and beautiful, beyond all hope and expectation, and I am thankful for them daily. So have hope. May you be as fortunate and lucky as I was.

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17Nov / 2011

How to punk yr dad

(Note: this works best if you live near Vienna)

Timing is essential, so wait until your mom is out of town on business, your dad is real busy with a conference and hungover from drinking with the distinguished delegate from the U.K. and being a general worry wart from trying to keep things organized in wife’s absence.

(Note: PS this is based on the method of team predation illustrated in the scene in Jurassic Park where the two raptors punk the dinosaur hunter guy.)

Dad: (text message) Be sure and let me know when you are on your way 2 yr sister in Vienna and when u will arrive

Dad: (couple hours later, phone call) Any idea when your sister is arriving?

Beta: No. I’ll let you know, though.

Dad: (later, calling Gamma) When are you going to visit your sister?

Gamma: I’m on my way.

Dad: You’re on the train?

Gamma: Yeah.

Dad: Your grandfather drive you to the station or did you take a taxi like you were talking about?

Gamma: He drove me.

Dad: Okay. Let me know when you get there.

Gamma: Okay.

(2 hours later)

Beta: (text message) Wasn’t Gamma supposed to come in to see me today?

Dad: (WTF!!!) (Calls Gamma, no answer) (Calls Beta) WTFWTF?

Beta: She’s not answering my calls.

Dad: !!!

Gamma: (text message) Where is Ceska Velice?

Dad: (Text message) Czech Republic

Dad: (Picking up distinguished delegate from U.K. at the UN.) You’ll never guess where Gamma is.

Dad: (Calls Gamma) So.

Gamma: Hi.

Dad: Fucking Schengen. In the good old days they would’ve stopped you at the border w/o a passport.

Gamma: There’s another train out in half an hour. My school pass should get me back into town. There’s an advent market here, want anything? Should I get you a gingerbread heart.

Dad: (Thinks: She’s such a sweety)

Dad: (to distinguished delegate from the UK) She’s such a sweety. She’s stuck in the Czech Republic and all she asks is do I want a gingerbread heart.

Distinguished delegate from the UK: Bless.

Dad: (To Gamma) Be sure and let me know when you’re back on a train in to town and when you arrive and are you okay. Also I don’t think you can buy a heart w/o Czech crowns. you only have euro on you right?

Gamma: Oh, right.

Dad: (To DDFUTK) We might be taking a drive up to the Czech Republic tonight. I’ll go home and charge my satnav thing just in case. There’s the exit we take when we go there.

DDFTUK: Don’t you have a power cord for the lighter?

Dad: Sure I do, but the jack got bent I think.

Dad: (To Beta) Heard from your sister?

Beta: No.

Dad: (To Gamma) So, you on the train?

Gamma: Nah, I missed it.

Dad: (To DDFTUK) She missed it. My sweet little 14 yr old daughter is stuck in the Czech Republic in the middle of the night with a broken leg. What could possibly go wrong?

Dad: Also the battery in my mobile phone is going dead.

DDFTUK: You seem relatively calm about it.

Gamma: There’s another one in like an hour.

Beta: So what’s up with Gamma?

Dad: !!!blah blah You heard from her?

Beta: Er, yeah, she’s here with me.

Dad: ????!?? OMG. Excellent one, you guys. You each get 5 Euro for putting one over on me like that.

Dad: (Describes situation to DDFTUK)

DDFTUK: You’ve been punked.

Beta: Wow, I’m so proud of you for taking it so well!

Dad: You guys are brilliant. You were like those two dinosaurs in Jurassic Park who hunted that hunter guy.

Gamma: (later, text message) Srry, Beta was bored.

Gamma: (Later) (Gives dad gingerbread heart with “Papa ist ein Goldschatz” written on it in frosting.

Dad: Aw.

So anyway, let me know if this works for you.

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31Oct / 2011

Genetics

Gamma fell *up* a step this weekend and broke her foot. She said nothing much about it until the next day. I think she inherited my coordination and her mother’s stoicism.