Last weekend was kind of interesting. On Saturday after breakfast Olaf, Esther and the kids drove to Münster to visit with Silke and Opa. They were going to stay the night and then visit Olaf's aunt the next day before coming back home. They had to pack up so much crap for the kids that it was ridiculous, totally not worth the effort
to stay one night. Anyway, after they left I headed into Köln for a little bit, just to get out of the house. I had been stuck here all week and it sucked, so it didn't really matter to me that I had nothing to do. It was getting really cold and I was bored, so I started heading back home at round 6 or 7.While I was waiting for my train, this guy sat down and started talking to me. It turns out that he grew up in Djerba, Tunisia, and actually worked at the resort that we're going to be staying at when we go there in May for vacation. It was a really weird coincidence that I met this guy less than a week after finding out about our trip to Djerba, but he told me he was from Djerba and named the resort before I had even said a word about it, so it didn't feel creepy or homicidal or anything. To the folks back home, however, it was a little too weird. It doesn't help that my dad had literally just watched the movie Taken (stupid idea!) and is now more paranoid about my safety than he was before. When I mentioned that he had asked me to meet up with him and go to a club that night Lee and my parents flipped out. Of course I got the whole spiel about being careful, don't go anywhere private with this guy, never leave your drink unattended, all that stuff, plus a few extra precautions were made in terms of being able to check up on me. Unfortunately my phone didn't work so well in the club, and this caused a minor panic back home, but in the end everything was completely fine and I had a great time. I even met a really sweet girl named Camilla who used to be an au pair in Santa Barbara. We were standing in line together waiting for the bathroom, and she was drunk and talking to everyone. I got her phone number and I need to give her a call to see if she wants to get together some time.
Because of getting out of the club so late, and the fact that a lot of the trains are only running once every hour at that time of night, I ended up not getting home until 6 or 6:30 in the morning. Needless to say I was exhausted and slept all day on Sunday.
Unfortunately most of what happened this week was a continuation of my crappy last week. The only thing that I actually accomplished was retrieving my package from customs so that I could finally open my Christmas presents from Lee: the new Zelda game for the DS and all 7 seasons of Star Trek TNG on a computer hard drive. Awesome! Other than that, though, the week wasn't so great.
Being home with Pauline and Gustav while they were sick all last week of course made me sick, so that sucked. To make it worse, Maria was also sick this whole week with some sort of stomach infection. On Tuesday, just as I finished cooking my lunch, I got a phone call from Esther telling me that I had to pick up Gustav at the Kindergarten at 12 because he wasn't feeling well and wanted to
come home (which, by the way, was complete crap because he was perfectly fine). More importantly, Maria wasn't able to take care of the kids because of being sick, so Jörg was going to be bringing Pauline and David to come and stay with me for the rest of the day. So here I am, feeling like complete crap, hardly able to breath, with a swollen throat and absolutely no energy, and I have 3 kids I'm supposed to be looking after. Now, I know that this kind of thing happens when you're a mom and whatever, but I'm not a mom and all I wanted to do was sleep all week so that I could simply get healthy. Not happening. It really wasn't too bad, though. After I gave them some lunch I made bottles of warm milk for all the kids and told Pauline and Gustav to stay in their rooms and be quiet for a while so David and I could take a nap. I put David in my bed against the wall and then laid down next to him and curled up around him. At first he was just kind of sitting there, playing with a toy car, but then I gave him a teddy bear, lay him down under the covers, and he didn't move until I woke up from my little nap. Later that afternoon Jörg came back over with Fabio, but he stayed and Esther was here, so I went to bed. It was only about 5:30 in the evening, but I couldn't stay awake anymore.Pauline ended up having to stay home the whole week because Maria was so sick. On Wednesday I had to dump both the kids with Britta in the evening because Esther was at a seminar and I had to go to my language course. Apparently that night Pauline was a monster until about 10:30 when she finally shut up and went to sleep. I guess her nap was a little too late in the afternoon, and Esther wasn't very happy about it.
Yesterday Britta had a doctor's appointment so she dropped Jetta off at around 10 and picked her up just a little before 1. Normally Jetta is a child who likes to scratch and pull hair when she's "provoked" but yesterday she was an absolute doll. Pauline, on the other hand, was not. At one point early in the visit she bit Jetta's finger, and then later she smacked her in the eye with a plastic doll. Poor Jetta was so upset. She was screaming and crying, and she begged m
e to take her home. I felt bad. But she let me pick her up, and rock her in my arms, and she cuddled up against my chest to calm down.We also had a little celebration in Gustav's Kindergarten yesterday afternoon. The kids in Gustav's group acted out the story of Frau Holle, and then we had coffee and apple juice and cake and whatnot. Esther had me bake some muffins while she was at work using a recipe from the book I gave her for Christmas. They were blueberry muffins, but they were made with whole grain flour, raw sugar, and hazelnuts, so they were kinda healthy and not particularly sweet. They were really delicious, though. All the mothers think it's so wonderful that I do all this baking and stuff to help out Esther, too. That would never have worked with Louva.
Today I had a lot of fun. The neighbors/friends were all supposed to go to the studio for another painting session and they asked me to go along. Bec
ause of the snow (we got a ridiculous amount of snow last night and today!!!) and various personal reasons, it ended up being just Britta (Julia's mom) and me. I had wanted to paint one of the photographs I had taken of the woods in the snow, but our sessions are only 3 hours and it was going to be really difficult and complicated, so I used a photograph of a cornflower, instead. This time my painting is 100% original, not a copy of another painting, so I think it's pretty cool. Tomorrow I'm going to hang it over my bookshelf. I already know exactly what I want to paint next time, too. It won't be an original, but it's pretty rad. When I got home this afternoon I pretty much just relaxed and did nothing until dinner, and then again after dinner. It's nice, after these last 2 crazy weeks, to be able to do nothing.
