That dog...

Just when I claimed that the dog never slept on his big pillow beside the bed, he has started sleeping on it and making a liar out of me. The very fact that I mentioned it must have been a trigger for him to start using it. That happens a lot when I mention some sort of behavior of his here on this blog. The minute I do he starts doing it in the exact opposite way I claimed he did. Maybe he secretly turns the computer on when I'm asleep and reads my blog.

That will make world news. It will teach me not to make generalized statements about the dog because they all will prove to be untrue.  When I mentioned the other day that he was completely house broken, he did a neat turd directly by the back door on the linoleum. When I say he's best friends with the cat, he starts bothering her something awful as if he doesn't like her at all. Anything I say about him, he'll prove differently. He's an ornery dog.

Other than that he thinks that every banana I eat is supposed to be shared with him and he looks very disappointed if he only gets one bite. He thinks I go to the toilet just to sit there and rub his belly because he always follows me into the bathroom. The first thing I do every morning is greet him as if he's the most important creature in the world (don't tell anyone but he is). He's an attachment of me just as well as my arm or leg is.

So much for that rotten dog.

I went to the hairdresser this morning and had the great pleasure of having my hair washed and cut. When my hair was washed, I also got a great head massage and I had been secretly hoping for one. I needed it because my muscles were very tight and they loosened up quite a bit.

I got a great haircut and it's very easy to manage. Everybody who works there knows how I want my hair cut and they all do a great job. I do have my personal preference but anyone can do it. It had been something like seven weeks since I had it cut so it was more than time for it to be done. I was amazed at how much hair came off.

I do see a very middle aged woman when I look in the mirror at the hairdresser. It's even worse when my hair is wet and it sticks up in all directions. It's best not to be too critical of yourself then. I purposely don't wear my glasses when I go. I don't have to see every detail.

I look alright once my hair is styled and in place. If I squint it's not too bad and if I run fast you hardly notice how old I really am.

Have a good day.

Ciao,
Irene

After a long night's sleep...

I managed to sleep from 10 o'clock last night until 6 o'clock this morning. I think that was partly because I was not at all interested in sitting behind the computer and doing anything blog related. As a matter of fact, I felt an aversion to my blog and my compulsion to keep wanting to change the design of it.

I think I keep wanting to change the design of it to make it a better blog, while I know that it doesn't depend on the appearance but on the contents.Lately I have felt that I don't have much of importance to say, yet I feel compelled to write to prove myself wrong. Every post looks alike and I feel that I'm only repeating myself post after post with the same unimportant ingredients.

I talk about how much I sleep and how much coffee I drink and about taking Tyke for walks. I actually lead a very boring life and from that I somehow have to put together a post that's interesting enough for people to want to read.

I think I'm not capable of doing it and the realization of it is hitting me hard and putting some fear into my heart. This makes me do things such as change the design every time I turn around. It also wants to make me change the title of my blog to fit the design I find.

Desperate people do desperate things, so I have decided instead not to be so fixated on my blog and to turn the computer off often during the day.

In the meantime, I have managed to get an appointment to have Tyke trimmed and bathed tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. There was a cancellation and that's why I managed to get him in so quickly. Otherwise it would have taken much longer. It will be so nice to get that done, because he really looks like a raggedy dog now. He almost looks like he has dreadlocks.

I've just taken him for a walk and it was still lovely out. It was just the right temperature. The sun was not to hot and there was still a bit of a breeze. It's going to be a hot day today, though, and I'm not looking forward to that. I have to go see my SPN this afternoon and I have to go on my bike, but hopefully that will be pleasant, as I will catch a breeze while I ride it.

I'm going to finish doing the laundry now. I never did get done with that yesterday. I have no reason why I didn't. I just forgot about it.

Have a nice day.

Ciao,
Nora

Taking a break.

