Mad dash.

This morning I made a mad dash into town to the lawyer, because I finally, after 3 months, got that marriage certificate I have been waiting for and which could hold up all the divorce proceedings if I did not have it. My daughter took care of me getting it in the end, but it was like pulling teeth, very painful and very slow. We should celebrate the fact that we’ve got it now, although I am waiting for the phone to ring and have the lawyer tell me that it is the wrong kind of certificate and that the Dutch courts will not accept it. Heaven forbid. I must not call disaster upon myself.

Social Services has moved to a whole new location and as a result, I do not have my monthly payment yet or the paperwork to tell me what it will be and why. The bank account is dwindling again, so they better get their act together quickly, or I will be robbing Peter again. Nor have I heard anything yet about the housing and medical care subsidies, so I will call them on Monday. Life is a bitch…

I am waiting for the Exfactor to come over as he said he would come for a visit. He has a new cast on his arm and he does not need surgery. He takes the short train ride from where he lives into town and gets around as well as he can. I guess he hobbles.

I would hate to be bothered with an arm in a cast and I have never broken anything, except for some fingers when I was doing some plumbing, by putting to much force on the wrench and having the thing slip on me. Ouch.

Yes, I am a real do it your selfer when called for. The only thing I don’t do well is drill holes into these very hard walls that we have here. In America you just punch a whole in the wall wherever, with whatever nail you’ve got. No such luck here. You need a hard stone drill bit and a very strong drill and muscle power.

I guess the Exfactor won’t be helping me hang up any movie poster any time soon. Oh well, I still can go and buy the frames and get them ready to hang. Maybe if I look at my upstairs neighbor kindly. The top upstairs neighbor who is an artist, supposedly, is really an alcoholic. I’ve met him in the stairwell and been met by fumes of alcohol and I have seen his unfocused drunken little eyes. So, he is no great asset to the building. They always put at least one loser in these apartments. He is quiet, though, and I think he has several lady friends who keep him and his apartment looking presentable. He comes and goes on a scooter and it does look a little banged up. As if he uses unmovable objects to stop against.

Now I need to take a nap…

Well, instead of taking a nap, I washed the dishes and did some laundry, which are also useful ways to squander your time, although I would have preferred the nap. It is that sort of day. It has been steadily raining all afternoon and it doesn’t look like it will stop anytime soon. I think it may be time to build the Ark of Noah and start sorting out those animals and fertile men and women.

The Exfactor was here with a very sore knee with a huge scab on it and a fluorescent yellow cast on his arm. It looked mighty impressive. he also had other assorted bruises and scabs on other parts of his arms and legs. He looked like he took a real slider.

The Überhund acted like his normal self, meaning that he nearly choked on his own little puppy sounds that he made out of happiness at seeing the Exfactor. He really makes a big deal out of it and gets himself so worked up that I have to tell him to quit. He could have an epileptic fit. The Exfactor has that effect on him always and makes him behave in crazy ways and the Überhund loses all his dignity. Luckily, the cats are cooler and only come to greet him when they are good and ready in their own sweet time, when they feel like it. Cats are so cool that way, which makes me think I have more of a cat personality than a dog one. I’d never jump up and down for joy for anybody like the Überhund does.

Anyway, we had a nice visit and I sent him off with an umbrella, although this does infringe upon his manly ego somewhat, to be seen with an umbrella, so I gave him the most masculine looking one and the one I least use myself. The Exfactor does come with an instruction booklet and I am glad that I am not the one who has to read it anymore. The Paramount can partake in that joyful activity now.

I can’t believe it is Friday again and that we will be enjoying another weekend tomorrow. It seems when you get older, time flies by quickly. It is like my life consists of very short weeks with very many weekends. I am not complaining about the weekends, but the time flying by sort of intimidates me, as it means I’m getting older faster and I am all in favor of slowing down that process. I have even started using a day cream every day to ward off wrinkles, which I will curse if they appear on my face and smear bat’s poop and toad’s slime on if it works. I’ll become a good witch and ward off evil blemishes to my face.

I’ve still got a list of rock and roll bands that I need to get the CD’s of from the library, but I don’t own a library card and I think they are 70 Euro’s, which is a little steep for my pocketbook right now. I suppose that for now I will live without this music and keep it on my wish list for the near future. I so very brightly and spritely want to stay on top of modern music and keep some sort of beat going in my body that is never allowed to die out. I need to stay on top of things all the time. I think it may be time for a little trip to Deezer and find out what the latest offerings are.

Right then, you all have yourself a really good day and a musical one if you must and keep it dry.

The trick is to not do so many rain dances, somebody ought to stop doing those.

Ciao…

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Serene Saturday.

I am sitting here listening to an MP3 player that I erased and then filled with songs that were really odds and ends that I had not used anywhere else. There is a lot of Norah Jones, nice and mellow, and Rosanna, who is an Argentinian singer. I had world music on this MP3 player and I actually wasn’t that fond of it, although I tried to be and some of it wasn’t too bad, but I could never listen to the whole thing, because it always got on my nerves after a while.Too many jungle noises and drums, I guess.It does all start to sound alike after a while. There is something other worldly about world music, hah.

