close encounters of the worst kind

last night (or was it the night before last?), i had just sat down on the toilet and was in a very compromising position when suddenly a big grey mouse ran in under the door and did a couple circles around my feet while i sat there screaming and completely unable to run away or do anything about it. then he quickly scurried away and disappeared while i pulled my pants up and ran to the nearest chair from which i could yell at luuk to come to my rescue with the broom.

yesterday i bought four new mouse traps. and my new secret weapon: butter.

so far, no halfdead mouse stuck between wood and wires, though the trap did snap in the middle of the night and the butter was gone when i checked in the morning.

how the mighty do fall...

holland was defeated in an embarassing game with russia last night. they barely even put up a fight. ridiculous. humiliating. disappointing.

this weekend involved my last dispuut night (with the student union), babysitting for kids who have never been left home alone with a babysitter before, hung out with my sister in laws and watched anchorman, slept in, helped our pastor painted her new apartment with others from our biblestudy group, watched the the most torturous game ever, biked home through a dead quiet den haag, slept in again, and was half an hour late for church this morning. as much as luuks constant nagging to hurry up, we are gonna be late, what is taking so long..., annoys me, apparently i need it to actually be ready on time.

lucy, our rat, is learning to come to me when i say her name, and i taught her that eating my plants is naughty. she stops when i start yelling. :)

holland massacres france (after humiliating italy) in their second european championship game. den haag is going wild! and i am writing about rodents.

i have a pet rat.

and today i bought a mouse trap.

two actually...

i set the trap with a piece of potato. within minutes i heard the trap snap. no mouse. i reset it, and this time it did not snap, but when i checked on it again the potato was gone. the mouse got a free meal, the sneaky dirty little bastard. he has been leaving evidence of his presence all over my kitchen. i have to scrub my cutting boards and wash my dishtowels and am even considering buying a new agenda because of him! and now he got a freebee.

oh well. he came back for more.

i was in the middle of a movie (under the tuscan sun...probably better as a book. but great for a lazy night home alone when the only other movies on tv are horror flicks and you dont feel like going through your own collection), when i heard the trap snap again, though it was a bit more muffled than the last snap. when i peaked into the kitchen i saw a squirming mouse stuck in the trap. i let him sit there for a while till i built up the nerve to do something with him and well, until he finally stopped squirming and died.

now he is in the garbage can, wrapped in a seperate bag, trap and all. i dont know how we are expected to take the mouse out of that tight trap without getting mouse brains all over the place... good thing they are cheap. the traps, i mean. trap number two is still in the kitchen waiting for any unsuspecting hungry friends of the late mouse...

i killed a mouse. happily. and i have a pet rat sleeping in my living room. what does that make me?

i hope she cant tell... so far she is pleased enough to sit on my lap and eat pieces of left over potato.

sigh.

it has been an eventfull week.

people over for dinner every night from wed through sat.

bought a rat; her name is lucy and she provides much entertainment.

got sunburned on sunday; helped with the youthgroup barbeque; realized i have somehow become very incapable of communicating with teenagers.

found ourselves a hungarian biology student at church; he decided the best way to travel and see a new country is to work in it for the summer so he just picked up and left home with nothing but good intentions and backpack. found out he was sleeping on the street in utrecht and offered to let him stay at our place for a couple nights. turned out he was very very uncomfortable with the idea of accepting help from strangers if he couldnt pay them back (though i guess the street seemed even less attractive); he kept trying to give us his bread and other food that he had accumulated along the way, refused to accept food from us till i told him he would insult my cooking if he didnt take it, and kept doing my dishes when i wasnt looking. no luck finding jobs, poor guy, and less luck finding someone who would rent an appartment to a jobless/moneyless student. today he took all his stuff and said he had found other means of accomodation but i am guessing that means a doorway somewhere next to the university which has lockers and showers that he can use when necessary. i am slightly relieved because he was so awkward to have around but feel guilty and worried for him at the same time. i guess he will learn to take money with him next time or at least to make more concrete plans...

tutored two kids adopted from guatemala by an american couple who now live in holland and will be moving to switzerland next year. the parents want their kids to keep some of their heritage. the kids are 16months and 2.5years old, barely talking, and not used to strangers. they are starting to warm up to me. the 2yr old, a boy, let me hold his hand when we crossed the street and the girl actually didnt cry any more when her mom left the room by the end of the day. the project is, i guess, a combination of playing in spanish and getting used to not being by mom all the time. in a couple of weeks we will be trying having the mom leave for a bit while i stay alone with the kids. i wonder how that will go.

volunteerd at the daycare this morning; put a kid on a chair for the first time cause he hit another kid...he didnt know how to handle that...i dont think he was used to discipline. but he actually apologized and was nice the rest of the day. good boy.

how do i keep ending up with jobs involving kids? if i believed in specific callings i would be slightly worried that God has somehow sneakily brought me to it. instead, i am ready to analyse whatever subconscious underlying factors might be leading to choosing these sort of jobs above something involving anything other than what i claim to really dislike. maybe i dont realy actually dislike working with kids. maybe i secretly like kids. or maybe i am just comfortable with this cause i have done this so long and am afraid to try something else.
egh.
september will bring change...

