Burning off nervous energy

I just sent off a letter to my employer demanding a permanent position. Now I am trying not to die while waiting for a response. Oh, can of worms, what was I thinking? I am not a very confrontational person, so doing this has turned me into a bundle of nerves. As a favorite tv character has said, I'm a balloon in a world full of pins.

Otherwise, I am just chipping away at the pile of work I made for myself.

Nee in Germany is made of work

Reporting from the past

I am trying to clear away the drifts of paper that have taken over my desk and came across the notes John and I were writing to each other during a play put on by Hannah's class in the 11th grade. I'm typing it up here for posterity, so I can get rid of the paper and also share the absolute WTFuckery of it all.

Me: Very sensual for our daughter's 11th grade play

John: phallic fruit salad

Song: "Silence is Sexy"
Me: as death?

Me: Where's Gallagher when you need him?

Me: Was [classmate] the pink-haired girl?

Me: short dresses and the dance of love

John: too much sexy

Me (from here on out): When did they get masks?

You call that a sense of musicality?!

[Music to prove the theater teacher is still cool.]

broken gaydar

It's my bedtime. :(

Inappropriate therapist! Quacking! With a ukelele! This play is getting better and better.

Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance

[Hannah's giving it her all!]

Fruity confusion Where's the fruit-based violence?

--denial

--loony bin!

--square dance!

Hannah is flumpy. Pinkie has the same posture as Hannah.

bugs!

Hannah's inner voice is a dick

Silence of the lambs`

hep ghost is hep
or is it a musical gorilla?

baby Nihilist

OneFlewOverTheCuckoo'sNest

Conspiracy Theorist--too late!

yelling!

someone's going to lose a finger

Hannah is probably hating this--she never looked up

[weird music accompanying

• dancing
• toothbrushing
• tedding mauling
• front and back masks and yelling
• scratching--note: lay off the smack, girls? chatos?
• suggestive rubbing
• petrified
• he's a zombie!
• Wormtail!
• child abuse

And that is how we spent one evening in a German institution of learning, ladies and gentlemen.

--Nee in Germany is tidying herself into an early grave

So cold

We've had proper winter temperatures this week, with the overnight lows going down into the mid- to low-20s (F). No, sir--I don't like it. Luckily our office at the university is well-heated, and I have the space heater to put under my desk at home. Still, it is chilly willy in our house.

All of which makes me wonder why I was so surprised at the amount of snow still on the ground yesterday. Maybe I just don't pay enough attention.

John accompanied me to a friend's reading Monday evening. I joined a book club last year, and one of my book club friends has now published two political/detective novels, and she was invited to read from the newest one as part of a series on local authors hosted by the local German American Institute. I'd never been in the library there before, and it made a lovely backdrop for the event, with lots of old-fashioned furniture and floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves.

We drove in to work on Tuesday because John wanted to give a hands-on demonstration in one of his classes using a chainsaw, and it doesn't really fit on the back of his bike. I wonder if the department's insurance covers course-related injuries...

On Wednesday, there was a departmental meeting in the afternoon, so that meant getting home much later than usual. Luckily, we have lots of leftovers at the moment, so no one had to cook.

I've been trying to track down a term for one of my courses, and I think I am going to just have to give up soon, because every time I think I have come up with a possible solution, it turns out to be useless. I've almost given up and gone downstairs for a nap twice already, but then the obsessive need to know has overcome the frustration at being thwarted at every turn.

--Nee in Germany does tend to fixate on things

Let it snow, and so forth

Got some snow overnight, and we're supposed to get a bit more over the weekend, and then next week the temps are supposed to drop to the point we'll need to protect our pipes (well, just the one in the kitchen, which was installed too close to the outside wall). Ah, the glamorous life of the homeowner.

Which actually is rather more glamorous than the life of the mildly depressed teacher. I was talking to John about my problem, and it is not merely that I have high expectations of myself, but that I am holding myself up to some really excellent instructors I had at university. The problem there is that they had many years of experience behind them in one field, while I have (been) bounced from department to department. One of the things I have done is to make the firm decision to quit teaching once my contract is up. I think I can manage to maintain and expand my freelance translation business with the contacts I currently have.

