Christmas countdown: 10 days left

Yesterday we had a vast skating rink all around. Then came the snow, white, fluffy, like powdered sugar, with all those miriads of sparkles.
I've lost my gloves, which I'd had only for a month and with which I believed to have looked like a genuine lady. Heartbroken and mourning my gloves, I'm reading the BBC news, and lo! there's a note about Poland, too, which happens once or twice a qaurter of the year, always with respect to some embarrassing situation or failure.


So now they echo the stir made by the first Afro-American MP in the Polish Parliament. And here comes this:

Racism is still a problem in Poland, where it is not uncommon for well-educated people to make racist jokes, our correspondent says. 

Fristly. There are so few Afro-Americans in our country (they too, just like BBC news, may not find our "emerging economy" attractive enough), that you have to explain to the kids on pics that people may be different colour and that white is only one from many options.

Secondly: it's true, many people would not even know they'd told a racist joke. But, to be honest, I haven't heard anybody telling one for dozen or so years now. I believe we're a freindly nation that respects the others, especially the disrespected ones; we might not have had slavery in our history, but experienced all sorts of repression and deprivation. I hope I'm not too idealistic about that!

Christmas countdown: 13 days left

After a fabulous, white morning (it was quite a challenge, digging the car up from the snow), around lunch time (while I'm studying hard at my translation school) - it starts raining. What this gigantic snowmelt brings about are not merely some puddles, no: imagine a great deal of water, a sea, an ocean of water in the middle of a big city - and what it takes to find any dry patch to set your foot on! Swimming along the street, with my shoes completely soaked, I wonder if it's time we started building an ark.

In the meantime (again), our home ginger cookies factory goes on manufacturing first rate products! These are my daughetr's:

Christmas countdown: 14 days left

I think children add some magical flavour, otherwise a bit forgotten by the adults, to waiting for Christmas. Our living room turns into one large (physically - very small, however!) artists' study, and Christmas decorations appear in wholesale amounts.

At present our son is also fascinated with the "Pettson and Findus" book series (Pettson och Findus in its original Swedish version). So we're reading. Those lovely, wise stories, so richly decorated, are, however, entirely devoid of "glamour" - an old lone man and his lively cat enjoy small things and have adventures as the small things begin to complicate.


Unmissable, for the kids and adults alike! :)

Christmas countdown: 15 days left

I can't keep up with the days and the dates, and the time keeps counting down till Christmas by itself. There's no possibility to negotiate, to ask for at least half an hour daily more, and no business training on "how to make the others give you what you want" could teach me to extort even a couple of more minutes, not to mention days.

In the meantime, in which I think my life generally happens, we're busy preparing Christmas stuff. My daughter is painting with acrylic paints a box for ginger cookies, the ginger-flavoured dough's in the fridge and bedtime stories revolve around Christmas trees, waiting for the Santa and adventures on the snow.

Outside the window, the snow is melting and only now I know it was better with the frost. At the moment, the street is covered with the dirty porridge. Why can I never enjoy things on time?

Christmas countdown: 19 days left

My daughter goes to a playdate - her classmate invites her to decorate ginger cookies together. In general, almost everyone I talked to today is baking, has just baked or is planning to bake ginger cookies. I've been eating them a lot recently, my favourite "Speculatius" - German Spiced Cookies.

Today the teachers at my postgraduate translation school are trying to spoil the fun of waiting for Christmas by making prophecies about tests and exams. First, I have to pull down my head from the clouds.


playdate - an arranged appointment for children to get together for a few hours to play