Monday again. Bah. (How can I say that when I am mostly unemployed?! It’s just that Monday feeling, I guess.)

Yesterday was a perfect, beautiful day. Zaubi and I spent the afternoon in a long, rambling (kind of slow — the kid was kicking like a banshee) walk through the woods and fields of Zürich’s outer suburbs. We left our flat in Höngg and walked to Regensdorf, then from there to the Katzensee (there are no cats in it), then took the S-bahn back home!

En route, we discovered some amusing things:
1) Stopped in Regensdorf to find a toilet. Found one, and also found that incomprehensibly, the building where it was located happened to be hosting some kind of old West dance competition. We’re talking, howling, yippee yee-haw, sequined costumes, high kicking, shimmying, awful music playing, cowboy-hat wearing cheeeeeezy dance competition. On a Sunday afternoon. (In Switzerland, nothing is open on Sunday, full stop.) In the middle of *nowhere*.

The Swiss are weird.

The next thing we found was much cooler. At the Katzensee is an actual biergarten. (While in Germany, according to Zaubi, there are lots of biergartens, there seem to be few to none here). Better yet, this biergarten had a SUPER AWESOME playground attached to it, with bumper cars, a hydraulic kid-sized digger, and no end of other awesome wood and metal playground things, but best of all, it was a giant model train playground.

The whole of the restaurant/biergarten was surrounded by a track on which ran a massive model train — about 25 feet long and designed so that kids and grownups both could sit in all the cars and be driven around the track. And it came complete with the most cunning and beautiful scenery: mini-buildings and models of the train sheds, the train maintenence buildings, bridges, hotels, etc. etc., all beautifully landscaped.

I was totally enchanted.

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately, and have decided that I’m really taking the wrong attitude about this whole baby thing.

Yes, it’s a horrible experience physically and I hate it. But I am, as has been typical, concentrating on only the negative. The apostle Paul says in Philippians 4:8 — "…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things." This is clearly an excellent policy in general, and not one I have been adopting in this situation. I’ve been so caught up in my own misery and fear about the negative side of baby-bearing that I continually push aside the reality that it is in fact (and especially for one such as I who has severe endometriosis) a real blessing to be having a child. A huge responsibility and big life change, but also a huge blessing, especially given that she is jointly the child of someone I adore.

So yes. I decided I really need to adjust my attitude. And just remind myself, when I start becoming resentful and afraid as is typical, that I don’t have to be a mother like everyone else

Anyway, I realized that I’m slightly at a disadvantage here, because due to circumstances (me being in a foreign country until the baby is born and only about a month after that and then moving again very far away), I am missing out on some of the fun that other mothers-to-be have — that is, buying stuff for the kid to come and planning it all out.

Don’t get me wrong. I am delighted to not be overwhelmed with baby showers and parties where people talk about sweet little dresses and booties (especially since I am having a girl!) and diaper training methods and whatever else people talk about at those things. Absolutely dancing in the street delighted. But at the same time, it must be kind of fun to wander around and shop for stuff for the baby. I hate clothes shopping, but I always liked buying housewares and cooking things and what not. Go figure.

And don’t get me wrong again — it drives me nuts when mothers go all crazy and start wallpapering and stressing out because the nursery isn’t just right and squalling over paint-matching and buying darling little throw blankets and ugly ruffled dresses. But still — buying stuff can be fun. But of course, I can’t buy anything, because I’m not going to be living here much longer, and I can’t have all this stuff to schlepp around. Honestly. I was just going to have the kid sleep on the spare bed.

Anyway — you know what? This post is too long. And my spaghetti is getting cold. The Photographic Domestic Journey will have to continue in another post a bit later…

Teehee… I just took a look at my calendar, in which I have posted everyone who is visiting.

So my mother, brother, and younger sister have gone by this point, and my German friend from Oz who stopped in last week for a few days has also gone — she is back in Oz and has swine flu now — but there are still many more to come!

