"i'm all aloooone in the world... there's no one here besiiii-hiiide meeee-hee!"

i hate it when people go and get one of those things for their blog where you can only read it if you are invited.
and of course they don't invite me.
bastards.

luuk is gone for 10 days... 2 down, 8 more to go. i slept like a baby last night; 8hrs straight. if you know me, you know that is a feat worth celebrating. but i hate being alone in this house. its creaky and spooky when alone. and there are spiders, which i now have to kill on my own instead of calling my brave husband to do it for me. and when i am alone, i get lazy with cooking, so i start eating like crap which means either i get fat or i get under-nourished, depending on the mood of the week.

a once close friend who i lost touch with for the past four years found me on facebook yesterday. it's really quite cool to hear people's stories after you have been out of touch for a while. this guy, i though would spend his life in the same town he grew up with, married to someone he had known all his life, and send his kids to the same school and church and die only three blocks away from his childhood home. but now he is an engineer now for some nascar team in a completely different state. traveling the country. granted, he is marrying a girl from hometown...but he's taking her with him.
funny how things work.
i like facebook.

we bought a basil plant a few weeks ago. it started dying so i thought i was watering it too much so i stopped watering it as often and then it really started to die and i found out from an italian friend (of course she would know) that it needs to be soaked in water all the time and so i really soaked it and now its alive again... anyway,so this basil plant also came with a steady flow of fruit flies. they are everywhere. i thought i woulda killed them all by now but they keep appearing. and they are little bitches to kill too, cause they are small and they fly really erratically (wow that can't be how you spell that), so i end up swatting at the air most of the time. fuckers.

my cold is finally starting to wind down. i spent last week on the couch drinking tea and blowing snot all day. now i just sound like a dying smoker hacking her lungs out. this is slightly less annoying and disgusting. and my head doesn't feel 10lbs heavier. yay.

on that note, y'all have a good day. cheers!

d'oh!

my ballot application came back in the mail with no explanation. so i sent it again. but now i think it really is too late. crap.

Don't forget to vote.

I filled out my absentee ballot today. I think I might be late. Why doesn't Iowa have an online option for procrastinators?

Frankly, I am so sick of this year's political mess that I really don't even feel like voting. Maybe I subconsciously delayed my application for absentee voting so I would have an excuse not to vote. I am an irresponsible citizen. But seriously, what a circus. When did American elections get so crazy? Do candidates/parties in other countries spend billions on making a big show of self-proclamation and the defamation of the opposition? It makes me nauseous. I was actually excited to see Obama as a candidate. That excitement has turned hard and dark, like something cooked too long and too hot. The only thing motivating me at the moment to vote is the slight possibility of Palin becoming President. What an embarrassing disaster that would be.

If it's not too late, I will do my duty. And then, I hope never to hear the words "maverick", "change", "Obamarama", or "McLame" ever again. And if people even start thinking about the elections again before Jan 2012, I will sew little Canadian flags to all my bags and jackets and start saying "eh?" in every other sentence.

Vitalizee

yesterday, i had my first experience at a european spa.

a friend of mine is getting married and needed a de-stressor; three of us spent the afternoon together in much more intimate circumstances than i am used to spending with friends.

we feel much closer now.

i have never seen so many naked people in one place.

i have never been naked in front of so many people at once.

after about 5 min, i got used to it. no one is really looking any way.

4 hrs of steam rooms, saunas, herbal baths, whirlpools and salt scrubs: pure relaxation.

next time i am going to book a massage.

pre-quarter-life crisis

today as i sat in my 9am class for which i had pushed myself out of bed at 7:30am and forced my breakfast and coffee down my throat and rushed to the tram stop to get into the overfilled, sweaty, smelly tram, so i could again rush to the train where i could sit next to van Morningbreath, i realized that i was not met with the reward that any subject that i have ever loved learning about has ever provided. i am forcing myself through this because i have to. because i chose this masters program over others. because this program would require less premasters courses. because i thought i could start last year. which i didn't. so now i am regretting my overenthusiasm and lack of patience. maybe i shoulda waited for something better.

the art of applying psychology... really, marketing psychology or selling psychology... so not my thing. and what about this applied data analysis class i am doing? again, not my thing.
what if human error and cognitive aging turn out to also not be my thing? the only two other courses left in my masters program are neuromodulation and some other one that i momentarily can't remember. is that what i really want to work in after i get that nice little paper entiteling me to a bigger salary?

what i am i doing in this program?

i don't even know what i would prefer to be doing. all i know is that i don't like this at the moment.

maybe it will get better. maybe cognitive aging will turn out to be the class that starts my amazing, fulfilling, lifelong career in...old people.

when i started studying psychology, i did it because i thought it was really interesting. few subjects interested me as much. but the prospect of applying all these interesting facts about how people work and think, and actually doing something with it all seems so unsatisfying. so maybe it's not this program. maybe it, whatever 'it' is, is me.

i must be tired...

i fell asleep on the couch after getting back from a morning of babysitting and workgroups. i woke up two hours later. now i feel medicated.

oh, the big question... what is the meaning of life?

started my masters program this week. immediately swamped with assignments and work. will be a busy year. thats good, i guess. i feel slightly lost though. this is very different than what i thought i would be doing when i first started studying psychology. the current class i am taking is somewhat more in the direction of business and sales. its called the art of applying psychology but really it should be called the art of manipulating big companies into giving you their money. (the exact words of our professor himself).

shit, i just realized that i forgot it was garbage day today. now our garbage will be sitting in a bag on our porch for another week. ugh.

anyway... so not sure yet if i should be disillusioned, excited, or remain undecided until my other classes start and i can get a fuller picture of what this master entails and what it might mean for future career possibilities. in any case, i am not heading to life of listening to other peoples problems and trying to fix their emotional issues. or at least, not one that pays for it.

