transposable element

it’s freezing outside, and scratchy inside… inside my nose that is. winter sets in and my body surrenders at the first whiff of siberian winds.

oh well, first month of the year barely over, and it’s not looking good. it’s been one bad news after another. my e-plus mobile phone contract was extended for another year despite me wanting to cancel it already since november last year; now i’m left with two functioning numbers, one with eplus, and another with o2, plus a globe on roaming. my maternal grandma died, someone’s ma died, someone’s nephew died. someone’s marriage on the rocks. jan’s back to wetting his trousers. a cut on one of my copy-editing jobs. the three of us down with some virus. and worst of all, my dad’s not responding to his treatment.

i’ve been taking all in stride. sometimes distance helps. sometimes focusing on the bigger picture helps. seeing the forest, not just the trees. but please, don’t let january be a foreboding of the 2007 that has yet to unfold!

until yesterday, we’ve been having an unusually warm winter. it’s so warm the bushes and trees started budding, prolly thinking it’s already spring. before i headed to manila in december, i promised to get myself a new anorak and winter boots as soon as i get back, but considering the mild temps, i’ve put it off and finally thought that perhaps i won’t need additional winter stuff after all.

today i’m kicking myself. we’re down to freezing temps, maybe it’ll even dip to negative 5 when the sun sets. i’ve forgotten how cold winter can be. the heater’s jacked up, and sheesh, i’m still freezing.

and the winter sales are almost over. damn.

it used to be that for paypal users in germany with personal accounts, receiving money online is free. starting feb 15, however, they will be charging fees for receiving money, the rate of which depends on where the payment comes from, and the volume of the transaction. in my case, i would be charged 3,6-3,9% + 0,35 EUR for payments i get from my pro-blogging gigs and other payments, which all come from outside EU.

although 3,6% is still lower than the fees one would expect from an international bank transfer, or via western union, i find it quite unpalatable.

good thing that cw offers the possibility to pay its bloggers via moneybookers (aff), where receiving money is free, although i get charged a flat fee of € 1.80 when i withdraw money from my moneybookers account to my actual bank account here in germany. much less than paypal’s 3.6%!

i just returned from putting jan to bed. we’ve had a petty fight this evening, with me losing my patience at having to repeat myself before he’d listen. after we’d both cooled down, we cuddled in each other’s arms and i delivered an earnest sermon, telling him that next time, he shouldn’t wait til we lose our patience before he follows what we’re telling him to do. at which point he burst sobbing and on a melodramatic performance worthy of a grammy, complete with shaking shoulders and trembling lips, said:

i know, it’s all my fault! it’s always my fault! you (two) are almost always just angry at me! i simply didn’t hear what you were saying. don’t you understand that i only have little ears, and i can’t hear everything?

ah, jan, at the rate you’re going, i’m sure you’d get yourself out of any trouble you’d get yourself into when you get older.

before he drifted to sleep, i said, “i love you jan, even if you sometimes make me angry.”

to which he retorted, “aber, das war nicht schlimm. kann man einfach abwischen. wie beim computer. fehler gelöst, problem gelöst!”

i hope so.

we’ve never said we’d stop at having one child. in fact, to be honest, we’re open to having another (am probably too old to have a third), but it just doesn’t feel to be the right time yet. we’ve been waiting for things to settle down (hah! as if that’ll ever happen, but that’s another story).

2007 seems to be a great year as any to have baby #2. first there’s germany’s lucrative incentive for new parents, although i’m not sure how much i would benefit from this, being a freelancer:

Under the new Elterngeld, or “parents money” law, parents who stay home to look after the new-born child will receive 67 percent of their last net income tax-free, or up to €1,800 ($2,380) a month, for the first 12, or in some cases 14, months after the birth.

also, according to asian myths, 2007 being the “Year of the Golden Pig” is a good year to bear children, as “babies born in the golden pig year will have comfortable and wealthy lives.”

A person born this year is likely to be a good parent. He may be easy to anger, but he is intelligent, honest, courageous, completes projects, gallant, and sincere. People born in these years are honest and straightforward. They can be relied on to see things through. They tend to be popular and make lasting friendship and are good neighbors.

i don’t know. i’ve never believed the zodiacs much. i still feel there are more pragmatic considerations when considering a second child. financial, emotional and physical competence should be factored in. and besides, the prospect of conceiving in the next 2 months to give birth before the year is over sets me in panic.

and honestly, if there’s one thing that makes me think twice of bringing another kid into this world, it’s the prospect of having to deal with another jan.

the year has barely begun and i’ve hit the ground running. after just a couple of days catching up with my boys, we’ve all swung back to normal rhythm. and for me, it promises to be a hectic year. i’ve got a lot of backlog from last year, including stuff i wanted to do on the homefront, but i just don’t know how else i can magic an extra hour or two to do all these. i need a major crash course in time management.

what do you do when you’ve got tons of stuff to do, with so little time to squeeze them in? where do you scrimp time on? do you cut the time you spend sleeping? eating? primping in the bathroom? do you still allow yourself to watch clouds go by?

three weeks over. am back to my previous world. just that half of me hasn’t arrived yet. or probably never did. ah, talk about parallel universes.

tons of email to deal with, blogs to resuscitate, schedules to fix, life to put into order. when i get a breather, perhaps i can still send the christmas cards i bought last year but never got round to sending, ack!

hope everyone’s having a great start into 2007!