Getting Better...

I still have a head cold and I am somewhat congested in my chest, but I really think I'm getting better. At least I don't feel like a wrung out dishrag and my body doesn't ache all over the place anymore. I think the worst of the flu is over now and that I'm mending, and I tell you, that's not a day too soon, because yesterday I became pretty disgusted with it. I saw all the things I had to do and felt my inability to do them and was very frustrated.

I also felt bad about not being able to take Tyke for a walk and now I think that is one of the first things I will do this morning. I will not go for a real long walk, but long enough for both of us to get some exercise and fresh air, which we both need, because we've both got cabin fever. It will be wonderful to be outside in the cool morning air and to stretch my legs and get some exercise after being immobile for the last few days. I think yesterday afternoon was the turning point and I started getting better from that moment on.

Now I'm sitting here with a glass of cold milk after I've had my obligatory cup of coffee. I've been drinking a lot of cold milk lately, because the fruit juice made my stomach sour. The cold milk quenched my eternal thirst really well and I drank it greedily. I know it's not supposed to be the thing to drink when you have a cold because of the mucous build up, but it doesn't seem to hurt me and it sure has quenched my thirst these past days. I've never been so thirsty and the fruit juice upset my stomach.

I have drank very little coffee, just a cup now and then, and I haven't missed it very much. I certainly did not go through withdrawal symptoms. I thought about drinking tea, but for some reason tea doesn't seem to settle in my stomach well and I don't know if that is because I take sugar in it. I have to try it without the sugar sometime.

While I was asleep, Tyke completely tore apart the hyacinths that my sister had bought me and broke one of the pots. The soil was spread all over the place and I had to sweep it up in the middle of the night. I have to replant them later this morning and find a new pot for one of them and then place them on the windowsill in the kitchen where he can't get to them. He had no sense that he had done anything wrong when I scolded him, so that was an exercise in futility. He was very curious when I cleaned everything up.

The hyacinths themselves are okay. He didn't bite them to pieces. I suppose this is what life is like with a pubertal dog. There will be another year of this before he has completely outgrown this kind of behavior. I have to have an awful lot of wits and patience in the meantime. A dog like that dares you to love him in spite of everything. And you do.

In comparison, it's so much easier to have cats, although they have a tendency to shred your furniture, but they usually stick to one piece. They do it no matter how many scratching posts you have. They are very good at ignoring those, even if they are quite appealing. I'm afraid to get a new sofa, or I should say, the sofa of my choice, because of what Gandhi will do to it. I think I will not get a new sofa until I have no more cats. That should be in another 6 years or so. I hope my sofa lasts that long.

Having been sick, and nearly being over it, sure makes me appreciate my health very much. I can't wait to start doing some ordinary things like hanging up the laundry to dry. That was still impossible yesterday, but I think I can manage it today. I won't be able to hang it outside, because we're expecting rain, even though the temperature is going to be nice at 9C. That would be warm enough to dry the laundry.

We're expecting rain for the next few days and it really doesn't bother me that much, as long as it's not cold and it doesn't turn into snow. There's no chance of that, however. I think we've left all of that behind us. I keep focusing on the idea that we're moving towards spring now and that nothing can stop that movement. It's the law of nature.

Tyke is very innocently sleeping by my feet. You'd think he'd never done a bad thing in his life, that he was the best puppy ever, that's how adorable he looks, all rolled up in a ball. Puppies look adorable so we forgive them their evil deeds. It works the same way with little kids. We love our children in spite of the fact that they drive us nuts, because they are so adorable. We don't understand that other people think our children are spoiled brats. Luckily, they get over this stage and turn into normal children.

Okay. I'm going to do some useful things now. I think I'll sweep the junk room and find a bag to put the cat litter bag in to. More and more cat litter is spilling out. I hope I'm not being overly optimistic as to my capacity to do things. I do so want to get the show on the road. And you know what they say: where there's a will, there's a way!

Ciao,
Nora

It's too early to go to bed.

I was planning on going to bed, but it's really too early to go and it would be slightly ridiculous if I went now. So, instead of that I will write another post and tell you about the amazing paint job I did over the mildewy patches of the living room walls. There, I just told you. No really, I had a nice little can of white paint and a brand new brush and I didn't dribble any paint and very neatly covered up the mildewed patches (of which I don't know the origins) and, as the paint has been drying, the mildewed patches have not reappeared, except for one particularly stubborn spot. I'll slap more paint on there later.

