A Pretty Lazy Saturday.

Is it my imagination, or am I having many lazy days lately? Please tell me that it's my imagination, because I would hate to go through life as a not diligent Dutch housewife. I mean I do do the odd job in the apartment now and then and I do take very good care of myself. That ought to account for something, should it not? I am always well put together, the fact that the Queen can't come over for tea at the spur of the moment should not be held against me.

I am striving to follow in the footsteps of my late sister in law who was not a great housewife, but an immensely interesting woman to hang out with and whom I loved dearly. She was always in the mood for any sort of conversation and no subject was taboo, and she had a good sense of humor too and she was very emancipated. Can you think of a better role model? The fact that she didn't scrub her kitchen sink on a daily basis didn't seem so important. She wasn't married to her house.

Anyway, I sort of wiled away the hours doing many mostly unimportant things, though once in a while something mattered quite by accident. Like spontaneously and unplanned cleaning up the kitchen to the point that the counters were free and clean. And going through my mail and throwing away everything that was unimportant and non threatening. And picking up heaps of dog and cat hair that had bunched up together under the furniture. That will be the bane of me yet.

I took a spontaneous nap on the sofa, because I was suddenly overcome by sleepiness in the middle of the day and fell sleep with the TV on, watching a very interesting program about the Holocaust Museum that was built by the same architect who got the commission to build the memorial at Ground Zero.I can't think of his name now. Just a minute...Daniel Libeskind. It's a shame that I missed most of the program, because it was very good. I find daytime television on the weekends to be very interesting with lots of good documentaries and good interview shows.

When I'm not behind the computer, I find that I turn the TV on for company and quite accidentally watch some good programs that way. I fall asleep with it on during the night, turned down low, and sometimes what's on TV becomes part of my dream.They are mostly reruns of the news, so by osmosis I am very well informed.

I made a short shopping list and with rain threatening, I rode my bike to the super market. Luckily, it wasn't too busy and I was done in no time and even remembered to buy a new electronic lighter, because the other kind of lighters always stop working when they are still half full. How is that for optimism? It's actually quite a rip off when you have to dispose of a disposable lighter that's still half full. I tried matches, but the striking surface on the box isn't what it used to be and is only there for decorative purposes.

Just when I had loaded up my bike and started to ride it out of the parking lot, it started to rain really hard and I thought, "Oh, what the heck, you have short hair, it will be dry in no time," and I pedaled home as quickly as I could, not encountering too much traffic, which was good, because I would not have put on my brakes for anyone.Just as I got home, the rain stopped. It was a joke of Mother Nature, she has a good sense of humor. She is always testing my willingness to brave the elements and to see how hardy I am, to see if I'm made of the right stuff to be called a Dutch woman.

I bough ten liters of milk and I hope they last me a while, but knowing how fast I go through milk, it will be gone in no time. The animals in all their curiosity came to help me unpack the groceries and found out to their disgust that there was nothing special for them, except for an empty shopping bag for Toby to climb in. My shopping bag is from the Socialist Party, so people can see my political preference up front. I never think about it when I go out with it and I guess I do make a statement, but it is really no big deal. It's not an in your face sort of thing. Tolerance reigns.

If I didn't vote socialist, I would vote for the Green party, because their attitude is right and they make humorous commercials that get their point of view across exactly. Unluckily, they don't stand a chance of winning enough votes in an election, although out of principle I am on their side. The socialist party is a very serious contender and should have been in this coalition government, but the Christian Democrats would not govern with them and left them out in the cold, which is not how the people voted.

So, we're stuck with this government of Christian jackasses for now, which is a real shame and gave us an unworthy prime minister who is a man without authority and leadership. An embarrassment to the country. That's not the worst of it. You would not believe the clowns who have started their own political parties and movements and who are being taken every seriously. It scares me! They are getting too much attention from the press.

I never knew I was such a political creature until I came back to the Netherlands and gained the right to vote. I never miss the news now and am always on the look out for the ridiculous and the ostensible stupidity that the system brings with it. I think politicians need to be sat on and watched like hawks, unless you have a person of great integrity whom you intrinsically trust.

