What the heck?

What have I gone and done now? Well, I was very casually vacuuming the living room and thinking about my ex reading my web log and how it was really not good to put that daily temptation in front of him like a very sweet desert in front of a fat person who is dieting. I mean, who wouldn’t want to know what kind of thoughts are going on inside the head of his soon to be ex wife, wouldn’t you be awfully curious? So, I thought, enough of that, you do not tie the cat to the bacon, as they say here. I must remove the temptation for him to read, although I kindly suggested this morning that he stop reading the blog.

It is too much temptation and I wouldn’t be able to stop either. So, the next best thing was to move the blog to a to him undisclosed location and hope that he doesn’t figure out where I am now by being so god darn smart. If I were him, I wouldn’t make the effort and let it go. I hope he is smart enough to do that. I also don’t want his paramount to start reading the blog. Yes, I wrote paramount and not paramour on purpose. Paramount means: commanding, controlling, dominating, dominative, governing, preponderant, regnant, reigning, ruling and I really have no idea if the poor woman is anything like that at all, but I liked it better than calling her a paramour which means: A person’s regular sexual partner.

What name shall I cal my ex? He is sort of a dominant person himself and preponderant and commanding, so I should come up with a good name that has that meaning in it too. No, I’ll just call them the Exfactor and the Paramount. The He and the She. I don’t have that many unkind thoughts about them, but I wish to be a little bit of mean about them sometimes, to get some of the frustrations out occasionally that I will never show in public. In public I will be a most reasonable woman who will not show the back of her tongue and who will always be kind and polite and who could Hillary Clinton look like she needs charm lessons.

I have had a most pleasant day so far, except that I asked the Exfactor to do me a favor and in his discombobulated mind he got things all screwed up and it took several phone calls to get it somewhat straightened out. At least to the point that it will hopefully be satisfactory to the people of the Social Services whom I will see on Tuesday. I should have taken care of this myself, but instead depended on the Exfactor’s stamina on his bike and his reasonable intelligence. I must remember not to do this anymore and depend on myself to take care of delicate matters, as it seems that our minds work differently. It must be the Venus/Mars thing. I will just have to try harder on my bike and not be intimidated by long distances and wind that blows straight at you.

Anyway, I vacuumed the apartment and polished the furniture and picked out a slipcover that my daughter had offered to buy for me as a housewarming gift for the new chair. I suppose I should have a housewarming party, but I think I am just going to wait until my birthday in September and invite a bunch of people over then. Hopefully, I will get very good gifts. I will start dropping very heavy hints soon. You can’t start soon enough with those things.

I filled two glass containers with different teas and one with pasta that I don’t eat, but it looks good. I have one empty glass container left for I don’t know what, so if anybody has an idea. It is airtight.

I went grocery shopping and spent 22 Euros and that should last me for the week and then I’ll have to get a few things for the weekend. Aren’t I a cheap woman? I even got very nice treats for the dog. I have to call him the dog now so he won’t be recognized by name. The Dog. The Uberhund! I bought some new cat kibbles that are a good brand, but just a bit cheaper and the cats like them very much. I always put down two bowls for three cats and one bowl is empty and the other is nearly so. Those troopers! They know we’re on a budget.

But guess what I just saw happen. The Uberhund was eating cat food! Aha! He ate all of it. Well, you know what that means. The cat food needs to be moved to the counter. That stinker, he has never done that before. I actually find it very funny, because Toby was convincing himself the other day that he liked the dog food. Well, now my wooden shoe breaks.

The Uberhund must think he has died and gone to dog heaven with all those dishes of good food and the snacks. I am trying to keep him on a diet so he doesn’t gain anymore weight, this will defeat all my efforts.

When you live by yourself, you have no dishes to wash, at least I don’t. I don’t cook for my self and eat simple food that is easy to fix. I have at the most a glass and a mug and a knife and a small plate. I rinse everything off right away. I never use the stove and I heat milk in the microwave. Milk with honey before I go to sleep.

Okay, that’s the end of the introductory epistle to this new blog. I’ve got some things left to do to it. Hope you are all going to have a great day. Oh goodness, it is Friday. remember how that used to be my favorite time of the week? Well, I have other days that are now, depending on what happens on them. I do like Saturday a lot now.

Ciao…

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Bless me!

Well, bless my little heart! I have been sitting here all afternoon trying to figure out a problem I had with my Dutch blog which did not recognize me as its administrator and so refused to perform all sorts of functions I asked it to. It basically just ignored me and even with the help of the support desk, I couldn’t get the problem fixed, so I finally said, the hell with it and set up a completely new blog in the same style as this one, but with a slighlty different header, though in the same theme. The other blog had two posts on it and it was no great loss and I did not copy them for the newer blog, but just started over again. Maggie May would like it and I will include the link to it here: http://noortje2at.wordpress.com/

I am sitting here yawning something awful, but that is because I have not had a nap at all today and I think I may go to bed on time. I don’t know why I have to do this battle with sleep each night, about when I go to sleep and when I wake up and if I am indeed done sleeping then. I would very much like to sleep just like a regular person from 10 to 7 or something like that. I am sure it would be good for my mental health.

My husband is working late again tonight and won’t be home until after midnight. The problem is that he comes in through the back door and it is in the bedroom,and it sometimes wakes me up, because the door jams.

It is raining and thundering and lightening outside and every time time it thunders, Jesker barks purely out of reflex. The poor dog doesn’t know what is happening except that it sounds very close by, just about on top of us.

Well, I am just about done with my last cigarette, so I must go and make more. I will add to this post in the morning, in the wee hours no doubt. See you then.

Tuesday in the wee hours. I woke up because somebody was very foolishly removing my reading glasses from my hand, when he should have just left them there, because everything wakes me up and it p*sses me off. Why not just let me be and let me sleep in whatever fashion I am sleeping, at least I am sleeping? Even if it means I have my reading glasses clenched in my hand and my book laying on my chest. I hate this nurturing bit that is totally unnecessary and only wakes me up and makes me stay up. Aaarrrggghhh! That was a primal scream in case you were wondering. I am sure I have many more of those in me.

