Warsaw Mommy Blog

So, yesterday was Mother’s Day in Poland (remember how I said it’s celebrated on May 26th, no matter what day of the week that may fall on?). So since it was a Wednesday, there was (a) no sleeping in (b) no day with the family (c) no lovely brunch or fuss or whatever.

But! Max woke me up at 6:00 with a potted plant (with bright yellow flowers; the boy knows what mama likes!) and the most beautiful card I think I will ever EVER get for Mother’s Day. Piotr had painted Max and Alex’s teeny tiny hands and then put their handprints inside the card. I almost died five times, I was so overwhelmed by the sweetness: by which I mean both the card itself and my husband’s thoughtfulness. I have a box in the bedroom which I call ‘my box o’ stuff’. Inside it, there are the boys’ birth certificates, our marriage certificate, the hospital bracelets put on the boys’ wrists after they were born, locks of hair from both boys’ first haircuts, the card from my Dad’s funeral, some photos, and so on. I swear, if the flat is ever on fire, I will grab that box and my kids and get the hell out. The handprint card? Is going in the box.

Then it was off to Max’s payschool, where they had a ’surprise’ planned – I was not at all sure what to expect, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it would be semi-rhythmic and extremely atonal – and sure enough… Max’s group lined up and recited a poem, then sang a song, then another poem. And then they gave us Mommies our presents (framed pictures of a vase of flowers, made out of playdough and sparkles and some glitter). It is actually damn cute – yes, really! – and as soon as I got home, I took down my totally lovely framed sketch of a mother and a baby and put up the playdough flowers. It is the first picture you see upon entering the flat, and I am just fine with that. After its time hung up on the wall, it will also go into the box upstairs in our bedroom. I’ll get Piotr to take a photo of it tonight and post it for you tomorrow.

I got home from the playschool party, all happy and loved-up, and THEN I got two e-mails confirming that I have two new clients, and a project that has long been put on hold (finally) started up yesterday, and THEN I was told (very hush-hush) that I am the favoured candidate for another project for which I am still preparing my proposal.

But before you go running off, thinking that my day was without any ‘normalcy’: Alex threw my mobile phone into the bathtub while Max was having his morning bath. It sputtered and flashed frantically and we gathered around and gave it CPR and wrapped it up in warm blankets and muttered prayers over its tiny little freaking-out body, before oh-so-gingerly turning it back on and waiting for signs of life. And it still works (!!!) – except for the fact that I cannot hear anyone talking to me on the other side. Oh, they hear me just fine, and all my contacts and calendar and scheduling information is all intact (whew!) and I can send and receive sms messages. But just don’t expect me to hear a damn thing you say if you call me, so be prepared to shout your lungs out. Or maybe it’s better to send me an e-mail.

All in all? A great Mother’s Day.

Welcome, everyone, to another ‘Over To You’ Tuesday! Today’s guest is the gorgeous (and she IS gorgeous, ya’ll: this is her on ‘Bloggers Without Makeup Day’) Cinda from This Side Of The Island. With a fantastic husband and three beautiful kids, Cinda’s love of ‘Family, life and simple food’ is central to her belief system, and is highlighted in her other blog, called Simply About Life. Check out her recipes and photos, as she pursues her own ‘Foodie Challenge’: to cook/ bake something new almost every day. And here I can barely boil water.

So, I’ll hand it over to Cinda now….take it away, babe!

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‘KK, Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia ……I guess looking back I’ve actually lived here – that is Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia – for almost 14 years… Well, actually I’ve lived in Malaysia in total for bit longer than that. In fact, I first arrived in Malaysia when I was 5 years old in 1979…a long long time ago. My dad was posted to Malaysia for a little over a year and we lived in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. It was the first of many places that we lived and one that I can remember very well – and a place that I would have never thought I’d call my future “home”.

West and East Malaysia (Borneo)

Travelling around as a kid and living the expat life was an exciting experience for me. We moved from Malaysia, Taiwan and then to Holland and back to Sydney, Australia. Each place gave us a unique exposure to a different culture and language, and for me that also meant making new friends and going to a new school each time. A whole lot of travelling but I really enjoyed my childhood; probably not your normal one but I’m thankful to my parents for giving us that opportunity.

