Wednesday, February 20, 2008

All By Myself

The total amount of "me" time in my life is increasing exponentially. This has to do not only with both kids going to school, but also through my own recognition (at the ripe age of 33) of the fact that I, actually, am happy hanging out by myself. I, actually, do not guilty about not doing housework (or any kind of work for that matter) anymore.

After three days of being stuck at home due to the wonderful snowfall in İstanbul, I went to a movie. People look at you strangely when you're at the movies by yourself. A couple, obviously more interested in making out than watching the movie ("get a room," I could say, but didn't, 'cuz hey, this is Turkey and you can't get a room if you're not married, and I can just scoot over a few seats and not be bothered), looked at their tickets, looked at my seat, looked back at their tickets, looked to the empty seat on my right, looked back at me again and just as I was contemplating whether I sat at the wrong seat, said that "oh, we didn't know you're alone."

Instead of a teary trailer of lonely days, having tea by myself with a sad face, looking at books and magazines in a store all alone while "All By Myself" plays in the background, a similar trailer came on with me dancing in Carrefour aisles humming "Patricia the Stripper."

I love hanging out by myself! I don't have to wait for anyone else looking at books that I'm not interested in, or nail polish shopping for that matter. There are times that I spend with friends doing exactly those as well. Just not all the time. (OK - I never went nailpolish shopping with a friend, but it could happen with my kokoş friends one day. Soon!)

Friday, February 15, 2008

Truth or Dare

I think that at some point in one's life, we have to stop and look back to see what we did wrong that made us come to the point of wondering what we did wrong. Or something like that. The problem with me -and my often distracted train of thought- is that I just never seem to concentrate enough to even wonder that. The minute I start bugging myself about not working, or not singing, or not writing (see, I'm writing, this does count, right?) I get distracted by
  • the kids
  • traffic
  • thinking whether we should buy new bananas
  • Nintendo DS
or last but not least -
  • Nintendo Wii.
See, here I sit down to write about some deep troubling thought yet all I can think about is playing Knights of Cydonia in Expert mode in Guitar Hero III.



The video is hilarious! And Arda's rock repertoire is expanding daily - I heard him humming "Black Magic Woman" the other day. Hmm.

Once again, my musings were interrupted by YouTube. Darn. I should go and look up the lyrics and download the ringtones as well. Another day!

I am a genius!

I managed to delete most of my contacts on my cell phone after I successfully synchronized it with my computer. The very very wonderful Mac of mine overwrote my old cell phone directory. So the new phone has to do with only 465 contacts. I emailed everyone and updated my status on Facebook to announce my extraordinary accomplishment.

Bravo.

And here is my new phone:

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Yelling at people - Not Nice.

So sue me.

That's exactly what some guy told me he would do today. AFTER he stopped on a the left line of a three-lane road. Right in front of me. Without signaling. In fast(ish) flowing traffic (maybe 50km/hr).

What was I supposed to do? The same thing any sane - decent driver would do - blast my horn so long that he paid attention, signal and switch to the right lane while still keeping my tense hands on the horn, rolling down my window and yelling:

"NO STOPPING ON THE LEFT LANE YOU MORON"

He was very very kind - mind you. After he told me to go &%+é (four words, take a wild guess) myself he said he would sue me.

I bet he went to school in the US.

Or he watches too many Law & Order reruns. Or Boston Legal.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Fun with Taboo Jr.

While playing Taboo Jr with Tunca:

(the word is seagull, and I am not supposed to use sea (duh, deniz in Turkish) and bird).

zym: you know how we go to the beach and we see these things that fly?
t: kites
z: no, these are living things, they're alive
t: alive kites!
z: these have wings and they fly, some kind of animal?
t: geese!
z: well, kinda like geese, but smaller, and white
t: small geese! white geese!
(time's up)

z: seagull
t: I call them geese.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

My very own emo kid!

My older son, Arda, has always been the emotional type. Even when he was a toddler, he would cry when a slightly mellow song came on the radio, and when Moe says goodbye to the baby in Ice Age.

We went to see Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium today - just the two of us. He got teary eyes NOT when Mr. Mag says he's going to die, or when he DOES die - but he did start to bawl every single time the sock monkey appeared.



He is attached to inanimate objects like crazy - it's so easy to manipulate that we shamelessly use his feelings to make him do things he doesn't want to do..

- But, what about his little piece of carrot - you just ate his mommy and he will be soooo sad if you separate them.

or

(when fighting with Tunca about who's going to play with the brand spanking new shiny black Nintendo DS Lite)

- But your old DS feels sooo abandoned and thinks you don't play with it because it has all those scratches.. Just like Woody in Toy Story (yes, Disney movies DO have a big place in our daily conversations)

Terrible parenting.

My worst nightmare: Less than a decade from now he'll be telling his shrink how we used this against him and that's the reason why he can't "connect" or "commit" emotionally.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Austria

So we're back from our 8 day long vacation in Austria.

We spent the first two days in Vienna, a city that always seemed distant and cold to me for some reason or another... Well this trip changed that - I have never seen a more child (and dog!) friendly place before! Everywhere we went, children were welcome and thoroughly tolerated with activities available specifically for them - from bars and pubs to museums and stores. I would have liked to spend a bit more time exploring museums and galleries and maybe even getting some "quality" music time, but such is life...

It was wonderful being with my brother's family as well, and despite countless times of telling the kids to "stop, wait, come back, get in here, walk, run, stop, go, eat, don't eat, don't touch, be nice, stop hitting each other, I WILL TURN THIS CAR AROUND NOW, no, we're not there yet, go to sleep, wake up, please, PLEASE..." we all had a great time...

Bahar, Sima and Berndt made us feel at home in their delightful hotel, Rothensteiner Apartments... It is an amazingly impressive apart-hotel decorated with antiques and is so close to everywhere in the city. We had a two-bedroom apartment with a living room, nice big kitchen and everything.

After waking up at 4:30AM to catch a 7:30 flight, all the kids could do was play with their DS' at the cafe we went to in Vienna... They're all drinking "apfelzapft" (sp?)

At the zoo... (During a fight and amidst constant complaining as to why Tunca is in the front and why Ali can't climb the lion and how come we have to take the bus back and darn it they want ice cream and yes, they KNOW it's freezing cold!)

We moved on to Gostling/Hochkar for five days where Arda and Ali (my brother's son) learned how to ski. Tunca was really not that interested in skiing - he preferred eating snow (and lollipops while we waited in the bar for his brother to come down from the slopes) and hanging out with Burak (who had a terribly busy week at the LME but was a good sport!) at the hotel.

First ski lesson with Suzi in front of JoSki bar (where we spent LOTS of time)

That's me trying to get Tunca to get up...

3rd lollipop while waiting for Arda...

By the creek in front of Waldesruh - waiting for us to come back from the slopes.

One of the (many) places my SIL crashed into during her skiing experience...




And... Arda is skiing! (Thanks Suzannah, Katrina, David, & Günther)

Keep Breathing

I think I wrote about Nathan before. I must have. Here's a video made for the Children's Neuroblastoma Cancer Foundation - he is in the video towards the middle, playing with sister Julia in the sprinklers, and towards the end, getting a kiss from his dad, Luke.