I like Norah Jones, I find her so completely inoffensive and mellow that I can do any sort of job with her in the background. She doesn’t have a great voice, but that seems to be just fine too and the music is pleasant. Sometimes you need music like that, that doesn’t tax your brain too highly and just lets you get on with whatever you are doing. If I could sing and play the piano, I’d like to do it like Norah Jones.

I’ve got the Real Player full of music to pick from. There’s lots of classical there too that the Exfactor put in there, and also Johan Sebastian Bach and Mendelssohn, which are more than tolerable to me. I can put together any sort of combination MP3 player, however the mood strikes me. I gigabyte one is about 165 songs, so that is more than enough to chose from.

I have one MP3 player with French chansons, nobody famous on there, and I am thinking about erasing them and replacing them with something else. The chansons are mostly okay, but some of them are really bad and I am embarrassed to play them in company. Not exactly music to play at a cocktail party. I need somethinga little bit classier than that. You see how I never get done picking out my music. It’s an ongoing thing. A forever mind changing thing.

I prefer women performers. I just prefer women. I am always happy when women do well in the arts and get recognition. So sorry for you guys, but that’s the way it is, and I like it when women move away from typical female subjects and move into the more masculine areas of expression and make bold statements, although I do have to add that women, through whatever medium they use, can make a strong case for women and the women movement, but I don’t think they have to and that they owe it to us. An artist only owes his art to her/himself and screw what the public wants. That’s my humble opinion.

I just received a tunic this afternoon that I had ordered yesterday and it was a little big on me. Rather than send it back, I have made it smaller on the sewing machine and that worked great too. Now I’ve got all these other clothes I have to alter, which I will get around to in the shortest amount of time. Watch me zip those clothes under the needle in the fastest time possible. Records will be set.

My sister and I took the dogs for a walk this afternoon and had psychological talks. We are very good at this, being well versed in matters of the mind and what makes us tick and what makes the other person tick. I’ve suggested she use a tranquilizer, but she refuses to and is under the impression that she can somehow keep her frayed nerves under control by sheer mind power. It isn’t working very well.

It’s decided to be nice weather today. The sun has been shining all day and I have washed the windows, but because the sun is shining on them, I can see the streaks and where I need to go over them again. It’s very frustrating, but they do look a lot cleaner from the outside looking in. Next, I have to clear away some weeds. I’ll do that this weekend. It’s some sort of wild grass that grows between the tiles and the apartment and is pretty when it first comes up but turns very wild after a while. The neighbors have put out pretty pots with nice looking plants and if it weren’t for the money I would do that too, but alas.

I do love Saturdays, because I always have a holiday feeling, having done the shopping on Friday. I really enjoy the weekends and take full advantage of them and really see them as days off. I am glad that the Sundays are still sacred here and aren’t frantic shopping days and there is always very little traffic on the roads. Nice and quiet and only the cafés and restaurants are open. I hope it always stays that way.

The Überhund is very soundly asleep at my feet. I can tell he’s getting older, because he sleeps a lot. Very deep sound sleeps.

My knees have been bothering me a lot these past couple of weeks and I have a heck of a time getting out of bed in the morning. I think I may need to take some supplements. It’s been a ongoing problem that gets worse at times and then lessens again. Maybe it is wearing these different shoes that’s the cause of it. Of course, like my GP said, it’s all due to having been overweight, but you’d think it would get better now. Sometimes, I think they’ll get stuck.

Maybe I have osteoarthritis just like Jesker and I need to be taking supplements just like him.

Well, I am off doing some other little jobs now. Something to keep me pleasantly, but usefully occupied. To keep me off the streets and out of trouble.

Have a great day and a super weekend.

Ciao…

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Cheer up.

I always forget what a cheer up listening to music is. I haven’t listened to any music in about a week and just lived here in almost complete silence, but this morning I put on an MP3 player with some good jazz and right away my mood lifted and my thoughts got perkier. It’s as if you need a sound track to your life to help you accomplish the little deeds that need to get done and that are somehow easier done when accompanied by some funky jazz. That is, until your battery runs out and you quickly have to remove the old one and pop in a freshly loaded one.

All of this jazz I am listening to is obscure. There are no famous artists amongst them, but I don’t care as long as they swing and they do. They make my mind swing and put me in overdrive and I function just a little better. Why do I forget about that? Why do I suddenly live in silence when living in melodies is so much better?

When I was a teenager, I listened to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. I also liked Vivaldi and Beethoven, but I don’t claim that I was a student of their music at that time. I listened to it with my sentimental, romantic heart and at certain passages I nearly swooned. I would play their records over and over again on my stereo installation in my room and I am sure I drove my poor parents crazy with the repetitiveness of it all. I was an incredibly romantic teenager and believed in true love and that one day my knight in shining armor would come by. I did not go out to look for him.

