Not a bloody thing…

I haven’t done a bloody thing all day, except for walk the Überhund numerous times at odd hours, sleep on the sofa several times, and get my hair cut in a really funky ‘boy do I look good’ style. Sometimes I sat on the sofa in an upright position with a cup of coffee and a cigarette and I would catch myself falling asleep with my head having fallen forward as if I was a rag doll that was falling apart.

Now, this is normal for me in the spring and in the fall, to go through these strange sleeping patterns. Last night I was up in the middle of the night, sitting behind the computer, doing things, and then I woke up with a sore head where it had been laying on the ridge of the keyboard. I do spooky things in the middle of the night again, but luckily, I had the good sense to go to bed and go back to sleep like a normal person and sleep until 7 AM. Still, that did not prevent me from feeling that I had to sleep some more during the day. I am like a cat, aren’t I?

I had a most wonderful time at the hairdresser, but I had already told you that I enjoy going there to watch the women get their hair done. I am always truly amazed at what a good hairdo will do for a woman, no matter how bad looking she is, but that may be the unflattering light around the mirrors that makes me say that. It does reflect you back in all your most basic glory. You need to squint when you look at yourself, or be extremely forgiving. Especially when you sit there with wet hair and a towel around your neck, you have a tendency not to look your best and you have to put on a brave smile and not be embarrassed in front of the rest of the customers. Even your well applied make up doesn’t look that good anymore.

Wel, you know, you grow up and you learn these things and you deal with them and you hope that when you are done you will have a brilliant haircut and that you will not have to sneak home to redo your hair quickly in the bathroom before anyone can see you and laugh at you. I happen to have a very good hairdresser who cuts my hair just the way I want it and we see eye to eye on what looks good. She never fails me. She is a treasure, but no matter what, newly cut hair is just that and you always want to fiddle with it to get it just right. I brushed mine two hours after I got home and then fixed it as close to how I wanted it as I could get it, but it won’t be perfect until tomorrow when I have slept on it one night. I don’t know why that is, it just is.

I talked to the Exfactor on the phone and told him that what I miss about not being married is the ability to tell each other the every day stories about the every day occurences involving the Überhund and the Minion cats. So very often I want to tell him something and then I don’t know if I should call him and share that particular story with him or not. It’s a little bit like having lost a very good friend. I suppose that we will work out some sort of working solution to this that will be non threatening and non invasive to the both of us. I don’t think either one of us has found another person to replace us with in that manner.

When I ask the Überhund if he wants to eat and I get out the bag of dog food, he walks away indignantly if he does not want to eat, so that message is very clear. There is no mistaking that. He stays away until he is sure that I’ve put the dog food away again. Since he is overweight, it is okay if he doesn’t want to eat twice a day, like he did yesterday. He had some little snacks today and a bowl of food and I guess that was enough.

I totally don’t recognize my sister in her new car. This afternoon she practically ran over me and honked her horn before I realized it was she. She is always coming and going and doesn’t have a peaceful bone in her body, she is so the opposite of me. She is very restless and always has to be doing things and have a full calender. I am more of the slow and contemplative kind. She is more of the fast and impulsive kind. She was 10 years old when I left home, so I have no idea why she turned out the way she did. I missed all that part of her growing up and didn’t come back to the Netherlands until she was 32 years old. I did see her in those years, of course, but I really got to know her once I was back here again. In some ways we are neurotically alike, in other ways we are very different. Of course, I am older and that makes a difference too.

I have official confirmation now that I am getting rent and healthcare subsidies. It came in the mail today and I am so relieved about that, because paying the full rent and the full health insurance fees has been expensive with the kind of money I have coming in. I will celebrate with a glass of wine once the money is in my bank account.

I have decided this afternoon to exchange the black cardigan for a smaller size. The one I had ordered was a little bit too big, I thought, I was not quite happy with it and arranged to have it picked up and have the other one delivered tomorrow. i think that is also the day that my ankle boots will be delivered so it will be a fun day all around. Oh, I do so love new items of clothing. I am a real woman, if there was any doubt about that. I may have been a tomboy when I was a kid, but somewhere in my thirties, my female genes kicked into action something fierce. I love and adore clothes, although I don’t spend a fortune on them, I am a frugal shopper. I like feminine things. I like necklaces and lacy bras and perfumes and pretty tunics and dresses. I love colors, besides basic black. Every once in a while I buy something that just doesn’t work out, but mostly I do a fair job. My mother would have been proud of me.

Well, now I am going to take this newly done haircut and the rest of me to the bedroom to get my pajamas on and then I am going to veg out in front of the silly box for some mindless TV watching. Soon enough, I’ll fall asleep and have to drag myself to my cozy bed. The Überhund has already gone there to lie on his pillow.

How wonderful that tomorrow the weekend starts. How sad that I will have to vacuum the whole apartment.

Ciao…

Read Full Post »

Blegh!!!

