Three questions

Thank you guys so much for your comments yesterday. It's great to see all the positive things happening in everyone else's lives! I got about 10 hours of sleep last night, and I woke up today feeling much better--but then as I was getting ready to leave for work, I started feeling really nauseous. So now I'm working from home today, although if I start feeling better in the afternoon, I may go into the office. The funny thing is that other than feeling like I might puke at any moment, I feel totally fine. Is that normal? Has that ever happened to any of you?

But hey, it's Friday, which means that if I do go into the office, I can wear jeans, and then there's a whole weekend ahead of us! Assuming this nausea doesn't turn into something worse, that is. Otherwise the weekend will suck. I have an appointment for a haircut tonight (but not a drastic one, for those few readers who remember the discussion we had about this back in August--I still want to grow it out so I'll have more options at the wedding), so I am hoping that I feel okay enough by then to be able to make it.

Also, everyone in my office got an invitation to this Christmas tree party this weekend at a nearby Christmas tree farm. The farm claims to have all types of Christmas trees, fresh, up to twelve feet tall, all at the same price of $50, which is incredibly cheap, at least for this area where big trees usually cost at least $100. It's so cheap that the demand for this farm's party is incredibly high, to the point where it's invitation only. Torsten and I both want a tree, but we would have to get a Zipcar to bring it home, which would raise the price, and also we'd have to get a Christmas tree stand and figure out where to put it in the apartment, and take care of it, and then eventually get rid of it. And also, we won't even be home from December 20-26, so we'd only get to enjoy it for about three weeks.

So! Rationally, we've decided not to go to this party. But damn it, I want a tree, and I have some decorations for it, and I've never had my own tree before, and three weeks is still a nice amount of time to enjoy the tree, and this would be such a good price. But on the other hand... it's an expense, a mess, and a hassle, and we'll get to enjoy my parents' Christmas tree on Christmas itself anyway. So I don't know what to do.

So, in summary, I have three questions for you:

1. Have you ever felt nauseous without any other symptom? And NOT because you are pregnant, because I am 100% sure that I am not.
2. Should we get a Christmas tree this year or not?
3. What are your plans for this weekend?
   

Mind over matter

Last night was a rough night, involving an extended 3:00 AM phone call from a friend having some relationship issues after I had already gone to bed much later than normal. Thus today I am functioning on not very much sleep and even though the workday hasn't even started, I am already feeling out of it. I put on full makeup today, including some desperately-needed under-eye concealer, which I don't usually wear. The idea is to trick myself into feeling as alert as I look. So far, it isn't working.

So, let's see. Time to try mind over matter. Let's focus on the positive. Hmm. It may be time for a list.

1. I met one of Torsten's best friends, who lives in England, when we were in Germany. Then earlier this week the two of them were talking online and his friend submitted her official opinion of me: "She's a great girl... you lucky bugger!" There's nothing quite like being appreciated by your significant other's friends.

2. My volleyball team won our quarterfinal playoff game last night. Next week is the semifinals and, if we win those, the finals. We went out for a drink after we won last night and I actually got to know my teammates, which felt good as I've felt sort of like an outsider all season since they all knew each other beforehand and I did not.

3. Seeing other people's relationship problems somehow makes me feel very solid in my own relationship. Not that I enjoy other people's sadness, because I truly do not, but seeing the issues that other people are having makes me look at my own relationship in those lights, and no matter what light I look at it in, my relationship with Torsten is great. Torsten is great. I'm incredibly lucky.

4. My boss is being super-nice and told me that if I need to leave early, or even go home and sleep for awhile and then work from home, I can. Unfortunately, I have work to get done this morning and a meeting I can't miss this afternoon. But still, I'm lucky to have a boss to whom I can even talk about this stuff in the first place, and who is so supportive about it.

5. I remembered to take something out of the freezer to defrost in my half-asleep daze this morning, which means I will actually be able to cook dinner tonight. This is serious progress for me, as usually I can't remember to do that even when I have had enough sleep.

Okay, well, that didn't really work. I still don't feel terribly positive. I feel tired, and also emotionally drained. Perhaps doing some work will make me feel both productive and distracted. (What a novel idea.) I'm going to try that technique. Also, let's try the power of persuasion: what positive or upbeat things are happening in your life right now?

DCBlogs Photography Contest

DC Blogs is having a photography contest with a theme: "What Inspires You?" Each person can have two entries, so here are mine. They have a common theme--both DC structures in detail, colored and lit and three-dimensional, against the September sky.



I moved to this city because I loved it, and I still do. I think it's beautiful, and I love that it isn't towering and enclosed like New York. I love that you can see the sky from anywhere, that the city incorporates nature, that there are so many majestic structures here. I love the museums and I love the colourful buildings in neighbourhoods like Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan. I love the big, fancy, national buildings and I love the little clumps of older buildings.

If we ever move away from DC, I'll miss the architecture for sure. There's something about those buildings and the way they occupy their space that really gets to me, in a good way.

Seven fascinating tidbits

Well, the fabulous novelist Katie Morton tagged me for that seven things meme, which, amazingly, I haven't done yet even though I've seen it everywhere. So, seven random things about me:

1. I can't whistle or wink or raise one eyebrow at a time. My facial muscles are deficient, apparently.

2. I hardly ever cry. But when I do, it's usually about really small, apparently inconsequential things. Probably I'm really crying about all the big stuff that I didn't cry about at the time that all adds up. Something about the last straw breaking the camel's back, or something.

3. I love to look at apartment listings and houses for sale all over the world and imagine living in those places. I am dying to own a house and completely furnish it and decorate it, possibly with professional help. I only wish that sort of project were in our budget.

4. I really like my job, but after this, I don't want to work in public health again. I like it in theory but in practice it just doesn't engage me that much. I love the writing and the editing, and those are the aspects I want to stick with.

5. You know how some people are addicted to shoes? Well, I'm addicted to sweaters. It might be because my feet are size 11 and it's difficult to find cute shoes in that size (although it's gotten much easier over the past few years), but I absolutely love sweaters. I can never own enough.

6. I have a scar under my right nostril from where I fell off my bike when I was six and a piece of gravel went up my nose. It required stitches inside my nose, which was so difficult and slow for the doctor to do in such a tiny, child-size nostril that the Novocaine wore off partway through and the next time he poked the needle in, it was incredibly painful. Originally they told me I was going to need plastic surgery to remove the scar, but it pretty much faded on its own. It's almost unnoticeable now, although for a few years in elementary school, it was more prominent and people were constantly telling me that I needed to wipe my nose.

7. One of my pet peeves is when people pronounce the word "idea" as though it has an R on the end. I realize that my readers are from all over the country (and world, to some extent) and that therefore some of you probably pronounce that word that way. If so, my apologies--I don't mean to offend. I don't mind hearing it once or twice, but somehow Torsten picked up that pronunciation (probably when he was living in England), and it drives me absolutely crazy when he says it. Whenever he says "idear," I always shout, "IDEA!"

Sisters

My sister is two and a half years older than me. I've posted about her before, briefly. We both live in the DC area and we get along very well. We haven't always, though. We never hated each other, but we fought a lot when we were younger. Stupid things like who got to sit in the front seat of the car or whatever. But we were definitely squabblers. I followed her around and she hated it. She bossed me around and I hated it. She always conned me into making trades that were extremely advantageous to her when we played Monopoly. I always got jealous that my friends wanted to hang out with her when they came over.


So no, I definitely wouldn't say that we were best friends growing up. But we were always sisters, we always had that shared understanding of our lives and families that only siblings can have. Still, though, when she left home, everybody was surprised at my reaction.

Though she's only two and a half years older than me, she was always four grades ahead of me because of when our birthdays fell and because she skipped a grade in elementary school. So when she left home, it was the beginning of my freshman year of high school. She was taking a year off before college and going to Spain to live with a host family. She left five days after her 17th birthday. The whole family came to the airport to see her off.

