Herr Hund contemplating....

July 03/10.....8:25 a.m.

I am telling you, my people must be nuts. Almost every day they sit in front of that box they call "teevee "  and normally in that box there are people and sometimes even dogs and cats...oh, I love that! But nowadays all they are staring at are lots of little men running around with only one ball they fight about - they call that FUSSBALL - soccer for my english speaking friends - And there is that terrible noise coming out of the box, they say it is made by what sounds like "uwe seelers"(vuvuzela).  I try to tell them that I can not stand that terrible noise, my little ,flopping ears are sensitive - but no, they tell me to go and play someplace else.  I hope for sure, that the whole shenanigan will be over soon and my people go back to watching dogs and cats. I do not mind if they watch people, but without "uwe seelers" please.

Mad Max, Wine Tasting and Festivities

June 18/10.....10:07 p.m.

We have some festvities coming up, the "Konfirmation" (google it s.v.p. , I am too lazy to explain) and a special birthday - not mine, thank heavens-  so some planning is looming ahead.  Daughter No. 2 (the most involved one) and me, also involved,  decided to start off with the wine tasting. So I offered to supply the bread and cheese for the stricly and family size event, unfortunately son-in-law could not be present - what a shame - but we had fun and I think we made a choice of the right wines, one red ,one white. But when I arrived with my "supplies"  bread and cheese ,mad Max(and faithful readers konw whom  I am talking about, the not soo well educated Lab-mix of our daughter) who is used that I bring him a goodie, but sometimes I forget, snatched the whole baguette out of the paper bag in my basket and had been in the starting hole to run away with it, we saved the baguette just in time. Which shows you, never get into the routine of things and then break the routine. So it has been...mea culpa!  We ate the baguette, nevertheless.

PUBLIC VIEWING

June 12/10....9:33 p.m.

Tonite we had the spontanious idea to have dinner outside. We went to one of our favoured spots, a riverboat, moored at the riverside quite near to downtown, Herr Husband is accepted by the young owner as "big daddy"  since he has been one of his first customers. Because the soccer world championships  are going on, Germany as a whole is in soccer fever. Tonite it is GB against USA and up to now the score is 1:1. So, we have been lucky, the place not too crowded, they have a big tv screen, very convinient, you watch and eat.  Tomorrow Germany is playing, fat chance to get a place without reservation, and it is then young crowds anyway. But the two oldies got an armband tontite from the restaurant owner and it says "I've got a little CAPTAIN  in me" in black- red - gold. Tomorrow grandson (13) will kiss our feet.
And, by the way, the inscription suits me!

Spider Woman

June 1/10.........6:23 p.m.

So mean Herr Husband wanted to give Landfrau a fright. While leaving the house,he discovered a big spider  right in front of our entrance door. He called me to have a look and I decided to take it away, did not necessarily want to have it in the house. Till then Herr Husband still had been laughing, but then I got a fly squatter, not to kill the little monster, mind you, just to take it away , and I flipped it, only Herr Husband had been in the way and the spider was gone and he started jumping around claiming that it must be on him now.  We kept looking, no spider, but when he started to shake himself like a dog, suddenly Mr. spider fell to the ground, and where has it been running to? - right!  -  smack to the entrance door. I caught it in time and this time I made sure to carry it far enough away to safety.

Now I am spider woman - I feel great!

I hate DROPINNERS

May 24/10 ....11:34 a.m.

Do not get me wrong, Landfrau loves visitors but I simply, totally hate dropinners. - There I am, still in my bathrobe, my hair hasn't seen a comb yet and my eyes no makeup (makes me feel I look like an albino, and who wants to look like an albino,I guess not even an albino) and the doorbell rings, and there they are, the dropinners. Oh, sorry, you are not dressed yet? Oh, no, we do not want to come in (tranferring, we have been on our bikes for about 20 kms and at least you could offer us a drink of water) and you mumble that you have been up for hours, just did not have the time inbetween feeding the dog, preparing breakfast, setting up the outside areas with sunumbrellas,tablecloths,cushions etc to look yet after yourself, but please...do com in, - Oh, no, we do not want to bother you - no, you do not bother me (FATHEADS, you do!) and then they sit there and sit there, sure, they are dressed and have all the time in the world. - Or, it is my housecleaning day and I look like right out of the slums, with my old sorted out t-shirt and slacks, all the furniture is upside down, the carpets are turned over and you fall over the vacuum cleaner and the doorbell rings and there...see above.

