Tummy Thursday: Happy Halloween

It probably still is Thursday somewhere.

For the last few years we have been celebrating Halloween with our friends and yesterday we went to my BFFs city where the local shop owners and the city and the different clubs and associations organised a Halloween event where the shops would give out candy. The town centre was packed and it was a lovely evening, followed by lots of spooky food.

While I could simply buy a generic Wonder Woman costume for the Little One, #1’s was more complicated. She#s too tall for the kids versions and the adult versions rely more on the DC movies than the animated Super Hero Girls show she likes to watch. While we found a nice pair of red and blue leggings, we agreed that a jacket with “property of Joker” on the back was highly inappropriate. “I’m no fucking property of anyone!” Mum to the rescue, I ordered two hoodies with a ziper, cut them in half and sewed them together again. Well, I still have to do the second one…

Same money, 1 hour of time, two jackets she can actually wear outside of costume events as well. And I’m damn proud of her. You know she’s on the spectrum and one of her great difficulties is interacting with strangers. She often preferred no ice cream to telling a stranger what she wants, but yesterday she went around all evening and asked for candy. It’s those things that make you proud.

Now for the food:

From left to right we have:

I made the dessert, because I’ve been baking non stop anyway…

So, I hope you all had a reasonably happy Halloween (thinking of you, voyager). Now I’m baking for the little one’s birthday party tomorrow.

Holidays: ¡De Fiesta!

During our holidays, the city of Mataró celebrated its annual major festival calleD “Les Santes”, the saints, remembering two female martyrs from probably the 3rd century. Surprisingly, those martyrs feature very little in the celebrations which had multiple concerts of different kinds of music, from classical to hip hop, theatre, children’s theatre and, most importantly, the street festival. Central to this is the “Robfaves family and the dwarves”: El señor Robfaves, his Wife the Giantess, their daughter Toneta and her husband Maneló.

And no, those aren’t just statues that are put in front of the decorated town hall. Inside of those figures are people who carry them through the streets!

While there is one day of the big parade, you can meet them throughout the whole two week festival. Nowadays there are also many other giant figures from the various schools, clubs, institutions, churches, villages,… While many of them seem to have a meaning and a history, I was unable to find out more because the information was in Catalan only. :(

Here’s an overview of some of them as miniatures in a shop window and now for them in real size. Sorry if the images aren’t much, they were taken with the mobile holding it above my head and hoping for the best.

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Holidays: Sagrada Familia: I’m Sorry, I Broke It

Here’s the last pics from our night out. After that, Instead of walking back the short way to the train station we got off, the family voted to walk to the Plaza Catalunya and we got a bit lost on the way. We managed to catch the last train home which was kind of strange because you’d think that trains from the capital to the bigger cities around it would run through the night, especially on a Saturday, but shortly after midnight the train service ceases for the night. On that train I had one of the more frightening experiences. A young dude was standing in the aisle and suddenly took out a dagger style knife. I didn’t say a word, especially not to the tired kids and extra especially not to the dude so I wouldn’t catch his attention. He started “stabbing” the side of the train and I started to make plans in case of emergency, like putting my camera rucksack in front of my body and shifting my position to cover the kids.

Thankfully he then used his knife to cut off the top of a plastic bottle, took out some cheap wodka and lemonade and got even more drunk than he was before.

OK, back to the Sagrada Familia. I have no clue what happened here. I guess the light and the structure and the 2D nature of photography are playing a trick, because it definitely didn’t look like this, or I would have noticed.

Tummy Thursday: I’m Bored

And boredom leads to cake.

For the Pokémon Go Community Day last Saturday I made a black forest style cake. See if you can guess the theme of the decoration:

And then I decided to try Petit Fours for the first time, practising the flavours for Halloween (but not the design):

Thin sponge with strawberry jam and pumpkin pie lemon curd (though it could use some additional lemon juice and a tad less cloves). Home made fondant glaze and teeny tiny fondant horn and ears.

