Berlin, 14.12.00
I've figured out the baby deal. Babies are rabid. It explains everything - the constant twitching and jerking, the urgent gnawing on human flesh, the white foamy shit coming out of their mouths. So we simply need give her a rabies shot and that's the end of that.
Frustrated by her lack of verbal skills, Madeleine is now trying to communicate by flag semaphore. Both arms straight up! Right arm up, left arm down 45 degrees! Left arm horizontal, right arm down across the body! I'm sure that if I looked up those arm-waving movements they would spell out something like:
M-O-R-E T-I-T N-O-W !-!-!-!
She also laughs in her sleep in a way that Annette thinks is cute but I insist is completely sinister. It is an evil chuckle.
Big milestone the other night - she slept from midnight until five in the morning. Of course she slept this long because she was completely exhausted by the ordeal of being a huge pain in the ass for the entire previous day, but hell, it's a start.
Not that she's been particularly bad or anything, but the last few months have been tiring. I'm beginning to see light at the end of this particular tunnel, though, and enjoy the thought that I'll be able to train again soon. I'm also beginning to find Madeleine a bit more interesting. There's more going on inside that little head. Much of it evil, doubtless.
And that's enough about babies. I have mixed feelings about my impending baby-free January. I will be very relieved, but I will also miss her, though perhaps only in a purely abstract sense.
So we've gone and done it - we've hired a Putzfrau, a cleaning woman. Once a week or once a fortnight - we'll see how it goes - we will pay a Peruvian student fifty marks to come and clean our apartment for three hours. I am simultaneously mortified and thrilled. I'm budgeting this as an athletic expense because those are three hours I can use for training. Now we (meaning I) need to get off of our (meaning my) ass and finish the last of the jobs required to render the apartment fully civilized.
Work's a bit of a bore. Mostly a bore of my own making, but I am once again reminded of how much I hate doing the nine to five thing. It really drags. Being in an office all week just saps my motivation. As soon as I can pull the plug I will. And working for an embassy has really driven home to me what a stroke of luck it was missing out on the Foreign Service ten years ago. Living abroad is cool, but at the end of the day it would have been just another tiresome paper-pushing bureaucratic job. Doesn't really turn my crank.
So, on to the future. There are a number of scenarios:
Scenario One, we go back to Canada at the end of the summer. Annette now has one interview lined up, possibly more to follow. There are three Canadian jobs, SFU in Vancouver, Carleton in Ottawa, and University of Toronto. She has a realistic shot at all three. If she lands a tenure-track job I will not go back to work full-time, even though the money for Canadian jobs is just terrible, nowhere near enough for the three of us to live on (university professors start in the mid-forties - in Canadian dollars). I will stick to part-time or freelance, juggling various jobs with training and babysitting and using my brain creatively. The work bit would be dead easy in Vancouver, where I still have contacts from my old job, slightly more complicated in the East.
Scenario Two, going to the US, is no longer an option. Well maybe I could handle New York. They have a cool senator.
Scenario Three, staying in Berlin, could see me free of full-time work obligations if Annette were able to find some fellowship or research money for next year. Then I could cut back to part-time or even look for some contract jobs, since I'll be on an unrestricted work permit come September, after having lived two years in Germany. There are advantages to staying, particularly cheap, readily available child care.
As usual, much is unresolved. But I do need to get out of this office setting as quickly as possible. I have no regrets, really - it was clearly my best option this year, for so many reasons. But it's not a permanent solution.
All we need, one way or another, is to have enough money for basic living expenses - nothing luxurious, just a roof over our heads and an old car once we leave Europe - and sufficient child care that we still have the time and energy to do the things we want to do. And enough left over for sports and travel. Is that too much to ask? Possibly. But if I play the market well and cash out my stock options at the right time we'll have a small house half paid for, so maybe it's not such a stretch. (It's occurred to us that buying an apartment in Berlin might be a very good long-term investment, plus it would give us even more of an excuse to return regularly.)
I am developing a maniacal interest in racing bikes again, one day soon. These days I find myself reading racing sites for hours, lurking on the newsgroup, staring at my road bike, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. I still want to skate, but I see that becoming more of a cross-training activity in the future. (Maybe I should quit skating before I need to drop a thousand marks on inline clap frames. Shit…) There's no reason why I can't do both, though it makes more sense to take advantage of the better skating scene here by racing as much as I can this summer - improved technique stays with you forever - then focus on cycling when I return to North America. I am now thirty-six years old. If I can work back into a regular training rhythm (parenthood makes this more difficult, but a spouse with a full-time income makes it easier) and my back doesn't fuck up again I could be near the top of the 40-45 age category for masters national and world championships. Why the hell not? It would take a lot of time and money and energy (sounds like my main complaint about the kid) but I would also enjoy myself tremendously if things went well. It's one reason why I'm slowly growing keener on the idea of moving back to Vancouver. I'd lose the long-track ice and the good inline scene, but I'd gain the Grouse Grind, good cycling, an indoor velodrome (although we have one here too) and skiing. Plus free babysitting, which you can't discount.
In the short term, though, I need to start moving my body again. A few weeks ago I decided to forget about pretending to train before we left for Christmas. Between the baby and various other things we needed to do, it wasn't going to happen, and pretending it was would only create more stress and problems in my life. I think I did the right thing, because I've been able to relax a bit and recover from a long, nagging cold that hit me a few weeks ago, but haven't lost much condition because there wasn't much condition to lose. I'll skate and cycle as much as I can during the two weeks I'm in Vancouver - maybe I'll even get up to Whistler for some skiing - then start the program in January. I'll try to be a bit more clinical about my training, doing short, intense, technique-focussed skate workouts and structured rides, all based on heart rate zones. And try to get back into the gym. And try to do regular stretching, yoga and dryland training. And so on. There's a chance we'll do a training camp holiday in Sardinia at the end of March, cycling and skating for me, running for Annette, plus a bit of tourism and relaxation.
I think this is enough for now. We fly home on Monday, KLM via Amsterdam. Carla will take care of the cat and apartment for the two weeks I'm gone. The next few days will be busy ones. Tomorrow is my last day at work, though I have promised to stop by the embassy on Saturday for the Christmas charity sale, partly to put some digital photos on the web site, partly to display the baby. Shopping has gone reasonably well - so well that I might even sneak off to the ice oval on Friday after work - but there will be at least one more expedition to make. Then Sunday afternoon and evening we're hosting a holiday Kaffee und Kuchen thing for various friends in Berlin who haven't seen Madeleine recently, if at all. It's the last chance for a while, as she and Annette probably won't be returning until early February, depending on the exact interview schedule. And then Sunday night, the horror begins - packing. Baby stuff. Up to two months worth of clothes for Annette, including interview outfits and running kit. Me and my skates and all my sports gear. And the Christmas gifts. And various baby transporting items. God help us.
