Instead of the Ferris Wheel in Open Diary 2001-2018 (Pre-Prosebox)

I’m trying to get my head above water. You should see it here. I’m in my office. I have let piles of papers, newspapers and magazines pile up in every nook and cranny of my cube. Today I decided to tackle some of those piles, and I came across a bunch of personal stuff that was tucked away in between the piles.

You know I travel a lot for my work. And this year during one of my Europe trips I was able to take a day off and go to a little town in Germany to visit EXMS’s grandmother. What a wild Sunday that was!! I remember it well. I was nervous to meet Oma, and she was certainly tough on me (very wary of somebody who might hurt her grandson again like his ex-wife did). But after all my effort and alllll the German skills I know (not much…a lot of sign language and her broken English!), I know I finally won her over after the visit was said and done and she’d had time to digest it. She gave EXMS her approval of me, and at the time it was sooooo worth it! I took photos and notes and everything.

I found those notes stuck in a notebook. They were funny…I’d written about how I had to get up at 3am to catch a taxi to Paddington Station (I was in London at the time) to take the Heathrow Express to catch a plane to Frankfurt to catch two more trains to the little town and then another taxi to Oma’s place. Man!! It was such a journey getting there. I visited with Oma for a little over 5 hours (almost excruciating because of the language/culture barriers and the scrutiny), and turned around and went right back to London…got back to the hotel around 1am and had to turn right back around to go to Rome very early the next morning!

Seriously, I climbed MOUNTAINS for EXMS’s approval. He was really happy that I visited his Grandmother, and I know that it meant a lot to him. And I was starting to feel sorry for myself for putting all of this effort and energy into going the extra mile(s) for naught, but honestly, not really. I mean, what a cool experience! To meet a crotchety old German woman in her new semi-assisted living apartment in a teeny-tiny town in Germany? How on EARTH would I have ever gotten myself into something like that if it weren’t for EXMS? I mean, sure…it would have been more fun to take a day off in London and ride the big Millennium Ferris wheel or something (I’ve never done that, as many times as I’ve been to London). But this was an experience that not many people will ever even have the opportunity to explore.

I’m lucky.

Are you convinced?

No?

I’m not either. I did it all for my honey. I did it in the name of creating family. I did it purely out of love with no ulterior motives other than to hopefully help EXMS’s Oma feel more comfortable about her grandson’s future wife. After all, she would have been the closest thing to a mother-in-law that I would have had with EXMS (his mother passed away when he was 10) I knew if she met me she’d love me. And she did. And I loved her.

I’m going to hide in the bathroom and cry for a little bit now.