Although we travelled and lived away from Australia, my parents would always try to maintain that Aussie identity within us. Mum would always join the local branch of the Australian expat club just so we could mingle with the other Aussies but it was usually the case that the American and British clubs were more popular, and where our friends were. They always had the better games, bigger crowds and more interesting holidays like Halloween and Thanksgiving…. something we don’t celebrate in Australia!

My first trip to Taiwan age 3 (centre), Alice Smith School (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia right bottom), hiking in Switzerland (right top), International School of Amsterdam (middle top), Taipei American School (centre bottom), British Museum with dad (left bottom), and Grand Hotel, Taipei, Taiwan (left top)

Anyway, apart from trying to maintain a sense of identity in a foreign place, my parents also tried to uphold our Chinese traditions and customs too. Celebrating all the necessary festivals and trying to keep in touch with the language: that was something I struggled with because I had only used it to communicate with my grandparents.  It may have been one of my first languages but I gradually lost touch with it and now only speak bit and pieces of it…. I really regret that.

So getting back to living in Malaysia: well first of all, how did I return to this place? I guess the hand of fate you could say. I have family out here on my mother’s side and at the time I had six months to spare before starting my new job so it gave me the perfect opportunity to do a bit of travelling after years at Uni and work…. a bit of time for me.

I wasn’t supposed to be travelling to Malaysia, in fact my original plan was to travel over to Canada to visit some other relatives, but somehow that plan fell apart and so I thought why not go to Malaysia. I hadn’t been there since I was 14 years old and I guess it was time to visit the relatives. Little did I know I was about to journey on a path that would lead me to a new home and fall in love with my future hubby, Donald the “tour guide” on a romance that would lasted more than my 3 month visa could permit.

When I first arrived in Kota Kinabalu or what the locals here call the “Land Below the Wind”, I really had no idea what this place was all about. Sure I had been here as kid, but that was so long ago and this part of Asia was so foreign to me at the time. I had only passing memories from visiting this place on holidays but most of those times were spent visiting family.

This is one of reasons why Sabah is such a beautiful place…. Mt. Kinabalu….truly the Land Below the Wind (photo taken from Tourism Malaysia) …My hubby has often asked me whether I’d like to climb Mt. Kinabalu but I’ve told him that I’m quite happy to look at these photos from afar and that he can do the climbing for the both of us (he climbed it in 2000!)

I saw KK (another local term of endearment for Kota Kinabalu) as a tourist during my stay, seeing all the typical tourist places like the island just off the city centre, the beaches and their tropical warm waters, the national parks, Mt Kinabalu and sampling all the delicious types of foods from the many ethnic groups that make up Malaysia…. Chinese, Indian, Malay and Kadazan (one of the many local ethnic groups in Sabah). I was won over by that and best of all I got to meet Donald. I was actually suppose to meet him when on my last trip to KK but he couldn’t make it as he was still living in the US – another long story but he was supposed to be at my aunt’s wedding when I was 14 – but another path of destiny brought us together in our 20s. But thinking back I don’t think we would have liked each other at that age!

A breathtaking view of the coast and the islands from the summit of Mt Kinabalu taken at 6.00am (photo from realtravel.com)

So to make it short I had fallen in love with this beautiful country and that also included the love of this wonderful man too!  And with this, I took the leap and got married and moved to my new “home”, on this side of the island of Borneo! I was in love!

The reality of visiting Malaysia as a tourist versus actually living here was something I came to learn very quickly; first of all, there was the language. Although I’m an ABC (Australian Born Chinese) I’m not really good at speaking Cantonese let alone Mandarin, which is one of the main languages here besides the national language of Bahasa Malaysia. I often get confused with being a local – rather than my hubby – and I would often get spoken to in Mandarin. To which I would just look at the person and reply in my limited Mandarin that I don’t speak the language… I have to tell you first of all my hubby is not exactly “local” looking either, which is sometimes why all the questions are directed at me. You see my hubby is part Kadazan, English and Japanese and 6ft 2’, so that totally rules out looking local for him, and he’ll just sit back and have a laugh at me whenever the “language drama” happens. I still struggle with any Bahasa Malaysia too because I just can’t get the pronunciation right. I’ve tried to learn but I realise that you can’t have a spouse teach you – especially when they are prone to having fits of laughter at your expense.

