I am having a good break here in Germany. Am writing this room our hotel room in Nuremberg. We arrived here about 2pm and will be here all day tomorrow and night, leaving for Mannheim on Sunday.
The drive here was atrocious! Very very wet. It rained so hard we had to slow to 20mph and could not see in front at all. The last time I experienced rain like that was in 2002 when we drove to Barcelona. Fortunately, by the time we got here to Nuremberg, the sun was out.Tomorrow the forecast says it will only be 14c!(but dry). As long as it is dry, its okay.
I just don’t know what it is with some people. Why do they feel they can judge a person they do not know? Write to them, telling them what they think or telling them how to live or to think? I get such emails frequently. I just deleted two people off my friends list on Facebook. For two different reasons. The first because they showed they had no respect for me by continuing to send me propaganda regarding their political beliefs which I had asked them not to do. I could live with not agreeing, one has to, but not with disrespect. If one doesn’t have respect for me, then one can f*ck off!
The second person was even more unbelievable. I do not even know who this is (as I don’t the one above either but she seemed to know me so I never said I didn’t recall her!). Anyway, she wrote on my wall that she thought I was the type of person who thought everyone was out to get me and I was negative. Clearly not a person I want in my life. Mainly because they have not taken any time to assess their own point of view. If they had they would know that their point of view was way off base. Anyone who knows me, knows I am an optimist and generally happy, despite the odds!
It is not often that I whinge on about my day to day living problems, 24/7pain and the challenges presented by disability. Not even the boorish ignorant behaviour of my fellows. There are of course exceptions and when I have had enough I let rip here. This makes me human not a negative, miserable paranoid individual who thinks you are all out to get me!
It seems to me that this person has issues, which they do not recognise, and instead choose to offend others by projecting their crap onto them. That is what I think though of course cannot know as I don’t know them and only have their impudent messages to me to go by.
Whatever the root cause, I will not accept the unacceptable and I will not have people in my life who disrespect me. To write to me, not knowing me, and judging me is disrespectful! I don’t do that and do not expect others to do it to me.
I really, really, really enjoy the type of trip we are on. I love to see knew places. I find people fascinating. I have this feeling, which i have tried to express to John unsuccessfully, about how I feel sad that I will leave this world with only having met a tiny fraction of the people in it and knowing NOTHING about all but a few. As it type this I am aware that there are people living a luxuriously wealthy life materially, that others are barely living at all, that others are living in the wilds of Borneo and the Amazon, happy and healthy, with none of what I would consider necessary! I see people in the hotel in the breakfast room and I want to know about them. I want to know the people I see on tv who live in mud huts in a jungle somewhere. All of us seem very different but I know we are not. We all FEEL.
I have as usual taken many photographs. I will blog them once home.
I have been knitting my aran sweater whenever we have stopped to eat or drink. I have had many comments. It is wonderful to know that even when one cannot understand the language one can still get meaning over. I have had Germans, Italians, and unknown tell me how much they like my aran and how they are impressed by the small gauge. When i show them the socks on the needles, they all look very puzzled! Toe up? One needle? Are you Martian? I learned from one German lady in Koblenz that my way of knitting is called Catholic! I do get quite a kick meeting other knitters and knowing that they do just as I do-approach other people who KIP, regardless of how their partners may feel about it! ;-)
I have not bought any yarn at all so far and am unlikely to though I am planning on buying from a source of undyed/white sock yarn if it is still there at this German place I know.
Regia has a whole load of new colourways I have noticed, and Lana Grossa too.
I have finished The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and am now reading the second novel in the trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire. I have really enjoyed the books but I don’t the ‘heroine’s’ behaviour acceptable at all. I am not sure why the author has drawn a character like this as an abuse survivor. To me she is not a survivor because she lacks empathy, is cruel, is condemnatory, and behaves with impunity, excusing her self according to others’ behaviour. This is a VICTIM not a survivor. She uses people. She is very clearly damaged and it is probable that her lack of empathy is down to her abuse BUT don’t make her a heroine because of it. (Perhaps my current opinion will change as I read on and get to the end of this trilogy. I hope I am given cause to reappraise her and the author of her.) Other than my distaste or this character, I am enjoying the books immensely. Real page turners.(Oh one mistake-he says of a character that her Asian looks are from her Hong Kong mother and her blue eyes from her Swedish father. This is not genetically possible UNLESS the mother carries the recessive blue eye gene and she could only do that if one of her ancestors was blue eyed. Not likely. He also says she has dimples where her parents do not and, whilst not 100% sure, as far as I know if one has dimples(chin etc) then one parent must also have them.)
