Monday, July 18, 2005
It looks like I won’t be making money on e-Bay this week, after all. Not much anyway. While I toiled away washing windows, Saturday morning, and while my husband swept the parking lot-sized driveway and taught my son how to ride his two-wheeler, Mike and his (admittedly friendly) wife emptied out our garage of their garage-sale items. It was all stuff they really should have thrown away, and looked to me as if they possessed little, if any, emotional value: outgrown toys their son no-longer plays with; a painting of the Old Masters religious variety, complete with antiqued faux-gold frame, that you might see hanging over your great grandmother’s moth-eaten couch (and like the one of Jesus sitting on a rock contemplating Jerusalem that I persuaded my husband to leave behind when we moved out of our Stuttgart apartment last January, which had been hanging—woe is me—over our marriage bed for exactly four years and four days); broken pottery; and a whole multitude of crap you yourself would shake your head at and wonder of its significance, so unworthy was it of begging an entire garage of storage space off complete strangers.
Later that afternoon, just as we were ready to sit down to lunch after a couple hours of grueling yard work, our doorbell rang. I had just been wondering if Mike and Sandra were done taking their things away, and if they would be giving us the garage door opener personally, or leave it with our landlady. I said to my husband, “It’s our garage door opener.”
He looked at me strangely.
“What?”
“Our garage door opener. They’re done and are dropping it off now.”
Did I ever mention that I’m psychic?
My husband, having just taken a shower and was walking around in his t-shirt and underwear, as he is wont to do, told me to answer the door. So, I did. I pressed the button that unlocked the front door, and before I even made it to the stairs, Mike had come charging in, a bee definitely in his bonnet.
“Where’s your husband?” he demanded as he stormed up the stairway to the main part of the house. I stood at the top of the stairs, not moving, and he was half-way up before he remembered this isn’t his house anymore. His wife, to her credit, discreetly remained at the doorway, looking abashed. He called my husband’s name, and said, “Come down, now! I want to talk to you!”
It just so happened that before his shower, my husband had used the bathroom. You know what I mean. He used the bathroom. The bathroom is located right next to the door at the top of the stairs, and the doorway was wide open. The unmistakable odor of a man hard at work wafted into the vestibule. My husband was looking for his sweatpants and taking his sweet time about it. I went back into the hallway to warn him, “Mike’s ready to rumble, and your stink is stinking up the stairway.”
“Good,” he said, in his characteristic way, “I hope he gets it full in the face.”
My five-year-old son, in the meantime, was still at the top of the stairs, trying to compliment Mike on his hairstyle. Mike blatantly ignored him.
Finally, my husband went out to talk to them and a loud argument broke out, echoing through the vestibule, into the outer entryway of the building (imagine a glassed-in breezeway), and drifted with surety and purpose across the entire valley of our town. The gist of it was, my husband and his wife had been talking that morning. She had reassured my husband that hers was being overbearing and liked to sound his horn, indirectly apologizing for the direction things had gone between us. Somewhere down the line, Mike had found out about the conversation and wanted to get the story straight with his wife of how they came to be emptying our garage of their things, managing to twist a few facts in the retelling. My husband held his ground, and eventually Mike and his wife went away again, and we haven’t heard from them since.
The garage is not completely empty, but there is enough space to park the car, “or to play fussball,” as my husband astutely pointed out. But we still don’t have the garage door opener.
I wonder if any of what remains is salvageable enough for e-Bay? There’s only one way to find out…
Monday, July 18, 2005
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Get Out of My Garage!!!
Thursday, July 14, 2005
“If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.” --Benjamin Franklin
When we found this house, it felt like something handed to us by Fate herself. The morning he read the ad for it in the newspaper, my husband had done a number of things out of the ordinary. He had left early for work, and had a few minutes to spare at the train station. He picked up a newspaper we ordinarily did not scan in our hunt for a new place to live, and was, believe it or not, the first person to call the people who had put the ad in the paper.
When we first set foot in this house, I knew it was meant to be ours. It was just a feeling I had. When we went up the stairs to the kitchen, the view from the windows there was breathtaking, stretching over the rooftops crammed in the valley below our house, and opening out onto the wooded hills of the Black Forest. There’s even a little back yard complete with a large terrace, a stone grill, and even a swing set that the current tenants promised they would leave there for our son when we move in.
