15 May 2009

Odds and Ends

  • If anyone is curious and has noticed my header, that's a field of hyacinths in Lisse, The Netherlands, that we stopped and wallowed in while visiting the Keukenhof. I love the smell of hyacinths and that's my favorite color. If we had moved in other directions, we had a rainbow of beautiful colors to choose from.
  • The previous post was a "premature" one (posted accidentally), but since there were comments (some e-mailed, one deleted), I'll leave it alone. I had many other links to add and I will post next week: I reach a point where I need to remove them even though it makes my skin crawl to deal with them.
  • The pneumonia is improving, after a week of the new antibiotic and the codeine drops. I still have bouts of coughing, but with the inhaler I am getting by. I am now having uncontrollable phlegm production and I hope my nose survives the tissue here (or, more accurately, the three rolls of tp I have gone through so far).
  • The girls started ballet and they are so adorable, and love it so much, I feel guilty that they didn't start earlier. Thing1 will be part of a production in a few weeks and I think it will be lots of fun.
  • Thing1's roller blades arrived today and she is amazing! She can already fall properly (protection in her size was easier to find) and kneel on her pads as she wishes. We had to mail order them because the 4 places we checked (including two stores in France) did not have blades in her size available. The girls went out with the German, T1 on her blades and T2 on her laufrad and they are both doing incredibly well. I foresee the time when both girls are rollerblading with the German while I remain behind lamenting my total lack of coordination.
  • On day 2, Thing1 can already rollerskate backward as well as forward: I think she is an athletic prodigy. She came home from kita, put all her protection and skates on and started to skate around the house. When the German got back from Munich he took the girls out and he also thinks that Thing2 may be ready to move from the laufrad to the smallest regular bicycle (German, just a smidge bigger than the laufrad, smaller than the American bike T1 has moved on to). Wow. This is overwhelming.
  • On the health front, the pneumonia is better, but still there, according to the doctor. He has given me another week of the new antibiotics, told me to use the inhaler both regularly and more aggressively, and upped the number of codeine drops I should be taking each night.                                                                                                                                    The nurse told me today that she didn't understand why I wasn't complaining more. Perhaps it's another cultural difference, because I can't understand what complaining would do (and I told her that). Apparently, as I am now starting to understand, the German system (medical, scholastic, business) works on the basis of yelling until one gets the desired result. Therefore, one should not expect the doctor to treat pain or discomfort unless one screams about it, even if one is clearly (as shown through, I don't know, listening to the lungs) in such discomfort.  I find it funny that he felt so sorry for me that without a compaint he upped the opiates. I really need to change my stoic attitude toward life and my belief in fairness if I am going to have the results I want in this country. I can do it, I just need to remind myself that things are not as they seem....

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the new header photo, and I always meant to tell you how much I liked the previous one also but never did. Anyhow, it's good to hear you're feeling a little better now. I hope you're totally well very soon, though sometimes it takes awhile. I was under the weather a bit myself from mid-February until April when I began to feel myself (sort of) again.

honeypiehorse said...

I really think corisone helped me after the coughing as well - it heals. I know what you mean about kids growing up so fast.

G in Berlin said...

@wintersong: Thanks, the previous photo was my parents' yard. I miss the Northeast. But spring in the Netherlands is glorious.
@honeypie: Sometimes it's hard to believe how fully formed, what real people they are, isn't it?