a quick update

all these times, we have been busy being ill, preparing the kids for the oral exams, and basically, just surviving the blah days of winter.

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my other computer said it was enough and i am just happy that my manuscript is all right.

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i have translated Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, which i learned was an important poem in American literature. now i am fascinated by his Stopping By Woods, because i am quite bad at metric poetry. translating this is quite difficult for me. plus, as there are so many one-syllable words in the English, they are insignificant in Hungarian.

so it is an interesting experience for me.

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i still attend the choir and i like it very much. we are preparing for our performances in Finland early may. we learn Cornelius's mass in d-minor, it is in Latin with all the compulsory elements of a catholic mass. sometimes i find myself humming tunes of it.

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.

body image

'body image' is the notion you have in your mind about what your body looks like.

some people think they are just fine and neglect work-out and eat more than they should. some of these people get fat. some other people on the other hand think that they are extremely overweight and stop eating properly. some of these people might get anorexic. now i think you get the picture :)

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as most of my readers know i lost four of my front teeth. the second titanium base will be fixed in on 7 february, and the surgery is completed in early may. i can't wait to see that.
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now everyday, everything i do from eating to speaking and even to breathing reminds me to the lack of those four teeth. i know it must be even boring to read about it all the time, but it is so very annoying that i just can not *not* notice it.
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now, get back a a bit in time.
once upon a time, like 5 years ago, i had a hole in one of my upper front teeth. it was quite visible and an annoying phenomenon. i went to a dentist. she filled it up twice but the filling had kept falling out.

but when the filling was gone the third time, i chose another dentist.
that man made a good job and the filling stayed.
it also matched the color of my tooth much much better.

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yesterday i recalled this filling.
yes, people sometimes do think about the fillings within their tooth.
do you?
well, i certainly do.
yesterday i said myself: what a great job that dentist had done. he filled the gap like three years ago and it is still doing fine.
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the fun part comes now.
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i went up to the bathroom mirror to have a short check on that glorious little filling that is so well done it is not even visible.
i went right up to the mirror to see it once again.
i opened up my mouth to check that particular front tooth with the nice invisible filling in it.
i looked at my teeth.
wtf?
i had no front teeth.
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do you get it?
my body image in my head still includes those four teeth i had lost in october.
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strange...

any opinions?

or experiences with body images?

please share in the comments.

much appreciated.

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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whew

i won, i did finish on time, i exceeded 50,000 words.

cheers, wine and whatnot.

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yet, why do i have this little feeling creeping at the back of my mind that revision will take longer time and will be more difficult than the writing itself?

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while writing, i soothed my nerves with sayings like: 'just go ahead', and 'it's good to have a good basis so you have at least something to revise', but now, after a week's rest i think i have to return and revise.

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NaNoWriMo news

i'm sorry, but NaNo is taking my time and nerves.

my improvement, actual word count and other NaNo-related news are displayed on my second blog.

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'.)

NaNoWriMo news

my improvement, actual word count and other NaNo-related news are displayed on my second blog.

for the love of justin sparrow

crossing lines
half-awaken, beside the door
through the velvet veins
i don’t see your shade anymore
so let’s throw the reins

hissing pines

cold wood
under my parched hands

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i started writing this in the fall of 2009. i added a line today and decided to post it anyway.

NaNoWriMo news

i started writing it.
the main point was to get it going.

i'm going far behind my plans for today, but i had a wonderful day travelling through the countryside, so i have no regrets.

for more information, stay tuned, i will keep you informed on my other site.

k

you may have, or have not heard about this website.
at times it is downright hilarious, and at others, highly spectacular. sometimes, at its bests, it's both.
basically, it is about wrecked cakes.
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however, this is not an advertisement.
i came accross a post.
if you have time please read it.
below is a letter i wrote to the keepers of the site, with great respect towards the jog they are doing and with great curiosity as well :)
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dear editors/moderators,
this is a private message - you don't have to actually post it. (just contemplate...)
english is not my native language, i think you got it by now :)
i had no trouble of whatsoever of finding 'spooky' where the wreckerator wrote 'spooy' instead.
i have read quite a number of comments, possibly from native speakers of english.
none of them seemed to have found the connection between spooy and spooky.
they all come up with fun explanations and suggestions.
no-one mentions 'spooky'. not ever.
please, i am seriously intrigued by now:
how come this?
why me - and no-one else?
you may leave a reply in a comment over one of my websites (BOTH are in english) for i will ask my readers, too about this strange phenomenon.
thank you for your attention and keep up the good work.

NaNoWriMo 2010

anyone participating this year too?
this November i'm aiming to do quite a progress in my novel called Copper Moon.
i don't feel obliged to die trying to write 50,000+ words, though.
i'm just trying to write.
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usually i write when i have the inspiration.
now i'm trying to get it the other way round. i'll just see how it works out.
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photos from Köln (Cologne, Germany)

this was my third time in Köln and to be honest, i feared of being bored.
to entertain myself i figured out an objective:
we received a map of the inner city on the bus. it looked like a copy from a guide-book. there were small buildings drawn onto the streets.
i looked at the map and aimed for the furthest possible sight.
i bought nothing as a memory during the 3 hours i had in Köln. that was not my purpose.
the purpose was to get to the furthest possible sight, and i made it :)))

i reached it safely and got back in time to the bus.

