Taking the canary home.

I am sitting at the breakfast bar, using my ex's laptop, and my view is of the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter which is so full of a variety of fruits that it is spilling over onto the counter. We are all eating it as quickly as we can, keeping a healthy diet in mind, but almost every day more gets brought in than we can eat. I think this morning I will make a serious effort to only eat fruit for breakfast and watch the supply dwindle a bit. The oranges look more than ripe enough and I will tackle them. 

The house is very silent other than the quiet noises that the animals make and the occasional creak in the woodwork. I do like that about this house because it makes it feel like it is alive. I would never attempt to fix that if it were my house and I do have to tell you that in my imagination, I have moved this house to downtown Maastricht and moved into it. I like it that much.

My daughter's dog has taken to me right away but her cats eye me with suspicion and will not come close. The only time they want anything to do with me is when their food dishes are empty and there is no other human around to fill them.

 I automatically speak Dutch to the dog and it makes no difference whatsoever to him because he understands me perfectly. He has not looked at me strangely yet. Of course, I understand that it is the intonation of my voice that he reacts to and that is the same in any language, He understands kindness and love even when it is spoken in strange words. Sometimes I call him Tyke because he is on my mind regularly. 

My ex and I did the grocery shopping at Whole Foods yesterday and because we did not know the lay out of the store, it was sort of a slapstick experience. We lost track of each other regularly and then found each other again somewhere in the middle. We each had to do our own shopping and the general shopping so that was lots of fun because we had to look three times for everything. 

We are both equally stubborn and both think we know how to do something best so we have to remember that and not get into an uproar when we clash because of that. When you think about it, we actually get along well because we tolerate a lot from each other and bite our tongues at the right moment. 

I finally managed to find a new address book, which took me a couple of months, and wrote all the pertinent addresses down in it yesterday evening. My old one was filled with crossed out addresses and obsolete ones of people I hardly remember. Now that all the pertinent addresses are written down in the new book, I feel so much more organized and up to date and I immediately felt like sending cards with "Season Greetings" to everyone which I had not done yet. 

I promise I will send you all Easter cards.