[...dun dun dun ....] It's IKEA build day.

The day before our furniture arrived, Will and I braved IKEA to purchase light fixtures, clothing wardrobes, and the inevitable odds and ends. Our apartment, as it goes 'round these parts, has nary a closet, pantry, shelf, etc., so storage furniture is a must. We don't have a car any more, so venturing to IKEA both meant a train ride followed by a bus voyage as well as having to arrange for the items to be shipped to us after we bought them. As harrowing as the journey was, the shopping experience was more so. It ended, as our IKEA trips always do, with me guarding three carts near the checkout while Will races through the warehouse aisles to try to pull down more boxes without getting a free-with-purchase hernia. This time, as I wrestled the carts into their position in line, an IKEA employee stopped concernedly to ask me a question. After she realized that I spoke English she paused, thought for a moment, and said "Alone?" I think she saw a frazzled pregnant woman with sweat on her brow and hundreds of pounds of un-assembled furniture and believed that if I were alone, I needed some overall life advice. I smiled as happily as I could muster and told her that my husband was here, too. She was relieved.

Today began with a shock, with the IKEA movers arriving at 7 am. And without warning. Will had some choice phrases for this early-bird special that were not appropriate for unborn ears. And so began the only day more strenuous than the IKEA shopping day: IKEA build day. If Will doesn't lapse into a shell-shocked coma state - and I would not blame him if he did given the number of times he's danced this dance for the sake of our household - he will spend today poring over cryptic drawings of happy people easily putting together millions of unlabeled parts to end up with usable furniture.

Keep Dr. W. A. Grissom in your thoughts today. The photo is as symbolic as it is real: the blood Will sheds for his family (knuckle skin torn off courtesy of his superior drill bits).

And HOORAY for hanging up clothes!!

35 Weeks!

Time has flown during my pregnancy. Preparing for and taking the California bar and moving abroad certainly contributed to the rush of it all. But here we are, a month / month-and-a-half pre-baby and we're getting excited. I am all registered at a birth house in Munich. It is a lovely place. I'd hoped to do a home birth, but with having just moved here, it doesn't *quite* feel like home yet and it would've taken a lot more leg work to find an English-speaking midwife who did homebirths in my area. And I'll admit that the "by the way, no worries if you hear a lot of yelling come next month; I'm just birthing is all" conversation with my landlords - who live below us - is not one I was looking forward to. So the birth house is a great middle ground. I (we) got checked out last week, and all is well. The baby's head is down, which my bladder could have told you.

And for those interested in anatomy, I give you this picture of me in a family way. Or my "baby bump," as those of you who like to make me shudder call it. I didn't show until late in the pregnancy, and when I did Will went around pointing it out to people as if we were debunking some widespread theory of my fake pregnancy. I've been a reluctant model for pregnancy pictures - it is a miraculous process and one that I've been fortunate to be very healthy throughout. But it has not made me feel particularly photogenic. But now as I fill up a dresser with onesies that I will be using in the very near future, I am a little more inclined to memorialize this time.

More Foods: varying success

(1) Wild rice soup wasundoubtedly the ugliest food I made this week, but dagnabit it was the tastiest.

(2) Cinnamon rolls - recipe can't be faulted for me using the wrong size pan, which was too small and left the center ones too doughy. Will generously ate those too, however. Orange icing was heaven.

(3) Vegan omelette. I took too many liberties with the recipe here, due to my impatience and a country of closed grocery stores. Still pretty tasty, especially with the homemade vegan chorizo, which was zesty and looking forward to serving us on a pizza in the near future.

(4) UPDATE: new food from 12/28: Cauliflower-Leek Pot Pie with Black Olive Crust. This was soooo good. We ate too much of it while Will beat me in Scrabble. Anything with a biscuit top is welcome around here. This one's a keeper.

Holiday Munchies

We had a fabulous dinner last night of roasted squash sauce over gnocchi topped with toasted walnuts. This morning, Will whipped up his oft-requested french toast, pictured here. Much more cooking is in the works for this weekend, and I'll try to chronicle it here so that we remain accountable for our gluttony. Now that my weight is in kilograms, it doesn't pack the same punch as the triple digit pound figure. And elastic maternity pants are so very forgiving...

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Peace to all! We're enjoying our first Christmas in Germany, but we surely miss our friends and family. Thank you for your support, generosity and kindness - and thank you for becoming followers of this blog! I had no idea this endeavor would make me feel more popular than when I actually interacted with people. It's like not being asked to prom never happened! (*sniff*)

We've Got a Bed in Here, People!

