Well....

I'm a fine example of an industrious Dutch woman. I haven't done a thing today that required any effort, except for walk the Überhund and clean up a cat hairball. I have done nothing but laze around and been kind to my toe, which I very gently rubbed with a lot of gel and then wound in a bandage a couple of times.

Actually, I think it is the bandage that is keeping it from hurting so much, as it keeps it from being squashed by the other toe next to it. It is a painful business to put on my boots and walk the Überhund, but I've been doing that for 2 months now, so I can do it for a while longer.

So, I have done nothing useful all day long and even the phone has not rung. It is a very quiet day here. You would almost think that I live on an island and have been cut off from the shore. Or I am living a life deep in the impenetrable woods and there is nobody around but me and the critters. I am completely lost in my own world. Is there a better place to be lost in? Not in my book. I have been completely at comfort, with a high sense of satisfaction. Today I was the lone wolf, quite happy in her den with the other animals.

Of course, I got up late and the day was halfway over before I got it started properly. That was extremely pleasant and I hope that happens again tomorrow. It is so funny to skip the whole morning and to not make it out there until after lunchtime and to know that the rest of the world has been busy for hours already and nothing bad happens to you if you do. The sky doesn't come falling down and the sun doesn't drop out of the heavens.

Everything is so relative. I am just a little tiny cog in the machinery and I hardly matter in the scheme of things. That makes me glad and I'm happy that I'm not important in the larger picture. That means I can almost be anonymous and just glide through the world outside without even touching it too much. I hardly need to leave any dents in the fabric of life. I don't cause many ripples in life's waters. Isn't that nice?

I used to have a fantasy about me leaping onto a big stage in front of a huge adoring audience and acting my heart out and emoting up a storm and getting a thunderous applause afterwards, but all that desire has left me and I would now merely want to be a member of the audience watching someone else do it. I'm glad general adoration and attention can go to someone else and not me. I would not want the responsibility of it and I am sure I would deal badly with it and come completely undone.

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In the meantime, it is an hour later, because my older sister called me and we had to talk for a long while, of course, and I briefly had to let out the Überhund. Just long enough for him to do his business and for my toe not to hurt too much in my boot. Luckily, the Überhund is always very cooperative and he gets done quickly, no doubt wanting to get home for his treat as soon as possible. Gandhi escaped into the stairwell, but I've discovered that I don't need to chase her and that I can leave the front door slightly ajar and she'll come back 5 minutes later. That saves me from having to go up four flights of stairs, which she takes a quick as the wind.

In the mail just now I also got news from the tax office with my new rent subsidy and it will be higher than it was last time, which was a miscalculation. So the next time I will get that extra money too. Thank you Higher Power, Allah, Buddha, God and Barack Obama. I will not thank Jan Peter Balkenende who is our prime minister and is up to no good. The Christian Democrat! While I am a Socialist. Righteous indignation here.

Anyway, here I have this perfectly lovely wasted day and I am not about to make a change in that by doing anything useful now. I may take a shower and wash my hair and fix it up again, but that almost seems like too much work. Still, it is tempting to have clean hair that is not sticky with hairspray. Yes, actually, that sounds like a very good idea. See how I can talk myself into that? I have some clean pajamas I can put on too. Sometimes I just outsmart myself. Hee, hee.

Well, with that smart idea between my ears, I am going to leave you and first remember to water my rubber plant, which needs to be watered every Saturday and which I have not done yet. I just pour half a container of water on the thing and it thrives. I have a green thumb with plants that take kindly to me. In other words, plants that only need a little bit of tender loving care and that can take some accidental neglect. I try, I really do.

Have a good evening. Enjoy your cozy hours indoors.

Ciao...

Done that.