My girlfriends went to disco’s and bars, but I stayed home and had quiet evenings with my parents and my music. Sometimes there briefly was a boyfriend, but there was never a knight in shining armor.

Anyway, music is such a mood influencer. There was along time when I could not listen to it at all, because it would elicit certain emotions that I didn’t want to feel. Therefore I lived in complete silence and I also liked the TV off. I didn’t want any outside noise to penetrate my thoughts and put ideas and feelings there that I possibly could not deal with.

When I first started going crazy, I listened endlessly to the soundtrack of “La Double Vie de Veronique.” It was so endlessly sad and I would become lost in it, but after a while I had to stop listening to it, because it became an obsession. Now I think I could listen endlessly to “Toutes les Matins du Monde,” but with much joy in my heart at this heartbreakingly beautiful music. But I don’t do that, I don’t listen obsessively to anything. I let myself be surprised by what is on the MP3 players.

My love for classical music now goes to the precision of baroque, especially Bach, who would not love him? I wish I could say he had Dutch ancestry like Beethoven, but we can claim no such thing. We Dutch can only claim one baroque composer and that is Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and he is not well known at all, not even in the Netherlands. It seems we only turn out great painters.

Does music soothe the savage beast? All the animals leave the living room when I play it. I don’t think they are charmed.

Well, I must be on my way and do my housewifely chores. You didn’t know that I morph into a housewife sometimes, did you?

Have a great day.

Ciao…

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Weirdness.

It is 4 AM and I am listening to some very weird music. Somehow that seems very appropriate, ordinary music wouldn’t do at this time of the day. This music is very futuristic and mixed with some nostalgic bits it makes you think you are moving between two time zones, the future and the past, but nowhere near the present.

Sometimes, I have a great need for weirdness in music and art, because it somehow seems to set free a part of me that needs some breathing space also. Room for the absurd, for the oddball craziness of it all. Not all the time, but a great deal of the time and at ever increasing moments the older I get. Maybe I get less conventional the older I get and I am more able to move away from that which is comfortable and middle class.

I am always so relieved when there is something unexpected in music and in art, when it is not predictable, when I had not anticipated it. I like to be thrown a challenge and to me that is unpredictable weirdness. Not even Andy Warhol could top that one, although maybe in his time he did for some people.

I don’t mean artists who have developed a trick and keep repeating the same trick like they are saying, “Look Ma, no hands.” Andy Warhol did that. I mean people who keep being innovative, no matter how difficult that is. Imagine finding someone like that and becoming completely enamored with them.  I love how in music, someone flips a page and does something completely opposite of what I was expecting.  That gives me a tingle down my spine.

It’s hard to be standing out and to be outstanding out there. There is a lot of noise and there is an overload of visual input. How do you rise to the top of that? Luck, fate, connections? All of those? When you are convinced of someone’s uniqueness, how do you convince the world?

Anyway, back to the weirdness. I really appreciate people who make it and do it well, without turning you off, because you can also get vulgar and loud and call that weirdness, which I guess it is also. That is a matter of taste. I suppose I like understated weirdness, the kind that is not so obvious and in your face, but subtle and amusing, although I like the kind with a bang also. I suppose this is all very personal and hard to describe, because I would have to show you, and have you listen to it, in order to make clear what I mean.

I used to think that in my world, I wanted everyone to behave rationally and predictably, but now that I am on my own, I am finding out that this is not true. Oh, of course, I want the majority of the system and the people in it to function normally and to do what it is supposed to do, but I am less afraid of the uniqueness and out of the ordinariness of the individuals in it than I thought I was. As a matter of fact, I embrace them. I find that I have all sorts of room for them and that they do not make me feel uncomfortable by being different. As a matter of fact, I am drawn to them, to their uniqueness and feel empathy with them. I am not talking about losers (whatever those are), I am talking about unique individuals.

I went through a stage in my life when I thought that being middle class was very important and the highest goal I could reach, well upper middle class and the attitude that goes with it. Such an erring attitude can only be blamed on the environment I found myself in and the circumstances I found myself under, cut off from other more invigorating and challenging attitudes. Call it the age of innocence, although it was more the age of ignorance.

Having been cured of that now, once and for all, I see how debilitating an isolating environment can be. When you are not exposed well enough to other ideas and points of view and conflicting attitudes, it is so easy to become narrow minded and complacent and convinced of just your own shallow look on life. You must constantly be challenged in your convictions and have to account for them.

Well, I hope that my offspring has enough sense to look beyond her horizons and see more than I did, although I have to admit that I possessed a large amount of naivety for a long part of my life. In other words, it took me a long time to become a grown up.

So, here I am sitting, listening to this weird music and I think it is a good way to start the day. The Uberhund has been out to greet me and is now laying at my feet pretending to be sound asleep, but really waiting for something exciting to happen. It’s to early for that, although the sun is up and the birds have chirped. Some cats are drifting in.

I suppose I’ll go and check on the food and water and milk supply of the life stock. Oh, it’s Saturday, isn’t it? Well, the mail will still come and phone calls will still be made. Oh, bummer.

