Well, this morning I weighed 100.3 kilos, so that is a bit better. That means I have lost the 2 ounces that I had gained over the last 2 days. Phew…what a relief. I was worried that I was going to keep gaining weight. I ate extra fruit yesterday when I felt hungry, so maybe that helped, but I did have a good chunk of cumin cheese in the evening after dinner. Eduard fixed pasta for himself, so I had my usual 3 egg omelet, and I always feel like having something else afterwards for dessert when I eat that. I enjoy making the omelet as I push up the sides to the middle as it cooks, so it gets very fluffy, but then the trick is to turn it without breaking it, because I don’t like the yellow to be soft. Usually it falls apart a bit, but this time it made it in one piece more or less, so I didn’t have to swear too much when I turned it. Besides, I usually only say something like: Oh shit, or something rather innocent like that. It’s amazing how often Dutch people say the word “shit” when something goes wrong. We’ve really adopted that word from the English, without it having the bad connotations that it does in English. Some people also say the word “fuck” a lot, without really stopping and thinking about what they are exactly saying, but I don’t hang out with them too much. A lot of English words have entered the Dutch language and we just Dutchefy them and make them part of our language. I could give you examples of this, but it wouldn’t make sense to you English speaking readers, so just take my word for it. I sometimes speak Dutchlish myself, but that is out of necessity, because I am temporarily bamboozled and I can’t think of the Dutch word, so that doesn’t count. I do this especially after I have just talked to my daughter in English and I have to switch back to Dutch to speak to Eduard. All this from making a 3 egg omelet.
As I write this, it is stormy and rainy outside, as it was yesterday. Sometimes the rain stops and Eduard can go to work or home again and I can walk the dog, but it is colder now. You need long sleeves and a jacket. First thing in the morning I wear my old sweater under my jacket to stay warm, as nobody can see it then and it does the job until I get dressed properly. I temporarily pulled it out of the “get rid of it bag” until my vest gets here.
Yesterday I had both my daughter and my ex on the phone, as he is staying with her this week for her graduation. I hadn’t talked to him in ages and it was good to hear his voice. He immediately started speaking the little Dutch he knew to me, and that isn’t much, so I just stuck to the English after a while. He thinks he will be in China for an other year and a half and that he will retire after that. Nicole wants him to come to Texas and live with her, because she feels that she really needs a parent close by, and I can completely sympathise with that. It would be very good for Damian to have a positive male role model in his life and Damian loves his grandpa. Lets hope that all works out. It would be nice if I could go over there more often myself, maybe we can find a solution to this in the future, we’ll see. I can see all sorts of reasons now why I am going to need to get a part time job in the near future. It has been too long since I was last there.
My sister called me yesterday, very excited, because she had found a solution to her dog’s eating problems. She had called the owners of the dog hotel and they had given her a tip on how to get her dog to eat the dog food that he wasn’t eating. They told her to mix the dried food with hot water to make sort of a gravy, and then to mix Bonzo canned food through it. Apparently this worked very well and the dog ate everything in his bowl. Now, to give her dog canned food at all, is a big step for my sister, so kudos to her, I can’t believe she’s done it and I made sure that she is going to keep doing this. She said absolutely yes, so I am going to give her back the bag of food that she had given me, that our dog isn’t eating, otherwise I would just have to toss it out. I am very happy for Quinto that he is eating now and that he likes what he is eating. So, that problem has been dealt with satisfactorily, thank goodness. Another thing I don’t have to worry about. At one point in the past Quinto was very skinny, you could see his ribs, and Erica thought he was just right. Fortunately, after he was castrated, he gained 4 kilos and now he looks just right. Strange woman!
I have rated yesterday with a seven, after having had two days with sixes. It wasn’t that much of a different day, but I was easier in my skin, as they say here in the Netherlands. I got dressed right and made up and actually did chores around here and then I watched a very good movie called “Mean Street”. One of the film channels definitely shows quality movies and, so far, I have watched at least one good one every day. I think taking two hours out of the day to watch a movie isn’t such a bad thing at all. It is very relaxing and takes my mind off all sorts of other things. Eduard had to work late in the evening and I stayed up until 10 pm to watch that program again, Without a Trace, which was only mildly interesting last night. Still, it prevented me from going to bed on time, but I think I didn’t need that much of an excuse. I enjoyed myself hanging out on the sofa, drinking decaf and petting Jesker, which can be very therapeutic. At one point, I saw his dog tag and his name tag, with the address and phone number on it, laying on the floor in the living room and saw that the little ring they had hung on had broken. Luckily, it happened inside. If it had happened outside, I would have lost the tags. So I found a new ring and fixed that.
The gold colored stud earrings that I have been wearing for a couple of days, have caused me problems with my ear. It has swollen up and there is some junk coming out of my ear, so they definitely were not gold. I don’t remember when I got them or where, the origins are obscured, but I won’t be wearing them anymore. Eduard did say that I could get some new gold earrings at the end of this month, when he gets his vacation money, and I have been checking prices online and they aren’t too bad at all. I am glad that Eduard appreciates my efforts at trying to be pretty and attractive. For example, for my birthday and Christmas presents, both Eduard and Erica always buy me perfumes, so I always have four perfumes to choose from every day, so I always smell good and Eduard really likes that. I have versions of Jean Paul Gaultier and Hugo Boss, and I like them all. I use a different one every day, so I don’t get used to the smell and I can still smell them on myself and on the clothes I wear. In the wintertime my scarf always smells of my perfume. My mother always wore Channel no. 5 and I also always liked that smell, but I can’t wear it myself. I’ve worn Oscar de la Rente in the past, but it is not a perfume that I can buy here, although I was complimented on it when I wore it. I love good smells. Eduard has a good cologne that he wears especia
lly for me when we get romantic. It gets me in the mood.
