Tomorrow Is Another Day...

Goodbye, Horrid Week

This week.  It has not been my favorite.

I have been really, really trying to put on my best Pollyanna smile and push through all the crap we've been dealing with for the past month.  I feel like I shouldn't complain.  So much about my life is SO GREAT.  I have been dreaming of living in Europe for all of my adult life.  I have wanted babies for ages, and now I have two adorable, healthy girls on their way.  Colby's current job gives us so much more quality time together, and is such a wonderful opportunity for us.  This is supposed to be the happily ever after part.  You're not supposed to ugly cry during your happily ever after.  Three times in one week.

The downhill slide started last Saturday when we got home from Ikea and started to assemble our furniture.  I was so excited because we would finally have a place to put the piles of linens, office supplies and winter gear that were looming all about the house.  I don't do so well with piles of crap and chaos, and we've been living with exactly that for almost two months now.  So, I was overjoyed to have a desk, coat closet and linen closet.  Everything went perfectly until we got to the linen closet, and realized that the system we had purchased was 100% customizable and every single piece had to be purchased separately.  We'd done so well--we had the cabinet portion, the door, the doorknobs, the wire baskets... but no shelves.  We didn't have the fucking shelves.  I know it's so stupid, and it was really about so much more, but that was just the final straw.  I broke down and sobbed over the $15 Ikea shelves that were 45 minutes and at least a few weekends away.

Once I finally calmed down, I checked my email, and we had a message from our realtor.  You see, I've been keeping a secret from you.  A secret that I was protecting because it seemed to good to be true and I was so terrified it was all going to fall apart in the end.  AND IT DID!  Pessimism rules the day!  While we had taken our South Carolina house off of the market in May and decided to rent it out, we found some great renters who fell in love with our house and decided that not only did they want to live in it, they wanted to buy it.  HUZZAH!!!  They offered our full asking price and only asked us to pay about 1/3 of the closing costs, and it was amazing.  We weren't going to have the stress of being landlords times two, and we were actually going to walk away with a nice bundle of cash in hand.

And then there was the inspection.  Where they found termites.  And an issue with the air conditioner.  And a gas leak.  And we racked up close to $2500 in repairs.

And then their loan fell through.  Even though they'd been preapproved.

And we weren't selling our house anymore.  Ugly cry #2.

The family is still planning to move in as renters, though we're still awaiting a finalized contract, but this has been hanging over our heads since May, and we were so ready for June 28th to arrive so it would finally be over.  Instead, we're renting out the house on a month to month basis while the buyers pursue other financing options, and we get to continue having it hang over our heads possibly until the end of the year.  Wonderful.

Then, yesterday I decided to break out my fabulous new steam mop and do a little cleaning since the floors are finally becoming visible.  We left most of our appliances at home, but brought over our television and DVD player to use with a transformer.  It's been working beautifully, so when I saw that the steam mop needed 1500 watts to work, and the tv and Bluray combined took less than 200 watts, I switched out the 7000 watt transformer that they were plugged into and used the 750 watt transformer instead.  I blissfully mopped the floors, then decided it was time for a Sex and the City break.  I made sure everything was plugged in properly, double checked the wattage, plugged in the transformer, switched it on and... KABOOM.  The plug exploded and there was the festive smell of burning in the air.

Ugly cry #3.

I called Colby, who immediately panicked because he thought I'd hurt myself, and I could barely choke out the words that I was pretty sure I'd just destroyed our 1 1/2 year old $1500 television.  Because he is amazing, he immediately came home to figure out what had happened because I was too scared that if I touched anything I would fry myself and our unborn children.  I spend the next 20 minutes sobbing on the couch, furious with myself, with the world for refusing to make my life easier and convert to a single voltage, the Air Base for giving us a shitty transformer... pretty much the world in general.  In the one stroke of good luck we've had all week, Colby discovered that I had only blown out the $7 surge protector, and miracle of miracles, the televison is fine.  We're still not sure what happened except that we probably had a defective transformer, and we shouldn't trust anything from the Air Force lending locker.

So, I am more than ready to see this week out the door.  I don't know for sure if next week will be any better, but it is at least starting out with the advantage that it isn't THIS week.  And at this point, that alone is good enough for me.

Please Send Internet

So much to tell you about and I have no idea where to begin...  Let's see.

