Dolce reminded me of something today.  Every year as Autumn comes whipping around the corner the vineyards turn into a riot of colors, for three years I’ve been trying to get photos and for three years I forget my camera at home when we leave the house. This year we have moved right into the heart of the Rhine wine growing region so all I have to do is hop on my bicycle and peddle to the vineyards. This year when they start turning I’ll be ready!   (I hope these don’t turn into famous last words)

We had a really nice visit with Allie and Brian.  I think Bear and Brian got along really well for a first time meeting. They didn’t have the chance for any long father/future son-in-law talks but he fits in very well with our family.   We make each other laugh and that is always a good thing.  Bear has a very dry sense of humor that some people don’t get but Brian does, this is a good thing.  I think that the nervousness that Brian was feeling at meeting his future father-in-law went away pretty quickly when he saw that I wasn’t kidding about Bear being more of the teddy than the grizzly variety of bear.  Though in all honesty when the grizzly does make an appearance we all duck and cover. 

We went to the zoo in Frankfurt the day before they left. The weather was gorgeous and way to pretty to be inside. Of course it was packed for that very reason. We all feel fall weather coming and everyone here knows that winter is coming on fast, so we have very few nice days left to enjoy. 

Fun stuff I’m telling you.  They are building a huge new monkey house, though I think the technical name is probably Primate House. In my family we pretty much lump them all together and say ‘Let’s go see the Monkeys.”  Building a new house is a good idea since there are babies everywhere. They have baby Orangs, Bonobos, baboons and chimps and those are just the ones I saw.

This is one of the baby baboons, though he/she isn’t the smallest.   That one was WAY in the back and I couldn’t get a clear picture.

The teenage bonobo was the most entertaining last time Bear and I went to the zoo. He was having a fit because the newest baby was getting bottled fed and he was clearly having some jealousy/rivalry issues.   This time it was the teenage Orangutan.  We think he was having a snit too. He came out of the indoor house to the outside part of the cage, went as close as he could get to the bars squatted down, stuck his bottom lip out as far as it would go, hunched his shoulders and pouted. I swear he was pouting.  He also began begging….for French Fries. Which to my horror some kids obligingly tossed to him.  Good job kids, see the “Please don’t feed the animals” sign?  The nutritionist is probably having fits over his eating habits.

Interesting sidenote, the spell checker had an alternative suggestions to Bonobo.  They were Beanba, bunyip and pinup.  Hmm? No thanks.

Happy hump day peeps. I’m off to ride the lovely Lolly B in lieu of mopping the floors.

I am so excited, Allie is arriving tonight and once again I get to hug my kid, that is a double w00t situation. 

No surgery for me. Yay! The ENT said that I have plenty of room to breath, there’s no polyps, though one of my turbinates is blue. Blue?  The infection seems to be under control or gone and now all I need to do is go see an allergist. Once I have the allergy testing done we can figure out a way to get my (apparent) allergic rhinitis under control.  It’s a lot like having the flu for three months, thankfully without throwing up on top of all the rest.  But it looks like the end is in sight and just getting rid of the infection has helped my energy level soar.  Like I said yay!

Yesterday was my 2 year anniversary!  As of yesterday I have NOT smoked over 25,000 cigarettes. Yes you read that right, if I still smoked as much as I used to…. in 2 years it is over 25,000 cigarettes and over 4,000 dollars. And that’s the price from when I quit not current price which I’m sure has gone up in the past 2 years.  Sin taxes and all. If your quitting or you have been quit for a while and want to know where your stats are here’s an easy way to find out.  http://www.quitmeter.com/index.php  You type in your quit date how much you smoke or smoked per day and how much your price per pack is, hit calculate and it will tell you down to the second and the cent how long and how much. Between me and Bear man together we have not spent over 7000 dollars on cigarettes. Quite the little savings.  In case your wondering if we really have put that into saving??? Well sort of, I stash away a little money every day, I call it my quit money, then I spend it.  We went to Rome for three days on our 24th anniversary, that was the first big thing. Then I started saving it again and me and my daughter Allie took that week long trip to Ireland where she met her honey Brian. And then as you all know I took my youngest daughter Emily to Paris for three days. Now I know if we didn’t live so close we wouldn’t be able to do all that on that amount of money but we fly cattle air (ryanair link, go play.) and I bargain for cheap hotel rooms and we don’t eat at 4 star restaurants. So that’s what I’ve done with our “saving”.  Believe me I like that better than being a slave to an addiction.  Even though I haven’t saved a penny of money.  The trick is not touching the money no matter how bad you want to and then actually spending it on what you set out to, sounds easier than it is in reality.  