That's basically what is on my mind at the moment, so I haven't been a barrel of fun lately. Wow, this is boring, sorry.

--Nee in Germany is a real downer today

Back on the chain gang

Survived the first week back in the classroom, but now John and I seem to be coming down with something. He's getting more and more congested, and I've got a bit of tummy trouble and headache. As I always say, stupid bodies. I'll be happy when humankind finally evolves to be a brain in a jar or a blob of pure energy, although I don't imagine I'll be around to see that.

Most people get up, drive to work, and drive home again at the end of the day, but for John and me, taking the car is a rather big event we have to talk ourselves into. John prefers to ride his bike, for both the physical and mental benefits to himself and the environmental benefits to our corner of Germany, but it has been raining pretty steadily (he got soaked through, coming and going, two days in a row, despite his rain gear) and he strained his knees biking against a head wind one day, so it wasn't too hard to talk him into the two of us driving yesterday. Nevertheless, we went back and forth about it several times before we even got in the car, and even after we had already left, but our decision was really only cinched as the best choice when we hit a horrible downpour a couple of miles from home in the evening. I could see John in the driver's seat, imagining what it would feel like to be out in that on a bike, and he was pretty thankful he had dodged that bullet. Later, lying on the couch in his warm, dry clothes under a warm, dry blanket, he looked really happy not to have to be drying off and warming up like on Monday and Tuesday.

Actually, he had it pretty good last night. It was my turn to cook dinner, and empty the dishwasher, and scoop the cat box (which I still need to do), so he could basically lie back and wait for the food to come to him. I tried out a recipe that is basically broccoli-rice casserole, with quinoa substituted for the rice, and then baked, and it was very tasty, even though the mini-muffin format was a flop. So I made a note on the recipe and will file it away to try again in a different form.

--Nee in Germany is dead boring at the moment

The Monday-est Monday in a while

I didn't have high hopes for today, seeing as it was my first day back to work after the holidays, but it turned out to be even more Monday than expected. Everything was going fine until I got off the bus and crossed the street. Five feet from the corner where I needed to turn left, a bus splashed a gutter full of water all over my legs. Two blocks from my office. One hour before teaching. Two classes to teach with gutter water in my pants. Urgh.

After work I came home and put my pants in the wash. Then I got a reminder that my bank had blocked my credit card because they couldn't read German and didn't know that that big charge was from a travel agency when we bought tickets to Texas recently. So I spent half an hour on the phone, at direct dial rates, getting bounced from department to department because they couldn't find my phone number in my account info. Finally someone at my actual bank and not the credit card fraud office was able to get it taken care of because he could actually see all of my info. Bleh.

Then I broke down and looked at facebook, and the first post was about David Bowie dying. Sigh.

It's not even 6 p.m., and I'm about ready to go to bed.

--Nee in Germany has to take her turn cooking

So much tidying

The junior firemen came around on Saturday to pick up our xmas tree, so that has meant putting our xmas stuff away, vacuuming, etc. Since Hannah wasn't here for our usual forced labor convenience, I was a bit lazy and didn't put out every last bit of the xmas decorations, otherwise it would have taken a lot longer. Now to polish off the last of the gingerbread men, and xmas will be ovah!

The weather cleared up on Friday and I made it outside to run errands for about an hour, ending with a trip up to the garden. Here's one of two stupid hyacinths that thought December was March.



There are a bunch of other bulbs sending shoots up elsewhere in the garden, but no flowers yet. Saturday was also clear, but several degrees colder. We almost reached the freezing point overnight, but this morning we woke up to warmer, wetter weather again, which is supposed to continue throughout the week.

I hate when I oversleep, and the last hour in bed is just endless variations on anxiety dreams. Trying to fight my way somewhere, but unable to make it there in time, or unable to keep track of some item, or unable to accomplish a particular task. At least when I wake up I can see the underlying pattern, but it still sucks to have your brain attacking you on your weak side when you are unconscious.

--Nee in Germany still has to clean all the cat off her office rug

Out of practice

I tried to sit down and write something 2 days ago, and I found myself staring at the screen with not a single idea in my head. It felt like mental constipation, and I could only wish that my brain were that empty when trying to fall asleep. *sigh*

It probably doesn't help that I haven't set foot out of doors since I helped John carry up our groceries on Monday. The weather has been shit, and I have a lot of computer-based work to do, having caught up on a lot of my household chores during the holidays, so there hasn't been a lot of incentive to get outside. The sun is out right now, though, so I'm considering running a few errands before it turns rainy again.