I had hurt my ankle that day at school and was on crutches. It was before September 11, so we were all allowed to go to the gate with her. The gate was very far away from the ticket counter. I had to speed along on my crutches, which I hadn't really learned how to use, and finally gave up and ended up walking on my bad ankle, using my crutches for support. It hurt for weeks after that.

When my sister said goodbye and turned to walk down the ramp to the plane, she cried. A lot. And so did I. I remember what she was wearing--black pants and a blue and white striped top. She had a pack of mint gum so that she could clear her ears on the plane, and before she left she gave me a stick. I sobbed. So did she, but she had more reason, because she was leaving everything. I didn't think she was particularly crying about leaving me. I still actually don't know if that was really a factor.

I cried and cried. I watched her walk away down the ramp, crying, and I cried more. I wanted to stay and watch her plane take off, something my family was not in the habit of doing. My parents were so shocked by the extent of my reaction that they allowed it. We sat in the seats by the window and stared at the plane until it left the gate about half an hour later. I cried the whole time. I cried way longer than my mother.

On the way home, I chewed the mint gum, which probably wasn't a good idea, because I was still sobbing. I almost choked on the gum. My mother made a comment about how she wasn't expecting me to be so upset and I cried so hard that I could barely even answer. When we got home, I wrote a really long journal entry about how traumatized I was. I had stopped crying when I began, but writing it made me cry some more.

The amazing thing was that my sister leaving home was what made us close. We talked every week while she was in Spain. I would waste time telling her about the latest baseball games. She wrote me emails--it was the first year I'd had an email account. When she got back, I had grown several inches and I had to bend over to hug her. We've been very good friends ever since.

Stuffed

I have to admit that I'm feeling slightly smug right now, and that's because even though it was Thanksgiving, the holiday of overeating, and I didn't count points between Thursday and Saturday, I lost almost 3 pounds this week. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I'll go with it.

I'm genuinely happy about the fact that I do not really need to be counting points diligently in order to eat well--Weight Watchers has taught me healthy food approaches and normal portion sizes that apply even when I'm not counting every calorie. This gives me hope for keeping off the nearly 45 pounds that I have lost so far. My first goal was 50 by Christmas, so if I keep it up, that should be no problem. And that's a great start.

Not that Thanksgiving itself was exactly healthy. I didn't stuff my face, but I did try a bit of everything at the table, as did everyone else, and I think that might have been a bad idea, because all of us felt slightly sick afterward. Part of it was that my mom's best friend, who was going to host Thanksgiving this year, wound up in the hospital with a staph infection (she's fine now), so we ended up moving Thanksgiving to our house and sort of rushing through the meal so that we could go visit her in the hospital. It was probably the fastest Thanksgiving meal I've ever eaten. Also, the turkey weighed 26 pounds and there were eight of us. Let's just say there were some leftovers. In fact, we're lucky the damn thing fit in the oven.

Oh, and also? We drove down to North Carolina on Wednesday evening, leaving DC at around seven. Guess how long the drive took? Four hours! Guess how long it normally takes, without holiday traffic? Four and a half hours! What the hell? Seriously, for a while there we were afraid we had the wrong weekend or something. In a good way.

I hope you all had a great holiday. Who's glad to be back?

Good thing turkey is a lean protein

Yesterday afternoon, our CEO sent out an email announcing that the office would be closing early today, at three p.m., in honour of Thanksgiving. Which, in theory, is very nice. Except that, in practice, we still have to bill our 40 hours this week and he did not provide a billing code for those two to three missing hours. And apparently everyone in my hardworking department ignores such things, which means that if I leave early, I'll look like a slacker. And even if I do leave at three, it won't help us get on the road any earlier, because Torsten still has to work until at least five.

But still. It's a nice gesture. And I have plenty of stuff to do today anyway, including the very tedious task of filling out separate reimbursement requests for every single book that I ordered on the company dime--all twenty or so of them. See, another nice thing this company does is give you $500 a year to spend on books or publications relevant to your job. So, I went ahead and dropped $500 on Amazon, which made me very happy (and also got me a lot of editing staples that I had been frustrated not to have, like, I don't know, a dictionary, and also the Chicago Manual). And now I have to fill in, sign, and photocopy thousands of expense reports in order to be reimbursed.

But hey, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right? Especially because now I have something useful to do between the hours of three and five today. Then we'll be getting on the road with my sister (and pretty much everyone else in the country) and seeing how long the normally four-hour drive will take us today. I think our Thanksgiving record is eight hours. We're hoping to avoid that monstrosity today, but we'll see.

I know a lot of you have already left for your various holiday destinations, but for those of you who are still here and reading: what are you doing for the holiday? And also, what do you WISH you were doing?

Not quite like Savage Garden

Stephanie's post yesterday talked about how she cried in a restaurant this weekend, and it reminded me of the time that I also cried in a restaurant, earlier this year. This is the most recent event that I've written about for the Tuesday Retrospective, but things are so different now that it certainly feels like a memory more than a current event, and that's the main criterion for this feature, so I'm going to write about it anyway.

Unlike that Savage Garden song, I didn't know that I loved Torsten before I met him, although we did meet online so there was a period of about a week and a half when we were emailing back and forth without having actually met each other. And during that period, both of us knew (or suspected) that we had found something exceptional, but were afraid to admit it since it seemed so crazy, which is why we met up in person as soon as possible.

Torsten knew that he loved me very soon in our relationship, but I was slower to be sure. I'm not sure if he had a moment when he knew that he loved me, but I did--one exact event that crystallized in my head the fact that I was in love with this man. It was the Sunday of the Oscars, which I think were in late February this year, which would mean that Torsten and I had been dating for about four and a half months. We had slept late and then gone for brunch at Bread & Chocolate, which used to be one of our favourite places until we decided to try to be healthy. I don't remember what we were eating but I do remember that we were in a booth toward the back of the restaurant. It was snowing, also.

My sister had planned an Oscars party for that night and I had told her that both Torsten and I would be there, but when we were eating brunch, Torsten was saying that he didn't really feel like going, with the bad weather and the fact that we'd be out so late and the work he had to do that day. I was really upset by this and said something to him about how much it bothered me that he never wanted to do things with my friends or go out and be social (okay, "never" might be an exaggeration, but I'm not known to play fair when I'm upset, and a little drama never hurt anyone, right? Not right? Oh).

Anyway, I was getting more and more upset and Torsten was getting confused, and trying to explain himself. And then he said to me something about how he wasn't sure when I invited him to go places with my friends if I really wanted him to come or was just inviting him out of some sense of obligation. This was such a strange concept to me that I stared at him and said something like, "Why would I ever want to be without you?" And then I burst into tears.

See, I told you I was dramatic. But damn it, it was right then, exactly then when I was sitting in the middle of Bread & Chocolate, crying in the face of my shocked boyfriend, that I knew I was in love with him. Although it was another couple of months before we actually said those words to each other.

It's amazing, now, to think that there was ever a time when I didn't know I loved him, or when he would be worried that I didn't really want him to come with me when I invited him somewhere. Because really, who wouldn't want this sweetheart to come with them everywhere they went?

Mother-in-law redux

So. We're back from Germany. The plane touched down in DC at about 7:15 last night, and we arrived at our apartment at about 10:30. The three hours in the interim were spent waiting for a tram to take us from our arrival gate to customs, waiting in two separate, very long customs lines (and yes, it so so sucks that we have to go through separate customs lines), waiting for the bus to take us to the Metro, riding the bus to the Metro, taking the Metro and changing lines and waiting a very long time for both trains, then dragging our three suitcases up the street to our apartment. Oh, and it probably took me about ten minutes to wrench our mail out of the mailbox, because it was beyond full and close to turning into a black hole.

But. We are back. Thank god.

