You want to call him WHAT???

Me: Honey, I have the perfect name!

Ralf leans back in his chair and regards me warily across seven years of blissful matrimony.

Me: Gerhardt! Isn’t that a great name?

A pause during which several expressions cross his face, followed by no expression at all.

Ralf: You want to name our son Gerhard?

I nod.

Ralf: Gerhard Schroeder.

Me: Uh huh. I like that name.

Ralf: As in the former German Chancellor?

Me (frowning): Well…. yeah. Why not? He was a good Chancellor.

Ralf: Why don’t you just name him Elvis Presley?

Me (primly): It’s not at all the same thing. People have heard of Elvis.

Ralf: Or Barrack Obama?

Me (rolling my eyes): Way more people have heard of him, too.

Ralf: Yeah, in… He struggles to come up with a suitably obscure location. Texas! THIS IS GERMANY!!!

Me: Hey, what about Tex?

No response besides a slight widening of the nostrils.

Me (regrouping): Anyway, I want to spell it with a ‘t’ at the end, so it’s not even the same name.

Ralf: I refuse to discuss this.

That means he feels strongly about it.

Me (in a wheedling voice): We could call him Gary. Or Hardy. No one would need to know.

Ralf: Go now. Buy a fish. Name it Gerhard or Geronimo or whatever you need to get out of your system.

Me (parting shot): It’s not like I want to name him George Bush!

Sheesh. I guess we’ll have to call him Deke or Garbanzo after all.

Scheisse happens

I've been reflecting on how I ended up in Germany. The obvious answer is that I'm married to a German but it's not that simple. It kind of evolved through a series of events.

Years ago I was an application developer, managing a small team responsible for designing and implemeting an HR solution for the Japanese market. About midway through the development cycle someone had the bright idea to split up the functional and technical teams, both of which I managed along with the QA team.

I resisted as long as I could and since my team was working on the biggest and most complex product requirements of the release I had a lot of say - until the release was over, that is, and then they calmly carried out their diabolical plan to make me specialize. Everyone else had already made the switch and I was the last hard core generalist standing.

Given the choice between functional work (i.e., defining requirements and designing solutions) and technical work (implementing solutions) I chose the functional path because it seemed to be the rarer skill, by which I mean that fewer people seemed to be good at it. Most of the people I worked with were either subject matter experts with no design skills or technical experts who designed like engineers - i.e., for other engineers. Few of them were what I considered great application designers so it seemed like a promising niche.

(For an example of engineer-driven design, go use gmail. I hope Google doesn't blow up my blog or delete all my contacts for saying that - and I'm thinking I won't be Blog of Note any time soon - but it needed to be said.)

Not long after I felt underchallenged in my new specialized role so I made a decision to leave the US and spend an exciting year or so abroad. Oh, and I also planned to marry Ralf, whom I'd met on the job, but I couldn't count on that happening so mostly I was inviting the universe to fall in with my ideas.

The tricky bit was finding a job in Europe when my only other languages were Japanese and Russian. I put my name 'out there' and was offered a job in the European sales team at the same company, which I eagerly accepted. Accordingly, I quit my job as functional analyst and put the paperwork in motion to move abroad.

Then disaster struck.

A couple of weeks before my planned departure date the offer was withdrawn! They decided to give the job to someone else already living in Europe, AFTER making me a formal offer. Rotten, I know, but believe it or not people pull crappy stunts like that all the time. Unfortunately, this particular crappy stunt left me jobless, homeless and with not much of a savings.

The good news is that I was also single, mobile and good at my job so I didn't despair. Much. And sure enough, about three days later I got a call from the manager of the German sales team with an offer. A bit less money but based in Germany. The only catch was that I had to learn German but they would pay for lessons.

What, am I stupid? I jumped at it! Ten days later I was in Munich struggling to learn German well enough to do a passable sales demo as well as learn a completely unfamiliar product area, because right after hiring me my manager was demoted to head up the financials product, rather than all products. Now, I'm a smart cookie, but there are limits to human ability and there was no way I'd be up to speed any time soon.

