insane in the membrane (part 2)

On the Tuesday morning before Thanksgiving we woke up with all the anticipation we could possibly feel. The night before we had gotten a call saying our van would be there in the morning. SWEET! I was stoked, and then the sales dude gave me the to-do list that we had to complete before we could pick the thing up. Bummer. Seriously, everything we needed to do could have been done the week before but he failed to tell us. And then he acted surprised that I didn't know we had to do these things and hadn't done them already. For real, things that would have been nice to know yesterday...

So after going to post to pick M up and filling out some forms and going to another building, we had to leave post to go get our license plates. As we were driving out the gate, there it was. Our beautiful silver van, just sitting there on a truck, waiting to go on post so we could go pick it up. What a cruel, cruel thing to do to us. It was RIGHT THERE. Right in front of us and we couldn't do a thing about it. I wanted so badly to take a picture of it but I didn't think that the security guards would appreciate me taking a picture with a large zoom lense at the entrance of a military installation. Probably not a good idea. So we drove away, with tears in my eyes, and went to get our plates.

When we got there, their computers were down. Are you kidding me? Their computers were down and they couldn't call to verify our insurance information. It had to be done online. What the heck? All we needed to get our plates, and therefore our van, was for them to verify that we did in fact have insurance on our car. Since their computers were done and they couldn't tell us when they would be fixed, we left. M was smart and left me in the car when he went in to get the plates, and had already started driving away when he told me what had happened because he knew if I had a chance to go in there, someone would be coming out on a stretcher and it wasn't gonna be me.

So we left, drove back to post, resigned to the fact that we were not going to get our van that day but would have to have patience and virtue and all of that other crap and get it the next day. When we got back to post, we turned in our paper work and decided to go home. But not before M called the plate people and they told him that the plates were ready to be picked up now. Dang it! Ok, so we drove the 25 minutes back to pick up the stupid plates, but we still weren't able to pick the van that day because after we picked it up, we had to drive it directly to the customs office which was over 30 minutes away. Seriously, this was not a simple procedure!

In all, Tuesday was extremely anti climatic and we ended up being gone from 9 am to 8 pm for no real reason. My kids are troopers, that is all I can say. So Wednesday we finally got the van. FINALLY. It is amazing. It has everything we have ever needed and stuff we didn't even know we wanted. After it was officially ours, we went and celebrated another Thanksgiving with some friends of ours. And then we crashed on Thursday. I spent the entire day cleaning the house because I had neglected it for the week prior. My ball gown was still on the chair, there were about 9 loads of laundry that had to be done and I don't even want to say how long it had been since I had cleaned the bathroom. It was bad.

We took the rest of the long weekend and relaxed, which was wonderful. We needed it because on Monday, it was back to the same old same old. And now things are just as busy as they were before. We are swamped with school and errands and decorating and having people over. I haven't been this busy since I was in college and I think I'm getting way too old for this. But I will admit that I like this pace, as long as I can have a couple of days here and there to be responsible and catch up on the boring everyday things.

M's parents are here now and we have been fun traveling around our area and seeing things we haven't seen before. Soon we will go on a little road trip, on which I will be schooling the Christmas Markets. They will not know what hit them. This is my one and only chance to have a real German Christmas and by God, I'm gonna do it right. I can rest later... maybe.