One of the things making me grumpy, besides the lack of crafting due to the aforementioned work, is the lack of creative writing. I've had one story circling in my brain, more and more insistently, for a while. It's a story I stole from my seestor, and have started, restarted, made an outline, made notes, and thought about while semiconscious. A few days ago, I sent what I had previously written to my kindle so I could see what I had come up with so far, and I wasn't happy with it. At the time I wrote it, I was pleased with it, but rereading it cold after so long, it feels technically accurate without having much heart. (That's probably what my clarinet playing sounded like back in high school as well.) Yesterday, I happened across a quote (allegedly) from one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett:

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

When I read that, something clicked for me. Rather than try to describe explicity what it is I see in my head, I need to write more like I talk. I also need to try to loosen up and not make everything perfect as I go. So I’m giving myself permission to barf out onto the page whatever occurs to me. Sort of like I do here. *g*

--Nee in Germany hates to admit she collects quotes

Anxious

Finished my knitting project. (You can tell that I've already put this dishcloth to use, so I would call that a successful  project.)



Then I got depressed because I realized I didn't have time to do any more sewing/crafty projects over the holidays, and I also won't have time to work on any once classes resume. As we say in our family, that sucketh.

I did manage to get a bunch of family photos onto an SD card, though, while John was driving Hannah back to Frankfurt; now I can save them onto my new digital picture frame and enjoy them any time. (And John thought I'd never get around to it.)

--Nee in Germany doesn't know how to relax, also wisdom from John

Annoyed

The supermarket closes in 2 hours, and I need to walk over, but I can't leave the house because I am waiting on someone to come by, and I wish they would just hurry up, because they are late.

But once that is out of the way, we'll be busy busy for the next couple of days. Tonight we're going to a New Year's sleepover at our friends', a fairly new tradition that saves me a long drive home in the middle of the night. Tomorrow we're invited to a traditional Korean New Year's Day lunch with our neighbors.

Hannah has to go back to work/training on Jan. 4, but the university is closed through Jan. 6 (Epiphany), so John and I don't have to teach again until Jan. 11. I've got a huge backlog of stuff to get through between now and then, but at least I don't also have to go in to the university.

I'm trying to practice my knitting, but I'm not sure I've got it down. More practice!

--Nee in Germany gets the craft-bug over the holidays

Addicted to LMFAO

... the musical group, not the Internet shorthand. I've discovered two things about listening to music while I work: 1. bopping around in my chair while I work keeps my back from getting jacked up, and 2. music helps smother all the rest of the brain noise that keeps me from concentrating on my work. I go through phases where I only listen to one album or one artist on repeat, but other times I just put my MP3 player on random. I'm about to download a few songs off amazon to add to my collection, such as from the aforementioned LMFAO, from Taylor Swift (I don't think I've heard more than 2 of her songs, only one of which I plan to download), and from David Guetta, for maximum boppiness.

We went to see Star Wars, and through a series of minor blunders ended up seeing it in 3D. I seem to remember having a headache after my last 3D experience, but it ended up being a non-issue this time. I *really* enjoyed myself, and afterwards I could understand how a friend's children ended up putting over 2000 "steps" on their Fitbits over the course of the film. There was a lot of excited wiggling going on, even if I *am* almost 43.

I cooked up some eggnog yesterday, which is the only kind John likes because it reminds him of the store-bought kind back home. That was never my favorite kind, personally, but whatever. Our neighbor who has been working in France since September is going to come over for eggnog and goodies this evening, since he also likes that kind of eggnog. Our house has been a magnet for Americans (mostly military) and USA-philes for a long time, so he has been exposed to various American foods. I didn't have time to bake until xmas eve, which is when Germans typically celebrate the holiday with their families, so Hannah and I took some cookies around on the second day of xmas and managed to catch several neighbors at home to ply them with buttery treats. Never fear, there are still plenty of homemade delights (minus the turtles, mmmm) to share with our recently returned neighbor over eggnog tonight.

