ammogirl

Okay, you guys, as proof that I have been so busy that I have honestly not had one single moment of spare time to post, I will give you two examples, both from today, and one of which will get me in a lot of trouble.  (If my mom reads this)(which she totally does)

1.  This afternoon, THIS VERY afternoon, I mailed off my mom’s Mother’s Day card.  I live in Germany.  She lives in Oregon.  The card cost me $2.99, and the postage to express mail that bitch off?  $14.40.

2.  I got off work at 4pm, and it is now…9:50.  In between then and now, I have: changed into running clothes for a race, raced, nearly peed my pants racing, drove home, showered, ate a bowl of cereal for dinner, started a batch of cookies to take to the wounded troops that arrive right here at my base on a weekly basis, drove three towns over to get Lindsey, drove home without Lindsey, logged into my English class and posted some replies, spoke to Lindsey’s ride home when she was finally dropped off, made more cookies, did the dishes, started a load of laundry, put the girls to bed, posted some more replies to my class, finished making cookies, cleaned up the kitchen, and…here I am.

You guys.  I seriously came one millimeter away from peeing my pants while I was running today.  I don’t know what I would have done…I ended up walking twice, for about ten seconds, while the urge passed.  However, even though I walked, I still managed to shave an entire minute off my 5K time, which is fabulous, yes, thank you.

In regards to the late Mother’s day card business…do you know I have every intention of sending my cards out on time, but somehow, the time totally slips by and before I know it, blammo!  I’m late, again.  I have spent more money on express mail postage for my parents various days than on…oh, I don’t know.  An average priced pair of shoes, or something.  Anyway, mother, your card is SUPPOSED to get there on Saturday.  Also, you’re the best!  I love you!

Now, let’s see…oh yes.  John and I went to a going away on Friday for one of his coworkers.  I had several-ish margaritas, and the German tequila must be very strong because whoo boy was I drunk!  In fact, I know I drunk emailed and/or IMd a few of you…ha ha ha?  I was amusing, right?  Yeah, well, anyhow, Saturday I woke up with a RAGING hangover, the likes I have not seen since Korea, and good lord, I cannot drink tequila.  I wasted my entire day slowlllyyyyy eating a package of crackers.  The rest of my family was a bunch of loud and busy damn beavers, though, and I would’ve killed them, had I been able to open my eyes wide enough to see anything.

On Sunday I woke up bright and early and tried to catch up on weekend stuff, so I was pretty busy all day, and in between all that busy I managed to have the worst day ever with my back, to the point where when the bagger girl at the commissary was loading groceries in my car and taking absolutely FOR-EV-ER to do it, my legs were shaking with pain.  Ah!  But!  Do not be alarmed, because this was actually a good thing.  I happened to already have an appointment for my back scheduled, and between relaying the story of the leg-shaking pain and the fact that I got fed up and said, “DO SOMETHING”, I actually got the doctor to listen to me.  I ended up getting 90 million x-rays of my back and spine (lower and really lower) and new drugs and another round with the physical therapist.  I don’t care what they say this time, I’m just glad finally someone listened to what I was saying.

Oh!  Something exciting actually did happen this past week…I got an A+ on my first writing assignment.  God.  That’s like heroin to someone like me.

And…thus ends the summary of my past week.  Now it is past my bedtime.

Tschuss!!!

Oh gosh, where do I start?  Hmmm…that’s right, no need to start anywhere, because I…oh wait!  Yes, I totally do have something to talk about!  Yesterday I was a volunteer buddy at the Special Olympics!  It was so fun!  I had a little guy, aged five, named Jakeem.  He - and I’m not being weird here, just stating a fact - didn’t have any outward physical or mental defects, that I could tell.  NOT that that would make a difference, I swear, I’m just giving you the full account.  Anyhow, Jakeem was an absolute SWEETHEART of a little boy, and I played with him at all the activities, and bought him brunch, and lunch, and a snack (Jakeem had an pretty hearty appetite) and made playdough snake families and I even rubbed his back while he rested a bit! I did!  I was certain I was Jakeem’s favorite person in the world…and then?  Sniff…and then Jakeem found one of his friends and ditched me.  Straight up threw me to the side.  I was heartbroken, needless to say, and feeling a bit 5th wheelish, seeing as Jakeem’s friend’s buddy had her OWN friend there, and none of them spoke any English.  So there I was, trailing along behind, totally dejected…sitting by myself on the train, no one to help climb up the…climbing things on the wall.  It was very sad.  Fortunately all this happened only twenty minutes before the day was over, so my total depression didn’t last long.

Hmm…that took a lot less time than I thought it would.  Let’s see…okay.  So, I got there at 750, and I stood in line until 915, and that was pretty much the most unfun thing I’d ever done.  Well, and the train ride was really fun.  And the food was good, even though I didn’t get to eat a crepe.

Anyway, work has been mind-numbingly boring this week, and I hate it so much when it’s like that.  It makes me do things like…sneaky surfing to Popsugar and the very obvious trying to hide the fact that I was doing so.  You know how that goes.  However, boring work days allow me to go run in the middle of the afternoon and then pretend that I’m “working” for the rest of the day.  It’s fun to sit at work sweaty, nobody wants to come talk to me.

