I love Window Cleaner: a day chez Liebesbotschaft.

1. One thing the blog reader does not suspect:
There has been an addition behind the scenes of the blog for the past few months:

Charlotte (some of you will already be familiar with her) is back working for me a few hours at a time and gives me the gift of her wonderfully humorous and fantastic personality.

No good news, unfortunately:
Lotta is going on a trip around the world in a few days.
(or let’s put it this way: ONLY, if the plan to break both of her legs, so that she has to stay, doesn’t work out.)

I spontaneously ask Lotta at lunch, whether she couldn’t write her own travel blog from abroad?
"It will be enough, if you post a selfie with tanned guys from every capital city. It would quite satisfy our need for local color. Fernando from Rio, Lasse and Bosse from Stockholm, Jack (shirtless) from Sidney, how about it?”
Noelle: "Oh, go on, Lotta! And then you’ll be famous and you’ll be in the Ludwigsburger Kreiszeitung (our local newspaper)!”



2.... because, guess what (I’m the master of transitions):
I will now sue that daily paper, for what do I read in today’s edition?
"...it was clear from the start for the 40-year-old.”

40-year-old?
FOOOOORTYYYY?!

It’s exactly another 8 weeks to my birthday and then this.

(All of you non-residents of Ludwigsburg can read it online ).



3. I would like to attend to more positive subjects now, but it doesn’t get any better:
I wanted to make super healthy fruity gummy worms.

Well.
Let’s put it this way:
little preparation + eightyninetrillion baking time = everything, but nothing that looks like fruity gummy candy.

Usually a visual disaster like this would never make it onto the blog, but:
the stuff tastes awesome. .
No, not like salami or jerky: very fruity and genuinely addictive! Yet it contains absolutely no ingredient other than fruit.

So if you are interested in the recipe and especially if you are able to ignore the horrible visual appearance – (and the latter is by far the more difficult part, I’m just saying!), I will be glad to post it for you later.

(just had an idea, you could use it to great effect for a kiddie birthday party with a “Native American” motto. As a substitute for pemmican.)


4. A substitute in the form of 15” has moved in, too.

Unfortunately the old laptop’s engine noises didn’t stop, resulting in the purchase of “Mr. bigger, better, thinner” (I don’t care so much anymore for the panicked skipping of breaths, now that I’m nearly 40 THIRTY-NINE. “What, if the PC dies and all the data is gone?!”, What, if I cannot watch the last episode of Shopping Queen online anymore?”, etc. You know what I mean.)

As soon as the new one had arrived, the noises of the little one stopped abruptly.

What the heck?!

And now, exclusively for you:

A little synopsis of the months chez Liebesbotschaft – written by Charlotte herself!

"Usually it wouldn’t be so earth-shakingly difficult to describe a day in the life of Liebesbotschaft, but that would not measure up to the cause.

That’s why I give you a few"random facts about Joanna":

1. Every morning, after the door bursts open enthusiastically, you will be showered in kisses.  

Every morning.



2. After this you will hear the mandatory sentence: “Honey, would you like some tea?”

Every morning.

On second thoughts…it repeats throughout the day. . 

Until that dark day when it turned into “HONEY, COULD YOU MAKE TEA FOR ME!”.  

Excuse: “You are part of the family now.”

Next thing, I was expected to attend a parent meeting.

3. Even buried in mountains of serious work you can mess around with her in the space of a second, until you can barely sit up straight as your stomach hurts from so much laughing.

4. She has very low expectations of me (Oh, go on! Which expectations?!):

 „And I thought we’d have warm chocolate cake?”,

 „You could have gone ahead and straightened the basement!”,  

„It was actually YOUR job to water the herbs in the backyard (I see)!”  

All of this leads to one of the essential topics:

5. Her sense of humor . 

Dear public:

Even if she seems funny on her blog, it is not even a fraction of how funny she is in real life and I could listen to her for hours, once she starts talking.

6. Her food is always delicious!
Always!
Seriously.

Even though I had to was allowed to do it myself at some point.
(After 45 minutes of a multitasking-celebrity-chef-Johann-Lafer-can-go-home-performance: „Just as an aside…Jamie needs 15 minutes for this! What takes you so long??!” – Dear Jamie Oliver. With all due respect, please never ever give a time estimate for the recipes again ever. Pleeeeaaaaase!!!)

Truth is that for this reason the most delicious things in the world are served up every day – even without Instagram/Blogger/whoever knowing about it.

7. She is very enthusiastic about what she does.

She puts great effort into everything and is only satisfied, once it is per-fect.  

(original Joanna G. soundtrack after she has tried several times to rearrange the entire set-up consisting of about forty-nine parts, because something in the photograph is bugging her – we are probably at today’s picture #7654894:”No, I am not a perfectionist, noooo!”), but this is exactly what makes her work special.

8. She is incredibly honest – if something doesn’t work out she’ll say it and that’s that.  
Problem solved.

Or when she thinks something is to die for/insanely great/great/not quite so great/not great at all at all. 

She doesn’t say things just to have said them, but she always means it 100%.

9. She is wonderfully uncomplicated – well, her black tea may not brew more than 2,84946 seconds and as soon as the chocolate cake’s consistency has surpassed a certain stage (reached after exactly Pi multiplied by e to the 2.71 minutes), there’s unfortunately nothing that can be done to save it – but despite it all she is insanely uncomplicated!

10. She is partial to window cleaner.

Yes, you read that right, dear reader.

Dear cleaning agent industry:
if this sector of the economy was run by Joanna G., several cleaning agent companies would have had to close their doors long ago.  

There is something that has long beat you to it: window cleaner!  

For everything.

No matter what.  

Window cleaner works every time!

(And really: its’ true.)

11. Her ways with people.

With the blink of an eye she wraps everybody around her finger and they find themselves adoring her.

Her biggest desire is to simply help everyone to greatness, to just lift them up and make them laugh out loud.

12. She is one of the most generous people that I know and I love how she deals with money.  

Even if she will probably burst out laughing at this point and say: “Yeah, come on, let’s just go to shoe heaven later on and I’ll show you how I deal with money!”.

13. She never gets wound up about anything she does, but always stays relaxed.  
Always. 

She knows everything will always work out just fine, however, she makes demands on herself, so that the end result is always top notch.

14. She is self-assured without being condescending – she knows exactly who she is and acts accordingly.  

At the same time she considers it the worst, if somebody is insecure and feels inferior – as soon as she notices this she will talk about it and whoosh! It’s over.

15. She is incredibly intelligent and has impressive general knowledge.  

Within a few minutes of talking to Joanna G. you can cover subjects spanning YouTube videos (let’s just say…they are NUMEROUS!), education policy and architecture, and Shopping Queen.

16. Car rides with her.
Reasons for them: see 17) and the aforementioned sense of humor.

She also always carries pillows with her.

Dear Joanna,

I gives me great pleasure that I had the honor of spending so much time with you.

You are beyond words, fascinating and have wrapped me around your finger more than anyone else by far!

I REALLY DO LOVE YOU.




AND WE LOVE YOU, CHARLOTTE!
THANK YOU FOR THE WONDERFUL TIME WITH YOU!
And we are waiting for a picture with Fernando!
Shirtless, you know what I’m talking about.

Love,
Joanna