Big Mistake

It doesn’t happen often.  Mr Dear Husband will tell you I never make mistakes.  It is his #1 rule to surviving in this marriage.  I am always right, he is wrong.  But yesterday, I will admit, my halo slipped a little and I did something that completely demoralised me.  I spent two hours reading the Martha Stewart website.

What was I thinking!  I know, right… it’s not like she is perfect, we all know that now.  Martha went to prison, not even I have done that, although I will admit to a few close calls…one particular incident at an airport in India, resulted in Mr Dear Husband uttering the words, “Please sit down and be quiet, or you are going to end up some butch axe murderer woman's cell mate, where she will refer to you as her Sugarpie".” You wouldn’t have recognised me, I was as quiet as a mouse.

Martha, Martha, Martha, what are you doing to me.  I looked to you for some solace.  My house is in that 87% stage of unpacked boxes and renovation and I have just plain run out of steam.  I needed inspiration.  What did you give me?  A big damn dose of inferiority syndrome.

Nobody can be that perfect.  The woman has a ‘craft’ loft (not room, but loft).  Neatly divided up into separate areas, with all the necessary equipment, stored, labelled and ready to go.  It doesn’t work like that here.  I am still looking for the sticky tape from before Christmas, thus resulting in all my Christmas parcels being tied up with kitchen string – I told them it was artistic and a reflection on the economic climate – nobody bought it.

This morning I was standing in the cold and nasty room of our cellar that is The Laundry.  I kept seeing the bright, shiny laundry room that Martha has.  With its neatly labelled baskets, bottles and boxes.  A special padded table for ironing, wire baskets on wheels for sorting (with padding around the edge so as not to bump and scrape the furniture), industrial lighting and recycling bins with wheels.  Hey, Martha’s laundry is nicer than my bedroom… that can’t be right.

So here you see Martha’s Cellar – then LuLu’s Cellar

And again Martha – LuLu.  My laundry looks like the kind of place that certain Austrian’s like to keep their ‘family’ for 24 years.

But here is the clincher.  This is the point where I broke down and started sobbing at the impossible goal that Martha has set me.  In her Guest Bathroom, sat two small, dark green towels.  Each embroidered in gold with the words, MAKE UP. 

“Martha likes to leave these special towels for the guests so they can remove their make up without fear of marking up the other towels…”

Please kill me now.

The Culling, or…

…it’s not you, it’s me.

Had a little time on my hands, not doin’ much, just messin’ about.  This can often lead to Mr Dear Husband looking anxious.. you know the drill, where he starts scratching the back of his head and doing those big sighs.

Peering over the back of the sofa, where he was attempting to watch some sporty thing on the TV, he asked me what I was doing.

“Just a little sorting.  Why?  Is it annoying you?”

“You are making that funny little click-clack noise with your tongue, the one you make when you are choosing the fruit at the grocers, or a new pair of shoes.”

And so I was… choosing, that is. 

I was, in fact, playing God with all your lives.  I was parting the Sea that is Google Reader.  I was Culling. 

For a while now, I have been mildly irritated by the ridiculously long list of blogs that I had collected, many of which have long sat dormant, and many of which, I no longer read.  There I said it.  And there I go again, spouting off like someone declared 2010 “Year of the Beat-Me-With-A-Stick Honest”.  But Hey!  What can I tell you…

A walk down memory lane.  I was plunged back to times when Mr Dear Husband would come home and say something like, “Hey Honey, how would you feel about moving to Moscow/Jordan/Kuwait/Dubai/Upper Mongolia (I made that last one up).”  And off I would scurry to my trusty keyboard, to search out local bloggers that would give me the low down, the real truth about real life.  But some of these adventures were shelved, and along with them, my skulking in the shadows, sucking out the marrow of other peoples’ lives in foreign lands.

Not all the culling was my fault.  Do you guy's have any idea how many of you just leave me waiting at the corner and never come back!  No wonder I have abandonment issues.  It is like a whole section of bloggers just got sucked up by aliens.  The next we will hear from you will be a reality TV program in the USA… ‘Bloggers from Outer Space’.  News at 11.