That's a fancy way of saying I sucked.

Meanwhile the manager of the consulting organization adopted the strange and offputting habit of coming to the door of the sales room to glare at me several times a day. We're talking resentful glares of hatred here and I really didn't understand what I'd done to offend him. My German manager soon clarified the matter: One of the key projects was dying a slow hideous death and they needed someone with my skills to save it - and meanwhile here I was wasting everyone's time trying to sell products I knew nothing about in a language I couldn't speak!

When he put it that way it kind of made sense. So, to make a long story short, I was soon after absorbed into the consulting group, helped save the project, got promoted to project manager (accompanied by more glares of hatred - I learned later it was his only expression), managed another project then joined the product strategy group. And married Ralf. Over time we had two kids and left our jobs to join a start up company.

Blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, my point is that some of these changes were planned by me, whereas others just kind of happened. And really, that's the way things go in life. You're never prepared for the sucker punches and you never know what will turn up when they happen. Also, there are a lot of great people out there, like my awesome German boss who offered to stand up for me and even get fired if I didn't want to change jobs.

(He has since emigrated to Ireland and is now a professional chef. Not because of me. Probably.)

You just never know. That's what faith is for.

The world's worst lovers

I discovered today at the Huffington Post that German men are the world's worst lovers because they smell.

Like what, soap? All the German men I know are neurotically clean. Because German women will chase them around with disinfectant if they're not.

According to this survey, most of my boyfriends have been the world's worst lovers. Alas.

Don't get the wrong idea, I haven't been working the 'world's worst lover' list or anything. For one thing, every time I get near a Swedish guy a little voice in my head starts chanting, 'My name is Jan Janssen, I live in Wisconsin,' and I start giggling like a loon.

But what's a girl to do? I'm taller than most of the Spanish, French and Italian men I know. I remember hitting a night club in Paris when I was young and fetchingly annorexic. I was immediately surrounded by tiny little smoking men waving their cigarettes around as they paid me extravagent compliments.

It was fun (and surreal) but it just didn't do it for me, you know?

Incidentally, where the heck are the Israelis on this list? Have you ever watched a troop of Israeli soliders march by on the news? Hello! And Israeli men are so extravagently and sincerely offensive in casual conversation it makes my toes tingle. In a good way.

Maybe Israeli women have too much class to participate in this lame survey.

This Charming Man

Nope, nothing to do with Ralf, although he has his moments.

It's a book by Marian Keyes. Although Ralf did ask if it was about him when he saw the title and I told him it was more about how incredibly charming German men are in general, which wasn't exactly true but I think he bought it.

Yesterday I may have given the impression that I don't like chick books but actually, I enjoy a good beach read as much as the next person. In fact, I'm reading one right now.

I started This Charming Man by Marian Keyes yesterday and so far it seems to be following the same old, 'I have no self-control and systematically screw up my own life until I marry a millionaire' formula of books I generally dislike BUT this book is a cut above the others.

For one thing, the heroine is going through a bad phase that isn't 100% her own fault. I mean, her boyfriend is marrying someone else and she's bummed, it could happen to anyone. For another, Marian's heroines don't usually get a totally over the top and completely undeserved happy ending, which always makes me feel like I just wasted two hours.

Also, these points notwithstanding, Marian Keyes can really write. The passages where the heroine Lola chats with the kindly Muslim waiter Ibrihim and secretly worries that he's thinking 'Whore of the Infidel' about her while taking her order are hilarious.

Best of all, she's Irish, so I'm picking up all sorts of useful phrases like 'fizzog' and 'minger,' and 'great feed of beer.'

So if my next posts are all, 'minger this' and 'minger that' and 'shut your fizzog,' that's why.

P.S. I don't think it's her best book but so far I have no plans to publicly trash it unless, say, our Lola ends up marrying Bono after blowing up Charing Cross station in a freak accident that everyone forgives her for because she's so inexplicably lovable.

That would vex me.

The sewing machine guy

After my flurry of Easter sewing activities my sewing machine went on strike. No matter what I tried, the string kept breaking immediately when I tried to sew anything and got stuck in the inner workings.