Nee in Germany lives off cookies and licorice during the holidays

Placeholder for stuff I've been reading and thinking about

http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-Labor

http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-Labor#6151391
made me think of this advice
http://thatbadadvice.tumblr.com/post/124839439584/good-advice-interlude-boys-are-confusing

http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-Labor#6130011
This made me cry:

"...I raised this woman. She won't take shit from anyone. She does things. She even offends me, and that's okay, because she is a rocket, and she is taking off, and I launched her."

http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-Labor#6130724

"To a lot of the people saying “ugh, cards, who cares” or “just skip it, no one I know cares about getting presents for [X] occasion,” this is why these things matter. The present itself is secondary. The thank you card itself is secondary. They matter as vehicles for messages of love. They matter as ways of saying “I value you, I am thinking of you, I treasure your place in my life and my community, and I want this tangible object to be a talisman of my care for you.”
The gift itself is not the thing. The card itself is not the thing. The relationship is the thing. "

http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-Labor#6131161

"On this foundation is built a castle of love."

http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-Labor#6131276
#FeminismThroughDadJokes is totally up my alley

http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-Labor#6131999
This made me catch my breath. This is advice that should be passed on to all people, but especially girls:

"There are a lot of questions on askme that hurt my heart because they are questions from women who want to know how to carve themselves into an acceptable shape for a man and I always want to tell them that they should never deform the person they were meant to be just so they can have some male-identified person with whom to associate. Life is too short to be a bonsai human for someone else's toleration and convenience."

Sniff

My baby is traveling around Frankfurt all by herself. *sniff*

She's traveled to and through Frankfurt alone before, but I bought the tickets and looked up track numbers, etc. This time it is all on her, and she texted me about her problems -- confusing train station, ticket machine that only takes small bills -- and triumphs -- only 5 minutes behind schedule, even with the problems.

As we say in my family (tongue in cheek), "She's so growny!"

Trying to be stoic

We took Hannah to her new apartment (room in a boarding house, really, but she shares one whole floor with a kitchen, bath, and dining room with only one other person, so almost like an apartment/roommate situation) today, and I managed to forget to bring her bathroom box, so no shampoo for her until the stores open tomorrow.

We all teared up when John and I left, and he cried a little on the way home, but I managed not to cry, what with my flinty heart and all. I called her when we got home and she sounded cheerful. She was getting unpacked and enjoying getting her room arranged to her satisfaction. She had even figured out how to get YouTube on the tv in her room, so I guess she can have 9gag and a game open on her laptop while also watching YouTube videos of drunk people doing things on her tv.

Gardening

I've bought an inordinate number of Coleus canina plants, i.e. piss-off plants, to keep cats out of my garden. Every time I manage to drive them away with a couple of carefully placed plants, they find a new spot to take a dump in. The plants are pretty pungent, with a strong skunk odor. The first time I bought some, I didn't think ahead, so they stayed locked in my hot, closed car while I did my grocery shopping. It was not an enjoyable ride home, even with the windows open. The last batch were bought on a less hot day, and I remembered the windows, but there was still the stink on my arms from brushing against them while I carried them up from the cellar. At least they work as advertised!

Off to Frankfurt

Today I am driving Hannah to Frankfurt to pick up the keys to her room in a boarding house. That's where she'll be living for the next 3 years while she completes her apprenticeship to become a cook/chef.

(Sorry for the briefness, but I've decided that microblogging is better than no blogging.)

Avoidance as a lifestyle

Urgh--I soooo do not want to grade papers and presentations, but I have a rather big backlog, and people are going to start wondering about them since classes start back on Wednesday. I'm at the point that I'd like to just set a match to all of it (and Hannah's room while I am at it--I wasn't kidding when I mentioned her hoarding tendencies).

During the xmas holidays, it is traditional for me to subsist mainly on candy and then have to change gears back to normal food in January. This year, I have decided to also cut back on the places where I would normally add sugar--coffee, for instance. I've discovered that I really only need some milk to cut the bitterness. I'm not keen on the idea of how much processing it takes to produce sugar, and cane sugar has the added drawback of not being produced in Europe. I don't actually imagine I can have a modern diet and still only shop locally, but I can make minor changes in both my diet and my shopping habits to feel like I am making some kind of contribution to my own health and the health of the planet. (Maybe it is a drop in the bucket, but I might go more crazy than usual if I don't do anything at all.)