I did actually take the time to re-read the last post (some as old as 2 years ago) before I hit the unsubscribe button.  Often there was no warning at all that tomorrow would never come.  More often than not, the last post would read something like this:   “Someone reminded me that that I haven’t updated my blog for 3 weeks/months/years. Can’t think of anything to write. Nobody reads this anyway. Anything I do write is lame.”

Then nothing, nada, zip. Gone.

In the end, what seemed to stick out more than anything else, is just how fickle I am.  My Google Reader was a mismatch of special interests.  One week I would be snaffling up any blog that would tell me how to turn an empty egg carton into a new 3-piece suite, the next I was teaching myself how to cut my own bangs (believe me… it is not worth it, don’t even go there). I am like a bumble bee in a rose garden.  Every time I had a thought, I would search for clever people out there doing it, and read what they had achieved.  Then when I had my fill… I moved on.  So many clever people, so little time.

Google Reader is slimmer now, more streamline.  Now I can start the glorious task of refilling her again.

Why aren’t Germans funny?

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”  C. S. Lewis

I was having a little chat this morning… a cyber chat that is, with a fellow blogger.  We met online over two years ago. It was when I was still in Sydney, before I moved to Cairo.  I asked her lots of questions about what it was like to live in Egypt.  I read all her blog posts, I made comments on all her blog posts.  I suspect she thought I was stalking her, and in my own way, I was.

It didn’t start to get weird until I arrived in Cairo, and she very kindly offered to meet me for coffee… at a place where there were lots of people, and many exits.  I liked her right away.  She kept her pepper spray in her pocket and sat close to the door in case she needed to make a quick get away.

At the end of our coffee, she said she had enjoyed meeting me, didn’t give me her phone number and turned to walk home. 

“Oh, are you walking, me too!.” 

She stuck out her hand, making sure to be far enough away so that she could give me a quick karate kick to the head if I tried anything.  “Ok, then bye.”

We both turned left… then continued walking… we both crossed the road. We both continued walking down the road, side by side. There was that sort of awkward silence that happens when you really think you are about to head off in the opposite direction.

“Umm, are you following me?”

By now, even I have got the idea that this is looking very suspicious. 

“No, I am going home… I live at the end of this road.”

Here, she turned sharply on her heel, cocked her head to the side and did that squinty thing with her eyes…

“Where exactly do you live?”

Turned out, I not only lived across the street from her, but my bedroom window looked directly into her bedroom window.  What were the chances!  From Australia to Egypt, and this poor lass ends up with me being able to watch her brush her teeth each morning.

Eventually, she softened and decided that I was not an axe murderer.  We became friends, the sort of friends that say, “Hey, I have just put the kettle on, come and have a cuppa.”  Or the sort of friends that call up and say crazy stuff like, “My maid is driving me insane today, can I come and hang out at your house until she is gone.” (seriously, now that I am back doing all my own housework… I miss having a housekeeper…and can’t believe I ever complained…spoilt brat that I am) Even the sort of friends that say, “I think I have a lump… what do I do?”

One of the topics of this morning’s conversation was our ‘dry spell’ in the blogging world.  It occurred to me that we had often laughed together at some manic Egyptian episode, and then there would the race home to see who could put up a blog post first.  “Now that is a blog post just waiting to be written!”, we would say.

There just don’t seem to be so many funny ‘blogging’ moments here.  Everything is too clean and orderly, people are predictable and do the right thing.  There is not that level of insanity that helped to keep a constant stream of witty anecdotes flowing. 

Perhaps I need to start looking at this country through the same eyes I saw Egypt, or for that matter, Turkey, India etc.  Perhaps it is time to shake things up a bit.

 

PS:  If anyone is interested in reading any of the LuLu in Egypt adventures, you will find the rough ‘saved’ version sans photos here:  LuLusbay in Egypt  It is really just a stream of words now, one day I will try to put it back together.

PPS:  If you don’t know what happened to LuLusbay in Egypt… you can read about it here:  Disaster!!!!!!