Yesterday I dragged Ralf back to the shop where we bought the machine to get it fixed. As you can imagine, he loved the opportunity to carry a sewing machine four city blocks.

The sewing machine repairman, a young guy in mechanic overalls surrounded by sewing machines in various stages of repair, plugged it in and immediately proceeded to show off all the different stitches my machine is capable of.

His verdict was that I had threaded it wrong.

Ralf's verdict is that next time he's going to marry someone less lame.

My verdict was that they can both bite me.

So that the trip wouldn't be totally wasted, I bought some new bobbins. I pulled my wallet out of my purse to pay and watched in dismay as various decrepit receipts scattered to the four winds. Sighing, I handed the wallet to Ralf while I gathered up all my bits of paper.

Ralf looked like he was thinking something like: 'I can't believe I have children with this person.'

Then he remarked out loud to the sewing machine guy: 'Women's purses are scary as hell.'

'Oh, yeah,' agreed the sewing machine guy with feeling, 'and then if we leave, like, one sock on the floor they totally rip us a new one!'

Alrighty then.

Some Like It Hot

Our house was built in the 80's and after almost three decades of hard use - not all by us - we decided to replace the heating system. It was still working just fine but some technical standards had changed that would cost several thousand euros to meet so we decided to have a new heating system installed last September.

Over time we hope to get off the energy grid altogether, with solar panels and possibly geothermic energy, which Munich is now investing heavily in. Ralf researched heating systems pretty thoroughly and we ended up buying an efficient, top-of-the-line heating system that also has adapters for these alternative sources of energy.

I won't tell you how much it cost because money is so vulgar but let me just say that between the heating and the AMT tax we had to pay last year we didn't have much spare cash for quite a while.

The new heating system was installed and working before we came home. It is a proud example of German engineering, which means it will probably run forever but I have no clue how to adjust the temperature in our house and am therefore completely reliant on Ralf, who barely understands it himself and likes it cold.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that on more than one occassion this winter he told me he turned up the heat when in fact he just went down to the basement and came back up again.

And now let me just say that the guy who installed our heating is a fine specimen of Bavarian manhood. He looks like a cross between the Greek god Apollo and Juergen Prochnow, who played the cool, blue-eyed captain in Das Boot. His shoulders look like they're going to burst out of his shirtsleeves and he speaks with a thick Bavarian accent that reminds one of hard physical labor. This is the man you want around when your cow is giving birth.

Unfortunately he is not the man you want around when you need to install a new heating system.

We discovered the first problems early on when winter set in. First of all, we couldn't figure out how to make the house warm. That wasn't exactly his fault but he hadn't quite finished initializing the heating unit, either. We worked through that, more or less, but then the new heater in the attic took to banging in the night so ferociously that the entire house shook. It turned out a couple of pipes had been installed wrong, which got fixed in pretty short order.

Then the heater kept turning itself off due to some mysterious internal error code that requires a special handheld device to read. After much time on the phone with the installer and supplier it turned out that there was some air escaping somewhere, blah, blah, blah and the chimney would need to be re-installed or yada, yada, yada. Since this sort of work can't be done in winter the guy from the supplier adjusted the heater to a less efficient setting to tide us over. It wasn't ideal and certainly not the point of buying an ultra-efficient heater but at least we were warm again.

Then we got our Wattson, which indicated out that when the heater first turned on in the morning it was consuming an outrageous amount of energy.

Now that it's spring again the heating guy - let's just call him Apollo - was here this morning to fix the chimney but concluded that there's no problem with the chimney installation that he could find so the guy from the supplier is coming to run some additional tests.

And if the guy from the supplier actually shows up and he finds nothing I guess we're back to square one until our heater starts turning off by itself again next year.

What will we do?

What indeed?

Yesterday we learned that German school kids are separated by religion. And not the interesting religions, either. You have to choose between Catholic (yawn), Protestant (really just watered-down Catholics) and Athiest.

Actually, the Athiest kids get to study ethics, which sounds kind of cool.

