A Moment...

...to breathe. Just a moment. Well, an afternoon, that is. I have been rebuked countless times since moving to Annapolis for my laxity in blogging. At first I had no excuse other than laziness and jetlag for being so remiss, but I have, at long last come up with three good excuses which I will lay out in High School essay-like form.

First,
Second,
Finally,
In conclusion, I am now working three jobs (read approx. 6 1/2 days per week), one which occasionally requires my presence at 5:15 am, another which occasionally requires my presence until as late as 11:00 pm, and I am exhausted.

Or, as a more true explanation, I now work as a hostess at Phillips Seafood Restaurant, a barista-in-training at Starbucks, and a nanny for Charlie (who is just under two months old). As you can, I am sure, tell from the fact that I have posted twice today, I have the afternoon off, and am desperately trying to catch up with my life. So I'm off (like a dirty shirt) to get everything else done. Right now. Effortlessly.

Home again, home again...

...well, not completely home. I'd say that I'm about 1/2 way there. At least I'm back in my own country. I have now been in Maryland for six days, and my first impression is that it is extremely hot and muggy. I boarded the plane in Hamburg with rain pouring down and stepped off in Maryland to be greeted with perhaps the same amount of precipitation in the form of humidity. To say that it's hot here would be more than an understatement. It is the kind of weather that makes you seriously consider joining a nudist colony.
Despite the temperature, things have been going remarkably smoothly here. When I arrived on Monday, I parked myself in Zeb and Sarah's apartment even though they had already found a room for me literally three blocks away. Allowing myself 2 1/2 days to begin recovering from my jet lag, and buy some work-appropriate clothes, I then walked just a bit further down the street to the harbor, talked to the manager of the local fancy-schmanzy seafood restaurant, and began my new job on Friday. My observations on the job so far is that once I have learned the system, it will be incredibly boring, and I have very strong doubts that I will have any desire to spend time with my co-workers in my free hours, but I am being paid well enough to survive, and hopefully even to save some money so I am simply thankful that I have income so easily and the resulting ease in financial pressure.
So that is the basic update. I am finally over the cold that I had carried with me for nearly the last two weeks that I was in Deutschland, I have a place to sleep, food on a pantry shelf with my name on it, new shoes, and wonder of wonders, I have begun to wear skirts.
I'm still working out my internet situation and I don't even have a telephone at the moment, so bear with me on my blogging schedule... it's all up in the air.

Days go by...

Everyone told me that Time's leaden feet of the beginning of my stay here would be transformed in the last days into winged things such as those which made Hermes so famous, and despite my doubts, the days are indeed flying to their close.
Siobahn, the new au pair, arrived Monday night.
I leave in five days, and have more plans for those hours than can possibly be realized.
Silke and I are visiting the Netherlands on Friday.
I still need to purchase obscene amounts of chocolate to bring home with me.
There is laundry to be washed and hung to dry in the corner of the yard where I run no danger of being embarrassed by the passer-by being able to see my undergarments.
Felix, seeming instinctively to realize that I am being somehow withdrawn from him, has become adorably clingy and kuschlich (prone to snuggle).
Photos of all the places I do not want to remember are still in need of being captured.
...Therefore, if you hear nothing from me for a week or so, don't be alarmed. I haven't been sold into white slavery: I'm just tired, stressed and trying to make it back to the states.

Congratulations...

to my friends Colin, Summer and Indy, who welcomed Sabine Selby into their family yesterday. I'm excited to get to meet her and to hear more about how the family grows.

The REALLY BIG NEWS

Okay, I do realize that in my very last post I stated that there was nothing big in the works and that all my plans were fluid, but all of that has changed; and quite quickly at that. I have not had a chance to introduce all of you to Carlton Schmidt yet. That is partly because I tend to keep the most personal things in my life quite private, and partly because I just met him last week. I have never been one who believes in "love at first sight," or instantly knowing that this person is "the one," but I have to admit, I fell extremely quickly and hard. We actually met on the train last weekend, and since that time I have gone out with him nearly every evening after I get done working (which makes me very tired in the morning). I'll tell you more about him in a later blog, but here are salient facts you all should know about him. He's 27, a linguistics professor at the university here in Oldenburg, born to a British mother and German father, he has lived in Germany most of his life and... we're engaged. We haven't set a date yet, or really made any other plans, but I'm so excited I couldn't wait to post something. So there you have it.

The official news

I have been going back an forth for quite some time now on the issue of what the destination should be on my return ticket to the United States. Tonight I finally bought my nonrefundable-in-the-case-of-cancellation-ticket which sealed the decision I had already made to move to Maryland on July 8th for an indefinite period of time (read there: at least a year, and then I would have to earn enough money to move back to the West Coast). What will I do there? Well, that part of things is still uncertain. I am pursuing an opportunity to teach part-time, and am hoping to pursue music and writing more intensively. Odds are much better that I will be able to keep up with my German the closer I am to D.C. Don't worry, all you Eugene-ites (and Portlanders, and all the near-that-area-ers) I will be back to visit Eugene for my dear cousin's wedding in late July/early August, so if you are in the area at that time then please throw me a party so that I can see all of you. There, in brief, is my news. As the rest of my plans are at a liquid stage, and running all over the place, I will wait until they are a little bit more firm to fill you in on them. Don't worry, there's nothing too dramatic in the works. ...And now you know the rest of the story!