Trivial Pursuits

People who know me would rate me as a low-maintenance sort of person.

I own a lipstick (and use it occasionally), but my other make-up has all gone so far out of date as to be unusable (in fact, I discarded the majority of it a few declutters ago). I still have perfume from the 80's (truly, I still have perfume that my grandmother left me, but I only smell it every now and then).

I have been complimented on my earrings, to receive a look of shock when I happily point out the little Mickey Mouses (hypo-allergenic from Disneyworld) and often grab my daughters' medical plastic earrings. I have had my hair cut three times in the 4.5 years we have lived in Germany and had not had a manicure in the last five (my feeling- why bother when my hands are always washing something and the nails crack from use?). However, after I had a manicure in Florida, using the new, UV-cured nail polish, I liked having a manicure that didn't crack in the first day so much, that I found a place here in Berlin that did the same thing (although with a far smaller selection of colors. This was the most interesting that I could find and this manicure lasted 40 days: with it, I achieved the longest nails I have ever had. And I think that I will continue to do it: when amortized over 4 weeks, it's actually quite reasonable. And I have been enjoying having normal length nails.

The end of the season

With apologies for not being very communicative recently (getting over some respiratory problems), I wanted to mark the end of my favorite (and sadly, very short) period in Germany: the Federweisser period.

As I've said, the only German gastronomic products that I would miss if I left are quark (and I now know how to make it at home) and Federweisser (which is irreplaceable). But what I love is not the Federweisser (pressed from white wine grapes), but the Federroter, the equivalent but pressed from red wine grapes.

It is the nectar of the gods.

The season (here) is only three weeks and I know of only one place to find it. I haunt that place and when the wine arrives (they do also have the white, which is far better than what I have bought bottled), I start buying it.

What you see here is the last of our supply. The containers are at different levels of fermentation (I must have rotated improperly) and the German is drinking the one on the left (far more alcohol) while I am drinking that on the right (almost grape juice, but with a fruity and smooth kick).

(And no- the refrigerator is not normally that tidy- as I have been sick and we were away last weekend, it was abnormally empty. So we took the opportunity to clean it.)

Whew. A breather.

The kids are both in kita for the first time in over a week, I am on my second cup of coffee, watching Boston Legal and cleaning during the commercials. What a relief.

Yes We Can (reprised) by Will.i.am

You know, whenever I get depressed or sad or stressed out, I watch this again and feel a catharsis and start feeling better about myself and the world.

The McCain campaign dishes on Palin: She doesn't know Africa is a continent.

Please note that this is a hoax- I should check to see if Scalzi has noted this as well:)



I saw this on Whatever

Small steps...

So, taking a leaf from Flylady and Mrs. Furious I've started to try to be a bit more coordinated in tidying, chores, and other life tasks.

In particular, I need to get used to (finally!) the fact that my refrigerator is too small, holds temperature poorly, that my freezer is tiny and clogs easily with ice, that I don't have a chest freezer, that my kitchen is smallish and overheats easily (so storing produce on the counter is short term) and that I have very little storage space and almost no counter space. The storage problem escalated this past weekend when we brought back the mini-vanload of boxes from my in-laws (almost all the rest of the food and drygoods products that came with our container last September) and started unpacking them.

Unlike Lynda, food delivery here seems to be generally terrible, starting with soup that is completely spilt by the time one receives it (lack of correct containers) and continuing through poorly spiced (compared to in restaurant) meals and scanty servings (compared to generous in restaurant portions) so I need to start making more meals and more "real" meals than I have been, or I will go insane.

To that effect, I have brought back many of my cookbooks and I am starting to make shopping lists and plan for meals because I need to recognizethat I will never have the things I need in house to make a specific recipe and I am just tired of one-pot sloppy meals.

So, yesterday I made Rosemary Chicken with Rice, an interesting recipe from The New Weight Watcher's Complete Cookbook which combines chicken, garlic, 1/4 c. of dijon mustard, carrots, 1 T of dried (or 2 of fresh) rosemary, carrots, pepper and 1/4 c. of orange marmalade (I only had grapefruit, so used that). It was very good and something I wouldn't have thrown together without using a cookbook. The girls had the left overs for dinner tonight.

Today I made baked macaroni and cheese with breadcrumb topping and it was great. Once again, I would never have thought to bake it withoout a friend mentioning his recipe for that in his apazine. And for dinner I made holishkes, or stuffed cabbage, from Marlena Spieler's The Jewish Heritage Cookbook . That was an interesting recipe, using cinnamon, white wine vinegar and sugar with the ingredients I am more familiar with from my family recipe. I prefer my mom's recipe though, which is more tomato-ey. This is the same book that I used for the charoseth recipe over Pesach.