The kids aren't totally segregated - basically, there are two groups of Catholic kids that share learning space with either Athiests or Protestants, which we can either regard as a practical recognition that most kids happen to be Catholic or as a Catholic infiltration (since the Athiests and Protestants rarely come into contact with each other).

Supposedly in urban areas with a higher concentration of other religions they offer additional classes. Just not out here in the Catholic burbs.

What will we do? you ask.

Ralf and I discussed it during his brief stopover home between California and Ireland.

First of all, he thinks religious studies are cool and we should all be more informed about different religions because this is such an important topic for so many people.

Fair point.

And who knows, maybe if more people treated religion like an academic topic rather than a purely spiritual one, they would be less likely to elect socially intolerant fiscally irresponsible environment ravaging Republican war mongers just because the church likes their stance on gay marriage.

(I know, it's hard to get a sense of how I feel about things.)

Next I pointed out that there aren't many hours in the absurdly short German school day and I'd prefer our kids to spend that time on reading, writing, math and science and he said why don't I run for Minister of Education.

I'm pretty sure that was sarcasm, which is part of the German marital benefits package.

But then, when I broached the topic of possibly enrolling K in Protestant studies to be with Leia, he got all huffy, like putting kids into religious groups at school was my crazy idea.

Ralf (bristling with indignation): 'Are you kidding me? We're not signing K up for some religion we have nothing to do with just so she can be with some kid she probably won't even like next year!'

No argument from me. I mean, OK, I did make some snarky comments about how I'm not the German here but we were basically in agreement by this point.

Anyway, the upshot is that we'll be going with Ethical (Athiest) studies next year and it remains to be seen if Celia's Catholic mom will throw her lot in with Leia (who is Protestant) or with us.

And Tina the Athiest.

A final Fasching party

Last night we were at one last Fasching party (the Germans really can't let Fasching go - yesterday at the train station grown men were walking around with udders).

A friend of ours has a company that builds homes and he recently acquired a large house that he's planning to tear down and build apartments instead. Until this time, however, it's a perfectly good empty house with electicity. Just right for a party.

This friend of ours always has some house like this available but somehow we never actually get around to having a party. Enter Frank. You may recall Frank as the plastic surgeon who got us into the Hacker-Pschorr tent at Oktoberfest last year - more about that here. Frank's a nice guy whose wife left him and it was his idea to have a Fasching party.

A little side note: Why anyone would leave Frank is a complete mystery to me. Not only is he really nice, but he now works in one of the few specialized areas of German medicine that isn't totally screwed by the new cap on fees that the bankrupt public insurance has finagled into law. So, for example, a cardiologist will only get EUR 72 per quarter for each publicly insured patient, not matter how many times they visit the doctor or what treatment they require. This means that if you're publicly insured in Germany these days, best not to have a heart attack because the cardiologists can't afford to see you any more. But Frank isn't impacted by this because even German insurance doesn't pay for boob jobs.

Some quality costumes made the scene last night. A girl I've never seen before showed up in a light house costume that totally rocked. Another friend came as a she-devil and since she's almmost as tall as Ralf and beautiful to boot she cut quite a figure. And another friend came as a dryad, with plastic leaves entwined all the way through her hair and wrapped around her cosume.

Charlotte recently wrote about Germany's Top Husband but I think the dryad's husband is a viable contender - all night he fondly referred to his wife as 'du Umkraut' (which means 'you weed') and as we all know, nothing says, 'I love you,' like calling someone a weed.

Ralf tried to go as Elvis but ended up looking more like a gay biker - the earrings didn't help. I put on a sparkly silver dress and was told I sort of looked like the blond girl from Abba if she had been a librarian instead of a world-famous pop star.

And with that, my friends, Fasching season is officially set to rest until next year.

How to excite a German man

That got your attention, didn't it? But I didn't mean that kind of excited.

Germans are known for being (compared to Americans) stern, phlegmatic and practical. Personally I think it's the harsh winters but I can't ignore Ralf's observation that plenty of hyper, unpractical people come from places that also have winter. So my winter theory may not have legs.