Our furniture and other belongings arrived today, and it feels like a tremendous victory. We are up to our eyeballs in boxes, paper, and possessions we really aren't sure we want to possess anymore, but it is still pretty sweet. The movers came 20 minutes early (only in this country would that happen), and happily didn't seem too put out by the snacks we provided. Before they came, I'd googled about tipping customs for movers in Germany, and ended up happening upon an extensive thread about feeding movers here. Since movers are folks that one really needs on one's side, I did not want to break with tradition. I do not, however, know what a normal German heavy lifting guy snack is. And I didn't want to end up giving them something that was equivalent to setting out cucumber & mustard focaccia to an American mover. So we went with what we figured was fairly safe and bought a bunch of pastries from the local bakery. I also bought water bottles, but those were distinctly unpopular ("Germans don't like to hydrate." quoth W. A. Grissom).

But I am getting off topic. The point is, we have a couch to sit on and a bed to sleep on. Will has the rest of this week and next off, so there will be much joyful unpacking in our future. Thanks for all of you who sent positive moving mojo our way!

Snow Day Zwei

Sugar, running in the English Gardens. Three days till furniture!

Thankful to have found my match, millionaire or not

I have been cleaning out my inbox in spurts lately. Apparently 28,000+ emails will slow an application down a bit. Today I happened upon a gem from January 3, 2007. It was a get to know you better email from Jon, an eligible bachelor from MillionaireMatch.com. Some of you may be thinking, but Rachael, you've been married since 2004? And you'd be right. And might I add that you certainly keep careful track of my marriage, gentle reader. But I digress. My foray into online rich guy dating was spurred by hearing about the site, telling my mother about it, and then the ensuing storm of both of our tendencies for curiosity and mischief. Mom informed me authoritatively that because it was free to sign up, and you had to be a member to see profiles, I should just stop being a baby and register. Don't judge me harshly; my mom is very persuasive. So I signed up, using a fake name, no photo, and describing myself as "a loner," "exercise-hater," "pessimist," "clingy" ... and any other tidbits that I imagined would repel a millionaire bachelor looking for love on the world wide web. After my profile, "Ms.IH8u" or some such thing, was created, mom and I holed up and poked around on the site until our voyeuristic needs were sated.

A few days later, I got an email from a millionaire. It was not personal or innappropriate, but it still felt oddly intrusive. Also, the bachelor in question was pictured next to his Delorean. Yes, the Back to the Future car. It made the whole thing feel too real and made me feel like a jerk for making a fake profile. So I set about trying to unregister. Which was tougher than I expected. And so I asked my husband to help me quit MillionaireMatch.com. This set Will on a fit of laughter and at least half a day of refusing to help me. "You made your bed" he cruelly snorted at me. I begged and begged, ("But, Wi-illlll, the DE-LOOOREAN!!"), and finally he relented though not before reminding me that Deloreans are awesome.

At this moment, my real-life match is toiling on the subway with our portable grocery cart, picking up used small appliances from a couple who is leaving Munich so that I can mix, blend, toast and boil in the near future. He also walks around with a German text book asking me what my name is and where my father lives, apparently so we can become German game show hosts. And every morning he takes the dogs out so I don't have to face the cold until midday. Not to mention, I occasionally only have to ask 4 times before he takes out the trash, recycling and compost. I don't need no stinking Delorean. I love you, mister.

(p.s. photo of Will is from our tour of Alcatraz. He is helpfully pointing at the cell for you.)

Movie Review: Funny People

Will and I were both a little tired and crabby last night, so we turned in early and watched a movie on our mattresses which we rented from iTunes. I was tired because I am mostly always tired these days and crabby because I messed up dinner (4 cups of water is not similar to 2 cups of water in a curry). Since I am mostly always hungry these days, too, this error left me stricken. Will was tired because he has not felt all that well this week. Why was he crabby? I imagine it was because he wore linen pants in December in Munich, but he insists that fashion offenses don't injure his psyche.

Anyways: Funny People is the movie we rented. It's a Judd Apatow flick - same guy who wrote Knocked Up. The cons: shamelessly self-aggrandizing of actor/comics making their way in Los Angeles and a little too much boy-humor (didn't you people take Psych 101? Get over it, Oedipus!). Pros: funny dialogue, not predictable, and interesting characters. All in all, some good laughs. If you like dry-joke driven comedy and don't mind a little darkness, Funny People is a good choice for you.

p.s. Selecting a movie was difficult for us. It made me miss Netflix; it's hard to pick out a movie without my trusty queue and Netflix's sage advice. So if anyone has seen a good movie lately, please let us know!

