via mig :

What kind of thinker are you?

You are a Spatial Thinker

Spatial Thinkers:

Tend to think in pictures, and can develop good mental models of the physical world.
Think well in three dimensions
Have a flair for working with objects

Other Spatial Thinkers include
Pablo Picasso, Michelangelo, Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Careers which suit Spatial Thinkers include
Mechanic, Photographer, Artist, Architect, Engineer, Builder, Set designer

Well, a little late in the game for these results, but I would think that most bloggers ( ugly word ) fit more into the linguistic thinkers category.

I have been invited to a dinner, although I must confess, the details are a bit fuzzy : I may be the dinner.

Now, should I wear my black jeans with the hole or my black jeans without the hole ?

And Catherine, I’ll meet up with you after dinner, as I shall be in your neighborhood . I’m guessing that you could use a drink or two .

Can you tell that I have been goofing off all day long ?

Go tell Gert how tall you are. It all seems very scientific.

Being vertically challenged, I find the number of ( very ) tall bloggers…intriguing.

But then, I’ve always ( at 5’2) been a sucker for anyone over 6 feet.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, why, even before The Girl was born, The Father and I agreed upon a division of duties regarding the soon-to-be born babe. It was quickly agreed that I would handle all shitty diapers ( had to go on and on again about my cast iron stomach, didn’t I ?), vomit and snot related items and he would do homework. We clearly believed in planning for the future, didn’t we ?

I have kept up my end of the bargain. I don’t believe that there is one speck of fecal matter, urine, vomit or snot, produced by anyone living in our house and/or in our yard that has not been cleaned up by old Mums here. Homework has not quite worked out as well, as clearly defined as was hoped. After all, homework occurs even during those weeks when The Father is away, somewhere ‘ on the road’.

I was sitting in a tub of hot water last night when he returned home. After the usual ‘how was your trip?’ formalities were out of the way, I asked him if The Girl was still in my little room of my own. Yes, she was. ‘She’s doing her homework. Go and say something nice to her ‘, I suggested. Truth be told, I was in the tub recovering from the emotional volcano that helping The Girl do her homework is. Amazing. I still can’t believe the drama of it all. Clearly, this is not my forte. I’m best at cleaning up excreta.

She had come to me with a list that she had to fill in for school by Thursday, a list of 16 members of the Dutch cabinet. She had to fill in which political party they belonged to and which ministry they were a minister of.

I put her and her list behind my computer, putting this page up on the computer. Now, if you hit the ‘ personen’ link on the left, it takes you to a search engine- all she had to do was type in the names on her list and *plonk*, there would be the information that she needed. I ambled out of the room to bathe The Baby , planning on taking my bath after Baby’s.

In between baths, I came in to see how she was doing. It quickly became clear to me that no one had explained to her what a ‘minister’ or a ‘ministry’ was and what the difference between the two was. For ‘ Ministry’ she had simply filled in ‘Minister’, each and every time as well as a lot of unnecessary information. ‘Girl, this is all wrong…’ ‘ ALL WRONG ! ALL WRONG!’ and she then proceeded to fall into a tizzy the likes of which I haven’t observed for a long time. She all but predicted her tragic future as a member of the grey and tattered hordes of the homeless. Words such as ‘useless… no point…I’ll never…wrong…wrong..wrong’ flew around my little room of my own. I hate scenes and this certainly was that, and when she paused for breath, I very sternly and somewhat loudly said to her ‘ Girl, you can do this wrong 20 times here and it doesn’t count. It isn’t ‘ wrong’ until you hand it to your teacher’.

I then explained the meanings of the two words and gave her a clean sheet of paper. ‘ You mean I have to write it ALL OVER AGAIN ?’ . Of course I was thinking, lighten up, it’s not ‘War and Peace’, but I simply said ‘Yes’. I numbered her paper, and sat next to her as she went through two names, filling in her list correctly this time. And then I went to take my bath.

