Earlier this year, at a Renaissance fair
Moth: I like the... what's it called... the marinade for pottery?
Me: The glazing?
Moth: That one.

*****

Hatchling, securely strapped to Moth's front, watches me intently as I stumble and almost fall.
Me, reassuringly: I stumbled and almost fell.
Moth, not interrupting her sight-seeing: Good plot.

*****

Moth, looking at the remains of a 13th century pulpitum screen at Tintern Abbey: Still a better boss than mine.

Toddler is busy playing and generally uncooperative.
Moth: Do you want to play or eat first?
Toddler: Lalala la la la la la...
Moth: Do you want to play or eat first?
Toddler: La la la la la la la l...
Moth: Can you please answer this question with yes or no?! Do you want to play or eat first?!
Toddler: La la... yes.

~*~

Moth putting Toddler to bed: Wwwwwwwww.
Toddler: ????
Moth: I'm the coffee machine.
Toddler considers this, then slowly puts her finger on Moth's cheek: Au'geschaltet. (Switched off.)

Me to a friend babysitting toddler at the music academy during my lesson: "Was everything okay?"
He: "Yup. She mastered the b-minor toccata all right."
Proceeds to post lots of pictures with toddler on an organ bench.

~*~

Moth: "...there's a semantic distinction. (To toddler) Say 'semantic distinction'."
Toddler: "Desandedayn."
Moth: "Close enough."

Me, in the bathtub to annoying toddler: "Go and fetch your ball, will you? Where is the ball?"
Moments later, I see our 80x80cm green fitball enter the bathroom with only the very top of toddler's head behind it. <3

~*~

I am carrying a very tired toddler up the stairs in the evening. So far, she has been using simple words only, with the occasional two word sentence. A neighbour stops for a chat and won't stop talking. I am too polite to press on and carry toddler in this position or that, hoping for her patience.
Toddler, quietly in sing-song voice: "Hunger... hunger... hunger..." (which is how you would express that you're hungry in German). Then, suddenly losing her patience very loudly, very clearly: "Le-ber-wurst-brot!" (bread with liver sausage)

~*~

Several times a day:
Toddler, taking the register, pointing at each of us in turn and then herself: "Mama, Mommy, TODDLER (=her name)!" sounding more triumphant every time this happens.

~*~

Me, concentrated in front of the laptop: "Ich brauche..." (=I need...)
Toddler, completely convinced: "Rudö," (=Baby Language for "Slide") hoping for a youtube video of children on the playground.

~*~

Me, in a sing-song voice: "Do you want to take a ba-ath?"
Toddler, in exactly the same sing-song tone: "No-o!"

Moth: I just got purred at by a cat. ... I pity you for never experiencing this.
Me: Don't worry, I don't miss it. (Being allergic to them and all.)
Moth: Oh. Oh no. Should we... do something? Like, see a priest or something? Isn't that the kind of thing soulless monsters should do?"

Moth:"My experience of the forest is hampered by everyone having longer legs than I do.
...
Like, I don't have long legs and dainty little hooves to look at blueberry."

Me, constantly bothered by midges:"So, you were not talking about insects,?"

Moth:"No, deer!"

Me:"Well, but in your defence, you don't have horns."

Moth:"I don't need horns. If I want to attract a mate, I go: Here, pancakes."

So yeah, the Met's "Das Rheingold" is a ride from the first to the one-hundred-and-fiftieth butt-squashing minute. There is an unexpectedly low amount of actual plot but lots of very diligent singing by seriously overweight world-class stars (love every bit of that) and a beautiful stage with lots of clever visuals, like the beginning where they have flying singers playing mermaids inside the Rhein water. On the one hand, I am really envious, but on the other hand it must be really hard to sing under such conditions.
Smeagol-Wotan was really easy on the eye and Loki his charming tenor self, as usual.
I can't really say anything clever about it all because for all my musical knowledge I've never had much interest in Wagner's sausage fest of an epos but... the beginning was nice enough. If I manage to see the other ones, I'll be sure to put it in writing as well.