Male German bosses in particular are not given to being excited about you or emiting unnecessary compliments like 'nice job'. So if you work for a German, don't expect lots of feedback about how much you rule. Unless you totally screw up, interactions with your German boss are more likely to go something like this:

Boss: How's your project going?

You: I finished Tuesday ahead of schedule and met with Global Dynamics Wednesday to walk them through it. They loved it and want to do a bigger project with us next month.

Boss (nodding): OK. Anything else?

You: Well, I put out a small kitchen fire this morning with my bare hands and skipped lunch to finish a prototype I'm working on that predicts stock prices up to five years out and has so far been completely accurate for a two year sample. I noticed two guys trying to steal our video conferencing equipment and was able to stop them using martial arts. My cancer vaccine is also coming along nicely. Oh, and I baked you some brownies. They're on your desk.

Boss (nodding and making a few notes): OK. Do you have any vacation planned this quarter?

To be fair, German bosses are also sensitive to the ingrained suspicion all Germans have of insincere compliments. I once managed a German project team and early on (before I really got the Germans) I sent a short 'nice job' email to one of the consultants. He responded, 'What is the meaning of this?' I took the hint and immediately desisted with unwanted personal observations and everyone was much happier.

Having said that, one thing is guaranteed to excite any German man: grilled calf hearts!

I mean, what's not to like? Calf, heart, grill. . . all good things, right? This morning we went to breakfast with German friends Albrecht and Andrea and I had to laugh when Albrecht's eyes lit up like a small boy at Christmas when he saw grilled calf heart on the menu.

It is little things like this that remind me I'm not in Los Angeles any more.

Happy Valentine's Day!

OK I'm late. I actually forgot that yesterday was Valentine's Day until R hugged me from behind and asked what I wanted to do with the evening.

'I thought I'd work on my article,' I responded, distracted by all my cutting edge thoughts about talent management.

Yes, I write real articles sometimes for HCM trade journals. Occassionally they are even published.

Ralf: 'It's Valentine's Day. You shouldn't work tonight. How about you cook us a delicious dinner and we watch a movie?'

Not a bad opening bid - after nearly 7 years of marriage it's finally sunk in that inviting a bunch of friends over to watch an FC Bayern game isn't romantic.

Me (upping the ante): 'OK but I want to watch The Women.'

I had no expectation of The Women being any good - and it wasn't - but I still wanted to see it.

Ralf (hasty counter offer): 'I was thinking we could watch 'Die Maenner.'

Translation: 'The Men.' Some classic German movie about men. A half-hearted counter bid he knew had no chance.

Me: 'So. . . I cook dinner and we watch your movie? Where's my diamond tennis bracelet?'

Let the backpedaling begin.

Ralf (magnanimously): 'Tell you what - since Valentine's Day's a chick holiday you can choose the movie.'

I couldn't resist a determined romantic overture like that so that's what we did.

It was nice, especially the loud, expressive snorting sounds Ralf kept making during the movie.

Think about it - would you want to be married to a man who enjoyed The Women? The whole point is that he hated it but watched it for me.

He loves me. :-)

Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day!

Lick My Butt

Disgusting, isn't it? But it’s actually a rough translation for a fairly common German phrase ‘Leck mich am Arsch’, which means something between, ‘Bite me,’ ‘and ‘I’ll be darned.’

You can also insert the word 'doch' to add emphasis, i.e., 'Leck mich doch am Arsch!'

A mechanic said this to me today. Well, technically he was speaking to Ralf but I was there.

You see, our Volvo finally arrived from California about 2 weeks ago and has been in the shop ever since. It's a gas guzzler but it’s also a turbo all-weather family tank and an old friend. Driving it reminds me of my convenient, manicured, blond life as a California mom.

And we buy carbon offsets from Terrapass to assuage our Earth guilt.

The company that moved our Volvo to Germany, Navitrans (I won't bother adding a link), took so long to deliver the car that the battery died and some valve that holds the power steering fluid in rusted and started leaking. They also stole our GPS and our California license plates, although that’s not really germane to this story.

