Surreal Georgia

Photo Challenge for January

I saw this on http://lifeinbeta.com , a blog I have been reading for some time. The Photo challenge is quite an interesting idea and I think it would even more interesting if someone from Europe takes part, me. Thanks, Mandi, for the idea!

 

 

So let's start: Something I wore today!

 

These are my favorite boots, a bit dirty, because we had real bad weather today. It was raining and thundering all the time. These boots I wear nearly daily from the first days of fall to spring. They are so comfortable.

New Old Desk and a Lot More

It  has been a stressful time since we moved. My job doens't let me any time for getting through that mess and if there weren't Anna, who fixes all when I'm at school, we would still live in a complete mess.

Every single day is filled with work from 5 o'clock in the morning until night. Because we can't move the furnishing of the rooms in Driburg (it doesn't look very attractive for a buyer if a house is completely empty) we at least try to move our personal things like our clothes, our books and computer we need for working/study, our computers, shoes, jackets, files and documents, family pictures and so on. Every day we move another part as far as it fits into my car.

We also officially moved: We are now citizen of Diemelstadt, where Wethen belongs to, Hesse. We are back to the place our ancestors lived for hundreds of years. It feels good!

In the meantime a lot of deliveries were made: Fittings for the bathrooms, a small scaffolding for the work on the high ceilings in the house, the bathtub, three sinks, a shower, four toilets, carpet tiles, floors for the bathrooms, wallpapers, drapes and so on.  It piles all up in the two garages and our personal things pile up in the first floor. Sigh! And no time to get all this work done. I even  haven't had time for ironing our laundry, which also piles up higher and higher.

Today actually Anna's car should have been ready for fetching it from Duisburg. But the vehicle registration office works as slow as a snail. So we still have no license plates. Hopefully we can fetch the car on Friday. We already bought tickets for the train to Duisburg. It is a journey of about 2,5 hours. We decided to travel first class, because we want to be left alone and have a comfortable trip. Then we have to drive the new car back to our home, another 2,5 hours!

Last week I bought an old desk for Anna's living room to be. She wanted to have a Chippendale coffee table, nothing else. So I bought one at Ebay. It's a nice dainty table with carvings and wooden network under the glass plate. It is about 60 years old. So it is just what Anna wanted. We drove to a small town in the Sauerland, Meschede, to fetch it. For heaven's sake! You don't guess how small and winding the roads are in the Sauerland. And you drive always up and down the steep hills. We were very glad being at home again after about 4 hours in the car. Several construction sites and closed roads forced us to go long ways round. But at least the table was in our old new house in Wethen. No, I wouldn't like to live in the Sauerland. There is nothing apart from hills and trees, nothing! OK, it's a wonderful landscape, but living there is not very comfortable on my opinion, above all not in winter.

Sauerland

Today I had a little time to clean Anna's table and to treat it with furniture polish. Here it is:

 

Last weekend it was my parents' birthday. My father would have turned 87 on Saturday and my mother 84 on Sunday. On this occasion we did a completely new planting on their grave and on my grandparents' grave. We planted heather and asters. Also the garden in Wethen had to be done. It is now prepared for winter. 

 

My parents' grave

And not to forget: There was an email of Mike Richwalsky, formerly of Erie, who asked me, if hecould reprint my story of Erie's sleeping beauty on his site "Erie Blogs". I feel very honored that he published it on his site despite my really bumpy English. I must admit that I'm really proud.

 

Co-Author

I forgot to tell you about my new co-author to be. I appreaciate her posts very, very much.

You find her blog under: http://sabineofgermany.typepad.com/shamanin/

Some Changes in Blogging

Dear "authorized" readers or simply: Dear friends! It’s a while ago since I posted and this is the reason why my blog is under password-protection now:

A few weeks ago I ordered a relax chair from Ebay. Well, it’s a long story, but the vendor was a primitive guy who treats his customers very evil. Therefore he got a “negative” from me. 3 weeks later he sent me an email threatening me that he would sue me because of the “negative”. Until now there is no mail from a lawyer, and I hope this will stay like this. German law does not protect people like me. If you get such letter by a lawyer (called "Abmahnung" you have to pay hundreds of Euros without any trial. There are special attorneys who only live from writing such letters and getting hundreds of Euros for each letter. Today there is a report in the TV about the typical German habit suing people for I don’t know what. The reasons grow more and more bizarre and the culture in Germany grows more and more aggressive. This is the reason why I decided not to blog in the public any more. There are too much people in the net who only look out for someone they can bully. I’m very sorry about this. If this goes on the internet will develop into a platform only for advertisement of companies with their own attorneys. It’s too sad, but for a private person like me the risk is much too high being sued because of nothing. I’m sorry because I’m afraid of losing a lot of nice American and German friends who read my blog. I’m sorry because my blog should be a bridge between Waldeck and people whose ancestors emigrated from Waldeck or who are simply interested in all the old stories or in daily life in Germany. I’m sorry, because I was so proud being a member of the Erie Bloggers, I felt so honoured about that. These were reasons why I blogged on after difficulties and being bullied in September 2006, but I must confess that I can’t risk any more being sued, being bullied, because it could cost my complete existence. I don’t have enough money paying for being sued because of nothing. This might even make me lose my house or my job. These risks are too high.

