I really do have to buy some new speakers for my computer. We have about 4 computers in our house, and depending upon the age, the speed and presence ( or lack ) of speakers of each computer, we all shuffle about. You know , Sims2 on this one, Sims3 on that one, email here.

Yup, I know. I’m here saying life can be such a bitch when we have four computers.

And yet, and yet, I do have to get speakers for my computer ( for whatever reason, the advent of Vista killed my speakers). This evening I had such a craving to hear a certain song. A Google search did not lead me in the right direction at all ( I know, I can’t hear it, but still…), so I shuffled downstairs and asked The Boy who *really * sang it.

And of course he knew.

Before I give a link to a song that I cannot hear ( and , jeepers, he does look like *he who shall never be named again*, doesn’t he ? ), I shall give my usual the road to hell excuse, that I actually did chat about Arsenal last night with The Boy ( She does ?!!) and Persie (?) was in papers today…I was loading up with good intentions…

But here I am, a born loner.

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I’m so lonesome I could cry

I really do have to work on my backbone, don’t I ?

But The Father has been away for almost a month ( ok, he was home for about a week in between, but sick as a dog…). What I miss the very most is simply being able to move over to the other side of the bed, when I find myself awake at 3.15 in the morning, and feeling the warm skin of the boy I fell in love with 30 years ago.

I shall add even more treacle to the story : to smell the scent of him in those classically dark hours of the soul.

I really do have to work on my backbone, don’t I ?

Hank Williams, of course.

The Boy and I listen to different versions for about an hour. Neither of us will ever admit that anyone could sing the song better than Hank, but this is also a very fine version ( The Boy’s speakers work).

My ear actually hurts, from chatting on the phone with Poffertje for so very long. That woman can talk about anything and we simply raced from one tangent to another. And she understood the Anne Boleyn comment that my father had given me only minutes before.

At the end of talking to Daddy, he said that of course, we were blood kin ( he has lived in the south far too long). And that Henry the 8th was kind to Anne Boleyn in the end. Sortof that kin business being factored in was the idea.

At the end of talking to Daddy about how we could vacation together next year, another road trip with a man that cannot walk, how The Boy could help him in those private matters that a handicapped person needs help with, have fun, day dream, he simply says to me in the end that we are blood kin.

I vote from Massachusetts. I think that it says quite a bit that I can actually spell Massachusetts without having to look it up or having to rely upon SpellCheck. Blood kin. Just pull out that glove and smack my cheek.

Which I always, always turn.

And we close our conversation with the image of a swordsman from Calais. Or was it just a swordsman from France ?

This is something that I hope I shall never tell The Father. It would simply ruin any road trip in our future, one that The Father, the children and my father would love.

I have a theme song for my father. I always lay the blame for all of his…eccentricities smack dab on Bucky’s shoulders ( do a search on Bucky here, there is more than I thought about her, or simply see her, here : http://akitcheninbrabant.com/burp/?p=2425 and you simply cannot see Bucky without seeing Tea, my Grandfather : .. that is a good one ).

And the song is that one which whispers, you only hurt, the one you love… ( and that cannot be a Bee Gees song, it simple has to be someone like Johnny Mathis…)

Did I come close to spelling that right ?

Tonight, I am going to talk on the phone ( yes, I know, hard to believe) with someone whose dearly beloved is actually qualified to be a rocket scientist.

Has nothing to do with much of anything excepting that odd whiff of serendipity, a word that I am not too fond of and which brings back memories of a rather ( ok, very ) lecherous man who was once a professor of mine in grad school. Hooters and danskins where the magic formula we poor Near Eastern Archaeology students used to flubber up his mind. The females did it for the boys as well as for themselves. We had a notoriously famous close knit ( shudder) * peer support group *. On a bad day, I would wear some uber ghastly danskin and the poor man simply left my * Peer support group* alone. For that day. Truly, the man could not close his jaw for the whole period of the class.

So I mentioned serendipity. So, this evening I also called my dad. Got- the children have informed me- his voice mail. Now, I shall never, ever have to ask where The Girl gets her fondness for … shoot me… those little bitty phones that one glues to one’s ear. From my Dad. He is always yakking away, to someone, perhaps to everyone.

Except for me.

Sometime last year, for whatever reason, my father *cut* me off. That would not usually bother me, for he has done it before, excepting that he cut my cherubs off- no birthday cards, nada.

Touch my babies and I am woman, hear me roar.

And I also mentioned a rocket scientist.

