Nice link to a Harry Potter game

The Boy liked it.

via: uren.dagen.nachten

Last Saturday, there was some sort of special day at The Girl’s scouting group. They drove all the way over to L., where there was a club house set up with a row of computers. The scouts did the walk in nature bit ( L. is right by the Dunes) and then came back to the room filled with computers. Then they spent a few hours ‘chatting’ with other groups of scouts from across the Netherlands. The older scouts , who could read and write English, ‘chatted’ with other scouts from around the world.

Lately, The Girl has had a strong desire to have a pen-pal. It has come up a few times, when she has seen the pen-pal ads in her school and horse magazines. She has even written a few letters, but has forgotten to post them. So when she was surfing around at a few of the children’s sites that I had found for her this week and saw the word ‘chat’, she really wanted to try it.

One part of me just wanted to say ‘no way’. I have read all of those news stories, those ones about creepy perverts infiltrating children’s chat rooms. On the other hand, I always had a pen-pal when I was growing up, a secret friend that I never actually met and could tell things to. The Father had a pen-pal too, from Finland. He still knows all of these Finnish words and would love to go there some day. And for some reason, I see these children’s chat rooms serving the same function that pen-pals did, way back when I was a kid.

It would be a bit unfair of me to dismiss people that you have met over the internet out of hand. After all, The Girl has met both Marjan and Catherine, people that I have met over the internet, people that she knows I have met on the computer in our living room. I mean, not everyone on line is some drooling pervert, who replaces slate roofs on churches for a living.

So I agreed that The Girl could ‘chat’, under pretty stiff supervision. First we tried the FoxKids chatroom. I could orientate myself quicker on the page than The Girl could, so after I saw the words ‘Vibrator’ and ‘geil’, I quickly changed the page.

We had trouble logging into another site and ended up at the SpeelZolder. Everything looked pretty ‘clean’, so I helped The Girl set up a name and password and let her go. I explained to her that I wasn’t trying to invade her privacy, but that I would come by every 5 minutes or so, to make sure that the language being used was what I considered to be appropriate. What choice did she have ? She agreed.

It turns out that the chat room is supervised, and every time I took a peek, the chatters were talking about favorite colors, pets, siblings,astrology ( ‘ Mom, what sign am I ? ‘ ‘ Pisces ‘ ‘ What does sign mean ? ‘ ‘ In five words or less ? How the stars were in the sky the day you were born.’ ‘ Pisces ? ‘ ‘ Yup ‘). The Girl had a nice time chatting .

You know, I want her to like computers, for some reason. Teach her how to make sites and all. Strange.

I love New Year’s Eve. I drive everyone around me nuts, I just get so excited and goofy about it. We never go anywhere or do anything special just stay up until midnight and watch the last minutes of the old year tick away and then I simply beam the first few minutes of the new year.

And today. I should probably be ripping fistfuls of greying hair out of my head, I really don’t like getting presents, we never go anywhere or do anything special, but golly gee whiz, I just love my birthday ! Happy Birthday to me, I’m 45 ! It’s my birthday !

Every Fall there comes a point when I change our menu : we go from ‘Summer ‘ to ‘ Winter’ food. This usually means that I start serving up a lot more food from the ‘ Dutch Kitchen’, meals including ‘Stamppot’ ( seasonal vegetables mashed through potatoes), Brussels Sprouts, thick soups and lots of kale and smoked sausages.

We have reached that point and today had an onion soup. I make a decent onion soup, or rather, I rarely screw it up and everybody likes it fine. So we are all sitting around the table, our bowls of soup in front of us, a slab of brown bread all around. Then we start our usual round of ‘ And how was your day ? ‘. Today I kicked it off.

‘You know Father, The Girl had a strange day the other day. One of the workers whistled at her ‘ .

The Father gave me a blank look. I waved my hand towards the kitchen window, to the church beyond and said , ‘ You know, the ones putting the new roof on the church’.

Then The Girl took over, and told The Father what had happened. When she had finished, The Father asked her if the man was still working there.

‘Yes’.

‘ I’m going over there in the morning to talk to him ‘. Right then I wondered how I ever could have doubted what The Father’s reaction would be. The look on his face made it clear that he would love to give that lech a Linda Blair neck twist and wouldn’t think twice about it.

There are advantages, I can see, in being 6’4, 200 plus pounds and having shoulders like a football player. There are advantages in being proficient in the language of the country that you live in.

I can picture myself stomping over to the base of the 13th century church, all 5’2 of me, planting my hands on my hips and calling up to the workers on the roof : ‘ Hey ! You ! Worky man in roof church ! I hear you talk naughty my wee girlie . Me no like. You stop, hear you me ? ‘. I think The Father will be much more effective.

It rains, I iron.

They are replacing the slate roof on the church behind our house. It seems that construction workers speak an international language : Monday, between the rain showers, The Girl went out to the back yard. She came huffing back inside a few moments later, reporting that one of the workers had called out to her ‘Nice ass”.

Now, I know that everyone accepts foul- mouthed construction workers as a fact of life, but The Girl is 9. I am sure that I am blowing this all out of proportion, but this doesn’t sit well with me at all. What is this, an initiation into the realities of being a woman ? I shall have to dwell upon this a bit more.