Holidays: Sagrada Familia 6

These are the last pictures by daylight. Remember that we went there in the evening especially so we could come back later to see it in the dark? Definitely worth it!

Creeped Out: the Price of Being a Woman in Public

Yesterday was Pokémon Go Community Day. For those of you who don’t play the game, that’s a day when a specific Pokémon appears a lot during a three hour period, often in a special colour as well and with an exclusive attack. In short, a day when we meet our friends and spend the day together, catching Pokémon and then having good food and fun together. I went with them for part of the time (I was out for a full two hours, I’m so happy and proud) and quite at the start, the following happened:

I was standing there with my two phones (yes, completely normal for Pokémon players as well), when some random dude approached me:

“Young lady, you’re pretty backwards, even I am more advanced in my usage than you!”

Now, first of all, no strange man in such a situation calls a 40 years old woman “young lady” as a compliment. He was berating me and trying to remind me of my place. Second: I have no clue what he was even getting at. He had obviously no clue what I was doing, but of course thought that he was entitled to explain it to me. I looked up from my phones:

“Excuse me?”

He continued:

“Yes, you gotta tell your phone what to do don’t you know…”

At this point I gasp interrupted him:

“Could you please leave me alone?”

Of course he reacted like any old white guy reacts when being told to leave a woman alone, he started to rant:

“I’m entitled to have an opinion! Am I no longer entitled to have an opinion or what?”

I answered that yes, he’s entitled to have an opinion, he’s just not entitled to my company, so he needs to leave me alone. He repeated something about this being a free country and so on and grumbling left me alone. This happened because now my friends and family, who’d been standing all over the place catching their own Pokémon had by now gathered around me to support me. We’re all pretty sure that this would have gone very differently if I’d been on my own.

I’m pretty sure all women here have had similar experiences. Such harassment has nothing to do with “looks” since I’m a fat middle aged lady. It has nothing to do with “being helpful”, because I obviously didn’t need or want any help. It’s got to do with male entitlement to the public sphere, where women are only allowed on condition of putting up with such shit. And it also shows how this entitlement is framed in terms of human rights and especially the ever favourite “freedom of speech”. That guy thought it was his right to keep bothering and lecturing me, while me telling him to get lost was akin to China mowing down protestors with tanks or something.

Holidays: Sagrada Familia 6

Yesterday, Paul Durrant was spot on when he suspected that

You left the lighting adjustment setting on incandescent lighting?

So here’s a few pics after I finally figured out what the problem was.

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Recovery: The Condition(ing) of Being a Woman

I’m making slow but real progress, but everybody and their dog keeps telling me to take it slow and I’m really trying to. But I also know that I’m far from “functioning normally”, not to mention that my current level of mobility is also due to generous amounts of anti-inflammatory drugs and painkiller. Anyway, one good aspect of German health insurance is that I’m entitled to a household aid for as long as I’m recovering. And my most wonderful sister organised everything with her care service and this morning the wonderful S. showed up.

Everything about my working class woman upbringing was uncomfortable. First of all letting a stranger in when my house is a complete mess. I know, I know, the woman came because there’s a mess and I can’t clean, but try to tell that to your subconscious. The other one is to have somebody clean your shit while you’re mostly watching. (I did help as much as I could). I know that many working class men have absolutely no problem with watching women clean while they’re lying on the couch, but for a woman? I’ve been both raised with some traditional crap about cleaning and quite some deep seated hatred against people who watch women clean, since I’m just two generations removed from women who had to go out and work as maids, being abused by master and mistress alike.

Still, I’ll need a household help after recovery as well because I think my body just told me that it is done with playing nice and putting up with my psychological issues of having to do all my cleaning myself.

Silence

For the words fail me to express my thoughts and feelings, my anger and despair.

On Yom Kippur there was an antisemitic attack on a German synagogue, killing two people in the street and at a Turkish take away: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49988482

And if you think I’m bitter, just yesterday the government decided to cut funding for initiatives that fight fascism and provide help for people who want to leave right wing structures.