I've walked Tyke and washed the dishes and changed my bed. Then I fooled around with the look of my blog. You know how it is, while I was waiting for the washing machine to get done, I couldn't leave well enough alone and I found a great website with lots of blogger backgrounds. Well yes, I am fickle and I do change my mind. That's my prerogative as a woman and I must be very feminine. Not that I hadn't noticed that before, but I do exaggerate sometimes. At least I don't wear nail polish on my toe nails. I haven't quite gone as far as that. I'll let you know when I get to that point.

I've even changed my glasses and put on the pair that I thought I had lost, but that showed up in the box of art supplies. They are rectangular, as opposed to my other pair which are oval. They look quite different and until I get comments on them, I don't know how I feel about them. You see, I can't make up my own mind. The woman in the shop helped me pick them out, but once I had them, I got enormous doubts about them and didn't wear them that often. Well, just often enough to lose them for a while. I thought they weren't meant to be until I found them again.

I've misplaced a denim mini skirt and I have no idea where it is. It's not in any of the usual places, so it's a mystery to me. How can a mini skirt disappear? It's not that little. I did have to fit into it. It will probably show up in some odd place where I haven't looked yet and that is completely illogical for a mini skirt to be. I'll let you know when it shows up.

I just walked Tyke again in the hot noontime sun. The clouds that were here earlier burnt away and now we have blue skies again. There are some clouds at the horizon, so there may be rain yet, but I doubt it. It doesn't look threatening enough. It's hot in the sun and I didn't make it a long walk. We did that in the morning when it was still cool. There's all sorts of shrubbery blooming now, which I can't identify, but which smells good. Most of them have white flowers. That seems to be the most common blossom here, except for the fruit trees which are pink and white. Some of them are still blooming too.

I should now get the laundry out of the machine and hang it up to dry, but my feet are sore from walking. I want to get some black high tops with white laces and wear those with my black leggings. I think they will be comfortable to walk in instead of these summer shoes and sandals. There's always some area of my foot that's being pinched by something.

Well, I took care of that quickly. I just ordered some on line and they were very reasonably priced and I bought them on credit. They will be mine in less than four payments. That's the way to do business. I will pay them off quicker than that, though. I don't want to walk on unowned shoes and I can't buy anything else until they're payed for. That's my rule. It will be nice to walk in something comfortable and not be pinched everywhere. My toes and my heels will be very grateful, I'm sure. So will the soles of my feet.

I will try not to take a nap today, even though I got up very early. It's better to be totally beat tonight. I think I will just find more chores to do instead. I've cleaned out that cabinet I was talking about the other day. It turned out not to be so much work. I just needed a plastic bag for the junk and a paper bag for the obsolete medicines that can go to the pharmacy. The rest of the things in there needed to be organized and that was done quickly.

I need the same kind of initiative when I clean out the chest of drawers. It just needs to hit me that it is what I'm going to do and then nothing will stop me. Actually, the Exfactor needs to look through them first and see if there's anything that belongs to him before I throw it away, because I'm ruthless. I have no mercy when it comes to tossing things out. I don't like to hold on to useless items.

Speaking of useless items, I have to remember to put the trash out tonight. It's that time of the week again. Last week I forgot to put out the recyclable paper and I now have a big box of it sitting in my hallway waiting for the next pick up day. These used to be the Exfactor's jobs and I'm still not used to doing them and have a tendency to forget. I'm only reminded because I see other people's stuff sitting out on the curb. Then I walk inside and forget about it again. I'm very absentminded. It's a good thing my head is screwed on tight. If I live carefully and pay close attention to the details, I do okay. An agenda is a very handy thing to have, though. Especially if you look in it every day.

Well, I'm going to hang up the laundry now and dust the living room. It looks pretty spotless, but you never know... A domestic help sees hidden dirt. Dirt that an ordinary person is unaware of. I see some myself now on the baseboard under the radiator.

Have yourself a nice day. I will take some pictures of the living room and post those soon.

