Ugly Americans

The packers are gone. Our junk is out of the apartment. There's a Rewe shopping cart downstairs in our storage filled with garbage bags that are, in turn, filled with stuff that will be going into a donation bin down the street. The kids are extra clingy. The pantry, the fridge, and the freezer are populated with the odds and ends of our remaining food stores. Everything that's coming with us on home leave is either in a suitcase, or can easily be chucked into a suitcase. We are almost done with our time in Berlin. I have now reached the hurry up and wait stage of our departure.  When we left out of Ashgabat a little over 2 years ago, it was a giddy and desperate affair. We were giddy that the tour was over, and desperate to shed as much weight as possible so as to make our pack-out and departure that much faster. Our predawn exit from that country was as surreal as our arrival. I wish I could say that these past two weeks in Berlin have been the exact opposite of tha...

There are a lot of pastry-related disappointments to be found in Berlin (food-wise). Many of them are apple flavored. However, If you find yourself in Berlin (in the morning, people!) near a Der B äcker Feihl Yes, too lazy to rotate the image.  Do yourself a favor and go buy yourself a Kirsch Plunder (Cherry Plunder). It is probably one of the best pastries you can pick up at any of the local bakeries. I bought all the remaining kirsch plunder (7) from our local store.    If you are reading this from somewhere outside Germany, you can always make your own using this recipe .

It is almost the end of February now. I have been slowly but surely eliminating the crap we have built up around the apartment from two years of living in Berlin. Between purging junk and dealing with kiddos, I have had a lot of time to think about the "FS Life", and form what i've learned in the almost five years we have been doing it into a list I keep revising as I think of new things. I realize that almost five years is nothing compared to some people that have been doing this for ten, twenty or more years. But length of time spent doing something doesn't make a person's experiences or thoughts on the matter more or less valid. As this is my own personal blog, I would like to reiterate that what I am about to say will a) probably piss someone or many someones off, and b) is my own opinion, and is not representative of the US government, the State Department, or any other agency. Also, I tend to be pretty catty, mean and sarcastic. You have been warned. My li...

Time. I have been thinking about time a lot lately. I never seem to have enough, and what time I do have occurs in the spaces between tending to other things. All of my productivity pretty much occurs in those spaces. I have four scripts that are being written at what feels like a glacial pace. My bookmark tab is filled with research links, and my phone has become my notepad and sketchbook when it isn't confiscated by a certain toddler. Because it's (in her words) her phone. One, admittedly, she uses to draw with or play minion rush or diamond digger. I would set up my old iPhone so she could use it, but the reality is she would still ignore it for mine, because its not about the phone. It's about having my attention, and spending time with me.   Our time left in Berlin can now be measured in months. The months remaining here have become a countdown of things to complete before we leave. We have to shed weight by getting rid of stuff we haven't used or looked at in th...

If you have kids, you are going to hear advice (asked or not), from everyone. Most of the time, it's from people you know. Sometimes it's good, sometimes not. And sometimes, it is rude. Usually, the rude advices comes from strangers. Here in Germany, I have have three (3) encounters with strangers involving 'advice' regarding my kids. Two of those instances were relatively benign. The third was not.   The first encounter was with a German mom at one of the local Kinder Cafes*. I had gone to the kindercafe thinking, "Hey, I can hang out with some other moms and Olivia can play". Then I realized that walls blocked half of the kindercafe off from the front end (where the parents hang out). After a few minutes of Olivia trying to pilfer other people's food items, snagging toys from other kids, and in general being a bit of a bruiser, I was rethinking the decision to go. So you can imagine how mortified I was when a German mom approached me with her little...

Ten years ago Mike and I walked into a pet store to 'window shop'. I was looking at a boxer puppy when Mike came over and urged me to take a look at this other puppy in the store. I remember asking him what kid of a  dog it was, and (knowing that this would probably be the best way to get me over there) he told me it was just like the dog in Mad Max. For those of you who do not fall into the geek category, the 'Mad Max' dog, or if you are a gamer the "Fallout' dog is an Australian Cattle Dog. Specifically, a blue heeler. The puppy he showed me looked like a German shepherd that had been dipped in powdered sugar. She was an adorable, big eared puppy that wiggled and yipped.She ended up leaving the store with us that day. She was far from the perfect dog. It took forever to potty train her. She never mastered walking on a lead (always wanting to herd us, or other people and animals that she saw). To this day she is still a very mouthy dog, obsessed w...