Have you ever noticed how certain smells take you right back in your memories to when you were a child? Like the smell of freshly mowed grass? Or the smell of mushrooms when you pick them out of the rich compost on the forest floor? Or the smell of glass curtains after they have been hanging in front of the windows for awhile? The smell of oil and turpentine always reminds me of my father and I like that smell. Or the smell of honeysuckle, that reminds me of when Eduard and I were young and he used to pick it for me and leave bunches of it for me at my front door. So romantic! When I cleaned out my mother’s closet after she died, I pushed my face into her clothes, because they smelled like her and I couldn’t get enough of that. It was a mixture of perfume and the detergent she used and I always smelled it when she came to visit me in the States and she opened her suitcases to hang up her dresses. Sometimes I smell a mildewy odor and that takes me back to the first house I lived in, that was eighty years old at the time and smelled a bit like that. Therefore all of my bronchitis, no doubt. If they could only bottle your memory smells like that. I have a biscuit tin that used to sit in my grandmother’s kitchen, and when I open it, it still smells like her kitchen. So I don’t open it too often to preserve the smell.
The wind is blowing the rain against the windows in gusts and it makes it sound as if it is really bad out there. I’ll have to wait until it stops properly before I walk the dog, but he has been out late because of Eduard coming home so late last night. All the cats are in the living room now, which is pretty sensible of them. The cats are definitely warm weather animals, causing them to hibernate a bit in the wintertime. I am more of a springtime and fall person, I find the summers just a bit too hot usually, especially lately with the climate change. And it gets so humid here. I am very curious to see the weather that this summer will bring us. It can be truly beautiful, when the countryside is just lush and gorgeous and it is fun to go for hikes along the little rivers. I have to lose just a little bit more weight to be able to go and do that.
By the way, the 25 kilos I lost is 55 lbs. I started off weighing 125 kilos which is 275 lbs. So now I am down to 220 lbs and I would like to weigh 70 kilos which is 154 lbs. So, I’ve got another 66 lbs to lose, if my calculations are right. I may have made a mistake there somewhere, but it is roughly right. Anyway, if I can actually make it to 70 kilos, that would be very nice, although that is not the original 65 kilos that I weighed, but I think I will be having about an extra 5 or 6 kilos in extra skin flab that will have to be removed. Even if I make it to 75 kilos, which is 165 lbs, I will be satisfied. Then there would be 13 lbs in skin flab. My neighbor got down to 80 kilos from 130 and she looks good, although she is a tall woman and a bit big boned. Actually, her gastric band is supposed to be filled some more, but I don’t know when she is having it done. The whole objective is to get down to a size 12 (42), if I can make that, I will be very happy. There are lots of nice clothes available in that size.
At some point I am going to have to do some sort of physical exercise. That could be just taking longer walks with the dog, which is sort of boring, I am sorry, but it is, unless you can go with someone else. I would like to join a gym and there is one around the corner that I could go to, but I don’t know how expensive it is. I’ll have to go and check that out. I used to go to the YMCA and did the treadmill and all the weight training and the rowing machine. It got me in great shape, but that was in my other life. And I drove the car there, worked out, and drove the car home again, how decadent can you get!
There is still no movement in the bedroom and I think Eduard is going to be sleeping a little late today after making such a late night. He had his rain gear with him last night, so I hope he didn’t get too soaked on his bike. The worst thing always is the puddles, you can’t always avoid them. Or cars driving through them as they pass you. Yes, that really happens in real life. There are always some drains that get plugged up and intersections that get flooded. You ride through them with your feet in the air. I haven’t been on my bike in a few years. I have been walking or taking the bus if I had to go anywhere and, basically, I wasn’t going anywhere. One day soon, I will start riding my bike again after I dust the cobwebs off. A few years ago, I was so depressed that I couldn’t make it to my psychiatrist, so he came to me instead. He’ll do that, make house calls for people who just can’t make it. How is that for service?
Well, enough chit chat, I’ve got to read a bit of news now, maybe I’ll write some more later…
I walked the dog while it was dry, but there is a cold wind blowing. I also brought the bag of dog food back to my sister. I asked her if her dog was still eating well and she very enthusiastically answered that he was, so I think she is really happy about that. She just needs to feel that she found the solution on her own. Of course I praised Quinto into high heaven and he stood there wagging his tail and looking proud. Jesker also stood there looking as if something important was going to happen, but it didn’t. Erica gave me a Tupperware container of vergetarian Nasi Goreng, which is an Indonesian rice dish that is very good, so I walked around the field with that under my arm.
Indonesian food is very much a part of the food culture of the Netherlands with Indonesia once having been a colony of the Netherlands and lots of Indonesian people living here. Their food is nice and spicy and I like it very much. If you ever get the chance to eat it, give it a try, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Saté with peanut sauce is very good for example. But you need to eat it in a genuine Indonesian restaurant and not at the Chinese who claims to make some of those dishes too. If you eat Nasi Goreng, which is a rice dish, scoop it up with your fork and some Kroepoek, with is a schrimp chip, that is delicious.
Well, now I am going to do some work around here, just the usual stuff I always do, and wait for my new vest to arrive, can’t wait for that…
Another Bright Day! 