Okay, deep breath and another one.

I just had some nonfat strawberry yogurt and I feel a lot better now. It’s given me energy and food for the brain and now I will have a nice mug of mocha coffee and a cigarette. You see, I know how to treat myself well and I know what I need in the middle of the night. I need to nurture myself through the small hours of it and not be miserly with what I need. So, a tall glass of yogurt and a big mug of coffee. Big, I like everything big. That’s why I like cappuccinos so much. They come in big cups.

Jeez, I can’t seem to find my sense of humor anywhere. I seem to have misplaced it. It’s not anywhere close by where I can see it. I don’t see its laughter jumping up and down the desk. I don’t feel it tickling my bare knees. I think I’ll go lie down for a bit. maybe it will come back to me then…

…of course I didn’t go lie down on the sofa. I went looking for a deleted post of the Dutch blog instead, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. It is well and truly gone and I don’t remember the title of it. I deleted it and then realized that it was a good bit of writing and that I should not have deleted it. Stupid move! Because I didn’t have the authority to publish it, I did send it in for approval, so maybe they will send it back to me. Keep your fingers crossed.

Oh goodness, I completely forgot to stick my headphones in my ears. I could have been listening to music all this time. Where am I with my mind? Life is so much kinder with a soundtrack in your head. I know why I forgot about it. My MP3 player needed a new battery in it, but that was easily remedied. When I live here by myself, i don’t have to worry about that, if I were to run out of batteries, I could just listen to the Real Player or to Deezer. I lived without any music for such a long time and now I can’t imagine doing without, because it makes such a difference in my mood. It cheers me up terrifically.

“There are nine million bicycles in Bejing.” Katie Melua. You can listen to the text, but you mustn’t believe in the romance of it, that would be a fatal move. Luckily, when you are 53 years old, you don’t have to take any of it personally and can just listen to it with detachment and a certain amount of bemusement. When I was younger, I was such a believer in the texts and the romance of it. I thought it was all true. I was the permanently broken heart kid. I walked around with a big ache that could only be filled with the romance that the song texts promised and sometime I thought I had found it. The big dramatic loves of my life, which in the end turned out to be relationships filled with hazardous no go areas.

All my love has been based purely on dependency. In how many ways can you rescue me? Can you take care of me? Can you keep me safe from the big bad world? Well, guess what, nobody could in the end. Least of all Eduard, although he tried the hardest, he also made me the most dependent and the least prepared. I reverted back to a sort of infantine state and became helpless and childlike. I had already become some of that in a relationship previous to that and let myself be treated like a Duchess, which was also my nickname. It was also a very dependent relationship in which I needed to be reassured constantly of the man’s fidelity and love for me and tried to earn it in all possible ways by being a very good girl. I was a ballerina with very sore toes, making pirouettes all day long.

My biggest fear was always to be abandoned by the people who I believed to be in love with, but which were really dependency issues. That’s because I never had clearly defined boundaries and I didn’t know who I was without the other person to give me a definition, dysfunctional as it was. I existed because of who I was with. Now I know that this is not true and I know that I am very well defined in sharp clear lines with a hefty substance and a clear content. I know who I am and what is bullshit and what is not. I am not afraid that I am going to be lost or scared or make some huge mistake in judgment. I will be fine, because I am a grown up now.

Well, after that long confession, I am going to end this now. In another half an hour, the dog and I are going to take out medicines an go for a walk, a nice and slow walk. I am off to see my SPN this morning to tell her the good news.

Have a thrilling Tuesday. Do you think days like that exist? Tuesdays seem like such ordinary days, except for some rainy day ones.

Ciao…

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The things I do to please you!

I changed the theme again of the blog after Maggie May complained about how hard it was for her to read the print on the black background, so there were only two options, either Maggie had to get really strong reading glasses or I had to change the theme of the blog, and since I like change, I didn’t mind doing that at all and at the same time I got to pick out a new image for the header, which I think is very angelic looking to match my mood of innocence and slight rapture at my possible new beginnings.

Yes, I am most definitely pleased about the way things are turning out and I am very grateful for this turn of events and can’t wait to start my new life as an independent woman. I look forward to not being married anymore and throwing of that yuk and being a woman who makes her own decisions about how she lives her life. It will be wonderful not to have to justify what I do to someone else and to have to give an explanation for everything I do or don’t do. Free at last, for the first time in my life. The emancipation of Nora, which I will celebrate with a party of some sort.

I have decided not to take of the two gold bands that I wear on my left ring finger, one of which I wear in memory of my son. In the Netherlands it is the custom of widows to wear their own wedding band as well as their deceased husband’s wedding band on one finger and this way people will think I am a widow and that may save me from some unpleasant encounters. People will treat me with some unspoken respect and that is just the way I like it. Let them assume what they will. As long as I don’t come right out with a statement I will not be lying.

My gastric band was filled this morning and I was very nicely driven over to the hospital by Eduard who took any speed bumps very slowly and carefully. Walking is going ever so much better now and as long as I don’t lean into anything I feel pretty good. Most backrests are hard and uncomfortable so I sit up very straight and don’t lean back. I may even try and take the dog for a walk in a while as long as he does not pull at the leash too much. He is not bothering me about going out, so I have a little bit of time yet. In the morning he gets impatient at six, as Eduard doesn’t take him out until seven, and I tell Jesker to go and wake him up and Jesker does this by barking at him, which Eduard does not appreciate. Jesker is such a smart dog!

Eduard is a bit grumpy in the morning and does not tolerate the cats well on the kitchen counter and the dog at his heels while he gets his breakfast and he grumbles at them and argues with them constantly as if they are people who understand his purpose. The animals have no idea what is is all about and just keep doing the same thing every morning.

I make myself small behind the computer and hope that I am not doing something wrong that will require some comment from him. Grumpy people should live in separate houses.

