Fear

As I lay awake looking yet again at another hour passed without the sweet lull of sleep I feel the blisters forming on my hands, mostly my knuckles, and another wave of utter fear overwhelms me and my heart starts beating maniacally to catch up to that whooshy-fally feeling (for the lack of words, like when your heart jumps to your mouth on that first fall from the top of the bazillion feet tall roller coaster) I curse at the shallow jerks who blame an earthquake on anything but the catastrophic movement of some plates and their tectonic shifts and moves and I get up to check on my sons and try not to look at the clock because I know there will be more of this torture to come.

Title that escapes me goes here.

An overwhelming sense of sadness washed over me as I walked across the street last week, exhausted and pissed and angry yet all that was in my mind was how this year had passed, so quickly, so filled with joy, heartbreak, luck, health and so on and on and on... Had to keep reminding myself to be thankful.

'tis the season, I guess.

Another year, another year... has passed. Another year.

the 26 steps

step 1: figure out why my cell rings, but doesn't work. properly. like i cant receive a call. or dial out. but it keeps ringing. and i can't turn it off.
step 2: suspect the sim card.
step 2.5: take out sim card.
step 2.75: break the phone completely while reinserting the damn card.
step 3: rule out sim card problem.
step 4: dig the extra phone from who knows where (burak found it).
step 5: be thankful for accidentally setting the shortcut button to turn bluetooth on.
step 6: turn bluetooth on. the computer as well. it has to sync somehow.
step 7: isync works. all is saved. or synced. just to show burak how tech savvy i am, i tell him that i can actually go back to any given day on my computer thru my time machine. not a real time machine. though i suspect that's coming soon, too.
step 8: burak tells me i havent backed up my computer for.... ta daaa.. three whole weeks. not too shabbyi huh?
step 9: attempt backing up. cannot locate the external hard drives (ehd from now on, i know they must have a better name than that but i cannot remember for the life of me). all 3 of them. they were on my desk. yes, i'm sure.
step 10: locate the external hard drives. in the bookcase. cuz they look like books you know.
step 11: try very very hard to remember which ehd i used for backing up.
step 12: locate the cables.
step 13: not those cables.
step 14: those are the right ones but they don't work.
step 15: locate the power cable. yes! the right one on my first attempt.
step 16: bet on the black ehd. connect. power up. and burak says "that's my ehd."
thanks.
step 17: disconnect after getting distracted looking thru burak's stuff.
step 18: bet on the other black ehd.
step 19: wrong cables.
step 20: those are broken as well.
step 21: consider trashing the broken cables. then think that maybe they're not broken and they're actually wrong cables.
step 22: find the right cables. the power cord is the same, thank god. i am exhausted.
step 23: wrong one again. disconnect after get distracted looking thru songs and stuff backed up from 2008.
step 24: the silver one. that has to be it. or i am so screwed.
step 25: freaking wrong cables. i am so not kidding. the first cable that i used for the black ehd fits, of course.
step 26: connect. back up.

the extra phone rings. and i have no idea who's calling.

Darkness of the night (hey that's a song!)

Some nights seem darker than others for some reason. There must be a scientific explanation somewhere that has to do with atmospheric stuff (see, all those freaky cold nights taking astronomy 101 at Mount Holyoke would come in handy if only I could remember a word or two of it) but my interpretation lies somewhere between my own physiological condition at that specific moment and my moodiness.

The darker the night, the better my eyes see. A gloomy sky with no moon (or the new moon? I really should look this stuff up) provides ample opportunities for cat watching, boat surveillance and just marvelous stargazing. The twilight-ish glow from the moon makes everything look hazy thanks to the multitude of stitches in my left eye, and the more the humidity, the moister my eyes are without any requirements of eye drops in good days and quinine related poison/medicine in bad days.

There were days when I wondered whether I would miss the sounds of the boats in the fog (I can hear them loud and clear from this new house) or the familiarity of the street I grew up in. I do, sometimes. But I can see shooting stars here. And that is exactly what I needed to see a few minutes ago. So I could make a wish.

Moving onto the next issue: gotta get lights for the house cuz if I were to trip up on one more thing (and we have “things” on the floors of our new place – toys, crayons, books, very dangerous cars, clothes, I am looking around right now and see scissors for gods sake! just like we did in our last place, and the one before that, because I hate picking after myself, or the children, or anyone else for that matter, and the children seem not have fallen far from the tree in terms of neatness) I know I will break something – most of the “things” don’t matter that much, but a hip replacement at the age of 35 is unacceptable). At least until I get some plastic surgery done. Yeah. There.

And I cannot believe I just wrote an 8-line sentence. Eat your heart out Orhan Pamuk here I come.

Mills and shots

When I was very young, my maternal grandfather put me in charge of grinding coffee beans. It was fun, kept me busy for a few minutes and made me feel useful while providing freshly ground beans for my grandmother to make Turkish coffee. When finished, they would allow me to experiment with the remaining wet ground(ed?) gunk in the bottom of the little cup, and often I poured cold water over it, added some sugar and just drank it. Then bounced off the walls for the next few hours.
Those three of you who seem to somehow follow me (hi, dad!) might think I'm going to into this tirade about how the "new" electric modern state of the art fancypants mills that grind a whole pound of coffee with the touch of a button are far worse than the original ones etc etc but no. I will not. I have no idea why I wanted to write about the coffee mill and me bouncing off the walls high on caffeine at the age of 5 but I really could use a shot of something right now and either one of the boys could use some "help mom and keep yourself busy" chore right now.

After the rain

The boxes are opened, the clutter is somewhat organized, and I as type, stuck in the realm of insomnia once again, again and again, sleepless as usual though my eyes are hurting from the exertion, I feel nauseous yet calm. Composed. Tranquil.

Tunca starts 1st grade on Thursday. He seems at ease. We'll see how that goes. My baby, riding the school service bus, every day. That came a bit quicker than I imagined, I guess.

Almost whole month...

Has passed since I last posted something, and that was a repost.

I should write about Arda's camp, Tunca's swimming lessons and how we decided to finally move and still wonder why we made that decision. We really like our place. We just never really "moved in." After 8 years in Istanbul, a friend recently told us our house looks like we just moved in.

I must have written about this place. It's on the same street where I grew up. It's a block from the Marmara sea, so close that we often hear the horns (what are they called anyways?) from ships on foggy nights, the smell of iodine is overwhelming after the rain for some reason and we have seagulls hanging out in our garden plus some weird flock of green parrots in addition to a zillion crows. Tunca was born here. Arda remembers this house as his house, not the one overlooking Bryant Park, not the one on York Avenue on the Upper East Side, but this one. They keep asking us whether we will take the doors with us (no), the bathroom fixtures (no), the curtains (maybe some), the sad attempt of Bilge’s and mine on stenciling on Arda's one wall.

So next week, we move. More on that later.

For you to muse upon, here's how gorgeous Seytan Deresi (The Devil's Creek) cove was.. It is still as peaceful, incredible, calming and mesmerizing as it was even though more than a decade has passed since we were there last...
And here's how the boys spent the last five weeks:
And more on that, later as well because I have to start doing some major cleaning - throw away everything we haven't used in the past year. Well maybe two. Except some sentimental stuff. Yeah.