Reverse

I have got my new camera, a Nikon one, my first ever Nikon, and I am back from Transsylvania. There are pictures to come soon.

But it seems that ever since I came back, I am occupied with workload. Recently I have had three proofreading jobs.

So far I have done it only to help my fellow aspiring writers in the writers' group. But now these are strictly professional readings. My mind is tired.

In my free time I do the usual garden chores... with varying success. All my first sowings were ruined by blackbirds, so I am sowing again, hoping for whatever, good luck or something.

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I am now closer to 50 as I am to 40.

Now, I may start sentences with the phrase 'When I was young'. It is unbelievable.

Suddenly, my parents, thank God they are still around, seem really, really old. Being old if you have an almost 50 year old daughter is common sense.

I don't feel old, though.

I know...They say it's not the number of years, but the way you feel that counts.

Sometimes I feel young, like... 30.

Sometimes I feel like 90.

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Sometimes I feel the Benjamin Button way.

Either that or I have feelings that bothered me when I was much younger.

Like the purpose of life and all that stuff.

I think I found answers to all those questions when I was 30, but maybe I have to find them again.

I kind of like this new phase.

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Be well,

SzF

0.5 out of ten :)

This year the choir is celebrating its 25th anniversary. I have been a member since 2009.

The celebration takes place in December in the 'advent' season and one of the pieces we do will be the Hallelujah choir from Händel's Messiah.

My son, now a first year BSc student to become a forest engineer in 5 years, has finished 3 of his 6 exams of the first semester.

He has spent the Christmas season with us and we were able to see how he changed. He turned 19 and he is not the teenager he used to be. He is responsible and mature in many ways. I am so proud of him.

I keep my fingers crossed for the rest of the 3 exams. And this is only the first of the ten semesters :) 

Oh, the life of mothers...

Constellations

We are invited to take part in family constellations.

The whole Sunday is dedicated to that. Normally, this kind of therapy is expensive, but now it is free for us (me and my husband). We have to participate the whole day and one of the sessions will be about our family.

If you are unfamiliar with this, you are advised to check this or this.

If you are sceptic, it's allright.

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We have been in one constellation a year or two ago and it was amazing. The random people chosen for their roles just behaved shockingly similar (or same) as their 'real' counterparts usually do. The session for our family took two hours I guess, but I lost the perception of time, it was so interesting, and it did solve some serious issues for more than one member of our family at the same time.

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Tomorrow during the day I may be chosen to represent someone's relative or someone's 'play counterpart'. I am a bit afraid, but also am willing to go for it for I trust it is helpful for me and for the family I am helping, too.

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Any thoughts?

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I will report on this event as soon as I can word my experiences.

mixed emotions

warning: lots of emotions in the following post.
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my maternal grandmother, born in 1921, has been living in an institute for the elderly. this is a safe place with nurses and with regular medical checkups by special doctors. the institute is run by a church.

my grandmother, who became weak physically in the past 3 or so years has become one of the favourite of the nurses. her kindness and polite behaviour made her really likeable person among the other inmates, too.

in this institute each person has his/her own room and two persons share a bathroom.

it is not a really cheap facility, but not a fancy one either. say, a medium one.

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she sold her flat and moved in when her health weakened.

with all the comfort of the facility around her, her health status kept dropping.

little by little she lost her physical and spiritual strength.

to avoid incidents, such as falling on the ground (you know how easily the bones of the elderly brake...) they began to give her mild sedatives.

i recall her as a caring, warm-hearted, witful and smiling person. she was extremely good at basic mathematics and could easily beat anyone in the simple logical questions of everyday life.

her old self, the one i knew her has gradually faded away.

i kind of imagine that she was in a haze for the past 6 month or so.

with her physical conditions dramatically dropping to a level hardly bearable, and her mind being wandering around in spheres unreacheable to us, i believe her soul was in an eager search to find solace with god and re-unite with her husband (my grandfather, who passed away 5-6 years ago) with whom they led a perfectly, unimaginably solid married life for more than 50 years (was it 60?).