We're still without internet at our house.  We have determined that it's not a T-Mobile issue, and some of our friends who successfully set up their phone and internet through T-Mobile came over to try and set ours up and failed, so at this point, it seems like it's a house issue.  But our property managers are insisting that it's NOT a house issue.  They're coming over tomorrow to do the house inspection with us, so I plan on presenting them with our computer, telephones and modem, and not letting them leave until they've either got our system online or agreed that the landlords will pay the EIGHTY EURO service fee that T-Mobile will charge to come out and do it for us.

In the meantime, I'm still doing most of my internetting from the phone--pain in the ass--or at the Business Center when I come on base to run errands.  It is... less than ideal, but it keeps me from feeling entirely disconnected from the world.

We made the Incredible Journey to Ikea last weekend to get a crap ton of furniture and organizy type solutions, but it's still taking forever to unpack.  We've got all of the boxes, aside from our wall art unpacked, but it's reached the stage of unpacking where I feel like I'm just moving piles of stuff from one place to another place.  I try to remind myself of how horrifying it looked last Monday after the movers left, and reassure myself that we're getting there, but oh, how tired I am of piles of stuff and bare walls.  Once our loaner furniture is gone on the 9th, I think we'll feel a lot better about our space, but that seems sooooo far away.

Our 18 week OB appointment was awesome and came with the lovely surprise of finding out that our little Frankensteins have little lady parts.  Colby dealt with some initial disappointment which I fully understood, because I would have felt the same had we found out it was two boys, but I think he's really come around, and he talks about "his girls" all the time now.  I melt.  It also means that I can plunge full steam ahead in my nursery plans.  I had a theme in mind that was pretty gender neutral, but I now I can girly it up just a little and finally update our registry with items that aren't all yellow, green or white.  I have tons of pictures and updates to share with you from the appointment, but they'll have to wait until we get internet at home so I can get the photos from my computer to the World Wide Web.

I also still want to tell you all about Switzerland, but that involves photos.  And we went to a Medieval Festival at a local castle (we have a local castle!!), but again.  Photos.

I went to my first spouse social last week, and met some nice girls, but oh, it made me miss my friends.  Again, I just remind myself that it took time to bond with the other wives in Washington and Charleston, and I know I'll get to that place here as well, but it was definitely a different vibe than my amazing Charleston spouse group, and it made me feel a bit homesick for the first time.

So, I suppose the bottom line is that we're doing well, still loving Germany, still hating the moving process.  We're going to look back on this time fondly some day... right??

Everything Nice

Yep, Still Moving

This has been the longest, most ridiculous move I've ever experienced.  It's hard to believe it all started a month and a half ago with the sorting, then the packing, then the physical relocation, then the waiting, and the more waiting.

The past two weeks have been simultaneously wonderful and insane.  I can truly say I love living here--even with all of the crap we've had to deal with on-base and from time to time on the economy.  It's an amazingly beautiful country, I know once we're settled into our house it will be perfect for us, and I'm nearly drunk on all of the travel opportunities we've already had, not to mention the ones that are yet to come.

We're still internetless and phoneless at our house--TMobile did their part in turning on the service, but there's a disconnect between that and what we're getting at the house.  When I call our phone number, it rings on my cell phone, but it doesn't ring in the house, and there's no internet signal.  I tried calling customer service, but shockingly, everything is in German--there is no "Press 1 for English"!  So, we'll probably be making our weekly stop by the TMobile shop some time soon so we can ask our questions and hopefully get everything worked out.

We're really enjoying living out in our village and being away from the Little America feel of the Air Force base.  Last Sunday, we did like the Germans and took the puppies out for a long walk through fields and up and down hills.  One of the things I love about the Germans--and most European countries I've experienced so far--is how active they are.  If it's a nice day, you're going to see scores of people out walking, biking, and running, and bicycling is HUGE here.  There are bike lanes almost everywhere, and bikers are treated like equal vehicles on the road, unlike in the States where in most places you're still taking your life into your hands trying to bike on the streets.

Our neighborhood is wonderful.  I think I mentioned before that there are a couple of Germans on our street, but it's predominantly American military families.  Both of our next door neighbors have come over to introduce themselves, and last week the other wives invited me out to a little street party to celebrate the kids' last day of school.  It's been such a new experience to feel welcomed by our neighbors, and they're all so excited that we've got two babies on the way.  I'm really looking forward to getting to know them over the years.

