Today I accepted a rather large box and a rather large bouquet of flowers from the mailman today. Oh no, not for me, but you a see, I am the only person home during the day on the street where I live and the mailmen know this very well indeed.

It has been known to happen that we are storing 8 or 9 boxes in our living room, yes indeedy.

I some times wonder ,like right after I am gone for one day, for Oma´s birthday, what these fools would do if no one accepted their packages, for, you know, the post office is way, way far away.

Nice thought, but I am too wishy washy for this kind of crap.

Yesterday was Oma’s 80th birthday, hooray.

Why, it lasted from 12am until a bit after 10 pm.

But, uh oh, someone left Destin in the playground, Alone.

As long as Des is with Elvis, he is fine. Sure, they will bark at the garbage truck, show that sucker where the sun don’t shine, but Destin wants to be with Elvis.

When we entered our happy home, our door mat was cluttered with mail.

Here, I shall show it. Why, should that cold day in hell ever arive, I just might translate these kindly missives, concerning that one day, those 10 hours that things went wrong.

1

( To the baasje, a cutsie word meaning owner of the beast )

2-a

(Not quite Dear-) Neighbor,

I am ( someone translate this for me , going crazy might work) from that dog of yours. ( Editors note we have two dogs). Would you please make an end to this. Please.

2-b

Neighbor

3

Do you find it decent to leave a dog, for an entire day, in a fenced in dump ?

I find it is very rude and low class. Then something about the whole neighborhood perhaps suffering from these hours.

I am assuming that this shall never happen again.

Friendly greetings, ( on a sheet of Phillips paper)

An inhabitant of Heusden. ( no name, once more).

(No Dear This Time)-… Neighbor,

Are you aware that , when you are not home ( editor’s note, uh, I’m always here, why, I take your packages, yes I do) that your dog ( uh, we have two) let’s the whole neighborhood aware of this by barking at the top of his lungs, like a foghorn, all day long.

The poor animal obviously is totally depressed, being left alone so long, alone, in the garden. ( Editor’s note- we have two dogs, they really are not allowed in the garden). He barks and barks, we feel that he barks and barks for his boss, who does not return and leaves his dog locked up in the garden.

We ask in a most friendly manner but also in a rather concerned manner to take some action about this, for, after all, you and no one else is responsible for your dog.

Your dog cannot help this, perhaps you should take him to a dog class ( BTDT), or you should take him when you leave the house, or find a new owner for him that can care for this poor animal , he would surely be better off in an animal shelter.

And, you really cannot subject your neighbors to this.

Friendly greetings,

A neighbor

5

Best Neighbors-

All Sunday, your dog barked. Annoying for the dog, but also for us. I think that if this happens once more, I shall call the the animal protection society.

( Again ) A neighbor

6b

To the owner of the barking dog.

Great People,

The whole neighborhood was absolutely sick by your barking dog.

Once more, and we call the police.

Neighbor

Dontcha just love these f**king cowards ? Do you see one name ?

Happy 80th Birthday Oma.

Mummy Dearest is quite annoyed.

In fact, I would love for Google to see what fine and understanding people we live amidst.

This was one time.

I kid you not.

I grow old.

Do you know, I bee- bopped by at FaceBook, peer pressure and all that. Why, people can have 400, 500 even more friends there ( as an aside, it really does remind me of collecting Pokeman cards).

Poor, pitiful me, I suppose that one can count my friends on less than five fingers. Deep in my heart, I know that I am not friend material, for, well, I don’t talk. I can write- sortof- but I really don’t talk.

And yet, I would like to add James to my *friend* list, mostly because he has been so stinkin’ kind to me.

He is a WordPress wizard, Look ! I sent him a laundry list of things that I would druther have changed and that man stayed up all night and brought comfort to my soul.

When WordPress goes belly up, call 007, He will never make you feel the fool ( and believe me, I have tested him dearly).

Yes, James has been very good to me.

Today was Oma’s 80th birthday, celebrated from 12am to 10 pm.

A wonderful time was had by all and we simply rolled on home.

To find letters in the little mailbox in our door.

Nota letter, but letters. About our dogs. Someone left Destin in the playground, all by his little lonesome self. All day. long. Instead of on the porch with Elvis, his grumpy Grandpa.

Destin barked and howled and moaned and groaned during this 10 hour period.

We have now been threatened with the police being called in , the animal rescue society, some Big Brother who shall take our boy far, far away to a better home because someone forgot to put him back with Elvie. For 10 hours.

I am more than livid.

Why, if I had a bottle of Black Jack right now, I would surely see the bottom of that bottom this evening.

But the big, hush, hush secret is this : The Girl has told me about this, The Boy has told me about this and The Father has made them both promise not to tell me about this,

Where is that Black Jack when one has such a hankering for a good shot ?

As well as trying to clean up this place ( to protect the innocent, that it is a cliche, dontcha know..), I am looking at the template these days.

But I won’t do that, no, I shan’t.

I want the archives somewhere else , that photo plugin in it’s place.

And my photos.

Where are they ? In which avatar of this site ( yup, I have backups up the gazoo).

But my nemesis, is raising it’s foul and vulgar head : who me and Php ?

First protect the innocent.

Why, I am on page- let me check my notes- page 29 of 188 pages.

Piece of cake.

My alarm ( ok, The Father’s handy dandy cel phone) will be tossing me out of my bed at 9am tomorrow morning.

Time enough to gather my wits and then sit behind this keyboard and try to get tickets to this.

Have to work on The Boy’s collection of having seen Living Legends, don’t I ?

Tonight at the dinner table, we went through the usual how was your day routine.