The other thing I’ve come across living here are the different cultural aspects of each ethnic group that we have in Malaysia. The vast range of Asian cultures all diverse but at the same time so much the same. There are familial ones that I’ve grown up with, but also new one too that I have never heard of. I learnt about this firsthand when I had my first child and I always found someone giving some “handy” bit of advice along the way. I was given a list of things from different friends and family about what types of food I was suppose to eat and taboo things which are not suppose to be eaten or just things I wasn’t suppose to do while pregnant. I wasn’t suppose to eat fruits like pineapple, bananas, lamb and so many other things because it was either  too “heaty/heatiness” or too “cooling”… Confusing?? It all has to do with the balancing of the Yin (heat) and Yang (cooling) of foods and how they would influence our bodies and the sensations it would produce by eating a certain food…. A real science some might say to what we can or can’t eat and it’s outcome on our bodies or just utter confusion to some!

I couldn’t eat a particular food (like lamb) because it considered too “heaty”, meaning that by eating it my body would overheat, causing myself and the baby to have “heaty” skin… rashes and fevers to follow….or if I ate a “cooling” food like pineapple it would be bad for my blood circulation and later affecting my milk production. I would faithfully observe these food “restrictions” whenever I was in the company of those who dictated what was heaty and cooling but as soon as I was out of sight, I would just eat to my heart’s content whatever I wanted… nobody was going to tell me and my growing belly what I could or couldn’t eat! I also had to check with my grandmother about the “truth” behind these heaty/cooling foods and her being a Chinese woman from China, she confirmed to me that I could eat whatever I wanted just as long as it wasn’t too much of a good thing and some of the food restrictions she had never heard of before…..oh what a wise woman!

But it didn’t end there: after I had my first child I was supposed to go into “confinement” for a period of one whole month or 40 days. I couldn’t go anywhere, eat anything I liked, had to bathe only in warm water, no air conditioning, cover up most of my body to keep the “wind” away and one thing I just couldn’t tolerate: I couldn’t wash my hair for a whole month!! I live in a tropical hot and very HUMID country and there is only so much self induced “warmth” I could take.

The main worry about all of these “confinement” rules really stems from the Asian belief that after having a child, you have to have time to recover not only from the ordeal of childbirth, but also from having to restore the body/womb after nourishing a baby for 9 months. There are some many stages of recovery and not only does it cover the yin/yang foods but it’s also about how you look after your body straight after giving birth. There are certain practices that you have to abide by like keeping warm, covering up to keep the chill away, not exposing your hair unnecessarily to water or wind (this is why you can’t wash too long and not at all in cold water). Although it all seemed well-intended I could never understand how anyone could get a “chill” in 30+C weather esp., in a tropical country like Malaysia.

There were also superstitions that I was also told about to protect the baby. How we placed the cot was important too, not too near the window so that evil spirits couldn’t get to the baby, not leaving the house before the first month is over, and the most interesting one was about burying the placenta deep in the garden away from evil spirits. It was all so interesting and scary at the same time, especially when you’re having your first child, so naturally I did follow some of these just to appease my own superstitious nature…. There are so many spooky jungle stories you hear around here, so I didn’t mind takings all precautions necessary!

So that was my first crash course experience living in this melting pot of cultures in Malaysia. It taught me to appreciate what my parents tried to teach me about living and learning about other places. Malaysia taught me to embrace an even wider scope of Asian cultures and I guess make me more Asian than before. But I haven’t forgotten about my own home, Sydney, and as my parents did, I try to keep my Aussie culture alive for my children – my connection with my home place, the love of my country – and I hope they will appreciate it and welcome all the diversity of cultures they have grown up with and bring it to where ever they find themselves in the future.’

You know, for me one of the funniest Polish language things has been ‘pet names’ for kids. In Polish, the diminutive is just so sweet; in my opinion, it is much more so than in English.

Example: in English, how do we show that a person is little? Well, we do something to their name, right? So ‘William’ becomes ‘Billy’ and ‘Jennifer’ becomes ‘Jenny’ (it seems that shortening things and adding a ‘y’ is the way to use the diminutive in English, yeah?). And if we want to call a child a ‘pet name’, it’s things like sweetie and honey and baby and so on.

