I am so lost. So much was lost.  My books, my room of my own- the chaise, the paisley shawl, the Burmese tables.

We were under insured for our possessions. We had fabulous Oriental antiques. All of the Wallace is gone.

My camera,my quilts, all of my material,my books. Most of my Mother’s things, photo albums.

None of this will be replaced, not even the Wallace. The Father sees this as a great way to eliminate our debts.

I shall go through life living in an Ikea house.

Sounds stupid, but it breaks my heart, I sleep on a mattress on the floor. No sheets.A camera is a no go.

I have to go to a Doctor today, and he will ask me how the anti- depressants he put me on are working. Well, how the f*ck can  I know.

And that is all that there is to it.

The Father wants us to go on a budget as well, now.

Yes, indeed, I am blue and I am lost.

No one, in their dreams, even considers replacing my books.

Oh, what a big pity party I am having.

There are many nights when I cannot sleep, for- you see- we have to make all of these lists. You know, for the insurance. I am the only one who knows what was lost and what was saved, and yet I cannot put pen to paper. Those were two antique Burmese lacquer tables. Of course, I could not spell Chaise Lounge. It’s French, you know. But I am constantly confronted with what was lost. Goodbye, most likely, paisley shawl.

On Tuesday, The Father and I were fed up with eating with plastic forks, spoons and knives, as well as other problems we were having with * the biggest and best calamity service in The Netherlands*. We told them to deliver the remains of our home to The Father’s company’s warehouse. This was three weeks after the fire.

What would you save if your house was on fire, what possessions ? The Father told them that night to save our war posters and our photo albums.

It was pitiful. Our photo albums were bloated and damp and moldy. Nothing had been done. Nothing but the posters had been saved. The photos in the hall, many unique were still damp and covered with soot. Box after box we encountered *nothing has been done*, water pouring out of PlayStation game boxes. Antiques and rare textiles covered with mold.

I had to make a list today, for my Mother’s Wallace Grande Baroque is missing. It was seen by The Father and The Girl at * the biggest and best calamity service in The Netherlands*, being cleaned. Wow, it looks great ! And now they do not know where it is. 8 place settings, 2 forks,2 knives, 2 spoons and serving pieces. And the sterling coffee/ tea set. The silver plate is also *missing*. Shoot me, Wicked Step- Mother told me to use it.

And of course, there are always my books. I went to Abebooks today, for I really would like my books back, even though I know that they are bottom of the list. The first book is 149 $. Well, I certainly did not pay that for it, and I am just going to think about it tomorrow, at Tara.

Today, I made my first *real* dinner in the new place. Schnitzel, and vegetarian version for The Boy, a wild rice , fancy mushroom and rucula salad and a cold potato  salad because, in general, The Baby is not fond of fungi. As my binder with *our* recipes is *missing*, I winged it on the salad, but I think I had it.

As we sat around the table, every few minutes there would be a sharp cracking sound- the sound of a plastic fork biting the big one. The Boy’s flew around the room. We laughed. A lot. It was a good dinner.

I finally figured out how to use the stove. It is one of those flat suckers with four we-glow-red-when-we-are-on circles. I was back to stuttering again ( by the way, I sounded like Porky Pig) trying to figure that sucker out. The Father and The Boy were trying to show me how to do it, but we could never recreate the success. I found the how-to booklet today. Piece of cake. Instruction booklets are against the ethics of being a man. Next the microwave that- rumor has it- doubles as an oven.

The Father and I decided to dump the biggest calamity company in the Netherlands. The Father was on speaker phone when he told them- in such a polite and inarguable manner that the man was really speechless- to deliver what they retrieved from our home to The Father’s company’s storage. Tomorrow he and I go to see what is there. What we really want is metal cutlery- either the Wallace or the silver plate, but something that does not snap apart when piercing penne.

At different times today, all three children told me how homesick they were. The girls actually came here, looking for photos, the past. The Baby asked me to write again.

And so I do.

I do not let anyone on my computer.  This, too, is a habit. On my PC- which is now toast- only one other person knew the password. One of my * internet friends*.

I am bending over backwards to make this easy on the cherubs. And they are taking full advantage of this fact. I gave The Baby the password to this lap top ( which I changed last night). I let her use it all of the time. Except for about 20 minutes a day, when I check my email. Work stuff.

