Obs `un`Jemös!

Last Time I went there I had Ingo and my Mum in my Polo.

Severinstreet in Cologne.

Right near "Obs `un`Jemös!", that´s "kölsch" for Obst und Gemüse, fruit and veggies.

Bro had successfully finished his studies and we came to celebrate.
Well. Celebrate. Our Dad had just passed away.


Some time before I´d visited Bro, the guy who "forgot" I´m behind him on his Ninja. He went over 200 km/h and I nearly died.



The chocolate-museum was always closed, we tried several times.

Now I´ll stay in Severinstreet for three days, in a hotel. Without Bro. HTML5 for three days, I could learn that stuff at home.
I hate being in a hotel alone.
But returning to Cologne... good memories after all.
How "we" aka Bro made Lasagna,



went shopping (he got three pairs of shoes!





Me: None, who is the girl? ;-)...)

We partied a lot.
We sat in the kitchen and talked about very serious stuff, too.
That week flew by.
Or was it two weeks?



That was 10 years ago. Time so flies.
We lost both our parents.
Bro managed to get away from his ex-girlfriend.
He is married to a really nice woman.
He has a cute daughter.
A cat.
A Shadow instead of a Ninja.
Ingo and I live together.

Ingo survived his severe sickness.

He found a job and was able to leave temporary employment after a year.
We have our own condo.

We´re all healthy, life is good.

I´ll probably go and see if Obs `un`Jemös! is still there.

Treasure Chest

No idea if this is worth something (guess so) - this is what I found in Bro´s/parent´s house in a drawer (one of 14 - in one room... it´s a never endling story!) - the first edition of "Stern"-magazine from August 1st in 1948!

Between junk! Like old receipes and other paper-stuff.

This is only worth to me, I guess:



Too large to keep, though.

This?



It has a face, no? ;-)

Right next door to Bro´s house... yikes.



A smoker-pub. Very small, very icky, opens at 10 in the morning and the kind of people going there... eww. The same since 40 years, just now it´s declared as smoker-pub.

A drop of rain in Bro´s garden, kinda beautiful:





This stopped being beautiful, rain... Do we have June? End of June?



Yesterday, Monday, traditionally our walk to the city...



Trousers and coat both got wet and yes we had a large umbrella. It´s cold, too, I´m still sitting here with my microwave-sheep Dörte.

This Thursday I won´t go to Bro´s place - "lucky" guy is on holiday.

Are We Bad?

Or… "Your Bag Has A Face!"

No, we didn´t kill anyone and we´re no bad people, either ;-)

Bad is short for Badezimmer, bathroom.

And the toilet got one, too:



We´re going a little maritime here :-)

Since I´m at it, this is the door to our bedroom:



WC, no meaning here, the toilet-seat is red, though:



Living room (until end of November, then this singing fella goes in the Advent-Calendar):



Then it´ll look like this again:



Or, occasionally like this:



This bag was in my Advent-Calendar last year.

On this nasty, grey Saturday I took this bag to the bakery. Our lady there greeted us with, "ahhh, family-trip!" and, "oh, your bag has a face!", followed by a smile.

This is what it looked like all day…



Still we went for a walk and I saw this cute frog:



And, good to know, if Ingo isn´t here and I have to go someplace I could use this:



Sad we live in a place where we need this…

Soccer… Germany is still in, everybody is happy:



Sunday the sun came out and we went for another little walk.

Look at these people, happy, content.





We saw another, a man in his 50s maybe. In a dark suit. A little raggle-taggle. And totally desperate.

We passed by, holding hands. And worrying. Should we do something? But what and how?

We´re no professionals here and could make things even worse. There are places that man could go. But we felt pretty bad. Would you have asked if he needed help and if so, would you have taken the job? It´s not a matter done in five minutes.

Life can be cruel at times.

Am I happy to have Ingo, and healthy, too.

Brummm-Brummm

Went to Bro´s place yesterday again. We worked hard, got much done, still so much to do, though.

SIL was sick, so we had to take little Niece in the afternoon. We were late, she was the last toddler and seemed quite frustrated.

This time she skipped the happy "Papa!!!" and was very silent. She came over to me for a hug instead.

