A Surprise Visit from a Distant Friend

Last night, I ran across a friend online. Although I’m online at the same time almost every weeknight, I’d never seen her presence until last night. I met her maybe four or five years ago at an English-language play group in Stuttgart. She befriended me (it usually takes some effort to befriend me. I can be shy, at times!), and we really had some nice times together. We’d talk on the phone for hours, or meet downtown on Königstrasse to window shop. At first, our boys would accompany us, and then they each started Kindergarten so we got to share mommy and wifey stories in the luxury of their absence. I watched her belly swell as she grew a new child, and held that tiny little girl the last time we saw each other.

Her husband, once contracted under Daimler-Chrysler, decided he had had enough of being the ausländisches underdog and not being taken seriously by his coworkers. When he cancelled his contract, he returned to America with my friend and their children feeling profoundly disillusioned, leaving not only Germany, but his profession behind.

I had tears in my eyes when my friend and I parted ways. We didn’t see each other often, but I had an affection for her, and just knowing she was in the same city was a great comfort to me. I was sad when she left, but we traded e-mails for a while. And then the e-mails became less and less frequent. The last time we heard from each other was about six months ago.

But lately, she’d been on my mind a lot. I knew I had to write her, but I’ve been less busy than completely preoccupied. You know how that is? So, when I saw her on my Trillian contacts list, I was thrilled. I did a virtual happy dance, threw her virtual hugs, and we IMed for a good hour or so. For the umpteenth time, she offered to kick out their current tenant and rent out the other half of their Ohio country fixer-upper to us. I don’t know that we’ll ever take her up on her offer—or how serious her offer really is—but it’s fun to think of our families being neighbors.

Seeing her again, even if only virtually, did my soul lots of good.

I know this has happened to you

Can you hear my tortured cries across Blogitland?

I just lost my post because my tired old computer farted again.

And if you can believe it, and I'm sure you can because you've all been here before, too, after I got back online I even check to see if maybe, just maybe, my little humble musing got saved and posted after all. Of course it didn't. and so here I am, bleary-eyed and barely able to type without a mistake in every word, trying to make the best of it, trying not to waste my opportunity. Maybe, just maybe, that was meant to happen. Maybe I was meant to write a better post. Maybe about the same subject, maybe about losing posts to the ether.

But dammit anyway! I don't want to write the whole thing over again... I'm tired. I wanna go to bed. And tomorrow, well, tomorrow's another day, and I have laundry to do and toilets to clean and floors to wash and a child to homeschool...

But maybe it was simply meant to be.

Yeah, right. Or maybe, my fingers were just clumsy.

crap.

Could it be? Dare I hope?

I'm happy to announce that, while we haven't formed any definite plans and have not fully committed to relocating stateside, my husband seems to be looking forward to the possibility.

And I couldn't hope for less, at this point.

Yesterday, he spent a good portion of the day on the Internet searching up activities of interest in the Chicagoland area. Soccer (he's German, of course he's going to look up soccer clubs!), swimming, cycling. He searched up a local writer's group for me. He spent a long time looking up first-grade entry requirements for our son. And together, we searched for local Canasta clubs. We found next to nothing that wasn't centered around online playing or linked to retirement communities. In fact, in the first search we did for Canasta clubs, we turned up nothing but pages of obituaries!

I spent a few minutes yesterday and today reassuring him that since we'll be sheltering with my folks, we'd be in a safe position. And, that for once, the burden of earning an income for our family wouldn't be his alone, anymore. Additionally, we already have a car and furnishings waiting for us, so we won't have to buy anything once we leave my parent's nest. Really, we have much more than most other immigrants entering the U.S., although our advantages stem from the fact that America is my homeland, and has been to my family for three generations.

He needs to be handled with kid gloves. It's a big risk he's taking, on a personal and professional level. And he's the type of person that, if he feels he's being pushed, he'll push back and do the opposite of what you ask.

Slowly slowly, he'll work himself up to the full committment. That's the way he works. I have my fingers crossed that this time will be no exception.

I never thought we'd come so far...

Well, here's a bit of good news.

Today, two weeks earlier than expected, we received my husband's US residency visa in the mail.

We've got six months to enter the US before it expires.

I've got half that long to make sure my husband doesn't chicken out and change his mind, and then to get us there in time for the new school year.

Wish us luck, everyone. We need this. My son and I, in particular, need this.

We just need that extra little push to bring us to the finish line. Please send us lots of positive energy...!

Choose Me! Choose Me!

This morning, I had a pleasant surprise. After bringing my boy to kindergarten, I settled down to a cup of coffee and checked my e-mail. I do this every morning not to see if I got any letters from friends, anymore, but to see if, while I slept, someone decided to inquire after my editing services.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I got two nibbles... but they were from two women who wanted me to employ them. I wrote back and expressed my sorrow that I could not take them on, but that I'd like to keep their resumes on hand "just in case."

So, as I waited for my computer to boot up (it took three tries to get online, the tired, farty old thing), I sipped my coffee and pondered the irony of receiving those two inquiries. Could I possibly list them as co-editors, to further entice potential clients to trust my expertise? And as I came to the conclusion that, no, that would not be very ethical, I logged in to my e-mail and saw in the subject line of one: Proofreading and Editing Services.

My heart skipped a beat. Would this be a potential client, or an employment hopeful?

Well, be still my heart, it was a request for my resume, editing examples and rates list. And it wasn't a one-time deal like everything else has been. It would be a permanent freelance position for a big non-profit org. Holy moly. It wouldn't be enough to pay the rent, by any means, but it would be regular work and enough to pad our income just a little tiny bit more. I immediately set to and gathered all my stuff together and e-mailed it away, attached to a nicely professional letter.

Now, I'm not silly enough to think I was singled out for this opportunity. No way. It came from the New York craigslist, so I went there, searched "proofreading", and checked out the competition. I was happy to see that I am in good standing, have extremely reasonable rates (cheaper than just about everyone else), and that I could have copyedited some of those ads and websites myself... though I wouldn't expect any potential client to know that, or else they wouldn't need a proofreader!

After I sent off my resume and examples, I wrote another potential client who has neglected to send me the disclosure agreement he wanted me to sign, as he promised he would do sometime this week. I don't know if I'll hear from him again, but I gave it a good shot, having called him last week in CA (from Germany) to follow up on his initial inquiry. At the very least, it was good practice.

Then this afternoon, I got a surprise e-mail from a university student who asked me to quote her a price for editing her thesis. I replied, and am waiting to hear back from her, too.
So, maybe something will come of these three good leads. They would all be good projects, affording a tidy sum in my pocket. I've got my fingers crossed...

Where do your friends rank???

A recent post by Strat got me thinking about my high school days. When I was a freshman girl involved in theatre, all my friends were senior Thespian boys (go figure), so I got into all the trouble-making earlier than I might have. I was fourteen when I started drinking, and though I never smoked cigarettes I did smoke pot on occasion. We got drunk in a local forest preserve, then piled into a couple of cars (I remember one time when seven of us in crammed into a tiny, two-door, early 80s Ford Escort) to make for Jakes Pizza or someone’s house for a Wall Party. My boyfriend and his fellow band friends took great delight in sign stealing, and left their mark on streets and public buildings (missing letters, missing signs) throughout the area for years after.

Our school was somewhat more strict than Strat’s, it seems. Absolutely no cola on campus (except for the coke machine in the teacher’s lounge, which we routinely broke into during weekend play rehearsals), no cigarettes (except those smuggled into the bathrooms between classes), no off-campus lunches even for seniors. I remember a few hair-raising off-campus lunches with my friends, too, as well as quite a bit of hell-raising on the weekends. I wonder how much my parents knew or suspected? Even at nearly 36, I don’t plan to enlighten them about those teenage escapades.

We’d remained friends and in semi-regular contact long past our respective graduation dates, through college and most of the 90s. But in the last few years, we seem to have gone our own ways: One of them turned criminal--he was one of the sign stealers and now steals money via fraudulent means, and you can find him in local paper archives. One female friend, who floated on the periphery of our core group, became an exotic dancer where she met her husband, then later got her degree in English at 31.

Another found God in a big way, but still we remain in contact and respect one another’s path.