My younger sister just called me and told me in the strictest confidence that she is getting a divorce to and I am very happy for her, because she has been unhappy for a very long time. I am not to speak to anyone about it though because of the children. They want to have everything arranged as much as possible first and then tell the children, who can then decide which parent they want to stay with. None of you know my sister, so I suppose my secret is safe with you. Mum’s the word. It has to be a successful divorce.

Anyway, that means that all of us three sisters will be without a husband soon and none of us are planning on looking for a new one. We will take them on as platonic friends, but that is about it. We’re not planning on getting into the draining aspects of relationships again. We’ve been burned too much and are possibly too dysfunctional to pick a good healthy partner. We did not have very good role models. All three of us have the tendency to be a bit of an Einzelgänger, so that is alright then. We make our own way through this life.

We’re not telling our older sister anything until both our processes are well underway. There’s no need to inform the whole world until we are fully ready to. I’d like to present everybody with a given fact as much as possible. The beauty lies in the perfect formula in that you don’t have to check with everybody and ask for their stamp of approval or their blessing.

It will be good to hear the words, I now stop pronouncing you man and wife, or something along those lines.

Wel, I have to go and try and take the dog for a walk. My real post for today is below here, in case you haven’t read that yet. Here’s to the true emancipation of womanhood for my sisters and I and hopefully for our daughters too. I know we can do it and come out as fully functioning and capable human beings. You just wait and see.

Ciao…

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Just a second!

Sunday morning. I tried to go back to bed this morning after I wrote the first post and I tried to get comfortable, but it was all just a battle for naught. My back hurt so much, that I would just drowse off for a little while and then wake up again from the pain and moan while I tried to get more comfortable. Eduard probably thought I was putting on quite a show, but it was just awful and I don’t know what to do, but sit in this office chair with a pillow in my backand type. I am really in agony unless I sit perfectly upright in this chair and barely move a muscle. I really should not type, but that is too boring and Eduard is still “sleeping”, so I can’t be looking for music now. Bah humbug! Here is a picture of Gandhi:

She looks a little mean in that one doesn’t she? Like she is saying, “If you do that one more time, I’ll scratch your eyes out.” She isn’t a mean cat at all, as a matter of fact, she is just a plain old sweetheart.

In the meantime, I have been doing something totally different. I accidentally ran into some very good Baroque music and made a 4 page playlist of that and now I am listening to it, which is rather pleasant and quite a change from all that other stuff I have been listening to. It is good for an orderly mind, it’s very mathematical. Very precise and aligned and squared off and measured. It’s good for the architect that hides in me and the little civil servant. You can picture that, can’t you? We have to keep an eye on that woman and see what she is up to. Can’t just having her roaming around without having a straight jacket handy. She may be the sort of person who is going to hamper all of Nora’s good efforts. Can’t have that.

Well, I may write some more later, we’ll see.

Monday morning in the wee hours. Eduard got up yesterday morning and did some housework for me and walked Jesker and then there was really not much for us to do, but sit and stare at each other without having much to discuss, because we have discussed everything we can up to now, so I suggested that he have another afternoon off and he did. He left on his bicycle with a bottle of water and his digital camera and his wallet and was gone for three hours, which was nice, because it gave me some breathing space in which I could just do what I wanted to do. I listened to music and started a new blog in Dutch.

Yes, I have never written in Dutch and I don’t know how well I am going to manage, because i also never read any Dutch blogs and I am going to have to find those, but I am going to give it a try. It will not be as comprehensive as this one, more short and to the point and a bit more business like. I don’t do emotions well in Dutch and it is not as much appreciated. The Dutch don’t like a lot of drama. They like self criticism, so the style of the blog will be a lot different.

When Eduard came back from his bike ride, we did briefly discuss getting paperwork organized for the mediator and the few pieces of furniture and household goods he is going to take with him when he moves out. It doesn’t amount to much. Just some odds and ends to get him started. He is going to get a lot of things at the goodwill store. Luckily, Eduard is one of those people who cares very little about how well decorated his place is and he doesn’t mind if nothing matches and is a bit old and worn. In this case, I do appreciate that. He doesn’t need to go to Ikea.

I really and truly appreciate the fact that I can own up to not being in love with my husband anymore, when before I thought that I very much was and that I would die without him. I believed in the love story of our marriage and I believed in the holiness of our love. I believed that together we were one and that we could not be separated, that one would be incomplete without the other.

Suddenly a switch got turned in my brain and I stopped believing all those things in an instant and I saw my husband for who he was, just an ordinary human being with all his faults and weaknesses, who also happened to have hurt me very much. I saw that my marriage was in very many ways dysfunctional and suffocating and that what I thought was love, was maybe really an extreme form of dependency. I saw that it was unhealthy for the both of us.

Seeing this so clearly, made me very determined to call a halt to it immediately, because I will not stay in a dysfunctional relationship, as I have been in two of those already and I know what harm they can do to your mental health. In this case the damage was incipient, because Eduard had been a benign partner and his actions had always been based on kindness, which made them nonetheless unhealthy. They allowed me to become very needy and dependent and dysfunctional and took away my believe in myself as an independently functioning human being. At the same time, it gave him an exaggerated sense of responsibility for me and made him believe that he was fully accountable for the wellbeing of us both 24 hours a day.

So, it is a good thing that we go our own way now. We need to let go of each other in order to survive and be the free people we are meant to be. Unfortunately, Eduard did not have a way to tell me this. He could only act it out by having an affair.

I won’t forgive him for the way he handled that. The way he went about lying about it and carrying on behind my back and making excuses and being a damn cheater. But I am divorcing him and I never have to worry about that anymore. The next woman will have to. What a relief.

My back is still not better, actually, i should say my side, because that where the pain radiates to. If I didn’t know better, I would think that there is something wrong with one of my kidneys. If things don’t get better by the end of this week, I will go back to the doctor. I think I need to be closely examined.