Have a nice day.

Ciao…

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Too early two.

I am sitting here with my daft head thinking strange things, because I am not quite wide awake yet. It is too early to be awake properly, yet this is the second time I am tonight. I thought what my mot de garde would be and it would be something like “no pain, no gain”. In my sleep foggy mind I imagined we had founded a literary foundation and each of us had to have a slogan like it, that was only known to us insiders. Talk about wanting to be exclusive. Of course, I thought if I can’t be creative in the fine arts, I must try and be it in the literary arts. God forbid that I should turn out to be only mediocre at anything. What a waste of a wonderful mind that would be…

It may come to that yet. Embrace mediocrity, Irene. Yes, humbly I will. I will accept that I am just an ordinary person with no special talents at all and that, at heart, I am just an interloper trying to pass as something other than le petit citoyen that I am. Bourgeois! Oh, the shame of it, the embarrassment. I weep. I hide my face in my hands. I sob. Maybe I can be a dramatist. There may be hope for me yet.

Well, like Babaloo says, there are those of us who do art and there are those of us who criticize. She didn’t quite say it liker that, but I am taking literary license. We less gifted people who stand back and admire or disapprove, as you will. I once went to an exhibition of German expressionists and left there with a headache, that’s how impressed I was, I will never forget it, but was it supposed to make that impression on me? The much touted about exhibition of the impressionists at the Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art left me rather unmoved. It was as if I was looking at reproductions. I didn’t get any goosebumps. A Frans Hals painting at a museum in Berlin left me weak kneed. I wasn’t expecting it there. The paintings of Frida Kahlo move me very much. I like any jubilant painting, a painting that can’t help but be happy about life, no matter it’s subject.

Well now, how did I get here? Oh yes, being a critic. There is a preschool close to here that has some art by three year olds hanging up in its front window and I would love to frame it in some nice pas par touts and hang it up here above the sofa. It is so uninhibited. I don’t think any three year old has that talent. Some of them just make a mess of it.

The painting I liked best that my son made, was the portrait he made of himself. I am sure his father has it somewhere, because I know we wouldn’t have thrown it away. It was so refreshing, and shocking almost, to see how he saw himself as a five year old and how close to the truth that was, including his adorable butch crew cut and bright blue eyes. Children should be taught art by real artists when they grow up and not to learn to color within the lines.

I love how the Uberhund has accepted me as the Alpha dog and goes wherever I go. He is always within a few feet distance of me. Now he is snoring away beneath the computer desk. It is very good to feel such loyalty from an animal and I feel very privileged. I must always take care to give him the proper attention he deserves and to never neglect him. I must remember to give him his cuddles regularly and not be autistic about that. Luckily, he is very good about demanding his time with me. He just shoves his nose in my hands.

He is very good about letting me know when in the evening he wants to go out. He doesn’t like to wait until 10 o’clock, that’s too late for him. If I tell him it’s too early, he barks at me and starts pacing up and down impatiently and doesn’t rest until I have put on my shoes and then he is so happy, he does pirouettes. That’s not bad for an old overweight dog on a slippery floor.

He tries to be very bossy on our walks and he has been testing me a lot and I really have to be firm and drag him away from areas I don’t want him to go to. That’s hard to do with a 20 kilo dog who’s stubborn. A very loud voiced, “No!” does wonders. Sometimes it’s confusion and sometimes it’s plain stubbornness. You can be too kindhearted to your dog too, thinking, “Well, it is his outing.”

I am listening to the last MP3 player I downloaded and I am pretty happy with it. It’s better than elevator music. It’s cocktail party music. Some of it is “Let’s get between the sheets” music. It’s a good thing I am home alone.

Oh, I have t see my SPN this morning. I think I won’t see her every week anymore. It isn’t really necessary, because all I do is sit there and tell her how well I am doing. You can only talk about that so much and then you are done with that. I also wonder if the people at the day therapy wonder what I am doing there, because i am not showing any obvious signs of any affliction. I’ll be lucky if I get to finish my 4 months there. Sorry, this patient does not need out highly qualified care. She is too normal.

I’ll get sent out into the real world, you wait and see.

The Exfactor is coming to fix my bike this afternoon. For those of you who are wondering, he did tell me last time how much he enjoyed his freedom of responsibility and care. How he liked only having to worry about himself and to only think of himself, so the same story that is true for me is true for him. He likes coming and going as he pleases and not being bogged down in a traditional relationship. So, don’t feel sorry for him, because this is what he wanted, except that I made him choose for it sooner than he wanted to. In the end, we both got what we wished for.

Well, that’s it for me now, my dears. Happy Tuesday to you. For those of you where it is still Monday, there is the Monday post too.

Ciao…

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Aaarrrggghhh!

I just finished filling up the fourth and last 1 GB MP3 player and I tell you, it looks like such an easy little job that you’ll just do in your spare little hours between everything else. Well, it is not. It takes hours to find the right music and fill those suckers up and, of course, once you start, you can’t stop. At least I can’t, because I am so obsessive. I want it done and I want to listen to it. Well, now I am and I still have the other three to listen to properly, but at least I know that I don’t have to do this anymore and that I can get back to my normal life. Jeez, get with the program, Irene!

