a new treehouse (53/365a)

Holy cow cow cow cow cow cow cow cow.

Remember all that pruning Rainer did? Well, he stripped those pruned pieces, and in only a few hours turned them into this masterpiece. It was unbelievable. he was still drilling holes and putting pieces together a few minutes before he left to catch his plane. The kids were ecstatic! So was I. there's even a bench up there, where I can sneak up when the kids aren't home and have coffee. We tried it out with Centa and Rainer right before he left.

Tonight is ART premiere. at 5 i got around to making my Antrios cake (a white cake with white frosting in a rectangular nearly squarish shape that has some white stripes and one horizontal line at the bottom) show starts at 7:15. at 7, i was still trying to fit the 4x5foot stretched canvas painting in the car. it wouldn't fit unless we moved seats out/down, which we did, but then we had to wiggle them back into place so we could get the kids in, even though they were just dropping me off. Don't drop the cake.

Red light. Red light. Red light. Red light.

once there, i had to change.Elevator goes down. Elevator goes to "wrong floor" (room 309 is on floor 2, how should i know that?) and then i get stuck in my evening dress. ... STUCK. i waited for some well meaning person who wasn't part of the show to walk by and convince her to get me unstuck. The show must go on, and it did. It was brilliant!

abschied (52/365a)

Rainer's leaving tomorrow.
Our day today was crazy and full. Rainer basically built a treehouse from scratch. Cecilia and I painted and painted and painted for ART. We had rehearsal. We had ....... well, we just did stuff.
But when we got back we do what our family does best. Sit around and wine by candle light.

us

rainer by candlelight

u-boot fahrgemeinschaft (51/365a)

Die liebe Fahrgemeinschaft

Not technically today, and I didn't take this photo, but Andi sent it to me today, and I want to show you know how life is to and from the way to kindergarten. Quite often I am the drivever. It's a big VW van, which we have named the U-Boot (pronounced ooo-boat), 7 seater (in this case, unofficially 8, plus I'm peaking in to photobomb for a total of 9 people in this selfie) ... we drive 5 kids from 4 families up and down a mountain twice a day.

lazy sunday wake up in the late afternoon (50/365a)

it was a not really a lazy sunday at all. my back was better. my kids played in the hammock. and cecilia and i painted and painted to try to get the painting for the show to work. more on that another day, i promise. we had to use laquer, called "lack" which has to be brushed on in a good thick layer. often we wished each other "good lack" haha.

Rainer set to work ultra pruning the pine tree, took huge branches off spending hours, with only a rusty hand saw. piles and piles of branches, that he then stripped and intends to use as a tree house.

i made homemade noodles with pesto from the garden which all turned out so well.

wine and long chats followed.

Three men in a boat

cute theodore

Rainer is deciding how much to cut this branch, which he describes as a "good sidewalk"

after:

yum

pruning and painting the antrios

shadow painting

the albino ladybug (49/365a)

i've taken a photo every day for 50 days. not bad, huh?

seriously threw out my back doing dance stunts yesterday. brian gone all day in vienna doing his german exam for visa requirements.

i was nearly too lazy to go get my camera for the weird yellow ladybug with white spots, plus it hurts to walk and climb stairs, but then i did and i caught him on camera:

OK! well that's not very good

couldn't stand it! went inside again so i could get my macro lens extensions and

BOOM!

all while Rainer thinned (NOT pruned) the apple tree

I see said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw.

cheese deficiency (48/365a)

Rainer's one request: Käsespätzle

Very little cheese available of any kind in Thailand, so we got some of the stinkiest yummiest cheeses from the market today and combined them into this traditional dish.


made more than just Rainer happy.... :)

after that, more ART rehearsal, including a visit to the craft store to figure out how to paint a canvas white so you can erase marker from it. then the Pennyless Players public cast party, which i didn't intend to go to but ended being at until 1am. Rainer jammed to the DJ music using my viola. Cecilia and I danced and danced but couldn't out-dance "Winston" (the main character, played by a female, of 1984)

DudiDadi's here! (47/365a)

DudiDadi's Here!

