Whatever I want.

Since it is my birthday and since it is Sunday and since I live alone, I wasted the whole afternoon very enjoyably making a very large playlist on Deezer of mostly women artists. For some reason, by some twist of fate, I kept running into very good women arists, so I had a field day. I almost couldn’t keep up with myself and there was nobody here to say, “Irene, why are you wasting your whole afternoon doing this?” Oh, isn’t it lovely? In the meantime the phone kept ringing with people calling to wish me a happy birthday, which was nice, because I never knew who was on the line when I picked up the phone, so it was a surprise every time. I didn’t recognize the numbers quickly enough, because I answered the phone too fast. That’s how eager I was. It’s so nice to get so many phone calls.

The Exfactor and my sister came over this morning and they had joined forces and bought me a big bottle of Chanel no 5 eau de parfum. I was so happy with that, I just love and adore that scent and I haven’t had any for a long time. I love the way it lingers on my clothes too. I had asked for eau de toilette, but they said I deserved better. How sweet of them and so generous and my oldest sister sent me enough money to pay for the new clothes that I ordered on line yesterday, so that worked out very well. She is also always very generous and I am thrilled to pieces.

I would say that I had a very good birthday even though I didn’t give a party. I had considered it, but decided against it and keep it nice and quiet. You will possibly remember that I had two birthday parties last year and that a week later I found out that the Exfactor was in love with the Paramount. Next year I will be in the mood to give a real party again and drink a bottle of white wine.

I am going to keep this short, because it is my birthday and I want to sit cosily by the corner lamp in which I just placed an energy saving light bulb. It does make a difference in the room for atmosphere with that light burning. I have to cuddle the Überhund for a while and pet some cats, because I have been very preoccupied today.

Have a good rest of the Sunday.

Ciao…

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Satisfying Saturday.

Why am I going to have a satisfying Saturday, for goodness sake? That’s because my husband’s other woman has to work today and he is not going out on his afternoon off, but is going to be spending it with me instead. Well, I hear you all saying, that’s kind of like coming in second, isn’t it? Well. yes you are right, but by coming in second, I do get a relaxing weekend without the stress that a weekend normally brings with it and I can show my husband that a fun Saturday afternoon can be had with me also.

We are going to do part of the Art Route that is laid out throughout the downtown area in different historical buildings. Different sorts of artists have mini exhibitions in all sorts of locations and the artists come from all sorts of disciplines. So you have painters and film makers and graphic artists and sound artists and sculptors. It’s always very interesting, if sometimes not very weird, and the locations add to the interest and sometimes to the weirdness. Like the sound artist in the old cellar last year who also used light effects. We are starting our part of the route in the film house and are ending it there too. We are going to see two short films that are run in a loop by a Brazilian film maker. Apparently one of them is of an industrial chimney spewing smoke with Latin chanting accompanying it. Should be very interesting.

I am just glad that I don’t have to sit here with my nerves tied up in a knot in my stomach and that I can have a relaxing weekend for a change. You just don’t know what a difference that makes, or maybe you do and you are tired of my nerve wrecked missiles that I spew out every weekend. Like that chimney spewing smoke.

Actually, first I have to stay home and wait for a package to arrive containing some clothes I ordered on line yesterday. I was suddenly hit by the “I absolutely have to have it bug,” and couldn’t contain myself. I actually had to empty my virtual shopping basket of some items when the total added up to too much. I must go into my closet this morning and discard some things that I don’t wear anymore to make room for the new items. Yes, I am a woman all over the place and I do like pretty things, I can’t deny it. It gets worse as I get older, but that seems to run in the family. The vanity of it all!

My mother owned lots of pretty dresses and she looked like Hyacinth from “Keeping up Appearances.” My grandmother, who was Dutch Reformed, was even a vain woman and was always dressed to the nines and wore a fur coat and hat in the winter time. My mother always thought that she ought to own one too, but she spent her money on airfare to come and visit me once a year when I lived in the States, and she could have bought many fur coats with it.

Anyway, I was discussing clothes. The older I get, the more I like them and the more feminine I become. I fiddle with my make up and my hair in the morning and spritz on my perfume and make a big deal out of what I am going to wear, even when I am only going out to walk the dog. My SPN thinks these are all very good signs of good mental health. I like the color black, but I like it accentuated with bright colors and I do like tunics and dresses in bold colored patterns. I like to be a surprise when I walk in.

