The Boy was invited to a party tonight. After all of these many years, I now know the true, untold story about these parties : every one from the class is invited and donates 5 euro to pay for the drinks, snacks and DJ.

For fun, the DJ will usually do karaoke songs for the group ( the DJ this year is- by the by- the only boyfriend The Girl ever had while at the little hell hole. The Girl has grit and was determined to have a boyfriend one year when valentine’s day rolled around. She even asked me to stay out of sight when he came over to see our dogs but I digress to an almost unforgivable point…). And usually, The Boy is the only one who does this, remember his Johnny Cash tune ?

So, tonight he got ready for the party. The theme is black and white and his first outfit, well, The Baby had it spot on : he had grabbed a black top that belongs to either The Girl or me and, well, the Bolshoi would have loved him. You look like a ballet dancer ! was heard.

Once the outfit was settled upon, he wanted to run through a few songs. He wasn’t sure which he would sing, so he went through three. One was Johnny B. Good. Have fun with the song, louder, I told him. Sweet Little Sixteen, same thing. Old Rock and Roll songs are meant to be vibrant and fun.

And the third song. Oh, The Girl is telling him to ar- tic- u- late and I am telling him that this is his song, sing it that way. And then I tell The Girl that it doesn’t matter if he articulates, since none of the kids understand English.

And The Boy tells me that every kid should know and understand the words to this song.

And which song is that ?

I did it my way.*

Elvis.

Of Course.

*
And now, the end is here
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I’ll say it clear
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain
I’ve lived a life that’s full
I traveled each and ev’ry highway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way

Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way

Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way

I’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried
I’ve had my fill, my share of losing
And now, as tears subside, I find it all so amusing
To think I did all that
And may I say, not in a shy way,
“Oh, no, oh, no, not me, I did it my way”

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!

Yes, it was my way

Wednesdays are always a zoo here, and I suppose so for most families with kids under 12 in the Netherlands, for the children have only a half day of school and so Wednesdays are a big day for extra activities.

For us, The Boy has keyboard lessons two villages away, oh, about 7 kilometers as the crow flies.

But we are not crows and cannot fly and so we must take the bus.

Which takes an hour and a half.

One way.

That doesn´t seem like much, I suppose, but it so utterly boring that it seems to last twice as long and yesterday we had to take THE Baby with us as well, The Girl having a friend over at the time, you know how it is.

As The Boy had his lesson, I had The Baby sitting under a tree with me ( I can smoke ! ), reading from her latest read book from school.

With one thousand and one things to do before we leave ( the next one who sings that they want to wake up in that town that never sleeps most assuredly will find my shoe wedged between their teeth), I did not have time to fuss about with dinner yesterday.

And so it was decided to get some take out Chinese ( here I have to say that while I love, love, love American Chinese, I loathe, loathe, loathe Dutch Chinese ).

I was dropped off at home, to set the table while The Boys picked up the Chinese take out.

And so I did.

And waited for them to return.

And waited.

And waited.

The lads finally returned, dinner dangling from a plastic sack on their wrists. The delay ? There was a camera crew at the Chinese place, filming the woe begone fathers, bereft of the gentler sex, picking up dinner for their cherubs.

Being clever, you must wonder why this would delay one darn thing. Well, it was the retakes. No spontaneity here, nope, as The Boy and his father waited their turn – agreeing with the owner of the joint that the last thing that they wanted was to be on TV- the camera men had the waiter repeat- 3 times- do you want that with sambal ?

This morning- his last day at the little hell hole down the street, after 10 years- The Boy asked me if we had any chocolate in the house, something to give his teacher as a good bye gift. Uh, no, I had to say, for I am letting our supplies go down to zero as we prepare for the latest version of the Road Trip From Hell, Mega.

But, I told him, I could pick up a large bar of prime chocolate today and then meet him at the school when it was all said and done and he could then bring his offering to the object of his admiration.

So it was written, so it was done.

I passed the chocolate bar to The Boy at the school yard and he went back into the building to present his offering.

He returned with red, swollen eyes, tears streaming down his face.

I didn´t push too much.

His teacher had told him to be himself , although she said quite the opposite on his final report card, and that seems to have been the proverbial straw, re :camel.

He told me that as he shook hands with his fellow class mates and looked into their eyes, he could see that they were sorry for all of the past years, that his was not the only tear stained face.

Well, I´m not Billy Budd, I am more along the lines of a female Lion, a cynical old fart old just about 50.

The Boy is going to a party tonight, thrown by his class mates, his father will be `unavailable` and I want the wee Budd to have a telephone.

For I haven´t one kindly, forgiving bone in my body.

No one will ever call me Mama Budd.

60 women ( families) have signed up to take part in the * reality show* which shall take place in our town.

Today I talked with one of the papa’s, a man that I know will fly through this with charm and elan.

And I have to say, the murmur going through town is not that the papas will be pulling hair out from the root’s end, but that the mamas will provide the entertainment for the show.

I have heard the word * catty* more than once…

The Boy has been jumping up and down all day.

Tiresome, to say the least.

As he only has half days this week in school, he offered to pick up The Baby at 3.15. No, wait : he insisted upon picking up The Baby, even though he knew that she was going to play with Prince Charming this afternoon.

Very insistent he was, yes indeed, and later I learned why : when he went to pick her up, he asked a girl to go steady with him and she said yes. When I asked who the girl was and he replied Chantal, I was not surprised, for Chantal has been crazy about him for so many years that I cannot remember how we first learned that she thought that The Boy was the cat’s meow ( uh…new computer, where is spellcheck ?).

But he is all grins and pleased, with four more days left at school and Chantal a year behind him.

In truth, going steady hasn’t changed much since I was 12 : some one asks you to go steady, you say yes, and there is a very good chance that you won’t even speak all that much to each other after the big moment.

But one officially has a girl friend/ boy friend after the question is popped.

And that seems to be all that matters.

My computer died on Sunday.

Hopefully, I haven´t lost any data.

Hopefully, I will be back soon.

Again.

After a week long vacation in Tunisia, The Father took off for three weeks in India.

He returned last Thursday, and gently removed my fingernails- one by one- from the ceiling.

On Friday, as he attempted to catch up on his sleep by napping on the couch ( isn’t napping on a couch a very boy thing to do ? ), our very loud doorbell rang. I ran to answer it.

There at the door was an attractive, wholesome looking young woman who asked if we would take part in a TV show. I dumped my Dutch immediately and asked her, uh, is this a reality show ?

She had to admit, indeed, it was such a creature.

Apparently, The BBC has some show where all of the women in a select area are taken to a hotel far, far away for a week and the point of the show is to see how the men in the chosen area get along without their dearly beloveds.

I very politely said, no, we were not interested in participating, leading to much moaning and groaning from The Boy and The Girl.

A few days ago, we received a letter inviting us once again to take part in the show, and today there was a rather large article about the whole gedoe in the newspaper.

I told The Boy and The Girl flat out that I didn’t feel like cleaning house for the next two weeks ( when the filming starts) and that I felt it would not be good for The Baby.

Deep down, I just don’t want our family to be the object ( subject ?) of public entertainment.

And I don’t feel like cleaning house for the next two weeks.