My mama didn’t raise any fool. I am very aware of the fact that as well as canceling my subscription to * National Geograph* this year ( which I have had since I was knee high to a grasshopper.. I know, I’m almost 52, but still.. it is indeed those little things…) my father has not called me for about a year and a half.

Mister little bitty phone stuck to his ear.

I could really let this bother me, but I try really hard not to let it do so.

He is my father, he is old.

But I must admit that at times I feel like a stinkin’ orphan, and wish that my mother had not died so very long ago.

Small families can become a very lonely place to be.

The Father is a nominee for some sortof prize that shall be given out this evening. For ( shoot me) doing work in India which shall help the environment and general population of …India.

Last evening at dinner, after The Girl and I had a * shop until you drop* trip to The Big City ( first one in 2 years, but, jeepers, she is almost 17, how many more chances will we have ? ), he mentioned this. The Girl asked him- very bluntly- when we would see any money from this oh- so- pricey- adventure. I looked down at my plate, which The Father caught on to right away. What can I say ? We have put everything into this venture, all that we own, any semblance of family life, we own this great big old building far, far away and for the last two years we have been broke, broke, broke. I print up the pictures, maybe I shall put them up. Soon. Most likely, I shall not. One of the *things* used for getting rid of *nasty stuff* looks just like one would imagine an oven at Dachau was. Creepy, no ?

But The Father could not answer The Girl’s question and I no longer ask. I just look into my plate of food. The clothes that one wears, look at them. We all simply look at the price tag, and if the kids are old enough, at the style. With * The Crisis*, more and more clothing which dresses the Western World ( including the very top of the clothing market, should you want names, I can certainly provide them ) comes from Bangladesh. And the conditions of labor there are simply hideous.

Oh, when The Father visited Bangladesh, they hid the children. But, still – and even in India- the conditions that people in the clothing industry work in are simply stomach turning. The chemicals used to process our raiments leaves the hands and feet of these beautifully brown skinned workers with Michael Jackson, pale white skin. And then the contaminated water is simply poured off into the water supply of the same people.

I could go on forever and ever about what goes on there, far far away, to keep us in both cheap and very, very expensive clothing…

But back to the dinner table.

Should The Father win, he has told me that he shall thank me. He put it in such an uber sweet way that I cannot remember it, for uber sweet is not my forte at all. Something like for all the times that he wasn’t here.

One does not have to ask where The Boy gets his flair for perfect romantic gestures from, does one ?

Wish The Father good fortune. Should he win, why, I do suppose that we shall put him up on Wikipedia, even though one must pay for that privilege.

And we are just so broke, broke, broke.

Tomorrow, The Baby goes to camp for 4 days. You know, I wonder if I shall ever, ever see her as an adult , for I am having such a hard time with the thought of her being far, far, away ( ok, about 10 miles away) for so very long.

This morning, The Girl and I chatted about the costs of living on one’s own, in a rather sideways way. I pointed out *utilities* and *taxes* but I felt rather comfy about the whole bit, even though she knows very well that it shall break my heart the day that she leaves.

Yup.

Well.

I saw *Psycho*. Have to get the goslings out , happy, their own lives and all, doesn’t one ?

Packing for camp.

I just counted out the cards in two decks, to make sure that there were 52 in each one. The Baby loves playing cards, and should it rain, she will certainly want to play a Dutch card game called * Peste* ( or is it * Pesten* ? Like the French, the Dutch drop their *n*’s all of the time ).

At 4.30 pm, The Boy, The Girl , The Baby and I shall go and load up the truck for camp. I want them all to go, even though The Girl shall worry about breaking a nail.

That is so her.

Even The Boy had to laugh at that.

Loading up the truck ( and unloading ) is the very only thing that I do for The Little Hell Hole Down The Street, but I do it very, very well. I am usually right next to the truck and heave ho just about everything.

One reason that I want all of them to go is that I feel that it will show The Baby’s peers what they might have to deal with should they muck about with The Baby, which I have simply never been able to do, The Girl and The Boy love her so much that I have rarely been able to discipline her.. And The Baby’s peers are starting to …be..less than pleasant.

Another reason is that it tends to be fun, so sans The Father this might qualify as *Family Time*.

And, perhaps the most important reason, is that I am so stinkin’ proud about The Boy and The Girl rising so far above the opinions The Little Hell Hole had about them, that I want to show them off. I want them to see what the quivering mass of shyness that The Girl was has become. Does *Make My Day* ring any bells ? And she is just so darn pretty…

And The Boy.