I've been good and just about got all caught up on my blog reading, although I just saw that there was a new batch waiting for me. It will have to wait for later, maybe after I am done writing this, if I am not ready to go to sleep by that time. I have been known to be very stubborn and attempt to stay up and try to blog and do its associated activities when I should be in bed sleeping. I am now trying to imagine how nice it is to get my pajamas on in a while and to turn the heater up for a bit and to get all toasty warm before I hit the sack, as the Americans say. I assume they mean a sack filled with straw or grass that some people slept on way back then. In the pioneer days, maybe.

I don't know if I would have made a good pioneer, I think I would have preferred the comforts of some small new England farming town and stayed there, or a fishing village on the coast. I would have been a damn Yankee.

That's all talking by the wayside, because I am what I was meant to be and that is just an ordinary plain Dutch woman who doesn't stand out much one way or the other, except that I dress rather funky for my age and I get looked at for that reason. Oh, I know people stare sometimes, but I think, just let them, give them some cause for conversation, the small minded people. I have fun and that's the main thing.

I finished 2 projects in creative therapy today, because I suddenly knew what to do with them and did it. I have to remember to bring my art folder next week so I can bring things home with me and decide on what I want to frame and hang up. Did you know that hairspray works as a good sealant? It gives your work a bit of a shine too.

I have felt no desire to call the Exfactor and frankly he has been removed quite a few steps from my mind since Joost has been here. I find that a very healthy development and I feel like I've let go a lot this weekend. I don't feel any urgency anymore or the desire to be close to him or to see him or to be the apple of his eye. I think he is a rather silly man who doesn't know what in the world he is doing and I'm not going to help him figure it out. He will fall out of love with the Paramount and then he won't know what to do with himself and all of us will have moved on to different places.

That's the way, aha, aha, we like it. Excuse my silliness. For some reason, I didn't have a dip today and I was my normal cheerful self all day long. It was mighty nice and it comes as a great relief to me. Maybe the crisis is past me now and I can go on again as I was and get on with living my life the way it was with me concentrating on what concerns me and not on what supposedly hurts me and what is in the past. I think that talking so much with Joost about all sorts of things has helped me a lot and we only talked about my divorce briefly, it wasn't our main subject.

We talked about politics and economics and integration and the Holocaust and immigration, you name it, we talked about it. We see eye to eye on many things, except possibly Israel, for which Joost has a soft spot, because he is half Jewish. Not practicing, but still...He has many Muslim friends, however, and they respect each other.

I always feel a terrible compulsion to write, as if I have something very important to reveal to you, but when it comes down to it, I just tell you my ordinary thoughts and actions. I don't know how deeply I let you look into my soul. Sometimes I wish to be very profound and let loose with en enormous stream of consciousness and just let the words come pouring out, but I suppose I have an editor sitting beside me looking over my shoulder who prevents me from doing that.

I have experienced a lot of different things in my life and a lot of it reads like movie script or a made for TV six part drama. There were times when I thought that happiness would forever elude me and that life meant the same as serving a long sentence in a restricted prison block. No parole. Things happened that seemed to be extremely bad and cruel jokes that god played on me and were proof to the fact that I must be a very undeserving person. It's only in these last years that I have looked happiness right in the face for long periods of time and realized that I was entitled to it and that I too could lay claim to it and call it my birthright.

It is your right as a human being to feel long periods of happiness. Not because you're wealthy or because you're living in a palace and your wish is someone else's command. I mean happiness simply because you are alive and things basically go alright and the one day is as predictable as the next and no catastrophes wait around the corner for you. You get up and do all the normal things that belong to your day and go to sleep at night and you realize that it has been done successfully without a big hitch and you made it to the end of the day and now you are good and well tired and ready to rest your tired body. That's happiness by my standards.

That's why it is easy for me to say that I am cheerful now, because I had no dip this afternoon, I had the money to pay the mediator's fee, I did not get rained on once, I am not longing for the Exfactor and I am going to sleep in a little while in a comfortable bed and hopefully tomorrow will be a similar day. If that is in the least bit possible, I will be happy tomorrow too.

Well, so much for my philosophizing for tonight. I really am going to go to bed now after I take my medicines and make some warm milk to drink.

Ciao...