Question of the day.

How many times have you moved house?

My answer:

Two. The first house we lived in was built by my parents and grandad some time after my parents married. My Dad didn’t really have the best job situation and it didn’t look like it was about to change any time soon, if ever, he also worked a lot abroad, and my Mum was studying before I was born but she didn’t really have the heart for it to begin with. After I was born, she felt she needed to stay at home with me, she started getting the benefits because of being my caregiver, but the strange thing with caregiver benefits in Poland is that they think once you become a caregiver, your only identity and your sole life purpose is being a caregiver, and if you even start working part-time or from home or something, your whole benefits will be taken away from you, even if you make a lot less than what you receive from the benefits. When I went to school the authorities did take the benefits away from her because apparently I was no longer under her care, but, with no higher education aand Olek being born, it would be even more difficult for her to find a job then. So my Dad, me and my siblings got used to the state of things, she accepted the situation and never ended up finding a paid job and has become a home manager as she calls it, and holds this position to this day. Thus, at the beginning of their life together, my parents struggled financially, so it was just a small house, with a kitchen, a living room and a very small bathroom downstairs and one big room upstairs which was my parents’ bedroom, and after my and Olek’s birth it was ours too, there was enough room for three beds, each in a different corner of the room. So I didn’t have my own room until I was 10, which I remember really amazed some of my school friends. 😀 My parents still considered themselves lucky – well, at least I know my Mum did – because they got to live close to my grandparents, they had help with the house building, a huge backyard they could use, they didn’t have to pay any rents etc. just for the heating, which would probably still be a lot less than if they had to move somewhere else and live in a flat or something like that. – My Dad’s financial situation improved drastically after a few years – my Mum often says she brings people luck and here it definitely sounds like it must have been the case, because I’m sure it wouldn’t happen without her intervention. – My parents were thinking about moving somewhere else entirely, but then my grandparents encouraged them that they could just build a new, bigger house on top of theirs. That sounded like a good idea to them so that’s what they started doing, but the whole process got complicated by several things, and also in the end it turned out not to be such a great idea. The family dynamics – with my Mum’s family – have changed in some respects, my Mum’s sisters started their families and decided they’d happily live on the same backyard as well and the more people, the more conflicts y’know. – Also the plan of how my parents wanted this house to be like didn’t fully work out. The whole building process was dragging on forever from what I remember, my parents were very stressed out and I was convinced that it would just never be built. 😀

Finally we moved in there shortly after Sofi’s birth, although we were basically forced to move out of our previous house asap so the new one wasn’t fully finished yet. Olek and Me had our rooms downstairs, mine was huge, and my parents had their bedroom up in the attic and after some time a small room for Sofi was added next to it. Sofi, however, didn’t spend much time there beyomd sleeping, as she much preferred playing downstairs close to Mum, and even if she napped during the day both she and Mum much preferred if she was somewhere closer so that Mum, or anyone really, could hear her crying. When she got a bit older Mum was also concerned that she would fall from the stairs or out of her crib when no one would be up there. I don’t remember if that was the ultimate reason why, but eventually, after about four years, we switched rooms with Sofi, to both of us’ euphoria and delight. I actually preferred living up there a lot more. This room had a nicer atmosphere to me for some reason and I made friends with it right away. I liked how it was so small and quiet and friendly and seemed more my style in terms of design, while my previous room was much better suited to Sofi in this aspect. I liked that I had practically my own loo up there – it was a small room inside my parents’ bedroom but they only used it at night, and it was perfect when there were a lot of people downstairs and I didn’t want to have to deal with them just for the sake of ging to the loo. The only downside was that the ceiling in there was very low so for the first few months, the first thing I’d do after getting up was hitting the ceiling with my brain, and sometimes even later on if I’d be too sleepy and forget about it being so low and get up quickly. So I’d often use that with people as a reason for why I’m so weird. 😀 Sofi, meanwhile, was also very happy to live downstairs and have enough space for all her toys and a huge wardrobe for all her clothes, which she always loved acquiring and changing as frequently as possible, or just having them for the sake of having.

The situation with my Mum’s family kept getting hotter, perhaps no dramatic arguments or anything like that, but all of us started to realise that, while family is a great thing to have, it’s also good to have more space between each other, or things can get quite unnerving and people get each other in the way, trying to be the one in charge, lecturing each other’s children and “borrowing” each other’s things indefinitely without the “lender” even being present at home. Such small things, over an extended period of time, can get extremely frustrating, especially if you’re the type of person my Dad is, with a heightened sense of individuality and need for territorial sovereignty. So my parents started thinking about finally buying a house elsewhere. Well, actually, they did almost ever since we’d moved to this second house. At some point they found a house in the town nearby that they kinda sorta liked, nothing special in itself but, in my Mum’s opinion, who is very interested in interior design and people has always envied her the skills in this area that she has and how differently our houses always look from everyone else’s, said that it could be made into something a lot better than it is. This is where we currently live. The whole process of moving here was never-ending as well, due to a lot of formal and familial issues, and rearranging a lot of things inside and out. We would probably also linger with this a lot longer, if not the fact that the furnace in our previous house broke suddenly in late autumn, and we knew we’d be about to move in a few months, so my Dad didn’t feel like buying a new furnace, therefore we used a… gosh, I think I knew how it’s called in English but now I can’t remember, either a compressor or a supercharger I think, anyway, we used that for space heating and that obviously wasn’t ideal as it couldn’t go on 24/7, and even if it would, we’d probably go deaf. 😀 So most of the time it was quite interestingly freezing and that definitely made us move out sooner, after about a week I guess. There is no tradition of naming houses in Poland, but my Mum did call our house Acacia River, since we live by the river, it’s flowing through our backyard, and our street is named after the acacia trees, which inspired my Dad to plant a lot of them here. This is definitely my favourite of the three houses we’ve lived in, although at the beginning I was sure I wouldn’t be able to love a house that other people lived in previously, and it wasn’t just me feeling this way. But of course over time we’ve made it feel ours and I guess it likes being ours too since all the people who’d seen it the way it looked before, when the previous owners lived in here, vs now, they say it’s a lot more beautiful. I like that it’s spacey and has its own spirit, and I love my room very much, and that we don’t have to share the house or the backyard with other people, not even family. I like that we live in a town so it’s close everywhere, yet because we live in the outskirts it’s really quiet here, no traffic, and actually feels fairly rural because it’s very green and there’s a park close to us, plus a lot of people actually do either some kind of gardening or farming here, so we didn’t feel like it was a major transition moving here from the countryside. 😀 But I also think I simply like this house the most because so far, living here has also been the best time in my life.