I have been trying my new wines this week, and I have to say, I made some pretty damn fine choices!  In fact…I should probably go make sure my choices are still spot on.

Tschuss!!

So, we left Sunday morning for Italy, eight of us plus our luggage crammed into two vehicles.  Of course, the van I was riding in now holds the title of “Most Uncomfortable Freaking Vehicle On Earth, EVER”, a fact not helped by the nearly 13 hours spent in it on the way home, due to an Autobahn accident…but we will get to that later.  Regardless, the trip down wasn’t too bad, I read a lot, slept a lot, talked a lot, and then we were there!

Now, I just want to state something for the record up front:  there is no scenic stops on the Autobahn.  So, while I saw many beautiful things while driving through Germany, Austria, and Italy, all I could do is commit them to memory for my own pleasure.  On the same note, the people I was with?  NOT into picture taking.  Needless to say, I didn’t get a lot of opportunities to take pictures.  Just so you know.

Anyway, so it was gorgeous on the way down, and when we finally pulled into the base around 6-ish, the weather was still perfect.  We checked in and immediately headed downtown Aviano (I think…) to BeFeds Chicken restaurant & microbrewery.  Yes, we had bbq chicken and beer…in Italy.  I don’t know.  It was pretty fabulous, however, and the beer went down very well…but not too much, as I didn’t want a repeat of the LAST inspection, you know, the one in which I puked the very first morning of the very first day, RIGHT at the front gate of the bomb dump?  Yeah.  So, bla bla bla, the inspection went absolutely swimmingly, and every day went like this:  get up, go to breakfast, go inspect, have lunch, inspect some more, get home around 5:30-ish, and then head to some random fabulous restaurant around 6:30-ish.  You guys.  THE BEST FOOD EVER.  In fact, one night, every first bite of each dish I would exclaim, “Oh my GOD.  This is the best EVER” until finally my coworkers were like, Ahem, OVER IT.  Of course, that did not stop me because hi, it really WAS the best food ever!  And the wine!  Oh my god.  I just…look.  Before you die, you HAVE to go to Italy and eat the food.  I would say it’s almost a requirement.  And then, there are these drinks, made with some lemon alcohol stuff and lemon gelato.  They are called (I’m going to fuck this up royally…) Sgroppinos and they taste like melted lemon meringue pie…with a kick.  SO good.  Plus, it sounds fairly similar to “scrotum” so of course for rest of the trip we would talk about how good the scrotum drinks were.  Yes, we are twelve-year-old boys, even me.

This time, I did not get sick, not once, even though there was some excessive drinking.  However, I DID gain the five pounds, and it was all worth it.  I have to tell you, and my husband will probably disown me for this, but at one point in my life I used to say that Mexican food was my favorite.  Now…I can’t say that anymore.

So, enough about the food.  The area around there was EXACTLY how you would picture Italy, whether it be in your mind, or described in a book, or in a movie.  There’s just a…an atmosphere that envelopes everything.  It’s relaxed, and…oh, I can’t explain it.  But one day, my favorite people will come to visit me, and we will go to Italy for a week, and that will be a very fabulous time.

On Friday we got done early, so a few of us went to lunch and then headed over to a winery (of which I do have pictures!  I will post them soon!) and did a little taste testing.  I left there with…um…24 bottles of wine.  What!  It was FABULOUS wine!  Plus, I need to fill up the new wine rack, remember?  Unfortunately, lunch + wine tasting at 2pm left me completely wiped, and I was utterly unable to stir myself to meet for dinner.  Probably a good thing, though, since there is this thing called “pants” that you have to put on to be decent, and I wouldn’t have been able to do the putting on thing, had I put another bite in my mouth.

The next morning, we piled in the vans, again, and headed out.  The drive was going very smooth until about the six hour mark, when we encountered the aforementioned accident.  And then we waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.  And then after one hour, we took a detour, where we…ran into everyone else who took the same detour.  So we waited.  And waited.  And…you know.  Anyhow, TWO and 1/2 hours later, we were on the (right) road again.  By this time, we should have already been home, and we had like…nearly three hours left.  Yes.  This sucked.  Because remember that uncomfortable van I spoke of?  Well, and do you also remember that I have something wrong with my back?  Yeah.  Agony.  I was very close to breaking open a bottle of wine just for a little relief.  And no, Angel, I have not inquired about a chiropractor.  Leave me alone.

We finally made it home at a much later time than we had originally planned, and yes, it was fine to be home.  I slept like the dead that night.  Sunday we did family grocery shopping (I know!  SO MUCH FUN!).  Monday I worked and wrote the essay, and today I had a race, which was composed of flat trails (not many), a downhill portion (small) and a GINORMOUS uphill stretch, almost 3/4 mile of an uphill stretch (ginormous).  It sucked.  Yeah.

I’m tired now.  Have a good day.

Tschuss!!