I am full of exhaustion and I don’t want to be, I am going to fight it all the way to the sofa if I have to and not give into it one teeny little inch. It isn’t as though I had an especially tiring day, although I did do a variety of things and maybe they left their impressions on my easily impressed mind. I mean, I am not used to much, so doing anything out of the ordinary is bound to thrill me to pieces and wear me out at the same time from the processing of the details.

I started out the day really slow, because I went back to bed after I had been up for awhile, but I decided that my head was still in slumber attitude and that I was not ready to tackle the day and all it’s details that it would bring. So I laid me down to sleep, with Jesker beside me, and didn’t wake up until the phone rang and it was my sister to remind me of our appointment to go to Ikea, as if i would forget that outing!

I very slowly got dressed and walked the dog and then went grocery shopping and to the tobacco store, where they see me as one of their favorite customers, at least, that’s the kind of welcoming smile I get. They almost know what I come to get, and one day soon I won’t have to ask for it. They’ll just reach for the items on the shelf the minute they see my bright and happy face.

Back home, Jesker and I shared a pudding with berry sauce and then my sister came to get me in her new Peugeot, which is a sporty little 4 door car with a hatchback. She had the radio on and I felt like Thelma and Louise when we drove down the freeway. Luckily, we don’t need to make our escape, as it is our men that we send on their way.

Ikea had just had another grand opening and there were people in yellow jackets directing the parking traffic ineffectively, but we found a good spot anyway. The thing is to ignore the pointing fingers and to go by your instincts, which will direct you to the empty parking space. It will also get you a dirty look, but this particular yellow coated traffic director had a big earring in and we figured he wasn’t really anyone important at all, even though he had a decent haircut.

We were good shoppers and followed all the arrows and didn’t take any short cuts through the store, even though we new exactly what we wanted. We also wanted to look at all the things we weren’t buying and in the meantime we were talking and chatting like two chickens in a hen house, like we have a tendency to do. We must go back soon and really linger and spend an afternoon there, when we both have extra money to spend on gadgets and stuff. Things you don’t really need, but can’t live without that will improve your life so tremendously. That’s what Ikea is for, and oh, I walked by the sofa I want and it hurt me to leave without it.

We soon enough got the items we wanted and headed for the cash registers and after some indecision ended up in the right line. The fast one, where my sister found out that she had bought the expensive duvet, but she didn’t feel like going to customer service and undoing the whole sale and going back into the store to find the right one, as it has taken us some searching to find the one that we thought was the right one, you know, with all those names on the products.

We shoved the bought items in the car, my carpet was a little long, and then went to the garden center next door, which has the same sort of planned route through its shelved products as Ikea has. Lots of temptations to buy things. “Oh yes, I’ll have 3 of those and 5 of these. And that plant is really pretty too.” Friendly customer service all over the place, attractive prices, overabundance of goods, you think you are in Fantasy land. It’s best to be strong of mind and keep a steady hand on your wallet and be determined to only buy what you had come for.

When I came home, I unrolled the carpet and found out it was bigger than I had imagined, so that was good. Jesker laid down on it right away and Gandhi sharpened her claws on it, which made Jesker angry. I told him, “Good dog.”

Then I had to walk him and go to the pharmacy to pick up a large supply of medication that I had ordered two days earlier, but when I got there, I found out they never received the fax with the prescription, so I had to make a phone call and at the other end of the line a frantic search took place to find the missing prescription, which showed up in the fax machine 20 minutes later. I love mayhem, especially when it is about my precious pills.

On the way home, I stopped by the flower and plant shop and bought two plants of heather in pots and I have those sitting here instead of the ‘child in mother’s lap’ plants that weren’t doing so well. They cost me 2.50 Euros for 2. It’s a steal. Jesker thought I was bringing home food and was mighty disappointed.

I was just out back, and besides a lot of weeds, I have the jasmine and the golden rain and the 3 trees and now another unidentified bush has grown up amongst the jasmine. I have to try and find out what it is, but it is staying. Anything that wishes to grow here, stays. I’ll have to pull out the weeds this weekend, although that is not my favorite job, especially not now that my left knee is bothering me so much. It really hurts to bend it, especially when the weight is on it. I am wearing out, I guess.

I hope you all like my header. I went through some trouble to find something to represent what I thought was Another Bright Day and I thought this little child was perfect. There is innocence and happiness. It is a challenge to find the right photograph to express a meaning. I liked the gray slate too, until Maggie said it looked like elephant’s skin and I don’t want that. Besides, it didn’t express much emotion.

Now I am going to rest my weary bones on the sofa, after I have looked up a TV guide on line. I must remember to do that. I hope there is a good British thriller on tonight. Those are the best.

Have a good evening, get yourself ready for a lovely weekend.

Ciao…

Read Full Post »

What the hell?