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she passed away a day ago.

i am crying but i feel relief.

may she rest in peace at last.
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this Ave Maria is for her

blog news

my father keeps orchideas. he savea rain water in plastic bottles during the summer so as to have a suitable amount to supply the plants during winter and whenever they are in a good need of watering. this photo was made by my father.

this post is to remind all my kind readers that all my writing-related stuff now goes to my second blog, for those posts please visit the top one called 'and i'm writing...' on the right coloumn.

thanks for being with me.

off for the countryside

we are going to see the small piece of land we have on the countryside in an abandoned village.

i wrote a post about the village itself a couple of weeks (months) ago.

this is the first time we are going there as a family, all the four of us.

i hope to see some showers of shooting starts, as there are no public lights (electricity) on the streets there, as the former streets are all reclaimed by grass and bushes.

my photo-camera is broken again :(

i am looking forward to this getaway, no mains, no lights, no running water, no wc, no internet.

only two days.

have fun, you, too.

a short break

shortly after my fifth (is it the sixth???) bloggiversary, i'm taking a short break.

don't be afraid, i'm not going very far.

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on Saturday for once, i'm going on a one-day trip with my daughter to the Dobsi.na ice cave - it's worth to take a look HERE.

i found the trip via a newsletter i receive from an online hiking group i have recently joined. their main profile are inland trips and trips to countries around Hungary. this one trip aims at an interesting cave up north where Hungary's Uplands are. now they belong to a country that is younger than me.

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for a couple of days more, we are going to have quite a mess in the house.

beginning Monday, we are going to have the old oven renovated in the living room/bedroom.

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also, as the kids are getting older the need to have a separate room emerged. it is not easy as we have only four rooms.

let me break it down for you.

room 1.

the newest one, where a new oven was built this August. see the photo attached.

room 2.

the one with lots of windows.

due to the location and circumstances of the room, temperature goes below 10 or even 5 degrees centigrade in the winter, so this room can not be used all year round.

it's great to play or read as there are plenty of light there, but is unsuitable for sleeping. also, it is really small, so we can't place a cupboard or table there.

room 3.

also knows as : office.

it is rather small. two large bookshelves, and a large cupboard and a table under the window with two computers basically fill the room completely.

room 4.

the one room out of the four fit and large enough for all-year-round sleeping.

it is the largest room.

but now we must change the situation one way or another.

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school has started today

the kids are now going to a high school in the town where we live.

my daughter (b. March 2000) has started grade 5 and her education will last for 8 years.

my son (b. December 1996) has started grade 9 and will graduate from high school in June 2015.

they commute by bus.

unfortunately there are no school buses here, so they have to take the town's own bus system.

today was like this:

we got up at 6:00 am, they took off at 7:10 am. they arrived home by 2:30 pm.

this is the first time my kids are going to the same school at the same time.

my daughter had 5 classes, but my son had 6.

she waited in the hall for her brother and they went home together.

i know i am being sentimental, but it warmed my heart up :)))

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there is a new job on the horizon... more on that later :)

memories of a memory card

while the fuji camera is still in koma, we discovered the memory card was alive.

here are some pictures. enjoy, enlarge or feel free to save on your pc for further family or personal enjoyment :)

on slightly related note:

i have recently joined the book with faces ;)

i post photos there and have confirmed relationship with some of my blogging buddies. i have asked them however, not to use my blogging name as i definitely want to avoid mixing the two faces of me. since i had posted photos of the canoe trip earlier on the fb and secondly here, i chose photos for the blog that were not posted over there.

from the 47' to the 62'

dear all,

between 11 and 15 May our choir is having a good time in Finland.

on Wednesday we fly to Helsinki, the capital of Finland, but after a short sight seeing tour we are heading Forssa, where we are put up with Finnish families. on Thursday we are heading Kangasniemi to visit the local church and give a concert there.

the next day we are going back to Forssa, have a day for recreation and perform the second time there, in a local church. we fly back to Hungary early Sunday.

Kangasniemi is by far the furthest northern destination of my life. it lies along the 62th north parallel, whereas my hometown (that is, where i live) on the 47'.

one of the pieces we are going to sing is over here: it is not us singing, but a famous Hungarian children's choir. this piece was written to be sung this fast and the kids are doing a really-really great job.

these days i'm busy arranging things before i leave and also i'm revising a translation i've just finished.

i feel tired and not everything's quite allright.

i'm looking forward to the trip.

making pasta

looky!
a post with a subject other than my accident and related dental problems.
whoa.
here, here!
we bought a simple hand-made machine that can turn a loosely formed dough of flour and eggs into useful shapes of fresh pasta.
they are much more delicioso than those one buys at the shops.
hear pasta!
imagine the smell of tomatoes!
the smear of olives!
the fall of freshly grated cheese from a chinaware!
the feel of the outer peel of garlic!
the onset of unwanted kilos!
loads of fun!
the kids involved in something useful for the household!
a hearty, meat sauce with hungarian paprika!
some morekilos!
whoa!
hear us eating!