In the meanwhile, peace and serenity rule in the apartment. The cats are very quietly moving around doing catlike things, such as investigating nooks and crannies that they know by heart, but are apparently worth having another look at. The Überhund is sound asleep by my feet. He told me earlier that he was hungry, so we fixed that problem. He really tries to tell me what he specifically wants and hopes I guess the right thing by his general stand and bark. We usually figure it out pretty quickly, but I don't know which one of us is the smart one.

I am planning on staying up late and sleeping late in the morning, but you know about good intentions. They do fall by the wayside. All I need to do is put my pajamas on and get on that sofa and I will be sleeping before you know it. I am hoping on some good entertainment from the TV, maybe that will help.

Here are some more photographs from the Exfactor.




Have a very good evening and wish for lots of sunshine for tomorrow.

Ciao...

Finally Friday.

I must have had an awful lot of sleep to catch up on, because yesterday all day long, whenever I sat down , I started to nod off after a while, until I made myself come awake again and stand up and do something useful, until I finally gave in and took a long nap on the sofa later in the afternoon. Sometimes it was even difficult to keep a phone conversation going. I talked with my eyes closed, which is not conducive to having a great talk.

So I dragged my butt around and didn't accomplish much. It was all too much effort. I did make it to the supermarket and did all the groceries. I bought some very good food for the dog and I hope that he likes it, because it is amongst the best I could find without breaking the bank. I bought much milk and plenty of coffee pads. They were on sale, thank goodness. For a treat, I bought cookies for myself and I ate them all up. They tasted very fine indeed. Sometimes you just have to sin a little.

It's not as if I can afford to sin, because I've gained 5 kilos this past winter and I have to get rid of them, obviously. I don't quite know how yet , because I love the foods that I am eating right now and it seems more than obvious that I'm getting plenty of them. Leave it to me to eat too much with a gastric band in. I always will find a way.

So yesterday I hardly made it out of bed in the morning and today I'm already up at 5 AM. What woke me up was the impatient pacing around of the Überhund. He didn't even want to go out, but was just walking around the apartment following cats around as if that is a new hobby of his.

When I got up, I walked around like an old woman at first, because my hips hurt from laying in the bed all wrong. I don't know how I managed to do that, but it is the second morning in a row that this has happened. Maybe I am just becoming an old woman, period.

I'm rather excited about today, because I get to go to creative therapy, and it will mean that my weekends will be so much shorter. They used to start on Thursdays, it seemed, and now they will start properly om Friday afternoons. Even then, I still have house cleaning to do this afternoon, so it will really not be a weekend day yet. I must vacuum the apartment and clean up the bathroom. Both jobs that I simply adore. I also have to do some laundry, which I mind much less. There is always so much dog hair in the bathroom stuck on everything! You can't simply sweep or wipe it away, you have to get on your hands and knees and scrub it off!

Well, I will never get first place in the Dutch housewife competition, but I'm always reminded of my late sister in law who didn't care much for cleaning house, but who did a lot of other interesting things with her life. She is much more an example to me than people with super clean houses. When she retired, she bought a house in France with a big vegetable garden and an orchard and she had two cats and two dogs and never a dull moment in her life. My cat Gandhi is one of her cats. So, I have a French cat, a French-Belgian cat and a Dutch cat. We are the European Community.

I just gave the Überhund his new dog food and he wolfed it down in one minute flat. It's supposed to be all natural and as close to homemade as you can get. It's called Butcher's and the first ingredient is meat followed by rice and vegetables, without artificial ingredients. I am trying to read all the small print on the can in four different languages, but it is hard even with my reading glasses on. The one I have now has fresh beef, rice and carrots. There is also fresh tripe and chicken, and fresh chicken, ham and rice. To name just a few. I think that is much better than what I was giving him at the start, which was an undefined conglomeration of god knows what. We are moving up in the world of dog food.

Well, now I have to get going. It´s that time of the morning again.

Have a good day. I am bound to have one.

Ciao...