Brief Blog with Photos and Captions
Sorry to be brief and that I'm not posting more pictures right now. 1a. I'm exhausted from 48 hours of running running running and nerves. 1b. Our one guest is staying in our office/guestroom and it's difficult to get a lot of time in here without intruding on her space. Everything went flawlessly, even the professional photographer pictures came out great and we should have them in two weeks. Had a great dinner last night with all of his friends here and got a great group gift from them and then all back to our house for more cocktails which didn't end until 3:30 this morning. All in all, a wonderful day with perfect weather as well. More later here are some pics:

This is during the ceremony. You recognize Frank and I, the man on the left is Jan. He was our interpreter (and friend) and the lady with the red hair is the person from the city hall who performs the ceremony. I have more great shots of the back of her head on the video where she completely covers Frank's face for about 5 minutes during the ceremony.

Again Frank and I, his friend Jan and Suzanne who is one of his college friends who flew up from Munich for the event. More pics on Monday...

T Minus 1
In the 1992 movie Singles, Campbell Scott’s character had a simple sign that helped him know that he was with the right girl. He would open the passenger door of his car for his girlfriend to get inside. If she leaned over and unlocked his side then she was the one. On the surface it seems silly, but it really represented something. He was being considerate of her by unlocking and opening the door, and she was being considerate of him by doing something for him. It seems simple but it shows that she cares enough to think of him on even on the smallest level.

When people ask me what it is about Frank, it’s not one big thing. It’s thousands of little things on so many levels, everyday. It’s the way our lives have meshed together so naturally during the past 6 years. How we’ve maintained our individuality, both giving and receiving from each other’s lives. It’s compromising without losing ourselves in the process. It’s being there for each other during the best and worst of times and growing ever stronger in the process. It’s feeling safe putting someone else’s needs over yours knowing that they are doing the same. It’s having someone to come home to and someone coming home to you. It’s knowing that a loving heart is the most precious gift, both given and received, and should be treated that way. It’s a love so natural that you just can’t comprehend just how lucky you are. And you don’t want to. With all of the pain and unhappiness out there it seems impossible for something so perfect to exist. So you don’t think about everything that could go wrong, rather everything that’s right.

Tomorrow we’ll take each others hand and move forward once again knowing in our hearts that there is nothing the two of us can’t do. And look forward to a lifetime filled with more love and happiness than any two people deserve.

With the wedding and out of town visitors this weekend I probably won’t have much time to blog until Monday. I’ll try to post some pictures. We wish you could all be there but we know your thoughts will be with us. Thank you all for your support, now and always.

The Ottoman Empire
It's been fun decorating the apartment especially after living for 5 years with the same furniture back in New Jersey (10 years with the bedroom furniture). Maybe some people are different than me but for the most part when I hang something on the wall or place a decorative item like a vase or a statue there's a good chance that it's found a new home for the rest of it's useful life. The same with the bigger furniture. You set the couch down and say, "Hope you like it there buddy because you're there for the duration." It's like a furniture nursing home when you think about it, they're there for the rest of their days.

So far the decorating itself has gone pretty well, our tastes are mostly similar and we've found some great furniture here in Hamburg. Frank's mother said we've struck a good balance between modern and traditional. (It's a little bit country, it's a little bit rock and roll.) Knowing that we're locking ourselves into it for five+ years we chose carefully. Originally we were going to just raid Frank's fathers warehouse, but it's 7 hours away and we'd still have to pay to get it transported out here. We found some good prices on some things and splurged on a few others. The funny thing is that every thing, literally every thing came disassembled. And it's not all from Ikea either. The dining room chairs from Bo Concept were each in six pieces, the couch was thirteen and you don't even want to know how many came with our eight-drawer dresser. Frank asked, "How much do you have to spend in this country to get furniture that's already assembled?" Of course you can pay them to assemble it when they deliver but it costs between 15 and 20% of the cost of the piece. Frank decided to do it all himself which turned out to be a good thing after we got a look at the delivery people. My favorite was a guy that couldn't have been more than 5-foot-2 with leather pants, a mullet and who smelled of gin and cigarettes even through the intercom. AND IT WAS ONLY 10AM!

The one and only thing that we didn't actually see before we bought it was a leather ottoman for the living room. We sat in the matching chair in the store but they didn't have the ottoman on display. We looked at in a catalog and she told us the dimensions but of course in metric so I didn't have a real perspective on it. Frank said, "It's big" but I thought big might be good. And what's big? The chair was a good size so the matching ottoman should be similar. Our couch is very oversized so it should fit in. We placed the order and the chair came in a month earlier and the ottoman (which they call hocker here) arrived last week. We took the wagon to retrieve it on Saturday after his parents left.

