DARN TEUTON!

Send some good vibes my way this week: I had a job interview in Hamburg on Friday and have another one here in Munich on Wednesday. Law of averages says that I should get at least one job offer, no?

I actually don’t know anything about the law of averages. Had I taken any statistics classes, I would probably be in a better employment position than taking a seminar titled: “European Witchcraft”. Unfortunately, Monty Python is having a hiring freeze.

video courtesy of YouTube

We moved to New York about one month before our wedding, and, like most women, I had lost a bunch of weight and was the thinnest I have ever been in my adult life. I hadn’t had any time (or much money) to purchase a wardrobe for my new body, and my “midwestern comfortable” clothes were not exactly fashion forward. What a perfect time to go shopping in SoHo. It was like the scene in Pretty Woman when the snooty sales woman tells Julia Robert’s character that she probably can’t afford anything in the boutique because it’s “very, very expensive.” I immediately took my schlumpy self shopping. (Yes, I know I should have stood up to that woman making $7 an hour to talk about the dignity of all mankind, but, eh, she was right. I looked dowdy and ill-fitting.)

Since then, I’ve always tried to look as fashionable as I can for the situation, which is generally not that difficult in Munich, where the northern climate and bloodlines combine to form a hardy, but not particularly fashionable, people. There’s always lots of hiking jackets everywhere.

But, after gaining and losing 10 kilos of baby weight in 18 months, the clothes I bought for pregnancy and nursing are too big, and I’m back to looking schlumpy and ill-fitting. What a perfect time to go shopping to one of the most expensive department stores in Munich. It was like a flashback to that SoHo trip (“Alles sind sehr sehr teuer.”) And they’re right — being a new mom doesn’t mean you have to look like one. There were plenty of women in that store with young kids who looked like they could pilate you into a pretzel. True, they were probably wealthy with personal trainers and such, but it doesn’t mean that us mere mortals can’t, at least, just buy clothes that fit.

So I put away everything I purchased in the last year, put on my not-super-comfortable-but-fashionable shoes, tied on a jaunty scarf, and went about my day. It’s easy to get into a rut, especially if you’re home all day, but I feel a lot better when I look better. Even if the only person who sees me eats his own feet.

…. squeeze other people’s babies. I had always heard that the Italians LOVE children, but never having had an available child when I backpacked through in my early twenties, I was not able to experience it first hand. Let me tell you. It’s true.

We brought the shitty weather with us when we arrived on Thursday. So we napped all afternoon, and when it was still thunderstorming into the evening, we decided to eat dinner at the hotel. Unlike Gran Canaria, where the the 6:30 p.m. dinner seating was full, there was only one other couple in the dining room. (Remember when eating that early was So. Lame.?)

We siddled up the stroller to the table. We ordered our appetizer and glass of wine. We took turns eating while the other held M. All of the waitstaff come by to give M a little foot tickle and tell us about their kids. Halfway through our stuffed artichoke blossoms, our waiter asks if he could take M into the kitchen so that we could eat. I’m not sure he waited for us to respond before scooping him away. As more diners arrived, he greeted them with M as his “assistant.”

It was like that everywhere. I had to change his diaper in a public bathroom, and the toilette lady grabbed him out of my hands before halfway to the diaper station. I took M with me into the hotel spa’s changing room while I changed out of my wet bathing suit, and out of nowhere, four Italian ladies swoop in on M and take him off of my hands.

That would never happen in the U.S. or Germany or, presumably, any non-Mediterranean country. But why not? Wouldn’t you like to squeeze that little baby on the train, or give some parents 20 minutes to eat dinner in peace? But could you imagine asking a parent on the New York subway if you could hold their child? They would simultaneously mace you and call the police. Those New Yorkers — always multi-tasking.

I’m giving myself an eye twitch stressing about this job search.  I wouldn’t be quite so upset if I hadn’t spent $100K on a “safe” law degree which was supposed to open the door to stability and millions.  But the start-up costs are so high, and the job is generally so sucky, that my time would have been better spent pole dancing. I would have started out as the Sexy Librarian in the early 90s, then moved on to a Tina Fey in the aughts, and finally retired as a Sarah Palin. (With some Lisa Loeb thrown in for the bar mitzvah circuit).

These poor schlumps from the Huffington Post agree. (As an aside, does HuffPo seem like a liberal Fox News to anyone? Why is the sky and/or someone’s top always falling there?)

