The Artful Eye Images number 14.

There may come a time in the future when I will not write a post every day, but I have not gotten there yet and I still feel the need and inspiration to do so. A lot of other people do as well, but there are people on the list of blogs that I read every day who do not post every day and this is just as well, because if they did, it would take me twice as long to get through them and I would sit here all day long and do nothing but read other people’s blogs. Not that that would be such a bad thing, but you do get saturated after awhile and I think that the amount of blogs I read now is just enough. Any more would put me over the edge and sometimes, when I add new ones, I get rid of some that I hardly read.

I must reiterate how much I like blogs that are humorous and a bit sarcastically written, but humorously most of all. Some people have an enormous amount of wit and understatement, other people are so brazenly funny that I sit here and giggle out loud.

Some blogs are about very serious subject matters and those are good too, because life is that way, it offers you a variety of ingredients and it isn’t all laughter and lightheartedness.

One and the same person can show you different aspects of her/his life, but usually the people who are really funny, stay funny, no matter what. Sort of like they have a stiff upper lip and they will not be beaten down by anything. I don’t know if it makes their lives easier, it is just a different approach.

I am not going to qualify myself one way or the other. I just tell about life as it happens in a more or less better mood, with more or less inspiration.

I actually, for a change, slept for nine hours last night. I don’t know how I did it. I went to bed early, because Eduard was working, then I got up at 1 am and I thought I was awake, but I wasn’t, I was drunk with sleep and went back to bed and slept until I was really done with it. It really feels good to sleep for such a long time and I haven’t done so in ages.

Barb @ Life in the Sunshine has made me a very special award because she is just a very special person and I am very grateful to her for it and will treasure it always, that’s how special it is:

That’s “The Jesker Dog Walking Award” and I can’t give it to anyone else, unless you have a black and white cocker spaniel named Jesker. Thank you, Barb!

Jesker is reacting to the pain medication really well, although we give it to him sparingly, but it really does help him. Now that we know what is wrong with him, we realize that there are certain movements that he makes to compensate for the bad mobility in his knees. The way he walks with his hind legs and the way he gets up and down. We had just thought that was the way he moved always since we had him. We wrap his pills in a slice of luncheon meat and he wolves them down without any problem.

Even though I slept most of the night, I know that it really stormed and rained and I wonder if that was the other storm that they had warned us about. It is dry outside now, but the wind is still blowing hard like it did yesterday morning, when I had to go see my SPN.

I was riding my bike westward, into the wind, and sometimes I didn’t make any progress at all. At one point I started having a mild asthma attack and I don’t know if that was from the exercise or because there already is pollen in the air, as I know there is. It took me a long time to get my breathing back to normal and I spoke to my SPN out of breath for the first ten minutes.

She and I really make a good team and every time I see her, I come away from there knowing something valuable about myself that I hadn’t quite figured out on my own yet, or I knew it, but I hadn’t said it out loud yet to anyone. I shed a tear, now and then, but they are healing tears and I am always okay when I leave there. She is a bright woman and she helps me very much.

Oh, I want to tell you about a site I discovered through another blogger. It is called Six Sentences and what you want to do is send in a very good story in a paragraph that is exactly six sentences long. Go there to read the stories and find out what you need to do to send in your entries. I think it poses quite an exciting challenge.

On Monday morning, our hot water heater stopped working, so we have been without hot water, and also without heat, because we have radiators. Yesterday afternoon, a man came to fix it and it worked for just about 20 minutes after he left, but then it stopped working again. I have had to boil the water for the dishes and it has been a bit cold in the apartment. Luckily, the washing machine heats its own water. Luckily also, Eduard doesn’t have to shave, because he has a beard. We can’t take showers, but we are very clean people and that is not so much of a problem. By the way, it takes two kettles of hot water to wash the dishes in.

Something completely different, sometimes when Eduard rides his bike through downtown, he sees people running with a weekend bag in their arms in the direction of the train station. He always asks them if they need a quick ride and if they say they do, he has them hop on the back of his bike and he races to the station. He tells me about this and I noticed that they are usually attractive young women that need these rides, but Eduard assured me that he picks up attractive young men also. I suppose older, less attractive people don’t run, but just figure they will be too late to catch their train. Eduard is such a good Samaritan.

Which reminds me of that Ethiopian marathon runner, Haile Gebre Selassie, who will not run in the Olympic Games in Peking, because he says the air there is way too polluted and he will concentrate on the Athletics World Cup instead. Isn’t it intriguing that so many really good long distance runners come from African countries? It is like speed skaters are supposed to come from the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. You wonder why? When we had Johan Cruyff, we were all supposed to be good at football.

Well, now I must go and get dressed in several layers of clothing, because I am quite cold sitting here. It’s not like I am like the animals with a nice
bit of fur around my body. The wind makes it cold in the apartment and the man to fix the heater isn’t going to be here until the afternoon. We won’t let him leave until we know he’s really fixed the problem. We will ply him with cups of coffee and cigarettes.

You all have a wonderful Wednesday. Keep praying to the Goddess of Spring. March is a difficult month always when it comes to the weather, it is often unpredictable. If I had cows, I wouldn’t put them out to pasture yet. Poor things would get all wet and cold and shiver and make sour and watery milk.

Ciao…
P.S. Image courtesy of Andrea.