When we got there it was all wrapped in packing material, disassembled of course in five pieces (body and four legs), and seemed big but I assumed it was the over wrap. It was pretty heavy though and in carrying it up the stairs from the garage I wondered if it would have been easier to walk the cow into the apartment and have it assembled there. Removing the wrapping revealed a monstrous padded surface that was much bigger than I expected. It's 43"x43"x16.5". I think it's only slightly smaller than my first Toyota and is covered with what seems to be at least a cow or two worth of material. It's footprint in the room is much bigger than the chair. I think Daphne was a little scared of it at first, circling around it trying to find a butt sniff. As with all leather furniture I immediately looked to jump on and do my Debra Winger from Urban Cowboy impression but it's too wide for me to straddle. We spent the next hour or so doing the tango bovine with it in an attempt to find a good position in the room.

Fortunately over the past couple of days we've gotten used to it. No one outside of us has seen it yet so we'll see what happens when the reviews come in this week from our wedding guests. We're calling it Henry Jr. (the chair is named Henry from the manufacturer, see previous blog about furniture names) and it's very soft and comfortable. It's like having a cow around the house that doesn't pee, poop or need to be fed. Sure, it could be picked up by satellite photography but depending on the angle that you look at it in the room it doesn't seem that big anymore.

Yesterday morning it was sitting on it eating a bowl of cereal with MILK and thought this just isn't right some how. The animal rights people would be all over me for this. But it's just so comfortable and all leathery and stuff. If loving this ottoman is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

I worked, therefore I was
In the movie Ghostbusters there was one part that has always stuck with me. Rick Moranis is an accountant who's having a party and as each person arrives he announces them with their name, what they do for a living and exactly how much they made the year before.

A couple of times lately I've been asked what I do for a living. It's a difficult question right now because, well, I don't do anything. But it leads me to question...why do we define people by their jobs? Is it an old caste system thing? Are all doctors and lawyers wealthy and smart? Are all teachers poor and intelligent? I don't think so. If I said I was a "feline midwife" what would they make of that? Is there money in that? Does it require a lot of education? Who knows, but unless they have a pregnant cat there's a good chance they wouldn't query further. Maybe I'll check that out...Dr. Dave Oeskovic, CAT-OB-GYN.

Lately I've thought more and more about trying to find a way to make a living through writing. It's something I've done a lot of lately both inside and outside of the blog. Living here in Germany has given me a lot of things to write about and a lot of free time with my thoughts. It's a creative outlet for me, which I've come to need in the past few months. Reading back through what I've written it's interesting for me to see my thoughts at the time and how certain things look in retrospect. Plus for any one who's reading it, it gives them a better idea about who I am and what I'm going through here. The question remains, would my writing be interesting to anyone else?

Regardless I've pretty much decided that if someone asks that I'm going to tell them I'm a writer. I told Frank and he gave me the look. I write things. I do. Just this morning I wrote "buy garbage bags" on the chalkboard we have in the kitchen. Just because I say "writer" doesn't mean I'm a novelist. I could be a technical writer (which I have done). Or a columnist. Or a screen writer. But hopefully just saying writer will stop the questions there. But what if it doesn't? I've got it all planned out:

"What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a writer."

"Really? Have you written any thing I know?"

"Uhhh...Have you seen the movie Gothika?"

"Yes!"

"Well, there you go."

"You wrote that?"

"Well, no...but don't tell me what happens because I haven't seen it yet."

"Oh...OK."

"So what do you do?"

"Cat Gynecologist."

"Ah, right."

Maybe I need a plan C...

The Luck of the Frank & Dave
Found out more about that pirate I mentioned in an earlier story. Apparently after they captured him and his crew of 200+ men they were going to behead them all. He made a deal with his captors that they should line up all his men before him. Once beheaded he would walk past as many as he could before collapsed and those men's lives would be spared. The legend has it that he got past 12 of them before his beheader (?) stabbed him to keep him from going any further. In the end they executed them all anyway. Not a very happy ending, and I'm afraid it was almost the same with his family's visit.

For the four or so days they were here I managed not to bonk anyone in the head, make any seriously incorrect age references, or break anything of theirs. (All things that have happened in my history with them.) I figured at less than a week from getting my name into the family tree I'd better play it carefully.