Well, you good people, I suppose I will go and try and write something in Dutch now. It is more like a homework assignment than a pure writing pleasure, but I do need the practice. I am not feeling the least bit artistic, so I am not posting any bits of art just now. Maybe someday soon again.

Have a great Monday. It’s the ultimate dragon slaying day, after all.

Ciao…

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If it’s Tuesday…

I woke up with a great opening sentence for today’s post, but now I have done some other things first, like react to comments on some other people’s blogs, and I have forgotten what it was. Something about seizing the moment and knowing when that was, but I am really not sure. Apparently it was the right moment just when I woke up.

A stranger came by and left a comment on one of my posts and, of course, I did what you always do, I went and visited her and she turned out to be South African and has a blog written in Afrikaans. This language is a product of 17th century Dutch, so I could read it and understand it with some amount of effort and I am planning on visiting it again in the future because it is a fun exercise to try and decipher the Afrikaans. I am not totally unfamiliar with that language, having read some shorter stories in it before, but always with the Dutch translation beside it. I think I had already told you about the double negative they use such as, must not smoke not, must not cry not.

For those of you who are confused about where my old blog is here, you must of course look in the archives and you will find all of my old posts there from the very beginning up to the moment I came over here. I didn’t actually physically take the whole blog with me, of course. Just the posts and those are what counts, and all the comments too.

As you see, I changed the header image to the blog. I do like to play with things and always try to find something better and I am awfully fond of tulips. I can’t find the photograph of the yellow tulips that I had originally, but I think these do nicely as well. What you do, is find a large enough image and then you have to crop a slice of it horizontally that you like for the header. I think this one has a bit of an antique quality to it.

I am sitting here in my fluffy warm bathrobe and I still need it at night, as it does get a bit chilly. We don’t have the heater on at all anymore. it is off now until October, but some nights it does get a little cool still. But it is wonderful to sit here wrapped up in this great big bathrobe and only have my lower legs sticking out. It is true that people should have more than just one robe and I suppose I will get one for the summer as well. I used to have a nice cotton one, but for the life of me I don’t remember what happened to it. That belongs to the memories I did not consciously store.

My sister came by yesterday with a bike of which the chain had come undone and Eduard is very handy and always knows how to remedy these things. It turned out that the chain was to lose and Eduard tightened it. He asked me if I knew how to do that, and I said, goodness no, that my father always took care of such things. I barely know how to patch a tire. In the States if something happened to my bike, we always took it to the bike maker. That earns Eduard’s scorn, as he thinks people should be self sufficient and take care of their own gear. He is awfully handy to have around, but that is something that I never got interested in, while I am handy with other things such as screwdrivers and power tools. It’s just that Eduard is so much better and efficient at all these things that I don’t bother. I am spoiled having had a very handy father and now having a very handy Eduard. A woman isn’t going to bother then, is she? It’s like cooking dinner while you are married to a gourmet cook.

I finally got the ironing done again yesterday and I’ll be very honest with you, I get it done because there are some of my things in it. Eduard has so many T-shirts that I can wait forever with the ironing. but if I have my clothes in there, I am likely to do it sooner. Those of you who wonder why I iron T-shirts, I have to answer that if you dry them on a washing line, they stay wrinkled and they don’t come out unwrinkled like they do when you put them in a dryer. That’s why I need to iron more often. I don’t mind ironing really, I just think I do. Once I have started, I don’t mind it at all. The only things I don’t like to iron are dress shirts. Luckily, Eduard doesn’t wear them very often.

I thought of something while I was ironing. You should never cheat on someone who irons your shirts for you. Somehow that ought to be a rule. Ironing is such a dedicated job, that the person who does it, ought never to be cheated on. They should call it: “The Intimate Act of Ironing.” You women know what I mean, don’t you?

I am sitting here with my head phones on listening to Massive Attack. What a super invention. I wore them yesterday while I was out walking Jesker, but I could still hear the kids screeching by the elementary school, so I didn’t quite drown them out. Sometimes I walk by there when they are out playing, the little ones, and I hear one of them use terrible language and I wonder where he learned that. At home, no doubt. I always want to go over and give a lecture, but I don’t know how to lecture a 5 year old I don’t know. I doubt the teachers would appreciate it. They would probably worry about me upsetting the child’s delicate feelings. They must be aware of it.

We have such a thing called the vulgarization of society. It is happening all around us and we have to fight against it. It has to do with catering to the lowest common denominator and appealing to the masses etc. That’s why I refuse to watch commercial television, because I think they are one of the greatest harbingers of it. Eduard will sometimes make an exception for a sports program, but I say you have to stick to your guns and not give an inch. I am unrelenting in this. I refuse to watch cheap programs and programs and films that are interrupted by commercials. I had enough of that in the States. Besides. I think the quality of the programs on the commercial television channels is pretty bad, They import a lot of, what I think, are the worst shows from the States. I can’t believe that Americans accept some of this drivel as good enough to watch. I don’t think we should, but there are enough people here who have no built in censor and who do. Like I said, television for the lowest common denominator. I don’t think commercial television is an enrichment to society.

Okay, that was my little social commentary. I think I am entitled to one every post and I don’t think I take advantage of it very time. So, maybe I should have two of them now. Nooo, I don’t think so.

I am starting to figure out this MP3 player. There are folders inside that contain whole albums and with a bit of trickery you can get it to play a whole album, but the trick is the trickery. I am not quite dexterous at it yet, but I have now got it to play Bjórk’s Debut Album. Yesterday I thought I had lost the screen, because it had gone black, but it turned out that I had the contrast turned up too high and by luck I got it down again, because I couldn’t see a thing. I thought contrast had something to do with the quality of the music. Hee, hee.

Well, I am just a 53 year old woman trying to keep up with technology on her own. I am not doing half bad.

Oh yes, I was saying to my sister how I wanted an iPod, but that they cost 229 Euros and she said that everybody in her household seemed to have one of those, but that they never used them and Eduard said that she should see if one of them didn’t want to send their iPod my way. The Classic iPod has 80 GB and a battery that lasts 40 hours. I don’t think one of them will find its way here, but the thought is nice. I should be so lucky.