You know, the boy no one wanted to stand next to in the class photo ?

With his Tom Cruise eyebrows and his lanky figure ( please, here, give a prayer that he keeps growing- at 14 *I think* he is at 5′9- ) his oh- so – open character, and this : last Saturday, just – I mean just minutes- before the stores closed, we had to buy a red rose. This can either be an extreme nerdy, or a memory of times passed sort of thing. We wrapped it up carefully this morning, snipping the stem so that it would fit in his locker…. For a girl…

Yup. I want to show off my cherubs.

Now to make a dinner that will be ready to place upon the table once the truck is loaded and The Father is home.

Every family should have a designated cast iron stomach. Rather like yawning, it seems that, well, there is simply no delicate way that I can find at this moment to put it, that vomiting over one’s shoes is a very contagious occurrence.

Whatever The Father brought home from far, far away, The Boy now has it. I can deal with…vomit. In fact, in a certain way, I find it interesting. Oh, so after X hours, this is what our food looks like.

I know, rather creepy.

But someone has to be around to mop it up, to assure the vomitee (?) that they will most likely feel much better after the purge has taken place, to not feel embarrassed.

But how I notice that weaker stomachs than mine have to leave the room.

And how the odor of Madelines ( shoot me. It is French, after all, and I am simply trying to show off that I did indeed read Proust) wafts through my mind. Mommy had that cast iron stomach and when one of her ducklings would make the messy mess, the two other adults would have to run far, far away, or else provide further fodder for the mop.

Yes, everyone ran far, far away last night. I cleaned it all up, spritzed the room with air freshener and simply thought , thank the skies up above that this does not bother me in the least.

I recently read ( in my * how to kill your husband * Ann Rule sort of books ) that only 10 % of a random population can actually smell cyanide.

Perhaps there is a teeny weeny percent of the population that can actually not smell…well…you know.

And I seem to be amongst that blessed few.

Yes, we are all a bit ashamed as to how we are reacting to The Patient. We contemplate getting blow guns to toss the Advil across the room.

No, not really. But that just sounds so good, doesn’t it ? It is all simply an outward expression of our frustration.

Many people are going back to nature, you know, growing their own vegetables, milking their own cows, why perhaps even darning socks ( yes ! I do indeed know how to darn a sock !). But how many people can live for 3 weeks without a car ?

I had planned a post about our Town. Road to hell and all. But our town is in it’s death throes, it is no longer a place where one can actually * live* . One can sleep here, amble amidst the streets cobbled with Swedish granite , glance at street lamps that Jack The Ripper would find oh so familiar, but we actually had a point in time- for about a year- when one could not buy toothpaste in our town. Sounds trite, but get rid of the car and this is no longer livable. No longer trite.

While Town is cluttered with * Boutiques*, there is no place here to buy either underwear or socks for the cherubs. The only shoe store charges about 100 euro plus for a pair of shoes that everyone knows will either be outgrown or fall apart within 2 months. Last year * The Toy Store * closed ( rent too high). Gone the place where one could find children’s books, crafty sortof of things for kids and essentials such as vacuum cleaner bags and replacement coffee pots. An art gallery has taken over that spot.

Art galleries.

Our town is home to just about 1500 souls. Surrounded by a series of star shaped dikes ( very Spanish, don’tcha think ?) land is, of course limited. There are about 200 homes from the 1600’s in town, ours included. A cherished few have a very high rank in the historical homes trash, which means they get a tax break but then have to deal with VERY expensive people to do squat with their Casas. Then there are people like us, a second grade listing, which means we get no financial breaks but plenty of paper work should we want to even repaint the frames of our windows.

Town is actually some sortof official European * treasure*, but really, what makes our town a treasure ? It isn’t the cobblestoned streets, although they do indeed add to the charm, nor the street lamps oh so Victorian. Nope, it is house after house from long, long ago that poor slobs like us try to keep up. I don’t even know if I want to start on what it is like to have a 400 year old house, set upon a very high water level ( or is it low ? You know, dig a foot and you hit water, welcome to the Netherlands..) where big butt trucks go zooming by and your whole house simply shimmies… Finish one thing and another pops up.

Art galleries.

I love this town. Anyone who has been here can cross their hearts, hope to die and say that it is most likely one of the two most beautiful places in The Netherlands. Really. But to actually try to live here is another story altogether. Nope, I shall stop, for I could go on and on and on, about how the town fathers care only about the tourist trade and not about the people who actually make this place so uber charming.