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and while other people wandered in small groups, i wandered alone. perhaps no one was able to keep pace, mwah-hah-hah :))
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the streets of Köln offers a galore of various food for the hungry...

anyone else fascinated by the metal structure, heh? just look at the great arch of the ceiling. and the shining. also displayed is the famous 'ice' train.
it looks like a double-decker train for me :)

uhm, some more light and metal and shiny surface. uhm, did i just say metal?

well, food again.
during the 24 h bus trip i ate nothing but fruits and drink nothing but water. i did it on purpose - uhm, well, roadside toilets are uhm, well... i didn't want to feel stuffed and not being able to get some uhm, natural relief... and also i wanted to avoid eating for boredom. so i chose not eating instead. it wasn't my first fruit-day. i do it about every month or two months.

i found that architects of Köln have a strange habit: they tend to hide nice building between modern and ugly ones. this is quite an old church, but they managed to cover it from the eager eye. more exhibits to this notion later on, when i post my photos about the dome.


this is the entrance to the same church. poetic, almost, isn't it?
over the years i have this tendency to picture doors. and windows. i think it's related to my love of translation and being (almost!!, but never perfectly!) bi-lingual.
a door, a window, that leads another side. fascinating.

ta-daaa.
THIS building was the furthest one on the map. anyone any idea about it? when and who and why?


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on the health side:
i got my set of false teeth. this is supposed to subsitute my old (natural) ones while i'm waiting for the implantation. as this is an artificial object in my mouth i keep drooling, which is dislike quite a bit.
they say the more i use it the more i will get used to it. according to hopes i will be producing less less saliva over time.

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,

back to the routine again

i'm home, reading and writing.
i'have finished a paid job, and on my way to go for another...
i go out a lot to the garden, tend the chicken, pick up walnuts, chop firewood...
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photographical recollection of my trip will be coming soon.

arrival

this is about the time our bus arrives back to my hometown.
i am too tired to post photos about the trip right now.
i am either sleeping or having a hot shower before sleeping, or having a shower of small presents to my family :)))
my kids expect me to bring some stroepwaffels...
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cheers,
real posts will come soon - like in a couple of days... as soons as i am not sleeping anymore...
zzzzzz...

we are heading back home

all things packed back again, with my luggage being a bit heavier with some packages of stroepwaffels and vla...

(i will make photos of them)

the bus leaves....

can you see me waving goodbye to our dear hosts, to The Netherlands ... ?

friday evening

whooo-hooo.
i think at around this time we are having a great farewell party organized by the Dutch people.
it's a nice evening meal with music.
basically, an event for informal gathering.
can you see me dancing?
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special programmes

for friday, we are visiting a local school and have a meeting with the local women's organization. it was here in 2008 that i got the idea to do mosaic at all.

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reaching Amsterdam

and meeting Bart :)

last time (in 2008) he took me to a nice Buddhist temple and after that, we just strolled along the fascinating streets of the capital. since the river Amstel goes criss-cross all over the inner town, almost every street is a walk on the riverside. this structure is part artificial and was created during the late XIX., early XX. century i suppose.

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much to Bart's surprise, i was really specific about my activities in 2010 here. this is my fourth visit to the city :)

we plan tovisit some great places like the market, a museum and perhaps a little bar...

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at the evening the bust takes us back to Wageningen.

reaching Wageningen

by this time i think we have reached our main destination.

at the town center, a short meeting is organized to welcome us, and then the guests depart with their hosts to the houses of the hosts to get some rest after the looooong bus ride.

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the evening is free - we usually spend it walking in the streets, or in the forest nearby, some visit bars and restaurants, some have a quiet family dinner.

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i am staying with an extremely friendly couple. they are middle aged and have already put me up in 2006 and in 2008.

whenever i think of the little room in the attic of their house, it feels like thinking of a summer house that somehow belongs to me as well. i kind of feeling like coming home there as well.

:)))

last year, in 2009 we hosted the man of this family in our house.

reaching Köln in Germany

about this time we are supposed to have reached Köln (Cologne).
here's a link to some photos from our 2008 trip.

off to the Netherlands

dear all,
i am away for a couple of days.

when this post appears our bus is about to cross the Hungarian-Austrian border.

we are travelling north, going through Austria and Germany to reach The Netherlands after a tiresome 24-hour bus ride.

until i return the upcoming few post are scheduled.

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as i type now, the washing machine is on and i still have my clothes unpacked for the trip.

i still have lots of things to do (like writing some more pre-shceduled posts.)

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among many other stuff, i am packing my camera, a good pair of walking shoes for all occasion (be it rainy or sunny), and two books, a sleeping bag and a thick pillow for the bus, and a flower pot i decorated with mocaic. the latter item is a present for my Dutch hosts. i know they have lots of flowers so i think they'll like this hand-made surprise.

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here's a photo of the mosaiced flower pot. that is my hand to give you an impression of the size of the pot.

without further ado...

1-
this blog has reached its fifth birthday on 30 august :)))
2-
between 28 september and 3 october i'm leaving for the netherlands: wageningen again.
the trip will take us to a women's organization and we will possibly visit a school.
on one of the days we will visit amsterdam, where i am to meet bart again :))
3-
on 27 november i will attend a reading. the event will be organized by an online writers' group i joined this march. i made some new friends and i will read a poem by one of them. he is a man in his early sixties with a serious hearing loss, so he would be unable to do the recital himself.
i am still hesitating about reading one of my writings ... :)
4-
the japan institute of budapest is having a haiku contest. the deadline is 30 september and a contestant can send in as much as two haiku :)))
i have written only six :)))
but i think i will be able to select two of them.
oh, my :)))
i wish i had like a hundred....
you know what is really interesting?
this contest is a themed one - and the theme is 'summer'.
believe it or not, all my hungarian haiku, yes, all the six are about summer....
:))))
wish me luck :)
5-
vesper has finished reading halo. some of my remarks are posted here.

inspired by a photo #2

to take a look at Ewen's another inspiring photograph GO HERE
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and here's my version.
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horizons

to connect the earth and the sky
first he drew a line with a sigh
he planted hope into the earth
and let the rain weep for our birth

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if the same photo inspires you in any way, please leave a comment.
have fun!

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!