Well, in Polish the most popular way to show affection for kids is to lengthen and sweeten the names of certain animals and objects, so a cat (‘kot’) becomes ‘kotku’ (‘little cat’). The ‘u’ is really important, actually, as it is strangely soft and caressing when pronounced at the end of a pet name… it’s not a sound that is used in English at all, at least not that I can think of.

So in Polish, calling a child ‘little cat’ is adorable, though it would be a bit odd in English, admittedly; I suppose you’d call a child ‘kitten’, but even that’s a bit odd to me. Sadly, some of the cutest Polish pet names just do not translate very well. Here are a few of my favourites:

’słoneczko’ (‘little sun’);
‘robaczku’ (‘little worm’);
’skarbeczko’ (‘little treasure’);
‘żabko’ (‘little frog’ – this is Piotr’s favourite name for Max, by the way);
‘rybko’ (‘little fish’);
‘perełko’ (‘little pearl’ – this is what Ewa calls Alex);
‘kwiatuszku’ (‘little flower’).

Some of them are really cute, huh? But not all of them are terrifically useful in English. Then again, when I was small my French-speaking mother called me ‘choux choux’ (‘little cabbage’) which is so sweet in French but doesn’t really work in English, right?

I have been trying to think of a pet name that works in both English and Polish: ‘little honey’ (‘miódku’, I suppose) makes no sense in Polish whatsoever – it’s like you’re calling a child a small jar of honey; there is no such thing as ’sweetheart’ and ‘cutie’ is non-existent.

So, I can only come up with one: ‘kochanie’ (‘my little love’). I think that works.

Well, nobody was more surprised than I was when ‘T’ called me about two weeks ago. You see, he is a casual acquaintance of ‘J’s’ (y’all remember ‘J’, don’t you? Yes, I thought you might), and it turns out that ‘T’ read J’s post, then mine, and all your comments, and he was quite offended by J’s depiction of the single male life in Warsaw. And he called me and asked if he could “set the record straight” as he put it, and show yet another side of life in Warsaw as a foreigner. So I said sure… I mean, what the heck! Let’s just blow the lid off stereotypes and pre-conceived notions and give everyone air-time! I think it’s great, don’t you?

So. Here is ‘T’, who wishes to remain anonymous because (a) he doesn’t want to cause some kind of internal turf war with ‘J’ and those of his ilk who hang around with ‘T’ occasionally and (b) he thinks it’s cool to write secretly and under a pseudonym of a single letter, and since this may well be the first and last time he gets to do this, he wants to grab the opportunity. And I totally get both point (a) and point (b), so I said sure.

Oh, and speaking of guest posts: check out mine at the lovely Mama Mogantosh’s site… my first guest post. How exciting!

Anyway, on with it now… let me hand things over to ‘T’; otherwise known as the ‘anti-J’.

‘As soon as I heard about ‘J’ writing a guest post for Michelle, I just knew that it was going to be some tragic partying with bimbos post. And guess what! I was right!

I read it with a mix of horror and resignation. I know ‘J’ (not well) and I have seen him out on the town, gold card flashing, talking to every woman with a skirt up to her crotch, and he just keeps spending money and drinking and talking until some drunk woman with fake breasts finally gives in and goes home with him. The sad truth is that about 10 years ago he had the women at ‘hello’, but he is getting older and the women are getting younger. He calls them ‘girls’ and I guess that is the best word for them: loads of them are barely in to their 20’s.

The point is that in his post he made it sound like he has this awesome party life with gorgeous blondes panting over him and beating a path to his door. The truth? He just keeps pestering a girl until he gets what he wants. There’s no dignity to it. And it seems that he gets more desperate as the years go on and he gets fatter and balder.

