Stressing Out is Half the Fun!
Finally time to start telling my Christmas story: a tale of adventure and lust, lost loves and babies, blood and tears. My fears were almost paralyzing. I was heading into uncharted territory and I knew it. I was about to embark on a journey to visit The Future Mr. Snaps two children who live with their mother and stepfather in northern Germany.
My fears were escalated when I started hearing details of the trip that had already been planned out: Christmas Eve (or Weihnachts) dinner with the kids at the X house, Christmas night dinner with old friends at the X house, the night after that, dinner with the ex-mother-in-law and family, another get-together at the ex-sister-in-laws house, and on and on the list went.
How the hell was I supposed to even begin to process that shit?
For weeks before the trip I fretted and stewed and simmered and boiled over a few times. Visions of food fights with flying brats and kraut filled my noggin. I was NOT going to get along (nor did I even want to look at my fiancés ex-wife. I just knew she was going to give me a bunch of German HELL like she kinda did when she came to visit in the springtime (examples: 3rd degree questioning about my experience with children, tons of intrusions in our loft, tagging along with TFMS brought the kids up to see my workplace!!). I did not want to hang out in any way, shape or form with her and her yuck-suck of a husband. But I knew that it was inevitable because of all the plans that were already made.
All I really wanted to do was to bond with TFMSs kids knowing that well be sharing our lives together. I wanted us to start to look like a little familyjust the four of us. No intrusions, no ex-this and ex-that. I wanted perfect and shiny and new. And I let TFMS know this. Over and over. And poor TFMS, he was completely stuck smack in the middle when all he wanted was to visit his kids. I felt badly for him while he felt badly for me, and we were both sorta not really looking forward to the cluster-eff on which we were about to embark.
But embark we did.
On Sunday, December 23rd, we packed up our warmest sweaters and big, fluffy down coats and hats and mittens and boxes of toys. Seriously, we could not fit all of the toys for the kids in our suitcases. We had to take one of those big storage tubs AND and extra hard case. They were FILLED with toys and goodies (including Velveeta Shells and Cheese and Lucky Charmstwo American delicacies you cant get in Bremen, Germany) We braced ourselves, gave each other nervous kisses, and made our way to the airport.
With plenty of time at the airport, we filled our bellies with Bloody Marys and salads. The first leg was to Memphis, and that was really easy. The second leg was Memphis to Amsterdam. Not bad, a little bumpy, but we took our Melatonin and were both able to sleep a bit.
But then we had something like a four hour layover in Amsterdam, and thats when things got a little tense. I think we were both so anxious about actually getting there that the lull made us both jumpy. I got insecure; TFMS got annoyed. We cleared things up after some carefully thought-out wording, a glass of wine, and some frites, and were finally on our little KLM cityhopper for the one-hour flight to Bremen.
I think we held hands through this whole flight, both silently comforting each other and mentally preparing for what was ahead
Next installment: Merry Happy Frohe Weihnachten!
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