ammogirl

Alright. Look, I have a phobia about poop, let’s get that straight before I start this post. I think poop is gross(er than normal people do) and will never understand how people can be so glib about it.

–SNIP–(lots of stuff about me that I just cannot bring myself to post)–END SNIP–

And…I remember I was writing this as a lead-in to a post about German toilets, but I fretted so much over that last paragraph that I forgot what I wanted to say (and then I ended up deleting the whole thing anyway). Awesome.

Anyway, blah blah blah more stuff I deleted out but basically my parents were evil and caused me to have this weird poop phobia because I would have to like, drink a lot of prune juice, and that never turns out, and to neutralize the prune juice I would drink Kaopectate, which would in turn force me to take Castoria, and it tasted like alcoholic prunes, and then everything would start all over again. I spent a LOT of time in the bathroom when I was young. Indeed, I grew to actually LIKE drinking both the Kaopectate AND the Castoria, and would sneak into the bathroom to drink them. Yes. It was a problem. Like…I would say a good 1/3 of childhood pictures of me are of me on the toilet, because if they hadn’t taken them, nobody would have believed I had been a child. True. HOURS. OF. MY LIFE.

When I was maybe nine, I remember being in the worst amount of pain due to my confused innards, and my parents wanting me to take a Correctol. I did NOT want to take that pill, because I was certain I would choke and die, and no amount of reassurance would change my mind. So I was standing in the kitchen, right, and my parents and grandma were all imploring me to just swallow the pill, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it, and I begged them to let me chew it up with a cake baked in my Hollie Hobbie EasyBake Oven, and they finally let me, even though it was a really bad idea, because Correctol is NOT a cake flavor. I cried and cried, and to this day, I have this whole deal with poop, and all of those reasons are my reason why.

…blah blah blah German toilets. The end.

Tschuss!

I swear to god I am losing brain cells on a daily basis. When I walked in my front door Monday evening, I had my ID card in my hand, I DID, but Tuesday morning, it was gone. Gone! It has travelled to another dimension. This caused many problems, because without my ID card, I can’t get on base without driving way out of my way, parking, signing this stupid form that says I am stupid, and getting a temporary pass, one that says in big letters “(i am a big loser who) LOST ID CARD”. Also what I love, is after explaining my lost ID to my boss, turning around and walking into a file cabinet. It’s not a new file cabinet. It has been there infinity long. I am just not infinity smart.
I have this thing for the past month or so where I am addicted to buying Halloween candy. Everytime I go to the grocery store, I buy at least two bags. Sometimes more. I try to buy a different kind every time. I have bought at least twenty bags of candy–enough to fill three very large bowls, and still have eight bags left over. And out of all that candy, I neglected to buy two–no, THREE!–very important types of candy: Reese’s, Twix, and Kit-Kat.

Do you know, I would suppose because of the candy store and the constant supply of high-quality homemade candy in our house when I was wee, that I very rarely trick-or-treated when I was young? In fact, I can remember only one time: I was I Dream of Jeannie, which, now that I think of it…the molded hair on that mask wasn’t blonde, OR in a high pony, it was a kicky red bob. Heyyyyy! And the costume was like, red and green and orange, not pink! WTF! I think I got totally faked out by my mom! Anyway, dammit, I never got to go trick-or-treating, and I always hated that. The lure of store-bought candy was always so strong. I especially liked Lik-M-Aid. Not the powder, really, just that tasteless stick. Yum. I have a point. I…just don’t remember what it is. SEE? Losing brain cells!

Also. This week I bought a bread machine from a guy in my building. He is moving to a different base that is not in Europe and his bread machine is of the European variety. I got it for ten bucks, which is totally bonus, even if I never, ever use it, not even once. Anyway, when I went to pick it up, we did that thing where I wasn’t sure if it was him, and he wasn’t sure what I was up there to buy, and we both sort of “hey!” “hey!” “so..”"yeah, so, um, you have ten bucks…?” “…yeah, the…”"Oh! Bread maker!”"right, right!” And he was like “ta-da” with the bread maker and I said “wow” appropriately and then he goes, “the one thing, see, there’s no manual-”"oh, that’s okay, no probl-”"no, I mean, I went online and downloaded it–” “oh, wow! (gracious smile) you REALLY didn’t have to do–” “…well, um, I mean, if you want me to, I can download it and print it out, or burn it to a cd or something?” and that’s when I realized that he didn’t do that, and I was all, oh, NOOO, don’t worry about it, I can totally do that myself, but by that point he was already googling it and I could tell he totally wasn’t WANTING to do it, but felt bad because I had mistakenly thought he had went to the trouble of getting this manual for me. Awkwardness ensued, while he tried multiple search strings to no avail, and then I was like, honestly, I can google it myself, THANKSI’MLEAVINGBYE!

And then like, two hours later, I got an email from him and it was the link to the online manual. He worked hard for that ten bucks.

Okay I’m going to bed.

Tschuss!

