how the lost sheep returned

of course the matter with the cheese (see my last post) weighed heavily on my heart. after all i'm a good catholic girl. not that i felt compelled to go to confession. i mean it was just cheese and i've already destroyed the evidence. still, i felt it would suck big time if one day i realized that my reservation on a fuzzy cloud had been exchanged for a spot in a giant pot of boiling water. so i tried to prove my goodwill by attending a mess again last weekend.

it actually wasn't the first time that this idea had crossed my mind lately. about five month after moving to b-town, i received the monthly leaflet of "st. marien" in my mailbox. not only did this show me that god had ultimately blessed my move, but it also reminded me that it had been over eight years since i went to church the last time. and not that i've ever been there on a regular basis. of course i did the whole enchilada of baptism, first communion and confirmation. but in germany people tend to be rather fickle about religion and just try to get by with the big milestones of getting baptised, married and buried there. and of course they'll go to the interesting messes like christmas or easter.

my family is pretty typical of that. except maybe for my late grandma who went to mess every sunday. she even had a fluorescent "virgin mary" miniature on her nightstand. i think it was filled with holy water from a pilgrimage to lourdes. when i was little and stayed over at her house, i used to sleep in her bed. and like all grandmas, mine snored like crazy. so i would pull the blanket all over my head and try to fall asleep like that, clutching the "virgin mary" tightly against my chest. though as the cheese affair has proven, that didn't seem to have made me any more devout.

i've always been rather conflicted about religion anyway. when i was in 7th grade, my religion teacher asked us to draw god one day - just like we imagined him. and mine turned out to be rather traditional. an elderly bearded man in a robe and sandals, sitting on a cloud and holding the bible. i figured he should look a bit like jesus on those ancient paintings. after all, he was his dad and i had never heard that jesus came after mary look-wise. i drew the picture with crayons, but i didn't have a red one. so i used a red marker for his lips. and since man do have eyelashes, i also drew some nice long ones on god's face. but then in class we all had to present our pictures and the other people had to express what they saw in the picture. so when it was my turn, there was complete silence in the room before somebody shouted "he looks like a tranny" and people started to giggle. and as somebody else asked why my god was wearing lipstick, my teacher explained that what i wanted to tell people was that god could also be a woman. i actually didn't, but i nonetheless agreed with her. so i became the freak-girl who drew god as a bearded woman with flaming red lips.

anyway, i went to mess last sunday. and actually it went by pretty quickly and the priest even made a joke or two. the only thing that bugged me is that i couldn't find that one easter song i had always liked in the prayer book anymore. i guess it must haven fallen out of the christian church song charts.

i stole cheese AKA the reconstruction of a crime

yep, i stole a "president le roux french country cheese" this week. an "extra creamy" country cheese for matter of fact. for 2.40 euro. and i know this sounds like a pretty shameless attack on the already weakened german economy, but i can assure you that it happened totally by accident. really. but in case you wanna try your own hands at shoplifting, this is how you do it:

look for a rather crowded aisle so you need to leave your shopping cart behind as you approach the cheese shelf. select your cheese carefully and take it from the shelf.
then -and this is the important part- you need to lose concentration for a moment. i recommend to either yawn generously or to reflect on that cute boy you kissed the past weekend. whatever works for you. then just as this moment is about to pass, you'll thoughtlessly slip the cheese into your tote. and i recommend you're going to use a tote for the day of the planned crime, as this kind of bag usually has a pretty big opening. this movement should come very naturally for you as your shopping cart isn't at hand, remember?
then you'll just walk back to the shopping cart and continue loading it with food. (if you get baguette, grapes and a bottle of wine you could have a "french dinner" that night.)
and now the tricky part. the check-out. you'll place all the product on the band for the cashier to ring up. but not the cheese!
after about half of your stuff is rang up, you'll carefully open your tote to take out some cotton bags. and then of course, you'll discover the cheese. you might have to practice a shocked facial expression at home in front of the mirror first, but for me spontaneity always works best. just, don't overdo it. you don't wanna attract the attention of your fellow shoppers or -even worse- the cashier. feign just enough, so that the security camera is able to register it. this is really important in case it comes to a court case about the stolen cheese.
now you've got two choices. a decent human being might take the cheese out of the tote, apologize to the cashier and then be arrested for shoplifting. but if you're a smart human being like me who values her money and loves her cheese, you'll discreetly drop that cheese back into the tote and then fill up the tote with the already rang up items. see, that way you can always claim that the cheese was with the other items on the band as well and that the cashier just might have not rang it up.
anyway, the unassuming cashier will ultimately present you with your total and you'll pay it and say goodbye, but not without displaying your most charming smile. which should come easily as you bask in the awareness that you just saved 2.40 euro and now got extra money to buy yourself some ice cream.

voila. who said leading a life of crime doesn't pay?

a very happy 4th of july to all of my american friends!