Things have been a wee bit hectic here this morning. Not only is it Tuesday- when the stores are closed in the afternoon- but Baby had to be hauled over to school ( by 8.30 ) and The Boy sent to school at 9.15, for his school field trip ( The Girl left at her normal 8.20).

The Boy was ping-ponging around the house all morning. He made me read the notice that the school had sent home about the field trip 3 times, until I finally made him read it out loud ‘We leave at 9.15′. He hemmed and hawed, dithered and fiddled, suddenly announcing that he didn’t know if he was supposed to go to school at the normal time and hang around there until 9.15 or just stay at home until 9.15. I finally told him that I would walk with him to his school and he could simply ask the teacher who is always standing there, watching over the playground. If he had to be at school, fine, then he was already there. If not, he could walk with me to Baby’s school to pass the time.

2 minutes before we had to leave, he got his shorts all wet and had to change clothes, but finally, his knapsack on his back and a sandwich bag with a few extra cookies in his hand, he and I and Baby took off. Of course, for whatever reason, today there was no teacher watching the playground, so I sent him around to the front of the building.

’9.15, Boy’ .

And so today I had company with me as I strollered Baby over to the next village. Twirling his bag of cookies with one hand ( of course, at a certain point, the bag flew out of his hand, went over a hedge and on to the street. Fortunately, there were no cars coming at the time, but he was left with a bag of cookie crumbs), The Boy talked about this and that. He explained to me that in Summer it was warmer because the Sun was closer to the Earth, but that in Winter, the Sun was further away. In fact, during Winter, the Sun went to Mars. I asked him how he knew that and he replied ‘ I just do’, and continued on about a camera being sent to Mars, a story he had heard on the news. I like listening to him, and he likes explaining things to me.

We spotted a pair of Fuuts building a nest in the water around town and stopped for a few minutes, watching the happy couple setting up housekeeping.

It was a pleasant walk and did indeed pass the time. The Girl told me later that he had a seat in the front of the bus, next to Nienke, one of his ‘buddies’. Nienke will always be a ‘Buddy’ to The Boy, as she doesn’t have big front teeth and The Boy only likes girls with Bugs Bunny teeth.

This afternoon I promised The Father that I would stain the interior of some closets, and while I do that I shall mull over the ‘Reality show’ remark that I made and the comments that were left.

I spent the time that The Baby was in school this afternoon brushing up the dogs. Buddy is beginning to look rather foolish : he is the size of a husky Lab and still has his fuzzy-wuzzy puppy fur. This afternoon, I was rather glad that allergies and smoking have dulled my sense of smell : as I brushed Elvis ( who farted peacefully the whole time, those tiny, damp stinkers), Buddy sat next to me, panting dank dog breaths in my face.

I was brushing them in the kitchen, about four feet from the open door ( let’s catch a breeze, I dreamed) when something smacked onto the sidewalk on the other side of the door. At first, I thought that a large bird had flown up against the house, plock ! and then had fallen on to the walkway. Then the orangey-brown pile got up and tore off into the shed . It was Kitty, one of our cats. She must have been walking on the drainpipe above and slipped, or possibly even sleeping on the flat roof of the kitchen and rolled over and off. Kitty does that all of the time. She will be sleeping on the arm of a chair and roll over, right on to the floor. Kitty has the IQ of a pomegranate.

I went out to the shed , looking for her, but she didn’t respond. I shall wait a few hours and then head out there again. She really fell hard.

Our other cat, Jimmy, the mad pisser, has been sneaking into the house the last few days via the window in my little-room-of-my-own here. Unfortunately for Jimmy, she is stone deaf and quite blind, so she never notices that I am sitting here as she sneaks in. She doesn’t hear me as I walk behind her, in fact, the first time that she notices me is when I have her in my arms, and am hauling her back outside again, 20 cat-claws embedded in my back and arms.

