No, I Am Not Dead....

...just knitting. A lot. I try to make most, if not all, of my Christmas gifts, so that's why I haven't been posting. So I apologize to the four people who read this thing. It has been even harder this year (I am in the mad dash of knitting this year and won't be able to knit all the gifts) because I have been feeling under the weather since we got back from the US.

For Christmas, we are asking for *literacy* in the German language. But hopefully the Santa that comes knocking around here is bilingual or otherwise he won't know what we're saying either. This week I went to the store to get shampoo. Seemed like an easy thing to me. Who could mess this up? Just look for Pantene. Sometimes they get the bilingual bottles that also say shampoo (as I cannot remember the German word for shampoo). So I look for this. I get a bottle. I go home. I get in the shower, hair is wet, I squeeze the stuff out of the bottle and lo and behold, I bought conditioner. This is my third bottle of conditioner. I promise to go to the store with a dictionary next time no matter how stupid I look because we are running out of space in the shower because of all the conditioner bottles.

The week before (yes, another supermarket fiasco as I refuse to shop at the commissary) I needed dishwasher detergent. Again I ask myself, "How hard can this be?" I go and look. Well, our supermarket puts the dishwasher detergent AND the clothes detergent next to each other (is this normally done?). Sh*t. I don't want to be eating food off of lavender-scented plates. I don't recognize the brands. The Germans gathering around me trying to shop must be thinking, "Dude, pick one. Mach schnell." I finally found one that had a picture of a wine glass on it (thank god). Can you imagine if I had put laundry detergent in the dishwasher?? Oh the foaming mess...