Mr.Jo isn’t here. He has taken a week long vacation. Then he is going to build a bookcase for my brother-in-law. Mr.Jo makes nice bookcases. Asked how long that should take, he replied ” About two weeks”.

I shall enjoy this trial seperation.

This morning, between stomping back and forth to the nursery school ( and this is really getting to be old hat very quickly) I had a visitor. Actually, to be more precise, The Baby had a visitor, don’t want to seem to be one of those predatory mums who attempts to take over their daughter’s beaus.

I was sitting at my computer, drinking coffee and inhaling enough nicotine to balance out all of that fresh air I encountered on my walk, when I heard a familiar voice calling into the house through the mail slot on the front door. I opened the door to find The Baby’s 2.5 year old beau standing there. I looked up and down the street as he walked inside the house, to see if one of his older brothers or sisters was around, but no, Bennie had obviously come to our house alone.

Walking towards the kitchen for my coat, I explained to Bennie that everyone was at school so let’s go back to the winkel ( his family runs the fruit and vegetable store in town). We crossed the street in front of our house, which is usually very busy, filled with idiots driving far to fast for such a small town , then walked towards the store, about 4 blocks away. In the distance, I could see his dad fast walking towards the dikes and the river beyond them. I waved and waved, hoping he would glance around, which he did.

He was so relieved. He asked me where I found Bennie, as they had been looking all over town for him. ‘Well, he was at our door’. His Dad was amazed that Bennie knew how to get to our house and obviously had been frantic with worry.

I had to cut it short as it was time to go and pick up The Baby.

Why is it that in the weekend travel section of the newspapers, I see tons of places offering tickets from AMS to NYC for around 400 euro, and today I can’t find one ticket that even comes close to this ?

One of the most difficult sounds in the dutch language for a foreigner to master is the ‘sch’ sound. It’s a sort of ‘sh’ sound followed very quickly by an extremely guttural ‘k’ ( one should almost, but not quite, bring up a small amount of mucous pronouncing this sound). Tradition has it that during World War Two, the sure way to ferret out a spy was to trick them into saying the word ‘ Scheveningen’. I get the impression that many a German mole was tripped up by this.

According to inburger.net, a site which has been set up to help foreigners learn more about living in modern dutch society, the ultimate test of one’s dutch language skills is the following sentence :

Op scheve schaats naar Scheveningen rijden

Yesterday, as a result of the parent teacher conferences, we started a ‘homework 15 minutes’ in our house. At 5.30, while I fuddle about making dinner, The Boy and The Girl are to come to the kitchen and for 15 minutes we will go over their school work. So yesterday, as I added coconut cream to the curry and sliced strawberries, The Girl worked on some math problems and The Boy studied for his dictation. First, I had him write out the ten words twice. Then I took the list and read out the words as he wrote them down ( after all, that is what a dictation is all about).

I did quite well the first 6 words ( schaar, schaap, schaam, schip, schil, schim), but after trying to pronounce the word ‘schuin’ three times, I was very glad when The Father appeared ( like the cavalry) at the kitchen door.

The Girl. At this point, it’s impossible for me to be unbiased about The Girl. Maybe that’s not my job anyways. Her teacher is thinking of having her remain in third grade. They don’t call it ‘flunking’ here, and her grades aren’t of a ‘flunking’ quality. But her grades are lower than her teacher thinks that she is capable of, and he says the problem is the class she is in. Apparently, it is one of the rowdiest the school has had in years, and The Girl doesn’t seem to be able to take the yelling, screaming, teasing and harassment casually. Where other kids can brush things off, she gets upset. My bias is leaking through.

Even her teacher notices that she is unhappy in this group.

Later on today, I will try to tell all about how Brabant is the only province in the Netherlands that does not have an official provincial song. Maybe after lunch.

The Boy is doing very well. His grades remain high and ( much to my surprise) he has brought up all of those marks for behavior from a solid string of ‘D’s to all ‘ B ‘ s and one ‘C ‘. His teacher hasn’t noticed any adverse changes since his illness. Guess he just saves it up for me.

Last Saturday, we finally had that fateful alignment of the kid’s activities that we have been dreading : both The Girl and The Boy had to be in distant places at the same time. The Boy’s soccer team was playing somewhere in the boonies and The Girl had to go to Scouts, about 4km away. On Friday The Father and I struggled for around an hour, trying to attach a kiddie seat on what is known as my bike, but failed miserably, so there was nothing left to do : I would have to walk The Girl and her bike ( they were going on a short bike trip) to scouts. Since I would have to walk anyway, I volunteered to take The Baby, who still doesn’t understand why she can’t join the other kids playing soccer.