Why am in in such an uproar ? The Tobacco store is for sale. Not that I scurry over there to keep my addiction at bay, but it is the only place in town where one can by a bus ticket. Yes, the bus. In less than 4 hours, I can go to the Big City- about 10 miles away- and buy not only underwear and socks, but flat anchovies, you know, without the capers.

And I know very well that should it sell in this time of economic crisis ( half of the town has been for sell in the last year ) a very good guess will be that yet another art gallery will brighten our horizon, make our town more *livable*.

I have stopped whining , hit my enough is enough point. With the last Advil, I passed along the info that it was time to *come clean* with The Company, admit the illness. After 3 weeks, Casa Kitchen here could use some help.

Point out, amen.

I do not, in the end, do Mary Martyr very well. Simply too pissy, deep down in my soul for sainthood.

At times, bluntness does work.

The Lone Eagle has returned. Yesterday, in fact.. I think.. for it might have been Monday, for I seem to have lost a day. Maybe.

I was mighty glad to see The Father once more. Mighty glad. Returning early in the morning, by evening, he was simply sick as a dog. This seems to becoming a pattern of behavior. Or perhaps the result of working too hard, sleeping too little, and being far, far away.

Poor nurse that I am, I threw Advil at him every few hours, to no avail. I missed him dreadfully, but once he returned, so sickly that I only slept 2 hours the night that he returned , I knew that when he said that he did not want The Company , read The Family, to know that he was ill, once more, after returning from India, that again, quality time was rather a distant mirage quivering within our imaginations.

The first evening was indeed quite tender, until his body simply revolted from the demands that he had made upon it. Up all night, showing sympathy, that stinking’ mobile of The Boy’s still bleated out at 6.30 am, tossing me out of bed. Rap. OK.

I crawled through the day, and finally woke the poor soul at about 1pm- I needed to sleep so desperately.

Made a fine diner that he could not even face, and so tucked him into the front room, in front of the TV, tossing Advil in his direction.

Chores done, The Patient taking his usual one hour bath, I helped The Boy with his homework. While looking for items and printing them out, we heard a bellow from the languid waters of our double tub : “someone go and kick that dog in the face”. The Pyr was barking. Homework had run a bit late, and it was time to feed the dogs, hence the woofing.

The Boy looked at me and said, he has only been home a few hours and he is already yelling at us. My soul rather crimped at that moment, for The Boy was right. The fonder had indeed not lasted very long.

Before I went to bed, I told him about The Baby, and that Mr.X is proving to be a far better teacher for her than he was with The Girl and The Boy. Why, he took a very long time indeed when The Baby paused to tell him about our house being egged. ( And I know indeed who did it). He in fact was terribly kind.

Our house was egged, asked The Patient. Yes, I said. I saw the first egg right away, and cleaned it up, but it wasn’t until the next day that I saw the second egg. Did you clean it up, he asked. No, I said, for it is like super glue right now, and I haven’t a clue as to how one can clean it up. A great rolling of eyes followed, perhaps even a massive sigh. Whatever followed, it made me feel very bad.

I did not toss Advil after The Patient. I did not give the sweet kiss of sweet dreams. I simply went upstairs and read for a while. And of course, did a bit of wondering.

This morning The Patient is feeling more chipper. He plugs in his laptop and checks his email. He chats with the folks related to The Company.

Yes. Well. I do suppose that I shall take a nap today, once The Baby comes home and has been lunched and how-was-your-day-ed you, once The Boy comes home and has taken off to the Dentist. I have made a list for the shopping that needs to be done, and so I am expendable, for the time being.

I am so stinkin’ tired. Up at 6am to get two of the kids ready for school and no beddy byes until The Girl comes home. And chats for a while. We are talking about 11.30 pm and I am simply an old geezer.

Email yesterday from The Father, one of those good – news, bad -news sortof things . Oh, he will be home earlier than thought ! Bad news, after a few days, he will be taking off once more to far, far away.

Yes, I do indeed grow old. I am weary unto death of *The Company* having first dibs, I am so very tired of always coming in second. It was cute about 20 years ago, but now I find that I am thinking very dire thoughts.

I do not think that I will be around when things *come in *. Nope. Since Mummy died, oh so many years ago, I know very well the danger of living too much in the future.

I have always had danger- danger lights flickering when tomorrow is too far away.

But then again, I am very tired right now. Once The Boy comes home and I make his lunch, I shall sleep, perhaps to dream.