We took it to a Volvo dealer to investigate the blood-curdling sounds it was making when we drove it. Where the stocky, taciturn Bavarian mechanic apparently got the surprise of his life when the car switched on by itself and would not allow itself to be switched off.

This came as no surprise to us because the same thing had happened a few times in California when the locking and unlocking buttons were inadvertantly pushed in some sequence that we never figured out. The Californian Volvo mechanics could tell us nothing but we assumed it was a 'feature' to warm up the car before getting in because we bought it used from someone on the chilly East Coast.

The annoying part is that once the car switches itself on it can only be turned off manually, i.e., by getting into the car, actually starting the engine with the key, then turning it off again.

Fortunately, the only time it ever really caused a problem was one time in a parking lot when I had just gotten the kids out of the car and into the stroller. Other than that, it was an infrequent and relatively benign feature of the car.

Naturally, we named the car ‘Christine’ and thought no more about it.

But the mechanic didn’t like it. Volvos are not supposed to turn themselves on and it disturbed him. He dug around a bit in the engine then called us to complain that someone had installed some mystery cables in the engine that definitely didn’t belong there. Would we like him to remove them?

For 60 EUR an hour?? NFW.

When we picked up the car we were presented with a hefty bill (more of a William) by our Bavarian mechanic, who was unexpectedly smiling. Then, after we had a chance to silently register all the zeros, he explained that they had also stripped out that cables that didn’t belong.

Two pairs of eyes snapped automatically from the bill to his face when he said this, then back to the bill to scan for this additional charge. Ralf’s mouth opened to protest but the mechanic held up one hand and continued: They didn’t charge us for this, he explained, because it needed to be done.

Yes. Really. He said that.

It was while he was recounting his amazing tale of the spooky self-starting car and the unforgettable moment when he first discovered the crazy amateurish wiring in the engine that he used the phrase: ‘Leck mich am Arsch!’ and shook his head feelingly.

Poor guy. I mean, I ask you, who ever heard of a Volvo dealer doing free work? It must have really bugged him.

Ralf was blown away as well. Shaking his head as we walked out to the Volvo he, too, felt the need to say, 'Leck mich doch am Arsch!'

This post has been brought to you by Very Funny Friday.

Date Night

Ralf and I went on a DATE Friday night, a real date with a babysitter and everything. Just to clarify, the babysitter stayed home with the boobies while we went out. We went to see La Brass Banda, which is a Bavarian student brass-mariachi-ska-techno-punk group that brings the house down.

Seriously, these boys can play large brass instruments while jumping around without a pause for two hours. And everyone else jumps around, too, which is always worth seeing in Germany because as a general rule Germans have no groove thing.

The exception to this is Ralf, who is pretty fly for a white guy.

We crammed into a packed basement with a bunch of students and professors from University of Freising (which is pronounced 'Fry-zing' not 'Freezing') and the getting down commenced. And except for the regrettably tall and curly (and unwashed) hair of the male student in front of me, it was just plain amazing.

There was much shaking of one’s funky stuff.

To give you an idea, there was no place to sit and we had to stand for an hour before they started. My feet hurt and I was already counting the minutes until it would be over. This is not because I’m getting older, you understand – I was always like this. There are not many things that could have made me forget my uncomfortable feet but La Brass Banda did.

The lead singer of La Brass Banda is apparently a Bavarian farm boy who took to the trumpet like a duck to water. There was no question of him becoming a butcher or baker or farmer or whatever it is his dad does in his hometown because he is a bugle boy. He plays the trumpet like it is part of him. I’ve never seen anyone play anything like that, like there is no physical barrier between the musician and the music.

About four years ago, before we moved to California for three years, Ralf and I paid a lot of money to see Herbie Hancock in concert. He was good but the evening was unmemorable. And he introduced a famous trumpet player who did nothing but stomp around the stage shaking his head and playing the occasional note because ‘he couldn’t find the mood.’

In striking contrast to this overpriced professional musician, the bugle boy and his lively band have no difficulty finding the mood day or night and the tickets were only EUR 15.

