Incoherent Scribblings

Forgiveness

It’s funny how I never thought some of the things A. said to me during the last few months of our relationship were mean and hurtful until recently when I started sharing them with someone else.

For example, there was the time when thinking about the future, I inquired if a family was something we might want. The response I received was that he wouldn’t be opposed to having children if he met the right person. Though I tried not to show it, I was taken aback. I was his wife. Didn’t it stand to reason that if we had committed ourselves to marriage that I was the right person? Apparently not…

And once he told me that without a job, an apparent purpose in life, my intellect was dimming and soon I would be like his mother. His mother! If I had a dime for every time he compared me in unflattering ways to his mother…

And so it seemed very simple when asked about the overall reason for the end my marriage. It wasn’t infidelity, financial woes, or any of a hundred other “standard” reasons. We simply forgot how to be kind to one another and fell out of love.

I remember the day we finally admitted it to each other and said so in so many words. There wasn’t any yelling: In fact it wasn’t loud at all. The words, “I am sorry, but I just don’t think I love you anymore,” were delivered calmly and in the softest tone of voice. Not a tear was shed, no emotion was revealed.

Of course it hurt. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t and I can only assume that it hurt him as much as it did me, but in some ways the truth set me free. I stopped walking on egg shells. I quit trying to fix something that could no longer be fixed and began to focus on myself again.

And somewhere along the line, I forgave him for many of the cruel things he said to me throughout our relationship and I forgave myself for not being the one that could make him happy.

Household Tip #712 (*)

In the time that I have been a housewife I have come across some very useful household tips. I am not sure if I have really collected 712 of them, even though I am positive that I have not recorded more than half a dozen on this blog. (For the ones that I have recorded, please click on the category “domestic activity” in the sidebar and see if you can find the actual household tips amongst all of the domestic disasters. )

Anyway, the household tip that I would like to share with you today was actually passed on to me one night while A. and I were eating dinner at the Italian restaurant next door. On this particular evening I had ordered Spaghetti Olio (or spaghetti tossed in nothing more than olive oil and garlic) and it was so delicious that it wasn’t until dessert that I noticed I had managed to splatter olive oil on my shirt.

I was devastated because I was quite fond of that particular shirt and up until that evening I had never had any luck getting olive oil out of clothing. For me it was truly the stain that I could not treat and I had given the shirt up for all but ruined when A. had an idea: He suggested that I ask the waitress if she had any tips for removing olive oil from clothing. After all, as a waitress in an Italian restaurant he figured that she had probably encountered such a dilemma before.

It sounded like a sensible idea to me, so when the waitress brought us our check a few minutes later I pointed out the stain on my shirt, told her I always had trouble getting olive oil out of clothing, and asked her if she had any suggestions for preventing a stain.

It was then that I received that most treasured nugget of wisdom that I have ever come across in all my days of doing laundry: The waitress recommended that I soon as I got home to directly treat the spot with dishwashing liquid and then soak it in cold water.

Honestly, I was a little skeptical at first. I had directly treated so many stains with laundry detergent with mixed results that I didn’t have much hope for an idea that didn’t sound much different. However, in an effort to save one of my favorite shirts, I was willing to give it a try.

To my sheer and utter amazement it worked like a charm and I have never had an olive oil stain since! In fact, I have since learned that using a little dishwashing liquid on most any food-based stain and soaking in cold water gets similar results.

Why does the dishwashing liquid work on such a stain when so many other methods fail? Well, in my housewifely wisdom, I think I have come up with a plausible explanation: Dishwashing liquid is specifically manufactured to remove food stuffs from dishes (most notably it is well-known for its fat-dissolving capabilities), therefore it is only logical that the same ingredients that eliminate olive oil or ketchup from your plate should also remove it from your favorite blouse, right?

So next time you happen to drop a spaghetti noodle that is dripping with olive oil on your favorite sweater, immediately treat it with dish soap and soak it in cold water when you get home. I guarantee (*) you will be pleased with the results!

(*) Disclaimer: The blondelibrarian does not actually guarantee any of her household tips nor does she assume any liability for any home accidents that may occur while using them!

The Death of the Dryer

You know you are hard up for blog material when you realize the most interesting thing that happened to you all week is that you bought a new dryer and you are blogging about it! Yes, folks, it is time for the next, much-anticipated installment of blondelibrarian’s long list of domestic disasters… the death of the dryer!

Last weekend, in the midst of our comforter-cleaning fiasco, my dryer died. It wasn’t completely unexpected, but still it was rather inconvenient: Not directly because of the comforter mind you, for like the washing machine, the comforter wouldn’t fit into the dryer either. However, because it wouldn’t fit into the dryer, the comforter was drying on my one and only drying rack when I came to the conclusion on Saturday that after three hours in the dryer my regular laundry was still wet. After an amateur investigation by A. and myself, we came to the conclusion that the heating element in our dryer was dead.

Now, you may ask why not get a professional opinion and then get the dryer repaired? Well, my answer would be because the dryer died on us once before and we had it repaired. It was still under warranty at that time, but the warranty expired about a year and a half ago. Therefore, this time we realized that by the time we paid a repairman to come and look at the dryer and tell us if it could be fixed (or not) and then paid to have it fixed, we might as well buy a new dryer… after all, the in-laws offered to buy a new one for us anyway!

Now, of course, as the faithful readers of this blog might suspect, there is something more to the story than just dryer-dies-and-dryer-is-replaced… because in Germany there are two types of dryers: First, there is your regular run-of-the-mill dryer where you attach a hose to a hole in your wall and the hot air is blown out. Lots of people do not have these types of dryers here because holes in the walls of houses for the dryer exhaust are not as easy to cut into a solid brick wall as they are wooden and/or dry-walled walls.

