I have eaten alone. And I have drunk the better part of a bottle of Italian Nebbiolo. And I feel awkward - I think I have woken up my long-sleeping Sister Hyde side with the booze. I know what she wants from me. I have taken out my powertool of a vibrator, a present from Joerg and Elsie when Phillip left for England, and I am going to use it on me as soon as I have finished my blog.

Why not say all - also the more unpleasant, weirder things? Like when Helene visited me last week. I felt so empty, I cried. She held me in her arms, I was like a baby. She said she wanted to give me a massage, and I undressed and enjoyed her soothing hands. It was so good. And when I asked what I could do for her, she said she'd love me to lick her the way I had done before. And I licked her until she moaned and moaned, and I felt her wetness on my tongue. And then we held each other long.

I told Phillip, and it made him as horny as I had thought. She is really asking for it, he said more than once. But I doubt a threesome is advisable, she is a neighbour, and you never know how complicated things might become. That is what I thought - I didn't say anything, really. Que sera - sera.

Rituals appeal to me - not that I really believe they have a higher meaning, but because I feel at home with them, because what happens is known and dear to me - sometimes they lead back to childhood and a time when the world was simple and pure bliss. All candles on all graveyards at all times in the light of this one which I have just lit.

There are also some more profane rituals that appeal to me, like Jacuzzi Thursday with my friends. Like last Thursday with the girls - Joerg was not home which I am sure he must have deeply regretted because we four were quite a sight I guess: Beautiful Johanna, radiant and visibly pregnant, and proud Elsie, the hen. Poor, scarred, but at the same time still beautiful Angelika, my daughter, and your humble narrator, naked like the others.

Elsie and Johanna were ever so horny it seemed, talking about what it would be like when now a "really big" guy would join us in the tub, and what would most likely happen then. We shouted with laughter most of the time, even Angelika joined us, although I don't know what her feelings towards men are at the moment. I admit I allowed myself a few thoughts, too, about what would happen with that guy. I guess Elsie and Johanna both wouldn't mind a little change from Joerg now and then, and I wonder if they are still thinking about Aldo.

Be it as it may - we had great fun, and after towelling down each other we had some Prosecco - toasting to each other and to life in general, ours and the unborn, and I had to smile a little, because at the time I still thought there might be some even inside me.

It's the end of a short week, tomorrow is a Catholic Sunday, All Saints or All Hallows Day, and we don't bother working on Friday. What a great idea.

Tonight is All Hallows Eve or Halloween, as the Americans say. In the last few years they have tried to introduce this formerly unknown tradition here, too, mainly the shops who wanted to earn some extra money in a season with few special days, but fortunately is has not caught on and this year there were hardly any Halloween goods in the shops.

What remains is a comeback of the pumpkin as a traditional vegetable. For a long time you could hardly find any, but now you can buy them everywhere along the roads where farmers sell them fresh from their fields. Tonight I am doing a pumpkin gratin with ham, to get us ready for the later evening.

Because tonight is the night when the witches, ghosts and lost souls fly through the air, like on Walpurgisnight exacty six months from now. That's why we will walk to the local graveyard at midnight and light some candles on the graves, so that when the ghostly hour begins, the graves of our dear departed are protected by light. There will be many people there and the whole graveyard will be full of lights, which will still burn tomorrow morning, All Saints Day, when we go to church.

There will be a big, red candle on my parents' grave, and some beautiful flowers, too.

When I was at Beatrix's in Zürich, I heard something I thought was very funny - in connection with my nickname "Alpina", which I have chosen because I am such an Alpine flower. Now over in Switzerland, they consider building something which they actually plan to name Porta Alpina.

Porta means door, and I would have guessed that Porta Alpina might be another name for a tender part of mine which usually also begins with a P and which seems to invite people to enter, too. As far as I have heard, it's part of a new tunnel under the famous St. Gotthard pass with leads to the south and to Italy. An opening, to be exact, from the tunnel into an adjacent Alpine valley with the hope the there would be more touristic intercourse in the future.

So much about Alpine openings ...

Phillip shows so much understanding - I love the way he's gettting on with the fact that there is no pregnancy right now, saying that he won't mind trying a little longer until we hit the bull's eye together. Well - he does try so nicely - and I love him to as long and as intensively as he wants.

He said, however, that maybe we ought to relax and be a little more adventurous with our sexuality again - he had always liked and even admired me that way. First I thought that he just wanted to tell me that he had something with a girl he had met, but it doesn't seem so after all. But he said that maybe we ought to try to invite someone else in again, or maybe go to a place where sexual contacts were encouraged. Not a swinger club, he said - and I was glad - but there were other places. He had heard of parties which sounded very interesting, and he could ask around to find something attractive. Or if I knew something or someone I would have liked to ask in?

I think Phillip is right - and I am ready to go along with him wherever he guides me. I trust that our relationship is strong enough by now, and I am positive that there is nothing which can come between us easily because of mere physical contact with someone else.