Today I get to do two “fun” things. This morning I am going to see my SPN and I realize again how much she has helped me already and how much I need to let her know that, so that she doesn’t think that I am leaving her because I am unhappy with her. So, I need to make a point to tell her that. I am 20 years older than she is, but I can’t tell for how much wisdom she has in her area of expertise.

In the afternoon I get to go to the physiotherapist for a good back massage and I am looking forward to that. As long as she does not fall asleep while doing so, like she did the other day. I had to wake her up by coughing very loudly. It jerked her awake. She is an older woman and I think she possibly needs a nap in the afternoon. It is quite embarrassing. I don’t understand why these things always happen to me. I once had a psychotherapist who fell asleep in the afternoons, so I had to stop seeing her. I can’t believe or accept that I was so boring that she fell asleep.

Anyway, the image above, and I don’t know if it is any good, is made with a collage by Lisa Sarsfield and here is the original:

Right, that’s all I’ve got for now. Have a terrific Tuesday and slay many dragons. I haven’t asked you to do that for awhile. There aren’t that many dragons around right now, maybe there are in your parts.

Ciao…or cheerio, whatever…

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Amazing!

You won’t believe this, but I slept 6,5 hours all at once this past night. I just woke up and looked at the clock and couldn’t believe it.

It’s been a while since I have done that. It must be because of the really good talk Eduard and I had yesterday evening in which we got so much clarified and because of which I feel so much better. I think it has relaxed me to the point that I can even relax enough to sleep well. It was a talk in which was made clear that I made all sorts of assumptions that I shouldn’t make and Eduard decided to be completely honest with me like he should have been all along. It cleared the air really well. Extremely well, I should say.

For those of you who are worried at the disappearance of my old blog and the destruction of all my old posts, I must tell you not to worry, because I brought all of my old blog with me over here, so everything is safe and well. Nothing has been destroyed. I just thought, for various reasons, that it was time to delete the old blog. It had to do with timing mostly and leaving behind some unwanted baggage like I talked about.

I have started to listen to my MP3 players with the headphones on and what an experience that is! It’s like the music is in the middle of your head and it is a wonderful way to listen to it. The only problem is that you are pretty much oblivious of what happens around you, because you can’t hear the phone or the doorbell or what other people say or the volume of your own voice. Of course, when I first had the headphones on, I had the sound up quite loud. I have turned it down a notch or two since then. It is just such a pleasant experience to have the music in the middle of your head, that I am reluctant to turn it down too much.

Eduard had gone to the library and had gotten some more CD’s for me and I have downloaded those to my latest MP3 player, the one with the most modern music on it, and I am enjoying that one very much. It isn’t filled up yet, so I have a ways to go yet. I think I am three quarters of the way there. I can’t wait to get more CD’s from the library and download those. I already told you that I am like a kid in the candy store, didn’t I?

Anyway, this music I’ve got is quite cheerful, even the “sadder” songs about love and broken hearts. The tunes are quite snappy, if you don’t listen to all the words, and even if you listen to all the words, they are somewhat hopeful. They are not so down and out that they depress you. You know, so that you get all heartbroken about them yourself. The women are quite emancipated and don’t sit and cry and not take action. They get out and sing about what they’ll do to those cheating men. It gives you courage.

I think I am from a generation and a class of women who very loudly proclaimed how they were equal to men, and how they didn’t need them to survive in this world, and who then proceeded to very much pursue them and make sure they had one. Having a husband was very important. So was having 2.4 children and a house in the suburbs and a dog and a cat and two cars and all the advantages that come with that life. We were probably never more domesticated and “blessed.” It’s all very well promulgating emancipation when in reality you’re not. That particular condition is left to only a few of us of our generation, voluntarily or not.

I can feel myself getting bogged down in a huge political and social discussion about lifestyles and points of view and limited views on life, so I better not go that route at all.

Jesker has come out of the bedroom and very cozily decided to come and lie down beside me. I have been walking him very early in the morning, sometimes as early as 6 AM. He loves it and it is nice to be out so early. It had become the habit that Eduard walked Jesker more often than I did since I had been depressed this past winter, but we have decided that I should be doing that again and it really is very uplifting to get out early in the morning when the day is just starting. I had forgotten how pleasant that is. I have probably forgotten how pleasant a lot of things are since I have stopped doing them.

I have washed my bathrobe finally for the first time in 5 months. It was about time I did, but because I wear it all the time, it was hard to do. I finally forced myself to do it after I kept pulling it out of the laundry basket. I let it dry outside and I am now wearing a super clean bathrobe that smells delicious. I had yogurt stains on it and god only knows what else. It all looked very suspicious. Eduard says I should have two bathrobes, but I think we have spent the money for that twice over already.

What’s even better than a clean bathrobe are clean sheets on the bed that have been dried outside and we are very lucky when the weather has been good and they have been. We put some clean ones on yesterday and we couldn’t wait to get into bed. That’s so lovely! It’s like they feel different too when they have been dried outside. It would be best not to wear anything at all when you get between the sheets then, but that is giving away the family secrets.

Oh yes, before I forget. The image above is made from a picture of a box that was decorated by the Artful Eye and here is the beautiful box:

I am going to get dressed and take my medicines and walk Jesker so I will get a good start to this day.

I know it is Monday and maybe a tough day for those of you who have to go to a job, so make the best of it and don’t get to down hearted on your way to work.

Cheerio…

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Night session.

It’s in the middle of the night and I shouldn’t be up yet, but I am, and I have to try and wile away the hours until it is morning or until I have reason to go to sleep again. So far, I find myself wide awake and counting the minutes and the clock ticks very slowly when you do.

It used to be, that I was always in a good mood when I woke up in the middle of the night, but this past week, I have been negative and insecure and I am trying to not let that get to me and put some bravuras on anyway and stay optimistic and write a positively tinted post. If I can’t be positive and secure, I can at least act like I am.