Not that the trip was bad, because it wasn't. It was fun, it was interesting, and it was necessary. But oh my god, was it ever not relaxing. Torsten and I are both seriously looking forward to heading down to my parents' for Thanksgiving later this week and spending four days collapsed at their house, recovering from our vacation. My god.

It wasn't really any one thing, except obviously Torsten's dad's fall and subsequent surgery (which went well) and hospital stay (which should be over in a day or two). His mom was so stressed about the whole thing, and she is the type to get really easily stressed out anyway. Nothing with her ever gets done easily. There must always be huge discussion and dithering and repeated questioning, whether it's about what she'll order in a restaurant or whether her husband really needs knee surgery. It takes five minutes just to say goodnight to her, because she'll keep remembering things that she wants to say or ask. At least, that's what I think, but since I don't really understand German, I can't be sure.

It all just felt so noisy. There was always talk and chatter and the TV or the radio on in the background and it was just so different from my family environment that it was really surprising to me. It did help me get a much better understanding of where Torsten comes from, which I appreciate, but wow. It was just so much.

And also, we spent two days at the North Sea just the two of us, and then two days in Cologne visiting Torsten's best friend and his wife, who flew in from England especially to see us. His mother encouraged us to do all this, and yet when we got back, she was furious about how much time we had spent away from her, and what an ungrateful son Torsten was, and what a bad influence I was. And she was passive-aggressive about it, which is so frustrating. Even I could tell she was being passive-aggressive, just from her tone and gestures, and I don't even speak the bloody language.

The weird thing is that his mother is truly a nice person. She means well, and she truly cares about Torsten, and she took great care of us and cooked good food and was generally friendly and open. She's just so much to handle, and such a shock to my system. She's a shock to Torsten's system, too, and he's been dealing with her for 30 years.

I even ended up having a meltdown on Saturday night, which normally never happens to me--we had gone to an Italian restaurant, just Torsten and me (because his mother doesn't eat dinner and doesn't understand why other people do, and his father was in the hospital), and I had ordered one dish and received another, and hadn't realized it until it was too late to do anything about it. And then I got ridiculously, uncharacteristically upset over it, even though I knew it was totally tiny and inconsequential, and ended up crying in the middle of the street, like really crying hard, over some stupid spaghetti but really over how stressful everything was and how frustrating it is and how much I so totally did not want to listen to everyone crying and being all tragic when they said goodbye to us the next day.

And speaking of saying goodbye and crying, remember what happened last time Torsten's mother said goodbye to him? How she told him he could always come home when things didn't work out? Yeah, that's right. She said the same thing again this time, that he was always welcome to come home anytime he needed. Apparently it wasn't quite as direct as last time, and he doesn't think that she meant it to be anything against me, but she still said "you," and unlike in English where "you" can be singular or plural, she used du, which is exclusively singular. Just him. Not me.

Torsten and I discussed it in the plane, and we think the problem is that she just doesn't make me feel like part of the family. And we know part of that is the language barrier, and the distance, and the fact that Torsten has never been as close with his family as I am with mine. But his mother just doesn't view us as a unit. You would think she would, because she had (and has) the exact same problem with her mother when she married Torsten's father. But she doesn't, and it's so clear to me that she doesn't, and it makes me feel like such an outsider.

So it wasn't a relaxing trip. But it was so nice to go to the North Sea, and so so nice to finally meet Torsten's best friend, who will be the best man at our wedding, and also great to see where he grew up and what his house was like. And the nice thing about being with someone you love is that you can never really have a bad time, even if your so-called vacation is stressful, because I never have a bad time with Torsten, ever.

But still. Thanksgiving cannot arrive soon enough.

Guest Post: Jamie

Hello Internets and fellow Du Wax Loolu fans,

I have been asked by our wise Internet Leader Jess to guest post on her blog while she lollygags all over Germany with her German Man Toy Torsten and I am honored to receive the invite.

Jess found my blog, Fully Operational Battle Station, by searching for adoption blogs online and I am delighted to report that she has been digesting the weekly doses of the useless and mindless sludge that is my blog ever since! And while at it, not learning a THING about adoption. My wisdom has been FAR better spent on discussing angry hippies, meth labs and diapers as of late, all of which I have keen knowledge of.

But I also consider myself to have keen knowledge of adoption since my husband and I are in the process of adopting a young sibling set from Ethiopia. And it's probably unfair to tease someone like Jess with promises of adoption-speak and then instead displaying case after case of hardcore avoidance of the topic. BIG SLIMEY posts laced with adoption avoidance.

And it's not that I don't want to talk about adoption, it's just that adoption is really hard to talk about with certain people. And we all know that I avoid hard whenever possible. Hard chores, hard jobs, hard discussions….. I know not of these things.

But here it goes. Because I promised Jess. And if I start frothing at the mouth due to the sudden jolt in hard blog topic, please understand that it may take a few posts about Gossip Girl and Britney Spears to get me back to my normal mental state. (Project Runway, I love you and I'm so excited you're back on, I missed you so much)

So, I'm just going to put it out there. Any and all angry rants and ignorant comments should be directed towards ME and NOT JESS. I will protect you Jess from that which seeks to spew ignorance, that which is usually adoptive parents.

Adoptive Parents. We've got it ALL WRONG guys. The whole outlook thing needs to change or our Adopted Children and all those hurt First Mothers out there will never forgive us. And really, who can blame them for resenting us when we keep running around saying things like "It was meant to be" and "Our child is SO LUCKY that we adopted her"? I know what you're doing there, sister. Who's playing the avoiding game now? You're avoiding the hard questions and the hard answers by throwing down an easy catch all. The "It was meant to be" card may work for awhile but eventually that kiddo is going to want to know EVERYTHING they can know about their first parents, their history, their lineage, their story. And that's okay. You owe them that. Don't be threatened by this. The way I see it, either don't be threatened by this or don't adopt. Well, you could adopt a cat. But not a child.

Secondly, the kid is not going to feel grateful that you adopted them. They won't thank you daily for "saving them". So, don't make them feel like they should. If you are looking for praise, possibly a career in Trust Fund Baby would better suite you? Or Hotel Heiress? Possibly an apprenticeship in Teen Pop Star? NOT Adoptive Mother. And by the way, there's no apprenticeship here so you have to get it right the first time. Scary thought, I know.

Moving on. Let's discuss agencies. People, PLEASE pick a good agency! I swear, Adoptive Parents do more research in picking out cars than they do in researching their agency. THE AGENCY IS REALLY IMPORTANT! PICK A GOOD AGENCY! GAH! Here. Here is a checklist:

• Pick one that tries (TRIES) to help the Mother/Family keep the child. If Domestic, pick one that offers extensive counseling and if International, pick one that offers financial assistance plans to the families.
• Pick one that is an advocate for open adoptions. If Domestic, pick one that lets you keep in touch with the first families and not only that but encourages it and if International, pick one that encourages you to meet with relatives and first families and gather as much information as you can.
• Pick one that is involved in Humanitarian Aid, especially in International Adoptions. IE: Giving BACK to the villages and communities that these beautiful children come from. Building schools, clinics, wells etc…
• Pick one that you are comfortable with, will communicate with you and won't piss you off.
• DON'T pick one that promises FAST placements and smooth sailing.
• If it sounds too easy, it's probably a crappy agency. Trust me, there are lots of crappy agencies out there.

I could go on and on about adoption but Jess is probably at this point regretting that she ever asked me here. She invited me into her peaceful abode and then I shat adoption controversy all over it. Heh. Sorry Jess.

The bottom line, in my opinion, is respect. Respect for the child's first family, respect for his story and his history, respect for his first Country and respect for his future emotions with being adopted.

Adoption is hard. Much harder than natural child birth, I have done that and this is harder. But if we do it right and I believe it CAN be done right, it can be the most rewarding, emotional and amazing thing. To love a child is a rewarding, emotional and amazing thing no matter how that child got into your arms.