Because I had to live on a teeny little welfare check for two months, that was not even enough to buy groceries with, Eduard supported me financially the best way he could by also borrowing money and making ends meet. Because of this, Social Services sees this money as income and is therefor not giving me my regular welfare check for this month. As a matter of fact, I am getting no money at all. So, until September the 20th, I will have to live on the money I borrow from my Visa card, because money borrowed is not considered income, because you can show that you are having to pay it back. I can not receive money from anybody else, as that will be considered income and will be withdrawn from my welfare payment. I can submit an objection, but it is all going to take precious time and in the meantime I am going to be very poor and owing a lot of money.

Still, after the initial shock of it, I decided to put on my happy face and consider myself lucky that I even have a credit card with enough credit left on it that I can borrow the money from. I would have to go through all sorts of lengths to get money otherwise and frankly, I would not know how, except for hanging a red light in the window. So, I’m trying to look at it cheerfully.

The man who is handling my case at Social Services now is new and he thought that the money I had received from Eduard was an alimony payment and that I would get that much money all the time. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and I told him that I was sorry, but that I had to pull myself together and that I would call him back shortly. I did have to pull myself together emotionally and I don’t like to do that while on the phone with a well meaning, but complete stranger.

This also explains why the tax people, who decide about my rent and medical care subsidies, told me they would call me back later this week between 1 and 3 PM. They are probably also assuming that I received a large amount of money in alimony payments and will forever. I sure do have some straightening out to do.

Anyway, this bright and happy news did set the tone for the rest of my day, even though I did not want it to, but I couldn’t help but be affected by it. The best thing to do is put on my brave trooper face and act like the whole damn thing is not going to get me down and it won’t in the end. I just hate bureaucracy and the stiff unbending rules that make it work against the little honest people. Eduard and I should have lied our heads off or have made different arrangements, but c’est la vie.

In the meantime, life at the Pondorosa continues with all the regular things that take place, although today was a little bit off. I did walk Jesker four times, but we didn’t make a long walk once, because he gets out of breath so quickly. He pants for a long time when we get back. I have been noticing that this summer. It’s not the heat, because it hasn’t been warm here at all for quite awhile.

I am having fun with Facebook, because this time it is I who picks out who I want to be friends with and I have a eclectic set of rules that only I understand. It comes down to instinct basically, guided by some very basic standards. I manage okay that way and have made some new friends. I even got Eduard to join, which is a miracle of itself.

Tomorrow I have wonderful ergo therapy and we will discuss detachment. I feel I have to crawl into my shell when I get bitterly disappointed, but maybe the thing is to seek your solace amongst people and their healing presence. At least I assume their presence can be healing. I am Irene the Brave, master of all my emotions. Right!

Eduard was here this afternoon, because his mobile phone is in my name and we thought his subscription had to be renewed and the person who owns the phone has to do that. It turned out that the subscription didn’t need to be renewed, it does it of itself, so that was a waste of time, even though they told us last year that we would have to do this. I had my passport and client number all ready for it too. Good intentions all the way down the line.

I am especially looking forward to going to bed tonight, even though so far I am postponing it, but it does mean an end to this rather disappointing day. At the same time, I don’t want to go to bed with even the slightest defeated feeling, so I am staying up until that is completely gone.

Jesker is snoring beside me after he has been very good about letting me put his eye drops in.

The differences between the cats and the dog are really so large. The dog is so dependent on me and the cats are hardly at all. Well, yes they are for their food and water and milk and they let me know very loudly when they’ve run out, but other than that, they are independent creatures that make up their own mind about when they come and go and when they need attention and how much they want. I am much more like a cat that way, because I like my independence too and I hate to be shackled to a time and a place and a person. I would hate to be a dog and I would probably bite my owner in his bum out of frustration. Maybe that’s why I am always so overly nice and patient with Jesker, because I would hate to be him and be dependent on a human being. I try to be an understanding human being for Jesker. I felt the same way when my kids were little and they were dependent on me.

I swept the apartment with a broom and a brush and dustpan this afternoon, because i thought the tax people might call me and I don’t hear the phone when I have the vacuum cleaner running. It worked equally well and you would be amazed by how much sand and hair I swept up. Actually, it was a meditative sort of job and kind of pleasant to do and I may do it again. The drawback is that I don’t vacuum the sofa and chairs then, so I will have to do that another time or wave my magic wand and have them turn out perfectly clean that way. Ha, I wish.

Well, I’ll end this epistle and go and do some other things until I am good and ready for bed. I could go on forever, but I don’t want to bore you with every tiny detail of my life, fascinating as it all may be.

See you all tomorrow, sleep tight.

Ciao…

Read Full Post »

Oh Lah de dah!

This morning I was very good and went to my ergo therapy class, even though I was half asleep and nearly nodded off during the first hour, because I had not had enough coffee. I woke up at 3 AM and could not go back to sleep, so read blogs instead, but I got so distracted by them that my caffeine consumption dropped to a very low level and as a result I was not so very perky at 8:30 AM, when I was supposed to leave.

I tried to do some damage control by drinking some coffee very quickly, but sleep was settling into my bones and I was getting mighty weary. I almost didn’t go at all, but then thought that the vigorous bike ride would wake me up. Well, not quite. It made me more like a unguided missile rushing through the traffic that luckily was light, because I wasn’t about to stop for anything, I just kept on moving until I got there and then it started to rain, hah, I got there just in time.