First cigarette money trip

One of those places that everyone needs to see at least once. Even if you have to take a second mortgage.  We went for our anniversary but we landed in Rome the day before my birthday. Which that year fell on Good Friday. Not being Catholic we didn’t think about the implications of being in Rome over Easter weekend on the one year anniversary of Pope John-Paul II death.  The crowds were horrendous as was the heat but even with that, both of us still look at the pictures and say we need to go back and see more.  And there is ALWAYS more to see. Rome has more culture and history laying on the ground than most places have in museums. 

On our 24th annie.

This was the second cigarette trip.  July 2006

Bear let me take Allison to Ireland and roam around.  Little did I know that Allie and Brian would fall for each other in less than a week. See what happens when you put two singletons in a car for a week They get bored and start plotting.  I could see they had a thing for each other pretty quickly but I really had no idea the depth of their feelings.  Here it is a year and some months later and now they are engaged and Allie lives in Galway with her Irish soul mate. See those Irish eyes a smilin’?  They laughed all week and have been laughing ever since.  If nothing else came of coming over here to live and work in Germany this one thing makes it all worth while. there is nothing in the world like seeing your children content. Brian and American Allie are perfect for each other and we never would have known if I hadn’t quit smoking….funny when you think about it like that.

Ah, gay Paree…..

Is it even possible to talk about Paris without falling into paroxysms of cliches?

I know of one cliche that we never saw or met.  We were there for 3night/4days and never saw or talked to one rude Parisian.  Every single person we met or talked to was not only friendly and helpful but they were polite and thrilled that we loved Paris as much as we all did.  I looked and listened to people all around us and I’m telling you that cliche about rude Paris is way overstated. Katie said “you get back what you put out” and maybe that’s true.  I find I love the Parisians as much as I loved Paris and really isn’t that the way it should be?  I’ve never been to New York city I wonder if I would find that there?

By the way driving in Paris is crazy, I had less trouble driving on the wrong side of the road on the wrong side of the car in Ireland than I did helping Mike navigate around Paris, traffic is insane.  But what a thrill to be able to say you drove all over Paris.

I now have 4 friends trying to quit smoking, all 4 live stateside so I know that in 2 years you can’t save enough money to do those three trips but it certainly won’t hurt to make a goal and try to save for that.  I saved a dollar a day at first then 2 and I did my best not to ever touch it unless it was to put in the bank.  I know I never came close to putting away all the money I smoked in the last 30 years but i’m trying to make up for that in a better quality of life….rofl  I’m with you* in spirit.

*read the linked blog, it says more succintly and honestly what a smoker thinks and feels than anything i’ve read in a long time.

We went to Aachen for a craft fair. We didn’t stay long but it was a really nice day and I was glad to escape the house for an afternoon.  This fountain is right on the edge of old town if you ever go there.  Just steps from the cathedral.  I wouldn’t mind having this in my yard either.  Remember the first yard ornament I want is the head from Stuttgart, now that is awesome. But these are yard worthy too, I would put Koi in the fountain and make sure that the middle is at least 2′ deep so they would have a happy home even in the Winter.

The guy from Stuttgart in case you forgot what he looked like.

Now onto pictures from the crafter fair in Aachen.

All of them should be “click to make larger” but who knows with xanga. I have issues with their photo uploader as well as the way the pictures are put onto blogs, but since I haven’t heard anyone else say anything maybe it’s just me.   