Two were born again and I haven't heard from them in years, I being the group heathen and therefore damned to eternal hell and below their recognition. I like to think they think of me now and again and pray for my soul. I’d rather have that than emptiness and misplaced pity in their hearts when they remember their female group mascot over whom they were once so protective.

Last week, I uncovered a blog belonging to one of them (reborn about 18 months ago). He’s a talented guitarist whose poetic writing style reminds me strikingly of Strat’s. In that blog, there was almost none of his former poesy. He spoke of mundane matters in a mundane style, except for every other sentence referring to God and needing to devote all aspects of one’s life to Him.

In one of his later posts, he had spoken of feeling uninspired, that the room he had dedicated to his creative and musical pursuits has done little more for him than collect dust. His posts became sporadic. And it occurred to me that instead of using his talents as a celebration of Divinity, he may have chased down the path that causes Divinity to choke the creative from him. Reading his posts made me sad, and it struck me that he sounded less accepting of his chosen path than trying to convince himself of its perceived rightness.

Another, a stout atheist in HS and beyond, attained his PhD in Theology and converted to Judaism while still at university.

And still another remains very much the same as he’s always been: a forty-year-old Catholic, somewhat more bitter than before, still as depressive and self-absorbed as ever, and doesn’t understand why he can’t keep a girlfriend and why he goes so long between. Don’t mistake me. He’s a gentle soul, musical, articulate and creative, and a good friend to have. My description isn't mean, just honest.

I find it interesting how religion has emerged to play such a vital role in many of their lives and has effectively managed to separate us. A part of me resents that I’ve lost to religion two of the people I’ve held dear for many years. Something about that doesn’t seem right. According to people “like them”, someone like me—with no set rules of Divinity to follow, with a propensity toward a kind of nature worship and affection for goddess tradition—is now unworthy of their friendship. I, who have never said an unkind word to them or about them, who have always regarded them with a friend’s love, am now below their regard simply because our priorities differ in this particular thing.

Shouldn’t Divinity should be inclusive, not exclusive? I respect the various paths my friends chose and I don’t begrudge them their methods of filling the empty places in their hearts. I have my own ways, but certainly don’t place them above anyone else’s. The Divine, after all, takes an infinite variety of forms. But it’s a real shame when we feel the need to sacrifice one form of love to embrace another.

This year, we’ll have all been friends for 22 years. Why would anyone want to forsake that? Why would the Divine, in any form, expect one to repudiate friendship? Isn't love supposed to be the whole point?

Lessons in Waiting

Last Tuesday marked the beginning of significant change for our little family. After months of filling out forms, standing in endless lines, and subterranean emotional preparation, my husband and I found ourselves finally at the American Consulate in Frankfurt to take the final steps toward his U.S. residence visa.What that means for us is, after having lived these past seven years in Germany, my husband’s homeland, we may very well be returning to the Chicago area once and for all before summer’s end. I’m very excited about this, and I think my husband is, too. And our son will be delighted.

The day at the Consulate passed very smoothly. The mission was to attend an interview conducted by one of the Consulate officials and then proceed to his physical, as outlined in the appointment letter. Just like in the movies, there was a line of people waiting to get into the Consulate itself. As we waited, I noticed a sign on the wall that indicated no electronics are allowed in the building. Opening the bag I held, I looked inside and found we had forgotten to leave my husband’s cell phone in the car. He took the phone and ran down the block to put it away.

In the meantime, a young woman, 23 years old, turned around and started talking to me. She revealed that she had lived near my hometown, and even had attended church meetings in the little schoolhouse-turned-community center in our farming community. (Actually, it’s no longer a farming community, but a burgeoning village—a recent victim of urban sprawl.) I was really amazed to run into someone else from my tiny little corner of the Midwest.

Last year on the subway, I ran into a young woman, a Seventh-Day Adventist missionary no less, who is from the next town over from ours. It really is a small world.As we laughed together, the woman behind us joined our conversation .“I admit it,” she’d said, “I was eavesdropping.”

The first young woman and I both made the same dismissive hand gesture and at the same time said, “That’s okay!”

“This far from home,” I said, “we’re all family.”

Just as my husband returned, and while the three of us were deep in conversation, one of the line attendants inquired after each person’s business.

Now here’s the interesting part. To the girl in front of me, and the girl in back of me, he spoke English. To me, he spoke German. I don’t know what it was that made him assume I might be German, except maybe my reddish dark-blond hair and blue eyes. But other than that, I’m about as American as they come. My clothes certainly have held to my American roots—t-shirt, oversized PolarTec pullover, hiking boots. And my hair basically has kept its style over the last seven years: long with bangs. I’m horribly unfashionable in this part of the world, and embarrassingly out of date in my own country.

So why would he presume to speak German to me—especially after interrupting our little Kaffee Klatsch? Didn’t he hear us all chatting away in English?He ushered the three of us (my husband trotting behind to catch up) to the front of the line where we simply checked in and were given a number ahead of several others who no doubt wondered what gave us privilege over them.

Then, we had to stand in another line to enter an antechamber, where we had to pass through a metal detector and x-ray our bag and coats, just like at the airport or a courthouse. Only four people at a time could enter the antechamber, and that’s where I was separated from my new friends. I didn’t see them again, even after entering the Consulate, but that was not surprising.

My husband and I were directed to the immigrant visa section of the large waiting hall, separate from the American portion of the area where passports, birth-abroad certificates, and the like are handled.It was about 8:20 a.m. when we entered the Consulate, and were immediately directed to Window 22, where we paid our application fee. (Someone had told us last year, before we even started the application process, to expect to pay around $500 in fees before it was all over. He was not kidding!)

We were given our receipt and told to sit in the waiting area until our number was called again. W511. We looked around, and decided the wait wouldn’t be as long as we thought it would be (the papers sent to us indicated a 3- to 6-hour process). There simply weren’t many people around, and our number was pretty low.

It certainly didn’t take long before our number was called to Window 23, where we turned in my husband’s application—as if he already hadn’t filled out a zillion other forms last summer, putting this whole thing in motion. We finished up there nice and quick, with no fuss, and were told to sit and wait until our number was called again.

This wait took a little longer. After fidgeting in our chairs for a while, I said to my husband, “I’m going to read a little bit. Once I really get into it, they’ll call our number.” And sure enough, maybe ten minutes later, we were called up to Window 11. There, we turned in all of our documents: police report, military records, birth certificate, marriage license, affidavits of support—a whole pile of papers. In a bored monotone and without pause for breath, the woman gave us instructions of what to do when we first arrive in the States.

After spending a few minutes getting those instructions straight, we were told to sit down—again—and wait for our number to be called—again—for the formal interview.This wait took still longer, and not even my old reading trick helped speed things up. I think it was because we were both a little nervous and I couldn’t concentrate. We waited long enough that we both began to wonder if maybe they might call our number on the American side. It sounds silly, but we’d waited just long enough for our numbed minds to start hypothesizing and playing tricks on us.

Eventually, we were called to Window 17, our final destination at the Consulate. The interview seemed more like a chat over coffee than an actual interview, except for the obvious questions the interviewer asked us: Where will we be living, has my husband been there before, how long have we been married (all of this information was already on the umpteen thousand forms we’d filled out), why do we want to relocate? At one point, I took my husband’s hand, and the man smiled at me and said, “Don’t worry. You’re doing fine.”

It was 11:10 when we finished up with the formal interview, and, taking the advice of our interviewer, we took one of the taxis lurking outside the consulate to the doctor’s office to make it there before it closed at 11:30.

As we rushed through the door of the doctor’s office, the Turkish receptionist, adorned in her very attractive head scarf and ankle-length black skirt, directed us to a waiting room upstairs.

When we entered, we recognized several other people from the Consulate waiting hall. We all smiled at each other in greeting, everyone clearly excited by the prospect of gaining their U.S. immigrant visas. At another desk, a woman crossed my husband’s name off a list. Beside his name was the scheduled time of our interview, 8:30. The list was long, and there were people with later interview times at the Consulate who had yet to arrive, their names still to be crossed off.