If you wanted to be exact, you could probablyy say that I moved around a lot more, because I was going between home and boarding school for many years, plus at school I’d also moved buildings in which I lived a couple times while staying there, but, while that contributed very strongly to my feeling that I was constantly on the move which I definitely didn’t like, I don’t think any of that counts for proper house moves.

You? 🙂

Question of the day.

Do you have any siblings? Do you fight or get along well?

My answer:

I’ve written about my siblings more extensively many times before, so I won’t here, but yes, for those of you who don’t know, I have a 21-year-old brother Olek (Aleksander) and a 13-year-old sister Zofijka (Zofia). With Olek, we neither fight nor get along particularly well, it’s all very very neutral. With Sofi, we both fight and get along well, depending on an occasion. We have a lot of differences, but at the same time it also means that we complement each other well. I don’t always believe in that opposites complement each other well in terms of people but here it seems to work a lot of the time. Whether we do the former or the latter, it’s always quite intense though.

You? 🙂

Question of the day.

Hi people! 🙂

Describe to me, what is your family like?

My answer:

Depends which side of the family we’re talking about. My Mum’s family are emotional, exuberant, touchy-feely (my Mum’s is the exact opposite of touchy-feely but the rest of them are), caring, sometimes way too caring about other people’s business and meddling into things that don’t concern them. They are very spontaneous and change their minds all the time, especially my Mum and her siblings, and as a consequence, they’re also very moody. They’re sentimental and almost all of them are easily moved and cry, They have a tendency to impose their own opinions on others but usually aren’t even fully aware of the extend of it and are well-meaning. They say they’re typical eastern Slavs as they have roots in all of the eastern Slavic countries plus Lithuania. They like to dance, have fun and many of them are a bit impulsive. They are all religious and very serious about it and have a very genuine relationship with God. My grandad is a bit of an exception, as he is an introvert, not quite as chatty and much more of a loner, deeply thinking through everything he’s going to say and a bit melancholic, he’s also much less emotional and makes a very haughty and proud impression, which is absolutely correct, but it doesn’t mean he can’t be very loving and caring when he wants to. Most of them are very intelligent and appreciate intelligent conversations, highly value knowledge and have a need for beauty in their lives. They are mostly traditionalists. They have a great sense of solidarity and genuinely like to meet up. They can be quite overwhelming and I don’t feel much of an emotional connection with them, which probably just stems from my lack of sense of belonging in general rather than anything else, but I much prefer my Mum’s family to my Dad’s and have a bit better contact with them. They’re more open-minded and just kinder and more genuine and I respect them far more.

My Dad’s family is quite different. They are secretive but in a weird way. They have those strange cliques where someone is talking to X, but not to Y because they had an arguement with Y in 1993. So you’ve got to be careful when inviting people sometimes, ’cause you can end up with a roomful of very emphatically quiet people. They do like to meet up though, nevertheless, and also have quite a strong sense of community, they know a lot about their ancestors and are proud Kashubs (though only my gran can actually speak Kashubian fluently and uses it in daily life in a serious way). They are narrow-minded and not the most subtle people in the world, they even always have such a weird way of talking to each other as if they were constantly mad or unfriendly at best. They are rather superficial in their judging of others or making their opinions on anything, it seems like they can’t have a deeper look into anything, and there is something cold, coarse and I’d even say unfeeling about them. Like, you wouldn’t go to my gran, or not even to my Dad (though he’s quite different than most of his family because of interacting so much with Mum’s family, and has been kind of polished over the years), anyway, you wouldn’t go to any of them if you had some problem and wanted someone to seriously listen to you and be compassionate and comforting. They can’t listen, only talk about themselves. They’re kinda self-absorbed and have a very stereotypical, one-dimensional view of the world and people. Politically, most of them are rightists and some are leftists but in overall views on life they all are very conservative, and not quite like my Mum’s family for whom their traditions are very valuable and of emotional significance but it seems more like some habits they stick to just for the sake of it, and have a hard time making any changes to their thinking or acting. They like to gossip. Sometimes when people gossip, it’s interesting to listen to because even if it’s not true, interesting stories come out of it and it’s intriguing to think of it what of it might actually be true and what exactly are the people about whom they’re gossipping, and sometimes it sounds like some fascinating fairytales, but in my Dad’s family gossipping is much more boring, they can’t even find interesting topics to gossip about, and it has a fair bit of toxicity in it. My Dad and his brothers have a weird common trait that they love to make fun of other people as a way of dealing with their own insecurities. It’s a very nasty habit. If they have a problem with you, something about you they’re envious about, or they feel insecure around you, expect that anything you’ll say will be met with a cynical laughter and some stupid comment that’s supposed to ridicule you. They don’t have quite the same loyalty as my Mum’s family have. They don’t really have imagination –
except for one of my cousins who has been gifted in this area and is generally incredibly different from them also in that she is more sensitive to other people – and most of them don’t even enjoy reading or anything like this, although they’re passionate about watching TV, some 24/7 and if it’s any less they get bad withdrawal symptoms.

