Well here's an interesting wrinkle! We got home last night from our shopping day to find that the kitchen had been painted (yay!) We had chosen a yellow color to replace the burnt orange color that was there before. The shift to yellow was refreshing - but maybe a little too refreshing for Hubbalicous' taste. It was fine in the daylight - but by the light of our halogen ceiling lights, it was ..well....you know sometimes your body gives you a sign that it's processed that vitamin that you took this morning? It was like that. We (grossly) dubbed it Vitamin Pee Yellow. I was willing to live with it - Hubbz was NOT. He decreed that we needed to pick another color - right now - and ask the painter to repaint it. He didn't care what it cost (easy for us to say, when the taxpayers foot the bill!). And then his eyes got really big as he asked: "Didn't we tell him to use the same color in the bathroom?!?" We scurried over and were pleased to confirm that the painter had not yet painted it! Phew! I'll fix it on Monday when the painter comes back. I hope he doesn't mind. I feel bad asking him to do it over. Hopefully the extra pay he'll receive will sweeten the deal.
This morning we shook up our old and tired bodies this morning and squared our shoulders for what we have come to call Groundhogs Day. The pattern goes like this: Ikea, hardware store, unpacking – lather, rinse, repeat. Sigh!
Our inventory and unpacking from yesterday revealed the absence of a ladder, and a few decisions to buy some items we had contemplated while shopping yesterday. The highlight of which was the $350 ladder that Hubbaclious had been eyeballing. He’d left our old ladder at home (a decision which I fully endorsed, given that it was bent and I felt the need to grab my rosary beads each time he unfolded it and climbed aboard). I had no idea how pricey a ladder could be – and the irony didn’t escape us that we had just purchased a ladder for $350 that would facilitate the use of $75 worth of light fixtures and curtains!
It wasn’t entirely Groundhog’s Day, actually - we did cut out to meet a friend at a biergarten nearby. She was there with her family and their friends from her children’s school. This is the friend that I met at the airport on the day she moved here. She’s FANTASTIC – and her family is wonderful too. I’m feeling like a little divine intervention was at play there :)
Since we’re in the land of seasons over here, biergartens are a thing to be enjoyed as much as possible during the warm months – because they roll up tight during the cold ones. The Germans were really on a roll when they came up with this invention. Basically, they put out tables and sometimes, the really smart ones, add a playground for the kiddies. They pop in a little snack bar where 10 different kinds of “-wurst” are sold, as well as ice cream, some salads and various munchies – and, of course, beer. The nestle these little gems amidst the hiking parks and city walks so that when the people are out enjoying their recreational walking (HUGE pastime here), and they start to get a bit peckish, they can plop down and enjoy a frosty brew, while still enjoying the nature that surrounds them. The kiddos play, the adults sip and chat and they all walk home when the day is done. Since Stuttgart is built in the bottom of a bowl, many of these little spots have beautiful views.
We had a nice visit and met some really nice folks who had some funny stories and sage advice about their ex-pat experience. It was good to get out and enjoy that time – and, hey, with our silverware still at large in the cardboard wonderland – it was a nice way to have a meal!!
At one point during our visit, I remarked that if we didn’t curtail our beer consumption, we’d go home and hang crooked drapes! We shrugged and toasted to hanging drapes tomorrow! But one of our new friends reminded us that no drills could be used tomorrow, since it was a “quiet day” …being that it was Sunday. Apparently, in some, more traditional, neighborhoods Sundays were still a day of rest, and no noisy work (mowing the lawn, hammering, etc) can be done! Well, how do you like that for forced relaxation. I slumped over in defeat with the realization that we’d get NOTHING done tomorrow – and Hubbz grinned so hard that beer ran out the corner of his mouth :)
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