And…. Cut! We made it through an adoption post together my friends. And look, no frothing! Just a slight twitch in my left eye.

Nordseekrabben

Right now we're in Cuxhaven, a town on the North Sea that is an extremely popular tourist destination in the summer and more or less dead in the winter. The reason for the deadness in the dead of winter became clear as soon as we got out of the car: the biting wind that snaps right through your coat and nineteen layers of sweaters as though you were naked. This place is beyond freezing.



My fiance brought me here under false pretenses, claiming that it was a mere three or four hour drive from his parents' house and just absolutely gorgeous. The hotel, he swore, was absolutely to die for at low off-season rates. The drive turned out to be seven hours, and we accidentally reserved the wrong hotel. However, the hotel we are actually staying in is also fairly nice, and the drive goes by fast when you aren't the one at the wheel. And we have a gorgeous view of the sea from our hotel room. And when you shut your eyes, you can pretend the loud rushing noise outside the window is the waves crashing, not the wind howling.



Luckily, the attempted ban on shopping has been lifted, and we've purchased a few charming things, including a stuffed walrus for my collection and a charming ceramic lighthouse for Torsten's grandmother. I also got a giant, two-foot tall book called "Das Grosse Bunte Buch Der Tiere," which means "The Giant Coloured Book of Animals." It's really cute and I have sworn to use it to learn lots of German names for animals and colours. (I was forced to make this promise, as my original justification for the purchase was that our future children would love it, and for some reason Torsten thought it was a tad early to be buying books for our kids.)



How is everything going with you? What have I missed?

Guest Post: Stephanie

Many of you know me as Stephanie from This Corner of the Earth, but today I have the honor and privilege of giving you a Tuesday Retrospective while Jess is in Germany. When Jess asked us what she should do about her blog when she'd be away, I was thinking Guest posters! Pick me!. A couple days later, when I received an email from Jess asking me to guest post for her Tuesday Retrospective, I got really excited. I am cool and I love Jess! Then really nervous. I suck and don't have anything to write about! Anyhow, I'm thrilled to be able to keep up the Tuesday tradition while she's is gone. She is a fantastic writer and more importantly, a sweet, kind and thoughtful person whose comments have helped me through some tough times and I'm so glad we're gotten to be bloggy friends over the past few months!

I wanted to be a professional dancer for all of my childhood. I don't remember how I first got into dancing, but in kindergarten, my mom signed me up for ballet and tap classes at "Miss Donna's" dance studio. Each year at Miss Donna's culminated in June with a studio-wide recital where our parents and grandparents and unfortunate siblings watched a two-hour (much too long) montage of young girls in sequined tulle costumes dancing to various show tunes.

I was always the tall one, always in the back row, center, so as to make the formations symmetrical and I loved my place in the semi-spotlight. For my first recital, my class danced to "Easter Parade", complete with wicker hats and a chorus line-esque kick sequence at the end of the routine. We were five years old.

Thanks, Mom, for the blue eyeshadow and flaming cheeks.

I loved my first year of dancing at Miss Donna's and was an above average dancer (for a five year old) so my mom signed me up for year after year, dumping hundreds of dollars into costumes I'd wear for one number in that glorious annual recital.

When I was about ten years old, my class and I had a killer tap dance to "King of New York" from Newsies (which I still have not actually seen) that won us trophy after trophy at competitions around the state. I still know every word to that song and can probably still tap my way through half of the routine. That same year, we had a ballet routine to a Nutcracker Suite medley and in the beginning of the year, when Miss Donna announced that one girl would get to dance as Clara and the rest would be toy soldiers, I immediately thought of my friend Erika. She was tiny, seemingly breakable, and a fantastic dancer at that. She had been in small roles in the Rochester City Ballet and I envied her. I thought I would be a toy soldier in the back row, center, as usual. When Miss Donna announced that I would be Clara, I thought it would finally be my break into a professional dancing career. My performance was fine, I got to exit the stage on a sleigh and I may have emphasized the fact that I had a SOLO performance to my fellow dancers a bit too often, but a professional dancer I was not.

Maybe this costume is why I never became a professional dancer?

As I got older, I added jazz, modern, lyrical and pointe to my weekly class schedule and was still the tall girl in the center of the back row. Because of my size (I was certainly thin, but I don't remember the last time I was shorter than 5'8") I knew I would never become a dancer with the American Ballet Theater, let alone the Rochester City Ballet, so my entrepreneurial spirit led me to want to open a dance studio instead. I was a good dancer and also very organized so I thought it would've been the perfect job for me.

As I entered my first year of high school, after a two year hiatus from the real world spent being homeschooled, I was overwhelmed with my new friends, changing classes at each bell, figuring out where to sit at lunch and opening my locker that dance was pushed to the end of my to-do list. My new friends were cheerleaders and so naturally, I wanted to be a cheerleader. My mom recognized the time crunch that would occur if I were to do both activities so she made me choose one. I chose cheerleading.

At Nationals senior year of high school. I'm on the left. And the gigantic Minnie Mouse bows? Don't ask.

Cheerleading became my life and I continued it for four years of high school and all three years of college. Go Mustangs! Go Eagles! was my mantra for 7 years and I met great friends, was in fantastic shape and had so much fun during that time. But I have always looked back and wondered what I could've done had I not chosen cheerleading. Had I picked the passion that I'd had my whole life. I may have opened a dance studio or continued my dance education into college, or I may have ended up exactly where I am right now. Now, as an adult, I take dance classes at the gym and that's enough to keep living out my childhood dreams.

Where or what would you be if you'd followed your childhood dreams?

Photos! And a bad day.

This morning, Torsten and I planned to drive up a mountain near his parents' house to take in (and photograph) the great and apparently famous view. We stopped for lunch on the way at a little restaurant run by a rural German family with accents so thick that even Torsten could barely understand them. We had a delicious meal, and then some woman ran into Torsten's car. He was stopped, waiting for me to come back from the bathroom, and she reversed right into him. Apparently some people don't find it necessary to look behind them while backing up.

She was driving very slowly when she hit him, and nobody was hurt, but both cars had some damage--her back bumper was all scraped and the side panel of Torsten's car had a dent and a bunch of missing paint. The woman who hit him had these two other women in her car and the three of them were all talking very loudly in German, and everyone was discussing and I didn't understand what anyone was saying and it was very frustrating. I was trying to tell Torsten that he should call the police to file a report, since the woman was not being cooperative and was not willing to accept the blame for the accident. Then the restaurant owner came out and everyone talked really loudly at the same time, and it was just a madhouse. At some point Torsten had the presence of mind to get the camera out of the car and take pictures of the accident scene, and to write down her license plate number.

She wanted us to go with her to her car dealer to see how much her guy thought it would cost, so that Torsten wouldn't try to slap her with a huge bill, so we followed her there, where she was still so freaked out that she parked her car in the middle of two spaces and then stalled out when she tried to readjust. Everyone calmed down when the dealer said the damage probably wouldn't cost more that much, even though the entire side panel of Torsten's car would have to be taken off. The woman gave Torsten her contact information and more or less acknowledged that the whole thing was her fault and that she'd be paying, and then we headed to Torsten's car dealer to get an estimate for the repairs. Before we left, though, Torsten called his dad to make sure it wasn't necessary to file a police report.

But when he called his dad, his mom answered the phone and told him that his dad had fallen and hurt his knee. Apparently he was walking down the stairs and missed the last step and fell. They were waiting for the ambulance, and we were to meet them at the hospital. So we drove like mad to the hospital and met Torsten's parents there in time to see his dad get an X-ray. Then they brought us into a surgeon's office to wait to have a chat. We waited maybe 15 minutes, which felt like nothing compared to how long the waits are in most American hospitals. Or at least, it would have felt like nothing if the man in the next office hadn't been quite audibly vomiting everywhere. I have never heard anyone gag or throw up like that before--the noises were incredibly dramatic and horrifying, and people kept running by with mops.