Interestingly enough, a few days ago I made Knodel from a package and quite liked them and now I see that they are really a German variant on Kishke and Pierogies, a flour dumpling usually served with brisket. Luckily I won't need to use an actual animal casing these days if I want to try to make them myself.

Tomorrow I think I'm going to try Duisburg Bunny's homemade pickles (look in the comments)so I need to make a note as to what I want when we go to the Turkish Market (if it doesn't rain).

Upcoming trips...

1. The Keukenhof on the weekend of April 26th. Please let there be a single day without rain!
2. We want to go to Venice mid-May. Diane persuaded me that there are decent air rates out there and she's right. But to get them we will be flying out of Duesseldorf, which is a bit of a pain. I've never been to Venice - anyone have any hotel/hostel/B&B recommendations?
3. Denver in mid-August (without kids, yeah!). I'm going to the World SF convention. I had thought that I would be going alone but the German has decided that for various reasons he would prefer to come along, so this should basically be the honeymoon we didn't have;-).
4. Upstate NY in early October. My niece is Bat Mitzvah and we want to be there.

I need to get a little more European vacationing going here, but it's a start!

Waiting for Godot

I was just realizing that I haven't written a letter to a friend that is now overdue three weeks. I keep waiting for something interesting to happen in my life. Compared to so many blogers out there, in Italy, Israel, Singapore and other exciting spots (for vacation, I mean) my life seems boring. But if I keep waiting, I might as well just stop blogging, so here goes with what happened over the weekend:

• 4 loads of laundry, washing, drying, folding

Some other bloggers have noted that they use a drying rack, but I can't quite figure that out. Either they have far more clothes than we do, or they must have a magic wand: it rains just about every day here and it would take days for jeans to dry on a rack. A load takes hours, with the slowness of the front load washer and then about another 90 minutes to dry. Then folding and putting away, which I generally try to do when the children aren't around:

• 3 loads of dishes, putting away each time
  
• Made a one pot ground turkey/rice/zucchini meal
  
• Went grocery shopping (I need to go at least every other day just to get milk. Then I add whatever else I can manage to put in my trolley).

Saturday morning the German and Thing1 (with 'help' from Thing2) put together the playhouse that we had gotten from Ikea (with help from our very kind landlord: we saw the house last week but it wouldn't fit in our rented car, so he picked it up for us this week). The Things love it and it's a help to be able to let them go out and play in it when it rains (again!) and they are begging to go out.

Sunday I sent the German and the Things out to play in the (wonderful) playground at the Zoo after breakfast: I needed to clean up, put clothes away, get dinner/lunch ready and in general reclaim the apartment. It amazes me how rapidly the apartment degrades after a few hours of the children playing.

They came back just after it started to rain (again) and Thing 2 was sleeping so we just put her down for her nap. Then I fed the others and set off for the first meeting of a potential women's book swap/club. It was in a section of Berlin that's quite close but which I hadn't seen: Charlottenberg proper. I quite liked it (and its architecture) and I found myself walking by the Broken English store that Dr. J had mentioned.

The group was nice (although no times were set for another meeting- let's see how it goes) and it was so relaxing to my eyes to see an apartment that was painted and had colors- I am so tired of being in a sterile white environment! But while we never know how long we will be here, we really can't paint. This is the longest (6 months) I have ever lived anywhere without painting the walls.

What's on my shelf...and what's on yours?

Slouching Mom posted a new meme (originally from Niobe) showing what is on her shelves.

SM felt that was harder than exposing her morning face. Well, I'm not going to expose my face because the German wants to remain anonymous, but SM- I don't wear any make-up either. (In fact, we might be related, looking at our snub noses and uncontrollable hair. Do you have cowlicks too?)

Moving on, here's one shelf. I might add another later, but I am a bit atypical: since we have such limited storage space here, I tend to remove the books I have finished and don't want to refer to later, which is why this shelf is a bit heavy on cookbooks. The Lilydale is awaiting the sequel before it's put away. And the Chinese self-study (unopened, I must add, is the German's). The books are pretty typical of my interests though, and you can look at what I have been reading this year in the Goodreads icon on the left of my blog.

I'm going to tag people for this meme (my first time!), but feel free to pass if you don't want to or don't have the time:

Diana at Martinis for Two
Lynda at Lulu's Bay
Snooker at Snooker in Berlin
Cathy at Planet Germany (your book is on my shelf;-))
Dani at Earth to Dani (looking forward to your book being out)
Dr J at Alien Ted

and Ree at Pioneer Woman, who I expect has too many comments to have time for this (but whose blog is fabulous and you should all check it out).

And anyone else who care to join in: please drop me a line if you post and maybe I can try a mosaic like Lynda did with her window meme and set up a list of links for those who participate.

Twelve Steps...