When Bro asked if she is angry with him, she thought about it for a while (she´s not even two!) and then said, "nooo…"

She took our both hands and we let her carefully "fly" a couple of times but then she preferred again only my hand and balanced on the edge of the walkway.

Again: She´s not even two yet! And can balance!

We then went to visit "Omi". I wonder how much she understands?



She finds the way to her Omi´s grave by herself and loves to water the flowers there (see first pic).

In general she loves flowers, it seems:



And she knows where the watering can belongs and even hung it up there, I was impressed!

Isn´t this too cute? The watering can is nearly half her size!


I was her age when my Dad´s mother died and I have no memories at all of her, despite the fact that I saw her daily cause we lived in the same house.

How does my Niece understand "Omi" and does she see a link to her “Oma” who lives next door? Probably not, I guess, "Omi" might be another word for grave or graveyard to her?

And was she afraid her Dad would´ve left her at kindy? She kept being quiet and clingy, I even had to carry her, man do my arms hurt today – Mums and Dads really have an exercise-program every day!

With the EM being on, we certainly had to play some soccer!

By this time she was in a good mood again.



This girl is so fast, all pics were blurry and I had no chance to get her from the front!

She even knows what a digital camera is and that you can see the results immediately. It´s weird! And she seems to understand that I try hard with her and am just clumsy. She never rushes me. I even managed to sit her down in her high chair!

That was where we did what she loves most "malen!" , paint.

And I had to paint balls in every color, this kid is so cute!

She even has a feeling for time! Usually when she gets to eat I do “brummm-brummm”, at least the last three times. Hence, when Bro came in with her dinner she looked at me and went “brummm-brummm?” and then she even kissed me good-bye, I left with some cheese on my cheek ;-)

Theo had prepared some of the strawberry-plants from the garden for me to take home. And he added some salvia as well. I so do hope they make it! They´ll always remember me of my Mum who picked one or two in the woods to plant in the garden when I was little.

So, summer: Come on!



And, to kinda Ingo´s disgust, I found something to bring home:



The glasses are cool, too, huh?
Won´t ask Bro, though to make them ready for me, I´m not that freaky ;-)



No idea what I´ll store in there since I don´t use make-up, but I couldn´t resist!

And we found two "umbrellas" either my Mum or my Dad brought home from Japan (back then when you sold enough Citizen-watches, the company invited you over! Twice they did! Guess there is no such luxury today…)

When my Mum was there she was pregnant with Bro.

One of the umbrellas has a peacock as a motive, which hence Bro was supposed to take, mine has flowers on it. Somehow the peacock came with me...





Guess our Mum had meant to give them to us and just had forgotten…

Death, it´s so present these days. Bro wanted to get the last furniture out of our Mum´s apartment this weekend. They have to skip it. His BIL wants to take them, but he has to carry a coffin in South-Germany.

His friend had died. Married since 10 weeks to the date, Baby is on the way, he wasn´t even 30 yet.

A healthy, young man. He was out a lot, catching fish. Must´ve caught a flu or something. A bit of coughing. His lungs were infected, no one noticed. His body simply gave up.

That poor woman… a pregnant widow in her 20s.

Frightening!

So… enjoy every day of your life.

Book Spine Poetry

Sarah tagged me with this one. Can you call this poetry, I dunno, but fun it was:



The Story of My Life
Born on a Blue Day (since living in this town this color haunts me)
Let´s eat! (who does not?)
Thinking in Pictures (heaps of beautiful ones in my head)
Don´t Stand too Close to a Naked Man (Umm... oh, why not if it´s "your´s"? ;-) ...)
I´m Not Really Here (yah. Sometimes I wish for this.)
Having Our Say (We will, huh?!)
Australian Languages & Culture (some fun-stuff to learn!)
Time Flies (sure, sadly does)


It really doesn't take long at all. Here are the rules:

* Create a book spine poem.
* Take a picture.
* Post it on your blog.
* Link back to this post.
* Tag another blogger, or two, or ten. (Feel free to join in)

The Golden Shoes

Each time we work in our parent´s/Bro´s house we find something to keep.

Like these shoes. They were mine at first, then Bro´s and then our Dad gold plated em.

I keep the right one, Bro the left.

