This weekend there is another big migration here : The Boy moves into his finished bedroom. This means The Baby can move out of our room and into her as-of-yet unfinished bedroom. Oh, the room has all of the floors and heating and stuff like that, it’s just that nothing has been painted yet and she too will be getting a wall of built-in bookcases/ cupboards.

There will finally be a place for the clean clothes to go, other than laying in piles in the laundry room.

Yesterday rather reinforced my belief that I should never speak in anger : I would be very ashamed of myself now if I had actually said- rather then written or linked to- some of the things I was thinking. Or maybe I just read Shogun one too many times in what may have been my formative years.

1. What’s your favorite piece of clothing that you currently own?
An extremely old Lanz nightgown. I believe that it used to be pink.

2. What piece of clothing do you most want to acquire?
A new Lanz nightgown.

3. What piece of clothing can you not bring yourself to get rid of? Why?
A pair of cut-off jeans, embroidered with gold thread, glittery beads and sequins. Oh, and a ‘Hanscom Field Pool’ patch. The shorts were from the first pair of Levi’s I ever had, bought in 1973.

4. What piece of clothing do you look your best in?
Oh, I don’t look particularly stunning in anything, but I do have a brown jacket that I’m quite fond of. It dates back to 1979.

5. What has been your biggest fashion accident?
My mother-in-law once bought me a two piece ensemble, which I wore once. It made me look and feel like Joan Blondell. I blushed the whole evening that I wore it.

via : smattering.org

See this, this ( bottom of page 4) and this.

I refrained from saying this in front of the kids.

What an utter snob I am.

I just closed the door on the mother of two of the kids who go to the school for hyperactive little kids in Waalwijk. She stood on our stoop and yelled at me for 10 minutes. According to her, we are not allowed to tell their kids to get lost. The next time we do, her husband is going to come over and punch The Father out.

I did not- of course- descend to her level. I stood there with a pleasant look on my face, let her say her piece, explained a few discrepancies to her ( like the fact that ‘one of the boys’ kicked the shit out of The Girl ‘Which one ?’ ‘It doesn’t matter’), chucked her baby under the chin and closed the door politely when she was done.

Her husband even turned up at the end of the harangue. How am I supposed to tell The Father about this ? I fear he might want one of those bulls-locking-horns confrontations and I just hate scenes.

She even threatened to call the police. Did I ever mention that those boys once started a fire on a pile of roofing tiles we had right outside of our gate?

I couldn’t help but notice – as she sputtered and spewed in dialect ( no ABN here)- what very poor condition her teeth were in.

Fishwife.

I have promised myself that I will do two hours of ‘work-work’ today. Yes, as of Monday, the daily nag has once again started.

But first I have some e-mails to answer. Here, read this :

Fatounmbi from Madivas HD A (Captain Moritz Berenbontx Babisch from Madivas) x Bruder Ludvig Bar vom Gelderland HD A (Jehaj Ludvigx Bertha)

I suppose that names like ‘Spot’ or ‘Rover’ have fallen out of fashion.

Yes. I heard from another breeder. Another very promising lead. Now to track down the dogs on Google, although I am pretty sure that Moritz and the Jehaj dog are brown.

Do I look like I care at this point ?

Stan (l.) and Ollie (r.)

The last few days have been pretty nerve-wracking : I’ve had between 6 and 8 kids ( half of whom attend the school for little hyperactive kids in Waalwijk) running around the house here from 3.30 to 5.30. I actually like the kids, but from experience I know that sooner or later things are going to go beyond just plain rowdiness and move on into unacceptable behavior. So I’ve been pouring cups of juice , getting soccer balls ( and shoes. Don’t ask) out of trees and waiting for the inevitable.

Which happened yesterday at about four. The kids were all out in the parking lot behind our house, playing football. The Girl got the ball and kicked it. It smacked right into the face of one of the boys from the school for hyperactive little kids in Waalwijk and he proceeded to kick the shit out of The Girl. I’ve seen him kick the shit out of his brother and it’s really a scary, scary sight. I’m sure that he felt that The Girl had done it on purpose but, well, we are talking about The Girl. Not Pele. I didn’t get pissed off. I knew this- or something like it- was coming. I just took the ball, took my kids and closed the gate to our yard. End of game.