Yesterday, The Father told me that I had received a fabric sample, on a tender that I was working on.

It is not that big of a tender, but I have tried twice to do tenders for this place. I was working on translating the thing from German into English when the roof fell onto our heads.

And I needed my computer yesterday, for more then just 20 minutes. I had to see just how far I was in the translation.And how long I had to arrange samples. This is do-able. And no where did they say I could get a fabric sample.

I spent the whole night in the bathroom, checking files, nagging other people about two other tenders I am working on , and The Baby keeps knocking on our door, asking for the laptop. I said that when I was done, I would let her know, but she kept knocking and asking.

In between this, I have to reset my *work* gmail password.

I finally went to her room and said, 20 minutes, then I want it back. I told her, I need a little peer support.

The Father was sleeping. He is exhausted. I go to her room and she will not give me my lap top. She is very rude to me. Says she will only give it to me if Daddy says so. I am clenching my teeth. What I want to do is rip the lap top out of her hands and just go, but I do not want to wake up The Father. And I do not want to say things I might regret.

I leave the room and go back to our room. I have a cigarette. But I really want my lap top back. And I do not want to wake The Father up. I go back to her room and manage to get the lap top. I do not know how. I did not rip it out of her hands, but I made it very clear that Daddy would not be woken up and that it was MY laptop, and she should think about that. She made fun of my work. As well as other choice insults.

I did need to go online last night. I did need people to feel sorry for me, people who know me, you know, those *internet* sortof people. I might not be able to speak, but I need to communicate. I need to write. I also want a camera, but no one knows where the Canon is and replacing it *now* has been nixed.

What tender from Germany could possibly make me go so out of character ? It is a little one, but if you know me at all you would know that it is irresistible for me. It is for the riot police, at Dachau.

I cannot resist the history.

I now camp out in the bathroom of our hotel room. With my lap top. This works for me.

We store our clothes that we wear when we go to the house here, and it reeks. By the way, I am repeating myself non- stop.

Just in case you have not noticed.

I can smoke in here. Yes, I am aware that smoking kills but this is not really a time to try and stop this filthy habit.

So, I plug in the lap top this morning ( oh, shall I digress now or later ?) and check my mail. I work, you know. I do tenders. I cannot stop myself, I am going to digress. One might wonder why I , having arranged the kids and dogs safely ran back into the house and grabbed my lap top but forgot to get myself some shoes. Very Simple. The lap top was right there, on the kitchen table and all of my work is in this fool machine.

So back to this morning, bathroom floor, laptop. The first mail I get is from Verio, or whatever they are called now. I need to renew a domain name. I know that I have put the info I need into Google Docs, but the battery on this blessed laptop …wait, that is not right and that is another story, but the laptop needs to be recharged. Reloaded. Refilled. Take your pick. So I am fading in and out here. The laptop is.

And the docs are in a separate gmail account and I can’t find my link to WordPad (and that is another story). Shoot me, I use it all of the time when I need to copy a number of things from different sources.

I have many, many faults, but I must be the backup queen. As I searched through my docs  for the info that I needed, I found the PAF for my genealogy *hobby*. It was the only thing I was not that sure of. I knew that it was on my external that is toast right  now. But I also backed it up on my old external, which is not in that bad of shape. This makes me happy.

I have back ups for everything. Every time the camera was *full*, I copied it all to CDs and then DVDs. It was a habit. We are talking about 10 years of photos and those backups did not get burned. The photos in albums and on the walls were taken out of the house immediately by some company that comes in once it is officially announced that the fire is over. While we dithered about, they know what is irreplaceable.

I actually have backups of this site in Google Docs, on DVDs ( yes, plural) and in three different countries. I kid you not. I have many kind friends ( you know, those Internet sortof people) who have copies of this blog.

What I did not have backed up- yet, for I was talking a week or so ago with The Father about this cloud business- was my work.

And so, I grabbed this lap  top.

I am so tired.

I am doing the cherubs  well,so well that they are lying and being obnoxious.

They have no idea what has happened. Or maybe , because they are so young, they did not have that much to lose, or do not realize it yet. I am too tired to go into it know.

The Father and I talked in the bathroom, today, in the hotel. We keep our when-we go-into-the-house clothes there and they reek. So we can smoke in there. There is no smoke alarm there as well.