So, friends, in our times there are phones, there are cell phones -use them! You are always welcome in my home but give me notice before you DROP IN on me and a chance to say "no" if it is really not convenient from my side. - This way we always will be friends!

The Windmaker

May 19/10.....3:16 p.m.

Usually there are rainmakers, me , I am special, I am a windmaker. You can have a day, not a breeze around, as soon as I decide to clean our driveway, there...it starts. And not only a little bit of wind, no - real whirlwinds, which take my heaps of dried leaves, and we have plenty, I only say - ivy ! - apart before I can bend down to sweep them up. So, if you are in need, like you own a windmill or so,call me, I come with my broom ,shovel and basket and the wind will start out of nowhere. - Besides the driveway slavery I had hoped it would rain, because then I could have skipped mowing the lawn. Tough luck, blue sky, sunshine and that nasty wind of course, which does not bother me mowing. So there I was, in the chaingang and besides from cleaning Herrn Hund's puked up basket, fixing lunch, walking the dog all what now is left to do is changing the bedclothes. Well, as we say in Germany: wer rastet, rostet (he who rests, rusts) - Landfrau is a rustfree species, or maybe I am like rust, always active.

Gnome in the House

Mai 15/10

I have that gnome in the house, who keeps himself busy during the night to tighten my garments and lately he must have had his cotton pickin' fingers busied with my favorite jeans. Somehow they are not so comfortable around the waistline anymore. So I decided for a trip downtown, only I forgot, that Thursday, having been a holiday, the whole of Nordrhein Westfalen, not travelling, decided to go shopping/windowshopping in the city. Finding a parking lot - even in a parking garage - was like winning in a lottery. Same in the department store, finding an empty booth. Well, I had been lucky with both and for about 2 hours "enjoyed "myself wriggling into and out of clothes. And the gnome must have been busy in the department store too, tightening all the clothes of my size, so I had to get the size above. Really thrilling! Landfrau now keeps her fingers crossed that one day she does not have to limit herself to stores called BIG & THIRSTY. Then I will murder the gnome.

Again and still...small World

April 30/10.....3:36 p.m.

Did you marvel about my previous post? Well, friends, there is more not so spectacular, but nevertheless. - When I was a teenagegirl, I had a girlfriend. You know how it mostly is, one takes all and the other is the timid drag-along, that had been me. So my friend made me walk around lunchtime ever so often along famous "Königsallee" in our city. At that time already the avenue was famous for expensive shops, and among others there could be found an antique shop and having his lunchbreak, one of the salesmen used to stroll along the street and my friend, having a terrible crush on the guy, wanted to give him the eye. So they glared at each other, but never spoke. Me, the little dragger-along, of course was not noticed. - Years later,in the meantime I was married and had moved to Vancouver B.C., my husband went to a photoshop and was greeted by another customer, a friend he knew from his former motorbike club in Germany. Turned out this friend was visiting with some other German friends, a couple, also living in Vancouver. Of course they decided to meet the same night at our place and the friend asked, if he could bring along his friends. And...who walked into our place along with his pregnant wife? The guy from the Antique shop, my girlfriend had been so keen on. Of course we talked about those "old " times and he remembered very well my girlfriend, but not me, the drag-along. We had lots of drinks and later on my husband's friend, who had been so drunk that we put him into our conjugal bed to sober up , puked into our bed - the pig! -
We became friends with the couple, they had kids, moved to San Francisco, got divorced and he became a very successful interior designer. We are still friends with his former wife, she lives now in Carmel .We lost touch with the puker and with my former girlfriend I lost touch too, that's the way it goes.

Small World

April 26/10......10:20 a.m.