What struck me most of all is that these boys were having FUN up there. Real, honest to goodness fun, the kind that has a hint of naughtiness and ‘shhhhh… I won’t tell if you won’t.’ Remember that kind of fun from the good old days before work and taxes and mortgages and insurance paperwork took over your lives? Genuine fun is a rare and precious commodity that the we were not slow to appreciate.

So addictive was this intoxicating sense of fun that we screamed desperately for 3 encores and would have made those boys jump around all night if we could have.

If you live in Germany and have a chance to see La Brass Banda in action I warmly advise it. It’ll make you feel young again.

On the bright side

TWO THINGS THAT CHEERED ME UP YESTERDAY

Thing 1: A dad doing the weekly shopping with his kids. And not just that, they were all wearing ski suits, so he took them skiing first and dropped by the grocery store on the way home. I thought about asking if he was single but the answer was pretty obvious and he wasn’t nearly as cute as Ralf so I just grinned at them all. This is Germany so they hated that, except the youngest child who smiled back when his dad wasn’t looking then stuck out his tongue.

Thing 2: At the gym I discovered that Paris Hilton is looking for a new BFF. Seriously, people, I’m going to apply. She doesn’t need any of those skanky ho’s that want the job, she needs ME. I’m the ultimate second fiddle. In fact, I should probably have included that in my list of life skills (see previous post) because it’s a bit of a specialty with me. I am attractive enough to be seen in public without posing any threat to my BFF. I can babysit the icky little dog during photo shoots. I can converse with the ‘spare’ guy on a variety of topics while she snogs the cute one. I can distract her other BFFs by telling them how amazing they look while she hits on their boyfriends. I can run her website and make sure she gets money when people watch naked videos of her and charge people twice, so her financial future will be assured. Moreover, I will always be honest with her and tell her when the guy she’s dating is a hairy tattoo’d moron. And if she ever decides to finish high school I can make sure she’s Valedictorian.

Clearly, she needs me. I love being needed.

The Day After

Ralf has no words. He is disgusted with the lameness of his family. Today was sunny so we decided to make a nice family excursion to the wild animal park in Poing, which offers what the Germans refer to as a refreshing winter walk and various exotic animals like stags, boars, and even a baby bear. In the spring there are goslings and piglets, too. So, we all bundled up in our warmest jackets and headed out.

Once there we were confronted by gale force mountain winds and it turned out that I had put the wrong shoes on L so her feet were cold. She also refused to wear proper snow gloves so she was all primed to be uncomfortable. K, dressed by Ralf, had the right shoes but complained that her mouth was cold and was quite put out by this. And I had unthinkingly put on my trainers, my default shoes that are more than adequate for California winters. Ralf stared at my shoes in disbelief that I thought these shoes would work for a winter walk. ‘Even you. . .’ he began, but was too overcome by negative emotion to continue and had to fall back on making helpless hand gestures. I could actually see him questioning the wisdom of bringing an ignorant warm climate girl to Germany.

Although he was prepared to make me tough it out he was not equal to the combined female power of his entire household so we aborted the mission and headed home again. On the bright side, it gave him a chance to practice his, ‘There’s no bad weather, just bad gear, blah, blah, blah’ speech. I let the lecture flow over me (totally undeserved – I mean, it’s sunny so how was I supposed to know??) and looked out the window at all the exotic Teutonic families with children dressed like puffy marshmallows and babies wrapped in down sacks and stuffed into insulated perambulators. It all looked very unnatural to me, like living on the moon.

Of course, when I expressed this sentiment out loud Ralf pointed out that the entire Northern hemisphere is like this. I guess he has a point.

Note to self: no trainers ‘til spring.

Thought for the Day: German Men Don't Do Scented Candles

I know I implied that my next posting would be the Commenter's Meme but I just had to share this great commercial from Deutsche Bahn:

Female voice: 'Honey, the weather's so awful I thought we could do a romantic night at home instead of going out. I bought scented candles, Rotbusch tea and the collector's edition of Dirty Dancing.'