The Baby had a wonderful day, as she celebrated her birthday today at school and was, or at least felt like, a Queen For a Day. As her birthday is always during the Fall break, this was very nice for her. We spent hours yesterday making up the little treats that she would pass out to her classmates and an appropriate snack for all. of. the. teachers.

When The Girl started to speak, I was stunned : she wants to back to horse riding, back to her old manege in fact. She rode there for 8 years and left when she could no longer take a group of girls there who had become too catty for her taste. The Girl is so good with horses, she has such a talent for training them. She loves ornery horses.She had worked with horses that are quite well known in Europe, getting them back into a more obedient frame of mind. At 14. Working with up to 8 horses at a time.

The owner of the manage cried when she left. His wife called The Girl, time and again, asking her to return, they would ban the cats.

I tried everything to get her to return. I watched international horse shows on TV with her , while she pointed out this or that a horse that she worked with, what the beasts problems were/ was.

But she was adamant.

But at the table this evening, she pointed that all of the catty girls were gone and that there was something else : she wanted something that was just hers, something besides The Boyfriend.

I am so very pleased about this, most likely too pleased.

She has such a gift and I want her to enjoy that recognition of her talents once more.

The only board game that I like is Scrabble. Why, I can win in two languages.

I love words, they are just, well, so much fun.

One can string them together in a straight row, like the little engine that could. At first glance, the words seem to mean one thing, and then, whoops ! They can mean something totally different.

Or put them together like a pine tree, branches shooting off of the trunk, slowly moving down until one reaches… life is like that.

Or make a swirling hot air balloon, going around in circles and then coming back to the ground with … dontcha know.

Yup, I love words. Say, is Sesame Street still around ? Any jobs open ? Cause I just love words.

One of the finest moments of these last three years was when I received a small packet, a purchase that I bought on Ebay. You can buy anything on Ebay, and I lucked out, for after two days, I stumbled upon this treasure. I have looked high and low since then, but no, I was just lucky that week.

I did not rip that packet open downstairs, no, I brought it up to my little room of my own and sat behind my table. I looked at the padded envelope. I knew what it was, I wanted to simply savor the moment, make it last. I opened it carefully, and there it was.
: a small piece of folded paper, franked on one side, a short message on the other.

A short message written by a William B. Kerlin, Steubenville, Ohio, about 170 or so years ago. Not my Robert Kerlin, but his oldest son.

I was tremulous, it was pure magic. I back to the futured away, I felt so very connected, suddenly, to the past. In my hands was a letter written by a man I only know from census reports and an old bible, the stories that he could tell me. Pure magic, holding that bit of rather crisp paper in my hands, reading those words written in black ink.

I am , of course, the keeper of the family flame. Have all of the old photos, yes I do. I am rather like a Voodoo priestess about photos : I won’t let a photo of anyone that I love be destroyed. Those folks that take school photos love me, for I buy them all, even though there isn’t a soul on this earth dwelling outside of the walls of this house who wants a photo of my children. Mawky, but true. But I snarf them up anyway.

And I get the family snaps because everyone knows about my devotion, my quirkiness about photos.

But the very best thing that I keep- in that keeper of the flame mode- are the old letters.

I have the letters that Tea wrote to my father, while Tea spent years and years in Europe, fightinh the good fight called WWII. Tea’s beautiful handwriting telling a little boy about.. about… about, if one reads between the lines, how much Tea missed my little boy of a Father.

I have the letters my father and mother wrote to each other, when Daddy had to do what is known as a * Hardship Tour*. The words said and unsaid are lovely, haunting, even, knowing that I was in the background of all of these letters, never knowing about them at all.

And I myself have a light blue box, filled with letters tied up with satin ribbons. I kid you not. From Sgt. Rock, sent to me from far, far away.

How could I ever throw these letters, these words away ? Words actually reveal more than photos, for they are portals into the mind of the writer, a door to a secret garden.

And now the balloon settles back to the earth. I loathe FaceBook and I loathe Twitter even more. All of the words being lost, nothing left for Ebay, for it seems that nothing is saved, the words are all simply poofed ! away.

Then again, I just love words.

I suppose that we all have our quirks.

Nope, I won’t write dontcha know.

I just ran all of the way downstairs, as the phone was ringing.

The Girl had told me that The Father might call, so I flew like an eagle, I did, down those 13 steps.

It was one of those telesales people, you know, that always call during lunch or dinner. Is this a good time ? Uh, I have learned to say, no.

But this one was different, for the pussycat voice on the other end of my bakelite phone was speaking in French.

I kid you not.

I looked to the left and then I looked to the right and I smacked my antique phone back into it’s cradle.

Wrong house, pussycat.

The Girl just called me. She is at The Office and The Tante has still not shown her lovely ( I kid you not. Think Demi Moore) face. The Girl has been there for about 4 hours. Waiting for The Tante.

The Girl cannot use the computer, for she needs a login name and a password to do so. I told her, during her call , that when the right time came, I would arrange that she would have her own login and password at The Office.

The Girl works there, part time. Unofficially, or officially ( depends upon whether or not you are a tax inspector) , she is now the assistant to The Tante, who does the book keeping.

After about one day, The Girl knew that she loathed working in administration. But hey, she wants to get her nails done tomorrow and Savvy would be a very good nickname for our precious Girl. She likes the money. But the boredom of sitting, hour after hour, waiting for The Tante is driving her nuts.

Long ago and far away, she was only paid for the hours in which The Tante was actually present. Now, she is paid from the minute she walks into that door. In fact, recently, she now also gets a paid lunch hour.

But she is so utterly bored. After her call, I actually ran out to the baker and bought her two croissants to have when she does darken our doorstep once again.

She loves croissants.

Comfort food.