Life

Rain, rain, and more rain. Rain+Nox=One hot mess. My life these days consists of dirty towels, muddy paw-printed floors, pants and white furniture. I clean mud splatters off of places that have no business having mud on them. I often question why I even bother to bath this dog, because, without fail, he will be covered in mud within the hour. Thus is the life of a dog owner enduring the winter rains of Germany. Newton, is how you would expect... perfect. He likes to stay on the trail next to me and sits patiently when he gets his towel wipe down after every walk. 

I recently showed one of our neighbors some of my American magazines, and she was horrified that one of the titles was "Garden and Gun". "Gun? Why would you have a Gun in a garden?"

We went to the Kino (movie theater) last week. There is one theater in Cologne that shows English movies with German subtitles. We have been there once before but I had forgotten how different the experience is. First you get an assigned seat, which is bad if you didn't buy your tickets two years in advance. Then you want to buy a treat and find that the menu consists of beer and ice cream and decide to give it a miss, and then your movie starts a half an hour late because... well, we don't really know.

We kept my birthday pretty hush hush. They like their birthdays here and usually have a party. This means that YOU throw a party for YOUR birthday. Somehow this seems backwards to me. If someone wants to throw me a party that's great, but here you do all of the cooking, and cleaning, and entertaining. Forget it.