(how come i still managed to fit those magic words into this completely non-related post. i deserve a good surprise.)

and finally

a short post to remember that on february 7 i had my second (and hopefully, last) titanium root implanted.

this time my husband escorted me to the dentist, as it is in another town. we took two trains to get there. his presence was comforting.

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after the operation i had felt awful until the painkillers kicked in at about 3 pm, and i am currently having one in every 6 hours. my face is swollen. not my kind of living... but it will pass :)

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and here's a link about dental implants for the brave.

just a warning for those who wish to click on the link above: it does not contain any *ahem* picture or any material that is in any way would be considered as nsfw, but believe me it isn't all fluffy rabbits chasing each other for another slice of carrot on a sun-kissed soft green grass.

looking forward to 2011

it's a new title and even the title sounds more optimistic, doesn't it?

for the year 2011 we are planning to move on with the renovation and certain jobs in the garden should definitely be done already (like creating a paved garden path, and re-locating the fireplace to another, more shady place.)

also, i'm planning to

... have both my kids entered into a new school.

...have my teeth finished (i broke my upper jaw, lost four teeth in an accident last October, the second dental surgery is scheduled for 7 february)

...have lots of great family events...

...travel to finland with the women's choir in mid-may :)

...write, write and write... (recently i have almost given up writing in English... i just don't see the point. i don't know... any opinions in this matter?)

...do lots of exercises... (the accident and my lazyness is starting to cause some pain in my lower back and i really, really don't like it)

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anyway, here is a photo I made earlier this january.

this is my son's cake for his 14th birthday (which is on 30 december) - i posted the photo to acknowledge the baking and decoration talent of my mother in law.

you may want to click on the photo to see those chicken more (they are made of marzipan, by my husband). the chicken are placed on top of an old-fashioned radio.

the inscription, of old hungarian runes read: pak-pak, which is just a fun way to say quack-quack (ie. what a chicken would say) in a childish language.

and here's another photo my husband made last december. can you spot my daughter in the picture? she's extremely good at climbing. she is about 3-3.5 metres high in a pine-bush, it's a tree with actually no solid branches. watching her doing this trick just sends shivers down my spine :)

what are your plans for 2011? share in the commets, please.

looking back on 2010

here are some photos as i promised in the last post. while taking the bad into consideration, i also wanted to have a small collection of positive memories of the past year.

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this one here was made on June 5, when we travelled with the women's choir to give a concert at Nagyszalonta. the trip was awesome, we saw museums and wondered around the streets of a lovely small country town.

the second one is a tribute to the chicken and the garden. if you click on the photo you will be able to see the chicken yard with animals of various age, color and gender. in the background, behind the chicken yard, there is the vegetable garden. you can see the purple echinacea bordering the lines from the left and a bunch of calendulas on the right. in between the two valuable herbs, there are small bushes of tomatoes.

heavy rains resulted in a humid autumn with lots of mushrooms - the third photo was made when the family (we, as four and my husband's mother and my kids' three cousins) went on a mushroom-hunting trip to the nearby forest. the photo depicts what the kids found beside lots of mushrooms.

in november we had a kind invitation from a friend of us, who took me to the Hungarian Krishna valley. some other day i will make a short collection of the photos i made there, but now here's only one of them.

goodbye 2010....
it was nice to have you - but now, filled with the hopes and the changes inside me, i already feel much better.

a bad balance

dear all,

i feel somehow in need of retrospecting 2010.

i have to go back to a year earlier.

last december i summarized 2009.

putting all the good and bad, all the events, experiences, influences into consideration i found a somehow happy balance.

why do i write about it now?

why do i contemplate 2009, why do i do it now, a few hours before the beginning of a party that is supposed to bid farewell to 2010?

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at the first glance 2010, as a year seems to be one of the bad ones.

i know my vision is blurred by the unfortunate accident of early october...

