No Hot-House Flowers Here!

Tuesday afternoon, I had a visitor. She’s someone I met during my exodus to Stuttgart in May, the month I was living apart from my husband. In fact, our meeting was so coincidental, it can’t have been coincidence. Some kind of divine intervention must have taken place to bring us together.

It was laundry day. My son and I had gotten up good and early to beat the collection of souls waiting to use the machines at one of the three Laundromats in the Stuttgart metro area I could locate. It so happened this Laundromat was located just down the street from the first apartment my husband and I once lived in, during the months before our son was born. I was grateful for its relative nearness.

I don’t remember what delayed us, but we were a day late doing laundry and had got a late start that morning, as well. Quite sure we would be waiting ages for machines if we didn’t scurry our little selves over there right quick, we hied it to the bus stop with our suitcase full of dirty clothes, and rode the two buses it required to reach the wash salon. We were lucky. On this particular Thursday, there were only two others there, and plenty of machines to choose from.

There was, however, a problem with the electronic device you put your money in and started the machine. One man told me I had to call the service desk, and pointed toward a phone on the wall. This idea did not please me because of the language barrier. My German isn’t terrible, but it certainly isn’t as far along as it should be given that I’ve lived here for nearly six-point-five years. The best option, I thought, was to simply come back the next day.

But it wasn’t an option for me. I had no underwear left, and the next day was Friday, and I’ll be damned if I was going to spend half my day, unshowered, shoulder-to-shoulder with a bunch of other unshowered launderers struggling to get their wash done before the weekend.
I walked to the phone and picked up the receiver, working through the jumble of words that were the instructions. I punched some numbers and a woman answered. In my imperfect German, I explained what the problem was, and it wasn’t long before she interrupted me and asked if I spoke English. Well, honey, I sure as shit do, I thought. Switching to my native language, I explained again, slowly, using as simple language as I could to make myself clear. I wasn’t condescending in the least. I know what it’s like to muck through a foreign language, and the slower and more simply a person speaks, so much the better.

So, between a mixture of German and English, we got our messages across, and I was told a man would be by shortly to take care of the problem.

And that’s when I met my friend.

“Are you American,” she asked me in English.

“Yes, I am,” I answered.

“I love America,” she said, and described her most recent vacation there.

It turns out we have similar experiences regarding our marriages and husbands, and she suggested we get together once in a while to chat. She’d bring her dog for my son to play with, and we could enjoy some coffee and cake. She had never been to that Laundromat in Stuttgart before. She doesn’t even live in Stuttgart, but rather about 30 minutes SW of there. I don’t know why she was doing her laundry there, instead of at home. I didn’t ask. Like her, I believed there was a reason I was a day late getting laundry done, late getting there that morning, and we happened to be standing in the same place at the same time.

It turns out we did not get together. About ten days after I met her, my husband and I reconciled and I moved back to our Schwarzwald home. The prepaid cell phone I had purchased when I moved out was on its last minute, and I wasn’t about to buy a new calling card when I had my old cell phone back. Figuring she’d probably forgotten all about me, I put the little phone away and never heard from my new friend.

A few weeks ago, I was curious whether I had any messages on my prepaid phone (I was bored. Really, who’s going to call me but my attorney, who I didn't need anymore, and my mother, who knew I was back home?). I checked my phone, and wouldn’t you know, there was a text message for me, and it was from my new friend. She had called only the day before, wondering how I was doing.

Well, I SMSed her back, and made plans to meet the following week. It was good to see her again. We talked about a lot of stuff over coffee and cake, and agreed to get together again in a week or two.

I saw her again on Tuesday. “This is for your birthday, since I missed it two weeks ago.” She held forth the biggest, orangest roses I’ve ever seen. They were enough to put any carefully cultivated hot-house flower to shame.

“How sweet,” I exclaimed, placing them on the floor next to the phone stand. “I’ll put them right here where they’ll shed a little sunlight.” She smiled in agreement, then we went about preparing our barbecue.

