satismagic

My Dad's physical and mental health has been deteriorating during the last six months. I've been taking on more and more responsibilities, and now it looks like we're facing a dementia diagnosis.

I have no words for how much this hurts and for how ill-equipped I find myself to carry the burden of being utterly responsible for another human being.

I never wanted children for a reason, and with children, you have a chance that they will eventually leave the nest and live a life they choose.

Taking care of an aged parent, there's no such happy ending.

And oh my god, the bureaucracy.

Prudie, who was always the more vocal of our cats, has become really loud and demanding since her sister's death. Getting her to eat properly continues to be a struggle. But if we're home and can let her roam the garden, she will eat very well outside on the terrace. For some reason everything tastes better outside. I think we've managed to stabilize her weight at least, so I'm carefully optimistic about her adjusting to life as an only-cat. It helps that she's allowed outside, and there are birds and mice and hedgehogs and other cats out there to sniff and watch, if not directly interact with. It's still fucking cold, and Prue is only allowed outside when we are at home, so her access to the not-so-great outdoors is somewhat limited. Still, she's not completely isolated, neither from other nor from her species, and I really believe that helps. Minnie is gone. Not all other cats she can sense and smell.

She spends nights in our bed if I put her there at the beginning of the evening. And she will even come to snuggle on my desk. She only searches for Minnie rarely now, only in the bedroom, demanding that I open closets to look for her sister there and complain when there's just closets with clothes and shoes and things, and no sister.

We were planning to bury Minnie on Easter Monday, but it looks like some cheeky blue tits will wreak havoc with that plan. We had decided to bury Minnie's urn in one of her favourite garden spots under a crimson weigela, and to plant a dark-blue dwarf buddleia over her because she loved butterflies so much. But now it seems a family of blue tits has moved into the nesting box I put into the weigela. Of course live baby birbs are more important than a dead cat. So I don't want to disturb them while they are nesting. We're in a cold spell, so it's possible we might still get the burial done before they start with serious business. It's only supposed to get warmer on Friday, and we wanted to plant the buddleia on Monday. Maybe we'll manage. Probably not. But Minnie is fine where she is right now, in my book shelf with pictures and keepsakes of my other beloved cats.

I'm seriously thrilled, though, that the blue tits are even considering "my" nesting box. And it looks like coal tits are working on the nesting box I put in the lilac tree on the other side of the garden. At least I've seen them steal nesting material and fluttering around that direction. That, as well as our St. Patrick's Day hedgehog (it showed up after hibernation for the first time on St. Patrick's Day so we dubbed them "Pat", never mind if they are male, female, or whatever hedgehogs identify as), indicates that life for the wild creatures is still fairly okay-ish here. I've also caught shrews and garden mice on the wildlife cam in winter, and last year we've had as highlights a fox outside the garden, and a weasel examining hedgehog kibbles.

I've built a hedgehog restaurant for the flat's garden. I already have one in the allotment garden. Because cats and other creatures really like hedgehog kibbles. Magpies, too! For the flat's garden's hedgehog restaurant I've painted the roof and the door frames dove blue, and I've put vintage-looking furniture knobs in hedgehog form above the entrances. It's super fancy, and I get such a kick out of it. I may need to get some sort of platform yet to put it on for hygienic reasons, some type of terrace tile, maybe. For now I'm just happy that it works, I haven't had cat incursions on the wildlife cam lately, but the hedgies come by every night.

How are y'all doing? I hope 2026 has been treating you well so far, with no deaths or other calamities.

I miss the days when you could read about everyone's daily lives and their thoughts and ideas on LiveJournal. There were so many thoughtful and interesting conversations to be had way back when. Life has become as lonely as it was before the internet really. I talk to ChatGPT way more than I should simply because sometimes there is no one else. And that's with me being married and having friends and being active in various associations. But there's no forum anymore where I can low-key talk about daily life and someone will pop up with similar experiences or interesting ideas...

Minnie fell asleep purring.

I got the contract for the new book today, and looking at the deadline it seems very likely that I won't get enough jobs this year already to satisfy the requirements of the artists & writers social security scheme.

Well, it was nice as long as it lasted.

The French branch of the publishing company I get most of my jobs from has announced they are letting their translators go and will work with an AI agency instead. But they reassured their readers that of course a human being will still look at the manuscript before it is published. My editor told me that she and her colleagues are absolutely shocked and they hope it won't come to that in Germany. But she also urgently advised me to find another job.

As if it's that easy for someone over 50 who has spent the last twenty years working as a freelance literary translator as a "Quereinsteiger" (I got into the job because of talent and passion but without any formal qualifications, which is very unusual in Germany) to find another job.