Like everyone else, we had to pay the doctor €125 in cash—German insurance would not cover this exam, imagine that—and after seeing that list of Consular patients for the day, I said to my husband, “This doctor must make a whole lotta money.”

Back in the waiting room, my husband and I talked about the man who’d interviewed us. “I think he liked us,” I said to him. “He was really nice, very friendly.”

“Too friendly,” my husband said. “Did you notice how quick he was with his questions?”

I thought about it and realized my husband was right. The man had been very friendly. Very chatty. But in the midst of the chattiness, he shot out pointed questions, so that those taken off-guard by his friendliness might stumble over one if they had secretive or dishonest reasons for wanting to gain permanent admittance to the U.S.

I said, “You’re right,” and felt a little let down. I like to think I’m not naïve, but sometimes I really can be. I like to believe the best in people. We had been a nice, humble couple during the interview. I’d smiled genuinely at the interviewer, thrilled that we had finally attained this final step, the future opening up before us, both of us happy and optimistic. And the man had seemed like a really nice guy. I understood his position, of course, being one of the final people to decide yay or nay to hopeful (and sometimes devious) immigrants from Germany. But I really wanted to believe he was a nice person, that he’d liked us, that the sparkle in his eyes had been as genuine as my smile. So, in a conscious decision to not play devil’s advocate for once, I let myself believe what I wanted to believe.

The physical went smoothly, too, though there was one hitch in my husband’s immunization records. Once we get that straightened up early next week, the physical results get sent to the Consulate. Within two weeks after that, we’ll know whether my husband has received his visa.We have still another long wait ahead of us, but I’m fairly confident the outcome will be favorable.

The Unexpected Visitor

We had an unexpected visitor last week. His name is Rudy, and, as my son and I walked home from his Kindergarten, Rudy slunk around the corner of a house and took an immediate shine to my youngster, following him all the way home. He even expected to be let into the house!

Rudy is a young black-and-white cat, no more than a year old, and friendly as all get-out. I’m terribly allergic to cats, and as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t let the little guy in. So, my son stayed outside to keep the feline critter company while I made lunch. It wasn’t long before he ran up to the kitchen yelling, “Mommy! You have to come outside and see the kitty. You have to!”

Some of you might understand that when a young child utters such words with such urgency, you don’t want to see what all the ruckus is about. But I put down my spatula, turned down the heat in the fry pan, and followed my excited child downstairs and out the door.

What I saw wasn’t as bad as I’d expected, but it was equivalent to a cat getting stuck in a tree. Li’l Rudy, as we later came to know him, was stuck behind the Plexiglas backing between the roof of the garage and the roof of the overhang that protects a portion of the driveway from rain and snow—no doubt installed there for the very purpose of keeping small furry creatures from hiding out in that prime area of shelter. But Rudy managed to find a gap between the Plexiglas and the garage wall and squeezed on up there… And couldn’t get back out.

Last year, when we first moved here, we encouraged two young stray tabbies to hang around our house by placing bowls of cat food and water by the patio door leading into the kitchen. We didn’t do it for long, however, because we soon learned that un-neutered male cats are rather unpleasant (Smelly!) companions when they think your home is theirs, and then mark it as their territory. Remembering that I still had a box of that cat food, I ran upstairs and poured our little friend a bowl, then crawled across the flat roof of the garage and placed the bowl below the gap where the cat had crawled through, then carefully climbed back down to wait.

Rudy was very interested in getting to that food. After trying to squeeze through the gap, he finally decided to twist his nimble body around the corner where the Plexiglas ended flush with the edge of the garage roof. He essentially bent himself in half, sideways, to reach the roof on the other side of the plastic shield. Cheering Rudy on, my son and I then returned to the house for our own meal, leaving Rudy to finish his and go back home.

But Rudy didn’t go home. He trotted along the side of the house to greet us at the back door while we ate. My son was outside in a flash and spent the rest of the afternoon playing with the little cat.

After a couple of hours, my son moved on to other things… he finally needed some downtime, so I let him watch TV. And while I busied myself in the house, the cat fell asleep in the sun outside the back door. It was quite late by then, close to 6:00 p.m., I think, and I started worrying about the cat.

Up until then, I figured he’d go on his way, meander back home. From his friendliness and the collar around his neck, it seemed clear to me that he had an owner, somewhere. And having lived with three outdoor cats (all of them spayed or neutered, by the way, a much nicer way of owning cats) for a goodly portion of my life, I was familiar with their wandering ways, and the fact that cats always come back home. But Rudy was looking mighty comfortable in that patch of sun in front of our kitchen door. And I worried about darkness falling, and him being left on his own in the cold April night, in the territory of two very wily stray cats who roam our gardens in this section of our neighborhood. Pitched against those two, Rudy would not fare well.

Watching him through our glass door (I’m severely allergic, remember), it seemed that what had appeared to be a design of the collar was actually printing. So, rolling up my sleeves, I went outside and took Rudy gently in my arms and held him in my lap while I worked his collar off. Sure enough, written on both sides of the collar were Rudy’s name and life story, such as it was. It seems that the little cat had lost his mother when he was a kitten, and had imprinted on people, explaining his amazing friendliness. Also written on the collar, to my immense relief, was a phone number. I put down the cat, grabbed up the phone and dialed the number. The owner, an older woman in her late 50s or early 60s, had clearly missed her darling feline (and darling he was!), and was quite happy to hear from me. A few minutes later, I met her in our driveway, and Rudy ran to her, happy to see his Mama.

I don’t think Rudy’s friendliness isn’t entirely due to having lost his mother shortly after birth. After watching him with his human Mama, who loved him enthusiastically and rocked him in her arms like a baby while he batted at her chin with his soft paws, claws safely tucked away, I think Rudy’s Mama has had a profound influence on his trust and affection for people.

My son and I were sad to see Rudy go, but are glad he’s back home with his loving Mama. She invited my son to come visit, and maybe we will. Or it may happen that we’ll find Rudy sunning himself on our back stoop again, and we’ll have to call his Mama to come pick him up. Either way, our lives were enriched by Rudy’s surprise visit.

Rudy takes a cat nap on our back stoop.

I couldn't stay away

Well, Hell. I'm Back. I just couldn't stay away.

I'm back, for better or worse. I missed everyone terribly, even if to you my absence registered little more than a faint blip on the Blogit radar. I missed... well, I just missed writing on Blogit. I know, I sound corny 'n' all, but that's just the way it is.

In the time I've been gone, I managed to get my website up and running, and have gotten a few jobs so far, so that's good. I also managed to glean a little knowledge in HTML code, by way of reverse engineering a couple of Blogger templates I was using to restructure them to my own specifications, so I'm feeling pretty good about that, too.

My mother-in-law and her mother vacated our home two weeks after her arrival with the usual shouting match between her and my husband. She stayed with my brother-in-law for one week before a shouting match with him and his girlfriend (how can you call a 40-year-old woman a girlfriend? Don't we move beyond that title at some predefined point?) prompted her early return to Greece. Good riddance. Of course, all of her stuff from her recently vacated Stuttgart apartment is now occupying our master bedroom and laundry room, and I have no idea when or IF she plans to get it our of our house.

And on that note, we have finally moved through the final phase in the application for my husband's US residence visa. Yes, last week was his interview. Today, he cleared up a misunderstanding about his immunization records, and so we should know within the next two weeks whether he will be eligible for permanent residency in the US. Once that is determined, there's a good chance we will be living in the US by summer's end. Yee-ha!

Of course, that means completely starting over. But things aren't that great as they stand now, so it'll be like wiping the slate clean and doing something different. I'd like to get my teacher's certificate, for instance. I'd like to convince my husband to do the same, because, watching him teach our son math, I think he'd make a good teacher.

Well, that's enough for now. It's midnight where I am, and I'd like to get some reading done before crashing for the night. Take care, everyone. I missed you all!

Lessons in Waiting

Tuesday marked the beginning of significant change for our little family. After months of filling out forms, standing in endless lines, and subterranean emotional preparation, my husband and I found ourselves finally at the American Consulate in Frankfurt to take the final steps toward his U.S. residence visa.