Just now:
Moth scratches me accidentally. A long white stripe appears on my arm. Cue, look of horor and dismay on Moth's face.
"Oh nooo!!!"
She investigates the stripe and my arm and then her fingernail, apparently finding some of my skin under it:
"Would you... like it back?"

***

Several days ago, Moth made pancakes, put them into two neat piles for me and I ate a few.
She then rearranged them.
I protested.
Moth: "They have to be the same size!"
Me: "But I was..."
Moth, relization dawning: "...finishing that pile?"
Me: "Yes!"
Moth: "Two schools of thought."

Moth: (waltzing into the kitchen with baby on her arm) Conversation: 'Do you wsnt to go to the kitchen, baby?' - 'Eh!'

*****

Moth: Woodruff is such a curious plant. It grows on top of itself.

Me: That's why we call it the 'master of the wood' ("Waldmeister").

Moth: (googling) It has many uses. Makes you tired... and is aldo poisonous.
...
Are you shaking your head at our woodruff plant?

Me: (glaring at plant whispers) Poisonous...

Me (in the kitchen, upon Moth's declaration of what the baby was gonna eat): "Do you call these 'Mairüben' (turnips)? I call them 'Mairübchen' (little turnip).
Moth: There's nothing '-chen' about them. They're big and fat.
Me: Yeah, but I thought that was the official name. You also say 'Radischen' (radish).
Moth: *defiantly* I WOULD call them Radis ("rah-deece"), if they were bigger.
Turns out she is right, by the way.

---

And the other day:
Moth: "You have to image search Robert Southey! He looks like the love child of Robert Downey jr. and Severus Snape."

Moth (discovering a cart at the German version of home depot that is not designed for children): "What if you don't mind your child getting slightly damaged?"

----

Moth (in a discussion on linguistics): "So... when you find out you were wrong, how will you prostrate yourself before me?"

Baby eats banana for the first time. Moth is feeding her.
Me: Mama likes banana, so baby likes banana.
Moth: Mama ate one million bananas during pregnancy, so now baby thinks she's back inside the uterus.

----

Me: (in a shop) Oh look, chocolate cake!
Moth: Or 'boring brownies' as I like to call it.

My three year old niece, playing with my key: I'll unlock you. You are my home."
My dad: That sounds almost like a psalm.

Me: Do you want me to draw the curtains so you can sleep?

Moth: I dunno. Don't mind. I do not need a little blanket on my cage to know that it's nighttime.

Hour eight and a half. Belgian conductor greets new travellers.
Moth grumpily: "There's nothing 'bon' about this 'jour'!"

I forgot the exact context, but at some point this month we were looking at a picture with some sort of fantasy writing on it or so and Moth suddenly got very excited.
Moth: "Oh, oh, I know! It's a... it's a letter..." (pauses to think for much longer than usual)

Me: "Wow. I'm sure glad those years of reading Linguistics at uni didn't go to waste."

***

It's the weekend. No one has spoken for a long while. Moth is rummaging through some laundry. Suddenly:
Moth: "I lost my jeans! (literal seconds later) I found my jeans! ... I know, great plot."

***

Today in the living room. The baby squawks. Moth looks up. Sings: "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands..."
Baby: Squawk.
Moth and I on cue, in perfect unison, imitating her exact sound: If you're happy and you know it, say squawk, ...
Baby: Squawk.
We repeat and finish the song, together with the baby.

These are from February, I think. I recorded them on my phone and then forgot to transcribe.

Me: *parking between two cars, very close to their doors* Uuuh... that's gona work... only just. Can you get out at all?
Moth: *Pshaw-look* I've got all the space in the world here. I can dance out of this car!

A little later:
Me: "I don't know if I wanna go for lunch yet. Any thoughts?"
Moth: "Yeah, let's go."
Me: *doubtful* Are you hungry already?"
Moth: "I'm not hungry. I'm... anticipating appetite."

Moth has been correcting 5th year class tests for a while now and keeps complaining that she made the test too easy because there are too many top marks. "It's not just that there are so many people who got an A," she says at one point, "it's WHO got them..."
So I'm like: "Well, that's okay, isn't it? They'll go into the summer break with a morality boost."