Anyway, the craft fair was filled with people from all over germany as well as a couple of booths from out of country. There was a booth from Toledo, Spain making Damascene gold which brought back a well of emotion seeing the pieces as well as seeing the pictures of Spain. When we lived in Spain in the early 90s we bought some Damascene pieces that I still have. I wondered what would bring them all that way just for a weekend and then I found out that besides being a sister city to Toledo Ohio in the states Toledo is also a sister city to Aachen.  So it sort of makes sense that they would utilize that connection.  Another booth was from Poland and they had quilts, I didn’t get a decent picture of them but they were different from what you might see in the states as far as texture and patterns go, but they were still beautiful.  There was a leather worker from Czech as well as an amber dealer. I love amber beads but I just can’t make myself spend that kind of money on a necklace that won’t get daily ware.  Last time we were in Prague though Bear bought me a beautiful little cross of silver and Czech garnets.  Did any of you know that the Czech Republic is famous for Amber and Garnets? Me neither, not until I went there anyway.   Of all the things there and all the walking we did I saw many things that were well worth the money being asked for them but I try to keep in mind that not only do I have to dust them but I also have to ship them to the States when we go home, that or give it away.  So the only thing I bought was a hand made Italian leather change purse that is also big enough to carry a credit card or ID card. It has 2 slots, I can carry American change in one and Euro in the other so it’s perfect for my needs.

The next best thing about any fair of any type is the food. We decided before we left home that we were going to eat lunch in Aachen and we did….

We split an order of fried mashed potatos w/ applesauce at one booth a roasted krauderbrot at another and a slice of dark chocolate truffle cake and fresh ground coffee from the last. We literally ate our way around the fair. It was great and we didn’t feel to full. I took one bite of the cake and Barry grinned and said uhoh a Matrix moment, I nearly choked on my cake I was laughing so hard.  I really need to learn to make that kind of cake.

Now that’s cake!

I hope everyone had a good three day holiday even if you didn’t get to go anywhere or do much.

I haven’t gotten to ride my bike, the lovely LollyB, as much as I like. Two reasons, the first we’ve had a lot of rains this summer and I hate riding in the rain. And the second, I’ve been fighting an infection for months now.  So sometimes the weather will be nice but I’ll be to tired to ride.

I run a low grade fever most of the time, nothing high just enough to drain my energy. And most days I have at least three or four episodes of extreme vertigo.  I had to look up the difference between dizziness and vertigo. I have vertigo. When your dizzy you feel weak or faint, when you have vertigo you feel like you’ve stopped and the world is still moving. Not a nice feeling at all.  That’s usually when you see me throw out my arms to keep my balance or to keep from falling down. Not because I’m faint but because I’ve lost my equilibrium.  The infection started in my inner ear because my sinuses aren’t draining properly. The doc gave me a dose of antibiotics and put me on claritin.  I felt fine for awhile and then the sloshy head came back and so did the vertigo. This time accompanied by sinus problems.  Now both my ears and sinuses are infected so the doc put me on the big daddy of antibiotics, changed me from claritin to allegra and threw in Flonase for my nose and a plain saline spray to try and get me to drain instead of just building up fluids. Or better yet quit making all this fluid.  Monday we get the pleasure of driving to Landstuhl for a CT scan to see how bad the infection really is, the doc already wants to do surgery to fix my deviated septum and he’d love to have someone do turbinate surgery. I’m holding out for results of the scan.  I like to take a more casual approach to cutting parts of my body. No need to rush into anything right?  

