So I'm getting ready to go to Germany

So I'm getting ready to go to Germany. Really. Not because of my exchange student, but because I said to hell with it, I am going to visit a friend whom I miss dearly. I'm off to visit Christine. I tell you, it has been a mad laugh-a-minute trying to get things settled. Starting with my new passport, which had the audacity to run out last year. OMG. I had tears in my eyes when I got my new one. It seems that nowadays they return your old passport, which is really great, because I am going to be hard pressed to let anyone pry the kids' passports outta my cold dead hands when I renew theirs. If you saw them, you'd understand. But back to the tears. Well, when they return the old passport, and they, for some untold god-awful reason, staple the spare (you send two) new photo right above the pic on your old passport. What they keep on file is now a mystery to me, but the sheer evilness of putting those two pics together us unforgivable. Is it the Bush administration's evil plot to crush the self esteem of all American women that have the need to see the world? My heart weeps at the losses that only a dozen (or less) years can rack up on a woman's face. In those short years I went from the last blush of youth to an old hag. Is this what motherhood does? Does it make is old hags? I fear it does. Is it worse for me because I waited so long, and everything just piled on me at one time? Is it just that having twins sucks every last bit of life from a mom? Not sure what it is tickling the back of my brain, except for the utter and deep-felt truth that well. I'd do it again. I just wish I had had the brains god gave a gnat when I was younger so that I would have enjoyed those days of youth and made some better life-decisions--earlier. This is what is truly meant by "youth is wasted on the young."

Enough of that rant, and on to the next.

So I am trying to meet up with my good friend Christine and her family and trying to met Verena's--except no one is willing to step up to the plate and set down an itinerary. They keep asking ME what I want to do, WHERE and WHEN I want to meet. Jesus you guys, it's GERMANY. It's ALL Germany. I just don't care what part of it I see. You guys tell ME! I am going to be so jet lagged that all I care about is actually seeing my friends. I certainly am NOT going to impose a schedule on my friend who also has 2 small children. I'd be happy to simply follow her to the grocery store! Verena's parents aren't helping either. I keep saying it's fine to meet me at the airport but they never say if they will be there or not. They ask if I want to stop somewhere for lunch. Um...It's Germany. I'll do anything....or not...but it's not up to me. It's up to my chauffeur--Christine.

All this and as soon as I get back I need to launch into the kids' birthday party, where Easter and Passover have rudely conspired to send most of their friends away on wonderful vacations, or restrict their diets so no one can have birthday cake. Alas, what's pair of spring babies gonna do about it except suck it up every few years?

And Verena? She's doing very well, and getting good grades. She's struck up some friendships that may end up having meaning, and already had to say "can't we just be friends" to one boy. She mustered the courage to try out for the school's production of "Noises Off". You go girl.