I have neglected my housecleaning and my poor animals and I have not given them special belly rubs and talked to them all nicely and given them extra treats because they were being so good, I am a bad mother. I should be put in the hall of shame. The Uberhund was so patient with me. he looked at me longingly, but my eyes were fixed on the computer screen and my hand was attached to the mouse and I barely petted him.

Well, I guess it wasn’t all bad, I did take him for his walks and pick up his turds and dispose of them properly, and I did make a big deal out of him when I came home and he was waiting patiently by the door. You should hear the endearments I call him. You would be embarrassed for me. They’re hard to translate into English, Ha, that’s my excuse and that’s my story and i stick to it. Somebody has been commenting and telling me that a lot lately, but he is a mystery person to me. It’s probably John.

I went to creative therapy today and worked with clay. I attempted to make a woman’s head. It was very funny. I got the general shape right but she could have been an old croon or an old man. She had no upper lip. It was completely hidden away behind her extremely large nose. She also had very large nostrils. She had no forehead and very heavy eyebrow ridges, Sort of Neanderthal like. I did get her cheekbones right and her eyelids. I didn’t bother giving her ears. I figured that was too hard and I gave her hair instead.

The instructor came I sliced a good part of her nose of and remodeled it and then we could see her upper lid, which she turned out to have after all. It did improve her appearance a bit, but she still looks like an old croon. Maybe I am a character artist and I only do funny heads well, by accident.

I didn’t quit and made a new head avoiding all the mistakes I made in the first one. Now I made a woman who looks like Barbara Streisand, she has the nose and the heavy lidded eyes. At least she looks less like an old croon, but it isn’t art. So I give up on the clay and next week i will try something else again until I find my specialty. Which may be bookbinding or something like that. I am a pathetic student of the arts. I know what I like , but I can’t make it. Here I thought I was, and had the reputation of, being artistic. It’s all a damn lie, I tell you.

Well, luckily, it was finally time to go home and I hopped on my bike and when I was almost home, it started to rain like crazy, so I peddled like mad and got wet anyway.

My new second hand bed is going to be here on Thursday and I think the Exfactor is coming to get the double bed on Wednesday, so that means one night on the sofa, but it does give me a chance to clean up the bedroom really well. There are going to be huge dust bunnies under the double bed, I know that for sure and God only knows what other surprises. I do have three cats, after all. I just hope there is nothing dead underneath there. Like a petrified mouse. I found one once when I moved the bookcase.

I am making a new friend at the place where the therapy classes are held. There is a common room and veranda where everybody from all the classes have their breaks and I met someone I know from an earlier time in the hospital. We hit it of right away again and I think she and I will end up being friends again. We’re just testing the waters now. You have to when all of you come with an instruction booklet. You just take it nice and slow.

I said to everybody that I was getting a single bed on Thursday and that they knew what that meant for my future life as a single woman, didn’t they? They all had a good laugh about that.

It does mean a lot of room in the bedroom to roller skate in and do other activities that need a lot of room. Like playing croquet, for instance, or shuffleboard.

Well, now I am going to end this and sit down on my rear end on the sofa, because I have a sore butt from sitting in his computer chair. Oh yes, will somebody give me Kaycie’s proper website address? I think I am looking in the wrong place. Is she no longer living in the Bible belt?

Have a terrific day. Be artistic and spread your knowledge to us less gifted people. We poor souls.

Ciao…

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Music!

I discovered a website where you can download whole albums to your MP3 players for nothing! They are not by well known artists, but they are good and they have a huge variety of choices in genres. If you click on one genre you like, the next list that shows up is even bigger than the one before and the possibilities are endless. Like this: 17sonsrecords 70s abstract acoustic age alternative ambient atmospheric bass beat blues brazil breakbeat calm chanson chansonfrancaise chill chillout classical club cool dance dark darkwave death disco dj downtempo dream drum drumnbass dub electro electronic energic experimental folk free french funk fusion garage german gothic groove grunge guitar hard hardcore hardrock heavy hiphop house humor idm improvisation indie industrial instrumental jazz live lounge love meditative melancolic melodic metal minimal musique new newage noise piano poetry pop poprock postrock progressive psychedelic psytrance punk punkrock rap reggae relaxing rock ska solo soundtrack space synthesizer techno text trance trash trip triphop variete vocal world

As you can see, there is lots to choose from and I had a lot of fun trying to decide which genre I like best. I had two empty 1 GB MP3 players that the Exfactor had given me and two of my own of which I didn’t like the music, so I emptied those, so I had four MP3 players to fill up. Now, I am not going to claim that I managed to do that this weekend, because that would have been impossible, but I sure came close. At one point I literally had to push myself away from the computer and make myself do something else, because I was becoming a little bit obsessive with it. Oh, here is the link to the website: http://www.jamendo.com/en/

You see how it’s a good thing that I live by myself and can indulge in these little obsessions and only have to take account of the Uberhund and makes sure he gets fed and walked on time and petted, of course. He forgives me everything and just lies at my feet while I sit here behind the computer doing my thing. Don’t worry, he lets me know if it’s time he needs to go out and needs a little affection. He plants both his front paws on my lap and barks at me.