I also keep trying to improve the living room and I found in the junk room a rod iron candle holder for three candles that you hang on the wall. That was just what I needed for one bare spot, but I knew that wall needed screws and I had no drill. But I also remembered that before the last paint job, there had been a hole somewhere in that spot that we had puttied, so I had to try and find it. After a while I did. It was just a little bump and I hammered a nail into it and hung up the candle holder. Then I looked in the junk drawer (every good household has one) and found three matching blue candles and stuck them in and voilà, it was a done deed and it looked nice. I even lit the candles for a while, but then blew them out and decided to save them for a really romantic evening. I am going to have one of those, you know!

Then I got really bold and took a lamp out of the bedroom and added it to a spot beside a chair in the living room, but it was a wrong move and it didn't even grow on me, and I have to take it back to the bedroom when I go there next. Sometimes you want things too much and then you overdo it. It is that way in real life too. Curses!

It's been freezing here and in some places there's an inch of ice on the water. That's not thick enough to skate on, but some daredevils do it anyway. It's going to keep freezing, so by this weekend we should all be able to skate outdoors. Not I, of course, I have no skates. I haven't skated in 30 years and doubt I could do it anymore. That's not at all spoken like a true Dutch woman, because no Dutch woman would say that. Everybody here knows how to skate, it's the law. It's as normal as bike riding. Even the queen knows how to skate. Heck, she even knows how to ski and you don't see the queen of England doing that. Yes, our queen rides horses too. I really shouldn't make a big deal out of that, should I? I mean, why should the queen not know how to skate or ski? She's a normal person of flesh and blood, isn't she? In the end, she's no different than you or me. She's about as royal as my left foot.

The dog's on a diet and is only getting half the food that he was getting. I am buying him some very good dog food, but giving him a little in two portions. He thinks it's fine and loves it and when his bowl is empty he thinks he's had enough. Except for tonight when he went over and in one big vacuuming motion ate all the cat kibbles out of their bowl. I hope he doesn't keep doing that, or I'll have to feed them on the kitchen counter. I do have a small bowl of dried dog food for him, but he is completely ignoring it. He must think eating dried dog food is beneath his dignity. He has to lose 12 lbs at least, but I have to buy him food that he likes to eat, otherwise he'll start begging for his Bonzo bones and those are only for special. He's such a goof ball.

I was sitting here with the blinds wide open letting the whole world see that I'm a woman living all by myself. I guess I always feel safe in this neighborhood, or it is because I have a dog. Little do they know that he is deaf and doesn't even hear the doorbell. It's very convenient that he's deaf when all the fireworks go of at New year's. It's like WWIII broke out, but he doesn't hear it and is not in the least scared. The cats are and go into hiding, the poor things.

Well, my dog thinks it's time to go to bed. He keeps going to the bedroom and coming back here and sighing deeply. I think it has great meaning. I must heed his call.

I hope you will all have a good night and sleep tight.

Ciao,
Nora

Wednesday in the morning.

Well, I managed to sleep through the night. It wasn't a super long night, but I did it anyway. I went to sleep at 12:30 am and woke up at 6 am. That was after I had fallen asleep on the sofa for a few hours in the evening, which I had promised myself I wouldn't do, but did anyway. The urge to sleep was stronger than the urge to stay awake. Now I am still yawning, but I think a few cups of strong coffee will take care of that.

Yesterday was another blustery, rainy day, although it was not as bad as the day before, and I decided not to go out on my bike at all. That meant I did no grocery shopping and I had to make do with what was in the kitchen cupboards. Luckily, there was enough there to eat and there even was enough dog and cat food, so we managed fine, but today I really have to go to the grocery store, otherwise we will be eating dry vermicelli.

I cleaned up that cubicle in the bookcase I had talked about earlier to make room for the latest mooched books. There was a big stack of paperwork lying there that I had to sort through and decide about what to keep and file away in a folder and what to toss out. So I did that and found some interesting bits of paper that I filed away that I had forgotten about. Now I know I've got them and where they are. I think the covenant of my divorce is very important, for example. I knew it was there, but I had never put it in a proper place. A lot of that stuff could be tossed out, though, as it was obsolete, meaning it was interesting a year ago, but not now. I put the books in the cubicle and they nearly filled it up, so soon I will have to reorganize another one, because I have 15 more books coming. Oh, but it's nothing but fun and all for a good cause.

Then I did a week's worth of dishes. Yes really, I didn't have a clean teaspoon left over, nor a clean coffee cup. I do let that go, you know? I keep stacking them up, until I realize they need to be washed and then I put them all in the sink to soak in hot sudsy water, but the plug of the sink doesn't fit well and very slowly the water leaks out, until I am left with an empty sink full of dishes. Then I think, "Oh, the heck with it!" and I put it off until the next day, except that everything seems so chaotic and I get discouraged from looking at them and another day gets wasted. I feel ten feet tall when I get them done and you would think I had washed enough dishes for an orphanage, when in reality it amounts to hardly anything. That's why I think I need a dishwasher. All those who agree raise their hand.