I finished 7 of my  approximate 12 to 14 scrapbook pages for our Paris trip. The only thing left to do is add the journaling.  I love to put together the pictures and the gorgeous paper and embellishments and I hate the writing.  I am so bad at putting into words what we saw or how I felt. To me it all sounds stilted or worse I end up sounding like a guidebook. Grr, the pages are pretty so I console myself with that.  Bear took me down to Patton barracks last Saturday and I spent $75. on scrap stuff, sheesh. he spoils me terribly.  When I start scrapping Strasbourg though it will be great to have the paper and stuff already on hand.  I wonder who will get all this junk when we die, which I plan on doing in about 50 years.  Maybe by then I’ll have all the pictures labeled and the journaling done and my great grandkids can talk about how cool it was that great grandma and grandpa lived in Spain and Germany for a few years.  My itchy feet could provide a source of wonder for a few minutes…rofl.

Speaking of itchy feet I know where all this wanderlust comes from.  During the depression my dad was a teenager, his parents had split up long before and he was bouncing between the two of them. While staying with his dad in Phoenix he got a wild hair and hopped on a freight train and rode it clear to Las Vegas before he turned around and came back. He was about 14, he told me he just wanted to, no reason, he just wanted to see something different.  He’s 86 now and can’t really get around to well, but on his good days he makes my sister take him for long drives to nowhere, just because.  That sounds like a really good reason to me and if I was home I would go with them.  It also kind of explains why all 4 of his kids were born in different states, lol.

I have 3 very dear friends who are trying to quit smoking right now. I would like to tell all of you that you can do this, you really can.  When I quit almost 2 years ago, I was a chainsmoker up to 2 packs a day. I know how hard it is to let go of an addiction and now I know how many excuses I made to myself and others about why I didn’t quit.  This wasn’t the first time I quit but I certainly hope that this will be the last time I quit. The freedom to go anywhere without the hassle is amazing.  It feels so good to be free.  You can do this, I’m praying for your sucess and if you need any encouragement at all, or you just want to vent, call me and I’ll call you right back so you don’t have a huge bill from calling Europe.  It is a price I will gladly pay to help you get off the nicotine.

And remember my motto: The urge to have a cigarette will go away whether you have one or not.

Love you all.

Dizzy Lizzy!

Regardless of the outrageous taxes and fees currently being foisted off on unsuspecting travellers I’m looking forward to going home.  I’m a bit nervous, why I have no idea, but I know we will have a terrific time.  Bear can go out on Greers Ferry Lake and fish all day and night if that’s what he wants.  I’ll get to meet my best friends grand-daughter that was born while we were here. We can start all kinds of home improvement projects while were there and now that we have a house manager we know they will be completed and done right.  Bear said I could see all three of my sisters and as many nephews as I want. ( I have 5 and they have a ton of kids )  It sounds as though he might be bribing me to go to the midwest and see all of them too, but the reality is this. We have decided that when we go up there we are going to go to his moms’ house and if they want to see us then they have to go there.  I hope we see my MIL and FIL, I love those two, I could not have gotten luckier in my mom in law and Wib is just a terrific guy no matter how you slice it, so noisy and energetic. Always raring to go, even at almost 89.  

I have decided I will not let his sisters stop us from seeing mom and Wib. It would be criminally isane of me and a real crappy thing to do to my honey.  I’m sure that his sisters are lovely people with lovely families but they don’t know us and just because we choose to live away from farming does not makes us aliens from space.  I know that Bear and the choices he’s made baffle them and I know that he hasn’t really given them a chance to get to know who he is because he left, but you would think that both of his sisters would know he is not the same guy that left Iowa 28 years ago and that they would quit judging him by the things he did that long ago and quit bringing it up.  The other thing that bugs the heck out of me is they both insist on giving a person by person update on everyone they went to high school with and yet don’t ask or want to hear about the here and now of our lives. They just want to talk about what so and so is doing.  It makes me want to say, do you have any interest at all in what we’ve been doing for the past three years?  I know the answer already and it’s not really, not in any depth.  I would also like his younger sister to quit trying to get us to farm with them, it’s a lovely offer really.  They have a house we could move into and Bear would be our brother-in-laws farm hand.  I wonder if she realizes he already has a career that he’s been doing since 1979. Oh wait, it’s not an approved career and it took him away from Iowa so it can’t possibly be as stable and secure.  After all he’s probably been trying to get back to Iowa all these years  and just hasn’t had the right offer.  