I like perfumes and usually own two or three different kinds, but I am now down to one bottle and some samples. That’s pretty meager and I hope the situation changes soon. I can actually swoon over a new bottle of perfume. My mother always wore Chanel no 5, and I have worn it too, and I think I might like to give that one a try again in the future. I am now wearing something by Calvin Klein that’s is light and fruity, but it doesn’t quite satisfy my nose. I doesn’t stay on my clothes that well and I do like that about perfumes, when the scent stays on your clothes and you pull on a sweater and the perfume still lingers there. I used to wear Oscar de la Rente, but I can’t get it here, it’s not available in the shops and I haven’t found it on line yet.

Oh, this talk about clothes and perfumes, if life were only that uncomplicated always. It would be more than fine with me if it was. I long for simpleness like that. I could spend my energy on such different things if I didn’t waste it fretting and stressing.

Yesterday was nap time day. I napped in the morning and I napped in the afternoon. It was lovely and much needed. I do love to fall asleep during the day and wake up in a stupor and have to pull myself together over a mug of coffee and a cigarette. I try not to pretend that I am all cheerful, as I have a tendency to do, and just sit there and be a grump for half an hour. I don’t bite any body’s head off. I just need to recompose my bits and pieces.

I vacuumed yesterday for the first time in a long time and it was a great success. I did not get a backache and the living room looks spotless, as I also vacuumed the sofa and the chairs. It was wonderful to do the job without pain and to be able to bend and twist and turn. I ran into cat barf twice. Once under the dining table and once by the corner of the sofa and had to get down on my knees to remove and scrub that. Much grass was eaten. Those cats do have some nasty habits and I think I know who the culprit is. I suspect Gandhi, as she is the real barfer in the family and she always does a real big load. No half measures with her. Jeez, the subject already!

The weather was warm and muggy and we are supposed to get rain starting this evening. That’s okay, because we’ve had some dry times and the gardens can use some rain. Our three little trees have come back real well and now have big bright crowns of leaves and two of them are taller than I am. The littlest tree is doing well and will grow a lot this summer and be tall by the end of it. I am so happy that they survived the winter and a month or so ago, they didn’t look as if they had made it. We had almost cut them down. Oops! Mother Nature is an amazing entity and never ceases to surprise.

Jesker’s growth on his paw is only getting bigger and after he has been to the dog groomer next week, we will take him to the vet again and see what is to be done about it. He needs to be trimmed and bathed first as it is high time and if he needs surgery, it is going to be a while before we can get it done. The spray that we put on his paw does not deter him from licking it, as a matter of fact, I think he just waits for it to dry up and then he licks it again, secretly.

There are birds chirping like crazy outside and John Mora would know what they are, but they all sound foreign to me who is used to Californian birds. I am most familiar with the mockingbird as we had one of them live in our olive tree in our garden in So.Cal and very often it sang at night when we tried to go to sleep. It really did sound like it was mocking us. Maybe this was a confused bird and it was not supposed to sing at night. Wikipedia does not tell me much about it.

Well, alright, it is time for some art. Let’s see what I can do about that. Try to do something really different.

It’s almost 6 o’clock and Jesker is sitting here being impatient, no doubt wanting his medicines and wanting to go for his walk. He is trying his best not to seem pushy, but he is looking at me with mournful eyes and I can’t ignore those.

So, I will say goodbye to you and wish you a very good day, as I am planning on having one of those myself with dear husband in my new outfit. I hope all that art does not confuse me and that I will still be able to think straight when I get home.

Ciao la miei buoni gente e migliori amici.

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Painted Beach Images number 3.

Yesterday I got up late, so I didn’t write a post, because after I got up, I still felt sleepy and I laid down on the sofa and took a nap there. That was just what I needed and when I woke up, I was full of energy and cleaned the apartment really well.

At noontime, I took the dog for a long walk and we both enjoy that so much. Eduard and I had taken him for a long walk on Sunday and Jesker came home real tired. We walked to the edge of town where the fields are and where there are lots of trees changing colors and where it is very beautiful. Every once in a while we saw a still life of color and stopped to admire it. Autumn certainly is a wonderful time of year when you live in a part of the world where it really is a noticeable season.

What you also notice, is all the various shapes and sizes of the leaves and how big some of them are and you want to pick them all up and bring them home with you. When we were kids, we used to make autumn baskets. We filled them with moss and wild mushrooms and chestnuts and leaves and anything we could find in nature and made an attractive arrangement with them. I don’t know if kids do that anymore. I have never seen my niece do that. I still remember the smell of them. So earthy and rich. I suppose kids would be discouraged to take things out of nature like that nowadays. You’re just supposed to look now and not take anything out of the woods.

