What question could I have asked this 8 Ball one year ago during the planning of my move from Dresden to Michigan?

a. Will this move make me lose my mind?

b. Am I ever going to have more children?

c. Will we ever move back to Dresden?

d. All of the above.

Sorry to get all hocus-pocus on you and start writing about silly things like four leaf clovers and 8 balls lately, but I am feeling kind of hocus-pocusy. I guess being nearly six months pregnant will do that to you. Oh! That gives away one answer: b. could have been a correct question for that 8 ball answer. It's true, there is a baby on the way, and in honor of that, a baby joke I heard today:

Two babies were lying in the nursery of a hospital. One looks at the other and says, "I'm a girl!" The other says, "I'm a boy!" The girl asks, "How do you know that?" The boy says, "Come here, take a look" as he pulls down his blanket. "See! I have blue booties on!"

Ha ha ha. That one is from the Danish mother of a wife of a colleague, imported straight from Denmark.

Anyway, back to the hocus pocus. Along with all the four leaf clovers (see previous posts about my finding of 4 of them in the past week), all fortunes from fortune cookies at every delicious Chinese restaurant I go to have been telling me that prosperity is near, and soon you will be sitting on top of the world and stuff like this. Huh, well, we'll see. I quit my job today, so that won't be making me prosperous any time soon. It may be a surprise to some that I quit my job, but it really is for the best. You see, I feel like I am losing my mind once again planning yet another intercontinental move...so answer a. above was also correct. I probably did lose my mind last year during intercontinental move #1. Big news for those not yet in on it! We are returning to Dresden! And now, a little Westernhagen (or is it Nena?) in honor of this:

"Ich bin wieder hier

in meinem Revier

war nie wirklich weg

hab mich nur versteckt

ich rieche den Dreck

ich atme tief ein

und dann bin ich mir sicher

wieder zu Hause zu sein"

I know my readers could probably all qualify as members of Mensa, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this, so you've probably figured out that answer c. from above would have also been correct last year had I asked the 8 ball that particular question. And from the Dreck part of the song, you probably also figured out that we are returning to the Neustadt! Hooray! We're not there yet, so I can't smell the Dreck (dirt) just quite yet...but soon enough. July 9th, I will officially be smelling the smell of Dresden again!

Soooo, in all truth, the 8 ball could have just said "All of the above."

Things I can't wait for:

-delicious German baked goods

-going to the Plus Markt and having the cashier throw my purchases for me to bag them myself (I'll tell you what, that's a lot more efficient than the slloooooooww cashiers here, and I can deal with my thrown purchases much better when tired and hungry than with some friendly cashier chatting with me)

-giving people dirty looks for anything and everything (I've already been practicing, I am sick of all the niceness around here!)

-letting Wilhelm scream in the store and getting dirty looks

-did I mention sunflower seed rolls? Quarkkuchen? Roggenbrötchen? Kuchen? Any kind of Kuchen? Schokoladenbrötchen? Oh yeah, baked goods!

-my bike

-Panama

-the tram

-delicious milk products

-Kartoffeln und Quark

-Rahmspinat

-the smell of the bakery in the morning, oh my god

-the lack of fast food restaurants

-Neustädter Diechl!

-Bagel's!

-Frank's!

-the playgrounds and all the über-moms there

-Softeis!

-being sent to the butcher to buy some meat products I know nothing about and will not eat, looking and pointing at the totally wrong thing when placing my order

-mmm, the cheese! All the wonderful cheese!

-people outside walking, biking, running and skating everywhere, even in the rain!

-all of the sounds, the angry tram drivers and their angry bells, car horns honking, dogs barking, people talking, church bells, the music in the cafes...

I could go on and on, but it's getting late and we have a big day of packing the car and dealing with the debacle that that is sure to develop into tomorrow.