What that means for us is, after having lived these past seven years in Germany, my husband’s homeland, we may very well be returning to the Chicago area once and for all before summer’s end. I’m very excited about this, and I think my husband is, too. And our son will be delighted.

The day at the Consulate passed very smoothly. The mission was to attend an interview conducted by one of the Consulate officials and then proceed to his physical, as outlined in the appointment letter. Just like in the movies, there was a line of people waiting to get into the Consulate itself. As we waited, I noticed a sign on the wall that indicated no electronics are allowed in the building. Opening the bag I held, I looked inside and found we had forgotten to leave my husband’s cell phone in the car. He took the phone and ran down the block to put it away.

In the meantime, a young woman, 23 years old, turned around and started talking to me. She revealed that she had lived near my hometown, and even had attended church meetings in the little schoolhouse-turned-community center in our farming community. (Actually, it’s no longer a farming community, but a burgeoning village—a recent victim of urban sprawl.) I was really amazed to run into someone else from my tiny little corner of the Midwest. Last year on the subway, I ran into a young woman, a Seventh-Day Adventist missionary no less, who is from the next town over from ours. It really is a small world.

As we laughed together, the woman behind us joined our conversation .

“I admit it,” she’d said, “I was eavesdropping.”

The first young woman and I both made the same dismissive hand gesture and at the same time said, “That’s okay!”

“This far from home,” I said, “we’re all family.”

Just as my husband returned, and while the three of us were deep in conversation, one of the line attendants inquired after each person’s business. Now here’s the interesting part. To the girl in front of me, and the girl in back of me, he spoke English. To me, he spoke German. I don’t know what it was that made him assume I might be German, except maybe my reddish dark-blond hair and blue eyes. But other than that, I’m about as American as they come. My clothes certainly have held to my American roots—t-shirt, oversized PolarTec pullover, hiking boots. And my hair basically has kept its style over the last seven years: long with bangs. I’m horribly unfashionable in this part of the world, and embarrassingly out of date in my own country. So why would he presume to speak German to me—especially after interrupting our little Kaffee Klatsch? Didn’t he hear us all chatting away in English?

He ushered the three of us (my husband trotting behind to catch up) to the front of the line where we simply checked in and were given a number ahead of several others who no doubt wondered what gave us privilege over them. Then, we had to stand in another line to enter an antechamber, where we had to pass through a metal detector and x-ray our bag and coats, just like at the airport or a courthouse. Only four people at a time could enter the antechamber, and that’s where I was separated from my new friends. I didn’t see them again, even after entering the Consulate, but that was not surprising. My husband and I were directed to the immigrant visa section of the large waiting hall, separate from the American portion of the area where passports, birth-abroad certificates, and the like are handled.

It was about 8:20 a.m. when we entered the Consulate, and were immediately directed to Window 22, where we paid our application fee. (Someone had told us last year, before we even started the application process, to expect to pay around $500 in fees before it was all over. He was not kidding!) We were given our receipt and told to sit in the waiting area until our number was called again. W511. We looked around, and decided the wait wouldn’t be as long as we thought it would be (the papers sent to us indicated a 3- to 6-hour process). There simply weren’t many people around, and our number was pretty low. It certainly didn’t take long before our number was called to Window 23, where we turned in my husband’s application—as if he already hadn’t filled out a zillion other forms last summer, putting this whole thing in motion. We finished up there nice and quick, with no fuss, and were told to sit and wait until our number was called again.

This wait took a little longer. After fidgeting in our chairs for a while, I said to my husband, “I’m going to read a little bit. Once I really get into it, they’ll call our number.” And sure enough, maybe ten minutes later, we were called up to Window 11. There, we turned in all of our documents: police report, military records, birth certificate, marriage license, affidavits of support—a whole pile of papers. In a bored monotone and without pause for breath, the woman gave us instructions of what to do when we first arrive in the States. After spending a few minutes getting those instructions straight, we were told to sit down—again—and wait for our number to be called—again—for the formal interview.

This wait took still longer, and not even my old reading trick helped speed things up. I think it was because we were both a little nervous and I couldn’t concentrate. We waited long enough that we both began to wonder if maybe they might call our number on the American side. It sounds silly, but we’d waited just long enough for our numbed minds to start hypothesizing and playing tricks on us.

Eventually, we were called to Window 17, our final destination at the Consulate. The interview seemed more like a chat over coffee than an actual interview, except for the obvious questions the interviewer asked us: Where will we be living, has my husband been there before, how long have we been married (all of this information was already on the umpteen thousand forms we’d filled out), why do we want to relocate? At one point, I took my husband’s hand, and the man smiled at me and said, “Don’t worry. You’re doing fine.”

It was 11:10 when we finished up with the formal interview, and, taking the advice of our interviewer, we took one of the taxis lurking outside the consulate to the doctor’s office to make it there before it closed at 11:30.

As we rushed through the door of the doctor’s office, the Turkish receptionist, adorned in her very attractive head scarf and ankle-length black skirt, directed us to a waiting room upstairs. When we entered, we recognized several other people from the Consulate waiting hall. We all smiled at each other in greeting, everyone clearly excited by the prospect of gaining their U.S. immigrant visas. At another desk, a woman crossed my husband’s name off a list. Beside his name was the scheduled time of our interview, 8:30. The list was long, and there were people with later interview times at the Consulate who had yet to arrive, their names still to be crossed off. Like everyone else, we had to pay the doctor €125 in cash—German insurance would not cover this exam, imagine that—and after seeing that list of Consular patients for the day, I said to my husband, “This doctor must make a whole lotta money.”

Back in the waiting room, my husband and I talked about the man who’d interviewed us. “I think he liked us,” I said to him. “He was really nice, very friendly.”

“Too friendly,” my husband said. “Did you notice how quick he was with his questions?”

I thought about it and realized my husband was right. The man had been very friendly. Very chatty. But in the midst of the chattiness, he shot out pointed questions, so that those taken off-guard by his friendliness might stumble over one if they had secretive or dishonest reasons for wanting to gain permanent admittance to the U.S.

I said, “You’re right,” and felt a little let down. I like to think I’m not naïve, but sometimes I really can be. I like to believe the best in people. We had been a nice, humble couple during the interview. I’d smiled genuinely at the interviewer, thrilled that we had finally attained this final step, the future opening up before us, both of us happy and optimistic. And the man had seemed like a really nice guy. I understood his position, of course, being one of the final people to decide yay or nay to hopeful (and sometimes devious) immigrants from Germany. But I really wanted to believe he was a nice person, that he’d liked us, that the sparkle in his eyes had been as genuine as my smile. So, in a conscious decision to not play devil’s advocate for once, I let myself believe what I wanted to believe.

The physical went smoothly, too, though there was one hitch in my husband’s immunization records. Once we get that straightened up early next week, the physical results get sent to the Consulate. Within two weeks after that, we’ll know whether my husband has received his visa.

We have still another long wait ahead of us, but I’m fairly confident the outcome will be favorable.

An Old Promise Made Good

Seven years ago, I quit my editing job, got married and moved to Germany. As I was wrapping up my final days at the office, I promised the associate editor for one of the magazines I copyedited that I would send him a copy of the German magazine that bears his last name.

Last week, I visited the website of my old company for the very first time. I don’t know what took me so long to do it, but there you have it. Checking out the sub-domain of that magazine I copyedited, I saw that a couple years back, the associate editor had been promoted to editor. That made me happy, because I felt he was a nice guy and working with him had been very pleasant.

And then, I realized that I had never sent him the magazine I had promised exactly seven years ago. So, the very next day, I bought a copy of that week’s edition and dropped it in the mail. I figured it was the least I could do… and the last chance I have to do it. We are, after all, in the process of making plans to return to the States for good.

After recovering from the shock of the postage -- almost three times the cost of the magazine! I was rudely reminded why I don’t send anyone presents from Deutschland. Well, except to my mom at Christmas! -- I was filled with a giddy pleasure. Imagine your surprise after receiving a large envelope with a big airmail stamp on it, from a person you haven’t spoken to in seven years. And inside that envelope is a promise finally -- if belatedly -- made good on.

I hope he likes his present.

Letting the Young-uns Fly...

