Turbulent Tuesday

Tuesday was not a good day.  It was one of the first really not so good days since we have been here.  To start it all off, Monday night the washing machine broke with a load of soapy, wet clothes.  We have this "thing" coming up on Thursday and we really need to have clean clothes for this.  All of us need clean clothes actually for four full days.  I will fully disclose our "thing" at some point but right now I can only talk about it in vague terms.
So, the timing on the washing machine breaking could not have been worse as I had been in Spain all weekend and there was a ton of laundry to catch up on.
Benjamin's clothes are dirty, like filthy dirty, every single day.  This normally makes me so happy to see him dirty.  A dirty boy is a happy boy or at least that holds true for him.  He didn't have any clothes, Josie was on her final pairs of clean underwear not to mention pants.
Tuesday morning,  Marty and I spent over 2 hours trying to fix the washing machine.  To be fair, I just held the light and fetched extra towels and like most fix it projects, Marty does all the hard work complete with some curse words.   But unlike most projects he could not fix the machine.
Frustrated by the wasted time and not being able to fix the machine he makes a couple of calls.  The Miele company says that they can send someone out to look at the machine before noon on Wednesday.  I thought that was great.  It would give me the rest of the afternoon and evening to to wash the clothes and even if I had to use the dryer I could.  Up until now I have been only drying the clothes on the drying racks outside.
Later in the morning I had a meeting with Josie's teacher and other classroom reps.  I signed up to be the alternative American rep.  Each class has two German and two American reps.  In the meeting I felt overwhelmed by things that I felt like I should know.  There is an upcoming potluck that I thought was next Friday but turns out it is THIS Friday.  I thought the potluck was a bring your children but apparently it isn't.  I just felt like in Seattle I would have KNOWN these things.  I could do the school thing in my sleep in Seattle but not here.  School activities and things still kind of overwhelm me.  The learning curve is steep,  You'd think school things would be the one constant but they aren't.
I leave the meeting and before I meet Marty for lunch I try to ride my bike by the one of very few waxing places here in town.  Because of our "thing" and because my eyesight is getting worse (I probably need to get a pair of readers but that wouldn't help in this instance) and because we don't have good light here in the bathrooms my eyebrows were a mess.  I walk into the waxing place and the woman motions to me to wait a few minutes, then I rattle off my one line I know in German "I speak only a little bit of German, do you speak English" To which she replies, "I need 15 minutes to finish then I can make an appointment for you"  Really, she can't just make a damn appointment for later?  Marty had called earlier even and it went straight to voice mail and I had stopped by last week before leaving for Madrid and same thing.  In Seattle I would just drop by my favorite place and if there was a wait it was maybe 5 minutes and I was in and out within 15.  Why is this so difficult and time consuming.
I got really frustrated.  Like REALLY really frustrated.  I am getting so completely tired of not being able to communicate.  I am a talker.  Anyone who knows me knows I am a talker.  I talk when I'm happy, when I'm sad, when I'm frustrated and when I'm nervous. I honestly probably talk too much.  Well, not here.  There is no outlet for my small talk. I can't talk to anyone at the grocery store or on the bus or at any of the places I go to day to day.  There is something about feeling like your intelligence level went down 10 notches because you simply cannot speak. 
I'm also getting frustrated by my lack of ability to just get stuff done. What would normally take a 15 minutes in Seattle takes all. damn.day. here.  Or it just doesn't get done.  I know I need to learn German so last week I head to the place where you are supposed to sign up for classes.  I had done some research and found an intensive class - 6 weeks, 4 days a week for 4 hours each day.  The sign up place was right in the center of our small little town.  But, wouldn't you know it... the office had moved and closed and wouldn't reopen until November 1st.  So frustrating.
So, I was having one of those days.  I had a bit of a melt down.  Marty tried to boost me up but I wasn't really having it.  It wasn't like I wanted to leave Germany or give up, I was just giving in to the fact that this was hard. 
We had a relatively soft landing here.  We had a house, we eventually found a school (that was kind of hard too) but now that we are actually needing things I am finding it harder.  We need a house and are having NO luck at finding one in our area where we desperately want to stay.  So... onward and upward I suppose.  I went to bed feeling defeated.  But at least the washing machine repair person was coming the next day and I could get through the laundry.   I could finally finish something!  And we had a TON of dirty clothes including the still wet and soapy load that was in the washer when it broke. 
Sorry, no photos.  There aren't really any photos to show you "life is hard"