In the weeks before we moved in, things started looking a little dimmer. The former tenants had told my husband two months before that they might not be able to get everything out by January 1, when we were due to move in. Then two weeks before, they promised they would have everything out, but needed a few extra days. When we finally came to paint the walls two days before the big move, they were still taking their stuff out of the house. They said they needed to use the garage space to store their things for a couple weeks longer, until they could move it into the house they were building in the valley—still unfinished as I write this post.
They also left a few very large pieces of decrepit cheap cabinetry in the attic, and a huge (ugly but useful) wardrobe on the lower floor with hand-grips that keep falling off and is home to quite a few spiders.
When the two weeks were up, they told my husband that they still needed to store their things in our garage for the next three or four months. That brought us to May.
In May, my husband and I underwent a marriage crisis, and he had other things to worry about than a bunch of trash in our garage. He’d never used a garage in his life, and didn’t miss not having one, even when we ARE paying rent on it. It wasn’t such a big deal at the time.
So May came and went, and so did most of June. Finally, the former tenants promised they would have their stuff out by the end of the week. That weekend, they came, true to their word, but only to remove the man’s motorcycle from the garage, and their patio furniture from our patio (of which I had made free use, and had frankly hoped they would forget about!). But nothing more. The week after that, they said they would be by to finally take away their things.
They never showed.
Two weeks later, just last week, the man called my husband and said he still needed the garage and was willing to pay us rent for it. He, on the other hand, offered my husband twenty euros per month, which is 10 euros less than what we’re paying for it each month. I didn’t know this until my husband told me that morning. My husband—illustrating our eerily close link to each other—laughed and suggested 100 euros in rent. I had already thought it was high time they offered us rent, and thought 100 euros was a fair monthly fee. It equals one-seventh of our rent, and including the garage, we have seven rooms in the house.
When my husband suggested that, there was a pause on the other end of the line.
“That’s ridiculous,” the man finally said. “You’re shameless.”
My husband told me he just wanted the guy to get his crap out of our garage, and gave him a figure he was certain he wouldn’t accept.
“I could find rental space on my own, for that money,” the loser said.
“Na, also. Geh’ doch,” My husband said. Fine then. Go.
The man said, “I’ll pay. But we need to get some things straight. I’ll come over tonight to discuss it.”
So, that night, we waited around for the guy to show up. His wife had come to pick up her son from our landlady, who watches the little creep (and he is a creep, and downright nasty to my son!). When she saw me, she was polite, but very cool. She said nothing more than hello to me, but no smile, and no mention of the impending meeting between my husband and hers.
Yes, we waited, and the arschloch never showed. He didn’t even call.
On Monday morning, my husband called me from work. He had spoken to Mike (yes, Mike. Not Maik. Not Micha. Mike.), who said he would move their things out of our garage by the end of the week.
“Great,” said my husband.
“And I never want to speak to you again,” Mike continued.
I laughed when I heard this. Who does this guy think he is? Who does he think we are? Are we friends? No. Did they ever invite us over for coffee, or a barbeque? No. Did his wife, a sales rep for Party Lite candles, leave a housewarming gift of a single lousy scented candle, even as recompense for leaving us their castoffs, and charging us nearly 3,000 euros to “buy” their installed kitchen, wood-laminate floors, and a wood stove that we can’t even use because the piping leaks smoke that stains the ceilings and walls black? Or extend one single invitation, or leave a current catalogue for me to browse, even after I had very politely asked for one? No. Mike had only made a few half-hearted attempts to involve my husband in their local soccer league, and never once called to see how he was doing after my husband had broken his rib the very first night.
“I never want to speak to you again,” was his final petulant comment to my husband.
Okay, buster. No skin off my back. Just get your garbage out of my garage. Let’s see how long it takes you, this time.
And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be making a little cash on e-Bay next week!
“If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.” --Benjamin Franklin
When we found this house, it felt like something handed to us by Fate herself. The morning he read the ad for it in the newspaper, my husband had done a number of things out of the ordinary. He had left early for work, and had a few minutes to spare at the train station. He picked up a newspaper we ordinarily did not scan in our hunt for a new place to live, and was, believe it or not, the first person to call the people who had put the ad in the paper.
When we first set foot in this house, I knew it was meant to be ours. It was just a feeling I had. When we went up the stairs to the kitchen, the view from the windows there was breathtaking, stretching over the rooftops crammed in the valley below our house, and opening out onto the wooded hills of the Black Forest. There’s even a little back yard complete with a large terrace, a stone grill, and even a swing set that the current tenants promised they would leave there for our son when we move in.
