March. Year 2016.

Night. The 9 month old wakes up at 1 in the morning. Then at 3. Then around 4.30 and refuses to go back to bed on his own. He's teething and miserable and the only way he calms down and snoozes is if I hold him tight and close to my body, with his head slightly elevated. Von Zobel needs some sleep- it's tax season and he works on Saturdays - so I swirl myself into a pretzel-asana in the chair, manage to fix the iPad on the chair arm with my right knee, so I can flip through it with my left hand, so I can hold the baby on my right shoulder-elbow-side, and lean in such a way so that in the next two hours I do not accidentally fall asleep myself and wake him up.

Morning. Following a large breakfast of fried eggs (aka OVAL! - Chinchilla Sr) with onion and turkey breast, bread and fruit,  and weekly call-around for grandparents and grand-grannies chinchillas demand entertainment. We walk to the remote playground, the Vice-president of our house riding in a sport stroller, the president - walking along upset for not being allowed to take his bicycle, tricycle or a van with him. I really hope that on the playground I can exhaust both of them and get some study time during their long nap.

Afternoon. The long walk brought Chinchillas some very good appetite, but - alas! - no sleepiness. Chinchilla Jr. skipped the morning nap altogether, and is now misanthropic and miserable. I spend another 30 minutes with him in my arms before he finally falls asleep, still jerking in sleep from my slightest movement while I try to put him in bed. Meanwhile Chinchilla Sr has already sung all his lullabies to himself, dropped out all his books from the bed and is now standing in bed demanding bathroom break. Ok, looks like he needed one. I put him back in bed hoping he can nap now. Go back to my bedroom as he continues to mumble and whine. Before I complete my first testlet though I hear him scream at the top of his lungs, rush to his room and find him on the floor by his bed. That's the first time ever he fell out of his bed. His screaming wakes up Chill Jr.

Evening. Chinchillas are exhausted, feeding or bathing them becomes a challenge. Junior gets a portion of Tylenol, I keep my fingers crossed that it works for him better than last night (when nothing worked at all). Takes some time to put him to sleep. Takes some time to put Chill Senior to bed - he can't go on, but is upset on the actual fact of being put to bed; however he seems to have passed out a minute after I closed the door of his room behind me.
I can come back to my testlet now.

Night. Sometime between passing out as soon as my head touches the pillow and Chinchilla senior waking me up at 5 again for a drink of milk, I find myself at a strange place. More like an ugly huge arena with an ugly outdated amusement park inside, and grey tall ugly Soviet-style houses with dark windows behind its walls. I'm with a group of people, knowing I need to get out of this place, because I need to get to my exam, but no one has any idea where the exit is. As we wander around the non-working rides, old garages and some other weird constructions an announcement is made that there're terrorists inside with us, getting ready to blow up this whole place very soon. Of course, I have to make it to the exam and other have some.. plans for the rest of their lives, so we divide ourselves and start running and searching for terrorists trying to catch them.
El sueño de la razón produce monstrous (c). Again :)

Love the exam multiple-choice questions that are available on... different sources:

 

That would be a challenging question on the exam. Reasonably foreseeable, huh?

 

 

 

And this sounds somewhat outdated :) I wonder when the questions were last updated...

A day ago I got dragged into a quick online comment exchange with two young ladies on - and that's scary - a woman's determinism and purpose in life. Other people's ideas on what a woman's life should be like and what her - thus mine - purpose in life should be, do occasionally reach me, but apparently last time they did was a while ago and reading this again yesterday soured my day a little.
The girls jumped in to reply to one of my comments on the importance of self-sufficiency and self-reliance as woman becomes mother, wrote a few long comments full of irrelevant thoughts, random accusations of being a selfish money-loving child-neglecting control-freak (not necessarily in this order!), threw in a couple of examples that would prove my point rather than theirs, and continued to rant about the outrageousness of women like me long after I retired from the conversation :)

Every time I have somebody approach me with a persistent advice on how I should immediately change my life so my family benefits from it, I facepalm myself.  In my mind, if it is absolutely necessary that I do not appear rude. And while on the World Wide Web it is easier to ignore a well-wishing comment than to start explaining my views to every random person, the though of how many of such people are out there makes me want to facepalm myself anyway.