Anyway, I cleaned the bathroom really well yesterday. It was a job I had been looking at for a while and finally decided to get over and done with and then when I did it, it turned out not to be too much work at all. I had seemed like a huge job in my mind. It’s funny how you get intimidated by some household chores and put them off forever and then when you do them, they turn out not to be as bad as you thought they were going to be at all. Now I find myself actually looking for jobs around the place and I noticed that I have to clean the bedroom really well again as there is spider rag there again.

Speaking of spiders, I was sitting on the sofa the other night and this huge spider came walking out from beneath it. It was very big and black. I called Eduard’s attention to it and Jesker came over to it right away, which caused the spider to disappear beneath the sofa again. We moved the sofa and Eduard caught the spider in a glass with a postcard and set it free outside. We always have a lot of spiders in the place, but mostly they are daddy long legs, very rarely do we see anything as large and scary looking as this one.When we moved the sofa, we found three lighters and a tennis ball and a lot of dog hair also.

It’s such a pleasure to walk outside with my new coat and my new boots on. I know my new coat looks good and my new boots make a nice sound when I walk. I feel better looking and it makes me feel more assertive. It’s amazing what good clothes do for your ego. I am definitely aware of what I wear and if it looks good on me. I could never wear just any old thing. I do that when I am very depressed, but when I am feeling better, I do no such thing. Every morning, I put my make up on and comb my hair into place and get dressed properly. I do it for myself as well as for Eduard. I want him to find an attractive woman when he comes home. But I also want to look good when I walk the dog or when I go anywhere. I wear perfume every day too. I like it best when I am wearing something that I haven’t worn for a while and that I can smell really well myself. Sometimes, I find little sample bottles in my nightstand or in my make up bag and I wear that. Mmm, delicious! I think a woman should have at least four different bottles of perfume.

Luckily, I am married to a man who appreciates my attempts at being feminine and he does like buying clothes and perfumes for me. Even when we are nearly broke he does. He likes it when I look good and when I smell good. I, in return, like it when he wears his rugged sweaters and jeans and walking boots, as that is the type of man he is. But I do like it when he wears his cologne and smells good too, although I appreciate it when he does that only for me. I don’t want other women swooning over him. Hands off the merchandise, girls!

This morning I am seeing my SPN. I always look forward to our talks as there is always something that we shed some light on. It is good to talk about things from my past, as there are all sorts of unresolved issues and I need to work through them and give the sadness and grieve a place and sort the sad from the happy memories instead of them being all jumbled up together. I also need to deal with the fact that I am manic depressive and the role that it played in my life. I need to sort out my depressions from the actual problems that existed in my first marriage and how one thing influenced the other.

I very much need to keep in mind that I am in a successful marriage now and that I am very capable of having a healthy relationship and that, even while being manic depressive, I can do relationships just fine. I am not faulty.

Well, that’s it for me today, folks. I must go and read some other blogs. I haven’t done that in a few days. I have been neglecting my fellow bloggers.

Have a great day, hope your autumn is as beautiful as mine, ciao…

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Barnacles Two Images number 4.

Yesterday afternoon, Eduard came home with a pretty little sample bottle of Kate Moss perfume. He said, “Here, try this and see if you like it.” I tried it and liked it very much. It had a wonderful fresh, fruity smell. Eduard went to get the groceries out of the bicycle bags and reappeared with a pretty box wrapped in a ribbon. “There you go,” he said, “I am glad you like it, now I don’t have to take this back to the store.”

Of course, now you are all thinking, “Aha, he is feeling guilty and buying you perfume to relieve his guilt.” No such thing! Eduard buys me perfume when he loves me especially much and he wants to spoil me and yesterday he just happened to love me especially much and he showed that in more ways than one. He also said that he is actually relieved that I finally got mad at him, as he feels that this somehow cleared the air and that we can move forward now. Psychology, people, I didn’t do it on purpose!

Of course, the store also put in some samplers of other perfumes for him and her and Eduard tried on some of the men’s cologne which made him irresistible to me and I took a big bite out of his neck. It was from Armani and now Eduard wants it as a Christmas present. It makes me swoon. I love men who smell nice. I’ll follow them to the moon, weak kneed and all. Needless to say, Eduard and I had a very loving day yesterday. We may be middle aged, but we are young at heart.