I am not a morning person.

6:30am : I find myself in the bathroom of my parents old house in Grandrapids. I am relieved that the bathroom is on the same floor as the bedroom and I dont have to scramble half asleep down the stairs, like our bathroom at home. Finally, the toilet. Ahhhh.... but why do I not feel relieved? What is wrong with this toilet? I try to look around the room and suddenly I am suffocating; there is a big fluffy thing on my face! I struggle to break free and hit my hand against the closet. What is the closet doing in the bathroom? And why am I laying down? Why cant I move? Everything is going crazy! And I still have to pee! Suddenly I open my eyes and realize I am still in my bed, my bladder is still full, and I still have to scramble down the stairs in my halfsleep darkness, after which I can crawl back into bed for the next 15min before the alarm goes off. Egh.

6:40am : I feel myself falling back into sleep...

6:45am : What is that beeping?! Luuk hits snooze.

6:47am : Mmm, sleep, wonderous sleep...

6:50am : Seriously, what is with the beeping?! Luuk turns it off and gets up. I roll over and put a pillow on my head and mumble, Please set the alarm for 7:30...

At some point between the front door shutting behind Luuk on his way to work and the time the alarm is set to go off, I crawl out of bed, set the coffee maker, get ready to travel across town to my tutoring job, chug my coffee which is still too hot to drink, and head out to the tram stop. At Central Station I wait for a half hour before I realize that my bus is late and I havent seen any other buses from that bus line... Shit. I check at the ticket booth. Yes, all the city buses are driving today, except the line that you need. They are on strike. And there are no other buses to the area. Wonderful.

why do i care so much about stupid things?

i love pictures. i love to take them, pretend i actually know what i am doing behind the camera lense, looking for the best angles and shots; i love to print them out and put them in books, to show them to people in person or on facebook or whatever means is available. i love playing around with them and turning memory into a form of art or at least something interesting to look at when i have the need to remember times long gone.

wedding pictures are the one set of photos that one would want to have the liberty to do that with. and they generally end up in the hands of photographers, simply because we couldnt take the pictures ourselves that day and had to depend on someone else to do so. what a ridiculous set up.

everything is different when it comes to weddings. and people accept it cause, well, its a wedding and thats just the way things work. and not to mention that there is alot of profit to be had in the whole business...

i am realizing more and more that i have a really hard time accepting the things over which i have no control. i lose sleep over those sort of things. and i play over and over in my head how i should have handled this or that situation to avoid being in the position i am in at the moment of no control. or how i will attack the problem to gain control again.

egh.

i am frustrated. and i cant sleep. and i have no one to yell at, even if i had the guts to actually do so. and what for, anyway? some things really are not as important as they seem to be.

i mean, seriously, there are people starving in africa; what have i got to complain about?

let the good times roll (but not too long cause i can only handle so much these days...)

this weekend was spent in antwerp with my dispuut (small group within a larger student union). i forgot my camera. so i am at the mercy of those who did take their cameras; probably, i will not actually ever see any photos. silly me.
our ride there shoulda taken less than two hours. we made a couple stops and get to the Scouts Center where we were to spend the night about four or five hours after leaving... coffee and icecream and traffic jams, good conversations and silly songs made our trip more interesting than any of the other cars packed full of tired students (this is the song that never ends, was a big hit).
the weekend included alot of walking, some alcohol, late nights talking outside in the drizzling rain, sleeping on a bad mattress with a bad pillow, fighting off mosquitoes, a tour of downtwon in the back of a horse buggy with a funny little old belgian dude explainging every interesting or old building in an accent that we could hardly understand, and coffee and beer with a group of hippies who play their incredible music on the streets to promote themselves and make the city happy. conversation with them was really confusing for me; belgian dutch is not normal dutch. very very hard to follow. but they enjoyed their beer and we enjoyed trying to catch their jokes and apparently funny comments that they kept throwing back and forth to each other.
luuk was in groningen partying with his old student union and joining a bachelor party. needless to say, we were both tired and probably a bit dehydrated when we got back and sleeping in our own bed was all we could think of when we finally saw each other again sunday night.
and now its monday again. i have a load of laundry that i am purposely avoiding, i need to buy some garbage bags and groceries, at some point i have to do some bills and loan stuff...and i am still wearing pajamas after noon and finding every excuse to just stay on this couch. :)

i could drink a case of you...

