Han works most Monday evenings. Usually, I’ll have Mike and Sally go into town and pick up a pizza for dinner, but I’m ‘trying to cut down’. This has left me with the distinct impression that I am subsisting on cocktail onions and white white and having to slice up a warm pizza for them was too masochistic even for me. So instead, I made them a proper dinner.

As we sat, chatting over dinner, one thing led to another and I found myself answering questions about their births. Meg took the longest, Sal’s the least amount of time, giving out notes for ‘I’m better-faster-bigger’ contests in the future. And then Sally asked me if I would like to have another baby. ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m too old’ I replied ( here Mike pipes up with his predictable ‘ You are not old!’), ‘ most women my age are grandmothers. And I’m tired.’ ‘Tired ? From what?’.

I sighed in response as she and Mike began talking about how nice a little baby would be. ‘ If it was a boy, we could name it Spike. Spike and Mike.’ ‘ Mike, we’re not naming a baby after a fish. Besides, once a long time ago, you two already decided what you wanted to name a baby. You wanted to name a boy Jack. After Grandpa’s cat. And a girl Elizabeth.’

Sally was really into the whole idea of another baby. ‘ Look,’ she told me’ all you have to do is have sex with Daddy tonight and in a few months, we’ll have a little baby. Simple.’

This is one of the few times that I have been glad of my naturally ruddy complexion. I’ll never get used to all of this ‘openness’. And nothing is that simple.

Rain in Waalwijk.

Today I have to go through Meg’s clothes. I do believe that I still have every single article of clothing that has ever touched her wee, sweet body. Queen Victoria and I would have gotten along famously.

I’ve become very superstitious about clearing out baby clothes. The last two times I did it, I found myself knocked up about 2 weeks later. Plus, it is a sort of farewell.

But Han is quite understanding of my seeing baby clothes as sacred relics. He always tells me that I can save whatever I want. So I will go through a first culling today, packing a large amount of faded and tattered dresses in a box. In about two years time, I will go through the box again, tossing out even more. Eventually, I will have saved a small box of special clothing and far too many pairs of tiny shoes.

But today I start.

I get a fair amount of comments here. I like them, usually I try to respond, usually I know where they are coming from. But sometimes I don’t, sometimes it is just someone who has drifted in from Google, usually regarding my posts about dogs, insects or Traudl Junge.

I always wonder about them, and believe it or not, I truly try to respond to the comments which I receive about bugs ( spiders and moths ). But I wonder about them. They are a mystery which intrigues me.

Next Friday and Saturday we will be in Amsterdam, here to be exact. My Father and Wicked Step-Mother are stopping by for the weekend to give Christmas presents. I know, it’s early in the year, but last year when they came at about Christmas time, it was so cold here for their Alabama blood that they were miserable. And so they are coming next weekend instead.

We will drive to the hotel after the kids are out of school for the day, eat dinner and then old Grandpa will take the kids to the pool. Then we will just hang out in someone’s room, bullshit, catch up on things. Although there isn’t much to catch up on- we just saw them last month.

And like every other year, on Saturday we will go into Amsterdam itself. Because we go there so rarely ( like once a year, when Grandma and Grandpa come) we always go to something ‘ cultural’ first. This year we would like to go to the Maritime Museum They have a full sized replica of a VOC ship there which I think the kids will enjoy seeing. I know I will.

Then lunch and off to do the fun stuff : hit a massive toy store. The Grandparents give the kids X amount of credit to go and buy what they want. This takes hours and suddenly math is not one of Sally’s weaknesses. Mike will agonize over which Lego set to buy and Meg have no idea what is going on.

But they all enjoy it and I’m looking forward to seeing a big city once more.

So I’m reading this book about Edna St. Vincent Millay, written by the same woman who wrote that Zelda book which I simply can’t read enough.

Eh, I struggle. So far, about all I’ve liked is the idea of being a woman called ‘Vincent’. Perhaps, somewhere, I hold her responsible for that dirty old man who accosted me in a bookstore when I was 15- ‘ Oh, do you like Edna’s work ? I knew her, you know. ( Edna, I asked myself. Who is this old fart talking about ? I don’t read poetry, everyone knows that…)

Perhaps I should read Nin, like Anne.

Margaritas for Two

I/2 cup of freshly squeezed lime juice
1/2 cup Cointreau
3/4 cup Tequila

I put these three ingredients in a big beer glass and then poured it into a water jug filled with ice, shook it about a bit and then poured it into two large glasses.

We’ve had as fine a Saturday night as one could wish for.

recipe from a rather vehement Rob.

Today- like any other day- I went to the bakery to buy our bread for the day. Our baker has the best bread around, but unlike American bread, after a day it is stale. The dogs are also eating about a loaf and a half a day, and so most times when I go to the bakery, I ask them if they have any old bread for the dogs. They usually do.

So today I went in and ordered a white bread with sesame seeds, a French bread ( what they call french bread, by the way, is what we call Italian bread, although I’ve never seen bread like that in Italy. They also call a dutch roof a French roof…) and asked if they had any old bread for the dog. Sheesh, she said, he ( the baker) just left with the old bead… wait a minute, they had a rather large bread left, it wasn’t old, just slipped over a bit and became lopsided during the baking process. I could have that for 2x the price of a loaf of dog bread ( 80 euro cents altogether). Sure, I said, bread is bread.

I was very glad that I hadn’t done much shopping this morning- a newspaper, Tequila, Cointreau, some cigarettes- for that bread was huge. Apparently, someone had ordered it to use in a display for sandwiches. He would slice the top off of the loaf, scoop out the insides and fill the shell with packaged sandwiches. Whatever, it is huge. Meg fell in love with it and played with it all morning, arranging her toys around it.

The family insisted I take a picture of the dog’s bread. We are a bit puzzled as to how to feed it to the dogs, Han would like to simply toss it out into the yard and see what happens. And I’ve promised Meggie a slice . Rumor has it that this event will be photographed as well.

the bread, mike and meg

It’s amazing. I have been procrastinating for 4 hours now. My, work-work must be in the air again. Yes, it is. While I was off eating scallops in Florida, the company moved their dot-com. I don’t know how they did that, for in theory they needed my permission, but Han can be very persuasive and I know that he was very yonked out about their e-mail, and so…

And so yesterday he came huffing to me and asked if I had gone to the company’s site lately. Well, truth be told, no. I avoid it like the plague. I couldn’t imagine what would unfold when I opened the link. And that is when I learned that they had moved the whole dot-com, not just their e-mail services ( although, I must admit I did pause for thought on that one : how did they manage to only change their e-mail services ?). What did I see when I opened the link ? Nothing. The whole site is gone, of course.

So I have been provided with the new user-name and passwords, my mission : to fix it.

I’d rather eat scrambled eye balls, inhale dog farts until next June… you get the idea.

Anon…

Yesterday I found some limes at our little market. In general, I have had a hard time finding limes here in the past, but there they were, five for a euro, and so I bought five.

Now I find myself hemming and hawing about what to do with them. Make margaritas or fajitas ?

Most likely I will equivocate until they are quite shriveled and spoiled.