Incoherent Scribblings

Time Out for Hardanger

I am not religious in any way, shape, or form and I am not Catholic. However, that doesn’t stop me from being very sad about the Pope. While I was watching the news yesterday following his condition, I decided to practice my Hardanger skills a bit more. I just so happened upon a small pattern for a Hardanger fish which reminded me very much of the “Holy Fish” (or whatever the proper name for it is). I practiced my satin stitches and kloster blocks some more and had a chance to learn how to do dove’s eyes. The first couple of dove’s eyes were kind of tricky, but I think I finally got the hang of it.

So, here is my Hardanger Fish, which I am dedicating to Pope John Paul II. Whenever I look at that little fish I will remember what was happening when I stitched it and I will be reminded of what a great man Pope John Paul II was.

This afternoon I went back to cross stitching and logged some more time on “Girl’s Time Out.” The cross stitching is finished now. I have the details of the room to do, but they are all half stitches and of course I still have the backstitching left. I am not sure how long it will take me, but technically I have 10 hours left in this rotation and I just might be able to complete it within that time frame.

The Accidental Housewife

In English we have invented politically correct terms like “homemaker” and “domestic engineer.” We even have amusing words like “domestic goddess.” But in German there is only one word for what I am: Hausfrau and it literally translates to what I call myself these days and that is simply “housewife.”

It wasn’t always that way. I went to, and graduated from, both undergraduate and graduate school. When I received my MLS (Master of Library Science) an “MRS” was the last thing on my mind. After graduate school I went to work and acquired all the responsibilities and headaches of a full-fledged professional.

After I got married I had every intention of finding a job, even though I landed overseas in a country where I didn’t speak the language. But fate has a way of taking you where you never planned to go.

My education and training were so specialized, that without realizing it I had made myself overeducated and under-qualified for too many jobs. And the jobs that I was technically educated for were practically out of reach because they were few and I lacked the necessary language skills and proper “German” credentials.

Even after the hours of language lessons were over the job hunt didn’t get any easier. My résumé was translated and reformatted. The necessary documents were collected and whenever I saw one of the rare advertisements for a library-related position, I applied. But I never got anything more than formal, impersonal rejection letters.

As the weeks passed into months and finally into years, I fell into a comfortable routine of making dinner, running errands, and doing the laundry. I seldom looked at job advertisements anymore and one day I faced the truth: I had turned into a housewife. The fact hit me in the face like a bucket of ice water, but what surprised me even more was that I found that I didn’t really regret what I had inadvertently become.