Very droopily I sat and listened to the other people tell their story of how their week had been and at times my head almost hit the table. Luckily, halfway through, we took a break and I had 3 espressos extra strong which gave me a kick in the pants and woke me up properly, so when it was time for me to talk, i could do so quite coherently. I made complete sense to myself and everybody else, although I do keep having this strange tendency to want to speak English as I find it easier to express what I want to say and I find myself struggling to find the right Dutch words. Everybody asks, “Irene, are you English?” And I grumpily answer, “No, I am half an American.” Nobody asks which half, but they leave me in peace and continue to let me struggle with a lot of patience.

We have something in the Netherlands like Facebook called Hyves and I had my pages there and had them quite organized, but yesterday I discovered that I had been hacked and all sorts of pictures of all sorts of strange people were on them and lots of weird messages. I had been completely infiltrated. There was nothing to do but delete them and sign up again under an assumed name with a picture of the Überhund in my profile and let the people who counted know where I was now. Actually, I am only on there for the sake of some of my relatives who like to keep in touch that way and I go along with the program and I very often forget to go and have a look to see if there are any messages. At one time, I even forgot my password and my sign in name. Then I get badgered to get on there and read the messages and look at everybody’s photographs from weddings and vacations. I try to be good, I really try…

So, I got that all organized this afternoon and I didn’t do much else, because I also downloaded music videos from Youtube for it and pictures and lord knows what else. Actually, it is a lot different than Facebook in that way.

Anyway, besides walking the Überhund and eating, I haven’t done much. Oh yes, I opened the mail, but it was not that important, except a reminder from the bank that I have no money in my account and if I am going to do something about that soon. Well, yes I am. In about 2 days, as a matter of fact. The signature was printed, so I am not going to bother to call. I don’t expect any gangsters at the door yet.

This morning we had to pick out cards form a large deck of cards that had lesser personality traits on them. We had to try to pick 5 cards, which I did. Mine were, overconfident, strict, cynical, distant and too detail oriented. We had to tell what our cards were and what we thought about these lesser traits that we had, but when it was my turn I said that I wasn’t at all unhappy with my traits and that I could very easily live with them. Well, I wasn’t supposed to like them and I am supposed to work on them! Jeez! Really, Irene.

Hey, I’ve worked hard to become the person I am today. I am not just going to give that up without a fight. I want to be cynical, actually, I want to be all those things.

Well, now it ‘s raining like crazy again. It has been on and off all day and yesterday too. One moment the sun shines and then it rains. It’s like we live in the tropics. Tropical Holland. Buy your seafront property now in the Limburger hills.

Okay, that’s enough of that. I am going to watch some TV and get some much needed head rest. That’s not a thing to rest your head on.

You all have a good day or evening or whatever you are having in whichever timezone.

Ciao…

Read Full Post »

The Pondorosa.

Well, it’s been another busy and eventful day here at he Pondorosa. On top of everything, the weather decided to be a scorcher, so we poor Dutch people were walking around with many body parts exposed and sitting at sidewalk cafés trying to find some refreshment. I am working on a cold bottle of Coca Coal myself, which is helping me quench my thirst and making my stomach region cold. The apartment is pretty cool, because I ‘ve kept most everything closed and the heat hasn’t had a change to sneak in. I just have some little top windows open for a little bit of circulation. An old trick I learned from a native Californian. Do not by all means throw open your doors and windows when it is hot outside. It will fill your house with heat and flies.

This morning I had my appointment with my SPN and i decided to be serious and not have one of those half baked conversations in which I say how great I am doing and then leave again. So, this time I really took my time to talk to her carefully and answer her questions with care. Her concern is that maybe I am hypo manic and I keep having to tell her that, no I am not, I am functioning just fine and am standing with both feet on the ground. I rate myself at a 7, sometimes at an 8 when I am feeling especially good for a little while and sometimes at a 6 when things don’t go as planned, but mostly I am a 7. I don’t think that’s a grade to be concerned about.

I told her, there is nobody jubilating behind my eyes and thinking life is just one great big party and a dream I can’t wake up out of. I think everybody is surprised that I am doing as well as I am. They had expected a hopelessly helpless Irene who wouldn’t have known how to deal with the situation and instead they get this. A competent human being and then some.

We went and saw our divorce mediator this afternoon. We are on agreement on everything and now she is going to write a covenant, which is a divorce agreement between the Exfactor and me and when it is written, we will sign it and it will be presented to the judge, Then we will be divorced in two months time. That’s the normal legal time it takes. She said in the meantime we could consider ourselves divorced for all practical reasons.