And so on. We're having some quiet work time in each other's company except that I don't manage to get much work done for reasons of my own. Then this hapens, out of the blue:

Moth: "Would you like to correct student M's test for me?"
Me: (hardly looking up from my own work) "Uhm... no?"
Moth: (in a sudden tantrum, child's voice:) "MAAAAAN! There are TWENTY-EIGHT students in that class! It is SO UNFAIR!!!!"
Me: (stares)
Moth: (looking surprised) What?
Me: (laughing) "The sudden, righteous outrage!"
Lots of laughter

Moth cleaned the kitchen window today. I got a bit scared that she would fall out and made some sort of noise to that effect.
She said: "My centre of gravity is in my butt. It's literally impossible for me to fall over."

***

Also, a couple of hours earlier:

Me: *pregnant* "I'm so tired... I can't remember what I just said."
Moth: "That's because your parasite is sucking out your brains through your belly straw."
<3

While we were brushing our teeth the other day, I suddenly looked at my mirror image and stopped moving to see what I look like when I don't move.
Moth's comment: "Did you just die while looking at your face?"
:D

***

I am watching the 2017 version of Worst Witch and, while I love it, season 2's episode 8 just got under my skin. Mildred's performance as HB was a little like Kate Duchêne's and her showdown with Raquel Cassidy after the performance was priceless. So well done. Mostly, I feel that HB's habitus feels a bit... wooden in both actresses, much though I enjoy watching them nevertheless. But in this episode, Raquel gave HB a self awareness of this teacher persona and it worked, I thought, and it feels very appropriate in a contemporary adaptation of this timeless story.

I just went on an express lift.

I have dreamed of this since I was a young girl playing "Sim Tower" on my crappy first PC.

PS Tate Modern. Yaaay.

Moth: "I miss the UK. I love going shopping there."
Me: "Shopping?"
Moth: "Yes, it's nothing like shopping at home. The perfect experience."
Me: *robot voice* "Please put your item in the bagging area."
Moth: *laughing* "Please take your items out of the bagging area. Please wait for assistance."

***

Moth: "We have to go to Ireland! You will love it there. It's beautiful! It's like England, but green."

***

Moth: "I don't want to go to Crete. There are Minotaurs on Crete."

***

Moth: "I miss Britain!!!"
Me: "We could go to the Netherlands. That's almost like going to Britain."
Moth: "It is so not!"
Me: "The shopping experience is close..."
Moth: "True."

So... I defrosted some rolls last night. To check if they had cooled enough to eat, I touched one of them with my finger.

Moth: Ouch! says the little roll.
I laugh and keep poking.
Moth: Ouch! Hey! Ouch! Aaah!
I approach with a knife.
Moth: Noooo! PLEEAASE! Aaaaah! (She continues to make suffering noises that make me wonder if the neighbours are gonna call the police soon.)
Me: (Cutting the roll) I like its colleagues' bystander consent. Complete silence.
Moth: They're quivering with fear. (Takes one roll and shakes it slightly.)
We laugh and hug.

"Your neck is doing that turtle thing that old women's necks are doing."

Me: There is a job offer from Innsbruck.

Moth: But sadly you have to leave that one.

Referring to H. Isaac's "Innsbruck ich muss dich lassen" (="Innsbruck, I have to leave you.")

Conversation between my dad and my sister last year:

T: Did you use to rip out spiders' legs [when you were small]?
Dad: Nah, I squashed them flat.
T: (horrified) You tortured them??
Dad: That's not torture that is...
T: ... recycling.
(both laugh)
Dad: I can see we can reach an agreement here.


Original:
T: Hast du früher [als du klein warst] Spinnen die Beine herausgezogen?
Papa: Ne, ich hab sie matscheplatt gemacht.
T: (entsetzt) Du hast sie gequält??
Papa: Das ist kein Quälen. Das ist...
T: ...entsorgen.
(beide lachen)
Papa: Ich sehe, wir werden uns einig.

