Well, today I weigh 99 kilos, so I lost only 1 ounce since yesterday, but then I really did eat a little more than I should have and I wasn’t expecting a lot of weight loss. I had a small glass of juice, 2 pears, Melba toast twice, one boiled potato (courtesy of Eduard), one piece of cheese and a tall glass of milk. When I went to bed, I felt full, as if I had eaten too much, and I worried about maybe having gained weight, so I said a little prayer before I went on the scales this morning. Much to my relief, I had lost that one ounce. Phew. I didn’t need to eat the potato or the extra Melba toast, that was just eating extra, because it was there. Opportunity eating as it were.
Now I am having my first coffee of the day. The birds are whistling and it is just getting light outside. I am still yawning and waking up, but that coffee should do the trick. Eduard and I both went to bed early last night. I for the usual reasons and Eduard because he has that breakfast showing this morning. He should be getting up any minute now.
I talked to my daughter yesterday and she said that it was a wonderful thing to be a graduate finally from law school. Her father and her aunt and her son were at the ceremony and they went out for a nice dinner afterwards. She has already sent me pictures of her in her cap and gown with her diploma in hand and flowers in her arms. She’s got a great big smile on her face. I noticed that my nine year old grandson is so tall that he already reaches up to her shoulders. He is built like is uncle Brion, tall and well proportioned. I speak with some grandmotherly pride and prejudice, of course. Well, now I am the mother of a future lawyer and I am proud of her.
I just poured my second cup of coffee and I am writing this very slowly, because I want to take my time waking up and thinking about things. Sometimes, I am in such a rush to write everything down, but this morning I realize that I have all the time in the world. There is no need to be in a hurry. And it is Sunday, after all.
I am thinking about those two pairs of pants that I wanted Eduard to take to the tailor. When I had them shorten the legs, it cost 19 Euros to have that done, and I am sure that making them smaller is going to be even more expensive, so Eduard and I decided that for the money, I should just go ahead and order another pair of smaller, similar pants online. So, I did that yesterday, and I am just going to tighten the elastic in the other pants until I run into someone who has a sewing machine I can borrow, to do the job properly myself. I think it is the best solution that I can come up with. Sometimes it is hard to decide what to do, especially when you have to make a money decision, but I ordered the pants in a small size, so they should last me a long time and I don’t feel guilty for having ordered them. The jeans that I have been wearing only for about a month now, are getting too big on me. I have washed them in hot water, but I think I will wash both pairs of jeans that I have and then dry them in my sister’s drier to see if they will shrink some more. Usually that will do the trick, as I have noticed this with other clothes I have dried in the drier.
I haven’t tried on the pretty red flowered dress again, but then again, the weather hasn’t been right for that kind of dress. When it improves, I will try it on again and see how much I have left to lose. Then I think that there are some more items in the closet that can go in the “get rid of it bag”.
When I chose for the gastric band, I wasn’t convinced that it would work for me. That is why I was seriously considering a gastric bypass first. I thought about it all for a long time, but then considered what a big operation a bypass operation was compared to a gastric band one, so then decided for the gastric band. Once I made that decision, things happened very quickly and in no time at all I was in the hospital in Belgium having the surgery done. Right after the surgery, I could eat very little, because your stomach swells up from having done the surgery. So I got a taste of things to come then. I drank a lot of liquids then, very little solid foods. But after a while you can eat again, because at first the gastric band is not tightened yet. Still, I lost 12 kilos during that first period, simply from changing my eating habits. I ate as if I couldn’t eat a lot of things already. It was purely psychological. After the first time it was filled, things became more serious and I found out what it was like to eat too much, so then I really had to start paying attention to what I ate. The second filling really made a difference. I can tell a lot of that when I eat my pear in the morning. Even when I chew it carefully, I become full very quickly and can’t finish the whole thing, but that is fine with me, because that lets me know that the band is working and it is good to have that full feeling after eating relatively little food. And I am constantly chewing my food very well and eating slowly, because it is a very uncomfortable feeling to have a chunk of food stuck down there. You end up having to upchuck it.
Eduard is up now having his first cup of coffee. The dog is laying on his pillow. It is too early in the morning for him to be up and about and active. Even the cats aren’t asking for anything yet. They are just sitting around, staring into space, thinking deep thoughts, I guess. It’s no wonder people think that cats are mysterious. They can sit for a long time, not doing anything but just staring ahead of them. Very deep! Bathroom pit stop, all that coffee…
Eduard has left the building. He is going on his motorcycle, that is always a special treat for him, usually he goes on his bike. He is taking the first 3 weeks of June off for his vacation. He will turn off his mobile phone and can only be reached in emergencies through me. It is going to be hard for them to do without Eduard for 3 weeks, but he is entitled to it and deserves it after working such long hours. Maybe then they will realize that they need a part time operator to help out when it gets really busy, as it does very often. I will enjoy having Eduard home and I am sure we will fill that time doing interesting things, maybe making day trips. We are not taking a real vacation, the vacation money has already been spent on other things like the new computer. But it is that way every year and we are just glad that we always get the extra money. Besides, we don’t want to lay on the beach in Spain along with thousands of other Dutch people. We are lucky that we live in a very pretty area of the country ourselves, with Belgium and Germany at our doorstep.