The doctor came in and did an ultrasound, and it turned out that he partially tore the muscle away from the bone just above his knee, and will need an operation to fix it. They're going to wait a few days for the swelling to go down, then they'll operate, he'll spend a few days in the hospital, then he'll make a full recovery in four to six weeks. So it could have been worse, but it was extremely traumatizing and the worst luck ever to have a car accident and a nasty fall on the same day.

Plus, just to make it all worse, today is Torsten's mother's birthday. She had to call all the friends who were coming to the party this evening to cancel, and when we got back from the hospital, we cooked some of the food she'd bought for the party and we all collapsed in the living room, where we still are now. Torsten's dad is in a leg brace and has crutches, but isn't really in pain and is being very calm about the whole thing. His mom is rather more upset, but she seems to be doing better.

So, we did not end up driving up the mountain for the view, so the only pictures on the camera from today are the pictures of the accident scene, which I'm not going to post. But! I do have a few photos from the weekend that I can share.

Ich bin in Deutschland.

I'm super jet-lagged right now, and exhausted, but trying to hold out before falling asleep so that I can adjust to the time difference. So we are sitting in front of the fire in Torsten's parents' house and I wanted to blog, but I'm too tired to write any more than a collection of impressions. So:

Even though the flight was direct, it was still way too long, especially for Torsten, who's a good 6'4" tall. He just about fit into his seat until the person in front of him tilted their seat back. I slept for a total of about three uneasy hours in the plane, but Torsten didn't sleep at all. I can sleep deeply pretty much anywhere except in a plane. I wish business class weren't so bloody expensive.

His parents' house is very nice, and his mother thoughtfully included all sorts of personal touches, like a case of Diet Coke because she knows I drink it. When she was showing me the shower, she told me I could use her hair dryer so that I wouldn't be cold going outside with wet hair. I tried to explain to her that curly hair doesn't take well to being blown dry, and then she whipped out a brand new diffuser designed specifically for curly hair. I'm pretty sure that it came with her hair dryer and that she didn't go out and buy it specifically for me, but still. It was amazing.

Torsten's mother has already baked a cake called Donauwelle, which means Danube Wave, and it's waiting for us to eat it in the morning (though I'll be having only a small slice as it is the furthest possible thing from Weight Watchers friendly).

We went to the supermarket and for the first time, I got to go to a grocery store in another country and actually pick what I personally liked. When I lived in France and in Senegal, I never had any say in what we ate. For this meal, I picked liver, sauerkraut, and mushrooms. I wanted to be authentic, I suppose. Torsten cooked it all up and it was delicious.

Torsten's parents collect ducks, which I knew before I got here, but the sheer number of ducks in their house is absolutely astounding. There are ducks, multiple ducks, in every single room of the house, including the bathrooms. I will try to post photos of them at some point, because it truly is incredible. Apparently, his parents also call each other "duck," both in English and German, as a pet name.

My German is slightly more useful than I thought it would be. I think someday I might actually be able to learn this language.

My credit card is slightly less useful than I thought it would be. This is such a small town that most of the stores only take German debit cards. We'll have to do most of our shopping elsewhere. Luckily, Torsten's grandmother gave us a gift of 150 Euros in cash, or we would have been screwed when it came time to pay at the supermarket.

Torsten's grandmother was so happy to see him that she almost cried. She kept talking to me in German and then Torsten would start translating but before he'd finished five words, she'd be talking again. I still have no idea what she was saying to me most of the time. She'll be 89 on Wednesday.

Torsten is in his element here. The self-sufficient only child in him is so visible here. Not that he isn't self-sufficient in the US, but he just... it's such a familiar space to him, and he does everything. He was so happy to get to build a fire. Our next home will have to have a fireplace, I suspect.

This is going to be a good trip.

Items

Sorry for triggering your "help it's a history lesson get me out quick" impulses with that last post, there. I'm going to have to learn to bake, or something, so that I can share tidbits that other people are actually interested in. Though I do appreciate how many of you said that you actually were interested in what I was talking about. Even though I'm not totally sure I believe you. Anyway, let's get over that little blip with a nice, normal post. Here we go.

Item the 1st: A few people asked what I got Torsten for his birthday, and now that I've given it to him, I can say here what it was: two almost-courtside tickets to see the Dallas Mavericks, Torsten's favourite NBA team, when they come to DC to play the Wizards. And also, a Lacoste polo shirt because he had one that he loved and it has mysteriously disappeared. He liked (or claimed to like) both gifts very much. Although the shirt made him a little sad because while it is the same style as the lost shirt, and what he liked about that shirt was how comfortable it was, it isn't the same pattern, and he misses the original shirt. Also, he says thanks to all of you for the birthday wishes. He read them all last night, and smiled a lot.

Item the 2nd: Speaking of gifts, last night the picture frame we had ordered for Torsten's grandmother arrived, but we got home from Torsten's birthday dinner after our building's package room had already closed, so I had to wait until this morning to pick it up. Torsten had already left, so the plan was that I would grab the package right when the room opened at eight a.m., put the picture in the frame, tuck the frame into my suitcase, and leave for work. Except that then? The frame? Turned out to be absolutely enormous. Like, it's for an 8x10 picture, but the damn thing must be at least 18x24, if not more, with all this glass for the picture to "float" in. Meaning that there was no way I could fit it in my suitcase, and even if I could, all that glass would probably break. So we are bringing just the photo, and we will have to find a frame somewhere in Germany to put the photo in. Whoops. That's what we get for doing everything at the last minute, I guess.

Item the 3rd: There were 13 things on my stressed-out pre-Germany list, and I completed nine of them yesterday. Another two will be completed today. That leaves two that won't get done. One was clean the living room. No big deal. The other was learn German. DAMN. I SO thought I could get that done in a day. Now what the hell am I supposed to do?

Item the 4th: I took your sage advice and decided to do a mix of post types while I'm in Germany. I have a couple of guest posts arranged, and you guys will love them, because these people are hand-picked by me and their own blogs are so, so good. But I won't ruin the surprise by telling you ahead of time who they are. I also packed the USB cable for the camera so that I can upload pictures while we're there and post them. I'll also probably have enough time while we're there to write a few normal posts, and maybe even read some of yours. I'm still trying to figure out how to incorporate Flibberty's suggestion of little interactive puzzle game things. I'm hoping the answer to that one will just sort of... present itself to me while we're in Germany.

Item the 5th: It's a little weird to me that this is like... a trip abroad, but also just a normal trip off to visit the family, the same way that we hop in the car some weekends and drive to North Carolina to see my parents. Except that this requires passports. Three of them, between the two of us. This will be the first time that I use my shiny new British passport. And I'm very happy about that, because it means that I can go through the same customs line as Torsten when we get to Germany, so if there are any strange questions in German, he'll be there to help. Though I don't think there will be, as European customs officials tend, in general, to be much nicer than American ones.

Item the 6th: My suitcase is huge. I dragged it on the bus this morning, and all I can say is, if I ever even think about taking a suitcase on a bus again, will somebody please slap me? I could barely get it up the stairs on the bus, and then it barely fit in the aisle, and everyone gave me dirty looks, and it was just generally horrible and I sat there feeling like a pariah the whole time. And my suitcase is beautiful and purple and should never have bad feelings associated with it.

Item the 7th: Torsten is trying to forbid me from shopping in Germany, including Christmas shopping, because the dollar is so weak right now. Let's see who wins that battle, shall we?

Why I wanted to learn Wolof

Lots of people have been sharing helpful lessons recently, like recipes, costume ideas, and tips on Avon products. I always want to do useful things like share tips too, but what I've come to realize is that I'm just not that helpful with little practical tidbits like everyone else seems to be.