While I really, really like cats, I really, really don’t ever want to have another one after these two have gone to the big kitty litter box in the sky. At least the dogs have never made pissing on The Father’s pillow their goal in life.

Since I have returned from Italy, there is a question which has rather been haunting me :

How is a blog like this any different from a ‘reality’ show on television ?

Next Saturday, at approximately 2pm, our town is going to be attacked by the Spanish. There, there, I am rather in the know, and so can tell you that the stalwart burgers who reside here shall repel the attack and that life will continue as usual. The Baby will make it to ‘school ‘on Monday.

Yes, next weekend is a full-scale ‘town play’ here. We shall be transported back into the 1600′s, most of our street will be blocked off and 20, 000 visitors are expected. Where they will park their cars is beyond me, but it should be fun.

Of course, we can’t quite enjoy the spectacle as much as non-natives : we know all of the ‘actors’ involved. But should you come and should you guess where I live, the secret code : ‘Kitchen in Brabant’ might get you a beer.

But then again, it might not. I may be wandering about town, enjoying the 1600′s. ( Which, of course, included our house and is part of the charm).

The house beer is Grolsch.

The Boy with Elvis, The Baby, The Girl with Buddy.

Week 1 here.

As I was drying The Baby off, after her bath, The Boy started shouting- from somewhere below- ‘It’s leaking ! It’s leaking ! ‘. The Father, sitting amidst his bubbles, asked me if I knew what The Boy was going on about. Well, I said, the only thing that I can imagine leaking downstairs is the dishwasher.

Once The Baby was dried and dressed, I headed downstairs. The living room reeked of… dare I say it ?… piss. The Boy was jumping up and down, pointing to a drip from the ceiling right next to the TV. Looking up, considering the pipe structure of the house, I could only surmise that the drainage system from the new toilet for the girls isn’t quite working.

I do believe that saying that I am oh, so weary of this shit might be an understatement. I attempt to console myself by recalling what we paid for this place and what it is worth now.

Should we ever sell it.

Which we won’t.

I must admit, I am having problems adjusting to being… ‘back ‘. I fell for it, I believed The Father when he said that Mr.Jo would finish off everything when we were gone.

He didn’t. Although he is very close.

But, next week he is taking a vacation, for a week. Then he returns. I don’t think for long, perhaps a week, perhaps two. Until, of course, the window frames and screens for the ‘porch ‘come in from Poland. But that will be in the Fall, I guess, and only on the ‘outside ‘of the house.. and so… I may get some semblance of life back…’soon ‘.

He finished our bedroom. Well, his work on it. Now comes the staining and varnishing. Yesterday he said to me . “Jacques ( the guy who runs the handy-man store in town ) says it’s time for you to come in and pay the tab. ” So, of course, I went to Jacques today. I said, ‘ Jo tells it is time to pay up again.’ He said , ‘Oh that Jo ‘ ( tone of voice : what a character ! ). And I paid.

The last two days, Mr. Jo has been going over the list of ‘fix-its’ that we wrote up. Wood works, with the climate, settling in so to say, so he had windows to adjust, cabinets doors to shave down. And then today, glue new tiles ( The Father loves them ) onto the walls in the downstairs toilet.

Mr. Jo hates these tiles. Oh, he didn’t say as much to me, but I could hear it. Sitting here, in my little room-of-my-own, at the top of the stairs to the second floor, burning off 20 CD’s, I could hear him huff and puff and sigh. He was right at the bottom of the staircase, gluing those new tiles on and- of course, no matter how I tried to avoid it- I had to pass by him. ‘You know ‘, he said to me, ‘none of these tiles are the same size, the same thickness. It’s puzzle-work ‘. I could tell from his tone of voice that he wanted me to say ‘Damn these tiles ! Let’s find something else, shall we ? ‘. But you know, that’s not an option. Instead, I took the coward’s way out and said : ‘Gee, The Father just loves these tiles. ‘

For the rest of the afternoon, his sighs rose like smoke from a campfire, small wifts of guilt enticing me. But I took the easy way out : it’s all The Father’s fault.