Makes one think those were golden times, huh?

But first thing to do was visiting our bakery and get some Eierkränze, a speciality you get in my hometown´s region only.



For Bro, the shop-assistant and I and especially for my colleague and my teamleader who make it possible for me to be at Bro´s side on Thursdays. Esp teamleader was thrilled :-)

And my, they were good! Haven´t had them in a looong time.

Bro really had a lot to do in the morning which actually was to be a thing done in no time. It took forever. I was still so tired (maybe from donating blood the day before?), so I stayed in the shop and had a nice long chat with the shop assistant P. I like her the best anyway and since Bro´s "wedding-party" we (all) address each other informal.

She talked a lot about my Mum. Whom never told me that P was there for her a lot. In her freetime. Like driving to the next city for an icecream or taking care of women-stuff Mum didn´t want to ask Bro and I was too far away for.

She said she liked my Mum and how you are treated in the shop.
Why did Mum never tell me?

Anyways.

We got a lot done and went to Da Nico for a (half) Pizza and had that in our garden:



Theo really does a great job!

Bro and I stood there, admiring Theo´s work, thinking of what had happened and in the same moment went "Ach ja...."
A (German ?) saying is, you stay together for another year now.
Good to know.



We had a long chat in Bro´s shop, Theo and I.
My Mum picked some strawberry-plants when I was little.
Theo will prepare some for me to take home next time. They´re so sweet, yum!
Theo is from Greece. He has near to no teeth left and loves nature. He kinda doesn´t believe me I can stand and even love loneliness. I do.

Well. We were standing there and a guy came in, saw me, smiled, took my hand and greeted me by name!
Bro saw I had no clue and adressed the man.
Oh. Boy. Drugs can do mean things. We went to school together, grade 1-4. He looks very old. Wrinkles everywhere.

He got himself together, third child was just born.
Has had a heart-attack already and health is not his friend...



Theo cut down this tree - and it re-grows :-)
Just like he and we wanted.
A golden life after all?
Not here atm, though.

Lifesaver Tour 2012

The other day I got an invitation from the German Red Cross to donate blood.
Last year the theme was showing old(er) people, saying "born 1984".

This year´s theme is the lifesaver-tour - cool idea, huh?
Not so threatening/frightening, but "cool".

Date was today and tomorrow and since tomorrow I´m off helping Bro again, we went today.
They have new, very comfy "chairs" instead of the ole stuff where you had to lie down - in funky red, too.
And we got a goody-bag each, filled with cookies and stuff (goes to Bro since I don´t like sweets), juice, a pad for notes, a pen designed like a syringe, writing red, leaflets... and the cool bag itself with the motto on it:



Plus a meal at the bakery nearby! Two breadrolls each, cheese, decorated with radish, strawberries, grape and tomatoes - and 3 scoops of icecream afterwards!

Call that a proper campaign, huh? And it worked, many first-time-goes were there!

Well.
Yesterday I realised my blog-archive was displayed just to the middle of the month.
Googled a bit, found a tip, tried, didn´t save first and... bang! All gone!
Man, was I pissed! (The archive was still not back)
I so loved that green, you can see the old design at my old blog, I just had a better pic of myself there.

Well.
In the aftermath this was kind of a lifesaver, too.
I had gotten bored a bit with the blog.

Now I think it´s fun to test the designs and all and maybe I´m a bit tired of all the green, too!

The design may change maybe again, my link-list is sadly gone, too (always be careful using the HTML-mode, it just disapprears for good, it seems, gah! Save it!)

Actually it made me realise, too, that it´s kinda stupid to rely on a tool that´s for free.
Guess I saw some function to save your stuff - it´s a "diary" after all and kinda important to me!

Did you/do you save your blog´s contents someplace else?
I´d been so darn sad if it all would´ve been gone, the good and the bad times.
What happened to Ingo in 2008 and how we/I mastered it, what happened to my Mum, the time when Niece was born and all that.
I don´t go back in the archive, but I could and that´s a good feeling.

So.
Blogger... that malfunction was a lifesaver, actually.
I stop using you as an old "e-diary" but found an interest in what you achieved, I play around, have fun, will save my stuff in time.
I thank you for this service! And that malfunction !