The second option one has when it comes to dryers in Germany is a condensing dryer. As the name suggests, these dryers work by condensing the water out of your laundry and collecting it into a little bucket that one must empty. Theoretically these dryers work almost as well as a good old-fashioned dryer (they take longer to dry the same amount of clothing) and since one doesn’t have to have an exhaust portal, can be installed anywhere.

Since our building doesn’t have an opening in the wall for a “regular” dryer, I had (and will be getting) a condensing one. However, the problem is since they have more complicated machinery, condensing dryers are also more prone to dying at the most inconvenient times… like when your comforter is drying on your drying rack, leaving two loads of wet laundry in their laundry baskets because they have no other place to dry.

Now, given the lack of exhaust holes in the walls and the short life of condensing dryers, it appears that many Germans choose the third option of drying their clothing: They skip the dryer all together and merely hang their clothes on drying racks or on clothes lines until they are dry.

I briefly flirted with this idea last week, but it quickly lost its appeal when I realized that by drying my laundry in this manner my bedroom would indefinitely be turned into a laundry room. After the first load I also remembered why I don’t even hang my clothes out on the balcony in the summer, and that is because I really, really hate the resulting stiffness of clothes that are hung up to dry! It only took three stiff loads of laundry before I had A. at the store arranging delivery for my new dryer (which should be here around the middle of the week) and until it gets here I am not washing (or drying) any more clothes!

Domestic Disasters – The Comforter

It all started on Thursday evening about 9:30 p.m. I went into the bedroom and proceeded to hang up a small pile of clothes that was on the bed. It consisted of my bathrobe, A.’s raincoat, and the jeans that I had been wearing earlier in the day. I folded the jeans and put them in the closet.

I then picked up the raincoat and as I put it on the hanger I noticed that the sleeve was wet. This was interesting because it hadn’t rained at all that day. Suspicious, I brought the sleeve a little closer to my nose and discovered the distinctive scent of cat urine. Reluctantly I turned around and, as I feared, I was greeted by a large wet spot on the comforter.

Upon closer inspection, I realized that not only was my robe also damp, the jeans that I had just put into the closet (on top of all my other clean jeans) had not escaped a dousing either. It was nearly 10:00 p.m. and I had no choice but to do a load of laundry. I grumbled a lot because starting a load of laundry at 10:00 p.m. that will take two and half hours to wash is a pain when you want to go to bed around 11:00, but I could deal with that…

However, it gets better, because after all, this Germany and things are never as easy as they seem!

Read the rest…

The Rules of Recycling

Today’s post is brought to you by Expatica.com!

I have never been against recycling: When you think about the amount of garbage an average person produces in a day, week, month, or year and how much of that garbage could easily be recycled into something new, recycling is obviously a socially responsible thing to do.

However, at the same time, up until three years ago I never lived anywhere that had a decent, convenient, or even mandatory recycling system. So, with the exception of when I lived in Iowa and got 5 cents for every (soda) pop can I returned, I am a little ashamed to admit that until I moved to Germany I never recycled.

But thanks in large part to the Green Party, Germany has not only a serious recycling program, it is mandatory. Nevertheless, though recycling is mandatory here, it is also one of those things that an expat might not find out about until it is too late.

When A. and I moved to our village outside of Munich and registered with city hall, they gave us a packet of information about our little town, but it only included the location and opening hours of what we thought was the city dump. We noticed the “yellow bags,” but dismissed them as mere garbage bags.

For the first three or four weeks we were here, we spent most of our time at IKEA and various other stores buying furniture and other necessary items for our apartment. The packaging obviously produced a lot of cardboard, styrofoam, and plastic trash and we happily carried it down to the dumpster without so much as a second thought.

My dishes and cooking equipment had not yet arrived, so we ate out most of the time and didn’t really produce a lot of what I like to call “nasty” garbage like potato peelings, rotten meat, or moldy bread. We did produce a lot of “packaging” garbage like milk cartons, but once again we just threw them away, barely noticing the “Grüne Punkt” visibly stamped on their sides.

One morning though, as we were lugging our latest IKEA junk pile down to the dumpster, we ran into our “Hausmeister” (or maintenance man) and he confronted us. At the time I didn’t speak any German, so I didn’t know what was going on, but A. informed me we had been throwing away our cardboard “improperly” and without any further explanation, he told me that we needed to take our cardboard back upstairs.

Later A. told me that in his discussion with the Haumeister, he had been informed all about Germany’s “Recycling Rules.” We learned that what we thought was merely the dump, was actually the city’s recycling area and it was there we were supposed to take cardboard, old wood, bottles, and paper… among other things. It was also there that we could get the famous yellow bags (for free). Once we had the yellow bags, we were supposed to put things with the “Grüne Punkt” into them and they would be collected once a month.

We were warned that it was imperative that we follow Germany’s “Recycling Rules” because you never know when your dumpsters might get a visit from the “Recycling Police!”

Apparently, the “Recycling Police” are much feared here because their sole responsibility is to go through garbage and if they find stuff in the “nasty garbage” that should have been recycled, dispense fines. And since in an apartment building it is nearly impossible to tell whose garbage is whose, the “Recycling Police” will punish an entire building for one family’s garbage negligence. This, of course, will not make you very popular with your neighbors and if they find out that it was you that caused the fine, your stay in the apartment building will be uncomfortable, to say the very least.

As far as I know, our building has never been visited by the “Recycling Police,” or if it has, they were satisfied with what they found. However, if they ever do decide to poke through our dumpsters, thanks to our gruff Hausmeister, A. and I can rest assured that it is not our garbage that is to blame.