Everyone in our family has silly names too. Rainer's name is DudiDadi. He arrived from Thailand today for a brief visit on his way to the US. We went to pick him up from the train station. He was surprisingly wide awake.

helping

in the apple tree

he brought us some handmade silk hats made in his province.

so they got modeled right away

with rose that was too good to be true. Nina (who took the above photo by the way!) thought it may be a fake rose stuck into the ground.

meanwhile an ART rehearsal was underway:

(cecilia acting and codirecting a rehearsal taking place behind a rosebush)

the show is coming up! 

to spontaneity (46/365a)

"to spontaneity" was our toast tonight, made with schilcher wine over a dinner of salad plucked from our overgrown garden and pizza made with yummy vegetable sauce. With Michi and Jackie and Andi. (plus kids)

weirdest moment today:
was when i was walking our kids (and a friend, that is, 1 adult and 4 kids) to chorus i saw someone we knew parking right in front of our house on their way to walk somewhere else, so i walked with her kids too, while she got a parking ticket and at the same time, two people with bicycles (mom with 1 kid, and a mom with 2 kids) came from opposite sides of the street, both of whom i knew, while another car, driven by a guy i knew (with his kid in the backstreet) drove past us all waving. count them all: 5 adults, 10 kids, all in a 1m stretch of road. woah.

I found out felix's "real name" today. we have heard for about 3 weeks an angry felix saying "i'm NOT felix" and when we ask "what's your name?" he says "i won't tell you." or "i'll only tell grandpapa"

here's his name: Feefee Felix Boom Boom Rabio Auto Schluessel die ganze Welt und Charlie Chaplin
  ("just remember that")

swinging on the fence door to say goodbye

we found a hedgehog (well, Ruby the dog did) and waited quite a while for it to remove itself from the driveway so our friends could leave. Then the kids swung the gate open, and waved.

Blauer Heinrich

Blauer Heinrich (literally Blue Henry, or colloquially Drunk Henry) is a magical cake that contains no alcohol despite its name. It's made with plumsauce, or prunesauce, which is like applesauce, made with no sugar (don't worry there's plenty of sugar in the cake), the germans call it "pflaumenmus" but good luck finding it in austria, because here it is called "powidl" and they "translate" that to "zwetchgenmus"... I didn't find it or know any of that before today. Manuela found it, and bought it, in her hometown in Romania. I turned it into this lovely yumlicious thing, that Manuela didn't have time to come eat today, but it was so so yummy and I saved her a piece. Jackie added the tomatoes... spontaneously as an afterthought.

elderflower champagne in the making

learning (45/365a)

uninspired today. asked brian what i should take a photo of, and he said "our dirty feet" so i sat on the floor for 20 minutes taking pictures of dirty feet. don't worry, you don't have to look at them. funny thing is, they are not even that dirty. i biked around barefoot and walked around on grass barefoot, and they aren't *clean* per se, but i've seen them much much worse. like when i tamped a walkway of mud and stones with my barefeet once.

but i'm learning things.
i'm learning to stop what i'm doing in the moment to make the rest of the moments better.

i am not left-handed

(like stopping to write in am important fingering that works so well right now and that i'll "never forget" until .... tomorrow.)

i'm learning to aim for perfection but not suffer if it's not attained by my arbitrary deadlines.

i'm learning to accept a certain amount of un-inspiration, un-motivation or un-creativity sometimes.

i'm learning that you can hold every minute precious even if once in a while there are some minutes that are not filled with magic or productivity.

i'm learning that even if you have 30 pictures of dirty feet you don't have to post a single one. it's enough to have tried and failed in that case. and it's ok to move on to the next thing photo and accept the magic of the dud.

sudden rain (44/365a)

a really lovely morning, a really lovely afternoon, with a disorganized transition between the two.

morning a bartok concerto lesson where we discussed the differences between the traditional writings and the urtext

an afternoon turned evening with delicious bread, and perfect DasGramm cappuccino with Nina, and a long rainy chat at the bus-stop and then cake with Manuela, and tram-stop picture taking, and finally lindy lesson including 'styling' - my favorite!

