(no subject)

[kittydesade]

The single father
For five years Rainer Valentin has been a single father and he is, as he says, "proud of his [whole?] family." When he and his wife separated in 1999 it was clear that he should have custody of both daughters Sarah and Anne, then three and one. He had looked after them the year before, because as an independent architect he had flexible working hours. His wife, however, did not want to give up her good-paying job as a product manager. "I was in any case more home-oriented and the career was never as important. So then the step from househusband to single father was not so big. My office is in the house and so I have a changing table among the writing desks(?). [something something] -- the children were also very small. And when I [something sleep dream think something?] or when they were sick... in the beginning it was also a problem for me that the other mothers for example in play groups often were a bit skeptical. And when the children were difficult -- [as?] all children are bad -- I had the feeling that they thought, "Oh, it's no wonder, when only the father is raising [them]!" It was good that my ex-wife and I had more good contact already on account of the children [?]. When I completely exhausted, she was able to take the children and I could go out and meet friends. Moreover she naturally financially supported us. Now we are still good friends and in summer we will all together take a vacation."

[ Na ja, ganz so einfach war es natürlich nicht -- die Kinder waren ja noch sehr klein. Und wenn ich an die schlaflosen Nächte denke oder wenn sie krank waren... this section still needs work]



Love meme! (Technically my thread therein, but love meme nonetheless.) Go forth and tell people you love them.

I still keep thinking about explaining the eleventh hour of the eleventh day to my veteran boyfriend. Of nine years, no less, so I would think he would have noticed me muttering about this before. But eventually this keeps leading to thinking about how he wants to eventually go work for the VA. And stuff. I think it'd be good. I doubt I'd make a very good soldier. I have asthma, and I'm not terribly good with authority figures I don't respect, the latter being more likely to be a problem than the former. I'm not good with respecting the uniform regardless of whether or not I respect the person. But I was raised to have respect for soldiers. Even if I don't agree with the war, which is most of the time, these days. I was raised to believe that I should vote, be informed on the issues and candidates on the ballot, participate in the community and donate time or money where possible, and respect and value the people who give of themselves to serve our country. Today, that's soldiers especially. Other days that might be teachers, policemen, firemen, doctors, nurses, administrators, researchers... Anyway, that's how I was raised.

Less weighty matters. Today was absolutely quiet at work. I got a little bit of filing done, less than I thought I probably should on account of, um, getting distracted by writing a fair bit. I should stop that, only I said I would do 11,111 words today and I have a Reputation To Uphold (tm). Also I already went way past 1,111 words. But the good news is, if I can get a little under 1k more written in my Nanowrimo today, which it looks like I'll very much be able to do, I'll be at the halfway point four days early. Which is good! Maybe I can get even further over the weekend and then not have to do any Nanoing over the mail order sale.

This weekend is going to be demented. Until tomorrow afternoon it's cleaning all the things, and then tomorrow afternoon it's making all the characters, and then Sunday it's taking all the drive and going to the used bookstore and buying all the used books. Chief on my list will be an Irish damn dictionary. And after that probably something along the lines of an Irish language textbook, or we'll see what other language books are there (Hindi and Arabic-probably-Standard are next), and, well, we'll see. At this point I also have to wonder what I'm going to do when I hit nine languages. Is it nine? I have to count how many languages I know, how sad is that. Yes, nine. I think at nine I stop doing three languages at once and start doing massive language maintenance and maybe learning one other language as a hobby.

Yes, I study and learn to speak languages for fun. Stop looking at me like that. It's fun for me anyway.

Well, and we'll see what else there is to see over the weekend when we get to it. I've got four writing projects currently, meaning to add a fifth if Yuletide ever gets going, and even if one of them is about to close I'll still have four writing projects, an apartment to clean, meals to pre-cook, knitting to do, dances to dance, web pages to laboriously code, my wife to murder, and Guildor to frame for it. I'm swamped. But not a fire swamp. Just an ordinary swamp.

I'mma gonna go home and watch Princess Bride now.