Please omit it.

last night our house turned into a giant panic room! german houses have metal blinds on the outside of the windows called rolladen. germans typically put the house to bed and close these in the early evening. last night at around 7 we had a problem with the electricity and a fuse broke, and all of the electric rolladen (leading out to all the balconies) closed and wouldn't open. s said it well when he emailed our landlord - "it's almost like being prisoners in our own home..." had to make a few calls and pull out my rusty german, but the rolladen are fixed and we are no longer prisoners.

so this morning, after the rolladen phone calls, i was pouring a cup of coffee when the bell rang. i went downstairs and my next door neighbor from down the hill was standing there. i opened the door, and since we had not spoken other than 'guten morgan' and 'guten abend' the first thing i did was introduce myself to her. we shook hands and she brought out a handwritten note and started trying to tell me something. i knew immediately that i had done something wrong and she was here to tell me ALL about it.

well, it turns out that one of the girls peed on the ivy that grows off of her property and stops at the street, and she would like them to stop. She was kind enough (really, i actually thought this was very thoughtful of her) to write the note in german and then use a dictionary to translate it into english for me - evidently one can tell i'm an american when i say good evening, which is just wunderbar...

here's how the note reads...

the urine from your 3 dogs before our premises. There ivy grow is our premises, above and below our house (home). Please omit it.

so we now have to avoid one side of the narrow road when we walk down to the river. it's truly ridiculous in my opinion that the dogs can't pee there, but who am i to argue? the sad part of the story is that as she's telling me what i've done wrong, and i'm trying to explain to her how this house and the steepness of the hill and lack of grass are such an issue for us, i start crying and can't stop. now i rarely cry... really. however ever since i was a child, the one thing that gets me is being reprimanded for doing something 'wrong' and of course this time was no different, especially since i was so utterly frustrated with the situation. i think she felt sorry for me, because she started saying things like "you love your animals... i have two cats, i understand. i love my animals too," and then told me how to get ticks off my skin with tape that she happened to have in her pocket. wtf???

anyway, i got about 50% of everything she said in the 10 minutes or so that we talked, which i'm pretty proud of, and hopefully we won't piss her off again. if you know me and the story of the guy who yelled at me in our last house in heidelberg, you'll know this isn't the first time this has happened. he ended up being a great neighbor, hopefully she will too.

good news... this afternoon i found a great grocery store (on recommendation from a friend) down the road in a small town outside of heidelberg. they have big aisles, great produce that i don't have to weigh and print stickers for myself, free parking, and they take credit cards so i don't have to worry about having enough cash on me when i go. it was nearly empty today at around 3pm when i went, which was also wonderful. i still have to bag my own groceries, but one can't have everything... : )

s got to spend the day in paris (while i argued with neighbors, stocked his fridge, and finished painting the bedroom) and will be home in an hour. now i will admit, he had meetings, but still - he had meetings in paris.

i'm ready for a 'meeting' in paris with a bottle of wine.