The Exgactor and I get along splendidly for small portions of time, but i wouldn’t want to spend a whole afternoon with him, because he starts to irritate me with his lack of attention to detail and his absentmindedness. He forgets half of what you ask him to do, because he writes nothing down and it creates irritation with me who is a stickler for detail. It’s a good thing that we go our own way. We are avoiding a lot of stress this way. Imagine having to be reliant on someone who is so absentminded all the time. Hanging your life up to that particular hook. Very dangerous and unsettling. No doubt it was the source of a lot of my insecurity, because he would not relinquish control.

Well, enough said about that, that’s like getting old cows out of the ditch, as they say here.

I came home to an Uberhund who was very happy to see me, but we could only go for a little walk because it was so hot. The Uberhund would walk for miles, not realizing he was overdoing it and collapse by the side of the road somewhere and I would have to call the animal ambulance. I don’t even have their number in my mobile phone, a good one to add.

So instead we find ourselves here with him laying beside me on the cool floor and with me staying cool while typing this. I am listening to my favorite MP3 player, the one with the weirdest music. I like to wake up with it and go to sleep with it. It’s got I don’t know how many songs on it. Quite a few. Sometimes I listen to the more mainstream ones, when I am feeling more regular and mainstream. Sometimes I just have this need for very odd music. I go through a lot of batteries, but they are all rechargeable, so I am constantly recharging batteries.

I have a tendency to get very sleepy in the evening and start nodding off when i want to start reading blogs. I am going to give it a try now and see how far I will get. Have yourself a good rest of the day and enjoy your evening.

Ciao…

P.S. Here is something I had forgotten about but that needs to be addressed. Two very nice ladies have given me awards. Babaloo for Fairymix.com has given me this award:

And Debs from the Lehners in France has given me this very nice award:

Which leaves me in kind of a quandary. When I left blogger and I came to WordPress, I left all of my awards behind and you know how smitten I was with all of those awards. I gave them top billing on my blog and it was hard to miss them when you opened my page. I thought getting awards was very important and that it equaled being liked by people and being accepted and being appreciated.

Since I left all of my awards behind me, I have had a change of mind and I found out that i did not miss them and did not have the least inclination to import them to my new blog and show them off. I realized that they were no longer important to me and that having them was no longer a sign to me of being one of the gang of accepted and well liked people. That was my interpretation I put on it and it was no longer valid.

So, the next decision was, what to do about any future awards I might get, what would I do about them? Do I gracefully accept them and display them for a day and then get on with life?

I need to hand them out to deserving people, don’t I? But how do I choose, because everyone who reads my blog is a “deserving” person.

I could have a free for all and tell everyone to just take an award when they come upon one, but most people are bashful and will not do it. Nobody will just take an award when it is offered for free.

I have come to the decision not to accept any more awards and to not display them if I do happen to get one, no matter how special and beautiful it is. So, these two I am displaying now are the last two that I will. After that I am taking a page out of Stinking Billy’s book and am not going to clutter up the site with awards anymore, although my reasons may be different than his.

I realize that there are so many awards out there that sooner or later everyone will get at least one. But i say, lets just write for the fun of it and for the beauty of it and for the entertainment value of it and not bother with the awards. The awards lie in the readership and how moved it is by what you write and the comments that follow. That’s what my interpretation is going to be from now on anyway.

Read Full Post »

Exhaustion.

You can tell that I am suffering from it when I fell asleep behind the computer this afternoon writing an email to the Exfactor. I was nodding of and writing it at the same time and then somehow pushed the send button without properly finishing it and somehow made it to the sofa to fall into a comatose nap, from which the Uberhund awakened me at six o’clock to go for his walk. He is a smart dog. Later I read the email that I sent and it was a bunch of gobbly gook, which I had to rectify with a proper email, because the Exfactor would have been puzzled about what I had been trying to communicate to him. He would have thought I had been drunk or on drugs.

I goes to show you the somewhat delicate nature of my psyche in that I do deliver the product when I have to, but I need days to recuperate afterwards, as if i have been on a dangerous and reckless mission. Simple intensive effort exhausts me and I walk on my knuckles afterwards and drag myself emotionally through the ensuing days. I don’t quite know when I will recover from this completely, because I am still dealing with things like getting the utilities and phone etc put in my name, as if I have not been a user of these products all along for all these years. I have been anonymous tot them, these companies. To them I have not existed and I am a whole new entity.

I am taking the opportunity and changing the Internet, TV and telephone provider to a good old well known Dutch one, but I just hope this doesn’t bring its own whole new set of problems. I may end up with a new telephone number and certainly with a new email address. I will let you all know when the time comes. I will not be making a lot of phone calls, because I have unlimited calls in the country only in the weekends. We wont even speak about calling outside of the country. It is my wish to keep my phone bill at the total limited price, so my sister in Emmen will have to call me instead of me aways calling her, because I am such a good sport. Call me Frugal Momma. It is the survival of the keenest that counts.