Announcer's voice: 'Need to get away? EUR 29 anywhere in Germany.'

Ralf thought this was hilarious. Bit unfair, really, since I've never attacked him with scented candles OR Rotbusch tea. . .

Just another day

Last Thursday all our stuff came from California: circa 157 boxes, 3 sofas, a queen bed, 2 kids’ beds, various kids’ furniture, chests of drawers, coffee tables and side tables, televisions, clothes, shoes, toys, kitchen stuff. . . which would have been great if we had been sitting her in an empty house. However, we left our old furniture in our German house when we moved to California and bought all ‘new’ stuff on Craig’s List so finding space for everything has been a challenge and our living room is as crowded as a Turkish opium den.

But let me back up a bit, because receiving a gimongous container of stuff isn’t that exciting and wouldn’t normally merit more than a passing mention. But there’s more: As I explained in my last posting, Ralf was in Dublin for a couple of days. He was supposed to come back Wednesday night but missed his flight, which also meant we missed our chance to schlep the furniture we know we’re getting rid of into the garage. It also meant that at 8AM Thursday morning I was facing 4 burly young Bavarian men and one scrappy one who kept saying ‘Hello’ and ‘Thank you’ to me in English but nothing else. German blue collar workers don’t generally like dealing with the lady of the house - I gather this is because 'she' tends to be indecisive and wants to try out all the heavy stuff in several different positions before committing - and these guys were no exception. Me being American wasn’t cutting any ice with them, either, except maybe the scrappy guy. They ignored me as much as possible until Ralf got home before lunch while I slunk around after them trying to make sure they didn’t break anything and feeling very much in the way.

Anyway, a lot of hard physical lifting and sorting was done by all and somehow the trucks were unloaded (but not unpacked) shortly after 2 PM. I had a call at 4 and was in a tizzy because I’ve been ‘applying’ for an international mommy group and didn’t want to miss their Halloween party. In the end I called in a few IOUs and sent Ralf, who was of course delighted to go and didn’t have anything else to work on. Unfortunately, my call got canceled so it ended up being a lot of logistical stress for nothing. This was not such a bad thing for me because I had plenty of work to catch up on but from Ralf’s point of view the afternoon was a wash. When he later asked me how my call went I considered lying but ended up blurting out the truth and watching various expressions cross his face, none of them good. Finally, after sharing a few pointed observations with me that I will not repeat here, he stalked out of the room only to have his dramatic exit blocked by piles of boxes.

I’ve been trying to create the impression of a fairly stressful day but amazingly, it got even worse. toward the end of the day. Once the kids got home, wired from the Halloween party, K’s friend Kaye came over to play and the first thing they did was climb up on the highest piles of boxes containing glassware and use them as a sort of high, dangerous path around the room with L standing underneath the most rickety pile of boxes and K rocking back and forth overhead. This activity was quickly forbidden and segued into the less dangerous but more annoying game of opening boxes at random and pulling everything out that looked interesting.

Still doesn't sound that bad? Well, then K gave one of her Halloween candies to Kaye, who immediately began choking and gasped something about a peanut allergy. Then, as I was frantically searching the Internet to find out if Twix actually has peanuts I heard a strange popping sound, which later turned out to be exploding potatoes that I forgot to poke with a fork before baking. Meanwhile in the background L was running around with no diaper screaming, ‘Caca! Wipe me! Wipe meeeeeeee!’ This would have been the right moment for the cat to drag in a dead mouse or throw up on the new carpet - a car crashing through the wall or a massive pipe bursting would also not have been out of place - but fortunately the exploding potatoes seemed to herald the end of the destruction.

Now for the good news: You’ll be happy to hear that in the meantime we have unpacked many of the boxes and the rooms where we do most of our living are inhabitable now. You will also be glad to know that Kaye lived and in fact never swallowed any peanut products at all. And that L’s caca scare was also a false alarm. And that I was able to get most the potato bits out of the oven. And finally, I am sure you will be relieved to hear that Ralf was a hit with the other mommies and we have been officially invited to join the group.