Those roses are still on the floor where I can see them every time I walk through the hallway, or sit at the kitchen table to pound away at my laptop. They do, indeed, bring a little sunlight into the semi-dark that separates the rooms on the upper level of our house. They are really very orange, and absolutely gigantic, requiring their own stand for display. They are also completely fake and nothing I would ever purchase for myself, or for anyone else. But they possess a singular beauty that not even a hot-house flower can match, because they were unexpected and given with love.

My Secret Weapon Against Psychic Phenomena

My husband has the Devil’s own luck. I swear it. For instance, he wins the lottery. Never very huge winnings, granted. Most of the time, he wins a few euros, just enough to purchase another round of lotto tickets. But several times, he’s won amounts significant by anyone’s standards. I know people who have never won the lottery. Where does he get off winning so often, when so many never win at all? Like me, for example.

I shouldn’t question it, really. As his wife, I benefit from his winnings, so I’m not complaining. But I’m patiently awaiting the day he wins the big one.

It’ll happen.
It’s bound to.
I hope.

But the hell of it is, my husband and I love to play games—backgammon and canasta, in particular. And playing games with him is hell on earth. Why? Three guesses.

Yep, you got it. He always wins.

If I were less smart than I am, I’d chalk it up to my own lack of intelligence. But I know I’m not dumb, and neither is my husband. He’s pretty sharp. In fact, he’s smart enough that I let him add up all the scores through a canasta game. In some ways he’s smarter than me. In other ways I’m smarter than him. It’s a good balance. So, we should be good competitors when it comes to games that involve a fair balance of strategy and luck.

Not so here. And I’m not the only victim of this circumstance. My husband wins games against everyone he plays against. A strange phenomenon, I was thinking. Until I made the connection between that and him doing the grocery shopping on the odd occasion and my desire for particular items without voicing them—usually in the interest of healthful consumption.

Can you guess what happened?

Yep. That’s right. I would think about those Snickers bars, the Ritter Sport chocolate, the cheese balls, or an odd item like clothes pins… and he would trot right on home with them in the paper bag. It was downright bizarre. There have even been occasions when he left to pick up a few items I’d jotted down on a list, and inevitably I would forget something. During those times, I would sit down and think about said forgotten item very very hard. And most of the time, he would come home with it, or something very like it.

And how many times have I walked past the phone thinking, “I think I’ll give my hubby a call in a few mintues,” and then the phone rings?

Man, I wish I could do that. My husband is freaking psychic!

So, it was during our many many games of canasta that I realized that the reason he was always winning, the reason why I so frequently laid down the card he needed to snatch up the pot, was because the booger is psychic. And it also happened that on the few occasions I’ve won against him, were also the occasions that I had a glass of wine or two, or indulged in my favorite amontillado.

He laughed when I explained it to him. He didn’t believe me.

Until this weekend.

Saturday night, I enjoyed two snifters of amontillado and a delightfully fuzzy head. And won one game out of two.

Sunday night, I won two games out of three—sweetly buzzed, of course—and slaughtered the poor man.

As expected from someone who wins All the Time, he did not take well to losing against me. He was not a happy camper. And I was giggly and happy and not the least bit interested in coddling his poor wounded ego. This time, when I explained to him that the alcohol seems to fuzz up the connection between us, which allows my mind to focus less distinctly and renders his unable to sift through the interference, he finally listened. He didn’t laugh at my theory, this time. Losing three games to me in twenty-four hours—and two of those having left him nearly castrated—was too much evidence to ignore.

I will still tease him about having the Devil’s Luck, and I will let him sink back into believing what a lucky guy he is. But I know better, and deep down, so does he. He may be psychic, but I can beat him at his own game—with the help of fermented and distilled beverages. That sounds like a happy solution to me!

Dance of the Seven Wails

Before I got married six years ago, I lived with my parents. We had three cats who lived outdoors, sleeping mostly in the horse barn on our property, or, in very cold weather, in our basement. The cats were never allowed in the house because I am deathly allergic to them. But I loved those cats, and they kept the rodents away. We had them neutered, and later, a third cat was added to our family—a small orange-black-and-white calico—and we had her spayed. They were lovely critters, friendly, came running when we called their names, left the occasional mouse on our patio stoop. The gunslinger of the group, Monty, was a wirey fellow, ruthless and sleek, and a glutton for a warm lap. He drooled when we pet him. Tigger was the lazy one, with a broken meow, and like his brother, enjoyed friendly company and human loving. Kitty—so-named because we couldn’t find a name for her—was a little more standoffish, but nuzzled and drooled when you pet her, too.

