Freddie Wasn't Much Help

Reading Sarah's post from yesterday got me thinking about my own experience with drunk guys trying to break into the house.

Journey back to 2001 with me, back to my little haunted cottage in Mankato. It is the middle of the night and I am fast asleep in my bed with the grumpiest Jack Russell Terrier ever. It was Freddie's custom to burrow under the covers down by my feet and God help you if you dared to roll over or wiggle your toes...she would put up a growl and eventually resort to barking and biting if the action was kept up.

I was probably having pleasant dreams about my new boyfriend Hans or maybe a slightly stressful dream about writing a paper for one of my college classes, or a nightmare about having to go to work the next day, if even for a few hours. Possibly a nightmare about how my phone was about to get shut off because I was so dirt poor that year...

Any which way, Freddie started in with her growling. At first I assumed that I had upset her rest, but then she came storming out from under the covers and started jumping at my closed bedroom door (oh yes, I always closed it, especially after Gen's encounter with the "crying child" ghost...as if the door could stop it from coming upstairs into my room!) and full out barking.

I'm a pretty jumpy and overimaginative person to begin with, so I started getting nervous, wondering what she was going on about, when through the racket, I heard it...someone pounding on the door and rattling the doorknob downstairs in the back entry. Surprisingly, instead of freaking out and (hello) calling the police, I felt a huge surge of adrenaline and started down to confront whoever it was.

I crept down the stairs, through the living room and kitchen and peered around the corner. The noise hadn't abated...the guy was still shouting to let him in and turning the doorknob incessantly.

It was about this time that I wish I would have had Greta in the house. The back door in my little old house was three-quarters wood with a glass panel up top. I'm pretty sure Greta would have been big enough to put her front paws up on the glass and bark in this guy's face. I still wonder if he would have wet his pants or what...Freddie was pretty much ineffectual except as an advanced warning system.

Anyway, I ascertained that instead of being a dirty hobo from the railyards as I had envisioned, the person trying to get in was a clean-cut college guy, probably not legal and so intoxicated that I could actually smell him through the door. So instead of backing away and calling the police, I got on the other side of the glass and started screaming at him to go home, to go away, that it wasn't his house. Using much worse language, of course--this is a family blog, I'll keep it clean. God, I was so mad! I was on the verge of getting my marble rolling pin from the kitchen and giving it to him good when it occurred to me that it might be wiser to just call the police.

By the time they finally showed up, I had convinced Mr. Drunk Frat Boy that it truly WAS NOT his home and he had wandered/stumbled off. The police did a half-hearted search around my little yard and behind my car and then left. They had had a hard time finding my house because apparently, it didn't show on the emergency grid or something. Comforting. Even though the house had been there since approximately 1876, good Lord!

I'm pretty sure that I actually went back up and back to bed that night...but my run-in with the drunk frat boy is something I've never forgotten. And it took about three days for the lingering miasma of alcohol to quit my back porch...!

Grab Bag

Hey all, this is going to be one of those posts where I just flush out whatever's stewing in my brain. Hope you can cope.

Here come the bullet points:

• Right now, it is yet another half rainy/half sunny day in Stuttgart. I won't complain too loudly because yesterday was a beautiful sunny day and we spent several hours outside. It's just that this summer has been unusually wet and annoying, in that it will rain for awhile, then the sun will come out just long enough to tempt us into gearing up to go out, by which time another rain cloud will have moved in. Repeat this ad nauseum.
• It's also extremely humid, which I don't recall from last summer. Probably because it's been so wet, duh Rachel. I don't have to consult the weather report to ascertain relative humidity--I can just consult how coiled Annika's curls are. Corkscrews = 98% humidity.
• I recently bought myself a Dove battery-operated face-scrubber thingy. Can I recall the name of the darn thing this moment? No. You buy these little pillows to stick to it with one side a pad and the other a scrubby, turn it on and go to town. Skin Revitalizer, I think it's called. I looove it and spend way too much time with it.
• I haven't had a decent night's sleep for almost two weeks now. I guess this shouldn't be surprising as I have just entered the third trimester of pregnancy, but I was really sleeping very well up until I went to Paris. I blame Paris.
• Speaking of babies, I had my regular appointment today, except for the (wheee!) fact that it was gestational diabetes testing day! Yay! I was required to fast as of midnight last night, so right before bed I ate four pieces of toast. The good Dr. Voss was kind enough to get me in first thing in the morning so that I wouldn't have to be hungry for long. They drew my fasting blood, I drank the horrible sugar water--whatever it is, it's doubly repulsive in Germany--sat for an hour, then they took more of my blood.
• Dr. Voss did a very quick ultrasound to check his heartbeat--I was pretty sure it was unnecessary as he was busy doing his morning Jujitsu during the ultrasound. Yep, it was beating. I will get a better, longer ultrasound at my next appointment. That will be the last four week, then we go down to appointments every two weeks. Eeek.
• I was highly impressed at our ability to get everyone out the door this morning by 7:45. Everyone got up, ate, got dressed, brushed teeth. I even made all the beds and put some dishes away and we still had a few spare moments before we walked out the door. Maybe I will be able to do this school thing...
• For anyone following the detailing saga, Hans is still working on it, but he got some good advice from his friend the admiral mid-week that is helping him to make these tough decisions. And he's talked to a lot of people at various commands who have great jobs available and are willing to put a "by-name" request in to his detailer for him. Let's hope and pray that by the end of next week we have a set location and a job locked in. Hope, but don't bet on.
• In addition to blogging right now, I am desperately trying to come up with something interesting for Hans and me to do on our date night tonight. Here are the options thus far:

1. Empanadas at a local restaurant - he always goes on about empanadas. Followed by a screening of "Gran Torino" in the comfort of our living room (there are no good movies playing on post or at the English-language theater).
2. A visit to Stuttgart's TV tower, I guess one of the tallest around...on a clear day you can see Alps in like, three countries or something, and they have a restaurant on site.
3. Chinese food at a local restaurant followed by "Gran Torino".

