Orange M&Ms, congratulating Willem and Maxima.

photo : onlijn

According to my colorgenics profile, I probably should have been drowned at birth !

They are gone, gone gone.

My 4 km morning constitutional is behind me. Yes, once again, I was up and out at the crack of dawn, wheeling The Baby to nursery school. Last Friday, The Father ( the man is a prince) gave us a ride there and I checked to see how far it was : just a little over 1 km each way. This is so healthy I simply eruct at the thought.

photo : The Probert Encyclopaedia

During the 45 minutes of ‘free time’ I had, ( after doing errands but before it was time to lace up the hiking boots once again), I actually vacuumed the living room ( it’s at times like this I wish I were British. For some reason, saying ” I hoovered” sounds far more civilized to me). The plaster dust covers everything. Our jewel toned carpets are now pastel abstracts ( not that I ever liked those carpets), in fact, we look much like Miss Havisham’s house.

But the very worse thing ( and what inspired me to vacuum) are the spider webs. One of the things they never tell you about, when you are ready to sign on the line and buy an old house, is that spiders just LOVE old houses. Given a choice between a sleek new place, made up of clean lines and sparse symmetry, or a quaint house, filled with oodles of charming nooks and crannies, the choice seems obvious even to me. Our house teems with spiders. In fact, being a mother means I’ve become the second in command of spider smashing, so I have gotten over a lot of my arachnophobia.

We have three sorts of spiders that we share home-sweet with. Most of them are your basic ‘Daddy-Long-Legs’ variety. Then about once a week, I’ll nab one of the black wolf spiders, which is about an inch across. But the third sort is simply ghastly, we don’t sight them too often, maybe twice a year , but they are big enough to steam, crack and serve with drawn butter : five inches across, black, thick ( and maybe hairy, who knows, I never get that close) – , I am disgusted at the memory alone.

All of the dust flying around has stuck to the spider webs, and last night I noticed just how bad they were, festooning the beamed ceilings,making large hammocks behind the chairs, and an odd corner in the toilet which looked like some sort of spider day-care center.

So today I snarfed up spiders.

photo : was once from here

At the same time, I washed the team uniforms for the Herptse Boys F2. The Father volunteered ‘us’ ( the man’s a prince) to do it, as B. wasn’t at the last game. Why would anyone put white shorts on a six year old ? Is it just me, or does a nice mud brown / grass green camouflage sound much more suitable ?

Confession time : those laundry soap ads, the ones that annoy everyone, I’ve actually done that. I once asked my mother-in-law ( she-who-irons-her-sheets) how she got her whites so white. It took her 20 minutes to tell me, a long story involving hand washing, vats of water and secret emulsions.Does anyone really do all of these things ? Today I simply poured half a bottle of stain remover on the shorts and am now hoping that they didn’t dissolve in the dryer.

photo : Cayuga

After my second 2 clicks, I spent the remaining time ( before picking up the older kids) continuing my search for newf puppies. These dogs have great blood lines, they are highly recommended and they are in Holland. So I wrote to them. These dogs are highly recommended as well, and I have heard they have a pregnant bitch. But with all of the animated gifs at their site, I am having trouble finding a pedigree for a black female.

Where do I really want to get a dog from ( if I can’t get one from Milena ) ? From Cayuga. I have written to them, but no answer so far.

dan is it zover ! Only 4 more days until the royal nuptials, only a few more days to play silly Maxima games online…

Oh, I’ll be watching it on TV, although I seem to be the only one in our circle of friends who will be watching.

Or admitting to it.

That is what I’m doing today : paying bills. I actually would like to ( like to ?) do it once a week, but our bank seems to need about 10 days to process information. So, every 10 days, I scoop out the bills, check the bank statement ( Yep. We are still solvent.) , pay them, scribble ‘paid’ on the bottom and file them away. Quite organized of me, wouldn’t you agree ? The other day, The Father asked me to add them all up and see how much we had spent so far. As this is our third ( and last) major rebuilding of the house, I didn’t even have to pause for an answer : ‘You don’t want to know’.

On Thursday night, The Father and I sat in the kitchen until almost 1 in the morning. We couldn’t help but reminisce over how the house had been when we bought it ( The Father has always referred to the house as needing a handy man, I as needing a bulldozer), especially the kitchen, which had this peculiar pea green paint that seemed to be made of paper mache. That was 12 years ago last December 15 ( my, how time flies…). In Feb., it will be one year since we began this last phase.

Send your good wishes to Willem Alexander and Maxima ..

A great place to learn Rikken

Well, today is the big day : by evening, we should have our new kitchen installed.

Mr. Jan says ‘No way in one day’, so we shall see.

Mr. Jan was right : it is a two day job. So I will be up again at 6 to greet workers.

I have finished another page of that fool website in between sending pics off to The Father. Last night, we figured out what the white spots on all the photos are from : it’s from the plaster dust hanging in the air there. The Father took an exceedingly unattractive picture of me in the living room and it came out sans white spots. Notice how I’ve plastered that picture up here.

” The Father, Catherine has a really good memory : she remembered the blood gutters. I had totally forgotten about them ”
” The what ?”.