I get quite emotional over the idea that being a wife and mother  (TM) - means devoting all your life to the needs of your family - is the only true and natural way for a woman to live her life. Has it been perfectly natural for women of the past few centuries to take full and complete care of their babies from birth to age 3? Absolutely! I can easily picture a peasant girl in her late teens, who delivers a baby in Western Europe some 300 years ago and receives a paid maternity leave right away! Or a female factory worker a century and a half ago, a single mother with no relatives in town, who is of course entitled for maternity benefits form both the government and the plant she works at so she could stay home with her baby, and take care of him. Yep, for the next 3 years! Or - on the other hand - a Victorian upper middle class mother would surely stay with her baby daughter day and night, and as her daughter grows up - her mother would be able to cook meals for her from the scratch, go for walks with her, teach her painting, French, horseback riding, dancing, good manner and read her books  - all by herself, of course! Nothing more natural than the history of mothers being attached to their babies from birth until and being multi-functional at all times.

Another concept I could never fully embrace is - what exactly a mother with no life of her own can pass on to her kids? Being a stay at home Mom of 4 kids looks great on Instagram , but what if it did happen to me and I ended in a... career, social and personal interest isolation for a while - what would I be able to teach my kids about the world around, about problem solving and importance of social bonds forming? How would I be able to train them on the skills I no longer had myself? How would I be able to tell them right from wrong in their teenage years if hadn't expressed my own opinion for years, teach them to persist in getting what they want if I forgot what it means to stand my ground, show them the benefit of creative thinking when I life in a Groundhog's day, advise on applying their skills and knowledge if I never used what I had studied in University? And - that's irrelevant to me now, but what if I had a daughter? What behavioral model would she soak up watching me?

Lucky are those women who get all the support from  their family, friends and peers to continue moving in the direction that suits them best. Otherwise, making yourself ignore dozens of discouraging and disorienting voices coming from all around may eat up a good portion of the energy that could otherwise be spent on just moving ahead quicker.

Love cleaning my laptop.

Turns out I had quite a buildup of PDF presentations dated almost a decade ago of various beautiful cities and places of out planet to visit - quite a few of which I've already visited (hello, proper goal setting!), PDF presentations received from someone full of "words of wisdom" that have never really been applicable to me, nor will they in the near future (esp. in the light of recent... life philosophy change), a bunch New Year and Birthday wishes (I've no idea who wrote some of those, and can't recognize the style), a stack of documents with some interesting facts or words (which are always so hard to get rid of... esp. for a girl who grew up reading encyclopedias for fun).

A special type of importance for me once must have been:

•  a presentation full of Geneva pictures (all of them apparently taking in a rush, and looking ridiculous now - it's easier to go to Geneva again some time soon and take some nice and meaningful pictures!),
• a study of... Ancient Egyptian (ok, I'm still an Egyptologist deep down my heart. Had to keep this one),
• a document titled "URGENT - to finish" - completely blank inside :)  (I guess I should have finished URGENTLY when I had a clue what it was about. Or at least started it :) )

Some documents, often coming from a folder with a proper title Pubelle are even amusing:

So, what does work for time management?

So much for being... a  bit less than tolerant to people who waste time :)  Now that my life is quite unpredictable - or let's refer to things by their names - my life is in nearly complete chaos - the mindset that has been helping me recently to squeeze out more from the 24 hours is thinking about the next task while still completing the current one.