I have decided not to have any music on the blog at all. I think it will make for a more tranquil experience and I think most of you don’t need to hear a lot of loud rock while you read these attempts on my part at writing something coherent. It would be difficult to do both, get irritated at the music and read the post at the same time and believe me, what I had picked out is not peaceful music to read a post by. So, out the window with that brilliant idea.

I am also not going to do a slide show of my art work and I will not be posting all the awards I got on my old blog in the side bar. I am going to try and keep the site as uncluttered as possible and not put anything in that is not necessary or especially useful. It was very nice getting all those awards, but I have them stored in a folder in my images file and I can always get to them if for some reason I need to. Vanity, all is vanity.

I think that maybe I felt more secure with all that clutter around me on my old blog. At least it kept everybody occupied and it distracted from the writing itself some. With all those awards around, the proof was in the pudding, wasn’t it? There was the music to keep your mind busy and the slide show to side track you and all the good causes and the adds. Now I am out there quite naked all by myself, with the wish to cover up a bit, but the sense not to.

Let me tell you something. it is difficult to write down your thoughts as they occur to you. You have to censor yourself as you remember what is okay to discuss publicly and what isn’t. Blogging is a very intimate act and you forget all those thousands of people who also come by and have a look. It helps if you aren’t easily embarrassed and if you feel at ease contemplating many subjects, but there are times when I have to hit the brakes and stop myself from writing things down here that just are not discussable on an open platform. You thought my life was an open book, didn’t you? Well, not quite. There are things I don’t disclose.

I have just had a tall glass of nonfat strawberry yogurt and it has quite perked me up. Now what I need is a nice mug of coffee. No, I never drink tea, I like it, but I always dislike the way it is too hot to drink and having to wait for it to cool down. That’s because I don’t take any milk in it and I do in my coffee. Low fat milk, no sugar.

I had to start wearing my eye glasses again. I noticed that, in spite of my reading glasses, I was having a hard time distinguishing a bunch of letters from each other when I sat behind the computer. They all started to look alike. Yesterday I noticed that my far away sight was worse when I walked Jesker. When I got home, I found my glasses and put them on and right away things were better and they are better behind the computer too.

I hadn’t consciously noticed that my eyes had gotten worse, but now I remember them being this way for a while already. Luckily, the glasses correct the problem exactly, only Eduard isn’t sure if he likes me as much with them on. I had to comb my hair a bit differently in order for him to be happy with them. Men! Wouldn’t you just love and adore this face with or without glasses? Ahum…

Bev was worried about me deleting my old blog, because all that writing would be lost, but it isn’t going to be lost at all. I forgot that I took it all with me over here, so I can just delete that old blog when I am ready for it. I just want to make sure that everybody who wants to, has made the move with me and I am hoping to drop some unwanted baggage along the way. That’s why I don’t want to wait too long with deleting my old blog. I check on things every day.

Okay, the image above was made from a digital collage made by John Mora. Here is the original:

That about does it for me for now. I have somehow managed to get through a large portion of the night. I dawdled a bit and drowsed a bit, but now it is almost 4 AM, so that’s not bad. Why, it’s been a genuine pleasure sittin’ here typin’ these here words.

Have a good Sunday, everyone. Aren’t you glad that today is a day of rest? I am, less can go wrong.

Ciao…

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Music.

Well, on this wonderful rainy Saturday afternoon, I think you have all been spared something. To pass away the hours, I have made a new play list over at Deezer’s and this time I have picked out all rock groups. I thought I would do things a bit different this time and show a completely different side of me. It was my intention to destroy the tranquility of my new blog with some of this music, to the great disappointment of some of you, I am sure, but what is a girl to do when she is home all by herself to pass the time of day? Right!

The only problem is, that I lack the capacity to install music on my blog the way it is now without buying more space and in order to buy more space, I need a credit card, which I don’t have. Ah, I hear you all breath a sigh of relief. I could borrow my sister’s credit card, but she is not home and that may give me just enough time to change my mind, because I do want to think about you who have your speakers turned on all the time and who are suddenly going to hear loud rock when you get to my blog.

Anyway, I did have fun looking for and discovering bands that I liked well enough. That was a bit of a journey. One band leads to 4 others and hopefully one or two of those are good and they lead to other bands. Sometimes you end up nowhere and you have to start the process all over again.

Another fun thing I did this afternoon was upload 6 CD’s to the Real Player and download those to a new MP3 player. It has Feist and Björk and Massive Attack etc. Pretty good music for a fun afternoon. Rocking and rolling all by myself, not really wishing for too much rain, really. I’d rather have Eduard in the great outdoors than indoors, if you get my drift. I want him to take me in his arms and kiss me square on the mouth when he gets home. No funny business.

Boy, I was in bad shape during the wee hours of the morning. I was so far gone from the straight and narrow, it wasn’t even a dash on the horizon anymore. I wonder how I get that way, what process takes place to get me there? It’s a mystery to me. I can only imagine some sort of an electrical storm happening in my brain that addles my thinking process and mixes up the proportions of things. The negatives and the positives. I am alright again now, but it took me all morning to get there and two walks with Jesker.

I am wearing my cute lavender dress and I feel extremely feminine in it, in spite of my cute short haircut. I’ve got my make up on and my perfume and a necklace. I think I could be ravished any moment now, although I don’t think it is going to happen while I sit here behind this computer. Well, never mind, god only knows who’d come to ravish me. It’s not going to be some 23 year old with a bare chest and biceps, lovely as that sounds.

Frances is right, whenever I start to talk about God or about the Queen you all need to get suspicious of my words and my mind. It probably means I am on a walkabout in my mind. I am out in the hot desert of my fantasy, out in the bush where I am overcome by what I think I see and not necessarily by what is there. It’s a strange place to be and it takes a while to get back from there.