Having wasted all of Monday, I decided to plow through some of the pile of things on my never-ending list of things to do. You know, send the vacation pics in to be developed, straighten out the accounting on the rebuilding, look at the box Essent sent me to put my computer on cable ( ‘Shit. Not today, box.’). The other thing I had to do was start up my search for Newfoundland puppies again. I found three breeders and decided to write to them. You know, a sort of ‘Going to have puppies available soon ?’ sort of thing. No dissertation, just a few lines.

Only nothing about getting the dogs we want has been simple. I should have just picked up a copy of the Saturday Telegraaf and found a litter there. It’s what we did the first time and it worked out fine. However, since then, I’ve developed a rather self-defeating moral ethic about this : I don’t want to support ‘puppy farms’. In fact, I find the whole idea of ‘puppy farms’ abhorrent. And from what I’ve heard , there really are ‘puppy farms’, rumor has it based in Hungary. Or that could just fall into the ‘urban legend’ category. Whatever.

So, bumpkin that I am, shortly after our dogs died, I went on-line and found a breeder. Little did I know that I was entering a radical , fanatical splinter group in the world of breeding Newfoundland dogs, one that hoped to open the eyes of all other breeders and change the course of the Newfoundland type in Europe. I just wanted 2 dogs. I have learned an amazing amount of things about the breed- about genetic problems of the heart, the benefits of a shorter muscle in the …oh, I think it was the neck. But quite simply, I don’t give a shit anymore. I just want two dogs. I don’t want to lead the revolution, change the world. I just want 2 puppies. Two males. I’ve learned enough to know that nobody seems to want the male puppies : they all want females- breeders.

So I got caught up in the ‘type’ issue. Mind-numbing I know. How do I know this ? Because The Father asked me at least four times at that big dog show we went to, ‘ What type was it that we like again ?’. Even he tunes out when I begin on ‘type’.

But after that show, we decided to leave the cel, betray the cause. We quite simply like the archaic and much-flawed European type. So I went on line again, but the problem is, unless they have a really good head shot- preferably somewhat in profile, you can’t tell if the dog is the American type or the European type. So I had to come up with some short and inoffensive e-mail to send out , saying that we were looking for puppies of the European type. It took me about an hour to come up with something diplomatic ( ok- but it’s really a small world and I really didn’t know if anyone was still breeding that type and I didn’t want to burn all of the bridges. After all, I just want two dogs.), which I promptly sent out.

Last night I received an answer from one of them. I went to their site, read pedigrees ( I know way more then I ever wanted to know about the different lines), did Google searches on the Dame and Sire, and shit-o-shit ! It looks like I have found just what we are looking for. At last.

I hope.

Learn how to spin dog hair into wool or have it done for you.

( It’s 10 to 11. My bedtime. But- due to the rebuilding- The Baby is still in our room. She just woke up. So I shall give myself notes for tomorrow, in the hope that she falls asleep within 10 minutes so that I can read a bit before I go to sleep). Has anyone else noticed the preponderance of ‘cat people’ in this environment ? ( Oh, no….) I mean we have two cats, and I admire and love them immensely, but- I confess- I’m a dog person. ( Shit. She’s going to ramble on about her search for puppies.

Again.

Go here instead.)

Mr. Jo is busy putting the finishing touches on The Boy’s room- painting the base boards, the window trim, putting a clear coating on his wooden floor. Then Mr. Jo will move on to ‘my’ room. Yep, I’m getting a room of my own, a place to put my computer and all of my ‘things’, which have been spread all over the house for the last ten years. My sister-in-law already gave me a great big table to use for all of my computer paraphernalia and I’m looking forward to the day when my wires don’t look like a tangled mass of linguine.

And then in a little over a year, The Baby will start going to school. Then I can fool around with code. I was being pretty unrealistic yesterday – at a certain point there were 8 kids running around here and The Baby was insisting that I put onThe Boy’s Borsalino and pretend that I was ‘Dr. Jones’.

Speaking of something that might be a bit unrealistic, The Father decided to bike to work today. Outside of a test spin the other day with The Girl to make sure his bike was in working order, he hasn’t been on a bike in a cootie’s age. He works about 10km away and promised that he would send me an e-mail when he arrived at work.

I’m still waiting.

Happy Birthday !