Holidays: Sagrada Familia 5

Or “being too smart for your own good”. Many photographers have nice expensive gear and then set everything on “automatic” and wonder why their pics are not that nice. Well, I’d never do that but do most of my adjustments by hand so I can get the best results. Except for when I forget about something. So here’s the question for the fellow camera addicts: Why do Giliell’s pics have this annoying blueish tint?

Here you can see the different style of later architects who worked at the cathedral after Gaudi’s death: sharper lines, more influenced by cubism than modernisme.

Write your guesses in the comments and I’ll tell you if you’re right tomorrow.

Holidays: Sagrada Familia 4

Let’s stop with all the hospital talk for a while, because I’m getting sick and tired of it. Seriously, I was not made for “long, slow recoveries, but I guess few people are. There are so many more pictures from the holiday, so let’s dwell on that beauty.

These pictures showcase the architectural elements inside the cathedral, which are just as beautiful as the windows. I love the light stones.

Hospi-tales: Stink

You’ve all been waiting for this topic, right?

For somebody working with teenagers, I still got a very sensitive nose, especially when the body concerned is mine and it’s also “amazing” what your mind can fixate on. Here’s the truth: being sick stinks. First of all, while my brain knew what happened, my body was still trying to run away from a sabertooth tiger that had just pierced my leg or something. In other words, it was ramming up the response, trying to mobilise as much energy as possible, resulting in me sweating like an ox. The second, and more lasting thing is medical stink. All the medication needs to get out of your system again and part of it just goes out via your skin. And it’ll keep doing that for a while, so I#m off to take a shower first and use some very sweet smelling body butter afterwards.

You’ll excuse me.

Hospi-tales: Pain

Or: getting older just means more opportunities to expand your horizon on “the worst thing that ever happened to me.

As mentioned before, I’m not very loud about pain. As a kid I hurt myself regularly in the way kids do, and the more serious it was, the more quiet I got. I once seriously cut my finger making potato stamps and my mum only noticed when my sis asked why I got red paint and she didn’t. During my first Judo tournament I promptly broke my clavicle in my first fight. I told the people from the sports club that it hurt. Judging from my lack of crying, they told me it would be better in a few minutes and I went to fight another fight. Afterwards I really insisted that this hurt and was taken to the hospital. I said I was in pain, I expected people to believe me. For some reason I still do, despite all evidence.

Anyway, back when Caine posted about her back problems and the work with the pain clinic, I believed her, I understood, I felt empathy, but I didn’t really understand. Of course I’d been in pain before. You can’t break a couple of bones and have children without knowing pain, but I didn’t know Pain. Well, another acquaintance I didn’t particularly enjoy. The hospital was (mostly*) good with painkillers, it was a shame that I was in such a peak that even the morphine didn’t do much anymore. The amount of pain I was in would have been an indicator to transfer me to another hospital for surgery if the treatment of cortisol injections directly into the spine didn’t work. Which leads me from Pain to PAIN. The worst thing in the first days was sitting, as it put weight on my poor inflamed nerve, but in order for them to inject me into the spine I needed to sit and round my back. I simply jumped from the table twice. When we finally got down to it I was crying, whimpering and at the end more or less passing out. If PAIN has a bigger sibling, I never want to meet them.

*Sometimes there are nurses who take it upon themselves to decide that you are really not in that much pain and shouldn’t have painkiller. No, not even fucking metamizol, which is usually effective and has lower (but not no risks) than the alternatives.

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Tummy Thursday: Happy Halloween

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Holidays: ¡De Fiesta!

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Holidays: Sagrada Familia: I’m Sorry, I Broke It

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Tummy Thursday: I’m Bored

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Holidays: Sagrada Familia 6

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Holidays: Sagrada Familia 6

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Silence

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Holidays: Sagrada Familia 5

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Holidays: Sagrada Familia 4

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Hospi-tales: Stink

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Hospi-tales: Pain

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