I'm trying to get some things better organized in the apartment, like the chest of drawers in the living room in which everything gets shoved that doesn't have a home. I need to go through them again and toss things out, and doesn't everybody have a junk drawer that is an absolute mystery to them as to what exactly the contents are? I know I have candles and mousetraps in mine, amongst other things and god only knows what else and I think I'm going to keep it that way and never really clean it up. I would just have to start another junk drawer with all the junk I'd find. Well, I'm not planning on moving any time soon, so I don't have to worry about boxing up my junk and having to find a new space for it.

Now I have to get the show on the road. It's time to get dressed and walk the dog. I have to go to creative therapy. I mustn't miss it. I have a busy day ahead of me. I'm not sure how much I like that. It's the riding my bike part that I don't like. Not in this weather.

Have a good day.

Ciao,
Nora

Hi People.

If you're looking for your award, you have to go down one post and you will find it there. If not, you're in the right place for some leisurely reading.

This afternoon, The Exfactor and I were supposed to move almost everything from my bedroom to the spare bedroom and move all the junk from there to my bedroom. In other words, we were going to exchange rooms, but he called me at 12:30 pm to tell me that his back was still bothering him and that he would be by instead tomorrow when I'm hardly going to be home.

So I said, "Never mind, I'll do it myself," and promptly made a plan of action and went to work. First I moved my own furniture out of the way, to make room for the first of the boxes and other junk that was sitting in the middle of the spare room. Then I started hauling that over and stacking it in a rational way against a wall.

That cleared up all the floor space in the spare room and I saw that I would have to do an awful lot of vacuuming, because I could hardly see the carpet for the grit and dog and cat hair and other assorted little bits and pieces that were unidentifiable. It had also been the Exfactor's hobby room.

Then I started taking the boxes of assorted items out of their shelf systems and brought those to the bedroom, very carefully one by one, easy does it. Every time a shelf system was empty, I took it to the bedroom and stood it against the wall and filled it up again, trying to do this in the most logical way, with all the heavy stuff on the bottom.

I did this five times with little breaks and glasses of juice in between. Finally, I had the spare room almost empty, except for one shelf system for which I could not find room and that also has some of my things on it. I am going to look at those items in a while and give them a better place. There won't be much left on it after that and the Exfactor should be able to move it out tomorrow.

Then I had to get rid of all the cobwebs, which were numerous, and vacuum the carpet really well. I took my time doing that and I got it cleaned up very nicely. If you run fast, you don't notice anything. That's what my mother always said.

After that, I had to haul my bed in there and that was a lot of work, because I didn't have the right screwdriver to take it apart. I had to leave it in one piece, but did take the mattress and the mattress support out, which was very heavy. It took some shoving and pulling and pushing to get it through the doorways and around various corners, but I did get it in place and put back together.

The night stand and the chairs and the standing lamp were easy. The long white bookcase was already in place and just needed too be cleaned up and have items placed on it. I did that, but I still need to clean the radiators and wash the windows, but I had run out of steam and called it a day. I will do a few small things now that I'm rested up again, but the hard work I'll do later this week.

I'm mighty proud of myself and said as much to the Exfactor when he called. He was quite surprised that I had done the job all on my own. I tell you, I'm no wimpy woman, I have muscles in my arms. You could say that I take after my father and don't know the word 'can't.'

All this time, Gandhi was 'helping' me. She climbed on every box and shelf system and on top of the mattress that was leaning against the wall. She had a ball. She ran from one room to another and jumped straight into an empty trash bag that made a lot of noise and when the bed was made, she went to sleep on it for a nice little while.

Toby was outside all this time, but at one point he came in and started meowing very confusedly and walking around as if he had lost his way, so I had to reassure him that everything was okay. He's not as playful as Gandhi, being the male cat of the house and having to think about his dignity and all. I think he also gets scared quicker, but don't tell him I said that. He has a reputation to hold up.

The dog just laid on the floor at a close distance and slept and if he got in the way he moved two feet and went on sleeping. I moved his pillow and that was just fine with him, he didn't mind one bit and laid down on it when he felt like it no matter where it was. That dog is unflappable. Nothing upsets him, except for cats eyeballing his very good food. I had accidentally bought him chunky puppy food and he certainly liked that! Gandhi only got to lick his empty dish.

Now I'm off to do those few little chores. I don't have any sore muscles or a sore back, so I suppose I am okay. Tonight I get to sleep in my new bedroom, now no longer called the spare room or the hobby room or the junk room.

Have a good night, everyone. I hope your day was as enjoyable as mine.

Ciao...

P.S. It was 26 degrees Celsius today, tomorrow it will be 27. That's about 80 degrees Fahrenheit.