Until now I haven’t found time to send all my readers personal emails with password and user name, but I hope I can catch up the following days or perhaps after posting this.

Since my last blog post there have happened a lot of things. First of all Anna is here. I hope she did her last exams well – we will not know this until September – and we have a lot of fun together. But also a lot of stress… Anna has to do a practical training in August and she is trying to get a driver’s licence until the end of September until she will be back to the Ruhr Valley. This is why we have a lot of stress at the moment. The driving school said it would be manageable to get the licence until the end of September, but they did nothing. 1 ½ week passed without any effort of the school getting the things done that have to be done before she can get her licence. They always told us some crap, so we waited and waited. Yesterday morning I called the boss of the school because I was fed up with all this mess and since then all is going well. This morning Anna has had her first driving lessons! We had been on a training-place earlier, so she can already manage the machine – with my own car! Well, I didn’t feel very comfortable about this, because I urgently need my car, but all went fine and Anna did all I wanted her to do. She is a very careful person. So my car hasn’t got any damage. Thank God! But now she needs training on real streets. Tomorrow there will be the next driving lesson. So I’m convinced that she will have a real chance to get the licence until the end of September. The entire licence-thing is very, very expensive and stressful for me, because I have to take Anna to the next big town, where the lessons are. She can only do her lessons in a holiday driving school, because she is living in the Ruhr Valley and the German law says you normaly have to do it in your hometown. I have to drive 60 kilometres for eachlesson at the driving school and I have to wait there in my car until the lessons are over. Fuel is about 16 Euros for hundred kilometres, so you know what I have to pay at the moment. But: Mommies nearly do everything for their children…

Next week we will have also a lot of changes. Anna’s practical training begins and I have to go back to school at the end of the week. So school holidays are over although I feel like having had no free time. I’m not relaxed, I feel stressed out. No good condition for a start into the next school year.

Jim: I didn’t manage the last days doing anything on your family tree. But I’m working on it. Please don’t be angry with me.

Mary K.S.: I didn’t manage writing a post about Rapunzel, but it will follow. I’m thinking of you every day!

Renate: I didn’t manage anything…same reasons. I’m also thinking of you, my dear friend. You know this (I hope so).

Wolfgang: You never bore me with your emails, just the opposite. I love your letters and you are a true friend! Thank you for thinking of me in those difficult times! I know that you read my blog very, very often and I’m proud that you do so.

The main reason why I couldn’t get any rest is that I have to be three times a week at my mother’s house and each day I’m not there I have to call here at least 2 or 3 times a day. This is pure stress! And I must confess that the visits are not very joyful for me. Just the opposite, because she is moaning and wailing and you can’t do her anything right. All is bad, the world is bad, her life is bad and all other people are responsible for this apart from her. My ears are aching from all this wailing. I can’t hear it any more. I feel extremely bad about my reaction, but I can't say that I enjoy these visits. Sorry. And whatever I do for her it is never enough, never ever. This is totally frustrating. Well, this might be an advantage of blogging password protected. I can talk about some things a bit more frankly than I could before.

The weeks before Anna came there was a lot of work in and around the house: My cellar is poop-free now. I put all on the dump what had had any contact to the sewage, I painted the whole floor and I put up a lot of new shelves so that nothing is standing on the floor any more just in case of a new flood in the cellar (please not!). Then I cleaned the whole house because last year we didn’t live here and nothing was spring-cleaned since my father died. So this was very, very urgent. The third holiday week I had to cut all the hedges around the house (more than 40 meters of very big hedges). You can imagine that this all was a lot of work in the remaining 3 days of a week I don’t spend at my mother’s house. Additionally I’m again in a very depressive phase. I’m suffering from depressions since I’m a teenager. Well, this will be better again. I’ve learned during all the years that these phases pass over, I only have to wait for getting better. It’s a bit like the weather: You can’t do anything against rain, storm and dark times, but some day there will be sunshine again for a short period of time.

So this is all for now. Now you know what I did during the last weeks and what happened to my blog. I’m very unhappy about this and I’m afraid losing a lot of my readers. But I can’t keep swimming in this pool with so many sharks in it. I hope that all my friends will understand my decision.