What a tempest in a teapot. And as I usually do at times like this, I thought to myself : adolescence is going to be sheer hell.

The Father and I have sortof had this running joke about me being allergic to him. You know, I’d start sneezing and he would walk by and say ‘ Gee, you must be allergic to me !’.

Last week, my allergies were really acting up. I was beyond kleenex and walking around with a roll of paper towels. Super absorbent. In fact, it was so bad that I had planned on going to see GP this week to get some turbo medication. But you know, I didn’t sneeze at all on Monday, and Tuesday I was fine as well.

Until The Father walked in the door last night.

Was Mummy Dearest about to admit that some of her best friends are books?

Burn her!

Lucky I didn’t end up as a crackling today, am I not ?

Having a bit of a funky day.

It happens.

Does anyone know of any other UK football blogs besides arseblog ?

I’ve been watching the wind all day, trying to figure out how a camera could catch it’s effects- the glittering undersides of some leaves sparkling, the way the rushes bent in waves. Now it is late at night and I am the fearless leader here. The dogs howl in terror or perhaps at the unknown.

It is a dark and stormy night.

I’m not a very athletic sort of person. No one passing by me on the street would mistake me for one who runs marathons, plays tennis or perhaps indulges in an afternoon game of squash. No, my idea of exercise is stretching over the kitchen table to reach my cup of coffee with one hand and my pack of cigarettes with the other.

And so this morning has been quite challenging. It began simply enough, the usual routine of dragging myself and the children out of bed, parking myself before my cup of coffee and the Dagblad. Perhaps, if this were a movie, the first ominous tones would have played in the background as I helped The Girl find the results of last night’s euro-vision song contest for kids in Belgium on my computer. Sure enough, after three days of being ‘clean’, my computer spewed the lewdest ads out, causing The Girl to run out of my room in horror. And so I began my day by scanning my computer.

At 8 we all kissed The Father goodbye. He left for a three day trip to East Germany. He will make a pit stop here on Tuesday or Wednesday night, and then head off into Germany once more, leaving us on our own for most of the week. But that’s no biggie. We’ve done that before.

At 8.20, the kids and I left the house, heading off for school. Before I shut the front door behind us, they asked – as they do every morning- if I had my keys. I patted my pocket- as I do every morning-, felt the familiar egg -shape of my key-chain and replied ‘Yep, I have them’, and off we went.

Only the familiar egg-shape in my pocket was not my key-chain, it was a light bulb from the chandelier in the front room. I had slipped the burned out bulb in my pocket last Friday so that I would know exactly what wattage to buy in the store. And I had left it there. And so 8.30 this morning found Baby and I standing in front of a locked front door and a 2.5 meter wall surrounding our back yard ( and the unlocked back door). And The Father and extra keys somewhere on the road to East Germany.

I have remarked here in the past about what an intrinsically lucky person I am and today was no exception. For the one day that I forget my keys was a Monday : garbage pick up day. Explaining carefully to Baby what I had to do, I hijacked a nearby garbage can and placed it by the corner of our neighbor’s wall. While our wall goes from 2.5 to 3 meters in height, our neighbors wall – which abuts ours for about 1 foot- is only 6 feet high. If I could get myself on top of the garbage can, I knew I had a fair chance of pulling myself up onto their wall and then edging around a supporting pillar of ours and jumping into a raised flower bed in our yard below.

The trickiest part was getting myself up onto the 4 foot high green garbage container without tipping it over. But I succeeded. My fear of heights forgotten, I managed to scoot myself around to our supporting pillar and ease myself into the flower bed. Did I mention that the puppies just loved this new game ? Jumping and barking, they greeted me as I thumped onto the grass and ran through the back yard, out of the gate and retrieved a very frightened Baby.

That certainly woke me up.

The Boy and elvis, The Girl and buddy, The Baby

I really have to do something about that grass. Because of the rebuilding, the yard was hopeless this year and the only thing I have tended are the roses ( which should be lovely next May). But I should go and do something about that grass.