I also got to experience some interesting local cuisine.  Evidently, there is a huge Turkish population who has settled in Germany, and they brought with them their food to spice up the typical schnitzels and wurst options.  I finally got to try out a doner kebab, and though people make fun of them, I actually really liked it.  It's basically just a gyro, so like any time you're eating meat off a stick, you want to make sure you're getting a quality product, but I don't know why they have such a bad reputation.  I ate the heck out of mine and am looking forward to another!

This past weekend, we ventured down to Switzerland and explored Luzern and Bern.  Switzerland is an INCREDIBLY expensive country, but luckily the exchange rate between dollars and the Swiss Franc was almost 1:1, so it wasn't as financially painful as it could have been.  And we LOVED it.  I still have to go through our photos, but I can't wait to share our adventures with you--it was an absolutely amazing few days

And yesterday, we had the great excitement of welcoming all of our stuff into our home!  We got an email on Friday that our household goods were available for delivery on Monday, and we actually managed to respond in time to lock it in.  Unfortunately, when we called to schedule the pickup of our loaner furniture, the soonest the Air Force can come is July 9th.  JULY NINTH.  Uggggghhhh.  Have I mentioned recently that this base is ridiculous?

So, anyway, we've got all of our furniture and boxes PLUS the hideous Air Force furniture crammed into our house, and I'm going more than just a little crazy from the chaos.  We worked from about 5 until 11 last night unpacking boxes, and I worked from 9 to 12 this morning and that is still an accurate representation of what our main living space looks like.

But hey, it also means that I was finally reunited with my Tempurpedic last night after many, many weeks of sleeping on the shittiest beds imaginable.  I'll take all of the unpacking if it means I get to sleep on a cloud of comfort every night!!!

16 Weeks

The time, it is flying.  Today I'm 16 weeks pregnant--and since I'll probably deliver at the latest around 38 weeks, that means we're just 3 weeks away from the halfway mark of this pregnancy.  It makes me pretty sad that there is a really good chance this is the only time I'll ever be pregnant, because I have really loved it.  I feel like I've missed out on the bad parts (namely, crippling nausea) and have had a really easy pregnancy so far.  It's sadly ironic that evidently my body was made to be pregnant, just not to get pregnant.
I have had a couple newer symptoms creeping into the rotation lately.  The most annoying of which is the almost constant sound of my blood pounding in my ears.  You know that sort of dull off-in-the-distance drumming noise you'll hear from time to time when you've exerted yourself?  Yeah, that's pretty much in my ears all the time and it is definitely a symptom I'd never heard of before.  It makes sense being that my baby book says that blood volume increases about 50% with just one baby.  I'm not sure if two babies means even more blood coursing through my system, but I would say there's enough to go around.

I've also been feeling faint a little more often.  I'll suddenly get really hot and clammy and a little nauseous, my head feels swimmy, and I need to sit down ASAP.  It's only happened two or three times in the past few weeks, so I'm just trying to make sure I'm eating and drinking enough and that there's always a place to perch nearby if necessary!  I also think my joints are already loosening up and my lower back gets pretty achy after walking for about 30-45 minutes.  It's not unbearable, but I think it's time to find some summer shoes with a little more support and cushioning than my constant rotation of ballet flats.
My belly button also looks about ready to give up on its long standing quest to be an innie.  It's dangerously close to being completely flush with my stomach, and the top part has already started popping out.  Colby is highly entertained by this scenario, and does belly button checks pretty much daily to see if I've popped yet.

He's also been pretty adorable about asking me if he can feel the babies kick yet.  Being that I haven't even felt the babies, I've explained that it'll probably be at least a few more weeks before he can, but that doesn't stop him putting his hands on my stomach and waiting intently to feel something.My 15 week appointment was pretty disappointing.  We spent about 30 minutes with a nurse, 20 minutes with a doctor, and 2 hours just waiting around to be seen.  The nurse was cute and bubbly, but didn't really teach us anything we didn't already know.  And the doctor was... ready to go home.  I get it.  He'd probably seen 20 babies that day and just isn't a warm and fuzzy guy, but I was ready to cry after the ultrasound.