Lotje is telling me now that it is time for me to feed her. She is being very polite about it, she hasn’t sat on the mouse pad yet, so I think I will feed the cats now and pour myself another cup of coffee…
It’s good to see the cats eat so well and I wonder if, within the same brand of cat food, there sometimes is a difference of quality, because they always like it or dislike it all at once. It wouldn’t surprise me. Jesker is still sound asleep.
I found two pairs of dangly earrings in a small box in the drawer of my nightstand, and I have been wearing them. They are not made of silver, because I would not have been able to wear them, but I don’t know what they are made of instead. Anyway, I wear them and I put ointment on the ear that is still a little sensitive from the stud earrings that I wore. But so far these dangly earrings are causing me no problems, which gives me hope fo
r the future and maybe the opportunity to buy more earrings like that. I would really like it if I could, because I like dangly earrings the best. You see how much I like the decorating part of me. I think Eduard is fully aware of that now too and knows exactly the kinds of things that I like. I think that he understands my taste and can walk into a shop and know what I would pick out. For a man who doesn’t care much about clothes, he has good taste when it comes to clothing and accessories for me. He is also good at picking out perfumes for me and does that without any sort of input from me. He always goes to Douglass and has the sales ladies help him. He has bought Clinique and Jean Paul Gaultier for me and some others and I have liked them all. My sister always buys me something from Hugo Boss, which is also very nice. But I like Eduard’s taste and I am glad that he cares that much.
Anyway, so maybe now I can wear dangly earrings again, and that is fun, because now I can look around where ever I am and see if they have anything interesting. So, I’ll be looking for necklaces and earrings. Me? Expensive? No! Not at all! With the weather being this way, my allergies haven’t been too bad, but I have developed the occasional cough which is a bit chronic, but goes with the time of year. My head and my left ear are a lot better and don’t itch nearly as much as they have, so the medication is helping. Even so, it is a chronic problem and one that I will have to take care of constantly. Which reminds me that we still need to get mattress and pillow protectors against the dust mite, I keep forgetting that, although I don’t know how much difference that will make with the animals around. Lord only knows how much dander flies around the place when I vacuum.
When I was telling you yesterday about the illegal immigrants being in jail, I have to admit now that I am not sure if 40% of the inmates are illegal immigrants or if 40% of illegal immigrants are inmates. You see the difference. So that will need some clearing up. Anyway, a lot of illegal immigrants end up in jail where they don’t belong. That’s the point. And they stay there too long. There are even cases of mothers being locked up along with their small children, which is a complete outrage, no matter how humanely this supposedly is being done. What sort of a country are we anyway? Is there any outrage about this? Yes, politically I think something is cooking about this. Their ought to be a law…
Closer to home, the cats are done eating and are now laying in various places getting ready to sleep some more. Pieke is laying on my new handbag, which is laying on the sofa, where it is always within easy hand reach of me. So I can hold it and look at it. And smell it if I need to. You know that I have earlier talked about smells bringing back memories. The smell of leather is one of them and reminds me of my mother and her purses.
I have just had a good look around the living room and I think I can get away with not vacuuming today. Even the sofa looks halfway decent. I had to borrow a special attachment for the vacuum cleaner from my sister, one that she wasn’t using, and it does a good job on fabrics. It has two velvety strips that pick up the stray hairs and then the vacuum cleaner sucks them up. Good system. Yes, when you are a house wife, these things are important. Just like you men out there like your good power tools.
My father restored antique clocks and also built copies with old works in them himself. He also restored antique furniture and hand built copies of them. He never used power tools, except for a lathe to turn the wood. He did everything by hand and never used screws and very little nails. He said that, if it was built well, it would stay together well without all the nails and without any screws. He hand cut bronze gears if they needed replacement and also made the weights for the clocks and the pendulums. He also hand painted the faces on the clocks and added the scenery on them if they needed it. He was a much talented man. We had some beautiful clocks in our house when I grew up and I was used to hearing clocks tick and bells chime. Eduard and I have a very simple clock hanging on the living room wall now, it is from Ikea and if you listen very carefully, you can hear it tick. I wouldn’t have minded having an antique Frisian clock, as they are very ornate and colorful, but at the same time it may have been difficult to have such a clock hanging here. I think that my oldest sister has all of the clocks now, stored away, and one of these days I will have to ask her about them and find out if there was a Frisian clock there.
Well, the time has arrived for me to go and walk the dog, duty calls. After that, there is lots of spare time left to do other things. Like read yesterday’s newspaper. No, in the Netherlands there is no Sunday newspaper, so if you buy an extra paper on Saturday, you can save that one for Sunday…
The weather is so nice outside. There is a layer of clouds, but the sun is shining through it and there is hardly any wind. Still, that is supposed to change later in the day and we will have more stormy weather, unless the meteorologists got it completely wrong this time. I doubt it. Jesker and I hung out on the field for awhile and then walked home. At one point, he was being very obedient and was walking carefully beside me, looking at me very expectantly. I gave him a treat and then he crossed the street carefully to walk on the sidewalk instead of the grass. So, he had that all planned. I let him get away with it for this time, he just can’t make a habit out of it. Sometimes you have to let the dog win. It’s for his dignity.
I just made the second pot of coffee. In the meantime, so much time has passed, that Eduard will be home again before I know it. Which is good, because I forgot to change the bed yesterday and we can do that together when he gets here. I’ll strip it and we can make it up together. At least the duvets, those are always the hardest to do. I also have to trim his hair and beard today, because we keep forgetting about that.
Okay people, that’s it for today, ciao…
Another Bright Day! 