75%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

And I had actually thought that I was addicted--- clearly I have a way to go! I saw this over on Maria's blog.

Back to thoughts of addiction...

I have known for a very long time that I have an addictive personality. I started smoking quite late- at 19- and was addicted for 15 years (I gave it up for the German). I haven't had a cigarette since I quit because I'm afraid that if I did I would start smoking again.

Sometimes I can displace one addiction with another: I am realizing that my new interest in blogging is interfering with my reading addiction. Usually, I read: Newsweek, Businessweek, The Economist, Forbes, Money, Publisher's Weekly, Fortune, Jewishweek, US News & World REport, Babytalk, and a few other magazines, as well as a goodly number of romances, science fiction/fantasy, children's lit, gardening books, travel books, and cookbooks (some of those genres overlap and not saying that I do more than fantasize, in particular in re cooking).

First, the children got in the way. Losing my daily train commute to work took out a 90 minute per day period when I could read without interruption. Here the 3 hours+ per day German course and daily shopping (with trolley) get in the way. Now my BW and NW are piling up in the corner- I'm about two weeks behind. Also, instead of reading some of the more serious books on my to-be-read shelf/pile, I am busy seeking out widgets and trying to figure out link-backs. Ex-pat blogs have, to a great extent, displaced my travel reading (although I am in the midst of, and enjoying the travel/memoir/cookbook Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee). But the mark of the true addict is that I would rather give up sleeping than not get my reading in for the day. The amount seems to vary, but there is a certain amount that I need to do or I just won't go to sleep. And I still need to shoe horn going to the gym back into my life or I will start fearing my physical (I already fear swimsuit season).

Anyone else have the addiction?

A Blogging Addiction?

So Diane over in Martinis for Two is asking whether she is addicted and whether that addiction requires, perhaps, an intervention. An interesting comment, as my Reader is at 97 blogs and counting.

So, right now I am blogging (and reading blogs) while there is a load of laundry in the washer and another in the dryer (there is one waiting to be folded). I am finishing my 2nd cup of coffee, the kids are at school, the dishwasher is cooling preparatory to being unloaded. I am watching Moonlight on the other laptop.In fact, hold on, this is a good scene... ah, I'm back.

Well, I'm new to blogging (and can anyone tell me how to make links through that connection at the bottom? And how do track backs work?) but I have been part of an apa for over 25 years (since I was in high school, for those counting) and the others in that apa have been some of my closest friends and confidantes throughout my life. The difference is really immediacy (in both directions), expense (blogging is far cheaper if one already has the connection), and the ability to incorporate cool widgets and photos.

So, perhaps this blogging and its equivalents are a type of addiction, but the I have been addicted to reading for almost 40 years (back of the toothpaste tube, anyone?) and I have come to terms. On the other hand, blogging is beating out my German HW right now, so perhaps I should check the self-destructive tendency, pull out my notebook, and get going on that... bis Spaeter!

A room of my own...

Today was the first day that I skived off class since I started. Fridays are half day for the girls and today was a reschedule of a class that my teacher had needed. I just couldn't bear to drop the girls off, go to class, and pick them up without even a minute to myself.

So I stayed home, watched Supernatural and Smallville, wrote my apa, read blogs and realized that although I love Berlin, although the apartment is great, although the German is tremendously helpful, sometimes I just want to be alone, in the daylight, drinking coffee. It was a great morning.

Getting settled

The children are in school. That took quite a bit of work.

First, the German had to register our marriage in the Sauerland where he was registered. Then, when we returned to Berlin, he registered both of us and the children here. I did some research on line and found some kindergarten/kitas within walking distance, called them, and set up appointments. The first one we went to, one that was supposed to be based on a nurturing method, left me in tears. The head told us that they were not really interested in children that would be “transient”, eg staying for less than three years, and that also the documents that the children require would take weeks and weeks to get, so why would we even bother to put them in school when they would be leaving Berlin in the spring? I pointed out that Thing1 was very sad, had walked up to a little boy in the school and asked him to be friends, and that Thing1was regressing due to interactions being mainly with Thing2. The head didn’t exactly shrug, but didn’t seem to give a darn.

She did give the German the number of the state agency that would provide the required documents, but reiterated that it would take weeks to get the forms, perhaps even months. When we walked out the door, I really was in tears at the thought that the children would not be able to play with other children for the foreseeable future. The German told me that everything would be alright, that in a country where children have a legal right to schooling that it would be impossible for it to take so long to get required documentation. In the event, he called the agency the next morning and when he went there, the woman in charge was wonderful. She assured him that it would take only a day or two for the document for Thing1 to reach us, and that she would be able to issue one for Thing 2 if he could provide documentation that I was taking a course.

So the German registered Thing1 for the 5-7 hours of kindergarten that she is legally entitled to. However, Thing2 could not be registered until I provided documentation that I either had a job or was taking an integration course.