A certain copywriter hit the nail on the head when he (or more likely, she) wrote, “If they could only stay little till their Carters wear out.” With every cute little outfit my son has outgrown, with every sweet little quirk left behind, or funny mispronunciation corrected, that Carter’s phrase comes unbidden to my mind. And every once in a while, as if someone had clicked my mind’s refresh button, I’ll take a new look at my son and realize that he really is growing up fast.

I often come to this realization with a painful tweak, and I find myself having to scramble to catch up with his growth. He’s not a little boy anymore, is he? He’s six years old, and somewhat tall and sturdy for his age. And just Sunday night, he lost his second baby tooth. But still…

I’m always willing to let him spread his wings, test them for flight. I remember the first few times he so carefully poured water or juice all by himself. The first time he brushed his teeth alone. Now, he sometimes makes his own breakfast, buttering his own bread or pouring his own cereal. He dresses himself most days, too. These things make me happy. I’m happy for his budding independence, and I’m happy I no longer have to be quite SO responsible for the simple things in his life. But the most recent development gives me a little trouble.

My son wants to walk to kindergarten alone.

It’s really not such a big deal. The school is less than five minutes away on foot. The journey is even quicker if you’re an energetic six-year-old itching to stretch your strong, boy leg muscles after a long winter indoors. And two weeks ago, after he plaintively begged me, I finally said, “Okay, you can go by yourself.”

He was very excited, and kept asking me how long before he should leave. When I told him it was time to put his shoes on, he hopped up and did it without hesitation, then pulled on his coat, hat, mittens and scarf without being told. Wow. Now, that's a first!

We said goodbye, and as his warmly packed, very alive body walked out the door, I realized that my son may be ready to assume this new responsibility, but I wasn’t ready to relinquish it. How would I know when he got there? How would I know he whether got there in one piece?

How would I know if he got there at all???

I quickly ran to the bathroom (I couldn’t wait to go potty), washed my hands, donned my shoes, coat and mittens, and flew out the door after him. I wasn’t going to join him, I just wanted to follow him to make sure he got there all right. But when I jogged down the hill to the main street, my son was nowhere in sight.

“Be calm,” I told myself. “He’s just beyond your sightline. Nothing to worry about.”

I followed the narrow sidewalk all the way down the hill to the kindergarten, situated beside a swift-flowing brook swollen with the melting snow. The walkway to the front door of the school was empty, no sign of my son in his lime-green-and-grey ski jacket anywhere. Just as I had made up my mind to sneak into the kindergarten to be sure he was in there, the mother of one of his schoolmates appeared.

“Hallo, Claudia! Hast du mein Sohn da drin gesehen?” I asked. Did you see my son in there?

“Joh,” she answered in her Schwäbisch dialect. She had seen him, and he was very proud of himself that he had walked to kindergarten all alone.

Satisfied that all was well, and not wanting him to discover that I had followed him, I turned around and headed back home.

Since then, my son has begun showing other signs of independence. I still bring him to kindergarten most days, but he no longer gives me the big hug and kiss at the door that he used to. And on the days he asks to walk alone, like the big boy he is, I let him go.

Then, I count to sixty before hopping in the car to trail him there, making sure he walks through the door of the school, safe and sound!

Watch out, it's a whirlwind out there!

Who'd have known that the new year would herald so much change?

The changes around here have been relatively small. I was away from Blogit for such a long time, it's hard to remember everything that's kept me from the computer. The first thing that comes to mind is all the hard work I put into a website I created to promote my proofreading and editing services. It's been up for two weeks, and I spent some time submitting the URL to search engines, and placing ads in obscure online classifieds. When I checked on Saturday, I saw that I had finally made it into Google. Excited, I wrote a giant mass-email to everyone in my address book announcing my new site. But then my mom wrote to tell me the Google link didn't work. So I tried it, and she was right. I WAS in Google on Saturday, but today I'm not. Not sure what happened there.

But fact is, the Website is up. Did it all myself. Go ahead and take a look. No, really. Of course, that also means the end of my anonymity here... but that's okay.

The Worsmithery

There. There it is. Let me know what you think.

In the meantime, my mother-in-law came to Germany with her 85-year-old mother in tow, and they've been living with us for the last ten days or so. These two, they eat A LOT of bread. I have to buy a fresh two-pound (1-kilo) loaf of bread every two days to accomodate their lust for gluten. Okay, fine. They like their bread. But all those carbs result in a whole lotta farting--and my house smells like stale farts. That is NO JOKE. Walk into my bedroom, which they are occupying, and oh boy. And whatever you do, don't stand behind the grandmother. As sweet as she is, she is loaded with lethal fumes. I can't tell you how often I've gotten caught in fart fumes from this little lady.

My mother-in-law is a pill, to say the least. She is the original mother-in-law. We had our first spat a few days ago, and she's been behaving quite well since then, but I'm not holding my breath.

Well, maybe I should, all things considered. Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other.

The unfortunate thing is, the woman is terribly impatient with her own mother, who is not only aged, but suffers from Alzheimer's on top of it. Bad news.

But we're coping, and the grandmother and I have struck up a kind of commaraderie.

So, also because of our visitors I haven't been writing at all.

And in the midst of all this, we're still preparing for our move to the States. We're still waiting to get my husband's interview date in the mail, which should be arriving pretty soon. After we relocate, I'm hoping to go back to school and get my Teacher's Certificate. I'd like to teach grade school, and I'm thinking at some point I'd like to earn my Master's in education and teach at the university level.

And while all this is going on, of course, I'm still writing that phantom novel in my head. Well, about 8 of them, actually!

So, there's lots to do and think about right now. I don't think I'll have time to post on blogit with any regularity for the next little while, so I've cancelled my membership for the time being. I'm hoping that, once the dust settles, I'll be able to get back into it. I'm hoping that I can come back next month. I'm hoping that maybe I won't have to go away, after all. The fact is, I've had a blast here. I've enjoyed getting to know everyone and reading about your lives. I probably won't post again, but I will try to stop by between now and the end of my payment cycle (another week or so) to visit everyone and say goodbye. Hopefully, it won't be for long.

In the meantime, don't forget me.

Peace, light and love to everyone,SilverMoon7

I want to be a switch-hitter

A post from mysteria reminded me of something that had crossed my mind last night while watching the latest Star Trek, the Last Generation movie on TV. You know those Vulcans, who aren't supposed to have emotion... Well, some things that I should be doing have been a lot on my mind, lately. Looking for a part-time job is one of them. Working on my writing ideas is another. There's more. I'm sure you have some, too.

A lot of dark thinking gets in the way of accomplishing those things. Self-doubt, frustration, insecurity. Reluctance. Laziness. And I thought, wouldn't it be handy if we could simply turn off those negative emotions, and get done the stuff that needs to get done? Just flip a switch and all those nasty little emotions that we (all) allow to get in our way, at one time or another, no longer would be a hindrance...

Ahh. Wouldn't that be sweet?

But as I thought about it longer, would that device hinder our personal growth? Would it stunt our ability to get through the tough stuff? To buck up and dance to the music, even if it's our least-favorite tune?

Or would it bolster our confidence? "Whew, glad to get that out of the way." "That wasn't as bad as I thought it would be!" "Hey, I CAN do that, after all!" "Look at me, I'm flying!" And then next time we encounter a diffcult situation, we won't need to flip the switch, at all.

Maybe I can work on creating my own internal switch. The Don't-Think-About-It-Just-Do-It toggle. I'd get a lot more done that way, and I might even get some brownie points with the character-development people upstairs, or out there, or wherever they float around.

Do you have your own internal switch? What does yours do?

Returning from the Land of Nog

After having vanished from the cyber-ether for nearly a month, I've returned, for the time being, from the Land of Nog. I hope your holidays were warm and joyful. After a rocky start, mine managed to settle into a relaxed rhythm that I'm sorry to leave behind today. My husband was home for eleven days, and after the initial Day of Decompression, things were very pleasant around here. Wish it could be so more often. I was sorry to see him leave for work this morning, because it meant returning to the Daily Grind and the usual stresses that make life difficult.