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you know, i still can't get some of my memories i gathered that evening out of my head.

i can still recall hearing the crackling of my bones inside my skull, and can still re-live the fear i felt when i first dared to look into the mirror.

it was the inevitable turn of events that petrified me the most.

i felt that because of the unfortunate fall, my face will never look the same again.

i felt i lost something.

something that used to be me.

i know that 2 of my 4 front teeth were of irregular shape and i didn't particularly liked the way they looked.

but the moment i met my new face on the mirror, blood mixed with saliva drooling out of my mouth, splashing everywhere in the handwash basin of the bathroom - i knew this was a moment that had a 'before side' and an 'after side' and the two sides would never meet.

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perhaps i am wrong.

deep down i am well aware that it is just the physical that was changed and i am still the same.

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this year i had another unexpectedly bitter experience.

i had a highschool friend who got married.

this is great news, isn't it?

this friend has been suffering from the lack of a permanent relationship in his last 15 or so years. i knew he was suffering. he shared some of his struggles.

our lives don't really cross each other's often...

we mean a lot to each other, or so i thought...
for in march he got married and forgot to invite me. all right, it was an intimate ceremony. not a big deal.
he forgot to mention to me that he was to get married.
i had to get the information from his online diary, which makes me feel abandoned. left out.
perhaps i overestimated the importance of our friendship. i mean he was important to me, but there was not a balance. i was not as important for him as he was for me.
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and here comes a twist.
since i felt neglected i was unable to feel positive towards his new-found happyness.
and i miss it.
i think it has been rude of me to not radiate some positive thoughts, virtual or otherwise towards him and, see - it's still difficult for me to say it, for his partner, a young and lively lady (i met her in person, because he did brought her to us in the summer).
and i think my rudeness deserves some punishment.
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just lately i have been thinking about this 'need for punishment' type of thing is kind of streching my mental health.
just lately i have been gathering that there are other areas of my life.
i'm in a kind of struggle, and right now as i'm typing my heart aches.
perhaps i'm taking it too far on me, and perhaps i also should stop whining and self-pitying.
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working outside in the cold helps, playing with my kids helps, writing helps, and the list is endless.
perhaps this relationship should have ended anyway.
we might have been lovers, but as a married, and happily married woman with two kids this was not a realistic option for me, even with an exceptionally understanding husband :)
and yes, i talked about it with my husband.
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and now, some positive words about 2010.
to get any, i have to look through the photographs i made this year.
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to be continued in 2011 :)

under the snow

dear all,

i did finish NaNo, i do have that manuscript that is still being revised.

revision will surely take weeks or event months.

i have sent chapter 2 for a friend to revise and right now i am revising chapter 3.

some say we have to get to a certain distance from the text, some argue the writer should be still 'in the flow'.

i am now kind of inbetween.

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our choir has performed a modern oratorium last week.
when we started to learn the notes in May we had doubts about the overall quality of the piece, but things started to look for the better once we started to do rehearsals with the instruments. we don't usually perform with violinists, cellists, trumpets and the like, but it did help us to appreciate the piece more.
we had a full house on both evenings, and the audience seemed to have liked it.
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we are still preparing our kids to their high-school admittance exams. aged 14 on 30th december, my son is in the 8th grade, so he is to go into a 4-year school, while my daughter, aged 11 next march will enter an 8-year high school - provided they succeed at the tests.

the ratio of admittance is 1/4-1/5, which means that only every fourth or fifth kid applying can enter the school.

there are written and oral exams in January from Maths, Hungarian and English (for my son).

it's not only the points they gather at exams that count, but the marks they got at school.

i am worried because of the lack of effort from my kids' part. my husband keeps telling me the i worry too much, my kids sense my worries and think that since 'there is someone to worry' about high school, 'i (the kid) don't have to worry about it at all'.

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but it's the turn of the light, the length of the day will slowly increase, as Wass Albert has put it in 'The Funtinel witch', just by a matter of good will each day'

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it's time to make those gingerbread men :) I hope to post photos one day, but now one cable is missing, the one that connects the camera with the computer.

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remembering Berci

yesterday Berci, our cat of 11 (or 12) years has gone away to a special place.

let there be a vast meadow for you to find grashoppers in abundant numbers, let there be large heaps and endless tunnels of mice, hamsters and rats to feast on, let there be some sandy area for you to make yourself comfortable after a large dinner, let there be large trees with lots of little birds for you to prey upon, and strong trees to sharpen your claws on.

let there be eternal sunshine so that you would be able lay lazily on your back, with your chin upwards, the way you used to lie on the sun in a hot August day.

