Who has the time?

Oh My God!

Am I writing?  I am!  I really am!  Yet I feel that I don’t have much to say these days.  I have been completely consumed by the new mommy role I play that I have let things I used to think were really important fall by the wayside.  Like my toes haven’t been painted in God knows how long, although in all fairness I have only recently been able to comfortably reach them again.  I need a hair cut.  I desperately need to go out and buy something other than these grubby jeans I keep wearing, and I really should think about some kind of extreme dry skin therapy for my hands.  Don’t get me wrong though.  I don’t look hideous.  I am still clean, presentable and fairly well, although very casually, put together.  My house is clean.  My laundry is done.  My kid looks great all the time.  It’s just those little things I used to enjoy so much, that extra polish and care I suppose, is gone.

Needless to say, along with the extra polish my writing has suffered as well.   I mean, how many times can I realistically write about the baby talk I hold each day?  Who really wants to read about how cute I think my kid is, how she peed and crapped all over the place during PEKIP the other day, and how I’ve gotten her to enjoy talking a bath?  Other moms I am sure can relate.

So today, after nap time, I am going out for a little retail therapy.  I refuse to let myself slide into the “unkempt” catagory.  I need a little polish.  But I will admit it is harder for me to fit in a little time for me than I thought it would be.

Kung Hey Fat Choy

Which means Happy New Year!  It’s the first day of the lunar new year according to the Chinese calendar and initially I was excited.  It’s the year of the ox and I am an ox.  We work hard.  We plod on towards our goals despite obstacles that might be thrown in our way.  We are reliable.  We are trustworthy.  We do it.  We get there.  And so I thought this was going to be a great year for me.  This morning the baby woke up early.  I was motivated to get some yoga in, and then my mom called me around 8.  “Call your sister.  She says she can’t get through to you when she dials for some reason”, she tells me.  OK, I think, my sister wants to talk.  Unsuspectingly I call her up and receive a bombshell of information.  Nothing harmful.  Nothing scary.  No one died and everyone is relatively OK, but it made me unbelievably sad.  I also have serious sirens going off in my head; huge red flags screaming “SOMETHING IS SOOOO NOT RIGHT HERE”!!!  But I have no way to contact.  I am far away.  There is nothing I can do but watch a bad situation spiral horrifically out of control.  And sadly, that makes me even more sad.

Which is why, obviously, I decided to check out what my Chinese horoscope for the year was going to be.  Because, OF COURSE that’s what you do when you get crap news.  Doesn’t everybody?  Well, I found out this is going to be a crap year for the ox.  Unlucky stars everywhere.  I will not gain money.  I will be distracted.  Challenges and hardships will continuously crop up over the year.  I will fight with my spouse more, and my health is in jeopardy mainly due to my distractions, and so I need to be extra careful while driving.

Great, all I need is to be hit by another car.

So far no good.  I don’t want to continue.  I have been through enough, I feel.  I feel totally screwed by the karmic God’s that arranged this, and yet due to my ox nature I am already thinking about how I can get through the year.  Maybe it won’t be so bad, but I tell ya, in my experience the Chinese have been right about a thing or two in the past, so I better drive very, very carefully.

Venturing out of the baby cave

I am up at 3 am writing instead of going back to bed and getting the sleep I so desperately need.  It’s as good of a time as any to write a few comments about becoming a new mother.

I have been in a serious baby cave.  I get out more.  Things at the 7 week mark have gotten markedly easier.  I am better able to organize myself and get normal things done.  I have figured out how to sleep here and there and still feel rested.  And let’s face it, I have always had dark circles under my eyes, so I can’t really feel to sad about that.

I am amazed at just how much life changes with the first baby.  I mean, we expected life to change.  We expected to be tired and up at all hours of the night, and were ready for it as well.  But I really think that both my husband and I underestimated just how much it would be.  It’s not something people tell you about, in fact, I don’t think anyone would be able to clearly tell you just how much of a change it is.  I am usually not at a loss for words but all I have to say about this one is: WOW.  And don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful WOW, but a big fat WOW none-the-less.

So, when I was single and childless I always noted behaviors I swore I would never catch myself doing.  For example, I always told myself I wouldn’t be the sappy type of parent who showed friends endless baby pictures of virtually the same expression.  I’ve come to find out, however, it’s pretty much a law of nature.  I have video taped my child doing nothing but cooing and smacking her lips and have showed pretty much every friend and family member who has come to the house.  I think it’s adorable, and of course I am told by said friends and family it is, but I have to wonder: are they just being polite as I have done so many times, or are they genuinely impressed by the cuteness that is my child?  And she is soooo cute!  You should see the way she curls up into a ball when she sleeps, like a little peanut!  Or the way she stretches and grunts as she wakes up, balling up her hands into fists and stretching into the air.  And she has the cutest toothless, gummy smile and this great little laugh when she thinks something is funny.  Oh wait, am I doing that sappy thing again?