This does not necessarily relate to the work or study projects where complete concentration is required, in fact, I'd rather allot some time blocks for anything that would require me to "dive in" and then not be interrupted for anything else. But when moving through routine tasks, running errands, following up with people and getting from one place to another it helps immensely not to let myself get suck in the present moment. Having started with an Item #1 on my list that does not require my full 100% focus, I start thinking about Item#2 - the next thing I should be doing or the next place I should be at, also finding the best way to get through the next thing quicker and move on to Item #3 etc. The next few items on the to-do list are thus rolling over constantly in my head, reminding me of all the upcoming deadlines and pushing me to move on quicker. The second benefit of this method is that it helps perfecting the execution  since, as I think about the next Items on my list over and over again, I find better ways to approach them, combine similar tasks and do them all at once, or get rid of some steps of a big project altogether.

What are the cons of this approach? Pretty much that while it is very pro-active in execution, it requires prior planning. Before I start mapping out in my head in 20minutes, and in another 20minutes, I need a clear list of all 7 places I need to stop by/visit - all on paper, any notes to be taken into consideration about them - all on paper. Any project should be penciled down step by step, and should circumstances change or another person get involved - it should all be added to the original plan before any actions on the amended plan are taken. Sometimes a to-do item or a small project comes up and I write it down without a slightest idea of how to approach it or when to find time for it - and it will get done timely.

Sound easy and banal? It is. Plain pen and paper, and lots of self-discipline and thinking outside the box. But just as efficient given where I am in my life now. I keep reminding myself that as soon as I reach all my biggest life goals I will definitely hire a PA :)

Just being curious.

Where do all these people around me get their time from?

I've never been jealous in my life, but if I were, I would have wished to become one of those people who seem to be at no rush regardless of where they are. Slowly walking down the hall of a Fitness Center, taking their sweet time to take a right turn on an absolutely empty road, walking at a speed of 10 steps a minute at Costco and as if that wasn't enough - stopping to taste each free sample available.

I can't imagine what life with no deadlines feels like. Still just as fulfilling as the one where you dodge around all the time?  Does not being in a rush help at all? Does speeding up through the day make any difference?

I really think one day I should try - for a change - walking sloooowly with a couple of friends of mine towards the gym exit, all three of us in one line in a narrow corridor. Preferably with strollers. Even better - chatting in a high pitched voice to completely block out the steps of the people behind and those excusing themselves trying to pass. The time when I split thinking and doing into two separate processes with two separate timeframes for each - will come! :)  I will be watching peacefully people half-stuck in a Costco egg fridge for more than a minute without looking at the fridge door with homicidal urges.

But today is the one extra day I got this year, - to be spent on achieving something important or catching up. And I neither caught up, nor moved ahead. I still wasted a lot of time dodging around and am still very far behind. All this is very, very personal of course.

Some doctors just know their stuff.

My new ob/gyn is prescribing me a new type of oral contraceptive ("just in case"), and meanwhile is refreshing my memory on its proper use (apparently, again, "just in case"):

-It's important that you take the pill every day...
-Yep.
-... preferably- at the same time every day.
-Yep.
-For example, every evening at dinner.
-Yep.
-So it's best for you to keep the pack in the kitchen: when you cook dinner, and the kids are tired, running around and screaming, and throwing tantrums - you think "Please, God, don't let me have any more kids!", and then you remember to take your pill!

...Too bad she switched to the next subject before I could ask her how on Earth she knew...

My pre-Birthday Grand cleen up brought me 3 new online points of inspiration within a few days!

In particular, 2 blogs and 1 website/Facebook group =)

A few weeks before that I finally put together for myself the reason I would never become a professional blogger or, for this matter, an Instagram-mer (although the feeling that there is something wrong with posting your thoughts and pictures full time had been flown around me for a while). I wouldn't be able to commit to religious posting of sheets of text or pictures online because at some point I would also have to commit to sticking to a certain personality I had developed through my blog and used most often. And my Alter-Ego strongly objects this idea. I would have to translate everything I do, have or feel into the realm of the person my readers or viewers are already familiar with and expect me to be. But at some point the need to constantly these expectation would ruin the genuinely of my self-expression and hold me back on all those ways I want to show my growth, changes and development throughout life.