As for my most immediate family, we are quite a close family, at least we are closer with each other than many other families I know. We all love and care about each other and I think we spend more time together than most families do these days. But generally we’re a rather typical family I guess and there’s nothing overly unusual about us. We do have our fair share of misunderstandings and a lot of differences between each other but at this point we don’t have any serious family problems or arguments and we get along well with each other. I think though it all wouldn’t be quite as well if not our Mum. She is like an adhesive for us. I often think that if she died suddenly, we would all fall apart in all sorts of different directions. She is often the mediator between us and brings us all together, and I know she sometimes makes big sacrifices and compromises in order for things to stay calm and peaceful, which isn’t always easy with a character like my Dad. Also we are always thankful for the blessing that we have Zofijka here. I often say that if not Zofijka, our house would turn into a Camaldolese monaster – the house would be so eerily quiet and no one would talk. –
And everyone agrees, because while Mum can be very chatty, she gets those moods when she doesn’t talk at all and seems annoyed with everyone, making the atmosphere a bit stale, Dad is generally rather quiet at home and he’s not too talkative, and me and Olek have our own worlds, and our own rooms where we like to spend the time, and are both introverts, plus Olek is at work most of the day anyway. So it would feel really eery over here without Sofi long-term. Though she’s very absorbing and very loud so it’s good to have a break from her once in a while.

What about your family? 🙂

Question of the day.

How big is your family, immediate and extended? Is one parent’s side of the family bigger than the other?

   My answer:

   I guess my family is pretty big, even my immediate family, for today’s standards. Apparently, families with just 3 children or more are officially recognised as “big” in Poland, and we have something called Big Family Card, which entitles members of big families to discounts on public transport or cultural institutions tickets and such. There is my Dad, Mum, me, my brother Olek and my sis Zofijka, and our cat Misha and dog Jocky, but they must cope somehow without Big Family Cards as they don’t travel at all so I guess that’s why they didn’t get them. As for my extended family, well my Dad has four siblings, and my Mum has three, and only one of my uncles on Dad’s side doesn’t have children, all the rest of their siblings do, so in total, on both my parents’ sides, only their siblings’ children/grandchildren, I have… let’s do some counting, it might take a while……… 23 cousins, if I’m thinking right, 27 if you count their spouses since they’re colloquially called cousins too. I think though that my Dad’s family is bigger overall, as his parents have both had many siblings, my gran had like 10 I guess. Or maybe I just have that impression that there is so many of my Dad’s relatives because I don’t know them quite as well as my Mum’s family. I lived with my Mum’s family for most of my life so naturally I’ve seen lots of her aunts and uncles and cousins and all visiting, if not us, then my grandparents, at least so that I know who’s who in theory, but if I’d meet my Dad’s cousin on the street, I don’t think I’d even recognise them, let alone know what their name is or what exactly is the familial relationship between us or what they do for living. My Dad knows all of them though and where they live and what they do, and all the complex affinities. They tend to have kinda unobvious nicknames that they go by, which adds to the confusion, I mean usually Polish nicknames from names are very obvious, but in my Dad’s extended family’s case, their real full names are often quite different from what they’re called, they have a talent for making up very harshly sounding diminutives and spoiling names that are quite pretty in their original full forms. 😀 I guess in a way this must be a Kashubian thing, as my Dad is Kashubian. Somehow though, I have an impression that while my Dad’s side is bigger, it consists largely of middle-aged to elderly people, unlike my Mum’s side where there are weddings and births happening relatively frequently all the time and there are children of all ages. But still, despite being smaller, my Mum’s family is big, quite interesting and spread all over the country, and a little bit abroad. 

   How about your family? 🙂

Question of the day.

Hi lovely people! 🙂

I have another question for you about you and your siblings today. 🙂

If you have more than one sibling, are you closer to one sibling than another/others?

My answer:

Definitely! As weird as that may be, I am much closer to Zofijka than Olek, despite she is much younger than me than Olek is. I was never very close to Olek. As a small child, I didn’t even like him, I feel, though it’s hard for me to say whether it was a sort of dislike like you usually have between siblings because of the rivalry and such, especially if there is not a big age difference between you and your siblings and you’re of opposite genders, or was it something bigger. I’ve written on here a few times that my very first memory is that of Olek being born and I didn’t like it at all, and that I was very nasty to him later on when we were both very small, like apparently I could come over to him and suddenly start to punch him with something very energetically for no apparent reason, or I was telling him when he can talk to me and when he can’t, like we would have a conversation and then I’d get annoyed with something or bored or whatever and was like “I don’t wanna talk to you anymore”. 😀 We played sometimes and had fun but as far as I can remember there wasn’t much of my initiative in it. I went to the boarding school when I was 5 so then I had much less contact with him, especially that in the first years of my stay there, if my parents wanted to see me in between school breaks and holidays they’d rather go to me than take me home, and then Olek stayed with grandparents for that time, usually. So we didn’t really get a possibility to strengthen our bond somehow. And we kept going further and further from each other with our lives, it was awkward for us to talk to each other a bit because we didn’t even know such things about each other like most siblings do, like what each other likes in greater detail or thinks about certain things, for example. When I ultimately came home after leaving that school at 17, in a way I felt weird because until then, I was moving between those two places and not really feeling like I belonged to any of them, and now as I was home for good I started to really feel like a stranger in the family in that I didn’t know about a lot of things, my family, other than my parents and Sofi, didn’t even know much about me other than the dry and mostly obvious facts, and it was all just a bit odd. Since then, five years have passed and I’ve caught up on most of those things, at least to some degree, because some things you can’t undo, I still struggle with the sense of belonging a lot, though not as much as I used to, but I feel much closer with my immediate family and have strengthened relationships with some of my extended family like my grandparents. My relationship with Olek is one of those things that haven’t changed much at all. We talk a little bit about casual things when we see each other throughout the day, sometimes will exchange some sarcastic comments on something or talk about what we’ve been doing during the day but that’s pretty much it. It’s very hard for me to initiate conversations with people around whom I feel awkward, and, while Olek doesn’t have social anxiety or anything like that, it must be tricky for him too. We live in one house, but our lives are very different and not very connected, and other people see the distance between us very clearly from what I can notice. I like him, we are kind for each other as fellow human beings should, but I sort of don’t feel the same intensity of feelings to him as I do to the rest of my immediate family. And I feel quite yucky because of it because it feels so callous not to have any deeper feelings for your brother just because.

With Sofi, it is an entirely different matter! We are both very very different from each other, so there’s plenty of conflicts, misunderstandings, calling each other names (more or less humourously), irritating each other etc. especially that Zofijka is rather impulsive so it’s easy to argue with her or make her angry or she goes moody and doesn’t talk to you for an hour or snaps out for no reason and then 5 minutes after that all is OK again. We play a lot, we spend lots of time together. We laugh at similar things, at least when it comes to situational humour, or some objectively childish/immature stuff that other people just don’t get, because they are either too serious (most adult people we both know) or too stupid (most kids and teens we both know) for that and they just scratch their heads in confusion when we suddenly both start choking with homeric laughter. We talk a lot about lots of things, make up silly games (like that Misha can talk via the connection between his brain and the brain of one of us, or creating the most ridiculous sentence, but such that will still make sense, in which all the words start with the same letter, or Zombie invasions, or make our own mock versions of stupid popular TV shows, or just coming up with the worst tortures for each other). Sometimes I help Sofi with her school work, though my patience is very limited in this field so it rarely ends up well, it drives me crazy when she doesn’t even try to think on her own or makes stupid mistakes so I don’t meedle in her school work unless she asks me too because I don’t want to discourage her or make her think she isn’t good at school work just because I get pissed off with lack of thinking in people. 😀 There are things that Zofijka seems to prefer to talk to me about or ask me about rather than Mum, because she feels embarrassed with Mum for some reason, she tends to ask me loads of tricky questions about stiff like sex, divorce or suicide, to give you a few most recent examples. She still wants me to tell her bed time stories and lay in bed with her, before she falls asleep, like seriously, she’s addicted! That often annoys me but we often have lots of interesting night talks because of this. The stories Zofijka likes most are about a creature called Jim, who is 3000 years old, but looks like a 12-year-old boy, he is a Jimosaurus, lives in a forest in Australia, and is the king of all the animals in it. He has a hut deep inside the forest, and, while he can eat normal, human food and likes it, it’s not nutritional to him, he lives on helping others. So when he feels hungry, he jumps on the roof of his hut with his special binoculars and looks around the world if someone/something needs his help. If so, which is of course always the case, he puts on his leather wings and flies there, with his friend Zofijka the Bee, just in case, because she is an excellent healer and nurse and can care for humans and animals and plants. And his monarchal duties are taken up by his friend bear, who is always sleepy and always clumsy and doesn’t have the best memory, so a lot of unpredictable things happen in the forest during his reigns because he doesn’t have any control or authority. Sofi loves Jim since she was 5 and still dreams that one day he’ll come to her and make her knees better so she can rollerskate, or help her with any other dilemma she may have at a given moment. She also likes stories about Misha, and what his life would be like if he was a human. Zofijka helps me too, sometimes she surprises me with her matter-of-fact, dry attitude to some things and in some cases it makes her a good advisor. I was once mentioning her a tricky situation I was having with a friend, and Sofi ruthlessly concluded it: “Tell her, if she has a problem, then she has a problem. It’s not your problem”. Which, in this particular case, was a healthy way of seeing it. Zofijka is also good with clothes and hairstyles and all so she often helps me with that too. Sometimes if I desperately want to watch a film because of something in it, or get a new music crush and want to know how they look like, I’ll rather ask Zofijka than anyone else to describe that person or thing to me. Zofijka is also a reasonably good cook for a 12-year-old, but she always threatens me that she’s poisoned my food. 😀 She can be really scary sometimes.

How is it with you and your siblings? 🙂 If you have only one sibling, are you close with him/her?

Question of the day.

Did you share bedroom with any siblings?