Berci, now you have reached your cat-heaven. let there be peace for you.


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(for my kind English readers: the cat's name is to be pronounced behr-tzie, where the first wovel as the 'e' in 'let'; 'c' as the 'tz' in 'pretzel' and 'i' as the 'i' in 'English'.)

off goes 4

if you think the title of this post has no meaning then go ask me what the meaning of falling off balance to loose 4 teeth at once was.

for they once were.

in my upper jaw.

off they jumped.

or rather, broke.

and i am broken now.

for most of the part, financially.

or will be when the dentist bills me for the implants.

my smile: past tense

i can not eat properly.

i can not speak properly. i miss/mispronounce 'z', 's', 'f' - to name a few.

but for most of all, i can not attend the choir.

well, friendship is one thing, but no one really wants to see a freak opening a mouth that has a huge hiatus in it, does anyone?

so, that is the news.

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in other words, i'm looking for new jobs like crazy.

those dental replacements will cost a fortune, insurance will pay only a tiny amount of the bill.

but the math goes like this: i am 40 and i am expected to live for at least another 40.

and on the other side of the equilibrum i see a long line of simple dishes, and renovations that go even slower in the foreseeable future.

we needed a new set of tiles in the bathroom for example.

allright, the dentist will fix it into my upper jaw.

we needed a garden path (now we have only dirt road from the gate to the front door).

allright, the dentist will fix it into my upper jaw.

i think you get the idea ;)

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the photos will be up some time later on.

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cheers,

the seventh cousin

dearest Örs Domonkos,
the smallest boy in the family,
be blessed,
let us be blessed by you,
for angels must have carried
you all the way from heavens,
for you came peaceful, quiet,
flying on puffs of feathers,
this very morning.
six brothers and sisters,
two parents, five grandparents,
two cousins, an uncle and I, your auntie
and friends
- we all have been waiting for you.

this to your long and healthy life!

socializing event

in hungary you basically will never find those no-fence, lawn-frontyard, come-to-my-house setting that are so common in certain parts of the usa. we all have tend to have high, strong fences, where most of the fences are so formed that you just can't see through them.

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for an unexperienced foreigner this expressed need for safety may seem an unfriendly, a get-outta-my-place attitude.

i know that there is alienation, but not where i live :)
where i live and in many other communities, where the original hungarian hospitality is still alive, this is just the surface.

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i have already mentioned some of the activities (like plum jam, see the post below) we, the community that has formed in our street do together.

and now, i'm going to illustrate another event: a street party.

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there is a street just one street up from ours, where people do parties every year. this year it was the 8th gathering. they set up a large tent for stage performances , they bring tables with snack food on them, they make a large pot of goulash enough for at least 40-50 people. they gather in the evening and enjoy the performances. the night ends with dancing. it is usually rock and roll, or disco-whatever.

now this year, our community was invited to take part.

we rehearsed and came up with a performance that lasted about 20 minutes. we sang three folksongs - the one we chose were funny.

after that we improvised a short folk-tale, where there were three princesses (played by three of the little girls, one of them, the biggest was my daughter), an old king (played by one of the fathers) and a dragon (*coughs*). the story was highlighted by musical performances: traditional flutes and a doromb. (i don't know if that one has an english name at all...)

we needed three boys to make all ends meet, so we borrowed them from the audience. they enjoyed their role-playing. we received lots of applause and laughter.

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after our performance we stayed to watch others. there was a trio that played classical music on instruments, a play making fun of the story of Cindarella, and various singing activities.

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we arrived as one group and left as one, too.

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this is my husband and my daughter minutes before our performance has begun. you may want to click on the photo to see her hairdo better. this hairdo is quite common for folk dancers. dh is sporting a linen shirt with a straw hat. this combo is a traditional menswear in hungary.

this is us, our family, having some fun - my son is not dancing, for he was engaged in bicycling with his friends. no, i'm not having digestive problems :) - i think we were dancing the twist. my husband and my daughther were keen on dancing. i simply got tired :)
also pictured: the other two princesses, and the stage-tent in the background.