Back at Christmastime I bought his brother an 8 euro toy car that he was more interested in that the 200 euro stereo that his Mother gave him at the time. Of course the interest in the car faded and the stereo is number 1 now, but trumping his Mother's efforts was an unintentional mistake I'd rather not have made. Fast forward to Friday afternoon. We had a late lunch together at nice restaurant with a view of the harbor. His stepfather and I both ordered entrees that came with "bratkartoffel" which is essentially what we know in the States as homefries. Just sliced potatoes pan-fried in oil with onion and bacon bits. During the meal his stepfather told me that it was his favorite thing to eat and he could eat them everyday. >BINK< light bulb! All week I'd been putting together the traditional German breakfast (Cold cuts, cheese, breads, cold cereals) and I thought it would be good to make something hot on their last morning. On weekends I had been buying this pre-made bratkartoffel in a bag that has scrambled egg mixed in. It's so good and really easy to just fry it up in a pan. After we returned to the house I went to the store to get the mix along with stuff to make a "goodie" bag for their five+ hour road trip the next day. (Something my Mom used to do for us. Just chips, sweets, drinks and a magazine or two.)

The next morning after walking the dog and getting fresh bread at the bakery, they finished their packing and we settled down to breakfast. I brought out the bratkartoffel and his Stepdad's eyes lit up. He told me again it was his favorite and I said it was a mix so it was no big effort. Somewhere between his second and third serving he asked what brand the mix was seemingly wanting Frank's mother to hear so she would make it back home. I told him and his mother chimed in and said she had made it before. His Stepdad said, "When?" to which his Mother responded, "Several times." to which his Stepdad replied, "Maybe it was for your last husband." It was all in German of course but I understood it and could sense the tension. Right then his brother chimed in and said he'd like to try it. I'm like, "More coffin nails...uh...I mean more coffee anyone?" Just as I thought all was lost Frank steps in and saves the day. Well, sort of.

After breakfast we got cleaned up and started loading their stuff in the car. His Stepdad went out to move the car closer to the building for loading and on our first trip out Frank's Mother, Brother and I carried out most of their stuff with the dog in tow. Realizing I hadn't given them their goodie bag yet I headed back to the house meeting Frank in the courtyard with more of their bags. Reaching into his pocket, as his hands were full, I pulled out only his car keys. Where's the house key? He has a two-piece key chain and the day before when I dropped them off and took the car to the store we separated them so they could get into the house. I didn't rejoin them when I got back and he didn't rejoin them when he walked the dog in the evening. The apartment door, building door, the front gates and the parking garage door all lock automatically when closed for security. We were sunk. All five of us and the dog locked out. It wouldn't have been so bad if they could have left for home but his Stepdads coat and another bag were still in the house. Plus the goodie bag was in there too, which since the potato incident at breakfast had become even more important than ever.

What to do? My "McGuyver meets Wile E. Coyote" mind kicks in. We're already inside the gates and I left the balcony door open in the kitchen. All we need to do is to have two people climb the gate at the boat launch, steal one of the canoes sitting there, paddle on the canal to our balcony, climb up the railing (we're on the bottom floor) and into the open door. Seems simple but in leaving the house Frank thought it was getting cold in the kitchen and shut the door. There were no paddles with the canoe any way. Frank concocted a plan to do with our open bedroom window, an old windsurfing board and a plastic shovel from the sand box but that didn't work either. A call to the landlady found that she didn't have an extra key and the housemeister (superintendent) didn't either. We called a locksmith and began to wait.

We were inside the gates so we were able to sit on the terrace in the patio furniture we'd just put together last week. All but his Stepdad had coats on and he waited in the hallway after our neighbor Nicky opened the door to go for a walk with her baby. She's nice, from London and her husband is from Ireland. We'd chatted before when we met in the courtyard. She offered to let us all in for tea when they returned from their walk after recapping her story of being locked out. Seems it was February 15th last year and she was 7 months pregnant. Her husband was off on a rugby weekend with friends and there was a snowstorm. It took the locksmith two hours to arrive and after three hours of working on the door lock with no success they had to drill a hole in their terrace window to get inside. The whole thing cost a "fortune".

Not good news for us but there was nothing we could do other than camp out on the terrace staring in to our now diorama-like living room through the windows. Fortunately it was sunny but the temps were just approaching the high 40's. The worst thing was I started to "prairie dog" right away and it was almost an hour before I remembered that there was a gas station a block away with a bathroom that was cleaner than most of the ones in Frank's friend's bachelor pads. I returned with a Coke and a bag of cinnamon rolls to help keep up the morale of the troops when from across the courtyard I could see no one sitting on the terrace. Always fearing the worst I immediately pictured Frank swimming fully dressed in the freezing canal with the windsurfing board and the plastic shovel floating near by as his family stood and watched from the boat launch. Fortunately that wasn't the case. They were all in the building with the locksmith and within minutes he had the door opened. The deadbolt wasn't locked (would have needed the key for that) so he used some kind of wedge to pop the latch. There was no damage, other than to our wallet at 180 euro for a weekend locksmith call and about an hour and a half out of the day.

The sense of relief and the goodie bag quelled all of the earlier tension and they headed home on a high note. I guess in our story things didn't work out so bad after all. No one got beheaded or stabbed and the only thing we're mourning is the $200.