What they don’t want to hear and what he has told them before is this, he wanted to leave when he was about 15 or 16. It took a bit longer than that and he made a sheer mess out of things when he did leave but he’s never changed his mind and what they won’t hear is that he has no desire to ever move back.   Long before he ever met me, back when he was a teenager, he used to listen to a radio program out of Little Rock called Beaker Street with a DJ named Clyde Clifford. That’s when he first thought about moving South and when people ask him where he’s from he says “I’m Northern by birth and Southern by choice.”  I figure even if he hadn’t met and married me he would have ended up somewhere in the South, it’s just where he was meant to be.  It’s where his heart is, as well as our home.  We raised our children there, our friends are there and when we go home in Oct for a visit and when we go home permanetly, that is where we’re going.   We love to travel, as all of you know, but when it comes down to it home is where the heart is and ours is in Arkansas. 

So we will go see his mom and Wib and we will have a lovely time while we are in Minnesota, we always do, but this time we aren’t going to go to Iowa. We are going nowhere near where either one of his sisters live and if they want to see us they can get in the car and drive the hour or so and come and visit for the day. I’m not going to either one of their houses anymore.  I’m putting my foot down. Until they both make the trip south and see where we’ve lived for the past 17 years or so I won’t be going to their houses. Naturally I don’t expect them to come while we are there for such a short time in October but when we get home permanetly I don’t think it will be to much to ask. 

P.S. Even Barry’s ex wife and husband AND her sister and her kids have been to our house. One year they all came down on our anniversary and we all went camping for three days.  How’s that for welcoming.  rofl.  It just baffles me how his sisters could never have wanted to come to our house. Actually what I think I find baffling is the lack of closeness they feel and the apparant lack of real interest they have in his well being and his life.

This doesn’t even include the almost 90 dollar fuel surcharge. Almost 200 dollars in taxes, fees and surcharges seems a bit on the steep side.  I’m curious why does every person flying have to pay the animal and plant inspection fee? I have NEVER flown with an animal or a plant. Also I have never immigrated, I am a U.S. citizen so why do I have to pay an immigration fee every time I fly home? I understand the security fees and even the facility charge but why am I paying to have a non-existant plant inspected?

We thought we would try and come home in the middle of October for a ten day visit so I did some checking on sidestep, expedia, orbitz etc.  I checked prices at the beginning of the week and just checked the same dates again and the tickets had gone up 20. dollars.  I told my husband if he doesn’t commit to taking the time off within the next day or so and unless we actually purchase tickets now we may not be able to afford to go home.   Well we could afford it but we sure won’t be going anywhere or doing anything when we get there or when we get back here for that matter.  Our entire vacation will be sitting at the kitchen table playing dominos and the highlight will be going to Huddle House because that will be all we can afford to do with ticket prices going up every three days. 

I’m conflicted, on one hand I want to go home for a few days and on the other I don’t. 

I want to see my house with my own eyes and at the same time I don’t want to deal with the hassles I know we’re going to have because of the damage that vandals and time have done to it. 

I want to see my next door neighbor of 17 years and hug her and hold her and cry with her and I want to avoid the fact of seeing her dying from lung cancer.

I want to see my dad and I don’t want to see him three years older, at 86 now and know that I’m missing what are probably his last years.

I want to walk down any street and hear nothing but American English being spoken around me but I dread having to repeat the same information that my acquaintances and not so close friends will want.   ie: When will we be coming home for good? How do we like living in Germany?   Not necessarily because they’re nosy but because they are interested, but that doesn’t mean I want to repeat myself ad nauseam for ten days.  But I certainly don’t want to seem rude, I have to live in this community and these are people I like.