There were other cats in the neighborhood who made use of our barn during the winter months, or mooched the cat food we left for our own. In the summer, the neighborhood cats fought. Once in a while, Monty or Tigger would come home with a minor war wound. Kitty once came home with a tear in her ear, which scarred over. The sounds of fighting or mating cats periodically punctuated our summer nights, that mournful wail and eerie yowling drifting through the warm humid air of our rural subdivision. It was enough to make you reach for the covers for protection, even when it was too hot to bear just a sheet, sending goosebumps down your flesh.

When we first moved to our little German dorf in January, we were greeted by two tabby-cat brothers, not yet a year old. I found them huddled together outside our patio door, patiently waiting for attention. Remembering those two orange tabbies of my own back home, I was delighted. I showed them to my son, who was also delighted. We started feeding them. I bought cat food, and we gave them our meaty leftovers. Though we never allowed them indoors, those cats became the highlight of our day.

One morning, following my usual morning ritual, I had opened the patio door to our bedroom and the window in my son’s room to air the lower level out. You must understand that windows do not have screens, here in Germany. I left my own bedroom to open the window of another room, and returned to make the beds. When that was done, I closed the windows and went upstairs. I didn’t notice anything unusual at the time.

When I came back down an hour later, I smelled the unmistakable odor of cat musk, and it was very strong. “Uh oh,” I thought. When I entered my bedroom, the stench was overpowering. There was no cat inside, but one had snuck in during the thirty seconds I had left the room unoccupied with the patio door open earlier that morning, and marked my bedroom as its territory. I traced the odor to the corner of the wall right by the door, and nearly gagged when I smelled it: the singular odor of armpits and rotten meat. It was horrible.

I decided on the spot that I don’t like cats, anymore. And certainly not ones that haven’t been neutered. And I especially didn’t like the daddy tom I had seen lurking around our house right around the time I had aired out our bedrooms. When I returned upstairs, I threw out the cat food. “No more feeding the cats,” I exclaimed to my family. “They are not allowed here, anymore!”

FYI, It took a lot of diligence, but I finally got rid of the smell by using Febreeze and household-strength vinegar.

After we stopped feeding the litter-mates, they and the rest of their misbegotten family have stopped lurking around our patio. We see them scurry across, going from one place to the other, but they don’t linger anymore. At least not around our patios.

Until last week.

I saw the mommy cat licking herself contentedly on the bench that is connected to our big stone grill. Nearby lurked one of the two brothers who had benefited from our generosity a few months before, and whose daddy had made it necessary to mark my territory as his own. The cat is full grown now, and he was stalking the mommy cat. She glanced over her shoulder at him and twitched her black and white tail at him, smiled seductively and beckoned him into the bushes she had claimed as her boudoir. Understanding what was going on, I rushed outside to chase them away. “No kitty-making in MY backyard!” I shouted at them. The last thing I wanted was a litter of stray kittens populating the underbrush of our bushes.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Oh no. One by one, other male cats streaked across our patio in search of the female in heat—seemingly the only female cat in the neighborhood. I saw cats I didn’t recognize. The sound of feline sex growls sounded from all around, first in one neighbor’s yard, then another’s. One night was particularly active, waking my husband from a deep slumber. “What was that,” he asked me, wide-eyed and clearly freaked out. He’s a city boy, having lived his entire life in Stuttgart. “Cats,” I said, the country girl, having nearly forgotten the racket those felines can make and how creepy they sound in the dead of night.

It became a quite a nuisance. No one around here is keen on those strays—especially under the threat of more invading our lovely hillside of the Schwarzwald. One neighbor couple had taken to dumping water on the copulating animals to chase them away. More than once I heard gun fire ringing through the air, and even witnessed another neighbor with his air rifle scouting around for the cat I had just seen prowling through his garden.