Ciao,

Nora

Ascension Day

This is just a post to let you all know that I'm alive and breathing, but that I've decided not to spend so much time behind the computer anymore. Blogging was taking up too much of my time and it had nearly become an obsession and a lot of my spare time went into it. I always had the computer on stand by and every free moment I sat down and did something related to my blog and I thought it had gotten out of hand.

Tyke is the recipient of my free time now, as I spend much more time with him and it's paying off, as he's bothering the cat much less and begging for attention less, because he's getting enough of it now. I take him for more and longer walks and spend more time cuddling with him and just sitting with him and being there, instead of sitting behind the computer. He appreciates that very much. Gandhi also gets more opportunities to sit on my lap, so I make her happy as well.

The photo at the top is of the field where I take Tyke for his shorter walks. I took it a few years ago at the beginning of Spring. I'm taking him there for his last walk tonight, while it is still barely light outside. The days are getting longer, although the weather has been dreary and cold.

Tyke has a little infection in his eye that I'm treating with an antibiotic ointment and it seems to be helping already. He's pretty good about letting me apply it. He only protests a little bit. Maybe he knows it's good for him.

The country has been in the grip of the disaster of the Lybian airline crash in which so many Dutch people died and which one 9 year old boy named Ruben survived. It's been quite shocking, to say the least. It happened one day before the 10 year memorial of the fireworks disaster in Enschede in which a whole neighborhood got wiped out and many people died. Flags are flying at half mast.

I hope you're all having a good day.

Ciao,

Nora

Neither here nor there...

An infinitesimal amount of people visited my blog today. I will not for one minute worry about being well known enough and start thinking of marketing strategies or popularity campaigns, though I'm sure that all such schemes exist. I've noticed that the most simple and insignificant blogs pull in the most followers and that long winded ramblers like me seldom get high up there in the ratings. There's too much to read and people just want something quick and not a treatise on life at my house. However, I always have much to say, and since it's my blog and I will keep saying it, I won't start worrying until the numbers start to really dwindle. Until I'm a lone voice in the desert.

I know that when I write a post about suicide attempts, or self harm, or a total nervous breakdown, with all the drama and tears to go with it, my readership suddenly goes up and I don't know why that is. So, I'm thinking that I must start making things up and have one of those events happen regularly and have lots of drama happen in my life, just as things are slowing down to a dull roar.

I also should post lots of pictures, because people seem to like them, so I'll have to start taking lot's of photographs of Tyke and the cats, which reminds me that I have to put batteries in my camera.

There, I took a bunch of pictures and then had to edit or delete them and locate them on the computer and stick them in a map where I could find them and it was all a little bit tiresome on a new computer. It didn't quite work the same way it did on my old computer, so I had to cheat a bit. A lot of my photographs are stored in Documents, because I could not get them into Images, and I had to store these in Documents also.

I just had to take my medicines and make myself a cup of coffee, because I had a complete sinking in moment. Suddenly life didn't seem all that wonderful and I hope to get over it quickly as soon as I've had my cup of coffee. I know, they are only fleeting feelings.

I bought a cigarette holder today that had a sticker on it that said, "Push here to open," and of course the first thing I did was remove the sticker, so now nobody will know how to open it but me. I also found an old watch with an adjustable metal band in my jewelry box and managed to get it off and attach it to the watch that was still working, but had a broken band. So, I solved that problem. Now the Exfactor doesn't need to go get a new battery for the other watch that stil has a band. The watch I have on is prettier and I bought it myself. It was one of my first purchases as a single woman.


I´m done writing this post now. I´m not all that satisfied with it, but I´m going to publish it anyway. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don´t. think I started out feeling like a nut when I first began this one. You know what you do when you write an unsatisfactory post, don´t you? You immediately start writing another one. I have the feeling that I´m staying up late tonight. It is Saturday after all and I must have my wild night too.

Have a good evening.