*Bluetooth gadget in car plays short melody*

Me: *through the phone* Goodbye, bluetooth.
Moth: *in the car* How do you know?
Me: There was a little melody...
Moth: It was me singing a new song.
Me: ...Bit of an ugly melody really...
Moth: Hey!!! How far are you with your 'Credo' then, hu? Hu? How far did you get?

***

Me: What is that? *staring at a yellow broccoli in the fridge*
Moth: Broccoli that we bought two days ago.
Me: Is it still... good?
Moth: *completely self-confidently* Yes! *more quietly* Tastes funny, though.

I’d forgotten that “a new Potter” would come out this weekend. No hype this time, no expectations from me. I was barely interested to start reading it, but then we just sat down and distributed roles and read everything in two long gos yesterday. I hadn’t read Beedle the Bard, I’d barely glanced at Pottermore every now and then, only to find all of my headcanons destroyed there without getting any actual stories in return…

And then we read this and for the first time in years (starting around 2007) I was happy with a Harry Potter experience again. I don’t know if it happens when you lower your expectations so much that you get utterly unexcited, or if this play was actually more interesting and more like what Harry Potter is to me than Deathly Hallows was. But it was pink and fluffy and nostalgic and I actually liked the new plot, which served its purpose and works well in a theater context, I expect, despite the weirdly short scenes (poor director) and the prosa-like dialogue (poor actors). No, but: I liked it! A lot!

( Spoilers ahead...Collapse )

So… I’m looking forward to October, where I’ll be going to London to see the performance. My life’s once again filled with a little more Potter and that makes me happy. I hope it does you, too, despite the various disappointments that people have suffered.

"Did no one teach you to knock, boy?"

I just realised I hadn't updated in a while.

Job-wise I'm doing three things at once at the moment. I'm still at school, working half-time, I'm playing the organ and I conduct three choirs in the area where I live, and I also started studying again (BA church music), officially full-time but in fact I'm only taking courses that don't overlap with my previous course of studies (MA music education), which is most of them.

Now, I'm taking singing lessons again, too, and my singing teacher just told me that a theatre job (choir) might be an option worth checking out, so now I'm doing that, hardly daring to believe that this could be happening.

Me: *failing to repair my PC*

Moth: *appears and makes everything better*

Me: How is it you are so good at computers and I'm not?

Moth: I'm a digital native. You're a digital immigrant. You're standing at the border with your little suitcase and they're not letting you in.

O_o

***

Having rented a SMART because our car is broken, I texted Moth the other day: "I have a smart!"
Her actual reply was: "Just one smart? I think you have at least two thmaatth."

<3

Moth this morning: "I'll be home by half two and I expect a full, perfect meal on the table when I arrive. ... I'm joking. Please don't cook."

I'm in Southern Germany with Moth exploring Roman ruins we're both really food of. Amphitheatres, basilicae, thermae and so on. She's as happy to see them I am, but yesterday we were goofing around while looking at what was apparently the biggest bath North of the Alps at the time and she suddenly goes: "Yeah, the Romans were quite good at building." Eyeing a massive boulder nearby: "Ten out of ten."
And I laughed so hard because it reminded me of the time when we visited Loch Lomond for the second time and on the way there she was like: "Yeah, I remember it being okay. Five out of five for wetness."
And then we drove round a corner and saw the Loch and she went: "I TOTALLY FORGOT HOW AWESOME THIS WAS!!!!!"

On our way to the car, coming from the mall, Moth suddenly grabs my arm and steers me around a bunch of snails.
Moth: Careful, snails!
Me: Oh look, some of them are already squashed.
Moth: Yes, but I wanted to save this one.
Me: Sure.
We continue walking for a moment.
Me: Not enough, though, to pick it up and carry it out of harm's way, eh?
Moth: No. ... It was feeding on the carcass of its fallen comrade.

~*~

On our way back we pass two women with several children crossing the street.
Moth: Behold, the future.

Me: Is this lettuce edible?
Moth: Yes. *munches* It's just a little wilted.