Ergo -therapy went fine until we ran into an assignment that I found absolutely impossible to do, while the others threw themselves at it with great enthusiasm, I just froze up and was unable to do the the work to the point that I became distraught and started crying. I was assigned a totally different safe thing instead and my problem will be worked on. The thing is, that you had to take a good sized box and make the inside like yourself the way you are inside and the outside the way you are outside yourself. This seemed like an impossible task to me and very overwhelming and I could not see how it could be done and I froze up with fear. I was afraid of the chaos and the choices and the mess it would create and not knowing how to represent myself and the box was good and perfect the way it was. Even thinking about it now, I feel the resistance.

I am falling a sleep again and I have to walk the dog still, so I better say goodbye now. Have fun slaying dragons.

Ciao…

Read Full Post »

Mother Nature…

Mother Nature proved her point that I can sleep without sleeping pills by letting me sleep until just one minute before the alarm clock went off at 7 Am this morning. How is that for perfect planning? This Goddess is a genius. Then I walked around with the alarm clock in my left hand, because I don’t know how to undo the repeat function, so every minute, for 8 minutes, it goes off again. I peed and made coffee and took my medicines and gave Jesker his medicines accompanied by the happy sounds of the snooze alarm. Darn thing!

It doesn’t bother me one bit to sleep alone in the apartment. I don’t have the least amount of insecurity or fear. I have a flashlight on my nightstand in case the electricity goes off and I know what to do if it does. I was up very briefly during the night, an old habit, no doubt, and I made a cup of decaf, but was asleep again before I finished it and I am doing al of this without the sleeping pills. I think it is amazing.

Jesker and I had a cozy time waking up together and then we went for our walk which was chilly. It feels like fall instead of spring. Jesker doesn’t care, he just hops and jumps ahead of me full of joy and goodwill. Oh goody, all these bushes to pee on and stuff to eat off the street before She can stop me from doing so.

I vacuumed the living room and the sofa and chairs really well. Of course, the cats had inundated the new chair with cat hair and now I don’t want them on there anymore at all, so I have a spray bottle of water and each time one of them jumps on the chair they get a good spraying. They certainly don’t like that. Ruining my mew chair! I’ll show them.

At 11 o’clock Eduard came walking in without announcing himself as if he still lived here. We had to make a rule about that right away. Call to let me know that you are coming now.

He went hard at work in the spare room and there was a lot of work to do. Eduard did most of it, as it was mainly his stuff and I did odds and ends, but I did clean out my own closet and shoe storage box and filled some trash bags with junk. Eduard worked very intensively and hard, but I noticed that after three hours I started emotionally sinking as fast as the Titanic. All the stress and negativity and impotence came rushing back into me and I just wanted Eduard to leave.

Luckily, he chanced to get a glimpse of my face and asked me what was wrong and I told him that he had been here too long and that he should go now. Well, Eduard recognizes a hint when he sees one and left very soon after that and it took me about 30 minutes to get my composure back. It made me realize that Eduard and I can never live together again, because he has such a negative effect on me and I thought how sad it was that I had walked around with those feelings all that time. I feel such emotional freedom without him.

He is not quite done yet in the spare room and will have to come back, but maybe he can get the rest accomplished when I am not home some time. I become impotent when I am around him and I don’t want that.

I think, actually I am pretty sure, that I don’t want to be in an intimate relationship again, because I don’t think they bring out the best in me. I think I do best as a single unit with lots of breathing space and room to move around in. I feel suffocated very quickly and don’t like the clinging part and the we become as one bit. I thought I liked it, but I don’t. I pretty much hate it. A dog is as close a relationship as I want to have with a male character.

I can’t begin to express to you the experience I have when I am alone in the apartment with the animals. It is so very special. It is as though I have been given a new life after having been terminally ill for a very long time. There is so much quiet joy in it and so much satisfaction and so much pleasure. It is the most therapeutic thing that has ever happened to me. There is a total lack of negativity.

The closest I have ever come to this was when I was a teenager and I didn’t have a boyfriend and I spent quiet evenings and weekends home alone with my parents and just luxuriated in the very simple things of life. I always found boyfriends to be very bothersome. I thought I ought to have one, but I usually broke up with them quickly, not being able to do the relationship well at all and feeling a huge relief after I had broken up with them. If it had not been so expected by my environment, I might never have gotten married at all and just have stayed an old maid. I probably would have been happier.

Well, I can certainly be an old maid now, can’t I, Yippee! No need to go out and do anything conventional. Nobody is expecting anything from me now. I don’t have to dance the polonaise, as they say here.

Well, now I’m off to do some ironing and scrub the kitchen sink and maybe wash a window or two, if I am so inclined. There is nothing like getting a little aggressive with a bit of scouring powder in a dirty kitchen sink.

Ciao y’all…

Read Full Post »

Solitariness.

I am alone. I am sitting here as a single, solitary, living by myself, independent woman and it agrees with me very well. I am the mistress of my domain and putter around in it with a purpose and make all things my own by touching and clearing up and rearranging. I feel a great deal of sense of ownership and independence and right of existing and autonomy. I decide how things are and how they are done and if something is done a certain way or not at all or if it gets tossed in the trash or saved. My, it just goes to my head. What a pleasure that is. I didn’t know it would agree with me that well.