In the weeks before we moved in, things started looking a little dimmer. The former tenants had told my husband two months before that they might not be able to get everything out by January 1, when we were due to move in. Then two weeks before, they promised they would have everything out, but needed a few extra days. When we finally came to paint the walls two days before the big move, they were still taking their stuff out of the house. They said they needed to use the garage space to store their things for a couple weeks longer, until they could move it into the house they were building in the valley—still unfinished as I write this post.
They also left a few very large pieces of decrepit cheap cabinetry in the attic, and a huge (ugly but useful) wardrobe on the lower floor with hand-grips that keep falling off and is home to quite a few spiders.
When the two weeks were up, they told my husband that they still needed to store their things in our garage for the next three or four months. That brought us to May.
In May, my husband and I underwent a marriage crisis, and he had other things to worry about than a bunch of trash in our garage. He’d never used a garage in his life, and didn’t miss not having one, even when we ARE paying rent on it. It wasn’t such a big deal at the time.
So May came and went, and so did most of June. Finally, the former tenants promised they would have their stuff out by the end of the week. That weekend, they came, true to their word, but only to remove the man’s motorcycle from the garage, and their patio furniture from our patio (of which I had made free use, and had frankly hoped they would forget about!). But nothing more. The week after that, they said they would be by to finally take away their things.
They never showed.
Two weeks later, just last week, the man called my husband and said he still needed the garage and was willing to pay us rent for it. He, on the other hand, offered my husband twenty euros per month, which is 10 euros less than what we’re paying for it each month. I didn’t know this until my husband told me that morning. My husband—illustrating our eerily close link to each other—laughed and suggested 100 euros in rent. I had already thought it was high time they offered us rent, and thought 100 euros was a fair monthly fee. It equals one-seventh of our rent, and including the garage, we have seven rooms in the house.
When my husband suggested that, there was a pause on the other end of the line.
“That’s ridiculous,” the man finally said. “You’re shameless.”
My husband told me he just wanted the guy to get his crap out of our garage, and gave him a figure he was certain he wouldn’t accept.
“I could find rental space on my own, for that money,” the loser said.
“Na, also. Geh’ doch,” My husband said. Fine then. Go.
The man said, “I’ll pay. But we need to get some things straight. I’ll come over tonight to discuss it.”
So, that night, we waited around for the guy to show up. His wife had come to pick up her son from our landlady, who watches the little creep (and he is a creep, and downright nasty to my son!). When she saw me, she was polite, but very cool. She said nothing more than hello to me, but no smile, and no mention of the impending meeting between my husband and hers.
Yes, we waited, and the arschloch never showed. He didn’t even call.
On Monday morning, my husband called me from work. He had spoken to Mike (yes, Mike. Not Maik. Not Micha. Mike.), who said he would move their things out of our garage by the end of the week.
“Great,” said my husband.
“And I never want to speak to you again,” Mike continued.
I laughed when I heard this. Who does this guy think he is? Who does he think we are? Are we friends? No. Did they ever invite us over for coffee, or a barbeque? No. Did his wife, a sales rep for Party Lite candles, leave a housewarming gift of a single lousy scented candle, even as recompense for leaving us their castoffs, and charging us nearly 3,000 euros to “buy” their installed kitchen, wood-laminate floors, and a wood stove that we can’t even use because the piping leaks smoke that stains the ceilings and walls black? Or extend one single invitation, or leave a current catalogue for me to browse, even after I had very politely asked for one? No. Mike had only made a few half-hearted attempts to involve my husband in their local soccer league, and never once called to see how he was doing after my husband had broken his rib the very first night.
“I never want to speak to you again,” was his final petulant comment to my husband.
Okay, buster. No skin off my back. Just get your garbage out of my garage. Let’s see how long it takes you, this time.
And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be making a little cash on e-Bay next week!
Monday, July 11, 2005
A Ramble Through the Woods
Monday, July 11, 2005
There’s something about days like today that make me need to write. It must be the electricity in the air, the smell of ozone, something that says, You must sit down and write something today… Okay, so it’s not my WIP which I’ve been working on for a year and am only 25,000 words into it (which equals ¼ of a manuscript, or 100 pages), and it’s not a new short story. But at least it’s a thousand words of something, and something is better than nothing, even if it is only in journal form. I’ll be the first to admit it, journaling, no matter how you slice it, is really just one form of mental masturbation.
Now really. Is that a good way to start a new blog? Probably not. But I’m nothing, if not truthful.
