Did you say baby?

I attended my sister's baby shower earlier this summer in London and well in addition to my sister being pregnant, out of the eight other women present there, three other young ladies were also expecting. Which leaves five. My mother and my mother-in-law who have already produced wonderful human specimens, my single second cousin who has not found the perfect man yet, my long time school friend who is a proud mum to her 1 year old boy.... and myself. With atleast four confirmed hormonal women present, I felt a kick coming on, and no, I was'nt 5 months pregnant without knowing it. Somehow being happily together with a guy for 4 and married to him for 2 years did not excuse me from not having a baby tucked under my arm.

Then came the big day my younger sister delivered her first baby, and the second kick came on. This one though emanated out of pure fear. Delivering a baby is painful, hard work and downright scary. And well, it oddly reminded me of a picture from when I was 11 years old and my mother got my ears pierced and I was standing there telling her much after all the howling stopped 'Why didn't you just get my ears pierced when I was a baby so it wouldn't hurt so much mamaaaaa...like all the other kids?' Moral of the story as I recall it from that time: it hurts less when you are young, spirited, easily distracted when in pain and have less control over your life.

The day I had to leave London and my 2 week old nephew, I cried like the baby. He was part of me, even more so, somehow, then the adults in my closely knit family. It was hard to keep the self composure as I proceeded on to check in and back to my life.

Oh well, I did. Work began and the weeks started to count away. I feel the same as before, but since that baby shower, and the days and months after, I do ocassionally feel a kick coming on smack right in the middle of my abdomen. Just my biological clock hitting the hour, I tell myself. After all it has to do its job.

That Feeling

Today I felt like I was falling in love all over again. I could not put my finger on what actually triggered it. Maybe the music had something to do with it as i finally upgraded to a Spotify premium account which enables me to listen to my offline playlists on my Iphone whenever I want to. Yes, I am nearly a gadget freak. So I spent the day playing music, prancing around my apartment with an amused husband looking on, skipping around the city, meeting an old friend and making a new one. The weather was glorious and I felt like I could do just about anything I wanted to. I came home and there he was. The reason for that feeling.

Satellite waste

Saturday night was spent with a bunch of wonderful mostly norwegians, partying, chatting, eating and drinking. Of the many other interesting encounters, two stood out. One about the different types of drugs one can take and the after-affects of each described quite vividly, followed by a round of who had tried what and not.

The second, was a rather interesting monologue delivered by a guy working with satellite technology. Monologue, because once we got him started he just went on and on, but we hung on each word, the wannabe-space-junkies that we were that night. Did you know there are currently approximately over 19000 + man made satellites orbiting earth?? and that many are just debri, with no fuel, pushed further away and just hanging about in space. A satellite wasteland.

So my selective memory from Saturday night retained some information when I awakened the morning after, and I did some research:

Artificial orbital debris, consists of the leftovers from humanity’s activities in Earth orbit. Every time we put a satellite into space, we end up leaving something behind in Earth orbit. At the very least this is the satellite itself and often times also includes one or more rocket stages and bits of miscellaneous stuff, like explosive bolts, lens caps, and solid rocket exhaust particles. Sometimes these leftover bits themselves shed more pieces through what are called fragmentation events. These events can be minor (a few dozen pieces) to extreme (explosions creating more than a thousand pieces). Within this category of artificial objects we define three basic populations: the trackable, the potentially trackable, and the untrackable.

Trackable: Greater than 10 cm in diameter, Estimated Population: 19,000+
Potentially Trackable: Greater than 1 cm in diameter, Estimated population: Several hundred thousand
Untrackable: Less than 1 cm in diameter, Estimated Population: Many millions to billions

Eat that.

So not only are we polluting the earth we live on we are also doing the same some thousand miles above us. Amazing.

Peace lilies

For me plants out in the nature are beautiful. Indoor they are invisible to me, until that is, I rented an apartment for 6 months and the couple that lived there wanted me to water the plants and keep them alive if possible. What I blurted out was the honest rather abrupt reply 'But I kill plants, always have' At which they just smiled and asked me to try.

I did try. Well, there were times they were plain invisible to me, part of the furniture and watering them never entered my mind. One of the first things my husband did when he came over for the weekends to visit me was to water the plants. And then we happened to be away for two weeks and the two peace lillies sitting happy in the living room window just died. My husband was extremely sad. He tried to coax them to live again. I felt the situation was rather strange yet touching. I have to mention that the lillies do make a tearful picture when they are dead. So, anyway he went out a few days later and bought two new peace lillies, because he felt it was the right thing to do. I ofcourse, had been saying all along that there was not any need. We tried, and two out of the five plants died. It was still a respectable remaining number for one like myself who kills plants.

In the last week of July, I vacated the apartment and moved into the hotel across the road from the apartment block according to my new arrangement with my employer. The apartment was to remain empty till the couple who lived there returned 3 weeks later. I started to adjust to the hotel life again. In the evenings, I would stare accross the road from my hotel room window and spot the peace lillies in the living room window of the apartment. I started to watch them a little everyday. By the third day I started to worry about the plants in the apartment thirsty for water. Strangely enough, I had grown attached to the lillies and the other plants in the house. It was a new feeling for me. I was quite disturbed about the plants starving for water, an occurence that never once bothered me before. Eventually, by the second week when I was at the hotel again I decided to ask my employer for the keys so I could save the plants. I went by one evening hopeful they were hanging on. The three other plants were quite sturdy and could do without water for longer, I knew. Peace lillies however are much more sensitive, and need water every 2-3 days, and I knew that too. It had been two weeks! As I unlocked the apartment I felt sad I had not come earlier. I raced down to the living room. The peace lillies were dead.