My answer:

Yes, for some years. The first house that we lived in was in the countryside, we shared the same backyard with my maternal grandparents and my Mum’s two sisters and their gradually developing and growing families. My grandad has built this house for my Mum. It was pretty small. There was a kitchen, a mini bathroom, and a living room, and from the living room you could go upstairs. There was one big, sort of open plan room and we all lived there, that is my parents, me and Olek. Me and Olek slept in one part of it, and my parents in the other. Strangely, as much as I’ve always had an enormous need for privacy, this particular thing rarely bothered me much. In a way I even liked it because it was easier to deal with my night time anxieties when I had my family all around, and my Dad snoring his lungs out every night (now I couldn’t sleep with that level of noise). Sure, I liked the idea of having my own room and I envied a little bit other kids who did, though I also remember that it was normal to me to not have your own room, and I remember feeling genuinely surprised hearing from other children for example at school that they have their own rooms. It wasn’t something I desperately wanted or dreamt about every night though. I think it was also good because then it let me get used to sharing bedrooms with roommates at school, which is a different thing than sharing a room with your family but I think it made it easier for me than if I went to school without having that experience before, especially with my need for privacy and adjustment issues I had there. Some time before my Mum was pregnant with Sofi, at least a year before Sofi but I think it must have been a few years, my parents got an idea of building a new house, technically on the roof of my grandparents, and a much bigger one. This whole thing lasted for years, because they had real bad luck with the people they hired and other stuff kept going wrong, it was really exhausting and affected all of us in a bad way, I wouldn’t believe building a new house could affect your entire life and your whole family like that if someone told me and if I didn’t know from my own experience, I thought we would always be just building it and will never really move in there, as I said I don’t even remember in which year or at what time it had started because it felt like we’d been building that house since forever. And then when Zofijka was 2 months we moved to our new house very spontaneously, though it still wasn’t fully finished, and I had my own room there, and at this point, I can’t imagine sharing a room with someone else all the time, not even a sibling.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

Do you have siblings?

My answer:

I do. My brother is 20, his name is Aleksander, nicknamed to Olek, he is a car mechanic, has started his own business earlier this year. He is very much into cars, but he would more happily be a driver, like the kind of a driver that my Dad is – a tanker driver, or a lorry driver, or a buss driver, you know, such who drives for longer distances, he’s been always fascinated by it. – He is also very interested in WWII, likes watching films and series to do with it or filmed around that time, he would also like to be in the army apparently but Mum is too scared and I don’t think she would let him. 😀 Funnily enough, both cars and WWII are also my Dad’s lifelong interests so you’d think they’d get on like a house on fire but it’s actually the opposite, my Dad’s very nasty to him ALL the time, since forever! Olek also loves football, although nowadays more in theory – plays FIFA and supports his favourite team, Lechia Gdańsk, and goes to all their matches, no matter how much it takes and how far it is, he’s even been to Denmark earlier this month. – He has a lot of close friends that he hangs out with, they often party and drink just in their own company, and he runs his business with his best friend but he’s not really into talking or socialising and says he doesn’t like people. He is bright and intelligent, but not cerebral or anything like that, just thinks quickly, and knows how to make people laugh, I think literally everyone. He is a bit impulsive and still does some mischief once in a while. He dreams about having some big adventures and is quite a materialist, but is also very very traditional in his views on almost everything, and doesn’t need much to be contented.

My sister Zofia or Zofijka, or Zosia for more normal people who do typical nicknames, she usually goes by Zofijka at home and I call her Sofi and loads of other things and she’s Zosia at school, is 12, there is a relatively big age difference between us but we get along really well and always laugh at the silliest things and play together quite a lot, well OK I don’t know if a lot but I don’t know many other siblings with a similar age difference who would play as much as we do. Zofijka is going to go to 6th grade in September. She doesn’t like learning and is very carefree about school, she gets tired very easily of using her brain, has a constant need for company and is very social, extroverted and hyperactive, she is loud and has a very infectious laughter, some people find her intimidating or draining. She is also very sensitive and conscientious, though, and can often be incredibly brave and courageous, but very moody and irritable and not always very pleasant to be around because of this. She has a lot of friends who change approximately every week, she will love you on Monday and invite for sleepovers and on Friday she’ll call you idiot behind your back and will pretend she doesn’t even see you. She is sporty, she used to play volleyball and rollerskate, she still loves rollerskating but she can’t do that anymore or at least right now because of her joint issues, especially with knees. She only does swimming right now and would love to horse ride in future. She is also big on dancing and singing, though, in my humble opinion, doesn’t have too much talent for the latter to be honest. Zofijka is also quite artsy, she can draw and paint really well and make very detailed things from plasticine or similar things. She loves animals, especially dogs, and her current dream job is to be a vet and a dog hairdresser at once, and she wants to have a big spa for dogs, though since a few years she’s been regularly mentioning that she’d like to become a nun and is interested in various religious orders. She likes playing around with people’s hair as well. She loves adventures and constantly needs adrenaline and something big going on – like trips, sleepovers, parties, getting presents, you get it. – Her favourite TV series is “Soy Luna”, she likes crime series as well, is very interested in smart phones, recently she plays Fifa too, a lot, her favourite band is One Direction but she also listens to loads of currently popular Polish hip hop and Spanish language pop and dance music like Alvaro Soler or even stuff like Enrique Iglesias, she would like to live in Spain. She is hugely into fashion and was it up to her, her whole outfit would be from H&M (but my Mum hates H&M). And she loves, loves, LOOOVES eating! Like, seriously, at the beginning of one school year they apparently had some introductions stuff, that everyone had to say something about themselves, and Sofi was like: “So, I am Zosia and, hm, I like to eat…”. 😀 We usually play different make-belief stuff which rather than being interesting in itself is more comical or something, not your typical things definitely, to give you an example last week we played I was Sofi’s daughter, and Sofi was my very snobbish mum and we were going shopping together and making a drama involving all the people in the supermarket, and Zofijka is pretty good at pretending and has some pretty good dramatic skills when she tries. She is also a good observer, especially of people’s appearance and stuff like subtle mannerisms they have. She’s not the brightest and most intelligent kid in the world, which doesn’t mean she is stupid or something, though as I said she doesn’t like using her brain too much, but sometimes she can be really funny and even make my Mum laugh, and my Mum only laughs at intelligent humour.