Mis Kitty's season is over. All is quiet again. Our night’s slumber isn’t interrupted anymore by the sound of cats howling on the hill immediately outside our bedroom. I am even less of a cat-lover than I was only two weeks ago. I understand now, why people once stuffed kittens into a sack and tossed them in the river to drown. If only I had a magic wand to wave them all away—or at the least, to spay and neuter them. I wouldn’t mind their company for the next twenty or so years—as long as they didn’t behave like cats.

Writer’s Software--to use or not to use?

I’ve been working on a novel on and off for about a year now. I started it last summer, used NaNoWriMo in November to push me to the quarter mark, and have barely touched the thing since. Okay, so we moved in January, encountered a serious marriage crisis at the same time, and in May I left my husband to return to him in June. Since then, I’ve jump-started my writing in lots of ways, including getting involved here on Blogit. I’ve been feeling really productive. I’ve even written poetry, for god’s sake, which is a first.

Except for my novel. In the past, I’d written tons of short stories, some of which I’ve decided to showcase on Rainy Day Reader (the good, the bad, and the ugly!), but this is my first novel. It’s the first one I’ve begun where I see the beginning and the end very clearly, the first one that I promised myself I would finish before going on to something new. I don’t expect to publish it. I probably won’t even try. It’s an exercise to simply get through it and get down the mechanics.

My major stumbling block is plotting out the middle. I never thought I’d do this, but I ended up buying some software that helps with the plotting. In fact, I bought two programs, which help in different ways, and I’m finally breaking through the barrier. The plot is becoming more refined, and I’m finally coming up with enough varied conflict to propel me through that sagging middle.

I’m wondering, how many of you out there have “stooped” to using writer’s software to push yourself through your works in progress? As a first-time novelist, I’m finding my programs to be invaluable tools for me, and I’m glad I spent the money. Whatever works, right? What’s your opinion?

Sniffing Rubber

Have you ever used a pair of household rubber gloves far beyond their need for replacement? I use rubber gloves to clean the bathroom or for a household chore that requires my hands to be submerged in water for any length of time. Normally, my rubber gloves acquire at least one hole before long, and need quick replacement. But the gloves I’m talking of, the Rubber Gloves that Wouldn’t Die, are the exception. They were approaching their eight-month birthday before they found themselves in the trash.

I’m sure you’re asking yourself, But that’s wonderful! Why would you even consider throwing away a hole-less pair of rubber gloves, when they’re still so full of potential?

In a perfect world, I would hold on to them and treasure them and revere them for their durability. But this is not a perfect world. Behold…

I used my trusty gloves they other day and was overcome by the odor they possessed. I didn’t smell it right away, mind you. I smelled it as my hands heated up in the rubber casing, and little puffs of foul air were expressed from their depths as I diligently worked to keep my house clean. When I was done with my chores, I sniffed the interior of those gloves and nearly keeled over with disgust. They went immediately into the trash, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars—or euros, as the case may be—and I washed my hands thoroughly.

But the story doesn’t end there. Oh no. The odors created by your own body have incredible staying power. As the afternoon wore on, I caught the occasional sniff of something foul. Something like old feet. As I folded laundry, the smell wafted under my nose, tantalizingly close. What is that smell, I wondered. Could that be me? My clothes were clean, I had showered that morning… Was I developing a foot-odor problem? I lifted one foot to my nose (yes, I am that limber, but I am 35 now, and I dimly noted that with age comes stiffness, and lifting that foot to my nose wasn’t as easy as it might have been five years ago.) No, it wasn’t my feet (thank god!).

Then I smelled it again.

I didn’t find out until a little while later, as I sat at the kitchen table with my son, watching him color. I put my chin in my hand, and there it was again, that unmistakable odor of old feet. What the heck was that? With a sense of dread, I lifted my hands to my nose and inhaled—and nearly passed out. The smell of feet was coming from my own hands! Horrors!
Did it ever occur to you how your hands, the hands you keep scrupulously clean by washing after every bathroom visit, every nose blowing, and every surreptitious lick from the cookie batter, could leave behind an accumulative stink so overwhelmingly bad it would render a perfectly good pair of gloves utterly useless? Probably not.