queens day came and went in a blur of orange, music, dancing, barbeques, and volatile weather. all in all, it was highly enjoyable. i love this side of holland...

the last few days have turned out to be warm and sunny. i now have a lovely farmers tan around my arms and neck. and today i washed our bedding and changed our blanket from the warm fall/spring layer to the cool summer layer. what an event. i almost feel like raising a toast to it.

tonight luuk is staying in some castle somewhere with the rest of the ING banks trainies and interns. they will all spend two days at this castle for a short training session of some sort. what a hard deal, being the newbies to this bank. weeks in a hilton, stays at castles, top class food and drinks... if luuk ever complains about this job, i might just slap him. but i dont think he will.

this past week luuk fought an ear infection. apparently it feels kinda like something is boring into your head and blowing up like a balloon on the inside. sounds pleasant. i usually complain about men being babies when they are sick, but this time i actually felt really bad for him. he was in misery. and kept me awake at night from rolling around in his sleep from the pain. poor guy. but now, thanks to antibiotic drops, he is himself again and getting better.

i am considering buying a rat. i need some pet of some sort. its been too long and i miss it. and no, luuk does not fulfill that need, despite animallike hairiness.

the neighbors across the street have a small fish tank sitting in the window. so far three different people have fed them since i have been sitting here typing this blog.

i could smile all day!

i slept last night. from 12:30 to 7am. didnt wake up once. that is, for me, an incredible feat (is that how you spell that???). and then i said goodbye to luuk who went off to work and i wont see till monday cause he is going to paris with some friends, and then i went back to sleep and slept again like a rock. it was amazing!

today it is sunny and will become relatively warm (in my opinion it is never actually warm here). i am going to find somewhere to sit in the sun. and hopefully find some people i know to join me.

wakeup, sunshine

its so much easier to wake up in the spring/summer than in the winter. especially here, where in the winter the sun doesnt come up till almost 9am.
but this morning, i woke up to sunshine pouring in around and under the curtains and it made me happy. i like waking up happy.

holland is beautiful in the spring. the people come out with the sun, sprawled out in chairs set in every available sunny spot between downtown buildings, drinking tea or beer or other refreshing liquids. they soak in the rays as they walk to and from work and smile quietly, unconsiously throughout their day. life slows down and the air smells sweeter. flowers pop up all over the place, and never in neat little rows, but wildly running everywhere that space and sun and sidewalks allow. and they grow undisturbed, with nice little fines handed out for those who might attempt taking a bouquet home for their moms.

sigh...i love this country in the sunlight.

love is about sharing.

so i have this cold.
first it started with an itchy throat.
so itchy i couldnt sleep.
i actually woke up at 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, and 8:15 one night cause it itched so bad.
and at one point, i couldnt breath cause stuff in my throat got stuck shut or something. i woke up gagging. that was fun.
but now that is gone.
replaced by one clear nostril and one runny/stuffy nostril.
know whats fun about the runny/stuffy combination? i cant sniffle. so my snot starts dripping out onto my face. and half the time i dont notice it till i feel something trickeling on my upper lip.
lovely.
at least i can still breath out of the clear nostril.
so i actually slept last night. only woke up once.
nice.

apparently the goldblonde i went for actually is orange. i have orange hair.

the tulips we got last week for luuks graduation are long dead and starting to mold. but i just cant make myself throw them out. i keep hoping i will wake up one morning and they will just be gone.
i really dont know where i would put them. we dont have a backyard, so throwing them outside is not an option. unless we want to finally get to know the neighbors downstairs... we can smell everything they cook through our bathroom vent. and we can hear their conversations word for word if we listen hard enough, though its generally in some other language. we kinda feel like we know them quite well already, even though we never met face to face. i suppose this would be a great opportunity. i doubt they would appreciate the effort though. those flowers are kinda nasty. interestingly enough, they dont stink. youd think moldy water would smell bad.
luuk is gone for a couple days. so liesbeth is coming over tonight so we can do girly stuff (read: drink lotsa wine and talk alot). one of our favorite activities is discussing our men. (no, that is totally not lame. so just pttsssttt!) its freaky how much alike they are. the latest similarity: they both bought the same briefcase on the same weekend. this will only add to their similar wardrobes(a ridiculous number of blue shirts), taste in music (trance anyone?), love for soccer, funny men quirks, and sense of humour that they both uncannily share. (is that the right usage of uncanny? meh...)

