One of my Colourlover friends made me remember something today:

Some years back on Christmas eve (that's when we celebrate in Germany) my mum and I were trying to get to my sister's place despite a completely iced over car. We couldn't open it so we tried public transport instead.

We barely managed to get there: they were running replacement buses for the trams and we probably got the very last one. Phew.

We had to negotiate the last 500m by foot on a very icy pavement - carrying presents, a half-cooked goose and supporting each other on the worst bits.

However, we managed to get there without falling down and despite some desperate giggling attacks!

Funny thing is, I don't remember at all how we got back home.

*** START BOASTING ***

I've just read Kerstin's thoughts on ageing and got stuck on this quote:

"When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old."
~ Mark Twain

Hm. OK, according to that quote, I've been getting very old from age 24! Only I haven't.

From about age 14 to 18 I was 18 to everybody, quite handy really, as it allowed me to go out without having to show any ID to prove my age. I think this was simply because I am tall (1.8m, or 5′9″ for those not familiar with metric measurements) and was so very early on.

From 18 to about 24 or so, I was still 18 for everybody. At that point it started to get boring, having been 18 for 10 years and not progressing…! I wanted to be taken seriously according to my age: haha, little did I know that that never happens with anybody who is at least five years older than you are.

From 24 onwards I have (slowly) aged but never caught up on my real age. I am 42 now and people still look at me in complete disbelieve when I tell them how old I am. Most seem to think that I am early to mid thirties. This is very flattering but at the same time I am so used to this reaction, that it doesn't really move me much any more. Only when I see people my age who look a lot older than they should I am surprised and I wonder why we are all so very different. I would love to think that my outside youthfulness is due to good health (not eating too much, hardly any sweets, no smoking, no exaggerated sun bathing), but to be honest it's simply in my genes. My parents both looked younger (and still do in case of my mum / my dad died ten years ago) and my sister also looks about ten years younger than she is. It has nothing to do with sports (I'm a total couch potato, apart from cycling for transportation in the Netherlands) and I actually was quite partial to drinking beer before I had Yannick (mind you, I'm cheap drunk). OK, of course my body ages, I can see certain things that I didn't have when I was 24, but to be honest ageing is very gentle to me, and even the pregnancy didn't leave any traces apart from a softer belly. I am very lucky indeed! Now don't forget that it's just the outside. Inside I am getting just as forgetful as anybody else around this age. Um, what was my name again?

Of course there is that one tell tale give-away that tells everybody without fail how old you are. Any guesses?

But I can still be surprised by other people: last week I met a match, another mum astonished me completely by telling me that she was 41 and I had not expected that at all! Using my own stereotypes I thought she was about 32 or something as all the mums I met over here are around that age. And of course she looked that age too. I think we both looked quite sheepish looking at each other!

*** END BOASTING ***

… I was waiting.

Yannick was due 20 April 2006 but managed to hold out in Hotel Mama until Sunday 30 April.

… I had my sister over, staying with us.

She was the person who drove us to hospital as Frank didn't have his driving license then. She stayed with us there too.

… I was quite uncomfortable.

Sitting was getting difficult, unless I sat straight up. My hands and feet were aching as I was suffering of carpal tunnel syndrome (which persisted for a while even after giving birth), my legs were slightly swollen, and I had heartburn every night.

… I was slightly worried.

Back in Dublin I had missed the window for some examinations to find out whether my baby might be suffering of Down syndrome. As I am an older mother the risk was slightly higher than for younger mothers. On the other hand, what would I have done if I had found out that my baby was suffering of this??? I am glad that things turned out to be just right.

… I was VERY ignorant about babies.

I believed that all small babies would sleep for long stretches of the day. Ahem.
I thought that I would have a say in when I would stop breastfeeding. Ha ha ha…

… I didn't know what was going to hit me afterwards.

"Once you have the little one, everything will be forgotten." Ha, motherhood will make it all go away??? Excuse me, make what go away, what will be forgotten, the baby? You might forget the pain of the birth, but if you are unlucky you have a really poorly, crying, hungry, not sleeping baby. That won't go away!

… I was curious.

I didn't know what I was going to have, a boy or a girl. I was hoping for a girl, but this little boy is such a darling that it really doesn't matter!

… I didn't know a lot of things about myself or Frank.

I am incredibly short tempered when I get too little sleep. Ack!
But I can survive on a lot less sleep than I ever thought.
Frank really is my rock to lean on. *blush* And he is a great dad!

Looking through boxes and sorting out things I found a piece of paper with this on it:

From: Richard
To:     Sylke
Date: Friday 4 March, 1994 8:54 am
Subject:

MS SYLKE KRAMER,
OUR FAVOURITE TRAINER,
WITH HER SLIM, TRIM FRAME, HER
EYES INFLAME, HER
GOLDEN MANE, HER
LIPS, HER MIEN, HER
VOICE, HER NAME,
NO ONE CAN CLAIM HER,
NO ONE CAN CHAIN HER,
OUR FAVOURITE TRAINER,
MS SYLKE KRAMER!....

At the time I found this quite flattering - and I still do!

This poem was written by one of my students when I was on a work placement in a training company. I taught a group of ca. 25 people basic computer skills. The full-time seven week course included word processing (WordPerfect), spreadsheets (Lotus 1-2-3), databases (dBase), desktop publishing (no idea what we used), email, and an intro to Windows 3.1. And this was only 12 years ago. Gosh, we've come a long way! All of this was during my first stint in England, when I was based in East London.

I met some really nice people at the course but unfortunately I lost contact with all of them. (Bob, Ben, if you should read this and remember me, contact me!!!)