Today I decided to clean up that nice white bookcase of Ikea that we have and that attracts dirt and dust like a magnet. While I was at it, I also took out all the books that belonged to Eduard and boxed them, leaving me with several open squares to arrange other things in. I also rearranged all of my own books in no specific order, just in a way that I can find them. I also found out that there is mildew on the wall behind the bookcase, but if you run fast, you don’t see it, so I had to camouflage that a bit. It was a tough but fun job.

I wanted to do the same thing in the kitchen, but I had no boxes left and I will just have to make a list of things that can go and just do a general good cleaning. I know I need to tackle the woodwork and the window and clean the refrigerator. I suppose I will share some of the magnets with Eduard, since he bought some of them. I’ll let him have those. I am so kind hearted and willing to share. Mmm…

Jesker doesn’t want to eat his regular food, so I fix him special treats. He never wants to eat when Eduard is not home and now, of course, he is waiting for naught. I gave him breakfast bread with diet margarine, which is good for what ails you. He liked that. He will sleep beside me tonight on his pillow beside the bed.

Speaking of sleeping…I have been sleeping without my sleeping pills and doing a better job of it and tonight I have already very optimistically set my alarm clock for 7 AM. I am going to drink hot milk with honey before I go to sleep, whenever that is. I can decide that for myself also.

I don’t do a lot of blog surfing and the Google reader is fooling me, telling me there are no updates for anyone when there are many. So, I am still playing catch up, people. You hard working writers and other artists. If I haven’t been by to comment, know that in my heart I am thinking of you and i will get there soon.

The Netherlands beat France in tonight’s game, but I slept through most of it and I am unsure of the score. I think it is 4-1, but I may be mistaken. It is sacrilege to sleep through a game like that, but the sofa was very comfortable. I am not a proud enough Orange fan, apparently. I ought to be shot at dawn after I am made to sing the national anthem, which words I always forget.

Oh, I know I am going to be doing a spring cleaning, I can feel it in my bones, but I do worry about the windows, because I can never get them as clean as I would like them. Not a proper Dutch housewife at all! I need to get down on my knees and scrub the floors, I know that and I have creaky knees, so I have to decide if I am willing to make the sacrifice for really clean floors. Mmm…

I ordered a NO/NO sticker for on my mailbox so nobody will put any unaddressed junk mail and free newspapers and fliers in my mailbox anymore. That should cut down on the amount of wastepaper that I accumulate every month and that needs to be put at the curb to be picked up. I do think that is such a total waste of cutting down good trees, leaving me with boxes full of paper to haul around. I don’t read a newspaper, because it is too expensive and I can read one on line and watch the news on TV. That should do. I have to think of all these economical and ecological ways to be smart.

Well, I am starting to yawn, which is a good sign to shut things down and get ready for bed. All alone in my bed surrounded by the cats and my loyal dog. Got to make sure the back door is locked.

Have yourself a good rest of the day and I hope your day was as good as mine has been. I can’t help it, it just has been a good day.

Oh, and by the way, the new chair from Ikea looks really nice and I am glad that Eduard was nice enough to go pick it up for me. The cats take turns sleeping in it.

Ciao…

Read Full Post »

All day…

Sometimes it takes me all day to get in the proper mood to write a post and this morning i was too tired. I woke up at 6 AM and was so sleepy. I walked the dog and went back to sleep, no posting for me and the funny part was, that I hadn’t taken my sleeping pill the night before, so I am going to try that again tonight.

Now, when I say proper mind to write a post, that doesn’t mean that I am sitting here being miserable, because I am not. I just don’t feel like writing when I am off doing other totally unimportant things that keep my little life busy. Today was one of those days when I kept myself busy doing a myriad of things that I couldn’t begin to tell you about, because they were all of no great impact on anything at all. They were just piddling around things like walking the dog and downloading music and doing laundry and talking to Eduard about things.

I am happy to report that Eduard has found a temporary place to stay until he has his own apartment. He is going to be staying with some friends who have very close connections with the anti-squatters organization. This organization gets good renters for vacant properties so that they don’t become inhabited by squatters. There was a registration stop, but Eduard’s friend has gotten him past that process and will manage to get him to the head of the waiting line too, so he should have something soon. These are perfectly respectable places to live in with gas and water and electricity and everything, so it is not a primitive situation. He can live in one of these places while he is still on the waiting lists with the housing corporations. Eduard will be moving out tomorrow evening.

I feel very good about all of this and glad that this now has been settled. On Wednesday morning, Eduard and Lieve are going to pack up a lot of Eduard’s belongings and put them in the spare room in boxes that Lieve will bring with her. I am gone all Wednesday morning, so that’s why they planned it then. It doesn’t matter to me either way, but I will make a list of all the kitchen stuff that Eduard can pack and talk about that with him, since he cooks and I don’t.