We actually reminisced about the time when we were teenagers and very much in love as it becomes teenagers and what would have happened if we had stayed together then. We both agreed that love at a later age is so much more romantic and interesting as we both came with lots of experience and wisdom. It was probably meant to be that we meet again at a later stage in our lives. Fate had it all in store for us.

When we were teenagers, we were so immature and so romantically naive. It was really kind of cute how we listened to classical music and walked in the woods and held hands and never got around to the really big deeds. We were such good kids. Well brought up, but very sensual in our own way. We each had to go out into the big world on our own and experience lots of things and people before we could come back together again and share everything with each other. So, we were familiar and yet strange to each other.

When we met again at the train station at Annecy, I immediately recognized Eduard. He hadn’t changed that much. He was still tall and blond and handsome. I, on the other hand, could have walked right past him and he wouldn’t have recognized me. At the time, I was a good looking woman. I wore sunglasses and my long hair in a French braid. I observed him as I walked up to him and he was scanning the crowd looking for I don’t know who or what kind of person. It was very funny, he didn’t have a clue that it was me. He was very flustered when I said hello to him.

Well, history was written in those few seconds. Call it instant love. But much better than instant mashed potatoes. More like an instant image on a digital camera. A moment frozen in time. There stood my destiny, the man who saved me from a life of instability and chaos. Little did he know what he was taking on. Little did we know what we would end up having in the end. When the story has been told and the light has been turned out. I won’t tell you that story here, that’s too private!

We got married in City Hall in Sonoma County by a Clerk of the County who was very nice and who said a lot of things that I don’t remember, I was nervous as hell. She probably said,”Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?” I don’t remember any of it, but we have a piece of paper to prove that we are married. My kids were there and my son thought it was all very amusing. I think he thought it was kind of a joke, his old mom getting married to a Dutch stranger.

Eduard picked me up and carried me over the threshold of our apartment, which made me scream with laughter. He was strong and I was a light weight then. We had a cake with two little bears on top, it was a strawberry and whipped cream cake, and champagne. I laughed all day long. I had no clue that soon I would fall into a major depression that would change my life.

It’s good to have really romantic memories and we certainly have those. There is a washed up tree trunk laying on Goat Rock Beach in Sonoma County with our names carved in it. I am sure it is still there, because it was rather large. Eduard carved our names in it with his Swiss army knife, ladies! I showed him the redwood forests and the foggy beaches and the wooded hills and the vineyards. We walked a lot and rode the car all over the place. We ate fresh French bread with sardines and tomatoes. We drank cold water out of a canteen. We kissed all over the place.

Luckily, we have a lot of photographs and slides to remind us of this time. It was our honeymoon. It will be nice to get those out one of these days and look at them again. Eduard can show the slides on the wall of the living room.

Okay, now I have reminisced enough. Goodness, so romantically emotional!

Eduard didn’t have to work last night and he doesn’t have to work tonight either, which is a real treat. We can sit around and be old fogies together. There is never anything good on TV and the digital TV company has decided we are only to have one channel and we will have to call them today to find out what the problem is. It seems that more and more often, companies that you have to deal with screw up, causing you to have to be put on hold forever when you call customer services and try to get the problem solved. This is not a customer friendly society.

Right, I’ll end my walk down memory lane now and wish you all a good day. I still need to drink many cups of Senseo and smoke many cigarettes and read many blogs. That will keep me occupied for a while until I have to feed the cats and walk Jesker. Ciao…

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So nice to be up again.

Today I weigh 95 kilos exactly. I just looked in my diary and saw that it was on June the 8th that I weighed 96 kilos, so it has taken me more than a week to get rid of one kilo. That’s not quite up to the schedule of one kilo per week, but then again, I think I was aiming for four kilos per month, so maybe it all works out in the end anyway. Four kilos per month isn’t quite one kilo per week at all, after all. Oh, I can be so nit picky about this.

This is what I had on the menu yesterday: one small glass of juice, one piece of cumin cheese, one pear, some Melba toast, one piece of Maasdammer cheese, some tomato salad with one hard boiled egg, another piece of Maasdammer cheese and two glasses of cold milk. The cumin cheese from the open air market is really good and the tomato salad was delicious. It gets better every time I fix it. I made it with three large tomatoes instead of two, to give Eduard a little bit extra, as he needs the calories. The man does stow away his food and then he makes some home made soup for himself to eat afterwards. Vegetable noodle soup. I hope his metabolism always stays the same, because he eats like a teenager, although he does eat more sensible than a teenager. No McDonald’s or other junk food!