But I am not here to trash ‘J’, even though he kind of deserves it. I’m here to stand up for the other kind of single guy in Warsaw, guys like me. Yes I like to party, I like to drink, I think Polish women are attractive. But I have dated Polish women and the truth is that they are not these perfect goddesses. They can look pretty good, but quite a few of these gorgeous blonde things can be horribly immature and surly and manipulative and controlling. Of course you only see this side of them after you start living together, or get engaged or married. Before that they are really great. Then as soon as they get you where they want you, then you aren’t ‘allowed’ to go out with the guys (and if you do your phone will ring every 5 minutes and it will be her demanding to know what you’re doing and who’s there and when will you be back). It’s like, no trust. I have no idea if Polish women have all been screwed over by men in the past and so have learned not to let ‘their men’ out of their sight (maybe they just don’t trust other Polish women?), or if this is some kind of cultural thing, but I really hate it. For me, I’m most interested in a woman who can trust me, and I really don’t care if she is Polish or not. Just a smart, pretty woman who is secure in our relationship – that’s what I’m after. It’s hard to find on the party circuit, though, so I have cut my time on it lately.

So – shock! There are some single guys here in Warsaw who are looking for relationships, not just one night stands. And we’re not all about the ‘Polish girls’, some of us are about ‘kind women’. So in this way, a foreign single guy in Warsaw is exactly like a single guy in any city on the planet: some of us are after something casual and some of us are not. Me? I’m not. I am looking for a girlfriend, someone I can be serious about and marry. I want kids. I want a mortgage. I want to celebrate wedding anniversaries. I want to grow old with someone.

I have no idea if SHE is here in Warsaw. As more time passes, I start to think not more and more often. But then again I have friends back in the USA who were born and bred there, and they can’t find a girlfriend either. So I am sure it’s not totally cultural. I think it’s just that finding a good relationship is hard, and it takes work and time. So I’m waiting.

I guess that’s all I wanted to say. I just didn’t want you all to go away thinking that every single guy in Warsaw thinks and acts like ‘J’. Because we don’t. He may think he’s some kind of spokesman for our group, but he doesn’t speak for me.’

Gah!

And work has exploded. Yet again. I am juggling two deadlines in two days… forgive me, y’all! I’ll be able to post the new ‘Over To You’ text tomorrow.

In the meantime, I did a guest post of my own over at Mogantosh… so go check it out!

So. I had an interesting conversation on Friday evening, with a very lovely woman from New York (who was in New York at the time of the conversation in question). So we were talking on the phone… quite obviously!

OK, backing up: she found me through a Google search which led her to my blog. And she wrote me an e-mail, telling me that she is the producer of a TV show – which I will not name here – and she is looking for foreigners who have bought property in Poland within the past couple of years and am I someone like that? Well yes, I wrote back to her, I am and what does this involve exactly? So she offered to call me on Friday evening, so she could tell me more. Well, OK then.

So she calls and she was very very nice and sounded VERY ‘back there‘ with her American accent, and one of the first things she asks me is: “And how long have you lived in Poland?”, to which I respond, “Almost ten years in total, but just over seven this time around.” She expresses shock and awe and so I explain that I lived here between my university degrees (way back from 1993 to 1995), and then did my MA in Canada, then went to Asia for five years, and then moved back just over seven years ago. And here I have stayed. And she says? “WELL THEN, YOU ARE NO LONGER A FOREIGNER.”

Pause at my end. I am not a foreigner in Poland? So… what am I? And she explains to me that according to the definition of ‘foreigner’ in the world of her TV show, a ‘foreigner’ is someone who has lived in the foreign country for two years or less. After that, you’re a Pole. Or an Italian. Or a German. Or whatever. The point is, you’re ‘naturalised’ and so cannot be on her show. She said all this very nicely, BTW, and I see her point. But it did get me thinking about how ‘the world’ sees people like me: expats who have lived in a foreign country for as long as I have, and who own property, and who work here and maybe have families. I mean, just WHO AM I?

I mean, let’s be frank here: I am NOT a Pole. Right? I am a Canadian. And although I speak Polish, I am not fluent. I do not hold Polish citizenship. I do not vote. I did not live through Communism. I have no family here, aside from my own little unit of us four. I do not think like a Pole, I do not behave like a Pole. I have always called Canada ‘home’. But then again, I have not lived in Canada for 12 years. I pay taxes here, not there. I have a business here, not there. I know the political and social and economic reality of Poland better than those realities back in Canada. My mother lives in Toronto now, but I never have, and so I know Warsaw better than Toronto: I never have any idea where I am in Toronto, but I can find my way around Warsaw with both eyes covered. So, yeah. Maybe I am kind of Polish-esque – like maybe ‘Polish lite’ – but I am still Canadian too. Am I a child of the universe? A global citizen? A mixture of many things and places and people and experiences? Or maybe I am essentially ‘homeless’, meaning that I do not fit where I am now, but do not fit where I come from either? Argh! Existential crisis!