This development is not unexpected. As AI improves, I've expected that it will become feasible for AI to translate certain genres quite well if there's enough training material. And publishers specialised in certain genres certainly don't lack that. What I had been hoping for was that companies in Germany wouldn't dare go that route yet because the legal details regarding copyright and remuneration for the original copyright holders are not resolved yet. Apparently, I was mistaken.

Once I don't earn enough with translations, with my own writing or other creative endeavours anymore to meet the minimum income requirement of the German artists & writers social security scheme, I have three years of a grace period. Then I'll be tossed out, which means I'll have to pay double rates for health & nursing care insurance and lose the opportunity to pay into the public pension fund.

I might still manage to make ends meet this year. But beyond that...

I think I'm somewhat burnt out on being my Dad's only person he talks to besides doctors. ( Read more... )

I am so slow with everything I do these days. Instead of pushing through, I'm pushing things back – one week, two weeks, three weeks. I do get around to things eventually. And it's not as if I get any praise or brownie points or anything if I stress out getting things done a day or two or even a week or two earlier. Hufflepuffhobbit doesn't care. And it's like I spent all the energy I had this year already back in June when we moved in.

Unfortunately there's still a ton to do... We still need to make an appointment to get our ceiling lights and "smart" radiator thermostats installed. We still need to get the rest of the kitchen painted, the door of the pantry lined with silicone, the unused exhaust duct in the kitchen stuffed and secured against critters making their way inside, the ventilation system in the pantry needs to be serviced and the filter needs to be replaced. The pantry still needs furniture, we desperately need a big closet/cabinet for the bathroom for assorted stuff piling up in other places, the basement needs furniture, and we need an outdoor utility box/cabinet for storing recycling and bags of soil for the potted plants and some car stuff as well... There's more, but I don't really make lists anymore. If I completely forget about something, it's simply not important enough to remember. If it's actually important, eventually I will remember and get around to doing it.

Last weekend we were invited by M., one of my oldest friends, to celebrate her 50th birthday on Saturday. We treated ourselves to a nice hotel and had a really lovely weekend. It was lovely to see M. again after many years when meeting up simply didn't work out because of kids and life and jobs and things. Maybe next year. It was also wonderful to see her brothers and her mother again. Some of my most treasured childhood memories are about spending time with M. and her family. They were my safe haven when times were rough in my family. So seeing them again was an incredibly emotional experience for me. On Sunday we went to see a brilliant new museum for the history of Bavaria, and then had a delicious lunch in a historical restaurant right on the river bank. The trip home was annoying/exhausting because the trains were so packed. And it's not even the holidays yet... Urgh.

Tomorrow I'm off to visit my Dad again. I need to set up Siri on his new iphone for him because the icons on the phone are too small for him to see and he can't remember how to get back to the home screen when he taps the wrong thing. The problem with all the accessibility tools on the iphone is that my Dad cannot SEE them much less understand them, so how is he supposed to use them? For example, the magnifying tool might do wonders for him, but he can't see the various buttons for how to use it. They are too small and there are too many of them. The other accessibility options? Well, I can see them, but honestly, I don't understand what most of them might do and if/how they might help my Dad use the phone. I wish there was some kind of service person for the handicapped that you could book an appointment with to look at all those accessibility options and set things up properly for someone with severe visual impairments and failing fine motor skills. But of course there is no such service. I will never understand why they removed the home button. That one little thing would make using the iphone so much easier for my Dad. At almost 84 his fine motor skills are not up to the fine gestures needed for using a modern smartphone. Of course he also absolutely hates all those new-fangled things, which makes everything ever so much harder. Looking at my Dad, I mostly see what I don't want to be like when I grow old, and that makes me so damn sad.

The cats and the gardens however are doing well. The hedgehogs seem to have hidden away for hibernation (as they ought to). I'm in the process of setting up new bird feeders. Another one of those things that I ended up postponing again and again. But today I've actually started painting the new feeders, so hopefully I'll be able to set them up this weekend. Just in time for the first of Advent. Hooray!

...it didn't even hurt.

(Maybe a little.)

Shockingly, lots of people remembered my birthday, and that was actually nice. But I honestly didn't mind if anyone forgot about it.

Well, I guess I would have minded if my mother forgot about it again. But she didn't. She sent a card and called.

Hufflepuffhobbit and I spent a nice day in the big city. We had a stroll through the city centre, while pondering the ill-advised words about the cityscape of the current German chancellor. Surprisingly, things are way more complex than one stupid statement taken out of context. We found more books to buy than we were willing to carry around so we didn't buy any. But we took notes. Then we had a fortifying lunch eating yummy Ramen. I was smart enough to wrap myself in a napkin. Hufflepuffhobbit only thought of that when it was too late. But damn, it was good!