I'm extremely happy that we DID at least get an ultrasound and heard the heartbeats, but he had the monitor facing away from me the whole time, and I had to sit up in a sort of half-crunch and crane my neck around to try and see anything.  Colby was behind the doctor, so he reported back that he could see their arms and that their spines and ribs had really developed, but sadly, no photos and no measurements to share with you.  The doctor spent more time going over all of the genetic testing we could have done than he did actually checking on our babies.

He also reviewed the labs that were run at my last OB appointment in the states, and evidently I'm anemic and RH negative.  For the anemia he added iron, vitamin C and Colace to my daily vitamin rotation (which already includes a prenatal, a calcium-magnesium-zinc combo three times a day that my last doctor prescribed, glucosamine-chondroitin for my achy joints, and a probiotic), and at my next appointment we're going to ask more questions about the RH negative factor.  Evidently that's only a big deal if either one of the babies is RH positive, so hopefully we'll know more soon.  I think I'll just have to get a Rhogam shot around 28 weeks if Colby is RH positive.  You can read more about the RH factor here if you're curious.
I have another appointment coming up on June 20th with the high risk OB, so I'm thinking she'll probably take a little more time with us, and hopefully it won't be such a bummer of a vist.  I don't know if I'll be considered high risk for the rest of the pregnancy or not.  I know that multiples can be higher risk, but no one has come out and said anything about me being high risk.  So.  We'll see.

The bottom line is that everyone is doing well and on track with where we should be, and we'll be getting another peek in just two more weeks!

Luxembourg City

In our effort to make the most of our travel time here in Germany before I resign myself to a delicate state of confinement, as well as limit our spending and use of Colby's leave days, we decided to take ourselves a little daytrip over to Luxembourg City on Saturday.  It was a fairly cloudy, grey day after two beautiful weeks of sunshine and warm weather, so that was a bit disappointing, but the rain held off and we were able to fully enjoy our time wandering through the city.

Luxembourg City is about an hour and a half away from us, so it was a fairly quick jaunt over in our new, zippy set of wheels.  We found a central parking garage, and stopped into a small cafe so that I could use the bathroom (an occurence which is becoming ever more frequent) and we could plan our day.  The city is very small, and we were pretty glad it was close enough for a daytrip.  It was definitely worth visiting, but there's not a whole lot to do there, and I don't think I would have ever visited if it weren't for the fact that it was just a short drive away.
We started our day at Luxembourg's Notre Dame Cathedral, which as is our typical experience, was largely under scaffolding.  Also, the interior stain glass windows around the altar were under repair and partially covered.  So, it was a bit disappointing, but it was still a lovely church, and we were very impressed with the fact that it was built over just seven years in the early 1600s. (Please forgive the black smudgies on our photos--our camera is in desperate need of a cleaning!)
After our stop at the Cathedral, we walked over to the Monument of Remembrance, or Gelle Fra (Golden Lady), a memorial to all of those who have died in Luxembourg's wars.  It was pulled down by the Nazi regime in 1940, which so angered the Luxembourgish people that it became their emblem of resistance during World War II.  After that stop and a view over the beautiful Petrusse Valley, we went into the Petrusse Casemates for a tour of the interior of the city walls.
These walls were originally built to protect the 10th century castle of Count Sigefroi who gave Luxembourg its name (meaning Little Castle), and over the years were used as underground tunnels to shelter troops and their equipment and provide a defensive battling point, shelter for the citizens of the city during WWII, and now sections are beneath the Bank of Luxembourg and are used as vaults.  There are 25 kilomenters of tunnels, and we got to wend our way up and down about a kilometer.  We also stopped just outside the casemates for a photo-op in front of Europe's largest stone bridge.
We spent some time walking through a beautiful farmers market, smelling the wonderful aroma of fresh flowers and vegetables.  We then made our way to Place d'Armes, a plaza surrounded by cafes and shops, and ended up outside the Palais Grand-Ducal (Palace of the Grand Dukes).  We spent an awful lot of time trying to figure out if they were actually open for tours, but in the end settled on photographs from the outside as I was running out of steam.

For the last part of our day, we drove through the quaint suburbs of Clausen, Grund and Pfaffenthal then began the drive back home.  It was a lovely little day trip, but I don't think I'd put it in my Top Ten list.  I told Colby I felt a little bit snobbish and spoiled being a little disappointed in Luxembourg, but he pointed out that we've been lucky enough to visit a lot of amazing places, and it's only natural for our perspective to change.  So, I feel a little less guilty for not falling madly in love with Luxembourg, and look forward to our next adventure!