When a very old friend's befriended daughter of an old, now deceased boyfriend is incidently the sister of two school friends of our younger daughter - and we have been meeting those boys travelling highway No. 1 in the nineties during our Californian trip with our younger daugther by coincidence on and off (and we gave them "shelter ,shower and dinner" in our motel for one night, since they slept in their car) and the family had been neighbours of our son-in-law and that young woman now is the wife of a this year's Oscar winner for songwriting I call this a small world.

Center Parc Fun-----F U N ?

April 5/10......1:44 p.m.

Vaccation cut out for the needs of small fry....forgotten so fast, when small fry has grown up but reliving with small fry of now big offspring is quite an experience. Our young family is taking a short holiday in a Center Parc in the Netherlands, just across the dutch border from us - not such a long drive - and yesterday we decided to pay them a visit. Actually the whole complex is quite nicely situated, in the middle of a forrest, with ponds and playgrounds, and of course those indoor facilities which Center Parcs are famous for. Our granddaughter claims, that four days are the limit to be overrun by the indoor activities and the continious acoustic irradiation and her husband ran, when the parents were summoned to do the "Ententanz" (duck dance) together with their offspring, he claimed he had done his duty during a previous stay last year, and..no never again do I make a fool of myself up there on the stage! (O-ton). Well, the kids are fascinated and love it, and that is, why the parents endure it. Aside from that, the living quarters are not bad, houses scattered in the forrest all over the places and you even have a fair amount of privacy. Before we left, we decided to have dinner together, but rather did not take in one of the "market place" restaurants. So we made a reservation at a restaurant outside- wise choice to have made the reservation, because 80% of the dutch people must have decided to frequent the place, it had been packed, but the service had been efficient and fast and the food very good. Little Miss Sunshine behaved very well too, except for one temperfit, where I had the brilliant idea to take her to look at and "torture" (pet) tiny chicklets jointly with half a dozen other kids. That distracted her and then our food came and eating is one of her favourite pasttimes, so no problem any more.-

When we came home, we were greeted by a rather annoyed Herr Hund, having been left alone for such a long time.To make up with him I took him for a long walk in the dark and now he talks to us again.

EASTER 2010

Wishing everyone a

H A P P Y .... E A S T E R !

Young Boat - Old Passengers

March 30/10.....7:24 p.m.

To be honest - the other way around I would prefer, even better - young boat and young people. Since we are not youngsters anymore ourselves, I prefer to encounter younger folks when I travel, this trip had a bit of a touch of an old age home. We have been travelling the river Rhine from Cologne to Bale, Switzerland and there is nothing to be said about the scenery, enjoyable, even if we have seen it times and times before. We lived at the rhineside in Oberlahnstein for two years and all major errands had to be done at Koblenz, but going ashore in Koblenz for a little sightseeing, it must have been another Koblenz we had been living close to, I did not recognize a damned corner, no deja-vu, and where I walked around it had been the old part of town,which sits there unchanged more or less for centuries. I also took a bustour to Strassburg, unknown to me up to then, I liked it very much and what really amazed me had been the nesting storks by the dozens if not more, our guide told us,they do not migrate south any more, beeing fed with chickens during wintertime,they have adapted to the easier way of life. Easy way of life you have also aboard, lots of good food, and since all servings are buffet style, you have to be careful of the ellbows of the hungry masses, must be an extended pleasure of old age..eating. I took part in one board game, called Jakkolo, a wooden board with little gates at the end, where you have to shoot kind of pucks into. And I won right away, my rivals were pissed off, especially a couple, where the wife had been the champ up to then. I had a laugh and made a big show, throwing up my arms and making the V-sign , that showed them, they took it so badly. -

The weather had been nice too, except for Bale, where we checked into a hotel and took part in the christening of the ship in the afternoon. It had been quite a spectacular affair and fortunately by then the rain had stopped. The next day we took a trainride back home and before we could even put down our bags, our daughter No.2, having kept Herr Hund showed up with Herr Hund and mad Max and now I am dogsitter in return, bad bargain, since they are gone for a week and we only had been away for 5 days. -

That's the way, the ball bounces.

Here We Go!

March 22/10 .......4:44 p.m.

About time to have a change of scenery!

Embarrassing Moments

March 16/10....8:17 p.m.