Internet Friend Dates

Yesterday marked attempt #2 in my life to make a friend via the 'net. The first time was in California when I joined a comedy writing group that turned out to be, basically, not that funny. This time, I classed it up and instead of craigslist, I turned to an expat site. I found a new mom on there who had been to the birthing class I was then contemplating, and emailed to ask her opinion of it. She replied and also invited me for "tea." Not coffee, mind you, my uncivilized American friends, but tea, because that's what people from the UK call the event of meeting up in a cafe. The mom, L, was very nice and quite funny, incidentally. She brought along her very chubby and adorable 4 1/2 month old daughter. I expressed that I very much liked the size of her child: still a baby, but some sturdiness to her. I forgot to preface with my internal monologue regarding my wariness of dealing with my own baby when s/he is very tiny and fragile. Nevertheless, L took the compliment well. She assured me that she was a little scared of damaging her's at first as well. L was overall quite positive about having a baby in Germany, saying that the worst part has been the bureaucratic process. For example, she named her baby "Molly," which is not, apparently a Good German Name, so she had to give evidence that sane people have named and have been named Molly. Evidence? A print out from imdb.com with Molly Ringwald's film history. Our meeting ended a little abruptly because Molly was teething and, try as she might, L had trouble soothing her which got us kicked out of Starbucks. I always cry very softly into my folded arms when I'm in a Starbucks, so I don't know if the power to expel expressive sad patrons is unique to the chain in Germany or not. But, regardless, it was a nice time and I plan to follow up with L and her husband after the holidays for a little expat double date.

Seven More Days Till Furniture!

My mom has told me of late that I am being a trooper. This means a lot coming from my mother, who herself has a truly remarkable history of trooper-ism. [Note: do not engage my mother in a conversation about what life was like spending a year on death's door in a tuberculosis sanatorium as a youth in Iceland unless you want to feel a little stupid about complaining about traffic or gaining five pounds. Anyways, mom, weight gain and long commutes are pretty lousy too, you know.] Her compliment to me is based mostly on my spartan living situation, in which I live in apartment containing suitcases, two twin IKEA mattresses - each a luxurious 5" deep, two folding chairs, and a side table that is too low for the chairs thereby necessitating a deep bend at the waist in order to eat off of it.

Well, the end is in sight! We've known since December 7 that our belongings have arrived by sea at the German port of Bremerhaven. Finally yesterday, we got word that our shipment was cleared by Customs and will be delivered on December 23. And I, for one, will gladly renounce trooperhood! In one week, no more will this pregnant lady straddle a side table, awkwardly trying to fit her baby-filled abdomen between her knees so that she can get a bite of oatmeal. No more rewashing the same singular saucepan to in an attempt to cook a normal dinner. Will I have friends? The ability to order food in restaurants? Gainful employment? No, no, no! But I will have a couch and a bed complete with a Simmons Beauty Rest mattress! This will be a wonderful Christmas indeed.

One day later: We are ready to be parents

Will and I attended a day long birthing / baby care class yesterday. A one-day class may sound perfunctory, but this class was eight hours long. Not to mention it was in English. My brain has not had to digest complex verbal information in some time. We are officially prepared, people.

The class was attended by three other couples, two from the UK and a woman from Florida married to a German. I was all a-flutter having a live audience at my disposal, but I tried to rein it in to as not to scare off any potential friends. Between my high-volume, rapid-fire zingers and Will's barely audible mumbles, we can be a disconcerting pair. We must have turned on the charm, though, because we got unsolicited digits from Vicki and Dominic at the end of class. Vicki and Dom (as I'll start calling him) were clearly the coolest couple there.

But even more importantly than our unstoppable charisma, we learned many interesting and horrifying details about birth and infant care. On the practical side, we learned several breathing techniques that seem useful, and the teacher led us in a relaxation technique that put my faithful partner to sleep, slack jaw and all. The class also managed to convince Will that we shouldn't take the subway to the birthing center once I'm in labor, so I'm grateful not to have to lobby for that myself. Instead, he'll just have to practice saying "No, no, my wife is just fat and noisy. There is nothing to worry about." in German, so as to convince a taxi to let us in.

7 weeks and counting until we get to put it all to use! (p.s. Mom - when are you going to buy your plane ticket??)

Snow Day!

This is Will. I thought I would give you all a break from Rachael's side-splitting jokes about my frugality to show you this picture. We woke up this morning to a winter wonderland. The Altbau-style houses look so much cooler when covered in a layer of snow!

