Housekeeping

I'm not a great fan of being a housewife. Even less of being a stay-at-home mom.

Circumstances have made me be both (yes, stay-at-home step-mom counts too) and it hasn't done me much good as a person. Life, however, is as it is and I've come to terms with not being able to do much about it myself, other than trying to push certain people over the edge and into action. Recently, things have changed, you might have noticed if you've been paying attention.

Along came a full time job which at least dragged me away from being a stay-at-home daughter, so now I have an excuse. I took on a second 'little' job, which turned out to creep up on me, when life decided to turn off the lights for a week-and-a-half. Internet problems just before the deadline didn't help much either. Now that's mostly finished save a later added article, and the option of more work to come, I figured I'd have time to catch up.

As a 'manager of the interior', one must tend to her tasks in a timely fashion. Or at least try.

I figured I'd sleep more. More than 6 hours a night, this to be achieved by going to sleep on time and waking up refreshed and rested.
DH decided to finally get his ass moving and book a flight to come over. (This isn't fair, the first time he 'finally' didn't have to come in to work was last Monday, so until then he didn't wasn't certain if he'd be able to make any more magic money, so he couldn't really book earlier)
He booked late. Late in my day, around 23.30 in fact. We booked the holiday on Tuesday, 23.45. On Wednesday, my no-sleeping-pattern had been consistent for 2 weeks solid. No chance in hell I'd sleep more this week. It is now the weekend, I've had my first headache.

No less important, Lady Steel of 88links offered me the "Lovely Blog Award" for which many thanks. She's not so bad yourself, if she doesn't mind me saying. Her pieces of arm-art are no-nonsense in design and high in impact. If ever I let myself spend on "stuff I don't absolutely need which isn't a book," I'm getting myself some. You should too.
To boot, I've finally found my third follower, Felix & Jane, creating things I'd wish I'd thought of. Go look them up.

Another item on my list is Don, the Don. Aka Landshark. DH calls him "dad" because he is. He's also the president of the Commerce Parrot Heads. Don't ask. Look here, and if you still don't get it, that's not my fault, nor my problem. All I know is that I've been told I'm the furthest located (honorary?) member of this club, and that I was supposed to be dressing up in tropical gear and celebrate the 4th of July.

As the twins, Miek and Do, turned 31 that day, I didn't see any problem with celebrating, and since Don told me (and everyone else on the mailing list) I consume 1kg of poop every year but not if I drank alcohol instead of water, I decided to do so, just in case. I'd have to drive to the BD the next day, when water would be the drink of choice.

I convinced the 'rents to BBQ



We had Texan and pretend-Texan BBQ sauce to go with this. It was good. Meat and sauce, salad and fries, pretty much a meal.



At first, Dad didn't quite understand how it worked, so he got me water to drink. I wasn't having any of that (remember, poop!)



In the end, we got to where we should be and I drowned all the bad little e-coli thingummawhattums in lovely, lovely beer.




Proost!

(I was in fact wearing a skirt with big blue flowers on it. I don't get much more tropical than that.)

Last on the list is (one of) the knitting project(s). Cold Mountain is 2 repeats on C away from being cast off, after which I must return to other, older projects. I'm just willing this one on now, as the initial excitement wore off and was replaced by "I just want this finished so I can use it, tyvm." It's still a lovely project, I just get bored and start looking for the next one when it takes too long to finish. The bolero shrug and Stitches on the Bridge project are due to be finished next. Can't wait, but have to pack. Need towel to travel.

I got some cheap ones from Ikea today.

Super quick post

Yes, it's late, but just wanted to blog the happy news of the arrival of the DH Wednesday week. It'll be a blast!

It's been...

...a long week.

I guess it started last week with me being absolutely knackered by the time I got home for work. Which was unfortunate, as I had planned to use that time for translating the darned job I took on, knowing full well I was going to be busy. Over-estimating my planning skills and not counting on everything to go wrong meant I had a lot still to do on the website. That would've been ok if we didn't have an unexpected and unusual heat-wave.

You see, we don't get those. Often. It just doesn't get over 25 degrees C over here at the best of times.

It was supposed to be rainy on saturday, when we had planned to go to a Harvest Fair. The same Harvest Fair we tried to visit the week before, when it wasn't there yet. (Which became painfully obvious as we drove down the lane to a very empty estate, oops.) We decided to try our luck and battle the weather as we found it, so sweaters and jackets in the car and off we went.

It. Was. Hot.
I have pictures somewhere to show how hot the game birds thought it was.










A man became dinner by lunchtime



And a Sea Eagle decided to strike his official-looking pose.

Obviously, I didn't drink nearly enough as I forgot to bring Heidi with me to monitor my fluid intake, so I had a juice and a glass of coke, and a headache to show for it. By 22.00, that was gone, and I finally had the opportunity to do some translating.

As you might guess, it didn't quite work the way I had planned, as it never does, and this was no different from all the other times I get to postpone a small job. Still, it was all doable, just adding text from my papers into the system. I cursed until 2.00 and called it a night.

The next day, mom's family planned a day out, so I only had a few hours before and after that to work, but hey, it was the weekend. (I should mention, all is finished, apart form a later added article, which will get done tomorrow, so I'll just shut up about it and move on with the story.)

The day started with lunch, lovingly (ahum ;)) prepared by Natasja



We finished most of it and then she showed us what is currently standing of their house. It kinda looks like the outside walls will be left standing, but then again, part of the back of the building will be added onto, so some of it might go. Obviously Erik knows how to make a smooth wall, and the bits they have finished look awesome. Note to self: do not design staircase. Let the professionals do that.

