Rule # 1 :

( Rule #2 is the whole spray air freshener / deodorant  around the place business…)

The filters on cigarettes tend to float. Check the bowl after flushing.

Anyone who has been be bopping around here for ten years or so, knows that I am not a Microsoft fan. I found Google when no one had ever heard of it. Same o same o with FireFox… back when it was called Phoenix or something equally romantic.

Since it shall now be a given that I have no life, that I am brain dead, I still highly recommend reading the get a job things at Google. I really doubt that the founders of Google would now even get their feet in the door, if  you know what I mean.

But the language being used is very frightening, it is that double speak sortof talk that one heard none stop , you know, when weapons of mass destruction were supposed to scare everyone literally witless.

If you have no life and have the time to read what it takes to work at Google, what you will see is what Google´s goals seem to be. This caught my eye, my mind.

I am sure that I am wrong, there is no reason on this earth that Google should be bringing Big Brother into my mind. None at all. Google does really good things. I know this. I personally, virtually know this.

And I personally am very glad that a Google search does not find me.

But I still have to work out this FaceBook…stuff.

A PS is needed. Google is a business, it is not like Excel. I use Google, I even have a Gmail account. But Google is becoming a very scary thing. If you do not believe that, I am all ears … it certainly will not be the first or last time that I am …wrong.

I read today in the local paper that Blogs are *old fashioned*. In fact, The * Dutch Bloggies* are folding their tents, after 10 years, and, whoops ! They are gone.

In the end, I have no comment.

I do know, indeed, that whomever told me that I have no life because I blog, is of course, correct.

And yet, I do indeed shrivel inside.  Imagine, I  am a point of mockery. It has been strongly implied that because I have  a *blog*, that I have nothing else. That I am , in fact, brain dead.

Yes, well, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

This looks like a very neato place.  In fact, I have BTDT. I simply have to get about 2,000 pages of glossy photo paper- not to mention more ink- but, what the hey, there are always DVDs. Of course, anyone who has fussed about with DVDs knows that after a time, whatever version you are using becomes yesterday’s news. I suppose that that is true of PDFs as well. It seems that in the end, nothing beats paper. But this is a really good link.

Oddly enough- well, that is not true at all- something Bucky said to me , once,  came to mind, yesterday. When Humph, our first dog, died so suddenly, I was talking to her on the phone. I said to her, you know that I do not believe in an afterlife, but tell me that Humph has simply gone to a better place.

Would I lie about something like this ?

She might have blurbled something comforting, although that seems a bit out of character, but I am so wickedly biased about Bucky, I am not proud, I admit it. But I do know this : she advised me not to get another dog, for I would simply love it to bits and one day, it too would be gone.

This is true, any simpleton knows that this is true.

And yet, what no one ever tells you- really, it is right up there with what is natural childbirth like ?- or perhaps you never hear it, or really understand the meaning of it, the feeling of it, but one day the cherubs will be gone. Adolescence sortof helps- that growing apart is a bit of a two way street, they loathe you and you attempt to not sound like Olivia Soprano. Rule 1, do not attempt the guilt route, after all, it is all your fault when push comes to shove.

As an aside, I also tend to wonder why if the offspring have not reached perfection, it is always the Mother’s fault, and yet, if there are sterling qualities, they must most assuredly come from the Father. Somehow, this logic does not work for me. I have no idea why, I am sure that age has whithered my IQ.

I have to find a new avatar for this site, or simply go back to paper. My days of being Mummy Dearest are over and that is all that there is to it.

And yet, the good times have – partially- been preserved here.

And that , after all, was the whole point of this.

Go check out Jo. This is great.

While I spent the weekend inundated with girl and boyfriends, thinking in my mind that we have to come up with new rules that I shall never enforce, a random Google search informed me that Lauren had died three years ago.

I have no idea where to put this little bit of info. A certain part of my heart is thinking, well, I should have felt that Lauren had left the building.

And yet  I know that I never wanted to see her again, not after that summer,  1982 .

Lauren was the best… and perhaps the only friend .. that I ever felt that I had in my life, until , you know, when ever I met you.

Lauren was my room mate, freshman year, at Smith. Her father wrote a book called Kane´s World.

Life is like that.

Gosh, won´t the past ever go away, leaving only the crystalline truth of today.

I have had enough sh*t on my plate, lately, without having to deal with three, count them, three, adolescents. You cannot fool me, although Baby is 11, she has better curves than most adults and an attitude to match.

The Girl. This morning, she moans and groans ( am I glad that it is almost the weekend ? This child gives a new and fifth dimension to the art of complaining…), the buttons on her new blazer, bought at some market about two hours away have fallen off. Oddly enough, I can sew anything, it is one of those hidden talents- like bowling- that one tends to be rather ashamed of, but, oh well. So, I tell her that on Saturday, in the Big City, there are actually a few button stalls at the market. Would I make this up ? We could bring her blazer and find new buttons for her. Do I want to do this ? No. So she decides that Boyfriend will drive us there, and I am thinking, well, if we have a car, I can also buy Baby a new and bigger trashcan.

A bigger and better trashcan.

