Muriel was a German exchange student at our high school in 2005. She had piercings in fun places, including (if I remember correctly) a small silver hoop through the gums between her two front teeth. She was, and still is, just about the friendliest person I've ever seen. We had art class together. Art class with Muriel in it was a welcome bright spot in an otherwise overcrowded and undereducated...well anyways, Muriel's awesome.
So, to make a long story short, Tuesday afternoon we set off to drive the four some-odd hours that separate our house from Muriel's abode in Stuttgart (geez, it really isn't much...I should visit more often) and promptly overshot our turnoff, so we went to Kaylene's house instead.
I suppose I should explain. Kaylene is Don and Debbie's Muriel. Don knew Kaylene growing up but, as he explained it, did not marry her because she was "too wild" for him. Debbie also chose not to marry Kaylene because neither she nor Kaylene was a man. She did, however, stay at Kaylene's house in California for a couple months while waiting to marry Don. Kaylene then enlisted as a sister missionary and--coincidence of coincidences! She got shipped off to Taiwan, where it just so happens that Don served also.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that Kaylene speaks Chinese. Also, she cannot escape the Cenatiempos no matter what she does. If she moves to Germany because her husband is an Air Force doctor, which she did because he is, then at some point the Cenatiempos are going to follow her over there. Which we did because we can.
Kaylene was kind enough to lend us her GPS so that we could backtrack to Muriel's house. And despite a saddening reduction in facial metal content Muriel is still her lovely self, just as good or possibly even better than my memory from high school.
Here's Muriel and Kaylene. See if you can guess which one is which. Okay, so I'll just tell you, Muriel's the one on the left and Kaylene's the one on the right, but I'm only telling you this because you might get confused, considering that they both look young enough to have gone to high school with me.
Per our typical shoot-from-the-hip traveling style (or should I say shoot-from-the-hip-in-the-dark-while-abusing-a-narcotic-substance-we-have-no-idea-what-we're-doing travel style) we had no idea what we were doing. We thought we might bop over and see the Rittersport chocolate factory, which we did. We thought we might go see the Porsche or Mercedes museum, which we didn't do. Plan all gone. Then Muriel and Kaylene gallantly took us to Tubingen, a cute little German town, and essentially saved the day.
I'm pretty sure "Tubingen" has an umlaut in it somewhere, but my umlaut-deficient keyboard can't produce one. So you'll have to mentally insert it. However, even with my umlaut-deficient keyboard and blogspot.com's limited capabilities, we can upload pictures.
We had a great time walking around Tubingen with Muriel and Kaylene, and staying at Muriel's house was pretty awesome too.
Muriel has three sisters and no brothers. Her family lives in a huge, eccentric house that has been whimsically decorated at varying stages by all four sisters, and you can definitely see the strong female influence--I'll just go ahead and say it, their upstairs bathroom is plastered with photos of nearly-naked men. In a word, hilarious.
Also, I love their spiral staircase and have decided to pattern my future house after the Roquette model. Shh, don't tell them, they might get kind of creeped out by my enthusiasm.
Actually I think they'd probably be tickled pink and offer to help paint, they're those kind of people. They're all well-educated, speak wonderful English, love animals and have adopted several, and play basketball. They've sent each of their daughters to study abroad. They're vegetarian. They're into politics. We sat around the table talking for hours straight until one or two in the morning.
And Muriel made a cake. I have to write it before I forget it, because it was such a Muriel thing to do. We walk in the door and she's giggling to herself because her cake is burning. While introducing us to her family she waves a hand at the blackened object in the oven and calmly exclaims "Oh no, my cake is so burning!" But she doesn't turn the oven off; she walks into another room and continues her introductions.
She mentioned it once or twice more as if it were no big deal despite the fact that a suspicious cloud of smoke was slowly filling the kitchen. After doing a couple more things she eventually got around to turning the oven off. Muriel cracks me up.
And she was right not to worry, because even with a charred shell that cake was delicious. We chipped away the top layer and fed it to her tiny, neurotic dog (his name is Pippa and he's genuinely psycho. Henrietta thinks the youngest daughter cuddled him too much as a puppy and he didn't get enough oxygen, but anyway, he's terrifying and hilarious at the same time. Neighborhood children run from him even though he's only the size of a chihuahua.)
Germany was great. I'm really glad we got to see old friends again and it's funny to think that Muriel's in Seattle right now while I'm over here in Europe...I guess we've sort of switched places since 2005. Hey Muriel! Can you hear me way over there? Make me a cake!
No seriously, I'm considering naming one of our kids Muriel. Barring that, at least we'll be naming something after her.
A cake pan, perhaps?
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