We left, and payed the only wheelchair accessible tourist attraction in the entire city of Den Bosch a visit. The St Jan Cathedral is pretty impressive. We lit a candle for Uncle Kees. Erik was kind enough to play tourist guide and told us a few tidbits about the building, but I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. (I forgot...)











Pretty soon though, the relaxed city trip was to end and the hard grafting was to start. Old farts (you know who you are) got to ride around without doing much more than standing, while us spring chickens had to work for the money. It was all good fun, I lost 17 kilo's just by sweating, but some of us looked odd. Some of us worked hard. All of us had fun!







We missed Kees, Ron, Chris-Jan & Carmen and Darling DH. By Gods, we had fun though.

Birds and Bees

I saved a bee today, have you?

It seems like almost every morning this past week, we've found an exhausted bee in our living room. I suppose now that the weather is pretending to be alright-ish for what we try to call summer (jeans and sweater, anyone?) we have the patio doors open a lot more than usual. If these bees get trapped inside, they're out of luck since we don't have (m)any flowering plants inside apart from one orchid. By the time I get ready to go to work, the trapped bee must be getting hungry or something, but by the time I find them, there's hardly any life left in them.

My experiment with sugar water and a bee on a dish probably went wrong a bit as the bee insisted on turning onto its back and therefore getting its wings wet. I think it's a very difficult thing to fly away with wet wings, but then again, I'm no bee and I can't fly even if I tried.

This afternoon we found another one on the floor in the living room, so I lifted it onto a scrap of paper and took it outside. Since nothing much is flowering with big flowers in our garden at them moment I didn't have a bee-buffet waiting, but we managed to make do with what we had. Mr Bee seemed to enjoy it anyway.





Just as I went back inside and closed the door, Mrs Mus flew in and checked out the area before flying straight into the hedge, where she lives.



All in all, not a bad afternoon in an urban garden.

Cold Mountain, and possibly some cold mountains.

I did it, yet again, once more, I can't be stopped. Before finishing any of my other projects (remember the black shirt, the stitches-on-the-bridge project, various dresses, and new bolero project, the crochet bags? Anyone?) I've started on another project. This one has some recent pictures.

It started out looking like this:


But now it looks a lot like this, only a little longer:


It's called the Cold Mountain Stole and I'm liking it muchly (sic) so far. Using bigger needles made me get mom to get me some more yarn. I'll need it.

The other knitting project has no pictures yet, but I've passed the halfway point. Progress slowed down because of the shawl though. This is not a good thing.

In good news, I'm no longer doing corrections at work next week, it's Friday and that's always good, I'm getting my hair done in the morning (9am, not so good) and a certain someone might be coming over soonish. That should be jolly dandy indeed.

In other news, the Slasher Book Club Book, Afraid is very amusing to read. To paraphrase:

"After getting away from the psycho killers, the sheriff found himself trapped in one of his brother's bear traps while trying to save his niece and her son from the mad psycho killers. In a moment of questionable genius, the sheriff cuts off the flesh on his leg, breaks the bone, just like his father did when trapped under a tree, only to find out the leg actually has 2 bones in it."

In the words of the delectable Hugh Grant:

Bugger, Bugger, Bugger, Bugger, Bugger, Bugger, Bugger, Bugger, Bugger, Bugger, (cont'd)



Oh gosh it makes me laugh. People think I'm weird. (Score!)

Dear BBC,

I am a daily user of your website, even though I am not located in the UK. I pay my cable company good money to watch BBC1 and BBC2, and I use the UK website for news, listings and background information on your shows. I am now forced onto the international website which doesn't list the channels I watch and it doesn't look like picking London as location (we get the local London news, so it seemed appropriate) is doing me any good.

Frankly, I'm pretty upset, and I'd like to use some stronger words to impress my feelings onto whomever gets to read this, but "that's not the way my mother raised me." I'm sure it's not your fault. However, that doesn't stop me from venting in more public places, not that you'd notice.

I understand the issue with not showing me iPlayer, (I don't but I accept it), I have a bigger issue with not showing me Springwatch webcams, but not letting me stay on the UK website reeks of a 'Close our borders'-kind of strategy I didn't expect from a self-respecting Broadcaster like your good selves. Where I live, only peroxide politicians do that kind of thing.

I wouldn't go as far as saying I'm not angry, just very disappointed, because I'm not. I'm flippin' angry.

Please fix this obvious error, or help me fix it, since your "Help" doesn't exactly cater for my needs.

PS. If this has anything to do with Windows or Firefox updates, it's obviously not the BBC's fault, but I'd still like some help fixing it.

Dreams....

...can come true, so they say.

*IF* (and that's a very, very, very big if) everything goes according to my plan, I get to dream a bit about floors and wall paint. However, I'm not the one doing the doing, so the dreams will have to wait for a bit longer.

Golly, another day day of keeping fingers crossed. This is getting painful.

Team VET came 16th in the World Championships. I wonder how they did in the nationals that were held this weekend. Very disappointed with not being able to go. Taking on extra work isn't always a very good plan, plus lack of funding seems to be a perpetual reason for not having as much fun as possible.

Keep those fingers crossed.

Here's a teaser pic from last weekend.



Yes, we are *that* good at building constructions with fabric, poles and lines.