Then we went to one of the most renowned museums of Germany and enjoyed a fabulous exhibition about the international ties of cities in the 16th century. You don't think of globalisation at that time. But it's there, even then. People have never stayed put. There have always been people with wanderlust and a sense of adventure. But to realise how important trade routes all over the world were even then, and how intense the drive was to discover new things... Like, it took less than three weeks of exact descriptions of a rhinoceros in Portugal to reach Albrecht Dürer in Nuremberg, so he was able to create a drawing and an etching of a Rhinocerus that was...  pretty damn accurate for someone who had never seen the beast himself. Or Indian Maharajas that were so enamoured with Dürer's art that they ended up having his Christian religious figures copied into the ornaments of their books. How did ostrich eggs and feathers, pacific snails and coconuts even make it to Europe in once piece in the 1500s? How did Nuremberg merchants end up owners of Cuban mines in the 1600s or thereabouts? How did a Black person's face end up as the coat of arms as one of the richest, most influential families of Nuremberg? It's crazy how far people ranged even then, and how greedy they were. Anyway, excellent exhibition.

Then we headed to the planetarium, where I've been wanting to take Hufflepuffhobbit since 1996, no kidding, and he always managed to get out of it because it would be dumb or boring or whatever excuse of the day he came up with. It was a show of starry skies and classical music, no science and information at all. And it was fabulous. Relaxing and omg, so old fashioned, even though the planetarium has just been restored a few years ago. It still feels ancient, even if it showcases some of the most advanced facts we know about the universe. It was lovely, but most of all, it was perfectly relaxed. No noisy crowds, no intellectual efforts involved. Just pure enjoyment of the universe and music.

Afterwards we went to a nice Mexican restaurant. Not terribly authentic, but yummy, and their margaritas are pretty damn good.

Then we caught the train home and fell into bed.

And just like that, I turned 50, and it wasn't all bad.

A former neighbour, more than an acquaintance (of 25 years), but perhaps not quite a friend, and for my husband a teacher, died at the beginning of June. Today was the memorial service and the urn interment. 

She was my father's age and had been very sick with bladder cancer since 2018, which we didn't know. I only knew that her sharp mind was starting to fail and suspected some connection to other health issues due to the way she bounced back from episodes of dementia. She suffered, especially at last. And of course Hufflepuffhobbit and I didn't even know it because we were not that close. I remember still seeing her around just around the time of our move and thinking that when I have a bit more time when I see her next, I'll tell her all about our move. She loved to stop for a chat. I never got the chance.

She lived a long and eventful life, in Germany, Switzerland, and Hawaii. She was rich and very poor. Always striving for wisdom. She left behind two sons and grandsons, who cried openly today, as well as other family members, friends and acquaintances who came to see her off. I think she would have liked most of the ceremony but would have been really disappointed in the part that was supposed to be dedicated to her religious/philosophical convictions. It was very clear just how out of his depth the celebrant was. I'll read up on the Golden Key, Heady, I promise. And I'll try to always make time for chats along the way like you did. I'll miss her. Quite a bit.

I hope that's the last funeral for this year.

I also received two invitations.

One was for the 30th anniversary of my Abitur (the final exam at secondary school in Germany). The other for the 50th birthday of an old school friend.

I don't think I'll attend the first event. I still miss school a little too much, but not necessarily all the people I shared it with. I may reconsider when they publish the details of the event. If there's a tour of our old school involved, I might attend. And I did permit the organizers to share my contact details. So if anyone actually wants to get in touch with me again, they can do so. I doubt it, though. I was an idiot when I was young. I don't think I'd like to meet myself ever again. Sometimes I'm not sure of that when I look in the mirror in the morning, to be honest.

But while I'm pretty sure the birthday party will only make me really depressed, I'm thrilled I got an invitation. I miss that friend so much. She has four kids, two of them grown, and such a full, full life that there hasn't been room for old childhood friends like me in a long long time. I didn't expect she'd think of me for this birthday.

I never had a lot of friends growing up (and after being a very young child with a very bad experience I never had a "best friend" again until I met Aranel in LotR fandom in 2004). But I did have a group of five to six solid friends throughout school. And I still miss them so much. I dream of them often. I'm still actively in touch with one of them, passively with another, rarely with one more. I know that's absolutely normal dynamics of growing up, growing apart, of being forced together by circumstance instead of choice. But (thanks, Mum) being left and abandoned is one of my deepest traumas, so there's that added layer of emotions to it all.

On the absolute plus side, my best friend is moving to Europe!!! It will be so damn awesome to have her (nearly) in my time zone. I can't wait. And that means we'll probably actually manage to see each other at least once a year. Did I mention that I can't wait?

In other random news, we (mostly I) got the new wardrobes built. Tomorrow Hufflepuffhobbit will drag the last batch of used and abused moving boxes to the recycling yard. There's still a ton of stuff to do and buy (a closet for the bathroom; ceiling lights, etc.), but we're getting there. It still feels odd to be here.