Dad Makes My Day

Yesterday I got a phone call. Even though I've practiced "I'm sorry! I don't understand." about 10,000 times, I can't seem to get it out quickly enough on the phone. So when someone starts speaking German, I freeze. This particular phone call caused such panic, and I rationalized that it must be a telemarketer because their intro was just too long. Mature adult that I am, I hung up on this unwelcome caller. But she called back. So I stopped answering my phone for two days. Finally, I admitted to myself that this person did seem to at least think that they needed to get in touch with me, so I googled the phone number, and lo and behold, a flower shop in my Munich 'hood. Now I knew that this was not a gift from Will - he is a dear man but the move has put the pinch on us and these days he starts to sweat when I buy condiments. It occurred to me at last that the call was about my Christmas poinsettia! Every year since I've lived on my own, my dad has sent me (and my sisters) a poinsettia plant. It is always a nice surprise, and this year, being so far from what I know, it was extra special. By the time I mustered up the courage to answer the next call, the young woman at the flower shop had realized that my affliction was language related and not merely rudeness or xenophobia. So now I've got my poinsettia, and it's feeling a little more like home. Thank you, Dad!!

Making Peace with the Rolands

Will and I have had a lot of lousy neighbors. I think this is par for the course when you are always living in multi-unit housing, but I also think it's par for the course to feel like your neighbor saga is uniquely awful. And we do.

Our first bad neighbor, in the apartment we shared senior year of college, was an "older" woman (she seemed older at the time; probably late 20s) who shamelessly hit on Will. That wasn't her bad neighbor bit, though; that activity quite perked the boy up, actually. She constantly parked in the spot that we paid through the nose for, leaving us roaming the streets of Ann Arbor for a free spot when she couldn't be located to move her car. One late night when we were leaving early the next morning for some trip or another, she did it again, and this final transgression turned Lover Boy against her: Will called a tow truck. Well, to sum this neighbor up, there were loud and angry confrontations that followed for the duration of our lease and, of course, no more flirting.

We had a period of neighborly love after this, first with our house in Oak Park where our neighbors' only peculiarity was such an obsession with perfection that they occasionally gardened or shoveled for us - no complaints from us on this. After that we moved back to Ann Arbor, and dwelled in relative peace, bothered only slightly by very bad death metal by the condo residents behind us and a very nice couple's very mean Sharpei who would try to eat our puppy. Truly no serious or chronic complaints.

Then dark days set upon us again when we moved to Detroit and were plagued with: (1) a 6'10" professional basketball player living above us who played basketball in his loft and kept European hours given that he played for an Italian team, (2) an adjacent after hours club whose bass caused our loft to vibrate from about 2:30 am until 5 ish, (3) a Jekyll/Hyde neighbor who reacted very, very badly to a request that he turn down his music, as well as a few other characters.

I left Detroit for Redwood City, California to re-join Will in 2008 - he'd been living in California for almost a year at this point working as a post doctorate fellow. Our colorful neighbors here included a gaggle of teenagers who left their barking dog out all night and filled our bedroom with pot smoke and (musically as well as personally) offensive rap music pretty much every night. When confronted about this nuisance, the putative father of the house assured me that the marijuana was legal because these kids had "a permit and everything." Well, I certainly had no idea that glaucoma parties were quite so lively, nor that so many blond co-eds were afflicted with the condition. I assured him that I was not 5-0, and what I really wanted was to sleep, not to prosecute. Well, that never happened, but as we do, we eventually moved.

Now we are in Munich. We live in a beautiful apartment in a quieter part of town than we originally wanted to live in. Part of the reason for choosing this place was coming to terms with our neighbor luck and the fact that a "fun" part of town would not only make for higher rent, but for a much greater likelihood of "fun" neighbors. And I do not like fun in a neighbor. Quiet, clean, bookish, and painfully shy are my top four neighbor traits. Nevertheless, the day we moved in, we met Roland. Roland lives above us and introduced himself thusly: "Hi! I'm Roland! I play the Indian drums. Let me know if it ever gets too loud." Sigh. I've since learned that Roland does not dabble in the Indian drums; he plays in intervals throughout the day and into the evening. Roland also stomps like a Yeti, moves furniture constantly, and has a 12 year old who is allowed to jump up and down until the downstairs neighbors (i.e. us) ask him to stop. Last night the spastic jumping carried on until near midnight, causing Will to climb the flight of stairs to beg for Roland's mercy. Will returned victorious but looking worse for the wear, saying only "He answered the door in a banana hammock" before returning to sleep. Apparently Roland is also very comfortable with his body.