I am supposed to make lists. I cannot do this right now. I told the Father, if I have to, I can do this.

It seems we have  great insurance. Well, what do you know.

I need to say something clever about myself. One of my Mother’s hobbies was following  real estate. She became a *dummy*  client for real estate agents in MA and I would go with her. This way those agents could see the houses, blah, blah, blah.

I learned a lot.

Since then., I have followed the prices of houses. A lot.

I found our house. The Father panicked. We could have gotten it about 30 thousand guilders cheaper. i know these things.But we paid about 205 for it, then kk.

Our book keeper at the time f*cked up royal on what we could afford re : mortgage. I was bored and blessed to find a job in the tuinbouw, picking tomatoes.

I loved that job. I really did, I kid you not. I did not have to do the heavy work, I just fiddled around with plants all day long, listening to good music. It was extremely peaceful- at times I would have two kittens on my lap as I worked. And I loved the smell of the leek fields in the early morning as I went to work.

I am really digressing here. What else is new .

But we did well. The house is worth between 7 and 8 hundred thousand euro now. And we are covered.

Imagine that.

Oh. All of the insurance people are just so interested in our house, because we do not have an Ikea house, we have really different sortof things. Like the antique Bedouin  Dress  from Saudi- I cannot do this now, you get the idea.

Jo, we had some reproduction lamps ( I did not know  then) from that place, you know what I mean, don’t you : glass caps,Morris stuff . Nope. I have to stop.

Baby is lonely.

We are being Mickey Moused here to death.  We talk to one official person after another and, to tell the truth, we have had our 5 minutes of fame.

I spoke to my Father last night and asked him, who do I sound like- Daffy Duck or Elmer Fudd right now ?

It seems that most of the time when I an speak, I sound like Elmer Fudd.

The Father and I went to the house today, to let the let’s- rebuild -the -house crew in. We have to get the roofless covered and make the house waterproofed, then they will bring in big blowers to dry out the house. We are very lucky that we are having very temperate weather right now, although the winds are horrendous. We do not want freezing weather right now.

Somewhere during the stay in Town, some official person came by and asked us if we had an official permit yet to remove debris from our house. Nope, and the official place has odd hours made worser by the holidays and the fact that they are not open every day. The official place that we have to go to get that permit is not open that often.

Then the Father and I sat at the Baker’s with some sortof official forensic guy ( the second one so far) and had to give a detailed statement of what happened. I wanted to barf. I took my glasses off and kept drinking Spa Rood- I am always thirsty.

Then we looked at some place in town we could rent. It will work. I came up with a solution for the dogs- it will work.

What I am having the most trouble with is the lists we have to make. This morning, we had all of the time in the world to do this, now, it has to be done by tomorrow at 12.30 pm. We started cleaning up and packing things to be saved and things – clothes- that were smoke damaged beyond repair a few days ago. We put put the lost in garbage bags. Now, we have been told, we have to dump all of those bags and count and identify everything.

Pick through the debris and the lost.

And this afternoon, when I thought that I had all of the time in the world, I spent about two hours trying to give names to identify the posters that I have collected over the last 40 years. Let us just pick that scab. I cannot find a photo of that dutch SDAP poster, it says- in Dutch, of course- something like workers of the world unite. It is mostly red and black.

Then, in my mind, I have been preparing the lists, for the playroom, for instance. Most of the stuff came from my family. There is a big difference between a 40 inch lamp from Ikea and a 50 year old , 40 inch green Celadon lamp from Thailand. Nobody knows what was lost, including me, because I do not really know what was saved, but constantly I am going through what I know we had, Tuesday.

These lists are killing me, and the changing deadlines.  And The Boy called from Germany and said, no, he did not have the Canon. I know the box is under The Baby’s bedroom, because I spent two hours with a flashlight trying to find something to save for her. Her room was closest to the fire. My books must have acted as some sortof buffer for her room, but the smoke the damage is horrendous. We can save her bed- it was that white rod iron number and a small child’s rocking chair, but that is it.

I can’t do this any more. Not tonight. I am Elmer Fudd, but oddly enough, somehow, The Father and I have really given the children that bright side of life look. They seem to be fine.

I have to stop now.