Ciao,
Nora

In the middle of the night.

I went to bed at 10 pm and found myself awake again at 2:30 am. There was nothing to do but to get up and make myself a cup of coffee and turn on the computer and enjoy the extremely wee hours of the early morning. There is still snow outside, but it doesn't look as if more fell since last night, leaving us with a thin powdery layer that right now is getting frozen at -4C. I do so like being up at this hour of the night and try to think of all sorts of things I could do now that I'm up and feeling well, besides writing this post and reading the blogs that I'm behind on. There are still the floors to mop...

It's too bad that I can't change the living room around anymore. I've done all I can do there. There's not a piece of furniture that needs moving, nor a picture that needs rehanging. From this point forward it is only cleaning that I have left to do and that, of course, is much less fun. I'm waiting for a burst of energy to come along and make me grab a bucket of suds and get to scrubbing. I've just made myself a second cup of coffee, so with a little bit of luck my burst of energy will come soon. Caffeine induced energy. I'll take it anyway it comes. A little bit of it will be of my own.

I'm almost done with 'Beachcombing for a Shipwrecked God' and it's turned out to be a surprisingly good novel and quite adventurous even at the end. I have a few pages left to read, but fell asleep last night with it. Then comes the big choice of what to read next, because I have so many books to pick from. I got two in the mail yesterday and they look good too. There are some novels I'm unable to get and it's frustrating me to no end. People who only send inside their own country have them and that's a lost cause. You can't even approach them. Bookmooch is very strict about that. There's no way to finagle your way into their hearts.

Well, it's slowly turning into morning, because I'm sitting here poking around as usual. Paying attention to everything around me as I try to write this. I'm also listening to music, which is slightly distracting me, as I've never heard this singer before. Or band, I suppose it is. I like weird music, but it can be a little too weird sometimes and then I just sit spellbound listening to it. I always imagine being young and being the lead singer in a band myself and what kind of music I would like it to be and I'm sure I would not like it to be middle of the road music. It would have to be slightly odd and unique.

I wonder how sleep inducing it is to write a blog post and how sleep inducing it is to read one or many of them. They are such very passive activities, aren't they? You use such few muscles and your brain doesn't get overly involved either, unless you're writing a masterpiece. We all know I'm not writing one of those today. I'm just chit chatting. Making noise on the screen. I have to go off and find a passionate activity to do, such as mopping the floors...

I'm just a little bit cold sitting here and I may turn up the heater just a notch. On the other hand, if I'm going to be physically active, I won't need to. I'm awfully hungry too and may eat breakfast early. I just hope it won't make me groggy.

Alright, I'm off to find my bucket. I saw it last in the bathroom, so that's where I'm headed.

I hope you all have a wonderful morning when you wake up and that you will be full of good cheer.

Ciao,
Nora

So very chilly...

The boiler repairman came yesterday, but he did not have a ventilator, which is what the boiler needs, so he is supposed to come back this afternoon. I hope he keeps his promise, because I'm starting to miss my hot water an awful lot now. I want to put my cold hands into a sudsy sink full of dishes and hot water and I'd like for the apartment to be heated and I'd also like to wash my hair, which is sticking up from sleeping on it and looks kind of spunky, but I'm not so much into the spunky look right now. I'm becoming quite sedate in my late middle age. I was going to say, in my dotage, but it's not quite as bad as that. Not yet anyway.But seriously people, I'm wearing two layers of clothes and my boots and I'm cold. I think I need thermal underwear...

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I pulled on a big sweater and took a huge nap on the sofa. At least I was warm enough to do it. I am still toasty warm now, so that big sweater has made all the difference. Even my hands have gotten warm and my nose also. This sweater is made of wool, so you can't beat that for warmth. I got it from my sister a few years ago and it has been an old stand by ever since. I can pull it on over all of my clothes and be comfortable, or wear it outside when it isn't too cold yet.