I have been managing pain and pain meds well on this trip, which makes a big difference. I am resting enough. I have learned that Barcelona is probably, realistically, far too far for me to drive in 2-3days. After driving 317 miles after a day of no driving on this trip, I was very tired, sore and distraught. I get distraught when I am exhausted and sore and not eating right as well. Barcelona is 1000 miles and I would need 5 days to drive there with adequate rest. Just writing it seems silly to me, I have done it in one and half days before..but my disease has progressed way beyond that no matter how I may tell myself otherwise! Stubborn sod that I am.
7 comments:
Colin,
Glad to hear you're enjoying your trip despite yeterdays niggles. Nice that your KIP is drawing interest enabling the meeting of more people. I look forward to seeing the finished aran.
Safe onward journey to the 'stubborn sod' long may he continue to travel. :-)
Good wishes and safe travels to you and John
Take care
Ann
Wow! What a wonderful trip and adventure the 2 of you are having! Isn't amazing how knitting or crocheting tears down language barriers? I had to giggle about "Catholic knitting". I've never heard of that one before. I wonder....is there Protestant knitting???
Colin, so happy to hear your adventures and that you are more or less enjoying the trip. Too bad about all the rain, but it could be worse I suppose. So interesting hearing the reactions to your knitting. Catholic? wow, never heard that one before. I'd like to see Protestant/Orthodox/Byzantine and all the rest too please. One time I was knitting socks toe up, magic loop, with the yarn tucked into the toe and the Yarn Harlot herself was puzzled and asked me "Wot's all this then?" We both got the giggles.
I persevered through all 3 of Stieg Larsson's books, by the end I understood why he painted Lisbeth's character the way he did... rather hard to describe profound Asperger Syndrome in a sympathetic manner without actually resorting to the label as a shortcut. By the end I felt much more in tune with her and empathy, she became very real and alive.
best for the rest of the journey,
c
Colin, I am glad to hear you arrived safely in Germany. Have a wonderful time on your travels. The various regions of Germany have different recipes for foods. My mother is from Hesse region and makes sauerkraut that is tart. In the north the kraut had caraway seeds in it and in some areas it is sweet (ugh). The same happens with the sausages, we liked the ones from Heppenheim area in a wine region but in other arreas the spices seemed off. I just llike to see where you are traveling and what new adventures you have.
Pat
Could not help commenting on your remarks about genetics. I am no expert; only know what my eyes see. I suspect that in some peoples (particularly those of Scandinavian origins) that blue eyes & blonde hair may in fact be a dominant gene.
I say this because of my own family. It was pointed out to me by a cousin many decades ago, as a curious fact. In my family, if the blood relative has children with someone of the (natural) blonde-haired, blue-eyed persuasion, every single child is a natural blonde, into adulthood; there is greater tendency toward blue eyes as well, although this is not as consistent as the hair colour. It does NOT matter whether that blood-relative is blonde, brunette, or redhead; blue-eyed, brown-eyed, or whatever. When they partner with a brunette or redhead, again regardless of their own colouring, the children show a fairly equal mix of blonde & Not-blonde. Not every blue-eyed person is a blonde either. This evidence is visible and without exception across at least six generations of my father's family. He was half-Scandinavian, blue-eyed and brunette. I have 3 half-siblings, all blonde and blue-eyed. Their mother was blonde, but not blue-eyed. My own mother had jet-black hair and obsidian dark eyes. We were all tow-heads (blonde) as wee children, then developed varying shades of brunette, however two have light blue eyes, like my father. None of my mother's relatives, back 3 generations at least, were blue-eyed.
So clearly, the brown-eyed, brunette hair, genetic-dominance is not an absolute.
Afraid not. Blue eyes are always recessive. The recessive can be unexpressed for many many generations and will only show up when paired with another. If your brown eyed relly produced blue eyed offspring to a blue eyed man, then she MUST be carrying the blue eyed and ti is quite possible she did so from 100 or any number of generations back.
Hi, Colin.
From what I read, eye color is more complicated than the Davenports thought back in 1907 when they wrote that brown always dominated over blue. It's worse than dyeing yarn. There are three alleles that control color, several genes are involved, and there are strong and weak variations of the genes. The interactions are not fully understood. Two blue-eyed parents can have a brown-eyed child because some blue-eye genes are stronger than some brown-eye genes. A strong blue-eye gene can be dominant over a weak brown-eye gene and produce a blue-eyed child.
I'm glad you enjoyed your holiday. Safe journeys.
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