I had rather high hopes for my little room-of-my-own. I remember The Father sternly telling the children, before the room actually existed as more than a pipe-dream of mummy’s, that my little room-of-my-own would be off-limits to everyone. One of those and that means you statements.

It sounded nice. In theory.

This week, I was asked – very politely, I assure you- to do some work-work. No brain-strain work at all, simply burning a few copies of the CD I had compiled containing the graphics for the company, converted into ‘web-friendly’ formats .

First on the agenda was re-installing the software for the CD writer. You know, many people have made many millions simply by developing software that 6 year olds can install and use. I tend to think that the more popular a software package is, the lower the demand upon having any technical savvy is. And so I always find it exquisitely humiliating when it takes me three…full…hours… to install a program.

But it is done, it is back on my computer once again.

But looking through the small photo section, I noticed that what I had was not the final version, but, no problem. It was simply a matter of pushing ‘auto levels’ and then the unsharp mask and things looked fine once again. There were about 40 pictures to do, and if I could have remembered how to do the ‘batch’ business, why, a chimp could have done it.

As I was plowing through this rather mindless work, I realized that my room-of-my-own now contains three chairs. And- even better yet- a queen size mattress, laying on the floor behind my desk. Do you know how inviting, how terribly sociable having a mattress on your floor is ? It’s a magnet for company, how comfy to flop down on the mattress, stare at the ceiling and chew the fat. It also contained one three year old. Have I ever mentioned that The Baby is always singing ? Today she was going through the full libretto of a rather melodramatic light opera, somewhat reminiscent of ‘Porgy and Bess’. Between each song, she would hang out of one of the windows and call out – quite loudly- ‘ Today is today ! ‘.

I suppose it is a blessing that I wasn’t asked to do anything which actually required any amount of thinking.

Babyism : Sunshine Lotion.

( As an aside, The Baby – 3 years, and almost 8 months old, brought homework home today from school. Alright, it was from her special language class, but still…. And so I have spent the day going over her pictures with her : ” Who is the mama of the kuikentje ? Ja ! The Kip !” For some reason, though, she insisted that the mama of the lamb was the cow. This might be why The Baby brought homework home today. )

One of the first things that I noticed when meeting up with Missy once again was the rather large, support-y looking bandage that she wore on her left wrist. Curious minds want to know and so I asked her what had happened.

It seems that she had sprained/ stretched / ripped/ wrecked the tendons in her left wrist by carrying The Little Prince around. ‘ Oh ‘, I may have said, possibly ‘ My ! ‘. She continued on, telling me that her Doctor had told her that 80% of all Italian mothers suffer from this sort of injury at one time or another. Again, I gave some nebulous response, ‘Oh ! ‘. And so, for the rest of the vacation, I watched how the Italian mothers that I saw were handling their young children ( say, under two years of age).

The first thing that I noticed was that everywhere you turn there are dozens of babies. Babies everywhere. The second thing that I noticed was that the mothers were always carrying, dangling, bouncing or holding the babies while the fathers pushed the empty deluxe strollers. And they never carried their babies on their hip as they stood or walked down the street, no, they carried the baby with it’s back to their stomach, left forearm across the baby’s chest.

I never saw a baby laying on it’s stomach on a blanket on the beach. I never saw a baby crawl- The Little Prince is 8 months old and can’t crawl, most likely because he is always being held and dangled. I wondered how many Italian babies never crawl.

I never saw a baby sitting in a Maxi-Cosi, just surveying the scene. In fact, I didn’t see one Maxi-Cosi. Every baby that I saw, when awake, had at least one adult entertaining it, holding it, bouncing it, devoting all of their attention to the wee treasure.

Major cultural difference. Needless to say, I never suffered from any wrist injuries as the result of my child-raising methods.