saturdaynight: we get our wedding pictures! its only been 3months and 2weeks. thats not too bad...

sunday: probably will be visiting the inlaws to show them our pictures.

this whole weekend: sunshine! finally! so i have to find a place somewhere in the neighborhood where i can sit outside and soak in the rays. maybe i can find a way to sit on the roof.

i stop watching myself for one second, and suddenly its chaos!

ever catch yourself doing something that you hate in others? like talking too much at biblestudy. or giving advice where it wasnt requested. or making lame jokes. or cutting people off midsentence, several times...

egh.

doh.

ok, in wishing to do something new to my blog, i managed to completely fuck it up. also, i lost my links to all your blogs. and the ones that i do remember, i am no longer allowed to see. what the hell?

new plans and a visit from the watchtower folks

wednesday i will be helping (for free) at a daycare for two hours.

after that, i will be joining a group of likeminded folks to take a short training course on listening and writing, so i can later be set up with an old person who i will visit weekly to listen to his/her life story and set it down on paper.
i am excited!

this morning: i was on the crapper when my business was interrupted by two friendly jehovas witness ladies at my door who were all geared up to convince me that i need jesus. i told them i already met jesus. not ready to leave without having had some sort of convincing discussion with a potential convert, they told me that as a christian that i should be aware of all the division within the christian church and all the denominations and whatnot and that i should be asking myself why this is and that i should be surprised at this division, etc. etc. i told them that no, i was not surprised, seeing as people are kinda like that in general, not always agreeing and stuff and that probably in this world we will never know the whole truth but only glimpses of the truth. as if they didnt hear me, they tried to tell me then that i needed to find the true religion and i told them i was quite happy with my religion but that i would continue to look for truth. and they gave me a nice little magazine that is supposed to aid me in my search. such nice ladies.

in their little magazine i was informed that a true christian can be identified by his/her belief that jesus is the son of God but not equal to God because he is a mere creation of God.
huh.
and i always thought that christianity was all about the divinity of christ.

i always thought i would enjoy having nothing to do all day...everyday...for the next five months...

this was the coldest easter in over 40 yrs, records say. officially three days past the first day of spring, we got our first snow. of course it didnt stick around for nice pictures or anything; just made biking to church a little colder than usual. today for just a little bit the world was frosted white. but that is pretty much gone already. the fun part is that because of the snow, traffic was back up for miles and the train system got a bit fucked up. i love that holland doesnt seem to know how to deal with a bit of winter weather.

luuk is back from his three week training. the three weeks with him gone turned out to not be so bad. i had to study for the first two weeks, so no distractions was good anyway. then i made a couple bootycalls to his hilton room (and made good use of pool, sauna, and the buffet, all compliments of ING bank....yes, they knew). now he is at his first real day of work...and i am bored.

things to do:
*call salvation army, see if they have anything for me to do for free
*start namechanging process and any resulting paperwork changes (new passport, license, etc.)
*work out final details of application for september masters program
*finish the dishes that i neglected to roam around on facebook for a while
*continue East of Eden

i am debating dragging them out a bit so i dont go through my to do list too fast...

passed: with a 7

i passed! i passed! i passed!

woooohoooo!

party time?
ah, right... i am home alone.
hmm.

i dont care!

i passed! i passed! i passed!

sometimes i wonder if there is something wrong with me. that or i am just really interesting.

ever read things with an accent?
i spent today reading a biological psychology textbook with a british accent.
just now i read kevins blog with a hick accent (dont ask me why...maybe to counterbalance or something).
and now i am rereading my own stuff with this weird north michigan accent. nope, no, now its switchin to hickness.
shit.

know whats a good feeling?

when you have been gone for a few days and then come back to the house you have been living in for a couple months, and suddenly you realize for the first time that it really feels like home.

life after studying

do any of you feel like you dont know what to do with yourself now that you are out of school? or whenever you do graduate..? are any of you panicking at the thought of going out into the wide open world of jobs and careers?
my whole purpose in life for the past 24 years (minus the first couple of years) has been placed and found in school. and now the prospect of that schooling career ending is terrifying.
the thought of having to find a job in some area that will in some way use my education, be fulfilling and useful and in some way add to my happiness if not just my bank account, is overwhelming.
i am literally petrified of life after studying. maybe i will just go on to get a further degree, phd or something. or an extra masters. and just keep studying forever.