long island for a year

So, today I was - in spite of the snow - driving to this place to get an ointment and a new tape for Bastian's lip, since the old one was coming off last night and I was told by some surgeon's secretary "not to touch, remove or apply anything, just come here and we'll do it". Driving half an hour isn't as terrible as it used to be some times ago and the snow had left almost no trace on the streets BUT going to the surgeon, filling some forms in the hope that someone is fixing the problem and then getting two small packages of ointment ("do you have this at home?" you think if I had this at home I would have come all the way to a facial treatment spa with two kids to make an ass of myself?Excuse me, but no.) was as ironical as it sounds. When I finally get to go to an hair salon, it will be enough beauty. Then, I took the kids for a stroll in Port Jeff and went to the burrito bar , because we wouldn't have time to cook and there were no left-over...

How do you survive tiredness? Lately I really feel sleep-deprived and still I can't sleep during the day, I am too nervous and keep thinking and I don't get things done, especially after Bastian's small accident - his pretty upper lip got cut and he had a stitch so I kind of guard him - I feel absolutely unable to do stuff AND keep an eye on him. He doesn't sleep too well either, and sometimes he's unhappy so that I am not sure if his lip hurts or he's just tired... No, there is no way I can change, when people I love suffer, then I suffer too. It has always been that way and now I am too old to re-program my brain. Then there is this thing that I finally got used to life here and half year is gone, and when I see in the news that Berlin had a specially cold winter I just don't want to go back, but move to a warmer place. Plus, I don't feel like I belong anywhere and anyone, as if home was the place I want to go away from, not the place I want to live. A...

Marty and Irma - on the left - on their pontoon boat What was I doing lately, apart from running after my son who is now a professional walker? Some days ago we had some Lab related meetings, meaning that there were colleagues-friends coming over to Long Island for work, which led to some dinner and nice talk afterward. We met our friend Marty - who used to be Ralph's colleague back in 2000, in Chicago - and Shen Pen - a Chinese Californian colleague with whom we were sharing our compartment on the night-train from Shanghai to Beijing two years ago: thanks to his human engineering AND knowledge of chinese language we managed not to spend the night with perfect strangers. Aren't we relaxed? We were all invited at Nancy and zio Bob's (that's how Carlotta calls him) place and had a very good time, with me trying to protect the kids from Sierra (their dog). If you know how scare I am of dogs - childhood shock - then it might sound amusing... We were all brave, indeed, and...

On Saturday it was snowing on Long Island, too. This is probably a snow landscape I hadn't seen before, even if there were snowy winters in Venice when I was a kid - and this year too, to tell the truth. Have a look at this ...isn't it amazing? Very beautiful pics of the snow on Long Island were posted by Bill Drago on The Long Island Blog . What am I doing while the snow is still on the ground? Bake cookies: I took the chance to try a recipe I got from my friend Marge. Usually I am very experimental with sweet stuff, which means everything turns out a bit different from expected...and actually I did add a secret ingredient. Still, these cookies will be renamed "Marge's cookies", because I like the idea that there is a person behind every recipe.