I am now listening to Limp Bizkit, another group I had heard of before but never really listened to. Very interesting to sit and listen to a whole album courtesy of Deezer. I imagine that this is the kind of music my son would have listened to. I notice that listening to music brings about a change in my mind. In my case it really does seem to soothe me and it doesn’t have to be soothing music. It is all about the steady beat that counts. The rhythm of it that settles me down. It keeps me focused and occupied.

All the cats are inside on the dining table having a good look outside and being generally lazy. It must be easy being a cat and having hardly any responsibilities. You’ve just got to keep yourself clean and stay out of the way of stray cats and stay friends with the cats you live with. I don’t actually know how hard that is. Maybe it is more work than it looks and there are rituals involved that I am unaware of.

I try to make my life as easy as that of a cat’s. I try to be almost as uninvolved as that, but it doesn’t quite work that way. I do try to be almost that independent, but it doesn’t work that well for human beings. Besides, cats are very dependent on us when it comes down to it, but they have an independent attitude and I do like that. They have that aloofness and that remoteness that I like, as if they don’t really need you. In my case looks would deceive. Wouldn’t you like to walk through the world as if you were an untouchable queen? Oh no, there is that word again. Quick, change the subject.

I still have to listen to my new MP3 player and I will do that as soon as I shut off the computer. I like to have the best of both worlds, so when I have the computer on, I listen to my Deezer play list. The only shame is, that you can’t play the list itself randomly, you can only do that when you download the player. You can, however, switch to the next band.

In the meantime, I am drinking decaf Senseo, while I am really longing for a glass of white wine, but I suppose i wont tempt fate and go down that path and upset my delicate constitution, because one glass is okay, but I’ll want more than one glass and be happy to have three of four. Darn! Wish I could drink and get away with it. I have to face up to the fact that with all this medication I am on, it is probably not such a good idea. There must be a reason for the warning on the pamphlet that comes with it.

Well, I think I’ve told you enough things now. I could go on and on talking about insignificant things all afternoon until it is 6 o’clock, but you’d get bored after a while and forget to peel the potatoes for dinner. Right, I suppose i will shut everything down and hook that MP3 player up and listen to those new CD’s.

Have a good rest of the Saturday. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Oh well, is that good advice?

Ciao…

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Thursday afternoon.

I sat down with Eduard behind the computer this afternoon, because we weren’t happy with the layout of the blog and so weren’t some of you, so we looked at a whole bunch of options again and noticed that there were some with a custom image header and I decided to give that a try and this is the result of that. A wide text column that’s easily readable and a blogroll and archives and a photograph of me and a decent enough header. What more can you ask for?

Hopefully, I’ll leave this alone for now and not mess around with it anymore, but now that I know that there are layouts to play with, I may play some more, it is almost inevitable, of course. It’s like asking a kid to stop playing by the pond.

We’ve also uploaded some more music to the Real Player and downloaded it to Eduard’s MP3 player. Portishead for one. They are pretty darn good and we agree on this one. These people are similar to Massive Attack and they lead you to Garbage which leads you to a bunch of other good groups. I can’t wait to get my hands on the rest of the CD’s I am supposed to get from the library. It’s going to be so much fun to upload them. I feel very greedy about that. Like a kid in the candy store.

Eduard has just vacuumed the sofa, the good soul. It really needed it too, Jesker’s hair was all over it and I am not supposed to vacuum yet. My lower back aches a lot despite the sessions with the physiotherapist and I think it is just going to be a chronic problem. I still have that ache in my side from leaning into the armrest, although I try to do very little of that and I am constantly on guard not to and to sit on both buns.

The problem is that I find it very difficult to just sit straight with both my feet in front of me placed squarely on the ground. I always want to sit at an angle with my legs crossed in effort to have the least amount of backache. It is probably the wrong way to sit, but try telling my subconscious that. I automatically do what it wants. It rules, man.

It is warm outside, but it is supposed to start raining sometime this afternoon and already the clouds have gathered. It’s the kind of weather that makes you expect thunderstorms. Muggy and warm and ominous.

My nephew has broken his wrist when someone kicked a football against it very hard, so now he has a temporary cast on it, which is going to be replaced by a permanent cast on Monday. That has to do with the swelling. Poor guy. He is such a football player and now he won’t be able to for a while. Let’s just hope he gets a cast in a cheerful color.

Eduard is going to the GP this afternoon to get some painkillers for his golfer’s elbow. He is not able to give it the proper rest it requires at work and it is bothering him a lot still. It’s his left arm, but he still uses it a lot, even though he tries not to and has other people do a lot of lifting for him. Without realizing it, you use your left arm more than you know.

It’s incredible how quickly the day is passing, but I do keep taking naps on the sofa. Whenever I start to feel down, I lie down and go to sleep and when I wake up I feel better. It’s just a need for sleep that gets me that way and a need for sweets, I crave them too. Yesterday, I ate cookies, but now they are all gone and I can’t be bad anymore, which is probably a good thing considering my still expanded waistline. Now I am eating some tiny little pickles from a delicatessen jar that calls them Petits Cornichons. They are okay. I don’t think they are as spicy as they could be and they are making me burp. When in doubt, burp. Two if by land, burp if by sea.

Humor!

Eduard has bought nectarines, but they are not ripe yet and will have to sit in the bowl for a while and you notice again how supermarkets so very often sell unripe fruit that they expect the customers to eat as if it is okay to. The problem is that they don’t ripen well in the bowl and very often rot before they ripen properly. You want fruit that comes right of the tree that is sun kissed and just ripe and still warm. That’s the best kind.

I remember, as a kid, laying under some cross bay bushes that belonged to a great uncle of mine and stuffing myself with the cross bays. They were so good! They were growing in a sunny spot and very sweet and I ate so many of them. I don’t know if that was actually appreciated. When they gave me permission to eat some, I don’t think they expected me to eat so many.

Man, those pickles have made me sick. I must have had too many of them and they are not agreeing with me at all. Mean little buggers. They may have been petits, but they packed a wallop.

Well, time to go scrub the toilet. Off I go, wish me luck.