I also have 3 siblings in heaven, one older and two younger than me.

You? 🙂

Question of the day.

Hi guys! 🙂

This is my question for you today:

When was the first time you remember feeling really angry?

My answer:

I generally wasn’t the type of a child that would easily get angry, not in my very early years anyway, later it started to look a bit different, when I would bottle it all up and then my brain would suddenly throw it all out at once and I’d feel out of control, but when I was very small I remember I was actually wondering why people get so angry so often about everything, and how do they do it, like as if I didn’t even know how to be properly angry. 😀 Yet my very first childhood memory is all about anger. The first thing in my life that I remember is when Olek was born. I was 2 then, and some people tried to persuade me that children don’t remember things at that young age, but, well, turns out that I do, at least this one thing, maybe because of how intense it felt. Mum was in the hospital, and me and Dad came to visit her. I remember clearly when we came in to the hospital and then we were in a very creaky lift and I was a bit scared because I felt dizzy in it. Mum was on her own in the hospital room and we were both very happy to see each other. Olek, like me and Zofijka, was born through C-section, and she showed me her belly, and I saw the wound and all, it looked horrid, and I remember she had a big needle close to her tummy, I don’t even know what it was for, but, at least then, it looked huge to me and it was all just awful, and I was feeling absolutely, seriously mad at that horrible creature who did that to her, I think good for him that he wasn’t there. I was mad at him for hurting my Mummy, and for taking her away from me. I don’t remember anymore of that, but when me and Olek were kids, we weren’t really like typical siblings – yes we played a bit with each other, and yes we argued like all siblings, especially sisters and brothers do, but I didn’t really like him at all, and I didn’t feel anything positive towards him, I was indifferent to him at best. – And, while I don’t remember those things, my parents recall that I would often come over to him and start to beat him with something, or wouldn’t let him play with me or with my things, or wouldn’t talk to him etc. I was real nasty to him. And we still don’t really have much of a relationship at all, which kinda sucks, and is definitely weird, and we both feel pretty awkward around each other and mostly only talk casually. But I no longer beat him, I’d be afraid to do that as he’s at least 30 cm taller than me. 😀 And it’s not that we don’t like each other now, just don’t have a close bond I guess. But while it seems slightly weird, especially given that I have a much more strong bond with Zofijka who is 10 years younger than me, I guess not all siblings have to have a great relationship.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

Hi people! 🙂

Today the question I have for you is about your childhood:

Was there anything you were allowed to do as a kid that most kids weren’t allowed to do?

My answer:

Well I guess that in a way, in our family, I was always the more privileged child in some respect. That was because of multiple things, I think. First of all, I was disabled and I think that in some regards it did impact my parents attitudes towards me. I was also their first child, the first one who was actually born and survived that is, as well as I was my maternal grandparents first grandchild, so that was a big thing, and had both good and bad consequences for me. Another thing was that when Olek was born, he was healthy and able-bodied, and there has strangely been a consistent generational pattern on both sides of my family that fathers are in a constant conflict with their sons, and so is with my Dad and Olek, even though things have eased over the years, but because of that, Dad was always more naturally inclined to me. According to my Dad I learnt to speak very quickly and apparently I was able to speak in sentences before I was a year old, while my younger siblings would learn to speak much later on and I know that my Dad really liked that about me ’cause he could actually get along with me as he says himself, he also always liked to show off with me. 😀 From all the recordings and stuff that they have of me from that time, I don’t think I was particularly special in this regard, and so does my Mum, but my Dad claims I was really different from all the children he’s ever met and more communicative. I don’t think he has more experience with children though, so from his perspective that may be true indeed. 😀 Then when I went to school at the age of 5 so I was about 400 km away from home and when I would come home it was more like I was a guest than anything and it was like a holiday for us and I was treated like a VIP which on one hand was cool because, well, who wouldn’t like to be treated like a VIP, but on the other hand was damn confusing and mesed up a lot of things for me, particularly my sense of belonging and stability ’cause that wasn’t really normal, even though I liked it. My Mum always thought I am so very mature, which she probably confused with me being intelligent, so she would always be much less strict with me than with Olek, who wasn’t much less bright but much more hyperactive and impulsive and that was what people had seen first about him.

It was particularly my Dad who was making a very visible difference between me and Olek. As a little child, I was happy about it, especially seeing how awfully and often irrationally stern he is with Olek, and I thought that I am just so lucky to be Daddy’s little girl and we’ve always got along well, despite there isn’t anything like some deeper understanding between us, we’re in a close but rather superficial relationship, not a very serious one, it’s quite immature.

Daddy woould be real nasty to Olek about something we did together while I wouldn’t suffer any consequences at all, or just a bit of telling off or some grumpiness until he forgets about the whole thing. He always liked to cuddle with me and although he was never the spoiling, doting kind of Daddy, he was close to that with me. I’ve also always had a bit of understanding of people so I knew how to not irritate him and how to convince him to something I wanted, and I guess I still have quite a strong influence onhim if I’ll try. He would buy me lots of yummy stuff just for myself, or take me to the beach and we’d go there just on our own, he would even sometimes play with me, while he never did that with Olek or even Zofijka as far as I am aware, or take me for quite long road trips or I remember that he took me from school in his tanker a couple times and that was always very adventurous and those tanker trips were always very exciting for me and one of my best childhood memories. Only that things have kind of broken a bit at some point, at least from my perspective, because we were once talking with Mum about Dad and Olek having another major crisis, Mum mentioned rather lightly, and probably not realising what kind of impact it was going to have on me, or rather how it’s going to sound, that Dad has always felt more fond of me because I am disabled so he was able to feel like more sympathetic towards me and have a better relationship with me than with Olek or Zofijka, and because I was away from home most of the time. I didn’t react to that, but it really got me ragin’. Maybe I should be a bit more understanding or something, like see the full picture and how it really is from his perspective, (though I’m not sure he’d be able and/or willing to tell me anything constructive) or just let go of that, but to me it sounded really awful and I am definitely not as genuine anymore in relation to him, anymore because knowing him it actually looks very likely. I suppose in some circumstances even feelings such as sympathy can with time grow into something more but then he wouldn’t treat us so unevenly.