I have to say the amount of time I have spent watching my daughter is pretty amazing.  Who needs a TV when you have a baby?  Not to mention the snuggles are amazing, and I can sit for forever snuggling the little peanut.

Things of course aren’t always all cute and cuddly.  My kid is a puker and will leak milk after pretty much every feed.  I have come to wear regurgitated milk proudly, because changing into a clean shirt would just result in another puked on shirt.  The majority of it ends up on the kid anyway.  Thankfully we have an abundant wardrobe for her as we change her at least twice a day in an attempt to keep her dry in the freezing weather, not to mention there is a stinky cheese quality we like to try and avoid.

There are certain expressions we have come up with during moments of- what?  I think these can be best described as “moments”.  Anyway, my favorite is the day my husband was changing a diaper and cried out. “My God!  She crapped like a total lunatic”!!  Immediately I had images of a Woody Woodpecker-ish character.  Wooo hoooo!!  Woooo hoooo!!  Or maybe “crapping like a lunatic” looked more like Heath Ledger in “Dark Knight”, licking his lips and drooling, commenting on the softness of the toilet paper and balling up his crossword.  But whatever it looks like to “crap like a lunatic” I knew exactly what my husband meant: the kid was up to her neck in poo and needed a serious bath.  I can just see myself in play group.  “My kid can crap like a lunatic, what about yours?”

Anyway, that’s all I really have time for.  As things continue to get easier and I am able to venture further out of the baby cave I have been in I will hopefully have more time to write.  But for now, it looks like the wee hours of the morning are going to be my best time to get a few words down every now and again.

Insonmnia

I can’t sleep. I have been up since 2 am and am still hoping I can get some shut eye before my week in the hospitol. Yes, a week, because that is what they do here in Germany.

Tomorrow I get admitted for a planned c-section on Monday. I know. I should be much happier about the birth of my child, and I am to some extent. I am nervous as all hell. Surgery does not sound fun. My last child died from a massive strep B infection and so I am freaking out about all the stupid possibilities and uncertanties and wracking my brain for anything that might happen that I haven’t thought of yet. I know. Useless waste of energy that one is.

Oddly enough I have been mostly calm leading up to this, with only a few manic days peppered in here and there. I am not really thinking about it. If I do I change my thoughts to more pleasent, positive, and productive thoughts. But tonight I can’t sleep so I think I just need to get my worrying “out there” and be (somewhat) done with it.

So here I am. 5 am. 3 cookies and a bottle of water later, and I still can’t sleep. There isn’t anything worth watching on TV. I don’t feel like investing time in a book. Mom is here but well, it’s 5 am. I wonder if now is a good time to clean out the old towels and sheets from the linens. That would be a quiet task. See? Total avoidence of what is about to happen. I’m good at it. I don’t know whether it’s survival instinct or good old fashioned denial, but I am good at it.

I WILL bring this child home. I will.
I have to go cry now.

Thank you

It was a normal morning, like any other.  Andy and I were wondering what we should do with our day.  We did a quick clean up on the house, nothing exciting at all.  Andy went to take the garbage out (yes, that’s how mundane this day really was) and nearly fell into a big bag of goodies.

We weren’t expecting anything from anyone.  Neither of us have a birthday.  We were completely stumped about this mystery package.  We thought maybe it was for one of the neighbors instead.  Regardless, we started going through the bag to see what was in it.  There was: a bottle of wine, 4 bags of highly addictive German christmas cookies- now dubbed the crack cookies, and a very soft, white stuffed moose.  At the very bottom of the bag was a thank you card.  (In German of course.)

Andy opened the card and started reading.  “It was almost a year ago now and I never have thanked you properly”, it read.  None of this was making any sense to us.  “You flashed your lights and made us pull over.  Just a couple more meters and our wheel would have flown off, causing an accident”.  Ah!  Of course!

Almost a year ago Andy and I were driving home down our 2 lane country road.  It was dark and cold at the time and mildly rainy.  There was a large van, full of people in front of us, and Andy noticed that one of the rear tires was wobbling horribly.  “What should I do”, he had said.  “Should I stop them”?  I remember answering with something like we don’t want anyone to get hurt, when all of a sudden one of the bolts went flying off the tire and across the road.  Andy flashed his lights, and after a few minutes got the driver to pull his van over.