But still! I want to do my part to enlighten my readers, and there is something that I actually want to talk about today, even though it is not really very useful at all. The reason I want to talk about this is because it came up in a conversation with a coworker yesterday, and it transpired that she had studied only science in college and knew absolutely nothing about the subject, and then I thought back and realized that I also knew more or less nothing about the subject until I started taking very specific classes in college myself.

I want to talk a little bit about general African history, and colonization, and tribal languages versus official languages. But I don't want to make it boring. I don't want it to be some dull history lesson that you all just roll your eyes at and move on to the next post in your Google Reader because NaBloPoMo is killing you with posts. And for me, this is personal. So it is history, but it is also about me, like most of this blog, and I can only assume that you like reading about me, because you are the ones who come here every day to see what I've posted, and what I've posted is usually about myself in one way or another.

Okay! The point here is that I was chatting with a coworker about my impending (and I do mean impending--i.e., we are leaving for the airport in just a few hours) trip to Germany, and she was asking if I spoke any German, and I was saying that I was trying to learn but that it was going slowly. And then--and this is where the segue comes in--I mentioned that one of the issues I'm having with my attempts to learn German is that I keep trying to use Wolof words instead of German ones. And then she asked what Wolof was.

For those of you who don't know, Wolof is an ethnic language spoken in Senegal, the Gambia, and Mauritania. To be specific, it is the primary ethnic language spoken in Dakar, where I spent six months studying. The reason I say "ethnic" is because Wolof is also the name of an ethnic group found in west Africa, and it is people of the Wolof ethnicity who speak the Wolof language. I am also referring to it as ethnic language to distinguish it from the official language of Senegal, which is French.

Most people know that almost all of the countries in Africa were colonized by various European countries during the 1800s, and that most of them have only regained their independence in the last 40 to 50 years. But usually that's about all they know. That's all I knew until I took on an African Studies minor in college and started learning more about the continent and its history.

When I say that these nations "regained" their independence, I'm kind of mischaracterizing the situation, because it's not as though the countries all existed independently before the 1800s, when they were taken over by European governments. Before then, Africa was not divided up into the countries that we know now. What happened was that European countries started to take an interest in Africa in the 1880s, and that interest led to what is known as the Scramble for Africa, wherein a bunch of European nations tried to gain control of as much of Africa as possible.

Then the Europeans started to realize that having free trade and cooperation among the rivals would actually be in the best interest of all the colonizing nations. So, in 1884, the leaders of 12 European nations met at the Berlin Conference, where they essentially divided up the continent of Africa amongst themselves down more or less arbitrary lines. This is why the Wolof people are found in three different countries. Lines were drawn through homelands of various groups of people delineating different countries, and it didn't matter that half of a tribe might live in one country and the other half now lived in another.

This is also part of the reason why there are so many different languages spoken in most African countries, and also part of the reason why in many ways it has been very difficult for many African countries to establish functional governments in the wake of colonization--because there were huge groups of people who had nothing in common with one another who were suddenly struggling with how to run a country, and often the best interests of the different groups clashed.

Anyway, the point here is that this sort of methodical distribution of sections of Africa led to various countries having European official languages. Senegal's official language is French because France colonized it, and so on. (By the way, the reason that you don't meet many German-speaking African people is because Germany was forced to give up its colonies after World War I.)

But because the European colonizers weren't, for the most part, interested in integrating with the native African people living in their colonies, most African people didn't really learn their countries' official languages. Now, post-colonization, most countries retain those official languages, generally for the purposes of unity within the country, but even still, they are used only in schools and governments. Uneducated and illiterate people largely do not speak the official language of their countries, but only the language of their ethnic group or region. Even those who do go to school and learn the official language still converse with their families and friends in their own language. And in recent years, many African nations have become very concerned about preserving African languages and the linguistic diversity of the continent.

This is why I tried to learn Wolof when I was in Senegal. And it was difficult, because Wolof sounds absolutely nothing like the two languages I already spoke when I arrived in Senegal, French and English. French was a language that was imposed upon Senegal by a colonizing force and is structured completely differently from Wolof. Wolof is mostly an oral language that doesn't have its own alphabet or anything. When people want to write it, they use the French alphabet and spell words phonetically.

As far as I know, there's no official spelling for Wolof, and even my Wolof teachers in Senegal would spell the same word differently on different days. Since official documents and schoolwork are always written in French, there is little official need to be able to write in Wolof--but young people send text messages to each other in Wolof, and many people concerned about preserving the Wolof culture and heritage want to write in Wolof, publish in Wolof, express themselves in Wolof because that is their language, their native tongue.

Wolof is definitely influenced by French, though. Many recently developed words like "globalization" and "computer" do not have equivalents in Wolof, so Wolof speakers use the French words when talking about those things. It is totally common to hear two people chatting in Wolof and to be able to pick out a handful of French words in their speech. Even if there is a Wolof equivalent, if the French word comes to mind first, the speaker will often use it. This blended style is much more common in cities, and a much purer form of Wolof can be heard in rural parts of Senegal.

But Wolof is hard to learn if you've never been exposed to it before. It sounds totally different from all other languages, and it took me a full month to even be able to distinguish one word from another when listening to spoken Wolof. I still can't make many of the sounds, and the sentence structure is still foreign to me. I made a lot of progress when I was there, but I was never able to get the accent down--I always spoke Wolof with a French accent, much as I tried not to. And now that I've been back from Senegal for over two years, I've forgotten almost all the Wolof I knew.

But I guess I haven't really forgotten it as much as I've lost access to it in my mind--because as I struggle to learn German, I find more and more Wolof words and phrases coming to mind. It's hidden back there, in the "learning languages" file, and now it pops up most inconveniently when I'm searching for a word in what will be the fourth language I learn.

So, for those of you who made it this far, tell me: Did you already know all of that African history? Did you find it interesting? Or could you really have cared less?

Germany: A stressed-out list

First of all, today is Torsten's birthday! I might possibly be more excited about this than he is, but still: Happy birthday, sweetie. I love you so much. And also, I really think you are going to like your birthday present. And then maybe you'll be more excited about your birthday. I'm sorry you're grumpy about not being in your 20s anymore, but I have six more years of it, so I'll be in my 20s enough for both of us. How about that? Sound like a deal?

Err, anyway. We are leaving for Germany tomorrow evening, going to the airport directly from work. Which means that today is the day for me to accomplish the following things:

• Clean the kitchen and empty the trash so we don't get bugs while we're gone
  
• Do many loads of laundry
• Pack my smaller suitcase full of all the clothing I will need in Germany, including lots of warm clothes since apparently it will be cold at the North Sea
• Fit my smaller suitcase inside my larger suitcase that I am bringing in case we do lots of shopping, so that I only have to drag one suitcase to my office tomorrow
• Straighten our living room and bedroom and organize some things so that it won't be horribly depressing when we get back
• Put together the birthday presents we got for his mother and grandmother (his whole family was born in November, apparently, except his dad)
• Put our newspaper subscription on hold so that we don't end up with a huge pile of newspapers in front of our door, screaming, "Rob us!"
• Send contracts to a DJ and a hotel for the wedding, and tell another DJ that we aren't going to be using his services
  
• Collect wedding magazines to read on the plane
• Figure out how we're going to get to the airport tomorrow, since DC's international airport is not on the Metro
• Organize my desk at work so that people who need to use my computer to access Dreamweaver while I'm gone will not be surrounded by huge piles to the point where they can no longer see out
• Write a huge section of a website for a client
  
• Learn German

Also, you've all heard of the Autobahn, right? I always thought that it was just this one special road in Germany without a speed limit. But it turns out? That the word "Autobahn" refers to the entire highway system in the entire country of Germany, and none of the highways has a speed limit except in dangerous places or construction zones or whatever. Did you know that? Am I the only dumb one who thought it was just one road?