Yesterday it rained on and off all day. Terribly big showers during which the rain came out of the sky by the bucket fulls. And thunder and lightening! We had thought about going into town, but then didn’t because of the weather and Eduard ran some errands in between the showers. Sometimes he had to seek shelter while he was out. He didn’t come home too wet! He had to get some Caster oil that was only available at a dealer across the border in Belgium, and because his motorcycle wouldn’t work, he had to ride his bike there and while he was gone, it rained something awful. I had visions of him returning home soaked to the bone, but he had been able to avoid the worst of it by hiding under a bridge. Eduard rides his bike across the countryside like it is a horse, no place is inaccessible to him. He is in really good shape for a man his age and peddles that bike everywhere.

I walked the dog and cleaned the apartment and found out that a cat had slept on the clothes that laid in the ironing basket. I keep another basket on top of this so how she/he managed, I have no idea. Eduard’s SP T-shirt is completely covered in cat hair and I don’t know if I can get it all off again. At first, I threw it in the waste paper basket out of frustration, but then Eduard protested, because it was his SP T-shirt, so now I will have to find a solution to the problem. Maybe some sticky tape will work.

I did laundry and washed some of my own clothes, that didn’t really need it, but I thought, what the heck, lets put them in the laundry anyway, maybe they will shrink a bit and I think they did. (When I am rating myself with a seven, my interest in doing laundry always increases quite a bit and I look forward to ironing too). When I open the closet door, the smell of my perfume always wafts out of the closet; all of my clothes smell of my perfume. Because I wear four different ones, it is quite an interesting mixture. Eduard was just telling me how much he liked it when I was wearing Chanel no. 5 when we were first married, so maybe I will ask for that for my birthday in September. It is quite expensive, so I will have to think that one over.

When I walked the dog at noon time, and I walked on the field with him, my niece and my brother in law were waving at me from their dining room window. Later, when I had my niece on the phone, she said to me, you always look so happy, you look like the sunshine. Isn’t that a wonderful thing to have somebody say to you? Apparently my face is cheerful as well. It’s comments like that, that make the day extra special. Coming from my 14 year old niece makes them extra special as well. I am glad that my face mirrors the cheerfulness that I feel inside. That my face is also a seven.

I talked to my daughter yesterday and she had played soccer in the park with her son, and her son’s friends, against a bunch a grown ups and they had won the game. I am sure Nick did a terrific job, because she is such a natural athlete and not the least bit intimidated by the ball. Today her son is going to stay with his grandparents in Germany for six weeks, like he does every summer, so Nick will have some time for herself while she looks for a job and gets some other bits of her life in order. Sometimes it is nice to do without your child for a bit when you are a single mom. Not that he will not be missed, of course, but he speaks fluent German and enjoys himself a lot in Germany. His grandparents are quite a bit older, so they try to enjoy him while they can.

I watched Forrest Gump on the film channel in the afternoon. I had seen it before, but watching it for the second time was nearly as good as watching it for the first time. Tom Hanks did such a good job on that one. I love the way the story is told and the voice and the accent of the story teller, who is Tom Hanks, of course. I kind of wish for that to be the voice in which my weblog is read. I love it when he sits on the bench, waiting for the bus, and tells all the different people the story of his life. Wouldn’t you like to do that? Just make it one long narration? Why is the Southern North American voice so good for story telling? Even Bubba speaks entertainingly about shrimp.

Which reminds me of that program, The Story of English, which was presented by Alistair Cooke. I have the book here in my book case. I thought that was a fascinating program and it taught me so much about English and it’s varieties in the States. You always think, you guys are speaking the language wrong, but then you realize where these local varieties come from. It is just like all the dialects and accents here in the Netherlands. Sometimes, when you hear a person speak a dialect, you think, wow, they are really murdering the language! But when you know more about it, you see how it evolved and how it is related to the language spoken just across the border, for instance. Formal Dutch came into being with the introduction of the States Bible and this Dutch version was decided on by representatives from all over the Netherlands. It could have turned out quite differently if another dialect had been more prominent.

Which reminds me, somehow, of the program Cosmos and Carl Sagan and how he used to say, billions and billions of stars! The kids and I always watched that program, even if it was on past their bed time. I wish programs like that were shown on TV now.

Imagine if, when I came to the states as a teenager, I had come to a place like Alabama. I would be speaking with a Southern accent now. That would be interesting. A Dutch woman speaking American English with a Southern accent. Would anybody take me seriously then? There is a bit of prejudice against that accent, isn’t there? Or am I reading that wrong? In Texas, the people in the big cities don’t speak Texan, only the people in the countryside do. You’re considered a bit of a country bumpkin if you do. At least, that was my experience when I was there. Little kids spoke plain American English as did most grown ups I met. I wasn’t expecting that at all. I thought they would all sound like J.R. on Dallas.