It’s all about the Journey

“As you journey through life take a minute every now and then to give a thought for the other fellow. He could be plotting something.”  Hagar the Horrible

I love a good autobahn.  There, I said it.  Exposed myself for the non-green, environment-destroying villain that I am.  But I do.

My first encounter with the German road system was terrifying.  Not only was a I fairly new to driving, but the first time I sat in the car, I discovered the steering wheel was on the wrong side… and worse, people were driving on the wrong side.  The wrong side if you come from Australia, that is.

It took time.  Time to adjust.  Time to remember to get into the drivers seat on the left, time to look up to the right to find the rear vision mirror.  But most of all, it took time to lose the all blood draining terror that came from having to merge into traffic travelling at about 140km per hour… Holy crap!  One false move and I would be little less than road kill.

There is also the small matter of Stau (traffic jams).  These can really mess up your day.  Get stuck in a Stau on the way home from having your bikini waxed and there is a good chance it will have all grown back before you get home.

One particular occasion, on the way to Frankfurt Airport, we were doing good time, heading out to places yonder.  About 5km before the terminal, the traffic just stopped.  Nothing, nada, zip.  Nowhere to go.  And my bladder was full.  That uncomfortable full that makes you sort of cross and uncross your legs.  It makes you wriggle about a bit, but not too much.  It makes you try to think of something else, but that doesn’t help.  Finally, I could hold no more.  My German in-laws were sitting in the front of the car.  Why else could I do?  We had been sitting in the car for 3 hours.  I could see the lights of the airport, where toilets flowed in abundance.  There was no other solution.

My father-in-law driving… we opened the front driver’s door, and the back passenger door… and I peeded, right there and then, right on the Autobahn, right beside my father-in-law, with all those car headlights behind us, illuminating my big, white bum.

Ever the gentleman, my father-in-law politely turned his head, and hummed some Bavarian folk song… Mr Dear Husband stared into space, wishing with all his might that he was someplace else.  I tried to imagine that all the drivers behind us were actually looking at something else…anything else.

I wonder why you never hear about these things happening to members of the royal family.  Or Madonna.

Frugal LuLu McScrooge

“The tooth fairy teaches children that they can sell body parts for money.” David Richerby

Not one to make New Year’s resolutions.  What is the point, I don’t smoke, and I am not giving up anything else. I thought I was set for the year, then the first mail delivery of 2010 arrived, and with it, the latest bank statement. And I stopped breathing, just for a minute.

Now, many of my mates will tell you that they have seen me do the happy dance over a bargain.  Mr Dear Husband is of the opinion that it wouldn’t matter how much money I had, I would still be happiest digging to the bottom of the bargain bin.  He is right.  To a point.  I had a lot of fun over Christmas, so much so, that now my bank balance has balance-anorexia.

Time to pull in the belt.  Start keeping those nasty dried up end bits of bread that nobody ever wants to eat.  Making my own candles, and saving the little pieces of soap that end up in the shower recess.  Not that I know what the hell I am going to do with bread and soap bits? Might have to learn to sew… oh God, even worse, I might need to learn to knit!  Have never been able to sit still long enough to do those things well.

This morning, Miss Eight was complaining about having to put on her boots to walk to school, and out of my mouth came these words:

“Well, I suppose you could go barefoot, through the snow, and just pop your feet into the warm cowpats along the way.” She was no amused.

I suspect I am about to turn into Ma Kettle.  Pa, Paaa, PAAAAAAA!

Miss LuLu’s feeling for snow…

“Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into, the mind.”  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If you grew up in Sydney, or spent most of your adult life in Asia or the Middle East, then snow is something you still find enchanting.  Well I did, until everyone left after Christmas and today arrived.

We have a thick blanket of snow on the ground here and a steady –3 degrees.  The snow makes everything look wonderful, even the garbage bins look sweet.  My unfinished efforts in the garden seem just right with a blanket of white.  The trees that didn’t get trimmed last Autumn, weigh heavy, dragged down by their powdery load.