I’ve always had a very strong relationship with my Mum, not always that very good, but dynamic and deep and pretty intense, and while she wasn’t as obviously favourising anyone as my Dad did, and has always loved all of us, she has always been very protective of me, don’t know if over- but very protective, and she would often let me do things that she wouldn’t let Olek do. I now know she has a lot of guilt feelings about that I had to be so far away from home, as if she could change much about it, and I think she wanted to compensate that for me in different ways, as well as that I said she just thought that I am so very mature.

Some of the things that I can remember were that Mum let me drink coffee from a relatively young age (guess I was like 8 or 9 years old and I really loved that and it made me feel so grown-up, I didn’t like to think about being a grown-up, but I did like the coffee drinking aspect 😀 hence probably my current coffee troubles hahaha). Now Zofijka is older than me then and would also like to drink coffee, but Mum tells her “No! It’s not for children!”. So I once asked her why Zofijka can’t, but I could, just of plain curiosity, and Mum argument was that “She’s too silly”. Can’t quite make the connection between those things, I know quite a few adult people who are silly and I would even say that’s too light a word and they still drink coffee but OK… Zofijka now is also spoiled by everyone, but in a completely different way as she’s just the youngest and the only child in the family at this point.

A funny thing, that I still consider funny, and a little bit confusing at times, is that my Mum have always asked me about lots of things, that she didn’t know but assumed that I might know. It looked particularly funny when we were somewhere with other people, ’cause which parent would ask the child about things. 😀 Parents always like to be right, and especially don’t like to admit that they don’t know something their child knows, like which spelling of the word repeatedly is correct (in Polish of course). 😀 When I was in my teens, she started to ask me for advice on lots of things, like what she should do in some situation or what she should choose. No, my Mum is not an indecisive person, I guess she just values my opinion or something, and I know she thinks I am a good listener. Now it’s not as weird as when I was a child, but when I was a child it felt kind of not typical in comparison to other families I knew that Mum would ask me what to do. It’s still confusing at times because you actually never know what her reaction might be like when you say something, even if in the end after a few months she’s going to say that I was right. 😀 Somehow though, maybe a little strangely, I’ve never had a problem with acknowledging her authority, it’s with Dad that I’ve always had this problem, and I don’t really consider him an authoritative figure or someone that I’d obey nowadays, for reasons other than to have a peace of mind.

What had been a bit of a problem for Olek when we were kids was that I got a phone when I was 12. It was a spontaneous decision and not really because I wanted it so much. Generally my Mum is against introducing technologies to children too early, and she used to say that she’ll buy us cell phones when we’ll be maybe like 15-16 or maybe even older. But when I was 12, I had to leave the integration school – closer to home – where I was for two years, and there didn’t seem to be much other choice than to go back to my old school. But Mum felt that now I’d need a phone, not only because I was older than when I was going there before, but also because I really didn’t want to go there so she hoped that if I would be able to be in some control of when we are in touch rather than have to wait for her to call the boarding school phone and possibly miss it, I might be more at ease with going back there, and that would just be more practical for me to have a phone. There was no such need for Olek though, so he had to wait some more, despite that he actually wanted a phone much more than I did.

Zofijka was much luckier, because although Mum also threatened her that she won’t have her own phone until almost adulthood, Zofijka was much more persevering, and also the times have obviously changed so it’s harder to stick to such a resolution. So about two years ago, when Zofijka was only 9, and had her leg in plaster, was terribly bored and really making a pain in the but of herself for all of us, Mum one day suddenly bought her a smartphone. She doesn’t have the Internet connection, but even without it, it still continues to make a lot of havoc in poor Zofijka’s mind.

I was also frequently allowed to stay up late, sometimes really late at night. It was well motivated though because my sleep cycle was messed up anyway so after some trials and errors Mum has rightly decided that no point for me going to bed at say 9 PM and waking me up at 7 AM for example if I’m not going to sleep either and am going to be drowsy the next day or be up and about at 3 AM. And it was often a lot of fun for me. I’d watch movies with parents, eat crisps withh Dad, or just listen to music and play or something – the best ideas for plays come to mind at night, just as now I still have the best and most creative ideas at night as well. – 😀

So those are the examples that I can remember now. It was kind of two-sided as you can see, both cool, and quite a bit confusing. And often made me feel not right in relation to my siblings. Like when I was going to the integration school and was thus living at home for two years and still having such a special treatment all the time, I felt pretty much like an intruder or something like this because my siblings weren’t treated like that, and I was afraid they might hold grudges against me because of that, especially Olek. But overall, I don’t consider my childhood particularly happy, – not somehow incredibly bad, but definitely not happy – so in a way I was glad of all that because it kinda made me feel special, in a weird way, but still.

OK so now you let me know how about you? And what was your point of view about that you were allowed those things? 🙂

Question of the day.

If you met five-year-old siblings named Jane and John, what would you think?