In any case, if anyone is in Germany next week and wants to look me up, I'll be the one hanging on for dear life in the Ford Puma that is doing over 200 kilometers per hour down the highway.

Hot lunch for a hungry man

Hey, do you all remember when I posted about that man in the grocery store that my mom wanted me to slip money to when I was in high school? And how I got too shy to do it and have wished that I had done it for years since?

Well, your comments on that post reminded me that just because I didn't help that man didn't mean that I couldn't help other people. So, today I went to buy a sandwich at the deli/hot bar next door to my office, and I saw this homeless man in a wheelchair sitting outside with a cup of change. I've seen him there a lot, and while I always try not to just ignore homeless people, I've always told him what I tell anyone who asks me for money, which is that I'm sorry but I don't have any cash (which is usually the case).

It's cold today, though, and it was raining this morning, and he was just kind of sitting there hunched over in his chair, and he didn't have very much money in his cup, and I saw him and he didn't even ask me for money this time. And I didn't want to give him money, because, well, you know all the standard arguments about not handing out money to homeless people on the street and who knows what they'll use it for and all the rest.

But I thought about the fact that I was about to walk into that restaurant and walk out again with food for myself that I had paid for on my credit card, and I remembered that one time when I was maybe nine years old, my family was driving to the grocery store and we passed a homeless Vietnam veteran with a cardboard sign standing on the median of the road. And when we were at the grocery store, my parents bought him a pre-made sandwich and a bottle of juice, and on our way home, we stopped to give it to him and he seemed so surprised to get it.

So I hesitated for a minute outside the restaurant, and then I figured, screw it, it only costs a few dollars and I bet he'll eat it and he doesn't look like he's eaten much recently, so I walked up to him and I said hi. And he just kind of looked at me and I said to him that I didn't have any cash but that I would buy him some lunch if he'd like. And he kind of stared at me and then he mumbled something about how that would be nice. He was talking very quietly and I had to bend over very close to him to hear.

He said yes, he'd like some lunch, so I asked him what he'd like to eat, and he took quite awhile to think about it, and then he said that maybe some chicken and rice would be nice. So I told him that I would see what they had and went inside. I placed the order for my sandwich and while they were making it, I got a to-go box and walked up and down the hot bar, looking for chicken and rice. They had turkey that looked like chicken, hot and roasted and simple, so I got a big piece of that. The only chicken they had was Cajun, and I wasn't sure if he would like that, but I put in a small piece. Then I put in a lot of rice and added a few baked new potatoes and a bunch of mixed vegetables--broccoli and carrots and cauliflower and asparagus and peppers. I kind of felt like I should put in something else, but the box was pretty full and I didn't see anything else that seemed basic and filling and healthy in the hot bar, so I closed it up.

I remembered the juice my parents bought for that homeless veteran, so I got a bottle of orange juice to go with the meal. I wanted to get the kind with added calcium, but they only had that in the little cartons and I didn't see any straws, so I just got the normal kind in a bottle that would be more drinkable.

Then I paid for my lunch and his, and packed his up in a plastic bag with a knife, a fork, a spoon, and a few napkins. I put my own lunch in a separate bag and I went back outside and I gave him the bag with his lunch in it. He asked me to hang the bag on the side of his wheelchair, which I did. Then he said thank you and I told him to have a nice day and I went back to my office.

That was it--that's all that happened. I feel vaguely good about having done it, but more sad about the fact that it was so little, and about the fact that he will probably have to eat his food in his wheelchair in the middle of the sidewalk. And I also feel bad because even though this was a good thing to do, it doesn't replace that other man in the grocery store, and the fact that I could have done something to make his day nicer, and I didn't. No matter how many homeless people I feed (and I don't think this is something I'll be doing all the time, but maybe every now and then), that other man will still not have his New Year's card with the $20. And all the homeless people in DC, and everywhere, will still be homeless.

But still. Doing something little is better than doing nothing. And I am so glad I have parents who raised me to understand that. One opportunity taken does not make up for another one lost, but at least there is one more person in this city eating a hot lunch on a cold day.

Sensitive skin

I took my first unaccompanied plane trip at the age of eight, from North Carolina to my grandmother's house near Albany, New York. It was because of this trip that my mother decided I was old enough to own a real, grown-up watch--in part because if I was grown up enough to travel by myself, I was grown up enough to take care of nice things, and in part because I wouldn't have anyone to tell me the time in the airplane.

My dad took me shopping to pick out my watch. I can picture the jewelry counter we stood at, and the lighting and layout of the store, but I'm not totally sure what store it was--possibly Wal-Mart. I was allowed to pick out any watch I wanted within a certain price range.

It was 1992, and watches like the Baby G hadn't quite caught on yet. With my always impeccable eight-year-old taste, I opted for a stylish watch much like a middle-aged woman might wear. It had an embossed leather strap, fake gold around the face, a rainbowy-hologram type face, and little fake crystals instead of numbers. I searched the internet in vain for a photo of a similar watch, but I did find one that demonstrated the basic structure:


Yeah. It was like that, except with the hologram thing and the crystals, like I said. Obviously the height of fashion for the third-grade set, except not at all. But I loved it, with a fiery burning passion that was, at the time, pretty much unequaled. My dad tolerantly agreed with me when I repeatedly insisted, "Isn't it SO PRETTY? Don't you LOVE IT?" and paid the cashier.

God damn, I was so proud of that watch. I kept it in its box until the day of my trip, reverently look at it several times each day. On the day of the plane flight, I put on the watch, and when I had to go through the metal detector at the airport, I was so proud that I got to take it off.

The day after I arrived at my grandmother's house, I woke up with my left wrist all itchy and covered in bumps. My grandmother said that it was probably poison ivy, so she slathered my wrist in calamine lotion and told me to wear my watch on my right hand so as not to irritate the rash any further. The next day, I woke up with the same rash all over my right wrist.

The doctor said that I was most likely allergic to nickel, a common allergy in kids that I might one day outgrow. The best way to tell for sure was to tape a nickel to my forearm and see if I developed a rash. I tried it, and the proof was there. Stainless steel has nickel in it, so from that point forward, I was relegated to only plastic things touching my skin.

My parents and I soon discovered that nickel touches your skin in the most unexpected ways. For instance, I would get rashes on my stomach where the back side of the button of my jeans pressed against my skin. We solved that problem by painting clear nail polish over the metal, but the watch had too much metal, including the little knob for setting the time, for that solution to work. My beautiful, stylish watch was relegated to a drawer, where I was never able to wear it again. And I cried. A lot. My parents took me to look for a plastic watch, and that was when we discovered that even plastic watches almost all have stainless steel backs. All except one, which I ended up being forced to get, more or less against my will. It looked like this:


It might have been more age-appropriate than my old-lady watch, but I hated it with as much intensity as I had loved the other watch. Even now, I can't stand Disney anything, or that particular shade of pink.

The doctor was right that the allergy would fade with time, but it never faded completely. I can only wear earrings for a few hours at a time, and if I wear a necklace on a humid day and sweat at all, I get a nasty rash on the back of my neck. So my preferred metals are gold and, of course, platinum. What can I say? Apparently, I have expensive taste, and my skin agrees.

A call for volunteers

Man. NaBloPoMo is killing me, and I'm not even participating in it. You people--you all just keep posting. And I keep reading. Instead of doing other things, like, I don't know, trying to learn some German before I go to Germany. Now what's going to happen is that I will not be able to talk to anyone I meet, but I will be able to recite by memory what every last one of you did for Halloween. Hmph.

I would shudder to think how many posts I would have waiting for me upon my return from Germany, but Torsten points out that although this is a trip to another continent, it's also sort of a ten-day family visit to his parents' house, and will involve some down time. There might be moments when I actually wind up posting in my own blog, or reading some of yours during this so-called down time. Funny to think that can happen on a trip abroad, but there we have it. So I think for the most part I'll probably have my own blog covered. Thanks for all your suggestions on my last post.

