Mom woke to hardened blood in her bedding about the size of a tea cup saucer and couldn’t find the source, asked if the cat menstruates but she can’t, we had those organs taken out, and it wasn’t the dog or our daughters or Dawn, no entry wound on my mom — so we’ve deduced the cat brought something into bed and bloodlet it, removed the solids and just left stains.

Drove by myself for the first time today to the Häckselplätze to dump some yard waste clippings. Eberhard said ‘if you feel like doing something this week,’ and gestured to the shrubs outside the window which arguably could be trimmed — but then did it himself for some reason in the morning, mentioned I could remove the trimmings, which I put off all week, but now that it’s Freitag and he’s coming, I thought I should do it to minimise any weird energy in the house tonight.

Circled the nearby town of Bietigheim a few times looking for the pet store, managed to not get in an accident or arrested, but pissed off many German drivers for going too slow, caught one doing a hand-sawing motion in the air as he whizzed by me — found myself on a very small road probably intended just for tractors out in the middle of some farmlands with a large blue heron off to the side, joggers looking confused why I was there in my car, but found the windmill which I knew was near the Häckselplätze, and thought if I could get to the windmill my sense memory would lead me the rest of the way, and I was right.

Worked out our budget and it appears we can probably live here for half the expense of living in the States, outside of Seattle.

Started the girls on cooking with each of them taking a night, paired Charlotte’s ‘quick tomato sauce’ from The Best Recipe with a Côtes du Rhône and a Barbera, both coming in about 10 euros (5 € each), easily $20 bottles in USD.

Got the girls enrolled in some 9-5 camp, M-F next week at the local gym, which will give Dawn and me time to work out their lesson plans for the first week of school.

Received an email from an IT recruiter in London asking if I was interested in a new contract but there were so many typos in her email, I wonder if she was a robot — and still having subtle work-dreams from watching a USA Today story about my former employer earlier this week, plus a blog from my friend Rick that asks how people feel about working from home, and what that means nowadays.

And now that it’s been about seven months since I started applying for jobs back in Seattle I’m just starting to get rejection emails that explain why it was a hard decision based on all the skilled applicants and so forth. And neither Dawn nor I have a cell phone plan now. We don’t use our watches really. I suggested we get an alarm clock and set it by the sunrise, so we can get up later each day as the year wears on, roughly 7:45 AM, come December.

The WordPress engine — whatever Oz it is behind the curtains — thinks based on my European settings now that I need to spell minimize with an ‘s,’ and I’m honoured.

Categories: humor

Tags: affordable wine, Barley Literate, cats, cooking with kids, corporate america, English spellings, European travel, expats, German travel, homeschooling, humor, humour, Seattle, The Best Recipe, working from home