I notice it more and more often, when bloggers try to maintain not just their writing style, but their life-style and personality so hard - the things they write about finally stop making sense. It shows when bloggers try to appear casual and care-free, positive head to toes, and projecting love and acceptance to everything around, and suddenly switching to depressed wishing he wasn't so lonely and life wasn't so tough - nearly in every other post.

It pops up when a "professional mother" of 5, who has a whole mosaic of Instagram to prove a happy mommy's life with 5 kids born 2 years apart and all doing distance learning at home is possible, with a working husband, without a nanny (ever), a housekeeper, or any other help - forgets herself and starts posting pictures of her with her mother, who's staying over for a couple of months...  Followed by series of pictures of her kids playing with her in-laws, who apparently, flew in right after to take over after her mom...  Topped by a picture of her with a stroller and a list of her time management secrets, where a super-secret tactics of "Plan everything in advance" is followed by an unthinkable "Delegate! My husband takes 1 full day off work every week to take the kids to a park or playground, so I can have some me-time or meet with girlfriends for coffee."  Closing curtain...

This nowadays fashion for being happy and absolutely self-sufficient tends to push people to extremes, which eventually come up as fake and completely not belonging to lives of people with the strengths, values or abilities they claim to have. Or, as one of my Regulation course instructors says, - "When you see an answer that starts with All, Always, Never, Only, Must - it is almost always a false answer". :)

Anyway... The 2 blogs I stumbled upon (or maybe they found me once I was ready and had space for them) - proved to be extremely useful so far, filled less with claims of the writer's ability of Having-It-All in the Land of Rainbows and Unicorns, and more - with precise examples of how they coped with every complex situation and life challenge using resources they had. Some wisdom for me to soak up during my 2am nursing sessions :)

Chinchilla Sr. & I put a start to library classes.

I finally decided to give a try to the kids' story reading in Russian session, and it went way above my expectations!
Instead of having a meeting room full of parents and kids sitting on chairs and listening to a story all the way in the back in complete silence (Dr. Chill. Sitting still. In complete silence. Ha!) we found a small group of toddlers of same age (3 out or 4 were also 2.5 year olds), hanging around a blanket, listening to  "teacher" Librarian and making all sorts of random noises. Apparently we were in some extra luck that morning, because no one of the kids really spoke, so we were all on the same level of stubbornness.

The "teacher" started over by asking the kids their names and ages (to be shown on fingers), and then to point at their ears-noses-eyes-teeth-necks, and go through some more physical, mental and vocal stretching before getting on to the actual story reading. The story du jour was a tale of Masha I Medved', in a beautiful book with picture cut outs on the page, and cardboard figures of the characters to go with. The kids were kept engaged on every page of the story:

- Once upon a time there were... (The teacher shows the cardboard figures of the Old Man and an Old Woman).
- A  Grandpa and Grandma! (the dialog was conducted with the oldest boy in the group who actually did talk).
- That's right! Now raise hands those of you who have a Grandma and a Grandpa!
- ... (moms, me included, raise hands of their lucky kids)
- That's great! Now, for your grandparents you are a... (facing a boy)
- ... eeeh.... Vnuk!
- That's right! And you would be... (facing girls). You are Vnuchka (since girls did not reply). And you are, for your grandparents... (facing Chill)
- Ai-ai!! (*the curtain falls*)

The story was followed by taking pictures in a Hoberman Sphere, playing dominoes and finding animals on a farm poster. Dr. Chill was multi-tasking by running around from one protected electrical outlet to another and opening and closing the covers on them, one at a time. Finally, the teacher said she had something for this young engineer  and took out a whole... tool box full of plastic tools!
- Sweet! - Said Dr. Chill... in a non-verbal way, grabbed a screwdriver, run to the wall and stuck it in the electric outlet.

...For the next weekend, I've been told to bring my youngest one along too.