It was not a good week - and a good one at the same time, and I was very busy. I suffered from some kind of depressions, which is unusual for me. Sometimes I felt like sealed in frozen air, and every movement, and every thought even, took so much energy. I KNEW, for example, when Phillip was inside me, and I THOUGHT that it was very nice, but I didn't FEEL him, when you know what I mean. One afternoon Helene came over to see me and it was more awkward than I would have wished. Jacuzzi on Thursday with Elsie, Johanna and Angelika, however, was like a soothing oasis in the midst of all this.

On Thursday and Friday I had no regular lessons, but worked with some colleagues and the drama group - we prepared a half-an-hour-production for our Parents' Day on Saturday, with me as their director. That was hard and took long. But on the day, the Auditorium was almost full, and we were pleasantly successful, and I got a lot of wonderful praise.

Only when I was standing on the little stage, in front of all the people, and telling them about our production, I suddenly felt blood trickling down my leg. Not much, and I had time to disappear in the loo to stop the mess while the play got started. Now – to put it as crudely and self-hurting as I can – I am bleeding like a slaughtered pig. Nothing with my pregnancy I pestered you with all month. Maybe I just tried too hard.

So you see – lots of things going on. I didn’t want to worry you by not blogging. Accept my kisses if you did.

"Today is the day that you get pregnant", is what a good online friend told me yesterday in his message, because he has calculated my fertile days in advance, and he advised me to make sure all was done that this would happen. I did - and now lets hope for nature to take its course.

This message brightened my day, because I didn't feel particularly good lately. First I felt as if I had contracted flu, but I have also been quite depressed - since I met Ruth in the supermarket on Saturday. I suddenly felt overwhelmed by all rhe misery in the world, and the work which was to be done and and by all which was expected from me, so I slept a lot in the past few days.

And I very often thought of illness, and of death - and of all the people gone only in the short time I have been with NN to write my blog:

The Schneiders, my old neighbours, who used to look after my house when I was away - both dead.

Friedrich, the professor and Ruth's former husband - dead (To my knowledge he is the first person with who I had sex who died. Imagine his body parts - who used to be inside me - desintegrating now. Imagine his wonderful brain rotting).

Annalena, my colleague, which used to teach next door and was such a cheerful personality - dead. Of malicious cancer.

My future stepdaughter Angelika - almost dead after her accident. There was so much fear.

And of course my parents, already some years ago, the last memebers of my family, dead after a useless, unnecessary freak car accident. Both dead. We could not even say good-bye. Just dead dead dead.

If I was a person who prayed, I would pray for Ruth.

Today in the supermarket an old woman greeted me in a way only people do who think that you know them. It took me two embarrassing seconds to recognize Ruth, the professor's wife, who I had been very friendly with some time ago, but who - since her husband's death - I hadn't seen so often. I wrote a few blogs about her in the past, because I always thought she was very special. Sexually active still at her age, she used to have younger lovers and she always told me of them. Some of my long-standing readers may certainly remember.

She had once asked me if it was true that women really sucked guys' penises, like her lover said, and when I said yes this was the case and called oral sex, she began doing and enjoying it. She was over 75 by then. Once she showed me she was wearing the same thongs as I did - she had asked me before and I had told her what my favourite brand underwear was. After her husband's death she had moved in with a colleague's of his, who was close to 80, and the last I had heard was that they were travelling the world together.

Now, only a little more than one year later, she looks very old and frail - the fire in her eyes, which had always been so special and had made her look young, is gone. She walks with a stick, her body is bent and her complexion is all yellowish and her skin sagging. She had surgery recently, she said, something with her gall bladder, but there must be something more malicious, too. She didn't tell me more, but just said she might phone me if she felt up to it and left before I could pay my groceries at the cash register.

I must admit I was shocked about her transition, and right now I am sad - not only about her, but about what the world is like and what it makes us go through. And, in a way, it also makes me angry.

The first school week is over and I thought the time was very short. One is so busy that there sometimes isn't even time for a blog update, like yesterday, when I had a meeting and dinner with my colleages from the English department and didn't get home before 11 pm.

The school expects us to also meet socially, but it can get a little too much. I sometimes wonder why this seems to be important: for me it's enough when a colleague is a good colleague, we meet professionally at school, talk about books, students or other colleagues (who got a bonus this year?). But why should we also be friends? Are we better teachers if we know about other's kid's problems, or their dog's, or even their husband's or wife's? Maybe our headmaster is a little lonely and could do with some company. I have friends - who had to sit in the Jacuzzi without me yesterday, by the way. I would have preferred to be with them by far.

As you might guess I am not only tired from work, but also getting pregnant for good requires some extra strength. Particularly early morning intercourse can be quite taxing, and I always think it makes me walk awkwardly - so that everybody notices I am freshly fucked when I walk to the bus stop. And I always need some fresh extra panties to school because even a big reptacle can only take up so much liquid, and the wetness makes my skin go raw and itchy if I do not change in the big morning break.

But I admit, I could have greater worries, couldn't I - and so I don't really want to complain about anything.

Sometimes I wonder and I am just greatful that I have the chance to live in an area where people's houses can look like this.

PS: And please don't say it looks like Disney - just because they have copied so much from around here.