Oh My God Its March Already

“I thought I’d miss mom more, but I am thriving. This is my version of moving out to find myself.”

– Gus

Introduction

Do you ever feel like weeks are passing like days? Day/night cycles slip together and suddenly you are far removed in time from where you started? Does it feel like the only constant thing in your life is permanently wet feet and the horrible stench of your damp shoes? These last few months have been an absolute blur. No one told me that days now only have 20 hrs – only this can explain how fast they are going by. This was true before Megan left for Canada, and is extra true after the fact. We spent the month of January living in Tunsel where Megan was nannying, and that already is a year ago for the mind.

This period has had some of the old familiar challenges, but the wins are really starting to stack up, the biggest of which centers completely around Herr Schmidt.

Herr Schmidt – My Light, My Love

Herr Schmidt is the engineer that was destined by fate to assess our vehicles road worthiness. Our paths were written in the stars, doomed to be mortal enemies out of sheer circumstance alone. Now, it is not this guys fault, but he is the embodiment of this Kafkaesque system capable of producing only frustration. It’s not his fault, but I’ll never forgive him. The TÜV (and by the transitive property, Herr Schmidt) has sole responsibility for my lowest lows since arriving in Germany. Even a brief review of my journal indicates the psychological resources we allocated to this god-forsaken bureau.

Herr Schmidt is a uniquely difficult fellow to read. Most people have 43 facial muscles. Herr Schmidt has only 2 – the ones responsible for narrowing the eyes into a squint. The only human emotion he required was the one to look quizzically annoyed, all else was vestigial. His face was so stiff that the Brits use it for calibration. Each time he would emerge from our vehicle and deliver a dagger to our hearts I was truly unaware whether he was taking any joy in our devastation.

Thanks to many kindnesses, we had our headlights ‘fixed’ (I’d argue they were never broken). So me and Megan, being the masochists we are, decided to head back into the TÜV for another round of heartbreak and metaphorical spankings. Herr Schmidt was ready to greet us with his quizzically annoyed concrete slab face.

After some time at the vehicle Herr Schmidt appeared at the entrance to the waiting room and beckoned for me to join him – he had ‘something to show me’. My heart didn’t even sink, so accustomed I was to the routine.

Our headlight actuators had been installed inverted – the dial to make them raise actually lowered them, but the range of motion was correct. I geared myself up mentally to go do some new wiring and return for more heartbreak at a later date, but Herr Schmidt was not done talking.

He looked up at me, eyes shining, and said “I will still make for you”. I watched in shock and awe, as long dead electrical circuitry around his mouth tried to spark to life. I was witnessing evolution in real time – Herr Schmidt was trying to smile. An energy filled the garage – were we about to kiss?

The last few months flooded back through the mind. I came to realize that Herr Schmidt had fallen helplessly in love for myself and Megan, failing us for the most arbitrary of things, so that we would have to come back and he could bask in our warm glow once again. There was simply no other explanation. Now here he was, realizing our tri-une relationship had slipped into toxicity and if he truly loved us (which he did with the whole cavernous space in his ribcage), he would have to let us go.

I’ve rarely been more excited to never see someone again. The task was not quite finished, but the largest hurdle was completed. Megan got to experience this euphoria as well, limping us over the TÜV finish line just before abandoning me to the whims of the universe.

Later on, I checked for a registration appointment availability at the Landkreishaus. There happened to be one in 20 minutes, and so it was an easy decision, I am gonna jump on it. I did not have all the papers the website said I required, but at this point I am a pro at showing up unprepared and really did not care. Unsurprisingly, they could not complete my case that day (see lack of all relevant papers comment), but what was surprising was that they had completed the registration the following day. An unexpected success.

What have I learned from all of this? Be confidently unprepared and get in front of a regular human. No one seems to know all the interconnecting systems anyways, and if you don’t have one arbitrary paper, who cares – 90% is a fantastic grade. That is why these people get paid the big bucks – they will figure it out. In other words, zero personal growth has occurred, and my problems are typically the fault and problem of those surrounding me. Secretly I had always suspected this to be the case, but it was great to have it so clearly demonstrated and enable me to live this profound truth out in the open.

Team Tapeworm

As homeowners me and Megan will suddenly be struck with a wave of responsibility-pressure and will get the sickening feeling that there are some things we “really ought to look into”. After ignoring these whisperings for a few more days we inevitably bring ourselves to the very threshold of “looking into it”, tiptoe over that line and instantly be confronted with the reason we tend to glide down the path of avoidance. Here is a hypothetical example for illustrative purposes:

MEGAN: “Its been pretty humid, we should take a peak under the mattress.”
ME: “Yeah not a bad idea, we should really look into that. It would be the responsible thing.”
-YouTube and Art Occurs-
-Megan and Reid regain consciousness 2-3 days later-
UNISON: “Oh Shit! We never looked into it!”
-Reid and Megan gingerly approach the mattress, lift it slowly to reveal rampant dampness and an overflowing mold problem-
UNISON: (TURN TO CAMERA, BREAK 4th WALL) “Gosh Darnit why do we ever look into things”

The brutal reality is that looking into things forces your hand to deal with said things. As long as you don’t check, the issue occupies some sort of superposition of states in which it simultaneously most likely is a problem, but also might not. I live for this uncertainty. Thrive on it. It is my happy place.

