Crap. I leave for Berlin in 10 hours and I forgot to learn Germish.

Conversation at dinner several weeks ago:
Me: Hey guys, in March I have to go to Berlin for a few days.
#4: Where’s Berlin?
Me: It’s in Germany
#3, who is 13 and twirling her hair: Does that mean you’ll have to learn Germish?

See this picture?

Isn’t it beautiful? It’s not mine. My step-sister took this on her honeymoon. It’s like Spain or something. She had to leave her hotel, in a foreign country, and somehow become situated in a place where she could take that picture.

This one’s mine.

It’s a picture of a dead rat in the ceiling of the theater in London.

I’m a terrible traveler. This is ironic, considering that I lived on the road for five years. Lived out of a suitcase, didn’t keep an apartment, the whole deal. In every city my sightseeing consisted of:
1) the airport
2) the loading dock of the theater
3) the rest of the theater
4) the hotel bar/restaurant
5) my room in the hotel
6) the nearest Starbucks

I might also get to include the local hot yoga studio if there was one, the grocery store if I had access to a kitchen, and a place to buy shoes. I traveled an entire road box full of shoes, but that’s another post.

There are people that, when they travel for work, go see stuff. I’m not one of them. I spent a lot of time in my hotel room wishing that I was one, but eventually I came to realize that I liked being in my hotel room and I wasn’t really interested in seeing the Second Biggest Ball of Mud West of the Mississippi. Not to be a dick, but most places in middle America are really not that interesting. I am allowed to say this because I lived in Indiana for twenty-four years.

But Europe? Their Second Biggest Ball of Mud is older than our whole country. That’s something else entirely.

My boss was supposed to do the Berlin gig but had a conflict, and very awesomely set it up for me to cover him. It’s a short trip, but I am woefully unprepared. I’m not packed. I think some of my laundry is done. I had to buy a suit Friday. The saleswoman was panicking on my behalf because I needed a suit by Sunday; I told her it was no problem because I actually had an entire 35 minutes to find a suit. I found it. It’s a good suit. I plan to write it off on my taxes.

I am fortunate that one of the people I am traveling with is quite possibly the greatest traveler on the planet. He is a very adventurous soul and is pretty much always moving from one exotic locale to another. He goes and sees stuff. He’s also a stage manager, so he’s terribly, terribly organized.

I’m staying an extra day in Berlin at the end because, let’s be honest, when the hell am I going to get to go to Berlin again? At least not until #5 is out of high school, and that’s nine winters away. Not that I’m counting.

My fantastic traveling companion is NOT staying the extra day. This day is also my birthday. Where I will be in a foreign country, where I do not speak the language, because in addition to not being packed yet I have not read past page twenty-three in my travel guide, only just now downloaded Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations Berlin Episode, and I forgot to learn Germish.

For the Record

For the record, when a parent asks “Who’s cleaning up the kitchen?” the wrong answer is “I don’t know.”Also wrong is the name of a sibling, any sibling, followed by a judgment of why they deserve to be the one to clean up the kitchen. All of these will get you the job of cleaning up the kitchen.

The only answer that might possibly on the slightest off-chance get you out of cleaning the kitchen is to say, “I’ll do it!” because then the parent just might possibly say, “That’s so nice of you to take responsibility! I’ll make your sister do it; you’ve done enough. Go have a cookie.” But this is only likely to happen if you volunteer immediately after your sister has made an ass out of herself by arguing that she shouldn’t have to clean up the kitchen because she did it yesterday.

It is far more likely that you’ll both clean up the kitchen, and I’ll eat your cookies.

The Bane of My Existence. . .

Is a duvet cover. Yeah, you heard me.

A shiny, ridiculously expensive, pretty Italian duvet cover- the kind of thing you buy when you’re single, childless, and free from pets.

The kind of thing that loses its closure buttons when puppies wrestle on it, allowing them to then wrestle inside it.

While the down comforter inside slides sadly down, down, down, despite the clips that were supposed to hold it in place and change my life. Those clips are no match for puggles.

That’s it in the middle there. The down comforter. The snaky lump now cutting diagonally across the bed. Prolapsing out the end.

It takes somewhere in the neighborhood of forty-five minutes to reorient the comforter inside the cover. It’s slippery. It’s askew. Those puppies, they think it’s a game. They pounce on the lumps. They try to crawl back inside.

I’m pretty sure they ate the clips.