And what about people like ‘J’? People who may live in a foreign country for years and years and never bother to learn the language, or the culture? These people exist, indeed they do: I have met plenty of foreigners here in Warsaw who have lived here for 10 years and cannot say more than ‘Good morning’ in Polish. Yes, really. But according to the producer’s definition, these people are no longer foreigners, by virtue of having lived here for more than two years. But I bet if you tried to tell these people they are now Poles, they’d backslap you. Right?

Now I am wondering: what makes a person a ‘foreigner’ and when do they stop being one? What is ‘foreign-ness’ and when do you stop having it? Such were my thoughts over the weekend. And I have come to the conclusion that – for me – it is about what you call ‘home’. Where is your heart? What matters to you? What do you guard and protect fiercely, and what would you be devastated to be without? If you were without this thing, would you feel lost? Once you figure all this out, then you know where your home is, and where you belong.

What I came to realise over the weekend is that my heart is with my husband and boys, so wherever they are, that is my home. It does not matter if we are in Warsaw, or in Toronto, or in Berlin, or in Hong Kong: they are my home. As long as I am with them, I am not a foreigner – I am where I belong. But if we are not together – if I am in Warsaw and on my own, or in Toronto and on my own – I am not home. For me, that is the sign of ‘foreign-ness’: to be away from your home, however you may define that. Some people will call ‘home’ a country, or a city, or a certain house. But I call my home Piotr, Max and Alex.

So the lady in New York was right about me not being a foreigner anymore, but not for the reasons she believes: I am not a foreigner because I am home. And that home has nothing to do with Warsaw, or how long I’ve been here. It’s about where my heart lives… and I know where that is.

It’s here:

And here:

And here:

Yeah, my home is unmortgageable, to be sure… but it’s priceless. To me, anyway.

Well, y’all had better brace yourselves! I haven’t been here since Monday, and today is Friday, and stuff has been going on. So this will a tome, an epic, a saga. A round-up, a ‘tying up the loose ends’, a catch-up, a panic-attempt at getting it all out of my head and onto the screen before it flies out of my head forever.

Oh, BTW? One thing I’d LOVE out of my head forever? All this green gunk! Yep, I am a snot factory working overtime, a waterfall of snot floweth, my brain is full of the stuff, my eyes MUST be turning green as I type this. I’ll go look in the mirror later to check it out. In short: I am sick. I blow my nose, and all that happens is my ears pop and I feel dizzy – the snot in no way recedes. Anything that comes out is quickly replaced with new stuff. Yes, I am a  mess. And just in time for the weekend, when we have two active boys in our care 24 hours a day. Hurrah! Gah.

Anyway, now that that is out of the way, let’s get on with it, yeah? So first, let me just say that my work life seems to have exploded in the past two weeks, and you will hear no complaints from me, though this means that you will actually hear almost NOTHING from me. As in, my blog has been (and will probably continue to be) noticeably quieter than it is usually. For those of you who have read the ‘About Us’ section, you know that I have my own business. Now, if you also have your own business, you know just how precarious this position can be at times: in my case, it seems that I am either sitting on my butt and praying for e-mails and work, or I am running my butt off, praying for a breather. I rarely have anything in between, except when a project is just starting up and we are in the negotiation and contract-signing phase, or the project is winding down and we are in the final touches and issuing the invoice phase.