Ciao…

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Whitsun Monday

In the Netherlands, religious holidays are always celebrated on Sunday and Monday, so today is also an official holiday and Eduard has the day off and all the stores and everything are closed. I should say that a religious holiday is celebrated for two days, so we have first and second Easter Day and first and second Christmas Day etc.

It is appreciated very much by the general population, of course, except that you always have to remember to do extra shopping, allowing for that extra day when all the shops are closed, besides them being closed on Sundays. I think in the States what we have now is called Pentecost, but I am not absolutely sure. It is Whitsun in England.

When I write England, I really mean Great Britain, Just like people say Holland when they really mean The Netherlands. Holland refers to just the two western provinces of South and North Holland. I guess it is the same as saying America when people really mean The United States of. Canada and Mexico are in North America too.

I guess it would be better if we were all more accurate, but people in the Netherlands really refer to their country as that, except for the Limburgers who mean everybody who does not come from Limburg when they say Hollanders. Then try to explain to them that you are not a Hollander when you come from some other region in the Netherlands. Somebody from the Northeast does not want to be referred to as a Hollander.

It is actually almost 5 AM and I slept from 9 PM last night. The only reason that I am up now is because I had to go to the toilet. That always wakes me up sufficiently to make me want to stay up and have my first mug of coffee and my first cigarette. It is one of the highlights of my day. I walk into the living room, turn on the lights, turn on the computer and walk into the kitchen to make my first mug of Senseo. When I am done doing that, the computer is ready and I am ready to blog.

Physically, I have all the symptoms of a depression. I am slow as a sloth and unmotivated and absentminded and uninterested in many things. My main occupations are sleeping, daydreaming and blogging, but I am not unhappy. I am just enormously slow and preoccupied with very unimportant things. Nothing really gets accomplished and I really don’t care. I am perfectly contend to just waste the whole day not accomplishing anything at all.

I would only start to worry if I got visions of doom to go with this, but I don’t have those. In my own way, I am perfectly happy, as long as no one expects anything out of the ordinary from me. A lot is out of the ordinary right now. It can mean many things, such as walking the dog at noontime in the hot sun and feeling that I have to drag my body through the warm day. What a bother. And doing yesterday’s dishes promptly in the morning, I’m just not up to it. The only thing I still don’t mind doing very much is the laundry. For some reason, that is still very satisfying.

Eduard has an outing planned for us today. It involves the motorcycle and riding into Belgium. The rest is a surprise. I hope it involves a lot of sitting down at café tables having cappuccinos. That’s what I would really like. I hope it doesn’t involve a lot of hiking, but knowing Eduard it is going to be strenuous, because he is in such good shape. I will wear my hiking boots, just in case and then I will tell you all about it tomorrow. With my bone weary body, which is going to get a nice massage then from the physiotherapist.

I have been sitting very crooked again and I think it is because I am not paying enough attention. I have a big pain in my right side from eternally leaning on the armrest of the office chair. I have to remember to sit on two buns and I keep forgetting. If I remember, I automatically sit straight. Once I am leaning on the armrest good, I have a heck of a time getting myself off it without it hurting. I move like an old injured woman.

Last night I dreamed that my ex, the republican, was working for Barack Obama and that he was begging him for a raise. Apparently I was still married to him, because we lived in a house of which the walls were covered in ivy, but that had no roof and we could not afford the mortgage and the Jeep Cherokee. Barack Obama’s wife drove her Jeep Cherokee in rallies and he suggested that I do the same thing and I told him that I could not afford the gas.

Then I dreamed that Jesus was supposed to be burned on the cross in a motel room and that it was all carefully planned by his disciples and him, according to some version of the Old Testament, except that something went wrong in the planning and that a careless chambermaid ignited the fire too soon by creating a draft while making the beds when Jesus wasn’t on the cross yet. He tried to get on in the middle of the fire, but it was too late and he and Simon were arguing about whose responsibility it had been that there had been a snafu. It was decided that the chambermaid was in cohorts with the devil and therefor she became evil.

Then I dreamed that I lived in an institution with other people who regularly became psychotic and who had to give themselves injections when they did, but there was a major campaign to get them and their periodic craziness accepted by the public at large and to have them inject themselves while they were out performing regular jobs during which they would become psychotic. One man was a door to door insurance salesman and was proud of the fact that he would get psychotic during a visit and excuse himself and give himself an injection and be alright again 20 minutes later.

One of the exercises we did in the institution was ballroom dancing and I thought it was scary to dance with crazy people and also to go out onto the grounds and go for walks with them. I was torn between accepting that I was as crazy as them and denying it and being afraid of them.

Well, some of that is pretty clear while the rest of it is very obscure. Anyone who can figure it out is welcome to.

Eduard is still very busy sleeping. Sometimes I can here him snore a bit. That never bothers me and sometimes Jesker snores too, so they snore in unisome. Yesterday morning, I didn’t let Jesker out on time and he did a piddle on the living room floor, much to his own embarrassment. He is mortified when he does and this is only the second time that he has. I must have been so preoccupied that I didn’t pick up any urgent signals. He is such a good dog and really waits until there is no other option.

Lord, the thought of getting the show on the road is really daunting. It must be done and I am trying to figure out what is important and how quickly I need to do what and in which order. I think as long as Eduard is not up, I am not going to worry about a thing, though. That’s a good excuse, don’t you think?

I suppose that is all I’ve got to share with you for now. I’ll go and visit some other bloggers in my alter ego, or should I say my real ego, because I do insist on being Norah here. Even if it means being “Bloody Norah.” Noortje is just an endearment for Norah.

Oh, by the way, after some time, I will delete my other blog. Say in about a month. That will give everybody the opportunity to have made the move. I think that is more than ample time. Maybe I’ll do it sooner. Say, in about 2 weeks. After that I will have to find a way to gather new readers around me. It will be a whole new challenge.

Have a terrific day, don’t work too hard, because none of us here are.

Ciao…

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