Turned out this man was taking his wife and a bunch of her friends to some holiday dance show.  After a quick explanation he was in the back of our car and we were on our way to his shop to pick up a new van.  We never told him our names, only that we lived in Verlar and that I am an American and Andy is German and works on windmills.  And almost a year later he tracked us down and surprised us with a thank you bag of goodies.  We never expected anything, and yet were so touched to receive it.

Isn’t that cool?

Update

After going completely postal via WordPress I went back to the Post the next day (after considerably chilling out) and the nice woman at the counter was just as confused why my mail had come back to me.  She resent it again and so far so good.  So I think we have success!

Going Postal

OK.  So I have avoided writing about being alone and pregnant in Germany, how large I have subsequently gotten and the amount of time I have been spending making the foreign office here happy because I didn’t want to launch a perpetual bitch fest here at Amis the Famous.  I am really a happy person despite my trials and frustrations.  However, today I am going to bitch loud and clear.

My question is this:  How hard is it to deliver the fucking mail?

Granted I have never worked in a post office.  I am sure there is some sort of super coordination involved but it’s been going on for years now so I am also sure there is some kind of uber organized science behind it all.  Sorting everything might be a pain in the ass but it can’t be that hard to start by distinguishing between ground mail and air mail.   Don’t they have little bar codes nowadays that help speed everything along?  Seriously, it’s not like I have to seal a personalized quill penned note with my own special distinguishing wax stamp and have it raced off across the countryside on horseback.  That might even be more reliable compared to the moronic bullshit I have experienced. Or maybe, it’s simply oooooo…  magic.

My Neighbors Are Funny

This is a really big flagpole with a really small flag, and it makes me laugh.

Surprise!

I just got the best news EVER!!! I have had some suspicions about my husbands actions recently.  He is currently in Canada and has been there for the last 10 weeks.  He travels for work: 2 months away, 2-3 weeks at home and so on.  Anyway, he cut one of our daily phone calls short a while ago, abruptly announcing he needed to call his sister.  Since it was going to be our anniversary while he was away I assumed he was planning a surprise surrounding that date, and I patiently waited.  Our anniversary came and went.  I was surprised with beautiful flowers brought to the house by a completely different person,  but nothing involving my husband’s sister.

I didn’t think much of it and went about my regular routine, until one weekend morning (8 am German time, 2 am Canadian time) I got a phone call from a very bored and drunk German husband professing all kinds of  love for me.  (As he should!)  He went on and on, very sweetly I might add, about how he missed me, how he loved me sooooooooo much, and how he couldn’t wait to come home.  “And”, he endearingly slurred, “I might have a little surprise for you”.

Car Magnets

I signed up as an Obama supporter a while back.  I went onto the website to check it out and was extremely impressed.  This is the first time I need to rely on candidate information via the web.  Subsequently, this is the first time I’ve really been into checking out political websites and I suppose I was surprised at what I found, for what ever reason that might be.  Anyway, I had no problem giving out my information.  I am an Obama supporter.  I am excited by his passion and find him an intelligent and motivating breath of fresh air in this crazy world we live in.  But what I wasn’t counting on was getting spamed to death by his campaign!  I mean, I love occasional updates on what’s going on, the email announcing Joe Biden was great since I have been curious, but do I really have to get 2 and 3 emails a day?   (Not every day, but it happens often enough.)  It’s become a comical thing really.  Emails “from” Obama, the official website, David, Jon, his wife?

I understand that campaigning is cut throat and people need to be encouraged to help out be it with donations or getting out there and spreading the word.  I am actually happy that this isn’t coming to my home on sheets of paper that I would be immediately throwing into the recycling bin.  It is interesting to watch a campaign from afar and not get swept up into the emotional bullshit the whole affair offers.  I have more time to reflect and form my own opinions versus being bombarded by attack campaigns filled with accusations I simply don’t have the time to research and find out if they are true or not.  I have actually come to believe that both candidates are decent people, it’s the people they are surrounded by that are sneaky, calculating and vicious.

Regardless, my point is that it’s interesting to really think about what moves people to action, and how different organizations sell themselves to the people.  I think today is my all time favorite.  I was invited to buy, oh!  I’m sorry, make a donation and receive an Obama/ Binden car magnet.  First edition of course, just to add that extra special sauce on the side.  I have to wonder though, will later editions look different?  Are we that shallow that receiving a first edition car magnet is really that big a deal?   Am I really going to sit around the country club drinking mojitos saying, “Why no Buffy, I have the FIRST edition car magnet on my Mercedes.  What’s yours, third”?

The answer for me is, of course, no.  And as interested as Germans are about our presidential race it would be rather silly for me to sport one of those puppies around town.  Over here, what we really want to see is change.