Funny Old World
Things were hectic at home last evening. Mama was putting out fires on the telephone, using both ISDN lines and my (not her) cell phone at the same time. (Her D1 cell phone from work has no reception in Lüllau. She says that she hates my phone, but never hesitates to use it without asking.) Three cities (Hamburg, Hannover, Bremen), three problems, three telephones… but only two ears and one mouth. Windows died on my ThinkPad, so I was busy with the Recovery CD (and making sure it didn’t touch the Linux partition). And Christopher was busy reorganizing those parts of the kitchen he could reach. By 9 pm we were all exhausted and in bed.
With Mama back on board as the main wage earner, I had to change my tax exemption status back to that of the secondary earner (Lohnsteuerklasse 5). My net pay is now 1/3 less than last year, and is just 45% of my gross pay. Last month Mama didn’t even notice that it had been posted to our account!
And then I have to put up with insults from my co-workers: ‘Only in America does the pizza come to your door faster than an ambulance.’ “;->” And they expect me to bring treats to the office tomorrow? I can think of 39 reasons to stay home in bed.
