string quartet + extra (33/365b)

second quintet rehearsal in as many days. quite productive to meet often. Yesterday's hard work seemed to have paid off, so that's good. At home we tried to get the house cleaned up well for Henry's party tomorrow. We're not even sure who's coming. So far we have 1 for sure rsvp and some unconfirmed yeses/nos from theodore and henry from their friends at school.

Came home from rehearsal to find my kids cutting their hair ... again.

asymmetric is totally hip right now.

Eventually I took Theodore to his perfomance of Midsummer Night's Dream, then headed to a rehearsal for tomorrow morning's baptism. We started over an hour late. There is another violist because I can't play in the afternoon, even though she *can* be there in the morning. Poor us had to both sit through each others' rehearsal... if I had known I would have just let her play the whole thing. It was too late to change anything now though. We also got asked to play Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, but we didn't have the music so we just improvised it. Also we got asked to play something for string trio, and I was told I could improvise for that too, but I balked and made them change their selection to something for four people. Got back just in time for the end of the show to get Theodore. Looked up and said hi to Arcturus and the twins on our way home.

samples and paper airplanes (32/365b)

Salon orch. meeting early in the morning, we chose to read through the financial books and take meeting minutes outside in the sun. I got a little tiny bit sunburnt. Quintet rehearsal right afterwards, Irmtraud was running late with something important, and Barbara had a blister on a finger on her left hand, and still had playing to do today, so we did some intense individual work, with just one or two parts at a time. Difficult but hopefully worth it, we'll see tomorrow.

Manuela came by to wish Henry a happy birthday early, and stayed for the ensuing paper airplane race. She brought packs of testtubes with her so that we can participate in her microbiome study. I'm curious to see the results!

following folding directions

skin swab with curious onlookers

Ingrid had made banana ice cream (I guess Henry told her that it was his favorite) so we went to share it with her. It was super creamy and yummy.

banana icecream - oh so creamy!

Centa and I had to leave by some specific time to get to a concert at 8. I dropped the kids off in the bathtub, changed my clothes in zero seconds, and we biked out the door. Got there 10minutes before begin time to find an empty parking lot, and locked nor and neither a poster, flyer nor any information of any kind. Baaack home. Looked it up again. That's why Centa had clearly remembered "Friday" and I had clearly remembered the 10th... The concert takes place on Friday, May 10th, 20NINETEEN. Well, I've never felt so silly for being early. Honestly, I wasn't sad to just have an early night tonight.

unrecorded (31/365b)

it was just an everyday wednesday. one of the other kids from the fahrgemeinshaft had a tantrum that meant i got home a lot later than normal, because i had to wait for her to calm down enough. she had plenty of illogical and ridiculous demands before that happened. her baby brother was born 2 days ago, i think she was just tired and typical kindergarten overwhelemed, but still, it took 2 adults (me included) to pry a (very threatening) stick out of her hands while she screamed. awful.

i walked felix and ronja to and from the chorus. the whole time i wanted ice cream, and felix kept saying he wanted ice cream, and ronja kept saying she would have ice cream for dinner, but we didn't get ice cream. we just dropped ronja off at the lend wirbel office and took felix home.

nina came over for a movie (To Rome with Love - which, incidentally, is not the same as From Paris with Love) after I made my signature dish, lightning bread with veggie omelet. Nearly the entire way through we find out Centa's already seen it. Brian came home halfway through after some "dance karaoke" at the lend platz, and made us some popcorn and watched with us.

so there's no day without a photo, here's one brian made
just a tiny portion of the bikes parked at lendplatz.

lendwrbl (30/365b)

hump day of an artificially short week. Thursday and Friday will be off, but we were kind of pretending it was already the weekend.

After school we did our homework in a temporary wooden geodome structure that is part of the Lendwirbel (Lend is the name of our region of the city, and wirbel means "chaos" - it is an ostensibly unplanned week long street festival, that Jacky helps "not" plan, but it has to have some kind of order, because people like city planners, police help, street barricading and things like that have to be properly in place when there are 1000s of people doing "whatever")

Off we went to swimming, and then Brian and I went to talk about Felix's development with the Kindergarten (we determined he's doing fine, of course) where Henry just ran around. Felix had gone home with the Foersters. And Theodore was off alone at choir rehearsal. He does way too much!

Then to the center of Lend for the real festival, stopping at the grocery store on the way to buy all the material for dinner for a louse 14euros / 5people. Not so bad for "dinner out with the family" ;)

It was a day of meeting people i met when we moved here and hadn't seen since. old faces, mostly didn't recognize me. A guy who stood on his head on a moving turntable with Brian in 2015 at la strada (we have the video to prove it). A guy who helped me and theodore when I had a flat tire and have been looking for ever since, who I would have talked to but he disappeared out into the crowd before I got to him. And the really whacko crazy lady who thankfully did not recognize me who told me, when Amanda was visiting, that she thinks i'm "evil" and she "hates" my "eyes."

There was lindy in the street, most of the time I was spreading butter on bread so that my family didn't starve. I left to do some planning with our driving group, but left that to do a dance with Kris, then back to planning. I also gave a massage to a stranger, who I found out lives on my street. I stayed to help Jacky do some clean-up in the streets, but as of midnight there were only a few beer cans, and not a lot of other trash, so I just went home.

henry in action

look out, here comes a soccer ball!

planning kindergarten driving

monday blues for everyone (29/365b)

a monday with only a quarter of the things we could have scheduled was plenty full as it was.

exhuasted at the end of the day.
i think i read through 1/2 page of "Enlightenment NOW"

lindy hop class itself was excellent today, although everyone in the world seemed in a bad mood all day, just little things. lindy teacher's shirt even said "mondays no. summer yes" i wasn't in a bad mood, i was just tired by the end of the day. poor centa had felix at home with her, who was also in a bad mood. and theodore also in a bad mood. at least henry was calm and went to sleep without spitting and fighting....

unsteady on wheels (28/365b)

i have wanted to try inline skates for a while now, and today brian brought me back some from the flea-marked, only one size too big ( :) ! ) just in time for me to take them for a walk with manuela. it was pretty fabulous.

Theodore giving me skating lessons

it was manuela and my "traditional" strawberry cake baking day. after dinner and before cake we went for a nice long walk. not roller blading because, well, i'm pretty unstable still.

Boredom is for beginners.
Pros last longer

more skating after manuela went home, one time around the block with each kid. by the third time round i could keep up... except for near a curb.

new bikes(27/365b)

i could have taken some pictures of some new bikes today but nope.

brian took all the kids to the used bicycle exchange today, which is really just a big random everyone sells/buys whatever they want free for all. i got a new bike, the kids got new bikes, and since felix didn't need a new bike i went and picked up henry's old one that was being used at the foerster house last year.

while the big kids were out for a "real" bike ride, felix and i walked to pick up the bike, and then walked to the opening of lendwrbl, which was too loud for us. it was in volksgarten, which is the park that is basically covered in drug dealers and gang members 360 days a year. whenever theres a festival or an event it gets a little cleared out for a few hours and then the criminal activities take over again. it's a very strange little ecoclimate

me dancing for 0.4 seconds. felix and his "new bike" and jackie and zorah with us.
this photo (thank you andi!) does not at all show how packed this place was.

i cross ocean chatted with nick about sourdough bread and art, so i had to take some photos to share with him. i guess i'll go send them to him now, instead of just posting them publicly like this.

bread ready to be taken out

art by committee