And the world’s most accomplished procrastinator.
Just look at how I scurry around the house in a fervor to make it look presentable the 90 minutes before my husband is due home from work!
***
The day started out cool and humid, but as the afternoon wore on, the sun beat down on the earth, warming our Black Forest community. My son went swimming in his wading pool (though children’s pools are not really waders anymore, are they?). I did the laundry and hung it out to dry in the sun. I got three loads done and one already sun-dried, the other two still wet and hanging, when the storm hit. The clouds came quickly over our forested hill, the wind suddenly picked up like it does in the Midwest, and fat drops began to fall. Thunder rolled across the treetops, and I ran up the stairs and through our big kitchen to the terrace, where the laundry hung, getting wetter by the second. I dragged the frame bearing our clothes inside, and scurried around our huge patio, picking up inflatable water toys before the wind did, stuffing them between the wall of the house and some heavy objects: patio table, 50-pound bag of potting soil, a large planter filled with sand for our visitors who smoke.
I love weather like that, and I miss the plains of Illinois for the drama the weather plays there. It’s much scarier there. Here in the Black Forest, we don’t get tornados. There’s really no threat at all when the occasional storm brews up a wild wind. But as the little storm passed over us, it left behind a pocket of fog nested between the hills, like clouds . I love to look out our windows to see the spectacular views of the Schwarzwald stretching from our backyard and across the steep hills to the west. It’s really something to behold.
***
This morning, my son said to me, “Mommy, I want to walk to Kindergarten by myself, today.” Being the fearful mother I can be, and his being only five years old, I knew that plan wasn’t going to work.
“How about this,” I answered. “How about if you walk ahead without me, and I’ll walk behind if you need me.”
He said, “Okay.”
A few minutes later, in his unique German-English patois, he said to me, “Mommy, Ich denke mal about walking alone and you walk behind me bis we’re outside. Is that eine gute Idee?”
I said, “That sounds like a great idea, sweetie.”
True to his word, when we finally left the house, he had thought it over, and decided he would hold my hand until we reached the intersection two streets away from the Kindergarten. At that point, we said goodbye, did our hugs and kisses, and I reassured him that I would, indeed, stand and watch him walk the rest of the way to the preschool. He turned around and waved occasionally, but made it just fine by himself. My little boy is growing up.
***
I have a job interview tomorrow. I’m an American expat living in Germany. My husband is German, my son is German and American, and holds two different passports to prove it. I’ve been living in Germany for six years, which is as long as we’ve been married. My husband didn’t want me to work, wishing me instead to stay home with our son and take care of the household.
Fine, I said. No problem. I was quite happy to give up my old job as an editorial manager at a large agricultural publishing company: Too many deadlines, too many editors who ignored those deadlines, and too much stress being the middleman. But, since the conversion from Deutschemark to Euro, the economy has taken a bit of a dip. It’s no long quite so easy to stretch that Euro as far as the D-Mark went, and not quite so easy to raise even a small family on one income. Slowly, Germany is becoming more and more like America in that respect. We’ve found that, while my husband’s income can support us, we don’t have enough to save. Not for vacations, not for the possibility of moving to America, not for the couch for the living room and the big-boy bed our son so desperately needs. And to his credit, my husband is averse to buying things on credit.
So, naturally, we decided I should find a job. But it’s not so easy for an educated woman to find a job in a foreign country, when her language skills are less than good. Really, my only hope is for cleaning rooms in hotels, and such. But we took it as a good omen when my husband stumbled across an ad in the local paper last weekend, by an American company, written in English, requesting an administrative position to be filled by an American citizen, eligible for security clearance.
I ran right to my still-unpacked boxes full of writing materials, found the floppy with my resume on it, dusted it off, and sent it straight away. And now, I have an interview in the morning. And I have very mixed feelings about it all. So many questions, so many issues to clear up if I get the job. What happens to our son? He only goes to Kindergarten (preschool in Americanese) for a half-day. What about the afternoons? What about when summer vacation starts in two weeks? What about when he gets sick? What will we do with him? And then I remembered that those are the same questions everyone everywhere has to answer, and we’ll answer them when we have to, not before.
There’s something about days like today that make me need to write. It must be the electricity in the air, the smell of ozone, something that says, You must sit down and write something today… Okay, so it’s not my WIP which I’ve been working on for a year and am only 25,000 words into it (which equals ¼ of a manuscript, or 100 pages), and it’s not a new short story. But at least it’s a thousand words of something, and something is better than nothing, even if it is only in journal form. I’ll be the first to admit it, journaling, no matter how you slice it, is really just one form of mental masturbation.
