Belly Dancer's Nightcap

"Don't even sink about it."

- said Jack to Ian, in regard to touching his meticulously ordered train scene.

At this moment I am sitting here having myself a tiny break with coffee. I would like to be a girl named Griet who lives in the Netherlands and has red braids crisscrossed over her head. Griet is sitting with tea on a grassy hill overlooking a stream that runs past her cottage where her two boys Jack and Ian are playing. Griet did not eat two much chocolate last winter so she is wearing a sundress with a light coat. Griet makes her own clothes and makes all their food from things she grows outside. What's that I see on the clothesline? Ah, a quilt Griet made last week. Most importantly Griet is not home-hunting, packing or doing laundry. No, the only thing Griet has to ponder is whether she should wear her striped knee socks or glitter tights to dinner at a friends. You'll notice she's not cooking either. If only...

This morning we were woken by the moving company. If it had only been me the doorbell would have been reduced to a Tinkerbell in my dreams. But Erik jumped out of bed and raced to greet the guy coming to do a pre-inspection of our things. Obviously since we were all in bed he was punching our bell much earlier than we were told. Not cool. The blueberry waffles and coffee certainly helped sooth a bad wake-up. Still...

I am agitated today. I can't say exactly why but I have a few hunches. The more I do around here the more I see how much there is to do. You might think I'm a wuss when I tell you that a moving company comes in and puts all of our stuff in boxes for us and takes it away. That's where we have things a bit easier that everyone else. However, I think the stress evens out a little with all of the insane and unreasonably complicated things the military has you do when moving. Poor Erik has the bulk of that responsibility. Here's where the packing work comes in for me. It makes things difficult if you are not organized and do not have things separated in a clear manner. You have to have certain things ready in a particular way too. Like your grill, gardening items, lawn mower etc. all have to be spanking clean. Things like that. So here's the deal. Like I said before when we came over here we planned to buy the bulk of our furniture. Things did not go as planned and it turned out that we did not want to pay more with the euro being high etc. So, I did not have anywhere to put numerous things so that one of our three bedrooms acted as a storage space to store boxes. I have to go into that kingdom of chaos and unpack every box and organize it. Because I was not organized enough last time the way all of our boxes were packed is horrendous. This also might be because our movers were smoking hash - and so I will open a box and find pottery wrapped in lingerie. Yeah. Another problem is that I can be a bit of a control freak with these things. I want things done a certain way and I want to make sure it happens. I don't want to get to the other side and find out things that cannot be replaced are broken because they were badly packed. And then there are those millions of tiny things to do that take forever all together. It's driving me crazy. I'm driving me crazy. Enough of that now.

Things around here have been pretty light up until now. We've been having fun and trying to enjoy our house and surroundings while we can. The other day while unpacking and packing I found our aprons. Mine are vintage ones that I love from my Grandma and mother in-law. I also found my husband's Barnie's employee apron before the days of Greyfriars where I fell for him. Of course we had to put them on and its a good thing I didn't find the wigs, boa and hats. There might have been a parade to scare our neighbors. I think we are weird enough already to them:)

Sometimes the boys actually play together and give us a little break.

When you have a big, little brother you can do things like this, no problem:)

In a few days now we'll be going back to how things were when we first arrived. We'll be in military lodging (bleh), there will be no phone contact, possibly no computer access and living out of suitcases. It's a bit different this time though: We have a car - I'm not a dazed pregnant woman who was expecting something that looks like Bavaria and instead has a view of tall barbed wire fence - and I'm looking forward to writing some letters when I want to talk. There will still be plenty that we have to do to get out of here but hopefully we'll get to ride one last train to Köln. Even if its just a stroll and a bit to eat with my family I'll be happy to soak up the last little bit of this adventure. Even if I can't be Griet.

Posted by M. of the Gypsies at April 4, 2008 01:44 AM | TrackBack