However, I'm not totally sure that I'll be able to rock a Tuesday Retrospective from Germany. Therefore, I'm looking for volunteers to write one for me. Does anyone have a fun/tragic/fascinating/deep story from their past that they would be willing to tell on my blog? Bonus points if there are pictures. If so, send me an email (address in the sidebar) and we will arrange it. I'm counting on you people to cover for me, here. I'm expecting tons of offers to come flooding in. Please?

So anyway, how was your weekend? Mine was lovely. Other than the time that I spent reading all of your blogs (which was NOT most of the weekend, I swear), I also went to a delicious pizza place in Chinatown with Torsten and a couple of friends, saw American Gangster, went to Eastern Market with a different friend, interviewed two potential wedding DJs, cooked, bought the last thing I needed in order to complete Torsten's birthday present (his birthday is Wednesday), watched Boston Legal, and got lots of sleep. What did you do?

Shoes, wedding vendors, and guest posts

Today, for the first time ever, I am wearing sneakers at work. It's casual Friday, and in the past I have worn cute flats with my jeans, but today I wanted something a little warmer on my feet, so I picked out my nicest pair of sneakers. They are narrow white and purple Pumas with a Velcro criss-cross strap instead of laces. And I have to say that while I love these shoes? And they go with my outfit? I feel a little awkward walking around the office in sneakers. I'm so used to skirts and flats or heels or boots. Even though other people are also wearing sneakers, and also my boss isn't here today (not that he would care) and neither is his boss (who might actually care).

Anyway. Now that we've all had a fascinating update on my footwear, let's talk about the wedding (I know, I've been doing a lot of that recently). Today I signed three contracts, and wrote three checks, and put them in three envelopes to mail at lunch. We now have an official caterer, photographer, and ceremony/reception site. And I am so, so excited about all three. So let me tell you about them!

We'll start with the caterer, which, in a backward-and-forward sort of way is how we found our reception site. We initially thought about going with a different site, and this caterer was the exclusive caterer for that site, so we did a tasting with them. And we ended up doing the tasting at another site that was exclusive to that caterer, and we loved the new site so much more, and it was the same price as the other one, so we changed our minds and haven't looked back since.

Anyway, the caterer is absolutely delicious. I was afraid of an exclusive caterer because I had in my mind the idea that all caterers made gross food like they serve at office luncheons, but this food was incredibly yummy, and really inexpensive. Plus they gave us a discount and I negotiated them into giving us an unlimited open bar for the cost of the standard beer and wine service. This is the beauty of getting married in November. And they offer a free Day of Coordinator, so that's another expense we don't have to worry about.

The site is here in DC, not too far from where we live. It's a big ballroom with 40-foot ceilings, two fireplaces with comfy furniture in front of them, pillars, and a dance floor in the middle. It is just gorgeous and I'm in love with the black and white marble foyer, where the cocktail hour will be held. I borrowed a couple of their (not very good) photos so you can see for yourselves. Just look at these pictures and imagine it looking like that, but a million times nicer in person.



The photographer is the same guy who photographed my sister's wedding. He gave us a $600 discount in part because he knows my sister and in part because our wedding is in the off-season. He has a photojournalistic style that is just gorgeous, and he offered to take us pretty much anywhere in the city before the wedding to take fun pictures of just the two of us. He's also just generally a really nice guy and someone I feel totally comfortable working with.

Lastly, as I've mentioned several times, Torsten and I are leaving next week to spend ten days in Germany. I'm still up in the air about what to do with my blog during that time. The two options I'm considering are pre-writing posts to be published throughout the week or asking some of my favourite bloggers to write guest posts for me (and whoever did Tuesday would have to do a Retrospective, obviously). What do you guys think? Which would you prefer?

Open letters*

Dear People Who Created This Spreadsheet,

Thank you so much for doing this research and categorizing it. I really appreciate that you have made it so much easier for me to WRITE AN ENTIRE WEBSITE in a month. Really, I do. But I do have one little thing to quibble about. You realize that my research process involves highlighters and printouts, right? So telling me the Adobe Acrobat page number DOES NOT HELP. Could you not have just LOOKED AT THE PAGE and written down the ACTUAL page number of the document, so that I would know where to look without having to open the PDF again and skip to the stupid page number that you listed? It's page 74, NOT page 24, because this PDF starts on page 50, and no it is not my fault that the other one has five unnumbered intro pages that are throwing the page numbers off. Please pay attention to what you're doing in the future or else the time that you spent trying to streamline this process will have gone to waste.

Love,
Your Angry Bitter Friendly Web Writer


Dear Weather,

It is November. NOVEMBER. So why is it 70 degrees out? Why did I eat lunch on our rooftop deck in my thin three-quarter sleeve sweater and actually feel hot? Don't you know that I have an array of warm sweaters and tweedy skirts, not to mention a shiny new pair of knee-high boots, waiting for me on the floor of my apartment in the closet? Please get back to our regularly scheduled fall weather, stat.

Love,
Jess


Dear DC Bus Riders,

I know that the bus is crowded in the morning. But let's face it, most of you are just on the bus to ride the three blocks to the Metro because you don't feel like walking. So the least you could do when you face the injustice of having to ride those three blocks standing up because all the seats are taken is to move to the back of the bus when you board. Do you realize that when you all crowd near the front door, the driver thinks the bus is full and doesn't stop for more riders? And some of us actually take the bus all the way to our offices, which means that if we miss the bus, the consequence is not just a quick walk to the Metro but actually being late for work. Please get a clue.

Love,
Jess


*Blogging Barbie gave me the idea for this with an open letter post a while back, so I can't take credit for it.

I used to like geese.

Torsten and I did not really do anything to celebrate Halloween last night. Our building has a genius system where people who want trick-or-treaters pick up a Halloween decoration at the front desk and hang it on their door. Then the kids in the building are only supposed to go to the apartments that have the Halloween doors. It's a win-win situation because it's efficient for the kids and people who don't have candy aren't bothered with tons of kids knocking on their door.

Surprisingly few apartments seemed to have the decorations on their doors, at least on our floor, but I passed some trick-or-treaters in the hallway last night with huge grocery bags bulging with candy, so it looked like they were making out okay.

Torsten and I did not decorate our door, in part because I didn't really want to have extra candy lying around the house and also because I had a volleyball game and Torsten was really busy at work.

So how was volleyball, you ask? Well, the game itself was good--we won 3-0. But the most exciting part actually occurred before the game. We were walking into the gym when a line of geese flew overhead. The scene unfolded like this:

Me: Look, geese!
My coworker: Aww. Fly south! Fly south!
Geese: [splat] [splat] [splat] [splat] [splat] [splat]

Yes, that's right. The pretty geese flying south for the winter pooped all over me. And all over the sidewalk. But miraculously, not one of my coworkers got a single splatter on themselves. I guess I took a hit for each of them--I had six charming yellowy brown spots on my shirt. Unfortunately, they were not all visible from the same vantage point, as I had them on my front, shoulder, and back, but I took a picture of a couple of the biggest ones. (This was after I had scrubbed my shirt with water in the bathroom.)


Oh, you'd like to see one of the spots up close? All right then, if you insist.


Sorry about the shadow of the camera, but I think you can get a sense of what they were like. Although you are missing the, shall we say, 3D effect of whatever half-digested food they'd eaten that I scrubbed off in the bathroom. I'm sure you're sorry not to have visual evidence of that. And also, did you know that goose poop smells? Because it does.

But hey, they say getting pooped on by a bird is good luck, and this was the first time we'd won 3-0, so I guess I took one for the team. But still. Torsten says that his mother is going to cook traditional German goose for us when we visit next week, and I had felt slightly guilty about that, having never eaten goose before, but now? Now I will dig in with a vengeance.