Now really. Is that a good way to start a new blog? Probably not. But I’m nothing, if not truthful.
And the world’s most accomplished procrastinator.
Just look at how I scurry around the house in a fervor to make it look presentable the 90 minutes before my husband is due home from work!
***
The day started out cool and humid, but as the afternoon wore on, the sun beat down on the earth, warming our Black Forest community. My son went swimming in his wading pool (though children’s pools are not really waders anymore, are they?). I did the laundry and hung it out to dry in the sun. I got three loads done and one already sun-dried, the other two still wet and hanging, when the storm hit. The clouds came quickly over our forested hill, the wind suddenly picked up like it does in the Midwest, and fat drops began to fall. Thunder rolled across the treetops, and I ran up the stairs and through our big kitchen to the terrace, where the laundry hung, getting wetter by the second. I dragged the frame bearing our clothes inside, and scurried around our huge patio, picking up inflatable water toys before the wind did, stuffing them between the wall of the house and some heavy objects: patio table, 50-pound bag of potting soil, a large planter filled with sand for our visitors who smoke.
I love weather like that, and I miss the plains of Illinois for the drama the weather plays there. It’s much scarier there. Here in the Black Forest, we don’t get tornados. There’s really no threat at all when the occasional storm brews up a wild wind. But as the little storm passed over us, it left behind a pocket of fog nested between the hills, like clouds . I love to look out our windows to see the spectacular views of the Schwarzwald stretching from our backyard and across the steep hills to the west. It’s really something to behold.
***
This morning, my son said to me, “Mommy, I want to walk to Kindergarten by myself, today.” Being the fearful mother I can be, and his being only five years old, I knew that plan wasn’t going to work.
“How about this,” I answered. “How about if you walk ahead without me, and I’ll walk behind if you need me.”
He said, “Okay.”
A few minutes later, in his unique German-English patois, he said to me, “Mommy, Ich denke mal about walking alone and you walk behind me bis we’re outside. Is that eine gute Idee?”
I said, “That sounds like a great idea, sweetie.”
True to his word, when we finally left the house, he had thought it over, and decided he would hold my hand until we reached the intersection two streets away from the Kindergarten. At that point, we said goodbye, did our hugs and kisses, and I reassured him that I would, indeed, stand and watch him walk the rest of the way to the preschool. He turned around and waved occasionally, but made it just fine by himself. My little boy is growing up.
***
I have a job interview tomorrow. I’m an American expat living in Germany. My husband is German, my son is German and American, and holds two different passports to prove it. I’ve been living in Germany for six years, which is as long as we’ve been married. My husband didn’t want me to work, wishing me instead to stay home with our son and take care of the household.
Fine, I said. No problem. I was quite happy to give up my old job as an editorial manager at a large agricultural publishing company: Too many deadlines, too many editors who ignored those deadlines, and too much stress being the middleman. But, since the conversion from Deutschemark to Euro, the economy has taken a bit of a dip. It’s no long quite so easy to stretch that Euro as far as the D-Mark went, and not quite so easy to raise even a small family on one income. Slowly, Germany is becoming more and more like America in that respect. We’ve found that, while my husband’s income can support us, we don’t have enough to save. Not for vacations, not for the possibility of moving to America, not for the couch for the living room and the big-boy bed our son so desperately needs. And to his credit, my husband is averse to buying things on credit.
So, naturally, we decided I should find a job. But it’s not so easy for an educated woman to find a job in a foreign country, when her language skills are less than good. Really, my only hope is for cleaning rooms in hotels, and such. But we took it as a good omen when my husband stumbled across an ad in the local paper last weekend, by an American company, written in English, requesting an administrative position to be filled by an American citizen, eligible for security clearance.
I ran right to my still-unpacked boxes full of writing materials, found the floppy with my resume on it, dusted it off, and sent it straight away. And now, I have an interview in the morning. And I have very mixed feelings about it all. So many questions, so many issues to clear up if I get the job. What happens to our son? He only goes to Kindergarten (preschool in Americanese) for a half-day. What about the afternoons? What about when summer vacation starts in two weeks? What about when he gets sick? What will we do with him? And then I remembered that those are the same questions everyone everywhere has to answer, and we’ll answer them when we have to, not before.
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