The Boy and The Father left first at 9.30 and at 9.45, The Girl and The Baby and I took off. The Baby thought that she was going to walk as well, so threw quite the fit when I put her in the stroller : she thrashed and writhed and screamed, looking for all of the world like a two year old undergoing electric shock therapy. As we passed the dikes, I casually asked The Girl ” Do you know how to get to Scouts ?” “No. Don’t you ?”. “No”.

It proved to be quite simple, really, just a straight line about 4 kms away. We even arrived 15 minutes early. We loitered outside of the building as other scouts began to trickle in. As each unfamiliar face joined the group, The Girl became more and more upset. In fact, after about six strange scouts had joined us, her eyes were brimming with tears. At last a familiar face wheeled in, and then another and another and The Girl unglued herself from my side and flapped her hand at me in a way that obviously meant my presence was no longer desired. So I took The Baby, strapped her in her stroller and headed home.

The Baby, of course, wanted to stay with The Girl, so began wailing and convulsing about again. I had noticed that a small weekend market was set up about 1km from the scouting club house, so stopped at the fish mongers to pick up some new herring for Han’s lunch. Attempting to distract The Baby, I asked her if she wanted to carry the fish. Well, that worked like a charm, in fact it almost worked too well : not only did she want to carry the fish, she wanted to eat some of it NOW. Well, I can handle nagging better than that howling, and she proceeded to nag for the rest of the walk. ” Wanna eata fish.Onyons”

As we entered the dikes, I turned to cross the street and could see a large group of bikers coming our way. Sure enough, it was The Girl’s scouting group. I could hear the children calling out to The Girl, ‘There’s your mother’, but The Girl stood firm- she looked neither left nor right, simply pedaled resolutely past us.

Arriving at home, I gave in to The Baby’s nagging and prepared a new herring for her, after all, I figured, it’s fish, not junk food. I gave her half of a herring, neatly sliced, on a small plate. She looked at it then turned to me, saying the equivalent of ” Where are the onions ?” So I watched my 2 year old snarf up a plate of raw fish and chopped onions and knew she was truly dutch.

The Father called at 12, saying that he and The Boye would be back in time to pick up The Girl. She arrived home and commented that if they had told her they were simply biking to the castle in our town, it would have saved a lot of energy on our part. The Boy’s team lost 1-3. How do they play ? The Father says they all stand there and watch the ball roll by. I have to wonder about all of these activities, it seems that this is something that is really arranged far better in the States.

Tonight are the parent-teacher conferences. Since his illness a few weeks ago, The Boy has been slipping in his behavior, so I guess that that will be the main topic of conversation.

At about 10 am this morning, I realized that Mr.Jo was not going to appear today. A glimpse into the kitchen would have revealed Mummy doing a solitary polonaise around the table. In Brabant, as an aside, that is not how one does a Polonaise. No, here a Polonaise is more like a shuffling version of ‘Crack the Whip’. Through peer pressure, everyone in the room places their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them and snakes around the room, usually singing something incomprehensible like ‘Hey-la-hey-la-hey-la-ho-la-ho’.

Today at 3 we have a ‘group visit’ to the GP. The kids will each be vaccinated against Meningitis ( first The Baby, then THE bOY and then The Girl and then The Father will have his stitches removed and get an update on that tumor they dug out of his head.

Yes, I’ve left the world of euphemism’s behind me and am calling it was it is, rather than a ‘thing’ or ‘a mass’. The Father had a tumor and now to see whether or not it is benign. Since I’ve started calling it a tumor, I’m not quite so jumpy about it. Odd.

While I’ve managed to pre-plan all of the logistics involved in this mass visit, one area remains grey : I’m not sure if all five of us will fit in GP’s office.

Despite this tumor crappola, today has been wonderful so far. The Father is home playing hooky after 2 days in Germany and I always like it when he is home during the week. I don’t know why, as he has spent most of the day cleaning his car and hanging out with Mr.Jo, but I like having him around. It reminds me of the good-old-days when we started out and spent all of our time together, back before careers and kids came along. And Mr.Jo, of course.