First, my older sister is still here, not sure when she is taking off, or indeed where to, but I’m thinking sometime mid-late September? Perhaps? And then it continues! The last week of Sept/first week of Oct,  plans to stop in for a bit. Then in the first week of October,  arrives for 3 weeks. Then he goes, and there’s about a week with no one, and then L, C and maybe their friend Big A are arriving for about a week. Then a little less than a week without anyone, then ol’ V. arrives for two weeks. Then two weeks and Little Bosse arrives (unless she’s late…)! And then of course a couple weeks after that, my mother arrives, and maybe also my brother and sisters again, since it will be Christmas. Although, if my mother moves to Switzerland earlier than that as she may do, I’m sure she’ll be in and out all that time.

Ah yes, I had neglected to mention that while my mother was here visiting, she was offered a job in a school here! Not in Zürich; more like Gstaad, but anyway, she was offered a year’s position as a math teacher. I think she’d be nuts not to take it: the same position was offered to her last year but she didn’t take it, got cold feet at the last minute. Now the headmaster has offered it again, and I think that would be just perfect. She loves it here so. And (cough, ulterior motive) then she could help me when I lose my head over all this baby business

So my mother sticks around through first week January, and then in mid-January we lose our flat here and still must decide if at that point we go to Zaubi’s relatives in Germany, or find a sublet in Zürich for a month, or go back to the States for a month, before returning to Oz…

This is just crazy. We’re here in Switzerland for 7 months, maybe 8, and it’s pretty much solid visitors from the beginning onward…

Well, I just put my little sister on a train for Geneva. She’s been here since about July 12th and now she is off again. My older sister is still here, of course — I’m not exactly sure what her plans are.

I’m finding myself in a really weird place right now. We’ve been living here in Zürich for two months now — two months which has seemed an eternity, which is really strange. For the past, oh, I don’t know, 10 years even, time has simply seemed to fly by. I’ve had a lot of adventures and been a lot of places and met a lot of people and done a lot of things and had misery and heartbreak and quite a fair bit of happiness and excitement too. In any case, the time has flown, faster than I could believe, scary fast even. And I don’t feel any older and yet 10 years has gone by and a million adventures and experiences and alas, people too, are now in the past.

But now… these past two months in Zürich, and more even, say the past 4-5 months, have simply crawled. Each day has dragged itself out, moment by slow moment, in a way that is totally different to before.

And it’s funny, becuase I love it here. I love it here in Zürich, I love it so much that I am wondering if we should move here for good and leave Australia.

It isn’t winter yet, of course, which will be the real test (the Zürich winter is supposed to be fully as nasty as Boston), but still, something in me simply feels at home here, in a way completely different to how I feel at home in Brisbane. Yet the things I love about Brisbane, and the things I love about here, essentially 100% do not overlap. Two completely different places. And you can’t have them both.

There are only about 5 months more that we will be here, and I feel these little moments of exploration and enjoyment slipping out of my hands. I’m not taking advantage of the time.

But — why? The only reason I have, the reason which springs immediately to mind though I try to squelch the feeling again and again — is that I am pregnant. I hate being pregnant SO MUCH. And yes, I know that is melodramatic and ridiculous. I know I have little to complain about, as far as pregnancy goes. I’m strong and healthy. I’m nowhere near overweight, I had very little by way of sickness, the baby is strong & well.

And yet, pregnancy makes me feel so unlike myself, so out of sorts, so trapped and frantic and so desperately unhappy, that it is literally like being tortured slowly each day. Each morning I wake to this burden that I passionately hate and it weighs upon me and I cannot escape it. And thus the days crawl, and thus, like any depressed person, I find myself completely unmotivated with regard to enjoying the adventure that is life. I can’t forget this miserable discomfort for a single moment. I find myself, day by dreary day, counting the slow moments until I can be rid of this burden.

It isn’t the baby, not really. I think I love my baby already, as much as I am able anyway. But the fact of the pregnancy, the method and the madness to the whole thing, the way my body is doing something absolutely beyond my control, fills me with panic and anger and helpless despair. But anger at what? At who? I did this to myself.

I’m wasting this time. I know it. I feel it. I’m going to regret it. And I’m doing that to myself too.