Our balcony is off of the bathroom. I sh*t you not (no pun intended). When I am too lazy to take M for a walk outside, but it’s still too cold to sit in the sun (Psst, Spring. You’re late), I prop open the door and put M in his bouncy seat just next to the tub. That way, I can sit on the toilet using the laptop for its original purpose: reading the interwebs while on the john.

Okay, so I’m immature. Tee hee.

I can start with the most recent complaints, and then move backwards to the ones I missed during my hiatus.

I’m on “maternity leave” now, which is kind of ironic considering that I didn’t work for the nine months before M was born. (I got pregnant the *second* we landed here — must have been the fresh alpine air, which now that I think about it, should be pumped into the well-appointed soothing mauve waiting rooms of fertility clinics the world over). I am, however, getting maternity benefits from the state based on my 3 months of work in New York before we moved here. It’s not the maximum I could receive (yet another reason I wanted to have M sooner), but it’s not bad, and free money is free money. Sadly, M is making more money for our household than I am.

For the first three months, I didn’t mind not having a job. In fact, I don’t know how women go back to work after 6 weeks in the U.S. After 3 months, it gets easier on the baby front, but it’s kind of nice being at home. But now, at 6 months, I’m about to go CRAZY. It’s so, so, so, so BORING. I mean, would a childfree person spend the entire day pointing out animals in a picture book? Of course not. Being a parent doesn’t make that activity any more interesting.

And it has nothing to do with being alone all day (or all week, since P travels for work). I’ve gone to some mommy groups (ugh. I hate that term “mommy group” — why would grown women call themselves that?) but they’re not for me. I go out to lunch, I take long walks, I do some shopping, but that’s not really enough.

I’m not saying that I’m not busy. When I fall into bed, I’m dead tired. But I haven’t really done anything all day. My friends gave me lots of tips: take a yoga class, learn a language, work out. All good ideas to fill up the day, but no different from a lady who lunches.

So my question is: What do stay-at-home moms do all day? Is this it, or am I missing something?

I went on a job interview last week for which I was supremely qualified. However, I am also supremely pregnant, and I think they were a wee bit surprised to see my belly announce itself prior to my entrance to the conference room. I believe that is when the job requirements included fluency in German and knowledge of Chinese — you know, for an English-language journalism position on an English-language magazine, for an international company whose office language is English.

But, in their defense, not even in the U.S. would an 8-month pregnant woman be hired for a job starting 3 weeks before her due date — but here, where women are afforded a 3-year maternity leave (with the first year at 2/3rd’s pay) — it was especially stupid to think that anyone would hire me, just to have me, in their minds, take 3 years off.

I tried to explain that I already had a nanny lined up — but the nanny concept hasn’t really taken off here. Of course, people have the occasional baby-sitter and what not, but the idea of having a full- or part-time nanny so that a woman can work is so foreign as to be unbelievable. (Of course, wealthy women, who do not work, have nannies. It would be as if I told them that I had hired an English governess — who could talk to woodland creatures, dance on the ceiling and use an umbrella as personal aircraft).

I recently started swimming again — and by that, I mean I went to the large indoor pool, twice, a few weeks ago.  But it’s a start, considering that I haven’t seen the inside of a regulation sized pool in 15 years.  There are some very nice public pools here, and like a lot of things here, are very modern but housed in these beautiful old turn-of-the-last-century buildings with columns and wide lawns and everything. 

Since I am a housewife, I go in the afternoons, where it’s just me and the retirees.  And here I witness something which continues to confuse and amaze me.  I’m always surprised at how the generally very orderly Germans cannot que up to save their lives, which translates into a bunch of older ladies darting all over the pool, while I try to bob and weave.   The indoor pool has no lanes dividers, and it’s every man for himself in there.  

Now, I like a flowered bathing cap as much as the next gal, but to seem them coming at you sitting on top of a face full of make-up and announced by a pair of torpedo boobs is disconcerting.  It’s impossible to get out of the way, since there is no “way” — just a bunch of ladies fighting for water space, and I’m in now way ready to win that fight club.  First, I’ll need that flowered bathing cap. 

Yes, they do, because the Germans use military time.  Like, you have an appointment at 14 O’Clock or the movie starts at 20 O’Clock.  Funnily enough, the half-hour is noted on regular time — you can meet someone at “half 7″, meaning 6:30 p.m., rather than at 18.30.  And hilarity ensues.

But, the benefit is that you never set your alarm clock for p.m. instead of a.m. (and thus can never use that time-honored American excuse) since 7 a.m. is always the number 7 and 7 p.m. is 19.00.  You can, of course, still snooze for two hours after the alarm goes off, as is my want, but only until 9 a.m. and not until 21.00.