I’ve had my own business for just over a year now, and it has been rough from the get-go. I started my own thing when I was about five months pregnant with Alex – and I started it because when I was just over three months pregnant, I was fired. Yes, I know this is totally illegal in Poland, but the thing is, the employer was actually based in the UK and so when I consulted a lawyer here in Warsaw, I was told that it would all be a mess of ‘UK law vs. Polish law’, with some EU Labour Law thrown in for good measure, plus a team of lawyers here, and one over there, and then having to pay for legally-sworn translators to translate everything from English to Polish and vice versa, and on and on, for about three years. Oh, I’d win in the end, this lawyer assured me, but I’d have to go through all that stress and burn through a lot of money in order to pursue my legal right to not be fired whilst pregnant. So I let it go, seeing as I was pregnant and unemployed and had better get something else lined up pronto. I did spend a couple of weeks contemplating the injustice of it all, and bemoaning a legal system that is unaffordable to people who need it the most, and thinking that this is how crooked jerkface employers get away with treating employees badly. But then I shook it off and started to think.

My thoughts were not pleasant: who was going to hire a pregnant foreigner who spoke Polish passably well, but was certainly nothing like fluent? Answer: nobody, honey. I was backed into quite a corner, and so I decided to set up shop for myself. At five months pregnant. Yeah, I like my life complex. You?

Well. Things began well, slowed down, picked up, and then s-l-o-w-e-d down late last year as the economic crisis started to hit Warsaw in earnest, and since February I have struggled. I mean, really really struggled. Oh, the clients have still been coming and there has been work… but nothing like ENOUGH work or LARGE enough contracts. Then suddenly, last month that all changed and now I am being sent stuff left and right and I refuse to say no, because I’d like a cushion for when the next slow-down period hits. And so time over here on the blog is limited, at least for now. But like I said: no complaints from yours truly!

Next up: I am very proud – and actually quite surprised – that I have been going to the gym regularly. Yes! I work my butt off doing translation and editing and proofreading and writing and then use a two-hour trip to the gym as a break. No lie: I am finding that doing so (a) feels great after sitting in a chair and hunching over a keyboard for several hours (b) gives me the focus and energy to come back and put in another round of work and (c) helps me sleep better, so I even wake up more refreshed and ready to go. News flash, y’all: my body likes exercise!

What else? Ooooh, the lovely Cinda has given me not one but TWO awards in the past two weeks. Here they are:

Now, I get to tell you 10 things that make me happy, and pass the ‘Happy 101′ Award on to 10 bloggers who brighten my day. I also get to tell you why I love receiving comments on my blog, and then pass the sunshine yellow award on to five people who visit and comment and make my day! So here we go:

What makes me happy, in no particular order:

1. When Max and Alex giggle.
2. Wearing orange, red, yellow and purple. All at the same time.
3. Grinding coffee beans by hand, with Max ‘helping’.
4. Being tucked up in bed, drinking full-fat hot chocolate whilst reading a ‘lite’ book.
5. Hugs.
6. Meeting a girlfriend for Sunday brunch (with Max, of course!).
7. Listening to music.
8. Going out with Piotr for sushi.
9. A quiet coffee before the day crashes in on me.
10. Buying a new ring – just because!

And? Why do I love receiving comments? Ummm. Because I like knowing that something I have written has touched someone enough that they want to tell me that. Maybe they relate to what I am thinking or feeling or experiencing, and I like knowing that too. Maybe they disagree with me, and have a strong enough sense of self to tell me so, which I like very much. Maybe they just comment to let me know they are there, so as to encourage me to keep writing and sharing. Which I think I like best of all.

Now! Passing these lovely awards on (rolling up sleeves and flexing fingers). Ahem!

My ten bloggers for the ‘Happy 101′ Award are:

1. Robyn at Who’s The Boss?
2. Lulu at Cherry Blossom Adventures
3. Emma at Le Petit Bruno
4. Rachael at Mogantosh
5. Diana at exPress-o
6. Becky at The Blog Of Becky
7. Robyn at Blommi
8. Marylin at Pure Unadulterated Softthistle
9. Lucy at Diminishing Lucy
10. In Real Life at In Real Life

And my five ‘You Are My Sunshine’ nominees (my lovely commenters) are:

1. Mary at Clean Shavings
2. Not A Soccer Mom at As My Mother Before Me
3. Barbara at JoBart
4. Kelley at Magneto Bold Too
5. Veronica at Sleepless Nights

Next up: Jodie over at Mummy Mahem had the brilliant idea of showing what real beauty is… and bloggers the world over are taking off their makeup and posting ‘real’ photos of themselves in honour of ‘Bloggers Without Makeup Day’; so here I am, in all my un-made-up glory. Actually, most photos of me on this blog have been ‘au naturel’. But I like this one the best of all:

See the way Alex is staring up at me adoringly? HE doesn’t care that I’m not wearing lipstick. And that my hair is not brushed. And that I haven’t drawn in my eyebrows yet. For him, I am GORGEOUS!