My answer:

I’d be rather surprised, that’s for sure. But, other than that, I could think many things. I would think it’s unusual. I would think what’s their surname and wonder what is more likely, Smith or Doe? I would think they’re both pretty names, but sound a little bit odd as a nowadays sibset. I’d wonder what are they parents like. Are they kind of minimalists? Have a very traditional, minimalistic, classic style? Or are they kinda conservative, maybe wanted to honour someone? Maybe they have their names after their grandparents or grand grandparents? Or maybe they grandparents came up with names for them? Grandparents often aren’t up to date with name trends, at least here in Poland, when I help people on one of forums with their baby naming struggle, I see it often that grandparents tend to suggest name ideas which were popular when their children were born or growing up, and now are kinda auntie/uncle-sounding, not fresh enough for a comeback yet. Maybe their parents have a bit quirky sense of humour and wanted to demonstrate it through naming their kids? While I love quirky name ideas and people adding a little grain of salt to the whole baby naming thing (like I know a family who have 6 children and they are named in alphabetical order, or similar stuff), but not to the point of making a harm to a child, I don’t think such very matchy twinset would have an easy life, unless they also have as much distance to it as their parents. Or maybe it’s otherwise? Maybe their parents are so boring, lacking imagination completely, and simply used the first couple of names that came to their mind? Oh yeah, I have tons of ideas. Some are a bit crazy. 😀 Maybe they were orphaned and someone just named them randomly? Or maybe someone changed their names to make them anonymous and protect them from something/someone? I actually like both these names, so if not the fact how plain they probably sound in English-speaking countries, it would be a nice, classic sibset. But yeah, they’re very plain. I don’t know much as for how’s Jane doing nowadays with popularity and what are some most popular associations or connotations related to this name, at least in other English-speaking countries than Us, maybe besides plain Jane thing, but I don’t think it’s much less neutral than John. Pity they were so overused in the past, they’re pretty names. And yeah, John can be nicknamed to Jack! 😀

What would you think? 🙂

Friendly Fill-ins.

This week I’m also participating in Friendly Fill-ins, held by 15 And Meowing

and

MCGuffy’s Reader

.

1. I am the… listener in my family. I don’t know why, my family really likes to talk to me about their issues or secrets or just complain about the world and people’s dogs pooing on the streets etc. Especially my Mum, she says no one else here would understand her issues, but everyone else does it too, well maybe besides Olek. I think I like it ’cause it probably has to mean they trust me or something.

2. I have… 2 sibling(s). 19-year-old brother Olek (nickname of Aleksander) and 10-year-old sis Zofijka (Zofia). I have a very good relationship with Zofijka.

3. I am looking forward to… finally passing all my school exams, especially the final exams, this spring. I am incredibly anxious about it, but also I want it to happen quickly, now, just to get through it finally. But my final exams will take place in May.

4. The first sign of spring this year was… cranes whooping near my window.

 

Share Your World – March 19, 2018.

What is your earliest memory?

Many people with whom I’ve shared this memory say it’s impossible to have such early memories, as I was 2 years old then, but anyway I remember it and it is too vivid and subjective to be just something I remember from what others told me, in my opinion, also when I talked to my parents about it they told me they never knew that I perceived that situation this way.

This memory is about my brother’s birth, or rather a bit afterwards. I only remember that me and Dad went to Mum to the hospital, after he was born. I remember being in the lift for the first time and being a little bit afraid, I was often afraid of such kind of motion, something moving up and down, because of my balance issues. Then we came in to the room where Mum lied, she was rather weak and didn’t talk much as she probably still was under the influence of anesthetics (we were all born through caesaeran section). She let me touch her tummy and the impresson of this moment has stayed with me for very long. I felt her stitches and it somehow moved me very deeply. I know I felt like it is my brother’s fault and it has to be very painful for Mum. I told them he had to be terrible if she now looks like this and my Dad was laughing he surely is an absolute monster. Then I remember us leaving and being n the lift again and going out of the hospital and nothing more about it. But I’ve often thought this situation had to have some significant influence on me. My parents told me, and I remember some bits and pieces myself, that I was often pretty rude for Olek, yelling at him or punching him all of the sudden and not letting him touch me, although it wasn’t a long period of time, but I guess we never had a proper/normal sibling relationship, mainly because of our limited contact as I spent most of my childhood away from home.

Which way does the toilet paper roll go? Over or under?

Over.

What makes you feel grounded?

Having my feet on the ground, warmth, but not heat, touching Misha and his purr, soft, relaxing music, deep breathing, and for some reason which I don’t really get – the scent and taste of mint.

What did you appreciate or what made you smile this past week?  Feel free to use a quote, a photo, a story, or even a combination.

Misha

, progress in my languages, blogging, strengthening relationship with my Mum. I was doing a lot of self care stuff this week, much more than usual. On Monday I had a very nice morning. Dad needed to do something in the port, he delivers fuel, often to ports, and has other things to do there related to his work as well. He offered my Mum to go with him and as she agreed, I decided to go with them too. While Dad was in the port, we were at the Sea

and it was very nice and beautiful and we had a great time together, we also spent a lot of time together after we got back home. Yesterday we all were in a restaurant and had a big dinner, very yummy. It was anxiety provoking, it is always very anxiety provoking for me to go out and there was a lot of people, I also find it rather stressful to eat among many people, but despite all that anxiety it was very nice, I can’t remember when was the last time before yesterday that I was in a restaurant. 😀 I guess more than a year ago. and although overall my week was rather uneventful, it was mostly good.

This challenge is hosted by Cee

. Thanks so much. 🙂