My aunt and mom "fought" for years over ownership of a certain cookbook that contained the recipe for my aunt's famous divinity recipe. I finally got the recipe from her, but in such a stripped-down form (only ingredients, and no specific directions) that it has been a disaster every time I have tried it. So this year I did my own research and found my own recipe (from the Fanny Farmer Cookbook, which is fairly dependable), and I still ended up with egg-white-and-walnut-flavored taffy. I forgot the cardinal rule--no candy-making when it is wet. That is hardly ever a problem in the deserts of West Texas, but in Central Europe, on the shores of a river, during a misty December--yeah, another disaster was inevitable. Moreover, corn syrup, as an American product, is not available here, so that will be my last-ever attempt at divinity, I have decided, for most of the reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph. Otherwise, my stubborn-slash-stupid side would not let me quit until I had finally conquered it.

In the process of wasting those egg whites and so much sugar, I managed to destroy my hand-mixer (stupid, heavy divinity), so now I need to shop for a replacement. I may just get the same one again, if it is available, as it was very reliable, except when I wanted to mix something that was clearly beyond its capabilities. I may get a stand-mixer, too. And a larger food processor. (I currently have just a food-chopper.) John bought me a multi-device several years ago, but the blender function ended up being its downfall. I didn't get the base threaded on properly, and when I tried to blend ice cream in it, the motor ended up soaked in eggs and canteloupe; I couldn't get it open to clean it properly, so I've only used it a few times, when I've felt ambitious and forgetful. Inevitably, it either overheats or the clutch (?) doesn't work properly and it turns too fast, again leading to too much heat. So if anyone has any recommendations, I am all ears. Actually, I will probably just buy a German brand; Bosch is pretty good, and I think I can get it in our local kitchen shop.

We went to our favorite German restaurant last night, and on our way in, we overheard some people in the street talking about "flood tourism". I guess some people had come into town to see the Neckar overflowing its banks. That's an odd reason to come, but if it brings business to our local restaurants afterwards, who am I to complain.

My adventures in puttering this morning included halfheartedly pulling some (but not all!) of the ornaments off the tree, shaking the needles out of the tree skirt so I could put it away, and sweeping the rest of the needles off the floor. Tree pick-up is not until Saturday, so I may have it all done by then at this rate. Now I need to get my shopping list finished so I can go to the post office and the store. Tomorrow I have to be in Frankfurt first thing in the morning with Hannah, so I need to finish up a few things so I don't have anything left to do for our outing.

-Nee in Germany is digging the sunshine that's finally appearing

Puttering as an extreme sport

Seems I have taken my puttering to a new level. Today I accomplished a lot of little things that needed to be done, but not necessarily right.this.minute. Some of them were to protect my sanity--finding 3 books I know I own but haven't been able to put my hands on in some time, clearing away my literal "to-be-read pile" that had become a tripping hazard next to my bed--while others would be due soon anyway--quarterly tax payments, etc. And others were things we'd been promising to do but just hadn't gotten our asses in gear on; now that my puttering has managed to procure bookcases for Hannah's room, it's her problem to clean out her hoarding and to fill them.

I finally broke down and bought myself a smart phone, since the Crushinator had done in my brick phone and John and I were getting tired of not being able to reach each other since we were passing the other brick phone back and forth. I still haven't actually been carrying it around since 1) I haven't gone anywhere, and 2) my SIM card has only been partially activated, but now that I'll be going back to work next week and the last of the paperwork for my SIM card should go into the mail tomorrow, I'll finally be forced to take it for a spin soon. Maybe I can figure out how to work the Blogger app...

I think I mentioned all the snow we've had. It's been warming up, so we've had a lot of melt-off, then we got a little rain and a lot more snow yesterday. By yesterday evening, the city was warning people to move their cars because the river was expected to flood. Sure enough, the water was up over the divider at the locks this morning. With all the new rain and snow yesterday, we made the executive decision to just eat out this weekend and to do our weekly grocery shopping on Monday. It's my turn, and I wasn't keen on driving down our steep, unplowed, cobblestoned street. It also bought me some more time to make a grocery list.

