Why must everything be so complicated?

Once I move, I will no longer be able to have an account at my bank in Karlsruhe… because Germans are awkward and only allow you to bank at a specific branch. But I will still need a German bank account for my wages, so I decided to open one at the online bank where Jan has his account. I got all the forms, filled them in just fine and was ready to send them off… or at least I thought I was…

To send these forms, you have to use a procedure called “PostIdent”, which means you place the filled in form in an envelope then take it to the post office, give a separate little card to the post office employee and show your ID. The post office employee uses the extra form to confirm that you are who you say you are, sends your completed form plus the PostIdent thing to the bank and your account is set up. Easy! I had planned to do that tonight after work, but then I noticed the small print: “If using a passport for ID, you will also need to include a copy of your registration confirmation that’s no more than 6 months old”. So now I need to go to the citizen’s office (which is only open while I’m atwork!), pay 8 euros for a copy of the bit of paper that says I’m registered as living in Karlsruhe, put that in the envelope and then I can finally go to the post office and send off my form.

Could just one thing in this moving process not be complicated?!

We cant ALL be beautiful…

It really annoys me how women’t magazines and self-help books are always trying to get me to believe I’m beautiful. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder! Every woman is beautiful! No matter whether you’re fat, thin, tall, short, wear glasses, have funny looking arms all you have to do to be beautiful is believe it. Now look in the mirror and repeat 10 times “I am beautiful”. Do that every morning for 21 days (the amount of time it takes to form a habit) and… taa daaa! You too shall be beautiful!

Sorry, but NO. It doesn’t work like that. Believing my hair is blonde will not make it so. Believing I’m a musician won’t magically improve my singing voice. So why should believing I’m beautiful magically make it so? There are millions of people in the world… it’s simply not possible for every single one of them to be beautiful. What they should be telling us to do is be okay with not being beautiful.  Concentrate on the good, yes, but don’t ignore the bad. Pretending I don’t have a big bum won’t make it any smaller, but learning to be ok with it might make me feel better. This is my new goal. Who knows, maybe it will even work…

A hairy problem

I may just have the most annoying hair in the world. The top part, close to the roots, tends to get greasy really quickly. The ends, on the other hand, get dry really easily. So shampoo for greasy hair is great for the top half of my hair but leaves everything from the middle down looking like straw. Auburn straw with split ends. And shampoo for dry, damaged hair leaves the bottom half of my hair silky smooth while the top half looks like explosion in a vegetable oil factory. It makes finding a good shampoo for me rather challenging, so I’m always pleased when I find one that’s just right.
Unfortunately, the just rightness never seems to last for long. I’ll use my new shampoo quite happliy for two or three months then BAM, my hair suddenly seems to become immune to it. I’ll wash my hair perfectly normally, rinse out all the shampoo and a few hours later my hair is so limp and greasy you’d think it hadn’t been washed for three days. It’s slightly strange and very, very annoying.

So last night as the boyfriend and I were going to bed he said to me “Didn’t you wash your hair this morning?” “Yeees,” I answered, suspecting I knew what was coming. “I thought so,” replied the boyfriend. “It’s just that it looks really greasy now.”
*Sigh* Time to find a new shampoo again methinks…