No, folks, I am not talking about grinning at people all day long and then noticing while looking into the mirror in the evening that you have a piece of spinach sitting right between your front teeth, a good one for the ladies is also having the hem of your skirt stuck in the waistband of your panties, ugh - no - I am talking about my own personal embarrassing moments like yesterday, when I had to drive my car to the dealer , where you find besides a plush sales room, where all the employees sit behind desks among nice new cars , also the body shop. So Herr Husband and Landfrau decided to meet at the shop, because I needed a lift back home. Herr Husband takes a route,which in my opinion is longer, I took my shortcut, but missed a right turn and the one I then took looked exactly like the one I should have taken, only I kept on driving wondering when the darn shop would show up and then realizing that I had taken a road which plum took me on the way to downtown.So I had to drive for quite a distance before I could make a U-turn and instead of being first, I was missed already by Herr Husband, my phone ringing when I was about to enter the shop. Once inside I was eyed by everyone, Herr Husband, aggravated " I thought you had an accident!" (gosh, as if I drive around having accidents all the time) being told by a smirking salesman "you have been missed already" me - mumbling redfaced something like "took the wrong turn, had to circle around" and then stumbling over the carpet. - And to top it off, I had to go back in from the parking lot when we wanted to leave, because I noticed my car sitting there with its window halfway down in the rain, so I had to get the keys back,which I had handed over. So, when I left for the second time, I turned around, smiled at all the grinning faces and told them "bye, today you won't see me any more, that's a promise".
And Landfrau kept her promise, there!

My Doubts confirm themselves

March 13/10....11:09 a.m.



The previous post gives me the willies and the one before that...I do not know if slowly but surely my shower turns into my enemy. This morning I grabbed my shampoo, put it on my hair and have been wondering why the darn stuff did not foam. Bingo, reaching for the rinse what did I have in my hands? Three guesses....the shampoo. - Touches of senility start with small things, I have been told. So folks - beware. (Not of me, yet - I hope)

What a Perspective!

March 13/10 ...... 8:36 a.m.

Found this early in the morning and it really made my day:

NOW I REALLY HAVE MY DOUBTS

March 7/10......9:45 p.m.

So Landfrau has been scrubbing shadows, next step is that Landfrau must love to scrub her face. Yesterday morning I went into my daily routine, washing my face and putting on my makeup. Then I went to take my shower, telling myself: do not wash you face, you are finished with that, opened the shower door, grabbed the washcloth and scrubbed my face. When I realized what I had been doing I told myself dumb ass silly woman - and then I had a terrible laughing fit. - So, you see it is hard to beat the old routine, normally face comes last, takes the most time and more so every year.

Hunting Shadows

March 2/10.....7:02 p.m.

I must be a natural nut. Herr Husband often says so, I do not always believe him, but this time... Well, for days I have been annoyed at an ugly spot in our upstairs carpet, right when you enter the door to the little office. Gave Herr Hund already the evil eye, him walking around with dirty paws all over the place. I tried to brush it off, no way, then I went at it with a cloth,water and some liquid soap, no way. I took a knife and tried to flush up the, already a bit worn over the years, carpet, the spot still was there. Then yesterday, leaving the office, I switched off the light, the spot was gone. Darn it... I switched the light on again, the spot was there. It turned out it had been the shadow of the electric cord of my portable radio,which I carry around where ever I want to listen to it. So it has been a fast repair, which can not be said for the damage caused by Landfrau kissing another car while backing out of a parking spot. First it looked like minor damage , only the frame of the licence plate broken, now the complete bumper seems to be a goner. Cars nowadays are not what they have been in former times. Bumpers are there to be hit, that's why they are called bumpers, right?

And in case you miss my weather pixie at the bottom of my page, I miss it too, I will put it back as soon as it reappears in the world wide web.

Well done, Guardian Angel!

February 24/10.....9:35 p.m.

So our little angel had a bad concience after all and really made an effort. Herr Husband does not need another operation and it turned out that his heart is doing fine. The doc said that it is an old heart on the weak side . Well, we all get there, eventually. All those good thoughts of great friends, real and virtual ones, helped too, that I am convinced of. So, thank you all from the bottom of my (hopefully still strong) heart!

Result of Insomnia

February 22/10....1:49 a.m.