Pink or white. I need a car to do this. I am not going to sit on a bus with a trash can half the size of me. No, I am not a saint.

By evening, Girl does not want to go, she offers Boyfriend up to drive me there, and I am, oh well, I do not want to go tomorrow, I have a lot of cooking to do. The Boy’s new girlfriend is coming over for dinner. The garbage can can wait.

So Girl and I and Boyfriend are hanging over the kitchen table, chatting. I have got to lower the phone bills here, those SMS’S are killing us. Boyfriend shows me a cheapo place. I really like Boyfriend.

And I am saying how we are all going to be oh so pleasant to The Boy’s new girlfriend tomorrow, are we not ?

The next thing that I know, the * Banana talk* is in the air again. And I am sitting there, with my first born, my baby, listening to how much 1000 rubbers cost, and various toys of a personal nature. Laptop on the table, buzzing away.

You know, children think that they were immaculately concieved, and I myself prefer not to go into the sexual activities of my cherubs. We have one rule here : until you are 18, yes, I will pick up your pills, I guess Daddy will buy your rubbers, but until you are 18 no one who is not related to you by blood ( no, I am not walking down that road. In fact, I shall take this opportunity to sniff and say, well, we are from New England, after all… although if I think about that, it most likely does not work…) whatever. When all else fails, I say that Baby is only 11, this idea is not a good example for her.

Pampers were always just simple, in your face easy- clean it, toss it, new one.

When she- whose name shall never be mentioned in this house again- ripped my only son’s heart out and mashed into the stony mouth of the pagan goddess of her withered soul, a plethora of youngsters rushed up to soothe his wounds.

Yup, Karan is correct, he shall never love anyone like he loved her : his cherry has been popped. I simply loathe having had to witness his descent into a degree of cynicism. That first love, my goodness, to witness that was a gift in itself.

The Boy has always been fey, and he also has quite a good dose of character. Perhaps all of those years that he spent being the outcast of his primary school gave him a strong sense of following his own drummer, of being deaf to the hoard, for, after all, the hoard rejected him en masse.

He has always been attracted to girls for rather odd reasons : the first one, because she had big teeth. Get the idea, need I go on ?

When he could barely raise his chin above the level of the floor, a fellow student wrote to him. He loves her laugh: he told me that she laughs like a wicked garden gnome. On Wednesdays, The Boy goes to The Girl’s school for special intro classes , let’s be a primary school teacher. Yup, that is what The Boy- at this moment- wants to be. She is in this class with him.

The Day After, she invited him to go with her to the winter Efteling. This was a no go, he cannot skate. Eventually, she and he went to the movies together.

He had a wonderful time with her. He laughed and laughed and his face was simply exploding with joy when he came home. They ended up going skating together ( neither knew how to skate and had a whale of a time), he spent all of Sunday in her home town.

Her hometown. This is an inside joke : she is from Masskantje ( check out the link at the bottom for English explanation ). Would I make this up ?

Now he is getting shit from his dear friends, for his new girlfriend is neither pretty nor sexy. But he loves her dearly, he has simply the best times with her. This is my boy.

She is coming to dinner on Saturday. We are having burritos and The Boy wants me to make cannoli again. Now, our filling was great ( thanks, Jo), but the shells sucked ( internet bought) and I am working on buying tubes and maybe a pasta ( cheap) machine, teach myself to make the *real* thing.

Eh, sh*t, what does someone from Maaskantje know ? ( I really do not mean that …)

I had a rather memorable Christmas : I found myself on Christmas Day ready to rip the jugular out of a minor and I was not alone in my rather Soprano thoughts ( yes, Jo, we made the cannoli as we watched the final episode of The Sopranos- they were great. The cannoli).

The thunder started rumbling Christmas Eve : The Girl Friend started sending The Boy SMS’s and MSN’s saying that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to be with him. By the wee hours of Christmas Day, it was a fact : she dumped him. Her Christmas presents were still under our tree.

To say that Billy Budd was crushed trivializes the pain that he went through. He came into my bedroom  at 1 in the morning and my boy’s  terrible and very eloquent  pain lashed my heart  to ribbons until 3 in the morning.  I kid you not. He now understands love songs and sad movies.

We watched him very closely on Christmas Day, as he sat in his room, glued to his computer and phone and hoping- I guess- that it was all a bad dream.

But it was true, it was life as it now was. Two days later, she , her family and her old boyfriend took off for 3 days in Disney, Paris. She let some   boy read his last letter to her, and then burned it with a firecrackeer-unread by her-, she told him. She threw his gifts away, she said.

When he received an avalanche of sympathy after saying that he was gutted, she told him that the girls simply felt sorry for him, and then when more seemed to be devolping, she cautioned him not to use some poor girl, to hurt someone in a vain attempt to forget her. Even Billy Budd gave a cynical chort after hearing that comment of hers.

A few days later, sitting across from The Girl at the kitchen table, smoking, I looked at her and asked, what happened to the Christmas  presents The Girlfriend got for The Boy ?

The nice thing about The Girl is that she  knew exactly what I was saying. I know this, as the same film of I-want-blood lowered over her eyes as well.