It was her idea, and she's the model

a different kind of hike (43/365a)

INSTEAD of a fast pace and early start and well planned snacks
IT'S pace of a person on crutches and 3 year olds with tantrums, a late start, and a hodgepodge of random food. with 2 dogs and 5 kids and 4 adults it takes us an hour to go a single km. rain-gear packed and carried but we all get sunburns

but it's still wonderful.

idyllic. our children never quarrel or cry

the lovely couple who had the hiking idea

Felix with Zorah

me reaching out to a really strange sculpture with herbs growing on the back/top (depending on how you look at it)

decided to stay at their place for dinner, but headed out for a coffee with manuela and dorian. it took me 12 minutes to get from jacky and andi's house to lendplatz, including a stop at home to shower, change and pick up my camera keys and wallet. World Record!

bird-eating sparrows seen at the cafe.

a beautiful disorganized afternoon (42/365a)

an afternoon concert that i had to leave early for to get to a board meeting. part way through the concert i realized i had forgotten my camera that i need for the meeting, so i left and came back. when i returned i got there in time for intermission, and had to leave for the meeting when intermission ended. went to the board meeting, but when i was almost there i got a message saying it was canceled for today, so i went back to hear the last piece of the concert. funny, actually.

4 family guys at the concert, can you spot felix?

he's awake now and watching the game

found this when i was out alone

snack time (apple) on the way home.

random street art benches

pause tag (41/365a)

kept kindergarten kids home from kindergarten today so we spent just a lovely day doing whatever we felt like which was mostly gardening.

we painted the paper mache rattle ball things from a few days ago.

to open the little tiny glass bottle of blue paint the kids used the vice grip in the basement. let's just say it opened the glass bottle, but not the way one would desire it to be opened, and not in a way it can be closed again. haha.

theodore

felix being very careful

theodore's art

afterward i ended up at the opera for the last showing of Zirkusprinzessin, and then out with some lovely ladies for pizza and a prosecco. picking up the tab i gave the guy what i thought was the right amount, but i had mixed up a 5 with a 20, so he came back to point that out, and i got flustered so i tripled his tip. haha.

kug vs tug (40/365a)

the auditorium is just beautiful

We call the KunstUniversitaetGraz the KUG (koog)
and the TechnischeUniversitaetGraz the T.U. (tay ooh)

My kids commented today we should call in the TUG (toog), and I quite agree.

spent all day at the technical university graz playing for the "re-graduation" (my own term) of people who graduated in 1967. it's called a golden diploma. they separate them out by department, so it feels quite weird, basically 3 of the exact same gig/ceremony back-to-back, same speeches and same music and same buffet. i only had a 50mm lens with me so i couldn't capture much, but it didn't matter. although i was there from 8:30 - 4:30 straight, we were sitting right up front and no way could i go around taking pictures.
home just in time to read the kids to bed and quickly edit a few 1984 pictures for the newspaper.

it all started in 1984 (39/365a)

stopping to smell the roses........ awwwwww......
child-development talks at kindergarten, so we went up the mountain alone.....we walked home together, grabbed icecream and stopped under a giant archway of roses (not really pictured)

then i went on to photograph 1984, a depressing story, brilliantly put on by the pennyless players.
exhausted now, but happy.

Social Detox Day (38/365a)

a good day to have no plans.
nina brought over a lovely bunch of four (and five!) leafed clovers and we chatted weekend.
other than that we just all stayed home and enjoyed each others' company.

henry hadn't opened up his presents yet, so he did that today.

wrapped 5 minutes before

made gigantic paper mache rattle things filled with tamarind seeds

drying... so pretty!

and made golden hour portraits of all three youngsters:

Felix

Henry

Theodore

also found out today that henry has his first loose tooth!