Boy, Texas sure is flat, and it doesn’t have any redeeming features like windmills and church spires or meadows with little woods. Houston is an interesting place, though, with no city zoning, so everything gets built wherever. It has very nice museums, which I hope to visit the next time I am there. It has the bayou running right through it, so I finally got to see what a bayou looks like. When Linda Ronstadt sings about the Blue Bayou, you have to know these things. Nick and I drove th
rough the expensive neighborhood of Houston, it was similar to Beverly hills, but the houses had more land around them. Quite impressive. They have very good restaurants in Houston and one that I really liked was Guatemalan, with excellent fish dishes.

It may make me a world traveler to have my daughter living in the States, but I would gladly forgo all of that if she could live here. We are still trying to get her a Dutch passport, which will give her many more opportunities, so keep your fingers crossed. It gets lonely for her to have her father in China and her mother in the Netherlands. I don’t recommend this to anybody! It’s best to have your children living close by, where you can keep an eye on them and be supportive of them at a close distance. Imagine what it was like a hundred years ago, when people immigrated and had no telephones to keep in touch with each other on a regular basis and no airplanes to fly them back and forth! You were pretty much gone forever then. I felt like I was gone forever when I first came to the States.

As usual, it is nice to sit here in such peace and quiet in the early morning. Only two cats are visible and one of them is asleep. I went to bed at nine o’clock last night, right after I talked to my daughter. I woke up at 1 am and thought I had to read, but as usual, I fell asleep again promptly. I don’t know what I am thinking when I wake up so early, like I am really coherent then and capable of reading a chapter in my book. I go to the bathroom and return to the bedroom full of plans, secretly hoping it is much later already and I can get up to make coffee. Silly woman!

Did I just say there were only two cats? Now they are all here and I have to feed them…

The dog is awake too, no doubt hoping for left overs. It is too early for Eduard still. Now Jesker has gone back to the bedroom, I guess he wants to keep Eduard company a bit longer.

I will end all my words here now and make a new pot of coffee, having enjoyed the first one so much. Yes, I do drink buckets of it. Remember, most of it is decaf. Have a terrific Sunday, people. Hope the sun shines where you are! Ciao…

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Thank Goodness.

Well, this morning I weighed 100.3 kilos, so that is a bit better. That means I have lost the 2 ounces that I had gained over the last 2 days. Phew…what a relief. I was worried that I was going to keep gaining weight. I ate extra fruit yesterday when I felt hungry, so maybe that helped, but I did have a good chunk of cumin cheese in the evening after dinner. Eduard fixed pasta for himself, so I had my usual 3 egg omelet, and I always feel like having something else afterwards for dessert when I eat that. I enjoy making the omelet as I push up the sides to the middle as it cooks, so it gets very fluffy, but then the trick is to turn it without breaking it, because I don’t like the yellow to be soft. Usually it falls apart a bit, but this time it made it in one piece more or less, so I didn’t have to swear too much when I turned it. Besides, I usually only say something like: Oh shit, or something rather innocent like that. It’s amazing how often Dutch people say the word “shit” when something goes wrong. We’ve really adopted that word from the English, without it having the bad connotations that it does in English. Some people also say the word “fuck” a lot, without really stopping and thinking about what they are exactly saying, but I don’t hang out with them too much. A lot of English words have entered the Dutch language and we just Dutchefy them and make them part of our language. I could give you examples of this, but it wouldn’t make sense to you English speaking readers, so just take my word for it. I sometimes speak Dutchlish myself, but that is out of necessity, because I am temporarily bamboozled and I can’t think of the Dutch word, so that doesn’t count. I do this especially after I have just talked to my daughter in English and I have to switch back to Dutch to speak to Eduard. All this from making a 3 egg omelet.

As I write this, it is stormy and rainy outside, as it was yesterday. Sometimes the rain stops and Eduard can go to work or home again and I can walk the dog, but it is colder now. You need long sleeves and a jacket. First thing in the morning I wear my old sweater under my jacket to stay warm, as nobody can see it then and it does the job until I get dressed properly. I temporarily pulled it out of the “get rid of it bag” until my vest gets here.