Our Christmas was pleasant. I made two Christmas dinners, one for us, and one for my in-laws a couple days later. We chose not to celebrate with them and my sister-in-law's family this year, because money is tight, and it seemed illogical for us to stress out about buying presents for five extra people we only see and hear from at my sister-in-law's Christmas gatherings. It also seemed unfair to impose present-buying on her parents and grandparents for our family for the same reason.

So, it was two turkeys for us, two batches of stuffing and mashed potatoes, and two pumpkin pies, and it occured to me to wonder, not for the first time, why are the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners the same? I wanted to cook a ham for us, but my American friend from across the valley had sick children to contend with, in addition to her own celebrations to prepare for, so she didn't have the time or energy to escort me into the Commissary at Patch Barracks so I could get me some ham.

Germans, while big on pork, don't do ham. Which is really too bad.

I did make egg nog for the first time. After a little research, I found a recipe that involved only four eggs, a reduced amount of whipping cream, and while the egg whites got whipped to a frothy consistency and added raw to the mixture at the very end, the egg yolks, at least, were cooked during the initial process. Unfortunately, I have a weird allergy to raw eggs, and even the egg yolks caused a reaction. I had two cups of the stuff, plus a little glass with rum added, and ended up pouring the rest of the batch down the sink. It tasted good, but was mighty rich.

I think next time, I'll use less whipping cream, low-fat milk instead of whole, and nix the beaten-to-a-froth egg whites altogether.

We did not celebrate the holidays with my Dread Mother-in-Law, much to my intense relief. She's stuck in Greece, her homeland, watching after her elderly mother, who is stricken with Alzheimer's.

At least, I thought she was stuck in Greece for a good long time, until I learned that she will, indeed, be staying with us for a lengthy visit beginning January 14. She is a BEAST, and a spy, and a downright piece of work to experience. Chances are excellent that I won't be logging onto Blogit for the the duration of her visit. I've said repeatedly to my husband, How on earth does she think she's going to stay here for six weeks??? We can't have peace in the house for even a single day, when she's here!

So, we'll see where that potentially traumatic time will take us.

She thought she might bring her mother with, Alzheimer's and all, but when she called yesterday, I think I overheard that she'll be leaving the Greek über-matron at home.

I'm sorry to sound so unsympathetic about her and her mother. I just cannot convey the horror that this woman is. I was dreading having to listen to muttered insults about me in two languages, but it looks like I'll only have to endure it from a single source, in a single language.
My mother-in-law wouldn't mutter insulting things about me in Greek. No. She'd do it so I could understand it. Very considerate of her, don't you think?

Do I sound stressed out, already? How perceptive!

On the by-the-way side of things, remember when I mentioned being interviewed by a reporter from my hometown newspaper? Well, it came out shortly before Christmas, and my parents sent me a copy of it. What follows is the copy, only slightly edited for obvious reasons.
The author of the article wasn't very precise about quoting me ("I'm pretty sure I didn't say that quite like that..." ), but the article itself was nice, and sensitively written.

December 22, 2005
By A Writer from Silver’s Rural Village

When SilverMoon7 , formerly of our small town, decided to follow her heart, she didn't think she would end up half-way around the world. And she certainly didn't anticipate a long distance relationship ... with the life she used to know.

That's exactly what happened when Silver and her husband moved to Stuttgart, Germany, six years ago.

Silver’s dad and Silver’s mom of our small town said that when their daughter first announced the move to Silver’s hubby's native land, everyone was happy.

"It was exciting at first, I thought what an opportunity to move overseas and travel," Silver’s mom said. "But then she actually went and it was really difficult for me to adjust."

Although she still struggles with her daughter living far away, she said it was hardest the first year, when she would weep just thinking of her departure.

"I just missed her so much and then she got pregnant and it was exciting, but hard again," Silver’s mom said. "Fortunately we have a good phone plan, so we talk and e-mail a lot."

And with the addition of her new grandson, Alex, who is now 5, Silver’s mom said they have also become savvy with digital photos.

Although both families try to make the overseas trip once, maybe twice a year, Silver’s mom said it's still difficult to spend quality time together.

"There is a seven-hour time difference, so when we can visit we are seriously jet lagged," Silver’s mom said. "We want to be awake when they are sleeping and they are awake when we are sleeping."

Silver said she too struggles with the time and distance constraints. But she said she never anticipated this when her initial decision was made out of love and not with the "what ifs."

"I thought it (moving to Germany) was for good, but I knew there was a possibility for us to come back," Silver said. "Things happened very quickly. I had to quit my job and learn a new language, my life changed overnight," Silver said. "I was very independent and went from being someone who knew where I was going to being a foreigner, learning a foreign language and pregnant."

Although she said things are getting easier, she feels like she always will have to cope on some level with her new lifestyle.

"I knew it would be hard and I thought it would be a good thing," Silver said. "But it's going on six years and it's still difficult. I still get homesick and I still have some difficulty with the language."

If that weren't enough she said she is still treated differently by her neighbors.

"After this many years here, I still feel like a foreigner," Silver said. "And people tend to treat foreigners as if they have never experienced anything in their life, like suggesting that I get a winter coat because (German) winters are cold. Of course they are, I know that because I come from Chicago and (German) winters are actually more mild (than in Chicago)."

She said she is also left with a general impression that Germans think Americans are annoying.

"Based on their comedy skits, they show us as fast talkers, or obnoxious," Silver said.
She said that is a general perception that is hardly ever perceived on a personal level. In dealing one-on-one with German people, she said she is greeted with a warmer view of America.

"Most of the people I have met are very interested in me as an American," Silver said. "I hear a lot of 'I love America' or 'I've always wanted to go', and that's nice, especially when you hear all the anti-American sentiments (on TV)."

Aside from her treatment as a foreigner and mixed signals for her nationality, she said there are many other anomalies that also have surprised her about her home.

"The drivers here are more aggressive, even than in Chicago," Silver said. "Driving on the autobahn [the expressways in Germany] is very fast and in some stretches there isn't even a speed limit. You hear about a lot of accidents all the time on there."

She said she also was pleasantly surprised by the lack of skyscrapers and the unusually high numbers of pedestrians in Stuttgart.

Of course there are many other things she said she likes about Germany and was quick to point out their medical benefits.

"When I was pregnant I didn't pay for any prescriptions and when I gave birth we didn't have to pay for anything," Silver said. "But the social system is starting to break down, so I think things will change."

Along with excellent medical care she said she really enjoys the country's landscape. She said there are lots of trees and some of the attractive sitelines don't get turned into parking lots.

"They are very stingy with their land and there are a ton of forest preserves," she said.

Currently she said she is living with her family in Wildberg, next to the Black Forest, which she said is connected by forest all the way to Switzerland.

"Preservation here is amazing, south Germany is stunning," Silver said. "It's really a shame when you compare it to the U.S."

Despite the wooded view, she said she still misses living in the U.S., and if there is one thing Germany doesn't do well it's the pizza.

"The pizza here is made with gouda cheese (not mozzarella)," Silver said. "If you want mozzarella you have to specify and they only give you a little. It's (the mozzarella) different too, it's fresher, not aged and it comes in a ball that is in a bag of water. It's just not the same."

Even though she can't comfort herself with the taste of home, she said it's a comparable treat to run into someone who speaks English.

"When I hear someone speaking English, it's music to my ears because I really don't hear it that often," Silver said. "If I hear it, I always make a point to speak to that person."

In addition to a couple from New Jersey, she said she has met a near-area resident while in Germany.

"One time on the train I saw a girl with a very unique appearance sitting a few seats away," Silver explained. "I was talking to my son (in English) and she asked me, in a very mid-western and familiar way, where I was from. It was a nice surprise and a friendly outreach that I needed at that time."

She said although her life abroad is generally happy, she would ask her husband to move to the states if she could do it all over again.

"But I'm one of those people that thinks things happen for a reason," Silver said. "I have grown a lot in the past six years and have had a really unique experience, one that not everybody gets a chance to experience."

Actually, the pizza isn't bad, it's just different. It's really very tasty, though the gouda cheese makes it saltier, and comes with a much greater variety of toppings than commonly available Stateside. You can't get Italian sausage, though. Pepperoni is called Salami, and jalapeno peppers are called pepperoni, which catches me unawares, on occasion, to this day.