So on our last day in Innsbruck, after a quick trip to the Apotheke for Lindsey (who now knows to always expect the worst, in terms of womanly things, ahem), we all packed up and headed over to the train station. Now, we were not travelling light. When we all finally made it to the same place (two taxis and a stroller walk later), we had amassed the following: 7 adults, 2 teenage girls, 2 one-year-old twin boys, 13 suitcases, 3 backpacks, 1 diaper bag, 2 porta-cribs, 2 baby backpack carriers, and a double stroller. It sort of sucked. Getting on and off a train in the two minutes it stops took supreme coordination and a referee for the inevitable bitching that coordination entailed. “That one. NO, that one…look, it’s right…forget it. I WILL GET IT.” I’m sure it didn’t help when I started in with the by-the-second countdown. I don’t know why.

When we arrived in Munich, it took a bit to get a taxi to the hotel–one of the only bad parts of the trip, really. We made it, though, and ran into Sandee immediately after we got there, and within 45 minutes everyone had settled into their rooms, cleaned up a bit, and regrouped in the lobby for what became the first in a long, long, never-ending, soul-sucking, exhausting, tight-jeans-making series of beer. Christ on a cracker, the grain from the beer I drank over those four days could have fed an entire third-world country. I would give you stories, but seriously? I spent the entire time with a buzz, so things are a little fuzzy. One morning, I woke up and declared quite vehemently over breakfast, “I cannot drink another sip of beer!” and then two hours later, where do I find myself? At a pub in the shopping district of Munich, cheers-ing yet again. Note to self: do not let yourself loose in the Munich shopping district while drinking. SWI results in purchasing…everything in sight, really. At one point, I was sent back to the stores to locate Christy, who was MIA. I found her in a jewelry store specializing in hand-made jewelery (hey! which one is it, Wordpress built-in spell checker? I didn’t get a red line for jewelry OR jewelery. Although I did get one for Wordpress. Hmmmm.) and as soon as I identified myself as being with Christy, who was also spending money like we were peeing it, the shopkeeper gave me a “special” coffee (read: alcoholic) and started pointing out which pieces would look best on me. At first I was like, “bitch, just give me the coffee”, but after a sip or two I changed my tune to “oh my gosh you are so right, this really expensive necklace I will NEVER WEAR (and break within 24 hours of purchasing it) goes so well with these astronomically priced boots I just bought! Wrap it up!”

I still haven’t told John how much I spent. Not because he would mind, or even care, but because I am horrifyingly ashamed. Fiscal smarts indeed.

Anyway, we eventually made it to the Hofbrauhaus, which is the most famous in the world. But truthfully all I noticed was the ginormous beer I was served. And served. And served. And you guys, does anyone remember when I used to love wine? Where was I during this trip? Also, a litre of beer? HEAVY.

We continued on in that vein for awhile, waiting until the verrrrrrryyyyy last minute to leave, to make it to John’s birthday dinner on time. For some reason, I was not concerned about the time. Huh.

Dinner went well, John turned 30, family stuff and I might or might not have had a small tear at one point and blah blah blah then we were done, and trying to muster up enough energy for the beer-fueled 30th birthday party we had all been planning for the last ten months. Only…we sort of had turned the entire trip into the party, which…left me tired. However, my husband will only turn 30 once, so I did what every good wife does: I drank through it with everyone at the hotel bar.

Oh! I forgot. So, I’ve already told you that the Europeans are a bit more lax in regards to BOOBS and SKIN and SEX, and that’s cool and all, but when they offer 24-hour pay-per-view porn on the hotel tv, it would be nice if they would do more than place a cursory 3×3 notice in the middle of the dirty sex show that covers up exactly one-half of a nipple and perhaps a beaver shot or two. Maybe. Our first night, John and I were flipping through the channels when BLAM! PORN! We were like, ha ha, hey, porn, and then I realized, oh shit! The girls can see this too!

Now, I don’t think my girls are sheltered flowers or anything, and we’ve had the talk and they know about sex and all, but it’s not like I sit down every Friday with them and turn on Anal Fury for family night (no, I haven’t seen it, don’t ask for a review). Therefore, I felt that the getting!every!hole!stuffed!girl on the screen might have been a bit of shock to them, and I ran right down to their room and said, “So. Um…hey, how are you guys doing? Tired? Going to sleep soon DO NOT TURN IT ON CHANNEL 41!! PORN-O-RAMA!” and while some of you might feel that was the WORST thing to do in that situation, trust me…even if they did look (which I know they didn’t), they wouldn’t have lasted more than three seconds before turning the channel in embarrassment. But at least they were forewarned.

Anyway, god, this is really going on and on, isn’t it? Okay. So the next day we woke up and after some sightseeing that did not include beer (really! I swear!) we all met up at the Hofbrauhaus AGAIN, where we drank beer AGAIN, and then went back to Steve and Sandee’s (John’s dad and step-mom, by the way) hotel sports bar, where we ate onion rings and nachos and chicken wings and…drank fucking beer while watching football. Of the American variety. The next morning, we said our goodbyes to those who were staying, and packed up those who were coming with, and headed home. We spent our last evening at our house with everyone the same way as we spent our first night: dinner from the local restaurant and a shot of Jaeger.

Everyone flew home on Tuesday and then I spent all last week in a state of utter exhaustion. That’s it! It was so much fun. If you haven’t looked at my flickr pics yet, make sure you do, or head over to John’s site, where he posted ALL of the pictures (not just the ones that flatter me).

You guys. Seriously…I’m so over beer.

Tschuss!!