So, I didn’t do much else this weekend. It sort of passed by without me participating in it very much. I was lost to the world. My sister called this morning and I said, “Oh yes, there is a real world out here too, isn’t there?” Her husband and the kids are on vacation and she has the house to herself, which she is celebrating by cleaning it. She was washing the windows today. I told her that the dear Lord did not like that, people washing windows on Sundays. She said she was only doing the inside. I said that it didn’t matter, he could see her anyway.

I know I am going to bed early tonight. I woke up with the alarm clock this morning, but then managed to take a little nap after I walked the Uberhund. I am looking forward to going to sleep. Tomorrow I have creative therapy and I must be in the proper state of mind for that. Hopefully creatively inspired. I have a vision of a head I want to make out of clay, sort of like Medusa with wild curly hair. I will give it a go, we’ll see how it turns out. Hair may be to fragile to make.

Sorry for the short post, people, but I am going to walk th Uberhund and then call it a night. I need my beauty sleep.

Have a good one, wherever you are, whatever you do.

Ciao…

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A dull day.

I am having a dull day and I am having it on purpose. I feel dull and dumb witted and I have decided not to exert myself at all and not do anything that requires great amounts of efforts, except for walking the Uberhund. I have lazed on the sofa, taking little cat naps, listening to my music, thinking insignificant thoughts, turning into a vegetable, an eggplant maybe, and letting the whole world pass in a parade and it feels good.

It’s so pleasant being lazy and dull and dumb witted. I haven’t even properly made up my face, though I have combed my hair and put on decent clothes. I know the queen isn’t coming by for tea today, so I don’t give a hoot. I’ve done the dishes and made the bed and cleaned up the living room, so we know a decent person lives here.

I sit here and yawn and think about the next nap and how lovely it is to drift off until the Uberhund nuzzles me with his nose to get me up. This morning I repeatedly hit the alarm clock until the snooze alarm stopped and went back to sleep until the Uberhund thought I had done enough of that and woke me up. He did have dire business to do due to that found bone.

It was already warm outside at 7 AM and we made a longish walk and when we got home, I realized I had forgotten to take the mail to the mailbox, so we went and did that too. We were fairly worn out after that and both took naps. In the interest of science, I am willing to find out how many naps a 53 year old woman can take on a lazy Saturday in early July, accompanied by her trusty four footer.

That bone put the Uberhund off his food for a while, but he just ate a bowl of Frolic, so I guess he is back to normal now. I wonder if he puts two and two together in his mind and associates eating the bone with not feeling so well? At least he had a terrific time yesterday gnawing on it and feeling like a ferocious ancestral being. I am still wondering if we stumbled upon the scene of a crime and it was part of a human thighbone? My imagination works overtime.

The cats are droopy like we all are. We are all just droopy. I called my sister and she was cleaning her house from top to bottom and I think there is something seriously wrong with her, because she sounded as if she was enjoying it. I had to call her about a grammatical question and since she is a trained elementary school teacher there is no better person to ask. I have forgotten so many of those Dutch rules. I always forget to ask her, because i forget she is smart and knows these things.

I have to forward the Exfactor’s mail to him now at his new address and I still have to look it up each time, but soon I will know it by heart. I can’t address it to that cute house with the climbing rose over the front door portico with the number 15 next to it and the nicely shaped bushes in the front garden.

I enjoy getting mail now, when it is addressed to me in my own name. Even bills I don’t mind and I am very organized. I have everything in binders in its own place.

My sister just came by to bring me this weekend’s paper. She thought I might enjoy reading it and I said, yes to add it to my stack of recycled paper that needs to be put to the curb. That’s on the 26th of July, I mustn’t forget that. That’s why I’ve got that no/no sticker on the mail slot, so I won’t get any of that extra paper junk in my mail box. The weekend paper is so large too!

The Uberhund was beside himself when he saw my sister and started howling at her with is head pointing at the ceiling. That was a real welcome! He is a kind dog that way. He does have his favorite people.

The Exfactor is coming on Wednesday afternoon to take all the boxes out of the workroom and hopefully he will take the bed at the same time too. If my new bed is not here, I will sleep on the sofa. It will give me a chance to clean up the bedroom really well. There must be several inches of dust under the bed that are hard to get too. Oh, I see why I need this lazy day now. It is to gather my strength for the week to come.

Yes, well, I just wanted it to be lazy. Just for the heck of it. I didn’t want it to have a purpose.

A day will come, real soon, when I least expect it, when I will be struck by the window wash genie. I can feel it coming, but it’s not quite there yet. I did buy a new bottle of Glassex the other day, maybe that is a coming sign of it. First the spit and polish and then the Glassex.

