Oof.

I'm tired. Being "on" all the time is exhausting to me. So far the visit is going reasonably well, truly. I mean, it's comedic for sure, but everyone is, at least so far, on their best behavior, and there have been no shocking episodes so far.

But good lord, I'm tired. Thank god I have Twitter to turn to in order to remind me of exactly what happened yesterday that made me so tired. Let's see:

• First (and while I was on a conference call), Torsten's parents dug out the vacuum cleaner and vacuumed the entire upstairs, which we had just vacuumed the day before. Also, they dug out the old vacuum cleaner, which barely even works. No wonder it took them so long.
• When I got off the phone, I looked out the window to see them in the backyard. Which, fine, except they weren't, like, hanging out on the patio. They were marching around the yard, inspecting it quite thoroughly.
• When I actually walked outside to see what was going on, they asked if they could mow the lawn. I didn't know what to say. Also I thought it was a weird question. And it was 90 degrees out and boiling hot. And Torsten wasn't there to help. So I said something about "heiss" ("hot") and pointed at the sun. I am a very effective communicator.
• They said they wanted to buy some groceries for breakfasts, and also have lunch, so we sent them off to Whole Foods in their rental car with our GPS (thank god it can be set to German). We were a little nervous about their driving--the rental car is an automatic and Torsten's dad isn't so comfortable with that (he has always slammed on the brake while accelerating multiple times, thinking it was the clutch), and this makes him do other scary things like stop in the middle of the exit ramp to figure out what's going on, or drive at 40 mph on the interstate. So when they hadn't come back 3 hours later, we started to get a little nervous.
  
• Finally they showed up, and we still don't know what in the hell they were doing at Whole Foods for three hours, but that does truly seem to be the only place they went. Then I was stuck awkwardly entertaining them for a couple hours until Torsten got back from his meeting. It turned out to actually not be that bad. Yes, as Sizzle pointed out, it is like playing charades, but at least we can use SOME words. Right?

But hey, for all the awkwardness and the struggles and the weird stuff, they are trying and so are we and they are being nice and so far it's going well. Also, they brought us Lindt chocolate that you can't get in the US, and fancy face cream for me and a really freaking nice watch for Torsten. And gifts usually help make most things better, am I right?