Life: Idiotropic

Wit is lost to me at the moment. Just not mentally there, but I do want to show off my little beauties and let you know that under no circumstances are you ever to get stuck with me in a labyrinth unless you have a months supply of food and water and probably a good hefty roll of toilet paper. Really, for someone who thinks that they are somewhat intelligent, I am pathetic when it comes to steering my way out of underpruned hedges. I think this is going to give me nightmares... Little Shop of Horrors becomes The Hedge Unleashed.

And it all started out peacefully... church, a nice drive through the rolling hills of South Limburg on a sunny day (Sun, here in Germany? where did it go? Haven't seen it since Sunday.) We taxied, 15 people in three vehicles, over hill and dale and around countless beautiful old half-timbered farmhouses and arrived at a lovely 300 year old mill, home of a wonderful pannekoeken restaurant where the adults could sit and eat peacefully while the kids played at the playground. Ahh... peace and a gyro pannekoeken. Couldn't ask for more.

From there we road tested the intelligence of my Garmin pitted against the TomTom of a friend to get to Drilanderpunt in Vaals. My Garmin was the clear superior with a much better, much more efficient route, but I didn't complain. TomTom took us down tinier than one way roads that were quite picturesque and no one got carsick on the turns.

We've been to Drilanderpunt before - the mysterious Dutch hill where Germany, Belgium, and The Netherlands all join. The picture above it is us - in three countries. Pretty fun.

So we went up the tower. Elise, Luci, and I in the elevator. Arianna, Tiara, and my mom up the stairs that wind around up the outside of the tower. Arianna, about halfway up remembered that she is terrified of heights, but my mom, wearing a skirt on a windy day walking up mesh stairs, wasn't going to go back down that way, so Arianna was stuck and eventually made it. Tiara - lost her flip flop.

I was at the top looking for the other half of my family when people told me that Tiara had lost a shoe. So she comes up embarrased because everyone was staring at her feet and even Dutch people had tried to tell her, in Dutch, that she was clearly missing a shoe.

So I asked the not so obvious question: "So where's your shoe now?"

"I don't know," she replied, "I think it's either in Belgium or Germany." That's something you just can't say every day.

She did get it back when we got down so she could run through the maze with two shoes.

The maze. Ugh. Took an hour an a half and that was with help finally from someone in the tower who watched us and shouted directions as we walked along, my mother with her purse in the air so he could see where we were, and me running my fingers along the hedge to make sure I kept to the right one. Clearly not a proud moment. Tiara and Tyler, who got tired of us pretty quickly, took off on their own and made it out a full half hour ahead of us. And we had a map!

Tiara with Tyler on the bridge that we couldn't find that leads to the exit of the maze... missing shoe... Luci in front of Belgium... Elise in front of Germany...