Oh my god this title is totally taken from the song from that movie – La Boom. Does anybody remember those french movies from the 80s about how teenies find their first love? Soo kitschy and actually too embarrassing to admit to having seen them. Although I am pretty sure almost any European person of my generation has watched them. Which doesn’t make it any better.

Anyway, this is totally out of context. I was gonna tell you about the crazy dream I had this morning after I woke up at 6:30 with Milo still asleep and decided to doze off some more. It’s that evil kind of half sleep that’s not really fully relaxing and makes you dream all sorts of crazy stuff. In the end you wake up all exhausted and emotionally disturbed and wish you had just freaking gotten up when you had the chance.

“I’m exhausted, I have to wake up” is also my favorite quote from my real favorite movie “Science of Sleep”. If you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading now and go watch it. Go! It’s a must see. Apart from it being a very artsy and creative movie, it also holds a lot of truth to me and has parallels to my boring little life. I have always been a passionate dreamer. As long as I can remember vivid dreams have been part of my night life. Often times I had better stories to tell in the morning when waking up than about what happens during awake time.

The science of dreaming really explains everything and boils down to a person being a crappy sleeper or not. I am. Very light sleep here. A house mouse farting could easily wake me up any time of the night. Therefore I have lots of light sleep. Therefore many REM sleep phases in which dreams happen. In those sleep phases only certain areas of the brain are active: Exactly the ones that are responsible for memories, emotions, and visuals. The logical cortex is deeply asleep at that point, so it is not surprising that dreams often don’t make much sense, are highly emotional, visual, and often contain random elements of what we experienced the previous day.

Us humans like to make sense of all the random elements and tie them together as a story. Or even start interpreting them to find a higher meaning. Myself included. I swear I tried to stay away from it. No way I was gonna believe in that bogus when it all makes perfect scientific sense. But then I had those healing dreams. Here is a fun fact about little Nicola that not many of you might know: As a kid I was literally afraid of being late to an appointment. I had ways to drive my parents nuts urging them to hurry so that we could be 30 minutes early that are unheard of. It must not have been fun. But then I started having those recurring dreams where I had to be some place, but getting there on time was impossible. Either my legs were made of stone, they wouldn’t move, the staircase became endless, the elevator never arrived, or all of the above. So my dreams forced me to be late and learn that nothing bad happens. Ever since then I am still trying to be 5 minutes early, but don’t freak out anymore if I am 5 minutes late.

There was also a period in my life where I kept dreaming of dead people. Not very nice dreams, let me tell you that. Basically there was always one or more than one body in my house and I had to get rid of it somehow. I had to roll it away, drag it away, and nobody ever helped me. So I looked up the meaning of dead bodies in a dream book and it said that dreaming of bodies or dead means that one is in a relationship or situation in life that is not good for one and should be ended. Sure enough, a few months later the relationship ended and so did the dead people dreams.

Before I go to dream land, just real quick the dream from this morning: Linc and I had another(!!) wedding. This time it was supposed to be real fun so we made sure to hire comedians as the officiators and all sorts of clowns to entertain the crowd. For some reason we also thought that it was funny to top off the whole show with a McDonalds theme. The rings were presented in a sweet and sour dip container that still had the sauce in it and nobody was really paying attention to the wedding because there was too much clowning going on.

End of story. Now while I go to bed, why don’t you figure out what this dream could possibly mean?

August 12, 2011. The day of Milo’s first birthday ever! It started with Milo waking up screaming at 5 AM and then me melting down because I just couldn’t take those 5 AM wake times anymore. Afterwards we both went back to bed and at least Milo was happy when he woke up the second time. I think this is the only memory I have from my little one’s actual birthday.

But luckily we got another chance the next day. We both got plenty of sleep and had a great party. The weather was a little unstable, but who cares. We just moved the whole shebang indoors. Yay for our house which fits approximately 15 kids and 15 adults and still has some room for everyone to run around like crazy. Milo had a blast and it seemed like everyone else had as well. Thanks everyone for coming and bringing so much joy to our little boy’s life! Milo loves all the toys he got and every morning he has a hard time deciding what to play with first. Peace and Love, The Trans.

Before we get into the part of this post where all the action happens, let me just start off by telling you a little bit about arguments in our house. Or the lack thereof. As you all know, Lincoln and I are pretty peaceful and quiet people. We are probably a little addicted to harmony and some might say to an extend that is not normal. But it works for us. When there is something that we disagree on, we usually just

1. voice our opposite opinions

2. go to separate parts of the house still grumbling over the fact that the other one doesn’t agree

3. tend separately to whatever makes each of us feel better while still thinking about what the other one said and starting to see the other side of the coin. Then about half an hour later:

4. come back together silently admitting that we understand the other position and find a compromise for this particular problem.

And there you go – crisis averted. Considering that this strategy has worked for some pretty big topics in the past (getting married, where to live, when to have kids), it was quite surprising that we clashed over something as small as a shelf in Milo’s room last week. (more…)

Finally, our kitchen renovation is done. But let’s start from the beginning. Here is what our kitchen looked like when we first met it:

Before

Absolutely hideous, right? In retrospect I can’t believe we even bought the house. This awful combination of early nineties wallpaper with all white cabinets, counters, and wooden country touch to it would surely kill any appetite if I had to live in it. (more…)

Soo … we did it. In the hopes of halting our high speed life for a good while and finally settling, we bought our first own house. It’s a townhouse (Reihenhaus) in a very lovely little community pretty close to where we used to live. After seeing about 20 houses, this one was clearly the best choice and we are very happy with it. What we were really looking for was a spacious place that we wouldn’t grow out of too soon, but is also manageable for our small family now. And we wanted good location. We learned pretty quickly that those are the two things that have to be right, because everything else about a house can be changed. Luckily, the house is in pretty good shape and does not need any immediate work, although in the long run we will definitely change some finishes.

The outdoor deck needs a new finish, the wallpaper in the basement has to be removed, the wood floors refinished, the carpet in the dining room has to go (stupid! whoever puts light colored carpet in a dining room must not have any children), replace the old brass light fixtures, and in the course of changing the kitchen sink we might as well get us some nice darker counter tops.

We moved in in February and have kind of arrived, even though a lot of details are still missing. It’s just a lot of space to fill and we are trying to get more pictures, curtains, and rugs piece by piece. Right now the living room is still pretty bare and empty (which makes for a great play room), but soon our highly anticipated sofa that we ordered two months ago will arrive. As you might imagine, the amateur interior designer within me is bursting of ideas and projects right now to make this plain canvas truly ours. It’s interesting how Lincoln’s and my role changed in this aspect. I used to be the one holding our budget together and keep spendings low. Now he has to hold me back not to go shopping for home goods every day. But hey, this is what I’ve been waiting for all my life. Confessions of a homemaker. Enjoy the tour!