Out of curiosity, I did one of those on-line translations of the link above, you know, Dutch to English. I suppose that this is only funny if you understand both languages.

The pertinent part of this article ( translation) is the bit about 1944, when the Germans puffed the tower. I was hoping to illustrate just how close we are to the Church, as when the Germans puffed the tower, it landed on the back part of our house.

‘Yonder’. Do people pay money for these translations ?

I have been watching this place. No, we are not related . I’m not related to the other one either.

Things have calmed down here. I just sent The Boy and The Girlto the toy store and they returned with a big bag filled with yet more fun beads and new shapes. For the last week or so, they have been on a fun bead spree, leaving our floor covered with the little suckers and my iron a permanent fixture on the kitchen counter.

Yesterday was an evil alignment of planets in this household.

There was Mummy Dearest here, not a morning person at all. The Girl, The Baby and I slept in until 8, then came downstairs to make coffee for Mr.Jo. Yes, Mr.Jo is still here.

Enter The Girl, the first born. Some experts believe that there is a definite advantage to being the first born. Sure, I believe that. I’m the oldest child in my family, so is The Father. There are some disadvantages though as well. I have noticed that a large percentage of first born children seem to have trouble entertaining themselves. This is certainly the case with The Girl . By 8.30, she was hanging over my shoulder, bemoaning the fact that ‘ There’s nothing to do ‘. So I put her behind my computer and said ‘surf’.

EnterThe Baby, almost three and a creature of habit. It is her age I know, but The Baby likes her days to be exactly the same, day in , day out. You know, rise and shine at 7, take The Boy and The Girl to school at 8.30, watch TV from 9 to 10 and then go shopping. Each day as predictable as the one before it. She has two sorts of days, a weekday – when Papa isn’t here, The Boy and The Girl are at school- and a weekend day – when everyone is home. Yesterday she was totally lost, she kept asking if The Father was upstairs sleeping and threw one shit fit after another.

Enter The Boy. A few days ago I was reading someone’s opinions about school these days. They felt that children had too many days off. I myself am always amazed that the vacations seem to fall exactly when The Boy needs one. He is just burned out . When The Boy gets tired, he gets dramatic. He gets melodramatic. ( Wonder where he gets that from, asked the woman who just kicked a site meter off her page because it was ‘upsetting’ her ?). So he’s working with those fun beads, making a picture of a mermaid. Well, it’s not working out at all, so he asks me to help. I’m really bad at fun beads. Looking at those pictures crosses my eyes and my fingers suddenly seem so stubby. But, you know, I’m trying. But I’m failing. Miserably. He will never get it right. It’s all my fault. This escalates until he is howling in tears, saying the equivalent of ‘and I’ll never get into Harvard’. The Baby hears The Boy crying and for the hell of it , joins in. The Girl explodes because she can’t get into the FoxKids site. It is 9.30. It is one and a half hour into a five day vacation. I begin to panic. Have the strong desire to put on my coat and go for a walk. Alone. In the rain. In the quiet rain.

By 11, the kids had settled down- probably were exhausted from keeping Mummy busy in the morning, but things went reasonably well for the rest of the day. And today, thanks to fun beads and my computer, we seem to have found a routine to get us through the day. In peace.

Ok, I can do this. I’m sure that the toughest time will be tomorrow morning, when I have a steaming cup of coffee in my hand and flip on the computer. Usually I take a look at who has passed through during the night.

I will probably complain, tomorrow, about trying to find something to do with my hands.

I can do this.

Already, for some reason, I feel a sort of freedom, a sort of anonymity. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me.

My name is Mummy Dearest. I’m a stats-oholic. It has been three hours since my last peek.

I can do this

Well, I have finally done it : I have removed the site meter from this page. It was starting to annoy the piss out of me and now -poof!- she is gone.

I wonder if I will suffer from withdrawal symptoms ? Shakes, chills, staring at the blank monitor for hours on end ?

The Girl ( holding her dictation list in her hand): Ask me how to spell something.
Mummy Dearest : Purgatory.

Today is the first day of Fall Break. That is when the kind saints who watch over my beloved offspring for a large portion of the day get a break and I must face the consequences of indulging in my urge to go forth and multiply, for listening to that ‘biological clock’ tick.

This morning was especially heinous. I now know why people who think ahead go away to Spain for these school vacations. It is really a very affordable place to go to, sun shines, beaches. Yes, sounds good to me. Unfortunately, the idea has very little appeal for The Father. He has quite strict standards for places we shall vacation in . Number one on his list is that there must be no other Dutch nationals within 200 miles. This leaves the options of Jasper, Alabama and
Palmyra Island open. Both of which are not really in the ‘ very affordable’ bracket.

So, here I sit. I managed to calm things down this morning in a now very familiar manner : I threatened to throw a bowl with about 2 quarts of Fun Beads out of the front door and into the street. This threatening to throw things out of a door really works and receives my highest recommendation.

I am also now sharing my computer. It is now my turn on the Internet. Next comes The Girl, and lastly The Boy.

Half a day down, 4 and a half more to go.