So, on the topic of Pizza, at pizza delivery places, there is not only pizza and Italian dishes on the menu, but Indian, Chinese, Mexican, as well. The Mexican is modified, and not quite as we know it in the US. And anything preceded by the word Amerkanisch, usually isn't. At least not according to my experience. Living 30 years on the outskirts of Chicago, I think I have a pretty good idea of what goes into a traditional pizza and Mexicana dish. And baby, that just ain't it...

But it's all good, anyway!

I hope your holidays were good ones. I'll see y'all around.

It's Christmastime in der Vaterland

It’s the Holiday Season. For better or worse, it’s time to prepare for the Yuletide and New Year.

However you choose to celebrate, though, it’s always a big deal. Ultimately, it comes down to food (if you have it, and do you have enough), family (if you have any, and have you remembered everyone), and presents (if you have any to give, and do you have enough for everyone). And, of course, you need the money to survive the season unscathed.

And many of us simply don’t have enough.

But there are some nice things about this time of year. I always love looking at the lights strung along the trees and storefronts. In Germany, people here don’t really do their houses, if they live in one. Not very much. Not like Americans, anyway. But people do decorate Christmas trees in their living rooms, and place candles and lights in windows and along shelves. Unless you have a Kaminofen, there aren’t many fireplaces to speak of and relatively few mantelpieces to hang socks. But it’s still a colorful and decorative holiday, like any other Christmas any other place in the world that celebrates it.


A Kaminofen is a romantic way to warm up, day or night!

There are some culinary treats that come with this holiday, too. Among them is Glühwein. This is a mulled wine, drunk piping hot in little glass mugs. German wine is notoriously sweet, and this is a perfect beverage to top off a cold day of shopping in the local Weihnachtsmarkt, or outdoor Christmas Market.


What’s making these gentlemen visitors to the Münchener Weihnachtsmarkt so happy?


Why, the Glühwein, of course!

Another goodie is called Kriststollen. This is a heavy, dense, lozenge-shaped cake. The cake itself isn’t very sweet, but the raisins it’s filled with really heighten the experience. It can come plain (with raisins—the little fruit is an essential ingredient), or with a marzipan filling in the very center. (Marzipan is a very sweet, almond paste.)

The other thing that makes Kriststollen the particular treat it is, is the powdered-sugar coating. But the powdered sugar isn’t exactly what you’d expect, stateside. It has a texture to it that makes me suspect it’s mixed with granulated sugar crystals, so it's a little... crunchy. What will really surprise you is that this sweet delight is usually eaten with butter--at breakfast! Oje.


Kriststollen; a buttery treat to sweeten up a Sunday morning.

The Weihnachtsmarkt is also a special enjoyment, and Stuttgart holds one of the larger and more popular markets in the region. People come on buses from all over to enjoy the Stuttgart Christmas market.

The streets of downtown are lined with wooden booths, and merchants selling their wares—everything from sweets and Glühwein to Alpine hats and pins, Christmas ornaments, special cooking ware, woolly felt slippers, cutlery and dishes, jewelry, candles, scented oils, all kinds of odds and ends you might associate with an outdoor Christmas market. There's even an ice rink.

In Stuttgart, the market is held every day of the advent, closing on December 23. Most markets are quite a bit smaller, and open for only a weekend.


The Stuttgarter Weihnachtsmarkt: A view of only a portion of the market.


An interior perspective of the photo above.

You don’t really need a lot of money to enjoy this part of the holiday season. Glühwein is extremely cheap at only 1.50 euros per bottle (about $2), and the Kriststollen is about the same. Assuming you can keep your wallet in your pocket while you’re there, the Weihnachtsmarkt also is a cheap thrill, though you’ll have to pay around 4 euros for a glass mug of Glühwein, which includes the deposit for the mug. You get one or two euros back when you return the little mug, but it’s not a bad price, overall, when you quietly slip that mug into your rucksack as a little keepsake. I’ve got five of them, myself, discreetly collected over the years. I had six, but one went missing last year. I plan to restock soon.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could focus on the joyous part of the holidays, the color, and chill, and warmth of fires and fiery beverages, without all the other crap that goes along with it?

I much prefer the small things.

It’s the bigger stuff that makes this season so unsatisfactory.

Do you send e-mail to yourself? Apparently I do...

Last week, at the suggestion of a friend, I finally downloaded some IM software called Trillian. I had never heard of this before, but thought I might give it a shot.

Sure, it’s another instant messaging program. But some of you might be interested if you haven’t heard of it before.

The beauty of this software is that it consolidates the IM programs of something like five different major programs, including Yahoo!, MSN, AIM/AOL, ICQ and another I don’t recognize, so can’t remember.

The downside is, not only is it another 11MB of software to bog down your computer, but once you plug in every individual on your e-mail address list who has screen names in one or more of these IM programs, you won’t get a word of writing done. Today was a good example of that as, in the same 10 seconds, three different people converged on me this afternoon, in addition to a phone call from hubby, and my son pulling on my arm to practice some “boxing”.
Let me tell you, I was doing some impressive juggling.

Another beautiful thing about this program is, once you get your own various identities from your various e-mail accounts set up, it will send you a message every time you get new e-mail in each of those accounts AND indicate who it’s from. Then, you can click on the box and it will take you right to your e-mail account.

Wow.

That’s neat stuff for little ol' me, who likes her toys where she can get them! Talk about convenient, and staying informed. It’s like having caller ID for your in-bin. Every single one of them!

This evening, as I worked down my list of favorite bloggers and was steadily rounding the corner to page two (of four, no less, having recently culled pages five and six), I got an e-mail notification for my main e-mail address.

But the weird thing was, the e-mail to me… was from me.

How odd. How could that be?

I believe I was in the comments section of one of Timmy’s blogs when this happened, and I just had to check it out. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

I clicked on the little notification box, and it directed me right to my in-box. I scanned the list, and the only thing that could possibly apply to this mystery was another notification from another writing site, informing me that someone on my faves list there had posted a piece of poetry. In the "from" column it simply said so-and-so had posted another poem.

How can an automatic notifier from another website use my e-mail address to remotely send myself e-mail? How does that work?

It just seemed strange to me.

I’m tired of keeping secrets.

It’s time to come out of the closet.

In a comment to my previous post, MayB brought up the concept of regrets. It was stated in the context of my ongoing friendship with an ex-boyfriend, whom I’ve known nearly twenty years, and who also has remained an important person in my life. Why? Dunno. There are lots of whys. Whys are as plentiful as What-ifs and If-Onlys.

The question of regrets seems to me an interesting coincidence, because of what happened to me last night.

My husband, in normal circumstances, really is a smart, funny, extremely perceptive guy. He’s responsible, and hardworking, and unwaveringly dedicated to his family and the family ideal. He loves kids. He adores his son, and they play together as if they were of an age. I jokingly tell acquaintances that I have two children: My five-year-old son, and my husband. (To be honest, it can be sweet when relating to my son, but when he should be adultlike, it’s bloody frustrating.)

So, my husband has lots of good, admirable qualities.

But my husband also boasts some down sides. Sure, we all do. But his cross the line between being human, and just being… well, I’m at a loss for an appropriate word.

My husband suffers from an undiagnosed mood disorder. We are talking extreme mood swings from one second to the next. If given free reign, he can really work himself up into frightening rages. Mostly, though, he can go from being strangely peppy, to strangely irrational, and settle back into normal rhythm and behave as if nothing has happened. That whole cycle might run its course within an hour, but the mood changes seem to happen instantaneously.

Last night, we ordered take away. It was delivered to us, and I called to my cheery husband in the shower that our food had arrived. He got out, and we all settled down to our individual orders. While we were still eating, I heard a deep cracking noise coming from the kitchen. It sounded like wood from the fire stove popping, but it came distinctly from the kitchen. I glanced inside from where we were sitting in the living room, but saw nothing, and didn’t think anything about it. A minute or two later, I heard what sounded like dripping from the kitchen. I glanced over, didn’t notice anything unusual, and went back to listening to what my husband was saying.

But I kept hearing the noise.

