In laws

Oma and M (S's brother) have been visiting. Usually this would be a source for a veritable torrent of anecdotes, but this time they are rather few and far between. Oma doesn't speak English,.

Both of them have very little sense of urgency, which can rile me a touch. As it did last Saturday. I was due to take the boys to German school, and normally I leave at 8:30 with them. However, today we needed to take some windmills to the nursery school, and drop them off on the way. So at 8, I told them that we were leaving in 20 minutes ("Zwanzig minuten" - my German stretches to that). M said he was ready. Oma said she would be.

At 8:30, neither of them were to be seen, so the boys and I set off to the car, and waited at the lift. After some waiting, they hadn't turned up, so I sent the boys back to get them, and then I saw them taking another route (they took the stairs - I had the boys with me, their lunchbags, my bags, some empty shopping bags, random toys, and two containers of windmills - I wasn't going to take the stairs, and a couple of milliseconds thought might have led to that conclusion).

When they reached the stairs, they realised they couldn't get to the car park without a key (how this fact had escaped them in the past was a mystery to me), so I had to go down. But first I had to retrieve the boys.

Anyway, eventually we all got in the car. A and D hadn't eaten any breakfast, 'cos we were all running a bit late, but I had prepared (given that I'd had nothing to do for the while I was waiting) two bags with some Joe's Os in them (which are like Cheerios, but from Trader Joe's). I gave them the bags, and asked O to open them (well, sort of indicated).

Instead, Oma started to open a packet of shortbread biscuits. At this point I wanted to explain to Oma that whatever alternate universe she lived in where feeding 4 year olds shortbread biscuits, which have pretty much no nutritional value whatsoever, for breakfast, well, that universe wasn't one I was familiar with. But saying this was beyond my German (which, as we've seen tops out at "Zwanzig minuten"). So, actions speaking larger than words, I took the packet of biscuits and threw them out of the (moving) car window.

D didn't like that very much, and cried and cried. Oma didn't say anything. M didn't say anything either, but that's common.

D hadn't forgiven me by the time we dropped him off, so I bought him (and A) a toy car each (for $1.29, from Long's Drugs - pharmacies are great, aren't they?). However, by the time it came to pick them up, he'd forgotten, and was very pleased (and surprised) with his car.

Oma never mentioned it again, but asked S if that was the sort of thing I did often. A few days later it was S's birthday, and there were some pastries from the 24 hour Donut shop, that Oma was offering to the boys. "Aus Fenster?" I asked Oma. (Which I thought meant "out of the window?", but I've just looked it up on Babelfish, and it seems to mean "From window?"). Oma just looked at me. M didn't say anything.