And then there’s the always fun being “pulled in three directions”.  The guilt that I feel for NOT wanting to go up to the midwest to see my in-laws.  If I could see just my MIL and FIL that would be perfect but it’s unrealistic to think I can get away with that….. so that means more than likely seeing them all……ack I can feel the stress already. And the whole time we are there I won’t be seeing my own sisters who if I’m going to have to travel to see someone I would MUCH rather it be them than my sisters in law. My sisters in law who don’t know me and don’t really even care too. The one sister in law that even though I have been married to her brother for over 25 years has never stepped foot in our home regardless of where we’ve lived and the other sister has once. One time in over 25 years. Yeah, I want to spend my vacation driving 12 hours to see them.  I “know” xangans I’d rather go meet.   Now, I’ve told the truth and you are free to tell me what a horrible person I am. Oh, and whiny too.

Shit, can someone tell me WHY we are planning on a trip home??? 

These are at the bloom field that’s by our house. And finally pics of my bike but luckily for you guys not me…rofl. Bear was running late so no pic of me.

Next time I take the camera on a bike ride I’ll go down to the river and take some of the kids fishing and the barges going by. 

We went to get my bike and stopped at the blumen feld so I could take pictures. I was going to ride my bike down and take them but it rained today and the wind was blowing like a gale. not really great bicycle weather. I got the pictures before it got to bad and in between squalls.

Then we decided to take a drive thru some of the vinyards. We live right smack in the middle of the Riesling hohenweg.  (upper riesling way) There must be 50, 000 acres of grapes up and down these hills along the Rhine.

You have no idea how steep some of the hills are until your standing at the top looking down. They have these really narrow tractors with seriously low gears and they go chugging up those hills like it’s nothing.

We drove around the vinyards for about 2 hours and never doubled back and never ran out of more grapes ahead. 

In the picture of the river you can see the road that we drive to get to the post.

Much prettier than Lampertheim and Mannheim. I suppose you have to have industry but I don’t have to live by it since i’m not working at a factory.  I prefer not to taste the air I breathe.

I’ll take a picture of the new bike on the next clear day, if Bear is home I’ll have him take a pic of me, so your forwarned.

Today was better, maybe I am starting to get a handle on things.  Not that I don’t expect more teary days but I also expect to get them fewer in a row.  I’ll keep everyone up to date on my aunts progress, I hope I’m still writing about my ornery Aunt Pearl kicking cancers butt clear into next year.  To tell the truth though, things aren’t looking good. Beside the 4 masses that are in her stomach the oncologist found a spot on her lung and two on her kidney. But she’s a fighter and she’ll fight to live so she can see her family. 

Bear and I went to the post and did our grocery shopping. I think our grocery bill is to high for two people but Bear says it’s probably pretty normal. Is about 75 to 100. a week high, low or normal?  I wish they printed coupons for things that I buy. I won’t use a coupon unless it’s for something that I planned on buying anyway, I figure you aren’t saving any money at all if it’s not a normal purchase. I know that we used to get generic ice cream when we lived in the states but over here the commissary only carries Breyers, Ben and Jerry and Edie’s. They do that a lot, carry higher priced brand names. Maybe that’s where some of it’s going.  Not enough generic items, like paper towels and cleaning supplies and low priced snacks.

 We had another gorgeous weather day so it was a treat to be outside even if it was just running errands. After we went to Dexheim for groceries we drove both cars to Maintz and had the old beater car de-registered and junked. YAY!  I’m so glad that car is gone. Now we can cancel the insurance on it ….there’s some ice cream money right there.  On the way home from dumping the car we stopped at the blumen field and cut some gladiolis.  I’m going to take my camera back down tomorrow and take pictures of the field, it was SO beautiful. It will be the first place I ride my new bike….yes, they finally got an old lady bike in just for me.  I think I finally got the right person to understand that I, not only don’t need a 21 speed racing bike I don’t even need a 3 speed. The only speed this bike is going to go is whatever my two legs can handle. Which will be on flat ground kind of meandering and in no hurry.  I’m rather excited to be getting it because now I can get down to the river much quicker and of course the blumen field as well as the local bakery for fresh rolls.

Tune in tomorrow for pics of the new bike and the gladioli.  I know, I’m sure you can hardly wait.