Life Simplification 101

When they say that the Army moves you around a lot, they are so not kidding. Yes, that's right, my friends! I moved again at the beginning of this week, so if you've lost count (and I know I have once or twice) this is move #4 in a little under 6 months! Good grief, I say! There's only so much packing, carting and unpacking one girl can do! The good news is, that barring any unforseen complications, I've moved to as permanent a place as possible: my new apartment! Thanks to all of you who have endured the various ranting and raving sessions that accompany my sheer amazement upon discovering many of the customs surrounding German aparment-dwelling. Some of these customs, in my humblest of opinions, exemplify inefficiency of a degree which simply baffles me. Baffles me! Seriously. You heard it here first! What could possibly be so, well, baffling? Okay, for example, let's talk closets. Americans, well, we like closets. We like them a lot. In fact, we like them so much that we will actually go to such lengths that we will BUILD them into our homes and apartments. Germans? Uh, no. No closets. Soooooorry! How about light fixtures? Nope! What? You'll have to put those in yourself. Okay, so the bottom line is, that like every other good, German economy-dweller, I have an apartment. With no light fixtures. And no closets. So, here's the scenario. The movers brought my furniture in on Tuesday, and I, boxcutter in hand am working LIKE MAD to get to the box with all of my lamps before the sun goes down because....right! I have NO light fixtures! Oh, and did I also mention that in the exhaustion of the move, I accidentally blew up my little boombox CD player? Yup: add it to the 220 volt casualty list! So, like I say, I'm going like mad, just ripping boxes open. Because of the CD player casualty, I'm down to listening to my clock radio for entertainment, at this point, which I must say, added a little something to the desperation of the moment. But, as we all know, the exhaustion of the move sets in at one point or another, and you just have to quit for the night. But, what am I going to do? It's getting dark, and I can't find my lamps. Wait: all is not lost! Why, I have a Mag light! This is going to be a piece of cake! So, just to paint you a picture, it is very, very dark by this point, and I am walking around my new, huge apartment using a MAG LIGHT to find my pajamas and my toothbrush in the sea of cardboard boxes. A few stubbed toes later, I was seriously contemplating pulling my car out into the street, and pointing my highbeams into the living room! So, I'd had a long day, and I thought I'd tell my mom the above story. She laughed and congratulated me on succeeding at really, really simplifying my life. Hmmm, yes. I would agree. When you're down to a Mag light, a clock radio and three thousand cardboard boxes, you are, indeed, a graduate of the school of life simplification!