Well, now I am very droopily going to make me another mug of coffee and try to figure out a way to download some music, there must be a way to do it, bugger!

Have a very good day, droopy or not lazy or active, with or without naps.

Ciao…

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A long day.

It seems like this has been a long day and now I am trying to recall what I’ve done with it and not a hell of a lot pops up. I think I may have wasted a lot of it, but that can’t be right! I distinctly remember doing useful things. I remember the alarm clock going off and me swearing at it and then getting up to look for it, although this time it wasn’t hard to find, it was sitting on the coffee table. I also remember that the day before, I had fallen asleep on the sofa and when the phone rang, I thought it was the alarm clock going off and I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t make it stop ringing when I repeatedly hit it on that button.

Anyway, I slowly figured out who I was over a mug of coffee in the company of my trusty Uberhund and little by little we became functioning beings. I wanted to say, human beings, but then I realized that the Uberhund is not human, although I do equate him with one, him being my companion and everything. He is my best pal, after all, and he hangs out with me all over the place, we even go to the bathroom together. We have no shame.

So, around 7 AM I was ready to go for our morning walk and breathe in the fresh morning air that has not yet been polluted by all the traffic on the highway that is not too far from us. The birds chirped and the wind blew lightly and the temperature was pleasant and we made our usual round. We made our regular turd stops and our beneath the tree foraging stops. The Uberhund tries to kill himself every once in a while by walking onto the bike path, but I usually pull him back on time.

This morning he found a gigantic bone that looked like it came from a ritual slaughter. Once he had that in his mouth he had only one objective, to get home with it as quickly as possible and nothing could deter him. He did not dawdle, he took the shortest way possible.

Once he was home, he walked around the apartment looking furtively for a safe place to chew the bone and he had a bit of a desperate look in his eyes, as if there was no place really good enough. I finally placed his pillow in the corner by the sofa and he grudgingly accepted that as being an okay place to chew on his bone.

He has spent the rest of this day chewing on it, taking little times out to go for walks and eat and drink some water. Oh yes, and rest a little bit too. It’s a lot of work chewing on a bone and guarding it from the minion cats.

The Exfactor has gotten himself a magnificent house through he Anti Squatters Movement. It is a freestanding two story house with an attic and a basement, with a washer and dryer, a microwave and stove and oven and a refrigerator and a freezer. It has a wonderful garden with a gazebo and it is in a very nice neighborhood in Valkenburg, which is a tourist town a few kilometers from here. He is thrilled to bits and we all are very happy for him. It really is a nice house.

It’s partly furnished, so he doesn’t have to worry about having to go out and buy all sorts of furniture. He has asked for our double bed and I agreed he should have it if he would get me a single bed in return, so today I went to the second hand goods store and bought a used bed and bottom and mattress for a very reasonable price in good condition. It will be delivered some time next week, when the Exfactor hopes to move his things out.

Isn’t it amazing how good luck is always on our path? It could have taken a lot longer for him to find a decent place to live and it turned out so well. The rent is incredibly cheap and all inclusive which means he’ll be able to help me buy that sofa I so desperately want and write off the money as an expense for redecorating. It does mean that he’ll have to pay me more alimony, which makes no difference to me, because social services will just lower my welfare payment. I don’t get ahead one way or the other. I’ll just be less of a burden on the system, which is good, I guess.

Anyway, I went to the grocery store this morning and managed to stay within the budget. That’s good. It is always a pleasure to stick to the budget and not be tempted by all the nice items that are on sale and that all want to go home with me. I have an iron will and a shopping list and I don’t deviate.

The Exfactor came by at noon to fix my bike, because the pedal sometimes doesn’t want to pedal and just goers round without doing anything. As it is, he was so busy with this unexpected house, that he did not have time to look at my bike and I can’t blame him. There are dozens of things to take care of.

In the meantime, back at the farm, I got sick of listening to one MP3 player and switched to another. I am hoping to find some relief of this music I have been listening to too much, day and night, endlessly. I think maybe I need to turn on Deezer radio for a while. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Annie di Franco.

I am paranoid about having the computer on too much because of the energy it uses and I have lowered my monthly energy estimate now that I am living on my own. I am very frugal with the lights etc. I almost need a seeing eye dog.

I find the evenings the most boring. There doesn’t seem to be that much to do and I really have to find something to entertain myself. The kitchen cupboards are clean. Next I should clean out the big closet where the water heater is and where we have a shelf system that holds odds and ends, a lot of odds that probably can get tossed. I always feel like eating something good. Like shortbread cookies. Yum!

Tonight I am going to make it a point again to watch the eight o’clock news. I did it last night, but I hardly remember what it was all about. I have to get in the habit of retaining what I see and hear. It could be useful some day.

Well, that was it for me for today. It wasn’t hugely exciting, but there was enough there not to make it completely dull.

You all have yourself a great day or evening, whichever you are in the middle of.

Ciao…

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Unproductive to a point.