One of the things we had been meaning to look into was our fresh water tank’s level of cleanliness. Being mostly water myself (presumably Meg too) it seemed reasonable to want nothing but the best. We aren’t being divas here.

After many days being completely blackout unaware of our adult tasks, our responsibility glands came back online and started to once again excrete their foul enzymes. It was time to look into it.

We opened the lid and, just as we had suspected, were instantly regretting having looked into it. It is an absolute exaggeration to say that the tank contained discoveries wholly new to science and it is another absolute exaggeration to say that the tank was teaming with all forms of life. What is not an exaggeration is that there was more stuff in there than one would like in their fresh water tank (and by extension their bodies), and now because WE had looked into it (like newborn fools), WE had to deal with it. Or at least WE would have, if Megan wasn’t heading back to Canada to be my bacon-providin’ Zucker-Mutter.

After taking the requisite 3-5 days of processing I need to do when confronted with a task I eventually got down to it and emptied the tank for a cleaning. There were exoskeletons bobbing to and fro in there from who knows how long ago. They were completely bleached and clean, so I am guessing quite a while. Among these amazing artifacts was a snail shell. Megan started affectionately referring to us as team tapeworm, which is just so sweet of her (#solidarity), but I think is a little bit easier to say when you are thousands of kms away and not still sipping on your snail water.

In not much time the aquarium had been cleaned out, and new water put in. They system was going to get a nice bleaching, and I’d be hauling water old school with my camelback for the night. However, laziness once again prevailed and one night with the bleach in the tank turned to two. Each time I had to haul water I would think “Ah yeah, I should really look into emptying the tank”. As you probably can guess, I did not look into emptying the tank.

One day I came home to see water drip coming from the wheel well. The inside of the van was also wet. Gus practically spills his water every single day (his foot being drawn inexplicably to the rim of his bowl may constitute a fifth fundamental force), but for some reason my panic completely overlooked that explanation and assumed that the bleach had been left in too long and was eating through the tank. A quick Google also told me bleach could eat some plastics. Confirmed – I had destroyed the tank, the van, my life and my relationship. Obviously, my worst imaginations did not come true, but my hand was forced to deal with things, and finally that little job was done.

Bike Rides with Gus

Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to our family foundation in early February. Megan, calm, collected and composed has taken on the job of being the sole person keeping this family afloat. Me and Gus, alone and adrift, without the anchoring presence of the tiny shmee.

Since she has been gone, our days have gone by extremely fast, but are generally following a straight forward pattern (wake up, lab work, ball time, pass out). Among those patterns is a twice weekly bike ride taking Gus to his new Aunty, Paula. Gus is terrified of stationary bikes, and so I must say I am so proud of him for running alongside with one. The bike rides are somewhat meditative, and I think that riding through Freiburg with my buddy alongside me is going to be a special memory I will carry for a long time.

Me and Gus had never fallen, so I took the above video. Of course this means on this particular ride we ate shit when someone opened their door and spooked Gus. RIP Insta360, I loved you. In typical fashion I have not learned any lesson from this and continue to film random stuff, like my grocery trips for Gus.

Odds and Ends

What else has happened?

I was honored to make the January spread of my coworkers annual nude calendar. I understand that this is a highly prestigious honor and will assume the honor correlates with immeasurable hotness.

We took a quick trip to Strasbourg, a city known for its treasure clues hiding around every corner.

Alternated between two personas in Switzerland. The first persona was being a couple of firmly established members of the gentry class, land and business owners, that were comically bemused by the absolute price gauging going on in that country. Persona two was being a couple of under the radar cat burglars trying to ride the trains for free so that we don’t have to go into a deep hole of debt and regret. We always got caught, so persona one really started to take a back seat. Beautiful country, but please if anyone from Switzerland is reading, get over yourself you Davos brained, out-of-touch hyper capitalist.

Aside from the travel school is also heating up. I submitted the official thesis start paperwork, and have been given my deadline – September 2nd. It feels good to have that target in front of me. Something to work towards and to know everything will be completed by then. The working title is “Characterization of Degradation Mechanisms in Organic Solar Cells” and if that doesn’t make you convulse with glee I don’t know what to tell ya. It’ll be hitting bookshelves nowhere in the fall. Preorder now.

Conclusions

What else is there to say that has not been said? I miss Megan, and I have it on good authority that Gus does too. We are calling the time before she left “Germany Chapter 1” and the time after she gets back “Germany Chapter 2”. Chapter one was full of growth, and I am putting it out into the universe that chapter 2 will be full of fun. When does chapter 2 start? God (and probably his eyes, ears and mouth on Earth the Pope) only knows – Megan currently sits in visa purgatory. But our patience muscles are well exercised, and the time will pass. I am really looking forward to having less peripheral bullshit to deal with, and to be able to focus on the lab work and writing. As for now, living at the campground puts me in proximity to birds, sunshine, trees and a nice mode of being. The rain is steadily being replaced by days nice enough to mountain bike in shorts and t-shirts. Travel plans with friends and family are emerging just as the flowers are emerging as well.