29

To tell the truth, every year the mere thought of how quickly time flies by becomes more and more scary to me. I have a feeling I don't have time to do anything - anything at all - substantial! Just as I accomplish something - I mentally move is from the category of "Oh, if only!.." to "Well, that wasn't too bad. Can't believe I  wasted so much time on this!" and continue to gnaw myself on the idea of not accomplishing enough. Again.

 Nevertheless... Since this time a year ago I improved my life by:

1. Having Chinchilla Jr! That's by far the most significant event of the past year. My little-little one is such a darling, smart, kind, curious boy, and we all couldn't love him more and be more grateful for such a wonderful new member of our family!
   The 12 hours (or so) it took to deliver Dr.Chill Jr was a whole different story and an experience worth living through to later make it fall under Ce qui ne nous tue pas nous rend plus fort(c). Making a birth plan is indeed a waste of time (that's why I never had any this time), whenever I go to the hospital "for a quick check" might mean I will return home in 2 days and with a baby(happened both times), and... I am a very lucky person indeed! (a statement proved by my life over and over again).
2. Completing all necessary education requirements for the licensing and passing FAR.
3. Building up experience on tax and valuation prep. Helps a lot in defining my direction further on...
4. Maintaining good relationship with Chinchilla Sr. and Von Zobel. One of my goals for 2015 was to organize monthly date nights out with Von Zobel. To my great surprise, we were able to make this happen (God bless younger sisters!), even around the birth day of Chinchilla Jr. - a few days before, and end of the following month.
5. Having read 30 new books. Not quite 50, as initially planned, but - still acceptable, given how little time I had for leisure reading and little-side-project reading. Oh, and yes, - most of those books were actually audiobooks I listen to in my car while driving.
6. Following through the Grand-Maintenance project of the roof, window screens, some window replacement, stucco replacement, garage and entrance door repainting, as well as Grand-Remodeling of the master bathroom and floor replacement in the Jack-and-Jill and Liz's bathrooms. The latter cannot even be counted as one of my big projects as I had to coordinate it about 3 hours after delivering Dr Chill Jr  and miss the first couple of days of work as I was still in the hospital. Bottom line - done with house remodeling and refurbishing projects for now. For a while.
7. Getting back into shape after having 2nd child, and on the whole - have a healthy and fit 2nd pregnancy. Took hell lot of time, energy, money and effort on my part, but was well worth it.
8. Having completed my first online course in Universite de Geneve. Studying right at this  university gave my some... unexplainable feeling :)
9. Meeting a few great new people. Some of them are cool to hang around with, others must have entered my life to give me a magic kick to move forward faster :) I guess keeping all old connections and not losing any friends could also go under this line item.
10. Beginning of Life Coach studies - as coming from another goals of 2015. Definitely was not a priority for the year, however a start was put.

A counter-intuitive way to win over the job-interviewers, impress them and get invited for the next one

is to show up to a large corporation (TM)'s interview completely sick: with voice almost gone, pink teary eyes, swollen nose and shaking from side to side even when seating on a chair. It is essential though to talk non-stop, use excessive body language and gestures energetic enough to turn over the round table at any moment, and loudly wheeze an apology, emphasize that you're slightly under the weather today.
Apparently, large corporations are naturally attracted to candidates who show up the drive of a locomotive even at the worst of their condition, and are able to show up and perform even sick like hell (sadly, both seem to be true).

***

On a side note - after 1.5 year (give or take) I resumed my blood donation, and discovered that:
a) donating blood while breastfeeding is ok, and does not stress body badly enough to cut off milk supply :)
b) exchanging a pint of blood for a pint of... beer is a fun and fair experience. I don't think I'll be able to put the beer coupon to use any time soon, but hope Von Zobel will;
c) Bonfils (at least at Highlands Ranch location) has some amazing employees. I already forgot what it was like, but it feels nicer than having a blood work at a physician's/ob/gyn office: you get help with adjusting the seat the way you want it, can ask for a bottle of water at any moment (that will be opened for you), can get a cookie (I didn't ask for any, but saw other donors do :)), get a Bonfils shirt,  but the best part of it is how professionally they actually stick in the needle. This time it took 3 people 3 (three) attempts each to get the vein, and I already pushed myself into the seat as hard as I could thinking of how blue the inside of my elbow will look like in 2 days, but... nothing except from a few traces from needle pokes. Not a small bruise. Simply amazing!