This Friday, the fast shipment portion of our household goods will arrive and we'll be moving into the house, so probably no big adventures this weekend.  But we have a three day weekend coming up next week, so we're planning a trip down to Lucerne for our first visit to Switzerland!

Getting Settled, Going Crazy

After a very long 2 1/2 weeks of feeling almost constantly frustrated, I think we're finally past the worst of this move to Germany.  We still haven't moved into our house or had our furniture delivered, but I honestly think that unpacking boxes is going to be a breeze after the ups and downs of these past weeks.

Moving to Germany is amazing, make no mistake about it.  The scenery here is gorgeous.  Over the course of two weekends, we've visited three countries.  The people are friendly and for the most part speak beautiful English (even though they seem to think it's only "okay").  I haven't once had a moment of doubt that this is exactly where I want to be right now, but I have had an awful lot of moments of wanting to rip all of my hair out.  It's just hard, because we feel as though we're starting over completely from scratch on "Life".  It's like we just graduated from high school or college and entered the world.  To give you an idea of what I mean, here are some of the things we've had to do since waking up as residents of Germany on May 17th:

• Open up a German bank account
• Find a house
• Have the Air Force base approve our housing contract
• Set up temporary furniture delivery at our house for use until our own things eventually show up
• Search for an affordable, reliable used car
• Research rates and get approved for a car loan which involved opening another bank account
• Set up internet and landlines at the house
• Sign cell phone contracts
• Sign up for the tax avoidance program because we aren't liable for the 19% utility tax here
• Learn German rules of the road and pass a driver's license test
• Go to Customs and/or the gas station on base to get our fuel ration cards so that we don't have to pay the staggeringly high German gas prices
• Have our new car registered
• Apply for a new credit card that doesn't charge international transaction fees

And of course, we have to do most of this while dealing with a language we don't understand, while thinking in Euros and Dollars, and most of these events took hours and hours plus several different trips to accomplish.  For example, while the process of setting up our German bank account was fairly simple, it took three trips to the bank, and we've been back twice since to transfer money since they charge for online banking.  We decided on the first house we looked at, but not until after ruling out three others, and spending about four or five hours in the base housing office trying to get the contract and our furniture delivery approved.  Then there were the various newcomers briefings that we've each gone to, the fact that we have to go to the post office to check our mail now, and scads of other errands that just take SO MUCH LONGER than you would ever think possible.  In comparison, for previous moves, we've just found a house, had our utilities turned on and moved in.  The end.

So, it's been a fairly complicated move in comparison to our previous experiences, but as of last Friday, things started to feel a little more secure as we finally got the keys to our house, the keys to our new car and the Air Force decided to start reimbursing and compensating us for the terrifying amounts of money that we've had to spend to get to this point.
I am madly in love with our car.  We took a day trip to Luxembourg this past Saturday, and as we were cruising down the autobahn, I told Colby that it felt like we were riding in a hug.  First, he laughed at me, then after a moment he said, very seriously, "Yeah, actually, it does."  She's a 2006 Mercedes, so it's like we were super fancy six years ago, but she rides like a dream on the autobahn and is so quiet and smooth that it's easy to see how these Germans easily get up to and over 150/160 kilometers per hour on the autobahn.  Colby went 160 (99 mph) yesterday on one of the unrestricted sections of road, just so we could see how it felt and it seriously seemed like we were going slower than when we would struggle to go 120 in our rattletrap rental.

Since I sold my Mazda Tribute before we moved here, I was supposed to be the primary driver of Colby's Honda Pilot while he drove something more fuel efficient back and forth to work.  But I am absolutely terrified about driving and parking that massive car in tiny villages and the fuel economy of the two vehicles actually isn't that vastly different (the Pilot gets pretty great mileage), so I've been lobbying hard for Colby to let me drive the Mercedes, or as she's become known to us, Heidi, instead.  We'll see how that goes.  For now, we've still got a few weeks before the Pilot even arrives in country, so there's lots of time for me to wear him down.

In the meantime, Colby has started going into work, and I'm stuck in our TLF all day, every day with crappy internet, about eight English tv channels, and some equally stir crazy dogs.  But by Friday, we'll be in our house, we'll have some furniture, and I think we'll start to feel a lot better about life.  Now I just have to get through four more days...