When wandering about our new neighborhood, we had discovered the Jewish Community Center (Judisches Gemeinde Haus). When we stopped in to ask about the community, we were told that they have a Volkshochschule, which is a type of community school all across Germany, where I could take a Deutschkurs for Anfangers (German for Newcomers). So I signed up for the semester, the German took the information to the state and we received the documentation for both the girls within three days.

(Germany has an amazingly good post system. It generally takes only one day for mail to reach us from just about anywhere in Germany. If we haven’t received something in three days, we know that there is a problem and know to call to see what is wrong.)

We got the names of some Jewish kindergartens from the JCC and called a few to see which would have openings and how far some might be. The real problem was Thing2, because the spots for her age are generally filled (there is a legal requirement of fewer young children per teacher at her age). We went to one lovely school in Grunewald, but not only would it be quite difficult for me to reach by public transportation, but also they would have had a problem with Thing2- she would not have been able to start until January, when they would be adding a teacher. The head was very nice and after showing us around, she sat the girls down to play with toys, took us back to her office, and started making calls for us. After two tries, she was able to make an appointment for us with the head of X school. So we called a cab and went there. We drove back and forth but this time, after stopping and asking for help and calling for clarification, we finally found it. This was funny, because we had attempted to reach X school almost on our arrival in west Berlin. But when we had called to get directions there we had not been able to find the school: it’s not easy to find.

In the meantime, I had gotten information from the JGH about Jewish kindergartens and kitas and had spoken to an International School (second choice, being both quite expensive and thwarting our aim of having the girls exposed to German as soon as possible). ) So when we got to the X school, finally, we were very impressed. The Rabbi knew our previous school, was warm and friendly (from the US;-) ), the classes seemed good and at least one of each teacher pair spoke some English, and the curriculum seemed great and familiar (although with both German and Hebrew). This is just what Thing1 has been needing.

The Things started school October 8th, the first day after Succoth, when my class also started. I spent the first two days with them at school, making certain that they would be ok, and on the third day the bus service that the school has started and I was able to go to class. We are all enjoying our classes now, although you would never know it from Thing1: she doesn’t tell me anything that goes on! Thing1 has been to the Zoo and the Opera House and to the library, but I only know that from the teacher: she is not yet good at communicating this information.

We have suffered through waves of illness. First, I was sick. A bronchial illness that hung on until I went to der Artz in the Sauerland (the weekend our container finally came in) and wound up getting antibiotics. Then, the week after Thing2 started school, she was quite sick. She had a temperature of 104+ and I had to find a doctor within our area and run her over. Dr R assured me that it was a virus and I should continue to concentrate on keeping her temperature down, which I needed to do by medicating her every six hours around the clock with Motrin. Her high fever continued from Sunday through Friday, when the doctor had told me to return if she were still running a fever. The doctor looked again, said it was still just a virus and prescribed a mucus thinner as well as continuing with the Motrin. Thankfully, her fever finally ended on Saturday. I kept her home on Monday, just to be safe.

This had played havoc with my classes, of course. I took two days off, we hired a babysitter one day, the German stayed home through my class one day, and the final day we had another babysitter, who we needed to send home because she was unable to comfort Thing2 (the only person, ever. We complained to the agency about her.) So back zur schule went Thing2 on Tuesday and on Tuesday night Thing1 started to run a high fever. So, Wednesday I went in to class for a few minutes to pick up my work. Thursday she seemed a bit better so I brought her, with coloring books, to class with me. She was exhausted and wound up falling asleep on me when I carried her out, but it was the day of my appointment with the Alien Affairs office and I needed to be there with the German in person.

So Thing1 and I took a cab there and met the German, they quickly called us in and gave me my residence visa, and then he called us a cab and went back to pick up the forms and come home later. Germany is extremely organized in processing newcomers and it’s admirable.

Staying sane as an expat without language skills

It's probably a pretty common plaint, but coming to Germany without a word of German (what was I thinking with 4 years of Latin and 4 of French?) it's almost frighteningly isolating to never hear an adult word that I can understand.

I am tremendously grateful that L and my parents have allowed me to set up a Slingbox at their house. That, added to a separate cable box with DVR, has allowed me to watch American TV and movies at my discretion. The only drawback is that the operating system is inferior to that of TiVo so it is more difficult to actually look up and plan for movies. So if anyone sees anything out there on HBO, Cinemax, SciFi, etc that they think I might like to watch, please drop me an e-mail and I can set the DVR to tape it. I’m very grateful to have family to allow me to use their connection because there is a professional organization that does this that actually maintains your own box and satellite dish and then charges an additional monthly fee for the privilege and I could never have justified the cost of doing that (until I went insane, I guess…).