DARN TEUTON!

M is definitely our son. He seems to have inherited our sleeping-in-why-wake-up-if-there’s-nothing-to-do gene. It is 11 a.m., and he’s still sleeping. Sure, he wakes up every few hours, but if I don’t come in, he just goes back to sleep.

P and my laziness has passed down to another generation. Sniff. This may be my proudest moment as a mother.

]I’m not all that upset about being my own cleaning woman because we have a brand new vacuum. It’s a little Happy Homemaker to be so excited about a new appliance, but I hate.Hate.HATED our old one. We bought a canister vacuum in the U.S. that P just loved. He always sniffed at the uprights everyone else had and crowed about the canister’s better sucking ability. Pulling that rolling thing around was like vacuuming while being followed by an annoying robotic Star Wars pet. No matter how well it sucked, I just thought it sucked.

So we compromised on what I call a “regular” vacuum with a bulbous little belly. It’s called a Vampyrette, which I think is adorable. (“I want to suck just a wee little drop of your blood, if I may.”) It sucks just fine. I don’t know why people need industrial strength suckage – exactly how much do you need to suck? Never mind.

I accidentally fired our cleaning woman this week. She wasn’t really that good or thorough AND she charged 13 Euro an hour (which is 1 Euro an hour MORE than I make), but I was too chicken to fire her before and felt all this liberal guilt for enslaving the poor Croatian immigrants — and by “enslaving,” I mean paying her more than me.

But, when she called to change to an inconvenient time, I took that chance to “let her go.” “Let her go” is a nice phrase I can say in English, but not so much in German. In German, all I can say is “I don’t need you anymore” which is a lot harsher than what I was going for. At any rate, I can do an equally adequate job for free. (And here I was complaining about having nothing to do. I could, theoretically, add a little housework to my day. Theoretically.)