I believe that life provides you with the challenges that you need to grow. It is clear to me that I need to learn to tolerate noise and unpredictability, to master confrontation in a productive but not negative way, and apparently to shake loose from my prudish, puritanical roots. So thank you Roland, as you pound your feet like a drunken Michael Flately above my head as I type this entry. Thanks to all you Rolands. I must try to work with you and in spite of you, because I will burst into flames if I let myself get consumed with my annoyance and anger. And so through gritted teeth and deep breaths, I choose peace.

Weekend Walk

Everything is closed here on Sundays, which offends my American sense of entitlement to service as well as my tendency to try to get a hundred things done everyday. It is, however, a blessing.

Here is a picture from our long walk through the Englischer Garten last Sunday. There is an entrance to the park just minutes from our door, which is an amazing amenity. The park is larger than NYC's Central Park, runs down from the north side (where we live) all the way past the center of Munich to the south side, and has about 46 miles of trails within it. On this walk, we went a few miles south and then rode the train back. It was a beautiful day, the baby stayed off my bladder for the most part, and the dogs survived the subway. All in all, a great Sunday.

Laundry Day

A mini-shipment of our things arrived yesterday and it held all the contents of my baby shower. So I've set upon washing everything, optimistically looking forward to the day that our actual furniture arrives so I can put it all away. I don't have a dryer, so I have to hang dry, and since my drying rack has not arrived, I have to get creative. Here's a picture of the first load of baby stuff drying on the wall heater in the bathroom - how cute are all of those onsie butts??

The Mystery of Sancho Brand Dog Food

Grocery shopping in Germany has been a particular challenge for me. There are several reasons I can think of for this. One, I don't have a car, so trying out two stores via rolling cart and subway is a day long affair for my increasingly beluga-whale like self. Second, I am vegan, i.e. no dairy or meat, and these restrictions are a little trickier in Bavaria than in the Bay Area. Third, I have to rely on internet dictionaries and pictures on packages to know what I'm buying. Fourth, and most importantly, the grocery shops here are qualitatively different than those back home. Germany has many discount grocery stores, which are tantamount to T.J. Maxx's with food: while there is an array, you get what you get and there's no predicting it. These places offer great prices, and my ..ahem.. frugal husband loves this. He has declared a trip to ALDI as being a weekly affair and delights in nothing more than asking me what I normally pay for [fill in product] at a normal grocery store. I love saving money, don't get me wrong, but I have also tried to point out that a bargain is a little less impressive when it results in laundry detergent that stings your eyes when opened.

Enter Sancho dog food. We ran out of kibble yesterday, and I didn't have the time or energy to track down a pet store. So we stopped by our local discount grocer, Netto. The only dry dog food brand that Netto carries is Sancho. Incidentally, they have cans of Pablo brand dog food. Both brands are packaged exclusively for Netto, so apparently some ad wiz at that corporation believes strongly that dog food with a Spanish flair with have greater appeal. This food is *really* cheap. It is also multi colored. Our dogs have only ever been fed high quality food, and it was only exhaustion that led to our actually taking the bag of Sancho to the register. We poured a bowl for the dogs when we got home and one of our dogs, Billy, set upon it like I've never seen. He is not a kibble-hound; even other dogs' kibble he is only momentarily interested in. Sancho, however, has turned him into a zombie. He ate and ate until I pleaded with Will to take it away, worried that he'd make himself sick. Once the bowl was gone, Billy stood on alert with his nose pressed to the bag of Sancho, tail wagging furiously, cursing his own canine-related communication limits. The zombie effect lasted all night, causing Billy to pace around the house until finally around 3 am Will took him outside in case he was ill. Not ill, apparently, though his digestion was on overdrive, and he returned ready for more Sancho. This morning we only gave him a small amount. Right now I can hear him whimpering softly for more. What in the world is in this stuff? [note: it might be best that I never answer this question] All I can say is that I am going to a pet store a.s.a.p., buying some kind of doggy health chow that Billy will tolerate, and then my family can start sleeping easy again.

Things I have learned after 7 days as an expatriate in Munich:

1. Dogs get jet lag.

2. Germany Shepherds are just called Shepherds here. Seriously.

3. Baking soda is not an internationally popular product. Please send my regards to Arm & Hammer.

4. Cable companies cannot get it right the first time here, either, yet German cable guys will also act baffled by these mysterious and apparently unanticipatable obstacles.

5. Everyone in Germany speaks great English, except for anyone who talks to you; e.g. store clerks, servers, nice old ladies on the subway and movers.