The repairman called to say that he would be here tomorrow morning, because he could not get the ventilator today. I know he felt bad for disappointing me, I could tell by the sound of his voice. He promised to be here at 8 am, which I think is very early. I may not be quite up to it then, but I guess I'll have to be. I don't think I'll be dressed by that time, because it is my day off, although in reality it is house cleaning day and grocery shopping day. You know how much I'm looking forward to that, right?

I was talking to another woman today and she said, "You know, house cleaning doesn't at all come naturally to me." And I answered, "Don't feel bad, it doesn't to me either." I think it did when I still had the nesting syndrome when my kids were younger and in theory I could have had another child. I was always being a proper hausfrau then and dragging the vacuum cleaner through the house. In my mind I had another baby once a month and I very often pictured where I would put the playpen and the high chair. So, it wasn't so strange that I was always cleaning up the place in preparation for another child.

But that instinct is completely gone now and I'm not interested in, or getting that much satisfaction out of cleaning house. It's done too often and too dull a job and it comes undone too easily for me to be satisfied with. I don't get that sense of pride from it. If I do get it, the duration is so short, that I hardly notice it. I've just given up caring about it, because of the never ending battle and I do so want carpeting in the living room and hallway. Anything to keep the dust down. I'll do that next year in the summer.

Anyway, It was cold on my bike this morning when I went to creative therapy. The tears were running down my face. I had a snotty nose when I got there, but luckily tissues in my pocket. I had forgotten that I had a different color hair, so I was surprised when people looked at me and did a double take and said," Oh, I like your hair!" The reactions have all been positive, but I really wasn't expecting anything else. I'm pleased with it myself, so I assume people will like it.

I was going to make a doodle this morning and got out all the fine point black pens, but none of them were working well and I had to give up on that project, so I got out an old fashioned pen and a bottle of ink and started to draw with it. I've drawn a continent (made up) and I'm filling it with little drawings of minuscule things. Right now I'm working on tiny flowers that all have to fit together. They don't all have to be the same size, as long as they are small. I don't know yet what else I will draw to fill it up with yet. I have to use my imagination, or look and see what somebody else is doing and get inspired by them. It's itsy bitsy little work and I have to be very patient, but for some reason I am. I like working with that pen, but am a little bit frustrated when I run out of ink and have to dip it in the bottle again. That's how I learned to write when I was a kid, with pen and ink and if you were real good, you got to write in green ink.

Oh yes, Ive changed my template. I've decided that I didn't want to be so obviously out there with my blog page and the header image and the header title. I like this better. It is a little more demure and calm and serene. It pleases my sense of order. It is all very nice and well to try and make your own design, but I like this design from Blogger, although I do wish they had more choice. I hope they catch on to that one day and offer us more to choose from like Wordpress does, but Wordpress has other limitations, so that's why I'm not going back there. You can't just go somewhere for the choice of templates. And don't try to upload those other free Blogger templates, it's not worth the headache you'll get from it.

It's supposed to rain tomorrow and it's not going to be very warm. Well, you do get used to any temperature and as long as the wind isn't blowing too hard, you can stand anything, as long as you're dressed warm enough. We were standing out on the deck today smoking cigarettes and it was not nice out there, but we stood there as if it was a spring day. It even started to sprinkle a little, but we didn't budge. We are die hards. The smoking room was filled with a group of cackling women from the cooking group and I would have felt like I was intruding and so did the others. Actually, come to think of it, the other people who were there out on the deck hardly ever sit in the smoking room. They stand outside in a blizzard. God, I hope we don't get one of those. No snow, please.

I have to walk the dog. We forgot our 6 pm walk and now he is sound asleep and will be hard to get up again. He is snoring, so that means he is way out west. He thinks he's all done for tonight. At least it's not raining now, so we won't get wet.

Have a good evening or a good rest of the day, whatever you can make of it.

Ciao,
Nora