Beneath My Wreath

A front door wreath. Warm. Inviting. Stylish. Festive.

It says: Willkommen. Mi casa es su casa. Come on in, y'all. It says: I'm totally rocking the Better Homes & Gardens thing.

And, a wreath says all these thing even if it's technically a stripped down Christmas wreath that is still hanging around at the end of February. Hey, with 2 feet of snow (& 4-5 feet of piled dirty snow) on the ground for 2 months & the kids out of school for days & weeks on end, I couldn't muster up any more enthusiasm than a dried out evergreen wreath. Sans ornaments.

Eventually, the snow melted, the kids went back to school & I finally trashed the Christmas wreath. I was happy dancing when I scored a "new" one for $3 at the thrift store. I know, sticks & berries are not quite in season for March, but but I was making progress away from pine needles. And, heck it was only $3. Besides, I spruced it up with an "R" for Rockin'Bauer & made it fancy.

I was just about to get a springy wreath when we noticed:

And, low & behold:

Four perfect eggs on top of my out-of-season wreath! Really?

What could be more spring? More Southern Living? More Martha Stewart? BH&G?

I was totally rockin' with the best wreath in the neighborhood, people!

And, that wee bit o' HausFrau smugness lasted about 4 days before reality swooped down like a buzzard all over those dead chipmunks in my front yard (oh, yes the Haus is chipmunk-free, thank you for asking). As sweet as those baby birdies were, they loved to eat harked-up worms. And then, as nature would have it, they pooped the remnants of those same harked-up worms.

On my front door wreath. And, the door. And, my Willkommen mat.

About the time the bird poo really began to pile up, the birds lost their babyish cuteness. Which meant the poo lost some of it's novelty too. It's like the difference between newborn baby & size 3T diaper duty. It ain't pretty & you really want to avoid it at all costs.

Eventually, the birdlets lost all their cuteness, became the equivalent of smelly teenagers. And, 16 days after they hatched, they abruptly left the nest.

You know what that means, don't you? The Martha Stewart induced high that I was riding came crashing down around me. I was left with nothing but a trashed out thrift store wreath & a big ol' pile of bird doodie on the front door.

And let me tell you. Nothing says, "Go away. Don't knock. Don't bother. Yes, it is a rental & I don't care how crappy the siding is. Yes, we are PCSing soon. No, MiniMe can't play. And, As a matter of fact, we do hate Girl Scout cookies!" quite like harked-up worm teenager-bird dookie-poo does.

Jet, Car, Ship and a Chipmunk

There is nothing better than drooling over the Blue Angels to distract one desperate HausFrau from an upcoming PCS. Just let me sit in my portable chair and pretend it's Maverick, Goose, IceMan and Viper up there & I'm one happy camper. Didn't hurt that Man provided me with ein bratwurst & zwei beers.

(High.Way. to the Dan-ger Zone!)

The girls were digging it too. One asked if I thought she should marry a pilot uh, no? ok, only if you have to & the other informed me that her Prince Charming would definitely be driving one of those thingies an FA-18 Hornet. Sigh. Please tell me, what am I doing wrong?!

Two days after flying high, it was time to hit the road. We sparkled up my car & drove out to the Baltimore Port. For the mere pocket change of $1300 and the relatively short time of 30 days, my Accord will be ready to rock-n-roll on the Autobahn.

This particular shipping adventure put me closer to the boat than ever before. For those of you who have shipped vehicles, have you ever seen the actual sailing vessel? I snapped this picture of Man driving my car up to the dock. The Wally-Willy is Bremerhaven bound & my car had better be on the 27 May sail date!

If you ever have to use the Mid-Atlantic Terminal at Baltimore, the guys who work there are extremely friendly & efficient. Yes, my friends, this is the vehicle we paid to ship commercially. Apparently, that provides a little bit of customer service that the government flat rate doesn't. After a 90 minute drive, two iced teas and one diet Pepsi, I floated right into the restroom of the MAT, where I found this sign:

Really? The nice shipping guys said it was the Ladies Room, but now I have my doubts. They probably play that trick on everyone. Right? Part of the shipping fee: sense of humor?

Once the car was out of sight & out of mind, I concentrated on unaccompanied baggage. Actually, I didn't think about it too much. I just dumped all the extra pillows & blankies on the office floor, tossed in 4 wine glasses and declared that good enough.

Very nice packers & movers came two days later and cleaned up my office for me! Gosh, with the right mindset (and 6 months notice and a burning desire to move far, far away from here) a PCS may actually be tolerable.

I know what you are thinking and I will neither confirm nor deny the consumption of any chemical enhancers or mood altering happy pills.

Who needs modern pharmaceuticals when your office looks like this?!

Actually, I think I might have to enhance myself with some Cab-Merlot tonight. Sadie, The BestCatEver, hand carried a chipmunk into the Haus last night. She batted it around, played with it, then grew tired and walked away. This is the same cat whose 5-day winning streak can be summed up as: Cat 4, Chipmunks 0.

Today, as I type this, we have a very skittish Charlie the Chipmunk living amongst us. I'll level with you . . . I've screamed twice in the last four hours and totally got the hibby-jeebies when Charlie dashed out from behind the trashcan and scurried-in-a-hurry right across my barefoot.

Can we all say in unison: Chipmunk 1, HausFrau 0?

Ok. Fine. I stood on the kitchen chair too.

And, darn near acted a fool.

And, Sadie, The BestCatEver . . .

could not care less.

Dear HausFrau:

Please PCS back to Germany as soon as possible. I'll even pay all your expenses to do so.

Sincerely, Uncle Sam
************************
Dear Uncle Sammy:

You are the best! I've been missing die/das/der Bier, Schnitzel, Wein, Volkmarches & Christkindlmarkts.

Vielen Dank,
Savvy

I'm Back

Or as Elton John would say, The B!tch is Back.

Today, after I dropped MiniMe off at the elementary Kiss and Ride, I headed out run a few errands. First stop was the Shoppette/Class 6 where I purchased a soda with my debit card just so that I could score some cold hard cash. I pretty-please-with-a-cherry-on-top asked for small bills to use at the laundry mat. The cashier gave me ten ones & balked a bit at following that with 2 fives, but eventually forked them over.

I was all smiles & full of gratitude and expected in return only a simple "you're welcome" or an "aw, shucks, it's nothing ma'am, just doing my job". What I got . . .

"Well, if I didn't know any better, I would think you were headed to the strip club."

Dude! Really?! You said that out loud?!

"I suppose that a HausFrau dressed in gym clothes, wearing borrowed-from-Laze-E flip flops & chugging a Diet Caffeine Free Pepsi could be headed to a strip club. At 0930 on a Monday morning. But, alas, you are right. I. am. not."

Yep. I said that out loud!

And, being a smartelic was loads more fun than doing PCS laundry, buying groceries & running 3 miles.

Probably not as much fun as the strip club, though.

HausFrau's Top Ten

Top Ten Reasons that I've Been MIA

10. Community College anatomy classes has just about sucked the cognitive abilities right out of my frontal lobe.

9. Those toilets didn't just clean themselves, you know.

8. Someone from the Haus had to develop an offensive plan for successful commissary shopping.

7. Been sitting around waiting on the "We're moving next week!" phone call from Man.

6. We drove 1400 miles so I could avoid cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

5. I don't share my FaceBook password, so all that social networking falls directly on me.

4. I decided to finally figure out the whole Die, Das & Der thing.

3. Santa called begging for my help & I'd had way to much Glühwein to say nein.

2. 32 episodes of SVU on my DVR.

1. Those bottles of German wine didn't just drink themselves, you know.