This was going to be a very productive day with me vacuuming and cleaning out the last kitchen cupboard, but somehow it isn’t turning out that sort of day at all. Instead, it is turning into a cozy day at home with the Uberhund and the cats, while outside it rains on and off and the world gets refreshed and very brightly green. I do like cozy days at home and since the day is only half way over yet, all things are possible and I may surprise myself and accomplish a big deed yet. We’ll see how the mood strikes me.

I do like this kind of weather. It makes me feel all safe and comfortable inside my little apartment and with just a few lights on it gives an atmosphere of real coziness. Dutch people are big on coziness, It is a stop word for us. We are always looking for it wherever we go.

I did just go and have a coffee with my sister where she practiced her signature in her maiden name and we had to find the nicest one. We finally settled on the best one that is also the most readable. She had changed her signature when she got married, where i had kept mine when I did, so I did not have that added problem. I gave her the book on how to get through a divorce for the first time that has many good tips in it. I hope it helps her a lot. They have the added complications of children and shared property, which the Exfactor and I didn’t have.

The Exfactor and the Paramount only see each other once every two weeks. Doesn’t sound like a very intense relationship, does it? He says that this is fine with him and I’ll have to take his word for it, but I wonder if he was not hoping for more. I think he might like a little bit more companionship than that. I don’t know why this was arranged this way, if it was to give her room with her other friends or if it is truly to give each other the space they need, but it is unconventional, considering he gave up his marriage for it.

He told me very proudly the other day, that he had not been reading my blog anymore and I said that that was good, because he would not have been able to anyway. I do appreciate him making the effort in not reading it anymore, but I still think it was better to remove the temptation all together and especially remove it out of the regions of the Paramount, crafty as she is. A woman does have a way to figure things out if she wants to badly enough. I’m a woman, I know these things.

I was once in a relationship with a man who was very dishonest emotionally. I learned to be very crafty and discover the truth about most things, but I did not enjoy playing that role of detective and being a subterfuge person. I developed a dislike for myself and my behavior, forced as I thought I was into it. It was all a very sick game we were playing and tearing myself lose from it was very painful, because dysfunctional behavior becomes addictive sometimes. Maybe the Paramount got a thrill out of the illegality of the relationship she had with the Exfactor. I hope for his sake that there is more than that. I wish for him to have romance and love in his life.

I, on the other hand, wish none of that for me. I wish for good friendships and good relationships with my sisters and my daughter. I wish for my mind to be equally clear and strong in the morning as it is at night when I go to bed. I want to continue to have these nice and relaxed relationships with the Uberhund and the minion cats, this harmonious togetherness.

Oh, by the way, the Uberkat and his sidekick the white cat are staying with me. In turn, the Exfactor is paying for my mobile phone. He wants them to stay in a place where they are happy and not subject them to a move and the stress that comes with it, not knowing where he is going to end up. it may be in an apartment 5 stories up.

Now it is true that the animals have been especially mellow since the Exfactor has been gone, so he does seem to have functioned as some sort of disturbing signal in the apartment. That is gone now and everybody is very relaxed. We have our routines and regular eating times and serenity and solitude and it all makes for quite living with some nice music in the background. I think the animals pick up on that.

So I don’t mind if the Uberkat and his white sidekick stay. They are no problem at all and I hardly notice any difference with one cat or three. Of course the one minion cat will always be the Uberhund’s favorite, but I am working on him accepting the other two more also and to not be so jealous of them. That’s why I have two hands to pet two animals with at the same time.

My sister was here briefly with her dog and he is not used to cats and is secretly afraid of them. He tries to hide this behind a certain amount of bravour and acting tougher than he is, but he is really afraid that they will jump up at him and bite him in the face. My cats don’t know this and find safe and high places to sit while he is here and glare at him with a lot of suspicion in their eyes. The dog sees their food dishes and thinks of only one thing, how to devour what is in them as quickly as possible. You know: Found food and all that. That dog has food on the brain.

The Uberhund has no sense of ownership when it comes to my sister’s dog and makes no effort to protect his territory. He doesn’t protect the cats or their food dishes.

Well. I typed a whole bunch of more stuff after this, but WordPress developed a problem and didn’t save it and swallowed my post. Luckily, it saved most of it as a draft, but then I had some trouble retrieving it. So I went off and did some other things, like vacuum the living room and the sofa and the chairs. I did accomplish something anyway and then there’s that one kitchen cupboard to clean yet.

Art, where’s the art? I don’t know, I am not artistic lately, I feel like a total dud when it comes to artistic endeavors and I need to be inspired by something grand. There are people out there doing some really good things, but I need to do something really good in real life in my creative therapy class. I have a vision of making a sculpture out of clay and I have the general shape in my head, but getting it done 3 dimensionally is something else all together, of course. I hope not to find out that I really am a total dud and not bake anything of it at all. I would hope to be exuberant, but I’m afraid I’ll just be uptight and narrow minded.

Alright, I have to read some blogs now. It’s a promise I made myself. I must do it. I’ve got an hour before I have to walk the Uberhund, so that gives me some time.

Ciao…

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