It feels like 2015 never ended.

Maybe because of the non-stop cycle of daily routine that went through the Holiday season, and the need to study for the exam through the New Year, and taking the exam on January 4th, and jumping into the next section before the results are even known. The hardest thing in going through the exam planning is trying to focus on the next study subject while the results for the old section are still unknown. But you need to focus and push forward. And be very, very patient...

The  Board I'm waiting to hear from, while taking their time with scoring, try to spice up the waiting period and send an email out of blue with an update on application status. For example, saying the application status is now closed. Just like that. And if you do want to discuss that - here's our general line, knock yourself out.

The only organization that succeeds in wearing me down even more is Humana - still looking forward to the day when an hour or more of being on the phone and on hold would yield me a reasonable professional employee who could cancel - this time for real! - the insurance coverage I thought they cancelled for me end of last year. Swear to God, as soon as I completely outsource my house cleaning, the very next thing I'll do is hire a virtual PA!

Yoga works magic: in 2 weeks of daily (Mo-Fri) classes the backache is almost fully gone, and skiing goes much smoother and well-balanced :)  Can't wait to completely recover from the cold to start making my workouts more active; my boxing gloves have collected enough dust in the basement since mid-1st trimester of the 2nd pregnancy!...

New Year Beginn(er)ing's luck

The warm words of gratitude this week go to the Universe for:

1. Missing the fire drill at Prometrics Test Center. In particular for:

a) Stepping out of the elevator literally a second before the alarm went off and both the elevator doors behind be and those leading to the corridor started to close. Last thing I needed today was to be late to the exam due to being stuck in an elevator :)

b) for deciding not to come to an earlier time and thus not being part of the earlier group who lost 5-7 minutes on leaving their testing rooms, and then being searched, scanned and signed in. I ended up needing every single minute of my  time. ( Damn, this exam was hard!..)

    2.  Successful return to skiing after having been out of practice for 3 consecutive years. By "successful" I mean being able to ski away on my own legs every time after a pretty bad fall :) You never know how much of a Pinoccio you've become until you try some activity you used to feel comfortable with, and apparently the next few weeks call for lots of yoga practice! :)

I think I know now how insanity, in it's most trivial and common form, emerges.

First and foremost, it comes from not being able to receive any substantial informative valid feedback to what you do. Week by week you do something (might be a repeating action, but different approaches), and expect to see a result... and the result does not come. No result you were hoping for. Neither attempt is no good or no worse than any preceding or subsequent one.
Am I going the right way at all?
Is anything going on here at all?
Hello? Anyone out there?
And so it goes: week by week, and if objects started talking to you suddenly, or if you started hearing voices in your head - that would have been a better sign than no sign at all. Day by day - seeing all your energy being sucked into the void. And then, at some point, something just shifts in your head...

Meine Uni periodically issues email warnings of crimes occuring on campus.

About once a month a report is emailed describing the evens where people got stabbed near the Light Rail stop, harassed with an attempt to be kissed and chased into a ladies' room, punched, robbed. The most recent incident involved 3 people being shot in the neighborhood, although near a different campus.

Today's crime warning email talked about an attempted robbery of a backpack by a Hispanic guy of aprox. 180cm and 100 kilos. Not only did he target a victim walking along with friends; after an unsuccessful attempt to get the backpack - he apparently fled being chased by the victim's friends and lost his shoe.
....

I immediately start picturing in my mind a big gloomy guy in a hoodie, picking out of all passers-by on a dark evening and throwing himself into a middle of a group of people to pull off a backpack, after a few seconds realizing something had gone wrong, and continuing to realize something had gone wrong as he is now being chased by just the recent victims up the street so quickly a shoe slips off his foot and quietly escapes the scene.