But today, it was the first day of something resembling normal life.  Mr Dear Husband was shipped back to his place of endeavours, where we hope he will earn enough money to pay for our holiday festivities.  Those stragglers still hanging on, were loaded into the Outlaws car and sent on their way to a day of sledding.  Me, I considered going back to bed, then decided that perhaps it would be a good idea to check the laundry…. BIG MISTAKE!  any visions of flopping on the sofa and staring dreamily out the window were blown to smithereens.

The next shock was my storage cellar… empty.  The fridge, empty, the cupboards, empty… and so it was that I was forced outdoors.  And this is where the fun started.  A simple trip to the supermarket, when snow is involved, takes a level of military planning that I was just not ready for.  We won’t talk about the windshield scrapper that seems to have mysteriously disappeared (can you say Mr Dear Husband?) or the bollocking I got from the Father Outlaw when he discovered that we didn’t have any window anti-freeze in the house.  I am sure it was on a shopping list at some stage… some where… who knows!

It took me 20 minutes to get the car out of the driveway.  By the time I had cleared the snow off the car, scraped the windows, shovelled the snow away from the back of the car, and cleared my front path… I was sweating like Rambo under-fire, but my toes and fingers where turning black with frostbite.

The supermarket car park was just as much fun.  A choice of driving over huge mountains of snow, or parking in a lake of grey slush.  And I didn’t have a Euro coin to put in the slot to get a shopping cart.  All the time there was a little voice in my head saying… “Hmmm didn’t you just say you loved living in Germany?  Isn’t this the year that you embrace life and run with the bulls?” 

At about the same time I was searching my pockets to find a coin that would save me from doing the shopping as a juggling act, I noticed a man talking to his bicycle.  First to his bicycle lock, then to his shopping bag, and inside the store I saw him select a loaf of bread, give it a hearty kiss…then do a little jig.

He seemed pretty happy and normal to me.

I want to be that guy… just today, just until I find my feet again.

My Love Affair

“I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”  Rita Rudner

My favourite thoughts are the ones that catch me when I least expect.  Cleaning out the lint filter of the dryer, and suddenly from nowhere, you start thinking about the boy that sat next to you in the 3rd grade, who always seem to smell like caramel.

Or likewise, trying to drown out the sound of the extended family, as we are packed into a mini van, hurtling along an Autobahn… it suddenly occurred to me that I was in love.  I had given my heart away, and didn’t even realise it.

It has taken me over twenty years to acknowledge this, and it has not always been an easy path.  There were times when the hatred I felt for this ‘new love’ could have outshone the blitz from a nuclear bomb drop.  There were many times that I would dip my big toe into it, feel the temperature, and decide to leave it well alone.  But this ‘love’ persevered until it captured me. We would cast shy glances, under our lashes.  We would bicker, we would make up.

This love is called Germany.

The good lord knows that I have resisted with all my might.  I have vocalized my dissent to all and sundry.  You may have seen me?  I was the wild haired girl that skipped through customs at Frankfurt Airport, grinning like a village idiot, filled with the sheer relief that I felt about being able to leave Germany behind… racing off to some place more exotic. 

People asked me all the time, “Wouldn’t you like to live here?” My reply did nothing help gender relationships, “I would rather stick Ebola laced needles in my eyes that live here.”  It stopped them in their tracks, they never asked me again.

It was a small child that brought my secret love to light.  The smallest of all the ‘guests’.  With her tiny hand tucked into mine, we spent Christmas striding through castles and snow… up hills and along over bridges, until one day, she turned her dear sweet little face up to mine, and with her squeaky voice (sort of like Mickey Mouse after sucking on a helium balloon) she asked me, “Aunty Lulu, do you know EVERYTHING about Germany?”

And it struck me, that I had been talking incessantly, constantly telling little anecdotes and stories.  Pointing out hills and houses, giving lectures on the history of everything from cemeteries to churches.  I was, in fact, doing exactly what a woman does when she is in love.  Talking non stop.

We have an uneasy love, Germany & I, but I believe that this is the place that I am meant to be.  And like all relationships, we will need to find a way to live together in harmony.  Right now, Germany has on its most beautiful dress, a thick blanket of crisp, cold snow.  And a quiet calm that is just what the doctor ordered.