I spent one whole day catching up on laundry over the break. When it got to the point where I couldn't find one particular pair of pants that I had just had on, I knew I needed to do something to get the mounds of clothes reduced to a livable level.

Hannah's laptop is driving me mad. It acted like it wanted to implode around xmas, and we finally got it up and running again, and now it is starting some of the same shit, 5 hours before she has a paper due. (Yes, she has homework over the holidays. Germany is not quite Korea when it comes to school pressure, but in her final year, it is starting to get up there.) Grrr...

-Nee in Germany is avoiding the inevitable--work

Flailing

Well, it's that time of year again, when the holidays are past and work is looming before me again. That means just one thing in these parts: Brain-flail!

Luckily for anyone reading, I find writing about the brain-flail as boring as you must find reading about it, so I will just skip it and move on to documenting life in the slow lane.

John's been spending all his free time (that falls outside of the local quiet hours) carving in the cellar. He's already got 2 panels done for the door of his garden shed/stave church and has been posting pictures like an obsessed person on facebook. Weatherwise, he can't do much up in the garden itself, so this is the next best thing for preparing to build the garden shed in the summer/fall.

Hannah has her school-leaving exams this spring, and every academic assignment this school year has inevitably led to tears at some point. I think it's the same for most of her classmates, though. German schools are notoriously difficult, but the stress has been ratcheted up for Hannah's cohort because the state changed the number of school years but not the graduation requirements right before she started high school, so she and her classmates have had to learn 9 years of material in only 8 years. We had already heard horror stories about kids having nervous breakdowns in their last year, but it could get even worse for the kids in Hannah's group.

Despite the best efforts of my colleagues, I wasn't able to get a new contract in the English department, but I applied for and got a contract in the translation department instead. Now I'm kind of wishing I hadn't. Translating (which I actually feel confident in my ability to do) and teaching translating are two different beasts, and I feel like I am letting everyone in the department down. That being said, I've already realized that it is not totally on me: they dumped 8 courses on me for my first semester, without any materials or curriculum beyond course titles. [FLAIL deleted]

We finally made it to the xmas market in Michelstadt. That is a little town up north of us in the Odenwald, and we had heard good things about it but had never managed to go. We went with another family on the last Sunday, and despite the rain, it was crazy crowded. We ate delicious wild boar sausage and visited a really cool museum while we were there, but the rain and crowds put a bit of a damper on the trip.

Then we were invited over to the same family's for New Year's Eve, which is our tradition. This year we played a dinner murder mystery game (John was the only person to suspect Hannah, that sneaky murderess!) and then stayed the night to avoid driving home in the snow. None of the chicks wanted to go outside in the cold to shoot off fireworks, so we stayed in while the dudes went outside. They didn't stay out long, though; a new roof on your house will make you loathe to play with fire near it, it turns out.

[Here's where we pretend I have managed to pull together these disparate elements into a satisfying conclusion.]

-Nee in Germany

Busy busy boring

Life has been hectic recently, but in a boring way.

I had a ton of grading due last week, exacerbated by my usual procrastination, so that wasn't fun.

In the middle of that, John and I had to travel to the other end of our administrative district to take care of some paperwork (the glamorous life of the immigrant). Anything to do with bureacracy around here can get very complicated very fast, but it could have been much worse. I'd like to spend more time there in Heppenheim if we get a chance. There was half-timbering out the whazoo, which I hadn't been expecting.

We had our 19th anniversary and finally found some decent Mexican food a thirty-minute drive away.

We have paying guests in our vacation apartment at the moment, so we had to clean in preparation for them coming, plus we had to replace a curtain rod and install some new lights we had bought. (One of the perqs of the vacation apartment is that now I have a place to put all the crafty stuff I like to come up with. I can thank John for that realization. On to the doily patterns!)

Our friends came over 2 Saturdays in a row, first to brew some beer and then to bottle it.

John and I also tackled the plants growing up our house. He trimmed and trained the roses and the grape vines, and I cut back this other mystery ivy on the north side. I also planted some carnations in a stone planter outside the vacation apartment--also on the north side, unfortunately, so there might not be enough sunshine there for them to be really happy. We'll see.

-Nee in Germany is actually getting shit done!