The gloves, causing my hands to sweat, over time had taken my sweaty shed skin particles and fermented them into a fragrant stew which clung possessively to its source, my hands, and did not want to let go. It took several hand washings for that odor to finally fade, and in the meantime, I learned my lesson. Rubber gloves, even those with no holes, do indeed have a short shelf life once they’ve been worn.

So please, be sure to replace your household rubber gloves regularly. A special announcement from your public health service.

Playing catch-up with the technologically advanced

Last Saturday morning, I woke up to find my husband’s side of the bed empty. My son soon reported that the car was gone, and wondered where his dad had gone. I said to him, “Probably to get newspapers and brötchen,” brötchen being rolls of bread that we Americans commonly use for yummy deli sandwich-making. They might look like Kaiser rolls, or they might look like short baguettes, about four inches long. They might be square with flax seed, sesame seed, pumpkin seed, or sunflower seed. They might be of white flour, wheat flour, dark wheat, or a mix. Either way, they are good. I was looking forward to breakfast.

But an hour came and went, and there was no sign of my husband. I called his cell phone.

“Where are you,” I asked. I had noticed shortly before that, while he was sweet enough to set the table before he left, he did not set a place for himself. Clearly, he did not intent to eat with us, which meant he meant to be gone a while, and might not be bringing breakfast home, after all.

“Ehm… I’m in Stuttgart. Vaihingen.“

„Vaihingen? What are you doing way out there?” Vaihingen is a subdivision of Stuttgart, and where my husband’s previous job was.

“Ehm… Bank stuff.”

I knew better than to press it. If he wasn’t going to volunteer the information, pulling it out of him was worse than pulling a tooth, and often with unpleasant results. I let it go. “When will you be home?”

“Soon. Half-hour.”

And of course, I could interpret that to mean at least an hour. And I was right. He came home behaving very suspiciously. He had something in his hand he didn’t want me to see, and told me to leave the kitchen and go into the living room, making sure the door was closed behind me. When I bent to peek through the keyhole (no, I’m not above such tactics!), his eye suddenly appeared and his voice boomed through the wood door, “No peeking!” Obviously, he had something for me, and it was for my birthday.

After a while, I forgot about it. But when I discovered its hiding place, it was all I could do not to peek. He had hidden it in the kitchen cabinet that houses all of our medicinal items, behind two boxes the held the blood-pressure monitor and the cordless phone. For three days I was good. For three days, I was tempted to peek… and didn’t. Impressed? I am! The flesh, after all, is weak. What impresses me most, is that my five-year-old son knew what the gift was… and kept it secret all that time.

Tuesday afternoon, it occurred to me what that gift might have been, and I knew for certain that if I peeked, I wouldn’t be able to hide that fact from my dear hubby.

Wednesday, I was awakened to three choruses of Happy Birthday from my husband and my little one. My son even soloed. Very cute. Then, like the co-conspirators they were, they ran upstairs to the kitchen, whispering all the way, and came back with the gift. It was exactly the size I had expected it to be, if my suspicion was correct. I tore open the paper with relish, telling myself to not get my hopes up. I’d been asking for one of these for years, and the answer was always the same: we can’t afford it.

When I finally ripped the paper free from the box, I yelled out with delight. “A digital camera! Oh my god! A digital camera!” I couldn’t believe it, even if my suspicion had been proven true. Yes, I know, we’re a little behind the times. We don’t even have a scanner. We only just got broadband a few months ago. And now, we finally have a digital camera. I just couldn’t believe it.
Naturally, I immediately began taking pictures of everything, and especially of the lovely bouquet of varicolored roses my husband had brought home the evening before. “I wanted to get you red, but I decided on these when I saw them. Because love is never the same color,” he said when he handed them to me. How poetic. How come I never think of stuff like that???
The rest of the day was nice. We rented movies, ate chips and dip, even had a champagne breakfast.

The Full Stink

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…

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!

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.