Me: My black spot from the cycling accident is almost gone. ... But there's new ones appearing all the time.
Moth: That's because you're klutzy and clumsy.
Me: *researches 'klutzy', learns that it is related to the German word "Klotz" (lump, chunk, ball)* HEYYYY!!!

Friday afternoon. We're sitting in a vegetarian restaurant with incessant fiddle music playing in the back.

Moth: "How many fiddle players are there in the band?' - 'I think there are nine violinists in the orchestra."
Me (after a moment's consideration): Masquerade.
Moth (astonished): Yes! How did you know?
Me: There were two options.
Moth: What was the other one?
Me: Soul Music.
Moth: *gives me the most loving look ever, saying nothing for a long while*

Romance.

I started listing the things I wanna see if we go to Scotland in the holidays about two hours ago. I suppose I could think of more, but so far these are the only two items I have been able to come up with:

- climb Ben Nevis
- see Puffins.

Keeping my expectations simple, I suppose.

Moth made me a Chrome profile while I wasn't here and called it "Blume". It has a tiny little probably standard icon flower that goes with it and I almost cried when I saw it just now.
I identify so much with that single flower... it's ridiculous.

We're watching TV. It's 6pm. We've just started a movie on Netflix.

Moth: We could go to the cinema today.
Me: Then we can't watch this movie. We'd be doing nothing but watching stuff all evening.
Moth: Yes, so? We took out the trash! *accomplished look*

This afternoon began with a healthy dose of Moth. Actually, it began with some sweet talk with me lazing arond on our couch and Moth trying to keep me company before realizing that I wasn't going to become any more interesting. Then, this happened:

Me: You are the sunshine of my life.
Moth: You are soft rain drizzling on the roof - while I'm inside.
Me: You are the scent of flowers in springtime.
Moth: You are a chocolate/nut cake.
Me: *allergic to nuts* Because I'm good for you but not good for myself?
Moth: Sort of. You are like... you're a cat. *short moment's consideration* There are different kinds of cats. Garfield is also a cat.
Me: *sinking deeper into my comfy pillow* I'll hit you. I'll get up, come over there and hit you. Any moment now.
Moth: In the words of my doctor: on a scale from 1 to 100, how likely do you think that is?
Me: *half laughing, half snoozing* Two. Two at least.
Moth: Well, yes. In a different universe, I am sure somewhere out there I'm beaten up severely right now.

(Because the written form of this might be misleading: both of us were in a good mood this morning and laughing all the time during this conversation. :D )

Moth: "You know what song I want for my funeral? But no one can sing along."
Me: *after a few wrong guesses, including I could have danced tonight and We are the champions* Well?
Moth: "It's a Beatles song."
Me: "Blackbird."
Moth: "Yes! It's sad, but not too sad. Somehow upbeat, too. But the lyrics don't fit entirely. People can't go and sing along. They'll notice it says 'All your life you were only waiting for this moment to arise'. So unless I commit suicide, please don't play it at my funeral."
Me: "I won't play it at your funeral even IF you commit suicide, because that says you've been waiting to commit suicide all your life!"
Moth: I heard it earlier this week and thought: this should be played at an official function. But it's too sad for a wedding."
Me: "It might work as a baby song..."
Moth: "I have NOT been waiting all my life to have a baby."
Me: Well, I have! Sort of."
*small pause*
Moth: "You are one of nature's little jokes, aren't you?"
Me: "What? Why?"
Moth: "You want nothing more than a baby and life presents you with a female partner."
*some bantering ensues, ending with:*
Moth: "You're like a milder version of Job. He is presented with horrible punishments, you are presented with... mild inconveniences."
Me: "I just realised you come up with this shit only on non-workdays. Why's that?"
Moth: "I have my head clear for creative things."

Moth: "I am so done for. I have nothing in my head today.

*weird eye movements*

Except for my contacts. My contacts are in my head now."

Moth: "I am so done for. I have nothing in my head today.

*weird eye movements*

Except for my contacts. My contacts are in my head now."

Dinner.
Moth: "A FEAST!"
Me: "...on both your houses."
Moth: "That's a curse I can get behind."