Yesterday I had both my daughter and my ex on the phone, as he is staying with her this week for her graduation. I hadn’t talked to him in ages and it was good to hear his voice. He immediately started speaking the little Dutch he knew to me, and that isn’t much, so I just stuck to the English after a while. He thinks he will be in China for an other year and a half and that he will retire after that. Nicole wants him to come to Texas and live with her, because she feels that she really needs a parent close by, and I can completely sympathise with that. It would be very good for Damian to have a positive male role model in his life and Damian loves his grandpa. Lets hope that all works out. It would be nice if I could go over there more often myself, maybe we can find a solution to this in the future, we’ll see. I can see all sorts of reasons now why I am going to need to get a part time job in the near future. It has been too long since I was last there.

My sister called me yesterday, very excited, because she had found a solution to her dog’s eating problems. She had called the owners of the dog hotel and they had given her a tip on how to get her dog to eat the dog food that he wasn’t eating. They told her to mix the dried food with hot water to make sort of a gravy, and then to mix Bonzo canned food through it. Apparently this worked very well and the dog ate everything in his bowl. Now, to give her dog canned food at all, is a big step for my sister, so kudos to her, I can’t believe she’s done it and I made sure that she is going to keep doing this. She said absolutely yes, so I am going to give her back the bag of food that she had given me, that our dog isn’t eating, otherwise I would just have to toss it out. I am very happy for Quinto that he is eating now and that he likes what he is eating. So, that problem has been dealt with satisfactorily, thank goodness. Another thing I don’t have to worry about. At one point in the past Quinto was very skinny, you could see his ribs, and Erica thought he was just right. Fortunately, after he was castrated, he gained 4 kilos and now he looks just right. Strange woman!

I have rated yesterday with a seven, after having had two days with sixes. It wasn’t that much of a different day, but I was easier in my skin, as they say here in the Netherlands. I got dressed right and made up and actually did chores around here and then I watched a very good movie called “Mean Street”. One of the film channels definitely shows quality movies and, so far, I have watched at least one good one every day. I think taking two hours out of the day to watch a movie isn’t such a bad thing at all. It is very relaxing and takes my mind off all sorts of other things. Eduard had to work late in the evening and I stayed up until 10 pm to watch that program again, Without a Trace, which was only mildly interesting last night. Still, it prevented me from going to bed on time, but I think I didn’t need that much of an excuse. I enjoyed myself hanging out on the sofa, drinking decaf and petting Jesker, which can be very therapeutic. At one point, I saw his dog tag and his name tag, with the address and phone number on it, laying on the floor in the living room and saw that the little ring they had hung on had broken. Luckily, it happened inside. If it had happened outside, I would have lost the tags. So I found a new ring and fixed that.

The gold colored stud earrings that I have been wearing for a couple of days, have caused me problems with my ear. It has swollen up and there is some junk coming out of my ear, so they definitely were not gold. I don’t remember when I got them or where, the origins are obscured, but I won’t be wearing them anymore. Eduard did say that I could get some new gold earrings at the end of this month, when he gets his vacation money, and I have been checking prices online and they aren’t too bad at all. I am glad that Eduard appreciates my efforts at trying to be pretty and attractive. For example, for my birthday and Christmas presents, both Eduard and Erica always buy me perfumes, so I always have four perfumes to choose from every day, so I always smell good and Eduard really likes that. I have versions of Jean Paul Gaultier and Hugo Boss, and I like them all. I use a different one every day, so I don’t get used to the smell and I can still smell them on myself and on the clothes I wear. In the wintertime my scarf always smells of my perfume. My mother always wore Channel no. 5 and I also always liked that smell, but I can’t wear it myself. I’ve worn Oscar de la Rente in the past, but it is not a perfume that I can buy here, although I was complimented on it when I wore it. I love good smells. Eduard has a good cologne that he wears especia
lly for me when we get romantic. It gets me in the mood.

Have you ever noticed how certain smells take you right back in your memories to when you were a child? Like the smell of freshly mowed grass? Or the smell of mushrooms when you pick them out of the rich compost on the forest floor? Or the smell of glass curtains after they have been hanging in front of the windows for awhile? The smell of oil and turpentine always reminds me of my father and I like that smell. Or the smell of honeysuckle, that reminds me of when Eduard and I were young and he used to pick it for me and leave bunches of it for me at my front door. So romantic! When I cleaned out my mother’s closet after she died, I pushed my face into her clothes, because they smelled like her and I couldn’t get enough of that. It was a mixture of perfume and the detergent she used and I always smelled it when she came to visit me in the States and she opened her suitcases to hang up her dresses. Sometimes I smell a mildewy odor and that takes me back to the first house I lived in, that was eighty years old at the time and smelled a bit like that. Therefore all of my bronchitis, no doubt. If they could only bottle your memory smells like that. I have a biscuit tin that used to sit in my grandmother’s kitchen, and when I open it, it still smells like her kitchen. So I don’t open it too often to preserve the smell.