It was a great relief when Eduard said he was leaving tomorrow evening. We are getting along okay, but he shouldn’t be here anymore now and I will feel better being on my own. He will come by once a week to take care of the bills and the administration until we have the divorce settled and we will have telephone contact. That’s enough. He says that he wants to get on with his life too and he feels uncomfortable doing that here, and I can understand that.

My mood for the most part is good. I do have my odd moment of sad feelings, but they don’t last long and I usually bounce back out of them really well. I don’t dwell on those times. If I think about being lonely, I try to think off solutions to combat that or I just wait for it to pass, because it does. Walking with the dog four times a day helps too. Come rain or shine, mostly rain right now. It comes pouring down like buckets.

Since Eduard is taking his big leather lounge chair, I am buying a chair from Ikea. It is called Tullsta, it is 79 Euros and I am getting it in red, just in case you want to look it up. I think we will pick it up tomorrow if we can borrow my sister’s car.

That’s all the news i have for now. Nothing earth shattering. I’m not really in the proper mood to blog, isn’t that strange? Me, of all people. I am too preoccupied with other things now.

Have a great day!

Ciao…

Read Full Post »

Who the hell was Irene?

I went to bed at 2 AM last night, without having taken any sort of nap at all. I just kept staying up doing a myriad of blog related activities, which are doubly intensive now, because I also do my activities in Dutch and have to find and read and leave comments on Dutch language blogs also. It is a way to build up an audience, after all.

I forced myself to go to bed at 2 AM, otherwise I would have stayed up all night and my schedule would have been seriously disturbed. I woke up at 7 AM, welrested and ready to tackle the long awaited day, with Jesker waiting impatiently beside the bed, wagging his stubby tail when I finally woke up. We took our medicines and I had one cup of coffee and a cigarette before I took him for his walk and he was greatly relieved when I did. I think he loves and adores his morning walks the best, because he has to spray against every bush and tree and other non moving objects.

I have no appointments today, but here was still a bit of a hitch with the old Dutch blog in that it kept referring to it when I left comments to other wordpress blogs. I finally got that straightened out, as I could not delete the blog myself, because it did not recognize me as its administrator. A kind young man named Anthony helped me and very promptly too. Such great service! Now I can leave comments on Dutch language blogs referring people to my new Dutch blog. Oh, it was all such a todo about nothing, but such a bother anyway. The old Dutch blog has now disappeared from my dashboard and I am happy for it, because it just created confusion, which I caused in the first place by trying to be too smart.

I am listening to Damien Rice now. Is anyone familiar with him? He’s got a nice singing voice and very mellow songs. It’s a good way to start the day. Starting the day at my place means a lot of blogging, and very litte else, while listening to music.

Frances wants to know what I give up by no longer being Irene and I think that is a good question that I wil try to answer here.

One of the things I give up is victimhood, as Irene has always allowed herself to be a passive victim of her circumstances and not an assertive creator of the positive development of them. Irene would find herself in a less than optimal situation and gloomily and fatalistically accept it, even though she knew she would suffer because of it and that it was going to hurt, but she accepted hurt as a common condition of life, as if she didn’t expect anything else in the end.

Another thing Irene did very well was drama, because it was the only way she could release all her pent up emotions and fears and frustrations. Regulalrly, like clockwork, these emotions would rise to the top, because of some triviality, and explode in a scene of high drama with wild gestures and tears and long speeches and everything and much anger, very much anger and it raged on until there was no drama left in her and then she could go back to internalizing all of her emotions again. She internalized her emotions, because she accepted the unacceptable.

Irene had no clealry defined boundaries and no clearly defined ego. She let people move into her space and tread on the holy ground that was her soul and she had very shaky opinions about what in the end she thought of herself and the world around her. She was very dependent on the people around her to fill in the picture for her. The problem was, that she did in reality have an ego, but this was so suppressed that it was dammed into a tight little corner where it was suffocating and slowly dying. She did have opinions and points of view, but was so hesitant about expressing them, that she literally started to stutter when trying to express them and then tumbled and stumbled over her own words and forgot important bits of information.

Irene wasn’t selfish, she was a martyr. She gave herself up for the people she loved dearly and that was her downfall and she needed to be saved from herself and develop a healthy amount of egoism.

Irene placed no value on her worth as a human being and didn’t think she was worth her weight in any sort of valuable precious metal. She thought she was as disposable as yesterdays newspaper and old bread that gets fed to the ducks in the park. She thought she had done everything wrong and thought back with a head full of shame on her life and all her memories hurt.

I think you get the idea about who Irene was and I can tell you that Nora is none of these things and quite the opposite in all of them. So, I suppose I don’t need to go into detail and tell you who Nora is, because Nora has been writing all of the posts for this blog lately. She is in charge now. Nora is getting me out of the marriage without drama and she makes sure that all is well and safe.

I am glad that I was asked this question so that I could sum up for myself how things really are, although it had been clear to me already.

Now I must end this epistle and do a little bit of housework, I am not completely incapacitated after all.

See also my other weblog: “Nog eens een keer een leuke weblog…”

Ciao…

Read Full Post »