Let's start with yesterday. By the time I was done with everything I needed to do I was just too exhausted to write an update, so I just went to bed. Olaf was in Switzerland and Esther was sick as a dog and slept all day, so I was basically on my own all day. Meaning I was 100% responsible for the kids, not that a had the whole day to myself. So here are some highlights from that whole experience:
-Amelie found a friend during our morning walk, and she swiftly and immediately pinned him to the ground and I nearly crapped myself. But the dogs had previously established that Amelie is the dominant one, and they just played for about 10 minutes and everything was ok. She also uprooted a sugar beet that was bigger than her head and carried it around the whole time.
-Gustav has an audio cassette called "Baby Born hat Geburtstag" (Baby Born is a doll, for
those of you who don't know, and it's all the rage over here) and he listened to it over, and over, and over again, all day.-Pauline had diarrhea, so that was fun. What made it even better was the fact that it didn't seem to bother her, so by the time you realized that you needed to change her, she was a complete and utter mess. Lovely.
-I had to push Pauline in the stroller when I took Amelie for her afternoon walk, which was exhausting. Those things don't really work too well over rocks and mud and lumpy grass.
-While Gustav was playing with the neighbors, Pauline pulled all of the tape out of his cassette and I had to wind it all back together before Gustav got home and murdered somebody.
-The kids fought over the last bottle of apple juice, so I had to hide it and tell them it was all gone.
-Pauline said "Uh, oh, mein Penis," when I was getting her ready for bed, and I just had to laugh.
-As I was putting her to bed, Pauline started crying because she wanted her Eisbaer, so when she wasn't looking Esther opened her bedroom door really quickly and threw the stuffed polar bear into the hallway so that I could shut Pauline up and the kids wouldn't know that Esther was awake. That made me laugh, too.
Fortunately, Gustav didn't really give me any trouble. He refused to go with me to take Amelie for a walk in the morning because he knew his mom was still at home, so I left both of the kids and went by myself. When it came time to get him ready for bed, though, there was no problem. He didn't fight with me (only a little play fighting) and was reluctant to go upstairs only until I promised him he could continue playing when he was ready for bed. He reminded me of this when I tried to put him in bed after dinner. It was actually really cute because I told him he could only play for a little bit, he agreed, and after about 3 minutes he simply put down his Legos, got into bed and told Pauline it was time for them to go to sleep. According to Esther, that's typical Gustav. You make a deal or arrangement with him, and you can trust that he'll stick to it. He just needs to have the opportunity to show his own responsibility.
So yesterday was my total mom day, and today was my total moron day.
I took the car into Frechen at around 1:30 or 2 so that I could walk around, maybe do a little shopping. I was in this one little store and had found a clock and a couple other things for my room, and I had to leave everything there because I needed to go to the bathroom. Most places don't actually have a restroom in them, at least not for the public, so I had to go find one. I spent the next hour trying to find a freakin' bathroom. There were 2 public restrooms, but they were both locked and inaccessable, and most of the shops and things were closed anyway because it was a Saturday. Finally I found a drugstore where one of the women was able to take me to the employee restroom. She had to enter a code to access their back room, take me up a spiral staircase to the second floor, and wait there for me so that she could let me out of the backroom again. It was awesome.
By the time I had that all taken care of, it was 3:50 and the few places that were open were going to be closing in 10 minutes (if they hadn't closed already). So I didn't get to go back and get the stuff I left in that one store, and I didn't really get to do any other shopping, either.
When I went back to the garage to get in the car and go home, I couldn't find the car. I thought it was just because I was in the wrong part of the garage, I went in a different door that I came out of, whatever. So I went back up to the street to find the same door that I came out of, and it was locked. Crap. This was not a good sign, because it meant that I wasn't as lost as I thought I was, but I still couldn't find the car. It turns out that they close off and lock certain parts of the garage at certain times. I parked in a section that they locked at 4. I couln't even get to the car, let alone get the car out. Oh, and the battery on my phone had died. I managed to catch a woman who lived in the building above the garage as she was opening the door (you know, the one that I came out of but was now locked) and she confirmed that they lock everything up. She was in a hurry to catch a tram, so I didn't bother her any further. I just sat on a bench outside, looking up Olaf's number in my iPod so that I could call and tell him what happened.
Just as I was about to go find a payphone, the same woman came out to find me. She told me that she was going to help me and just catch the next tram. Because she has access to the building, she was actually able to open the door for me to get into the garage, and then she opened the gate that was closing off that section of the garage. How sweet is she?! She said that she was in a hurry because that particular tram doesn't come very often and she wanted to be sure to catch it, but she thought that helping me was more important. I need to go back and find this woman and give her a gift or something. Where in America will you find someone who's willing to do that for a stranger?
That wasn't the end of my adventure, though. The car was completely out of gas (the light was on and it was beeping at me) so I had to make it back to the gas station in Koenigsdorf before I got stranded. It's a good thing that the guage says Diesel on it, because otherwise I would never have thought to put that in there. I went in to pay the attendant (I only had 11 Euro) and then pumped the gas. For any of you who have ever been to Europe, you probably already know what's wrong with this situation. So I'm pumping the gas, and I figure it has to have filled 11 Euro worth, so I look at the pump. 13,25 Euro. Shit. So I had to find another 2,25 in the car to go back inside to pay for the extra gas that I got. The boy explained to me, in English, that in Germany you pump first, pay later. Oops. I totally knew that, too.
Finally, when I got home, I realized that I no longer had my coffee tumbler with me. It was the one that Esther bought for me at Starbucks last week, and I probably left it at the store that I walked out of to find a bathroom. I'm really bummed about that. Maybe if I go back they'll have it, otherwise I need to buy myself a new one. That'll have to wait until next week, though. I'm done with this week.
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