And now, finally, here are a couple of photos of the boys, seeing as I have been remiss in putting any up the past few days.

Here’s Max, wearing his new sunglasses and doing a Fonzi-esque modified thumbs up (index fingers up?). He is also saying ‘So cooooool‘ while Piotr takes this photo. Yes, really.

And here is Alex. Swinging. Ummm. That’s it. Oh, take note of his cowboy style bandana around his neck. Very Woody from Toy Story:

And finally finally! Brenda over at Mummy Time has put up another Flog Yo Blog Friday… so drop on over and sign up.

OK, that’s it. Whew! Over and out!

Max went to get a haircut this weekend…

…. and he was remarkably cool about it all. No histrionics. No screaming. No bribery necessary. It was smooth sailing the whole way.

Yeah. I don’t know who that kid was either. But he has a cute damn haircut.

Yes, I’m one day late! But no matter… I hope you had a lovely day. And for those of you who find Mother’s Day a hard day – a day of loss or sadness or grieving, either for your own mother or for a lost child – an extra virtual hug to give you some strength.

Now, here’s a news flash for y’all: Poland did not celebrate Mother’s Day yesterday. Nope! In Poland, it is always ALWAYS on May 26th. Yeah, I know that in North America the date is moved around so it is on a Sunday, but not here, boy. May 26th… no negotiation! Which means that this year, it falls on a Wednesday. So what about a chance for me to sleep in? Nope. Breakfast in bed? Nuh-uh. A lazy morning on my own? Ummm, no. A nice lunch out with my family? Hell, no! Piotr and I have to work! A day at the zoo, or at the park, or at the cinema with the kids? N-O. No. Mother’s Day will be like any other Wednesday: up early, mad rush to get Piotr and Max out the door by 7:30 and then work. Nothing special at all.

Well. Except that I get to spend one more day of my life being the mother of two sweet, funny, bright, healthy little boys.

I suppose that really is quite something.

Hey. Remember how I promised to do that ‘recommend 12 bloggers’ thing? And it was to be done by last Saturday? And then I didn’t? And then I promised promised to do it by Wednesday? And then I didn’t?

Yeah. I’m a big fat lying bloggy liar who bloggy lies.

This week has been non-conducive to blog updating. It hasn’t been a bad week – nothing to worry about, no crises or problems as such – but in terms of time, I just haven’t had enough. First, Monday was a holiday so the boys were both here and very very much in our faces, so work or writing were quite impossible. Then I have my ‘normal’ weekly life which revolves around and depends on the lives of others (what time the nanny arrives in the morning determines what time I can sit down and start work, or leave the flat for a meeting; what time Piotr gets away from work determines if I have to pick up Max from playschool, and for how long I am home alone with the boys) at the best of times, and then somehow I have to factor in client deadlines and demands, and then actually DO SOME WORK. And writing and editing and translation take great focus, but this whole week has been rainy, so Alex and Ewa have been in the flat. All. Week. Long. Goodbye, focus!

And for some reason, this week has been chock-full of niggly little things to do, which are not major time-suckers in themselves (like: the boys got vaccinated yesterday, I had to order and then pick up a new company stamp, I took on an extra hour of teaching this week) but the travel time, and logistical arrangements for picking up/ dropping off the boys, and the preparation, and the lost time at work all add up, and before I know it, I’ve lost half a day’s work on taking the kids for a 10-minute needle. Madness.

Somehow in all of this, I’ve managed to get to the gym once, for two hours, but I doubt I’ll be able to go today, though I planned to. Maybe this weekend. We’ll see.

In the meantime, let me just post this photo, in honour of my first ‘Freak Me Out’ Friday. It’s a picture of my husband, Piotr, at the age of three:

Does he remind you of anyone?

Freak. Me. Out.