The wind is blowing the rain against the windows in gusts and it makes it sound as if it is really bad out there. I’ll have to wait until it stops properly before I walk the dog, but he has been out late because of Eduard coming home so late last night. All the cats are in the living room now, which is pretty sensible of them. The cats are definitely warm weather animals, causing them to hibernate a bit in the wintertime. I am more of a springtime and fall person, I find the summers just a bit too hot usually, especially lately with the climate change. And it gets so humid here. I am very curious to see the weather that this summer will bring us. It can be truly beautiful, when the countryside is just lush and gorgeous and it is fun to go for hikes along the little rivers. I have to lose just a little bit more weight to be able to go and do that.

By the way, the 25 kilos I lost is 55 lbs. I started off weighing 125 kilos which is 275 lbs. So now I am down to 220 lbs and I would like to weigh 70 kilos which is 154 lbs. So, I’ve got another 66 lbs to lose, if my calculations are right. I may have made a mistake there somewhere, but it is roughly right. Anyway, if I can actually make it to 70 kilos, that would be very nice, although that is not the original 65 kilos that I weighed, but I think I will be having about an extra 5 or 6 kilos in extra skin flab that will have to be removed. Even if I make it to 75 kilos, which is 165 lbs, I will be satisfied. Then there would be 13 lbs in skin flab. My neighbor got down to 80 kilos from 130 and she looks good, although she is a tall woman and a bit big boned. Actually, her gastric band is supposed to be filled some more, but I don’t know when she is having it done. The whole objective is to get down to a size 12 (42), if I can make that, I will be very happy. There are lots of nice clothes available in that size.

At some point I am going to have to do some sort of physical exercise. That could be just taking longer walks with the dog, which is sort of boring, I am sorry, but it is, unless you can go with someone else. I would like to join a gym and there is one around the corner that I could go to, but I don’t know how expensive it is. I’ll have to go and check that out. I used to go to the YMCA and did the treadmill and all the weight training and the rowing machine. It got me in great shape, but that was in my other life. And I drove the car there, worked out, and drove the car home again, how decadent can you get!

There is still no movement in the bedroom and I think Eduard is going to be sleeping a little late today after making such a late night. He had his rain gear with him last night, so I hope he didn’t get too soaked on his bike. The worst thing always is the puddles, you can’t always avoid them. Or cars driving through them as they pass you. Yes, that really happens in real life. There are always some drains that get plugged up and intersections that get flooded. You ride through them with your feet in the air. I haven’t been on my bike in a few years. I have been walking or taking the bus if I had to go anywhere and, basically, I wasn’t going anywhere. One day soon, I will start riding my bike again after I dust the cobwebs off. A few years ago, I was so depressed that I couldn’t make it to my psychiatrist, so he came to me instead. He’ll do that, make house calls for people who just can’t make it. How is that for service?

Well, enough chit chat, I’ve got to read a bit of news now, maybe I’ll write some more later…

I walked the dog while it was dry, but there is a cold wind blowing. I also brought the bag of dog food back to my sister. I asked her if her dog was still eating well and she very enthusiastically answered that he was, so I think she is really happy about that. She just needs to feel that she found the solution on her own. Of course I praised Quinto into high heaven and he stood there wagging his tail and looking proud. Jesker also stood there looking as if something important was going to happen, but it didn’t. Erica gave me a Tupperware container of vergetarian Nasi Goreng, which is an Indonesian rice dish that is very good, so I walked around the field with that under my arm.

Indonesian food is very much a part of the food culture of the Netherlands with Indonesia once having been a colony of the Netherlands and lots of Indonesian people living here. Their food is nice and spicy and I like it very much. If you ever get the chance to eat it, give it a try, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Saté with peanut sauce is very good for example. But you need to eat it in a genuine Indonesian restaurant and not at the Chinese who claims to make some of those dishes too. If you eat Nasi Goreng, which is a rice dish, scoop it up with your fork and some Kroepoek, with is a schrimp chip, that is delicious.

Well, now I am going to do some work around here, just the usual stuff I always do, and wait for my new vest to arrive, can’t wait for that…

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