The next time I looked, I saw there was a large puddle forming at the bottom of a cabinet we use to store excess beverages. Water, wine, whisky, beer, more water (I’m the water drinker). I also have been storing my newly bottled Kombucha tea there. And Kombucha tea gets fizzy when you bottle it. Sometimes, if you don’t use bottles appropriate for fizzy beverages, said bottle—a wine bottle, say, like the ones I had been using—will burst.

Well guess what, guys? One of those bottle broke.

I suppose right here would be a good place to explain how controlling my husband is. To make a long and complicated issue as simple as possible, let me apply it only to how it affects my relationship with you fellow bloggers.

My husband hates it when I do things that are part of my own personal development. I don’t write when he’s around because he starts to get agitated. I can see it. And eventually, without fail, he will find a reason to use my writing against me, then enforce acceptable times when I can do it. So, in order to avoid a nasty scene, I don’t write when he’s home. Which is why I don’t blog on the weekends. Consequently, he doesn't know about Blogit, my blogs, or anything of that nature.

The Kombucha tea is a similar story. In order to make it, I needed a live culture and starter fluid to begin. That means I had to find it somewhere. Many people won’t ship it through the mail, which means if you find a provider, you have to drive out there to get it. My husband uses our only car to get to work (even though he can use the train—another control issue of his).

There was some back and forth about driving out to get a culture from someone. Whenever I approached him about it, he got all irritated and pissy. So, then I tried to find someone to mail one to me—with absolutely no luck. (I took advantage of my visit Stateside to purchase one through a reputable herbalist and brought it back to Germany.)

He also limited my buying bottled Kombucha from the store. It’s expensive, but less expensive than the alcohol and cola he purchases every week, by three quarters. In other words, it would have been okay if I wanted a case of soda every week, at 13 euros per 16 1-litre-bottles. But if I wanted to spend 6 euros on two litre-bottles of Kombucha tea (KT), forget it. I could only get one.

So knowing how he thinks, I also knew that he would not like the process of home-brewed KT. I found a discreet area to let it ferment before bottling, but kept the bottles in the cabinet with the rest of our beverages. In a sense, it was an open secret. For two weeks, he said nothing but the occasional disparaging comment about my strange beverage. I thought things were going well.

When the bottle broke in the cabinet last night, I knew I was in trouble. Without a word, I got up, took a dishtowel and tried to catch the liquid as it fell. But when I opened the cabinet, the towel was insufficient to stem the tidal pool of Kombucha waiting to spill out. So, it hit the floor with a splash.

Which caught my husband’s attention.

When I told him oh-so-casually, knowing what thin ice I was standing on, it was over: my husband’s cheeriness, my Kombucha brewing, a pleasant evening.

After some ranting, he told me I had to throw the rest of the bottles away. He wouldn’t have me brewing some shitty drink in his house. He said, to be specific, that the bottles had to be thrown away the next day. So, I finished cleaning up the mess, planning to transfer the precious KT to some plastic 1.5-litre water bottles the next day. I heard an endless rumble from him about how it stank. Which was an exaggeration. It’s a yeasty apple-cider smell. Not unpleasant. Not to me, anyway.

But as I was getting our son ready for bed, I heard bottles banging around in the kitchen. I knew what he was doing. Later on, I went into the kitchen to look for something for my cough, and I saw that he had done what I was afraid of. He’d taken all seven bottles of my home-brewed KT and dumped them all down the kitchen sink. He’d also hidden my box of Pu-erh tea, which he’d made very clear earlier in the day that it smells like fish and he can’t stand it. (I found it this morning, by the way, but left it where it was. I then took my two remaining boxes, which he doesn’t know I have, and hid them. And yes, it sucks living my life in secret from my husband. Isn't that just wrong???)

His reasoning behind it? Brewing the KT, which takes no more than two hours of total physical work each week, is taking too much of my time and attention away from the house, and care and education of my son.

And I thought, uh-oh. Here we go again. It’s this time of year (winter), and he always gets worse. Last year was horrible, and resulted in my leaving him and petitioning for the custody of our son. I won’t go into why I returned. But I did. And now here we are, back to square one, it seems.

In addition to my husband’s control issues, mood disorder/irrational thought, alcoholism and verbal abuse, he also toes the line of being a physical threat. I’ve been pushed/shoved, pinched, scratched, blocked, forced up the stairs, in addition to being raged at and controlled to the point that my human rights have been treaded upon. (The KT being but one example.)

And because of the sticky state and general unlikelihood of foreigners gaining custody of their German-born children, you might understand a portion of the reason I returned to my husband this summer. And you might also understand why I’m so desperate for our family to return to the States.

So do I have regrets?

One might say I do. In a way, I wish that when T had called me out of the blue two weeks before my wedding, I had called the whole thing off and tried again with him. But without my beastly husband, I wouldn’t have the beautiful child that I do. There are some nice times, though they don’t justify the not-so-nice times.

Regrets are complicated. I’ve certainly learned some important lessons in the six years of my marriage. But one thing is clear. I can’t keep it a secret any more. I’m coming out of the closet as an unhappy spouse of a verbally abusive, mood-swinging alcoholic.

I didn’t ever want to write about this issue on Blogit. I didn’t want to whine and complain. I don’t want people to poo-poo me, or poor-Silver me, or give me advice. I hold no illusions of the situation I’m in. None. I choose to stay (for now) for some important reasons, and not one of them is self-delusional. But the time for secret-keeping is over.

And regrets, in my opinion, are a luxury I can’t afford.

What regrets might you have? Are they really regrets? Be careful how you answer. There's a lot more to it than you think.

Boy did I bomb...

I wrote four pages, total for NaNo.

But it's okay.

Really.

I let myself not sweat it. It was only my second attempt, and due to family circumstances, both inside and outside my own home, I chose the easy route over dogged determination.

Sometimes we need to do that. To save our sanity.

Don't we?

No, it's not a stain!

When I was back home a few weeks ago, two friends of mine came to visit. Naturally, we were excited to see each other, and naturally, we took pictures. I just uploaded the photos to my computer, yesterday, and while perusing them, I noticed that some spots showed up on three or four of those pictures. The spots didn't show up on any other pictures, before or since, just on those.

Now yes, if you know me, you also know I'm thinking, Holy crap! Those are orbs.

But, being a realistic person, I'm also thinking, Golldurnit, that's only dust.

Or is it?

I've never had dust show up on a picture before. Never. Unless you count the time we were in Penzance three years ago, and the odd dust that showed up on my pictures of the Merry Maidens standing stones--and only on those pictures.

Last night, while putting my boy to bed, I felt that funny sense of pressure that you get when you think someone is in the room with you, but isn't. So, still being of an experimental bent (see previous post), I got up and got my camera, then crawled back in bed and turned out the light. After relaxing and waiting for that feeling to come back, told any wayward energy that I'd like to take a picture of it now, and to please oblige. I pointed my camera toward the other end of the room and snapped a picture. Turning the camera around, I looked at the display--and wouldn't you know it, a series of white orbs showed up.

I took another picture, and the same thing happened. Different orbs, in different spots. But definitely something showed up.

I spent an hour snapping pictures in the dark. Some showed no orbs, but several did. As a point of interest, I noticed two things. First, the longer I took pictures, the dimmer the orbs became and the fewer the number. However, they brightened up noticeably after I spoke to them.
The last thing I did was lay quietly for a bit until I felt a "fullness" coming from a particular area of the room. Three times out of four, the picture showed an orb: One in two corners of the room, and one over the bed.

Coincidence? Dust with a conscience?

You be the judge. I've included some pictures below.

What I DON'T want you to judge is the color of the room. It's pink. I didn't want it to be pink. It was supposed to be a much deeper color. But it turned out pink, and there's no help for it now. The other thing I don't want you do judge is the burgundy-sheeted air mattress propped up against the wall, where most of the orb pics were taken. I specifically aimed for that spot because it's a broad expanse of dark color, and figured if anything is there, it would show up best against the darkness. That aside, yes, I have dark red sheets. They are actually remnants of my American bed back home, and those sheets matched my blue and dark red comforter. So there. The rest of the house is a nice neutral ivory and wood tone.

Anyway, here are the pics. Tell me what you think!