I'll have to report back to see which option he chooses. Thank you for putting up with this mish-mash of a post. Have a great weekend!

Rothenburg Pictures

Trying to catch butterflies

Annie, admiring the view

Rathaus

View of the wall

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

We're trying to knock out a few "must sees" still on our list. You know, before I become too big to fit through some of the narrow lanes in some of these quaint little German towns! I can just see the headlines now:

Enormously Pregnant American Woman Becomes Trapped in Adorable Bavarian Town! "Mein Gott, die Frauen ist grosse!", sources say...

Don't scrutinize my German too much, I'm sure it's not exactly grammatically correct, but it would be something akin to that.

Anyway, one of Hans' wishes was to see the town of Rothenburg odT again...it is necessary to insert the "odT" because there are approximately 293 other towns called Rotenburg, Rotenberg, Rothenberg, etc. in Germany. Really...it's confusing. Rothenburg odT happens to be the only town left in Germany that still retains its original defensive wall. Hans visited it with his dad in November and thought I'd go into swoons over its adorableness and shops filled with charming German knick-knacks.

He was right, as he so very, very often is (although I will say that he was wrong in his spelling of Rothenburg, trying to enter it into the GPS...hey, I have to take my small victories!). It was a pleasant drive, a beautiful day and Rothenburg odT was all he said it would be. Not 50' inside the city walls was a great pottery shop, where I was able to purchase two more pieces of salt-glazed pottery. The only reason I limited it to two was that I knew I'd have to drag it all over the place...if the car had been nearby, I probably would have filled up the trunk!

We had lunch at die Burgher Koenig and then wandered around inside the walls for a few hours, admiring the views of the valley below and the pretty, flower-bedecked buildings. The kids were able to burn off some energy at a beautiful little park and we were able to spend a few moments all relaxing together in the sun. A good day.

Rothenburg, check. Next stop: Zurich.

Twins!

Ha! Made you all jump!

Not me...Annika. I just now stepped out of her room, where she was peacefully asleep. With her two baby dolls stuck up the front of her nightie.

She and her friend/neighbor Sydney were playing "doctors" today, I think that's where the idea stemmed from, to put the dolly in the front of her shirt. And then they "had" their babies and were taking care of them. Let's just say the gestational period and postpartum recovery were extremely speedy.

I just about burst a kidney trying not to laugh too loud and wake her up, but as I was going for the camera to get the money shot, she sat up and removed the babies! Maybe next time I'll catch a picture...

(d)

Oh, I forgot my last category under "Favorite Tourist Behaviors":

(d) People who take forever to set up photographs and/or act annoyed when people dare to meander into their frame or interrupt their "perfect" shot.

I truly try to stand back and let people get a shot if I notice that they're setting one up, but I feel that at these crowded sites, people need to snap quickly and move on.

And yes, I know that I kind of qualify as a tourist...so I shouldn't pick on them too much!

Has anyone else ever wondered how many random people's pictures they're in? Just me? It kind of gives me a weird thrill, for some reason!

Paris in Pictures

The Mona Lisa--the one painting I really wanted to see while at the Louvre...I wish being pregnant would have gotten me through the throng of people elbowing and jostling, but it didn't. I finally ended up throwing a couple of elbows myself and plowing my way to the front. The crowds get so tight to see her that they have personnel who open the ropes in front and let people filter out rather than have people trying to work their way back out through the throngs. After I saw her, I spent the rest of my time at the Louvre at their Starbucks, drinking fruity/tea slushy drinks and nursing my sore feet.

One gallery at the Louvre--this place is immense. I think a serious art lover could conceivably spend a day in each wing of the museum, about a week in the Louvre.

The Louvre, with I.M. Pei's famous pyramid in the center. The area beneath the pyramid is all underground guest services, gift shops, Starbucks, etc. The Louvre started life as a palace.


The Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Talk about throngs of people! I expected to be completely bowled over by Versailles, but I really wasn't. Don't get me wrong, it is worth a visit and it's incredibly beautiful...maybe I'm just getting immune to palaces and castles, having visited so many of them. It was super-crowded here too, especially in some of the smaller rooms. I saw plenty of examples of my favorite types of tourists: (a) using flash photography when there were constant signs and reminders not to use flash to preserve the artwork and antiques (maybe this is leftover angst from The Breakers?); (b) videotaping everything (seriously, do you go home and watch 48 hours of tape?); and (c) not even trying to dress like the locals (ie: wearing your DeKalb seed corn cap--and I have nothing against seed corn caps, but hello...you're in France, leave your cap on the farm, OK?).

Versailles...I was quite pleased with this shot

Versailles--Front "yard"

I have such difficulty in getting night photos to turn out. This is the only one that turned out decently. We took a cruise on the Seine, left at around 10:00 p.m. I highly recommend taking a night-time cruise on the Seine to anyone headed to Paris. It was absolutely stunning and tres romantique! If we ever end up in Paris again, I will put this high on my list of priorities, but I think I would try to do a cruise with supper. There's also a restaurant on the first observation platform of the Eiffel Tower that looks amazing...

View from the second level observation deck - Eiffel Tower

Don't ask--the person taking my picture told me to "do something" and this is what I came up with! But a good shot of my cute red dress and the babe.

Detail of ironwork

The Rose Window at Notre Dame...of course, my photography does not do justice to the absolutely brilliant stained glass at the cathedral. It is hands-down the most beautiful cathedral I've been privileged to visit in Europe.