Damn

I hate having my illusions shattered. Here I’ve been going along, thinking that my German’s improving, and suddenly I’m confronted with writing a paper. It wasn’t even a difficult topic, but there sure were a lot of corrections when L.H. got through with it. (He was a German teacher at a *large* public university in his previous west-of-the-Atlantic life.) That’s *after* I had looked up something for almost every single sentence over 7 pages.

While waiting for the bus to take the damned thing to my instructor, I met the mother of an acquaintance. She speaks very easy-to-understand German (trust me, some people’s dialects are completely impenetrable to a doofus like me), but I was having the hardest time following her. I guess it would have helped if I had realized that Monday is a public holiday, since she was talking about not being able to get to the bank until Tuesday, something, something. I mean, I can follow Darling Daughter when she speaks German; what was the problem?! Then it occurred to me that D.D. is probably speaking slow and using small words because she knows she is speaking to a BIG DUMMY. Sigh.

I had progressed this last week from normal-sized and psychotic to puffy but pleasant, but now I think I would like to lie down and cry, except I’m on a bus full of unsympathetic strangers who can *already speak German.*

Screw that—I’m going to work on my German every day and not sound like a moron who hasn’t learned a thing in *2 years of living and attending university in GERMANY.*

***

In other news, I cut D.D.’s hair last weekend. I only meant to take off 2 inches or so, but it seems that it might have been more like 4. Oops. It’s still down to her armpits, so it’s not *short*, but it is a hell of a lot easier to comb. Hallelujah! She has even taken on the onerous task of *brushing her own hair.* At only 8 years old! By 13 she should be able to tie her own shoelaces, and by 15 cut her own meat! We’re on a roll!

She had a jar with a bit of plastic wrap for a lid that she had tried to catch bees in without success, so that became the home of the sacrificed hair. She was convinced that the Hair Fairy was going to come, even though I tried to tell her the opposite. She was a bit bitter the next morning that the friggin’ Hair Fairy hadn’t bothered to show up. I guess she didn’t get the memo.

***

I am totally obsessed with this 13-year-old singing sensation from Sweden, named Amy Diamond. Ok, that does not sound Swedish at all, but she lived in England as a baby, so maybe her folks are English. [I went back and looked at her site. Her dad is English. And she enjoys Math, PE, and needlework. I will be adopting her as soon as that bus driver I hired finds her parents. Or not.] Or maybe she gave herself a stage name so freaky stalkers wouldn’t be tatooing her real name on themselves. Maybe. Anyhow, our cable rearranged itself one day, so now we get Nickelodeon, and they’ve been playing her video (“What’s In It For Me?”) like twice an evening. I don’t know. The song seems kind of grown up, and you can tell in the video that she *doesn’t even have all her adult teeth in yet.* But I bet she grows into a really attractive young lady, and I hope her parents have bought a shotgun before Kevin Federline finds out about her.