Playing catch up

I should apologize for how neglectful I've been of my blog lately. Both Mom and Tom commented on it being well over a month since my last post. Hopefully I haven't lost my few faithful readers :) I've just been so busy and overloaded that I haven't had it in me to stop and take the time to put a post together.

This month has flown by. It's hard to believe Mom and Dad have been gone for 7 weeks already. I loved having them here and I'm already looking forward to our visit at Christmas.

After they left I returned to work at NAF for only one week then switched to my new position in CPAC. It's just down the hall and I already knew the people I'd be working with so I wasn't too nervous about starting. It's ended up being far more stressful than I thought it would be though. I've been doing some serious contemplating about staying there or moving on. I don't want to work overtime because my life outside of work is more important to me, but I feel like I'm almost expected to there. It's been necessary to work some extra hours just to stay on top of the workload, but I'm really fighting falling into that trap.

There may be another job opportunity on the horizon. If things turn out the way I'm secretly hoping - I may even be working less hours which would be wonderful, but until it's set in stone I'll not go into too much detail. I wouldn't want to jinx it.

I'm the only American in my area of the CPAC and it's proven to be a little interesting. I like cool weather and the two other ladies like it HOT. They get cold at the slightest breeze, so on days like today (90 degrees out) they refuse to turn on the AC. If someone does turn it on the reprieve only lasts for a few minutes before one of them says their throat is hurting. I have bitten my tongue on a number of occasions.

In all my years I've never had my name scrutinized like I have here in Germany. Obviously, Mom and Dad didn't consult the world before naming me. German's don't like the name and several people at work can't seem to say "Misty". I didn't think it was that hard, but obviously I was mistaken. My name comes out as Mitzy, Missy, Melissa, Mindy,...anything but MISTY. I've given up on correcting them and just answer to anything that sounds similar to my name.

Something that really surprised me is that (from what I gather) a lot of German women have house cleaners. One girl I work with who is younger than me and has a young child, was gong to be interviewing a new cleaner. I was surprised that she would have a cleaner for her house and she said "Well, I don't want to clean my house." Well then....I never knew it was an option. I always thought if I wanted a clean house then I had to clean it. We American's are so unenlightened , aren't we? Sure it might make life easier, since I'm working full time, but I still take pride in cleaning my own home.

Summer's always a busy time for Sam because the SAS kids are out of school and need full time care. This summer's even busier with having lost several of his long time employees over the last couple of months. Several college age kids are back with Camp Adventure. Sam had pity on them and asked me to make a dinner for them. So, I sent in a pan of lasagna, rolls and cookies. They seemed to enjoy it so much that I'll probably try to make dinner for them again before they leave.

Unfortunately, the cats are still not getting along. I really thought after two months they would be getting along a little better, but Gabby just can't stand the sight of Papa. She actually searches for him, then picks at and chases him around the house. Poor little guy. I feel bad for him, but he is completely capable of fighting back, but is docile enough that he won't until he's had enough. While Gabby picks at Papa mercilessly, he doesn't seem to "get it" either. He'll follow her around until she sees him, then hisses and swats to chase him away. You would think he'd steer clear of her, but he just seems too interested in her to stay away.

His absolute favorite place in the house is the couch. He will lay there for hours. He's so cute. Sam says he reminds him of a cartoon character. He's so big and it's cute when he tries to run. He's probably the sweetest cat I've ever known.

His newest favorite spot though is Sam's recliner. Sometimes he's there when I leave for work and in the exact same spot when I get home 9 hours later. He must move at some point through the day, but you wouldn't know it.

We saw a rat out back on the patio tonight. Sam promptly closed all windows. There's a lot of construction going on behind our house and I think it's chasing the little critters out. We have to be careful because we have the cats that go out back , but if I know my husband he'll be setting traps all over the back yard.

In the past I've mentioned our ongoing saga of the phone lines. Here's the most recent update. Back a few months ago we moved the router down to the living room behind the entertainment center so all the wires could be hidden. The downside of that was the desktop no longer received a signal. We wanted to try the router in a different jack closer to the computer, but Deutch Telecom told us we could only have one phone jack working at a time, so we were stuck. Deutch Telecom has a monopoly on the phone business and it's absolutely ridiculous. Every time they come out to turn on a different jack it cost about $100. It's just a way to cheat people out of money if you ask me. Anyhow, Sam knows someone who said they could get all of our jacks working, so we had him come out. He's an electrician by trade and had never seen such a poor wiring job as what he found here. The phone jacks had never even been connected. The wires were just in a roll down in the utility room. Early on we asked what the wires were for because they were coming out of the wall and looked like they should be hooked to something, but of course we never got a straight answer. A job that should have been relatively simple turned into a couple day job. We were very happy when he got all of our phone jacks working. Unfortunately, it hasn't helped the Internet connection on the desk top, but at least now if we decide to move the router again we can just do it and not have to pay yet again.

Well, I think that about covers what's been going on in our lives. I'll try to do better about updating this blog. We need to get the desktop working again, so I can post some more recent pictures. Until then, this will have to do.