So, as you know, we have this mouse that lives in our bedroom. She’s been there for a while. She knows that I am not going to put out a trap that slices her in half, hit her with a fly swatter. She does not start trembling when I flip on the light switch as I enter the room. In fact, as I have mentioned a number of times, it is rather- well- embarrassing how little this mouse fears me. She has been known to sit and finish picking her teeth ( or whatever it is that mice do) upon my arrival before scuttling away.

So tonight, I’m sitting downstairs with Han, and he tells me what happened last night. For all that I sleep lightly in the mornings, my first sleep is very deep. Very deep, coma- like. So Han comes up last night, he flips on the light-switch, and sees a mouse on my nightstand. She doesn’t run away, oh no. She continues drinking out of my water glass, perched on the rim. Only when she is done having her drink does she leave.

I have to have my water at night. I just dug out a cup that the kids picked up at some hotel. It is plastic, with a plastic cap, with a plastic straw in the cap , with a little lid that can be snapped on the straw.

This is really a mouse with an attitude.

I have finished up Sally’s site, except for the blog. Once I put it up, it was easy to straighten out the folders .( Yup, Karan, that was indeed what it was, and so basic it is almost embarrassing. Oh well, I’m not proud.)

There are new pictures here showing Mr. Jo’s progress. He was only here for 14 hours this week, so things are not exactly zooming along.

And in a few minutes, when Sally comes home, the vacation starts.

Thank God. Mummy is pooped.

I believe that great amounts of thought and research are expended upon when – exactly- is the perfect time for a school vacation. What else could explain the fact that about two days before a vacation is due to start, I find myself simply strangling in the routine that gets everybody in our family prepared and through their day ?

I noticed it first thing this morning, as I sat on the floor in the bathroom, trying to pull myself together during the time it takes to smoke one- and only one, never two, never one and a half- cigarette. I was sick of running up those stairs to get the girls, of having Sally growl at me, of then going to wake up Meg and on and on through the things that make up our morning. Always the same, right down to the minute. At 7.30, I get everyone’s clothes, 8.10, time to put on shoes and go potty.

At a certain point, it just becomes unbearably boring, beyond predictable.

And so I watched the clock today with extra interest : not only did the sight of Mr.Jo walking down the path in the garden herald the first level of ‘Weekend’, it is also the beginning of a week long school vacation.

I can predict that by next Thursday, I will be ripping my hair out, saying how glad I am that in a few days school will start. But for now, I’m looking forward to a week with days of a more spontaneous nature. When I don’t glance at my watch 12 times an hour or count the number of times that the bells at City Hall have rung.

So, I watched the game with Han. He was really excited about this and I really don’t know why- last week, feeling lonely and on the look-out for Catherine, I watched the London game. I was quite confused at first, for I did not recognize Ajax’s ‘out’ shirt, and that of Arsenal’s ‘home’ shirt was…quite…deceptive. Know what I mean ? I didn’t fall so far as to cheer for the ‘wrong’ team, but, I came close.

So, we’re watching this game tonight ( and I’m not breathing one word about the results, not one) and there is this Arsenal player, I think it’s Vieira, and he has a large, wet stain, shaped and placed somewhat like a bib on his shirt. I was just reaching for a munchie out of my bowl when Han said to me , ” You know, that’s not sweat, that’s snot”.

Well, I pulled my hand back immediately, and said ” Oh, no, no,no, it couldn’t be!” Your basic yukkus reaction.

But you know, Han knows so much about textiles, it’s his business, it keeps pampers in our cupboard, bread upon the table and so during the course of the game, I watched Vieira’s shirt closely. Indeed, whatever was on his shirt was glistening, was something lying atop the fibers, not something that had seeped through.

Do tell, Catherine, Arseblog, what was it ?

Catherine sent me this link and I agree, totally. Thanks !

I was going to tell a story today about what happened when Meg and I went shopping yesterday, about how I caught a duck by the bookstore and the admiring crowd reacted as though I had wrestled down a tiger. ‘Uh’, I said, ‘ it’s a duck. It doesn’t even have teeth.’

But it is Wednesday and the kids only have a half day of school and Sally’s birthday is quickly approaching.

So instead of telling wild tales about the duck, I’m busy inserting rollovers- hearts, in fact – on Sally’s little site. They turn from blue to red on mouseover.

Sometimes it’s a lot of fun doing those things that I would never dream of doing here .

In a certain way, I feel quite sorry for people looking for info via Google who find me instead. You do recall that Google loves me, don’t you ?

Do you know that the most common Google searcher who lands on my site is looking for info on Traudl Junge. Imagine that. And imagine that you end up here.

OK, I will admit that they are good links, but still, I have no doubts as to why Google bought up Blogger.

So that people like me wouldn’t screw up their searches.

Thanks, Katrien !

Following in the now well established tradition of the Bloggie Awards, the results of the DutchBloggies have led to calls of ‘ groupies’ and ‘unacceptable results’. So now there is a counter DutchBloggie, Loggies der Lage Landen.

I guess that this happens everywhere.

Joeri puts up a link to Eurobilltracker, a site very similar to Eurodiffusion . Both hope to follow the travels that the individual Euro coin or bill makes throughout Europe.

I am a very light sleeper, one of those people who tosses and turns and checks their watch every half hour after about 4 am. Sometimes, just having a glass of water seems to do the trick, lull me back into sleep and so I keep a glass and a bottle of Spa Rood ( bubbly water) on my nightstand.

As some of you know, we had a major problem with mice about two years ago. I managed to catch and toss out all of the mice except one. No matter what I try, I can’t seem to catch her. I hear her every night – in fact, she often wakes me up- running through the bedroom, but really, I am at a loss as to what to do about her. I’m rather hoping that she simply dies of old age and thereby solves the problem.

Last night I went up to bed, as everyone does. I sat on the side of my bed, doing those things that one does when settling down, you know, got the book that I was reading, turned on my lamp. I noticed that my water glass was half full ( or half empty, whatever) and went to fill it up for the night. As I unscrewed the cap of the bottle , I noticed that there was something floating in my glass. An ash perhaps ? No. Closer inspection revealed that there was a small, black coprolite , of the mouse variety, in my glass of water. Isn’t that- by the way- a great way to say ‘a mouse turd’ ?

I can’t help wonder how it got there. Oh, I’m not that simple minded, I know that the mouse did it. But there is nothing hanging over my glass of water, no ledge that this could have fallen from. While I can stretch my imagination and picture a mouse balancing on the edge of my glass to get a drink of water ( you know, desperate times call for desperate measures), I have a very hard time imagining a mouse balancing on the edge of my glass in such a way that a mouse turd would fall in it. It almost seems, well, deliberate.

Really, I can’t think of any other way that that got in my glass.