i will have to wait and see, i guess.

the things that make me smile...

the day i look forward to most in a week is usually thursday, when i visit my old lady. weekends are an automatic trump though. weekends are great.

the highlight of my week so far was when i walked into the door at the house where i tutor spanish. the youngest, eva, immediately burst into a tears and wailing, knowing that my presence means that mommy is leaving for what must seem like forever to a kid. but then the oldest, gabriel, came running up to me while yelling Bye Mommy!, asked me for Huggy, which means pick him up, and then wrapped his little arms around me and stuck his sticky nose into my neck and said I love you Amanna!
they are starting to say some spanish words, too. finally. which is great, cause it means that i am not a total failure at this tutoring stuff and i dont have to feel guilty for the money i make on it.

the most interesting point of this week has been the end to a drawn out fight with a mouse. he made his appearance last week when we were in the living room and lucy was running around freely. you would think he would be smart enough to stay out of sight. anyway, we tore apart the living room trying to catch him and/or squish him with the broom, but to no avail. he even ran across the tops of three mouse traps we have put in front of the space he would come out of behind one of the book shelves... and on sunday when we had 8people over, he came out again, even running around on the window sill next to the heads of several of our guests (much to the displeasure of some of them who prefer to stay away from these sorts of creatures).
we finally decided to use the same strategy as before and keep the door to the living room closed so he couldnt get out and to offer him only one source of food. on the mouse trap. finally, after days of chasing the pesky, though cute, mouse and after several failed attempts to catch him and after surviving several personal encounters with the mouse traps that never managed to get the mouse but always managed to get my thumbs and fingers, last night while we were falling asleep luuk suddenly exclaimed "I heard the trap!" and lo and behold, this morning there was a dead little mouse waiting for disposal.

after dealing with my mixed feelings of guilt and relief, i decided to head out for my day of babysitting/tutoring. i opened the door and for some reason looked down. right there, next to the door was a dead mouse. it seems that he had met his demise in the corner of the door as it was closing. the shape of the corner was seriously imprinted into him and his whole body was squished flat and well, in an L shape.

i wasnt sure if i should laugh or throw up. i chose for the former and picked him up with a bag and threw him out. now he is stinking up our garbage can. good thing its garbage day today.

Back to business as usual.

Luuk and I spent two weeks on the island of Vlieland (north, above Friesland) with his parents at the family summer house. The island is like a giant park, complete with forest, dunes, and beach. And a tiny adorable town on one side and summer homes and camp grounds on the other. We read alot, swam occasionally (in the freezing north sea water), played alot of Rummikub and a game called Toup (or something like that), and biked into the wind from one side of the island to the other (I still havent recovered). Relaxing, quiet, calm, restful...perfect for a short vacation.

Meanwhile, a friend was taking care of Lucy for us. The day before we got her back, they found out she is allergic to bananas. I have tried to feed her banana before but she wasnt interested, so I did not have the pleasure of finding this out on my own. At some point after taking a taste of someones banana, she started making gargling noises and wretching and foaming at the mouth. After googling what to do with a wretching rat, it was decided that the best option was to take her to the vet. So four people rushed this poor rat to the animal emergency room where she was injected with steriods and sent home after her swollen throat started to go back to normal size and she could breath again. She is now fully recovered and back to digging holes in my flower pots.

Today Luuk started working in a new section of the bank, part of the training program where they use the trainees to fix their lack of employee problem, a result of bad management, instead of sending them to the sections that they were promised. A bit of a bummer. But I guess that is the real world. It will be interesting, anyway.

I am back to an empty house, being the good housewife, until the masters program starts in two weeks. In the meantime I will be finishing the book for my old lady and putting the finishing touches on a three party bachelorette night with some friends. The possibility of coffee with Inge Henderson somewhere in the next two weeks has also come up.

I will post again when my life is a bit more interesting.

Cheers.

favor

anyone in the sioux center area can/want to pick up luuks sister from minneapolis airport on aug. 19, around 6pm? you will be duly compensated. :)

she has been smoking all her life and just turned 81.

writing in the morning will prove to be a mistake. it is not my brightest time of day.



today i visit my old lady. i really dont know why i call her that. i could call her mrs. gemert (with that gutteral g). or tante sis, which is what every one else calls her. but somehow i like my old lady better. mrs. gemert is too formal; tante sis too informal (though she did say i could call her that). hmm...my old lady....its personalized by using my, but the old lady part...maybe thats too impersonal...

whatever. i like it. i am sticking with it. till i am comfortable enough to say tante sis.



she is sweet, my old lady is. sweet and very direct, which is an interesting combination. and she likes to tease, though i dont always catch it right away so her jokes are sometimes followed by a look of slight disappointment. usually though, they are followed by a good laugh, even bigger when i look at her with a dumb confused look on my face. jokes in another language are just so much harder to catch...

yesterday she called me to make sure i was still coming today. i told her i was still planning on it. and she said that was good, cause she really enjoyed our visits and didnt want to miss it. i almost cried.

the book i am writing for her is going to be very short. maybe i should look at it as a long essay. or a short story. so far, 16 pages. but its the content i am worried about. i am writing in dutch. and my literary dutch is at a very childish level yet. so the book sounds like it was written by a ten year old. at least it will be easy to understand, if they can get past my various grammatical and structural errors. in each sentence. yeah, i am gonna need luuk to edit for me.

i hope i live a long and happy life such as hers. it wasnt without heartache. but it was happy. i just dont like the idea of living longer than all my friends and loved ones. that seems depressing. luuk and i are going to travel alot when we are older, so the likelihood of us dying together in a plane crash is higher. thatd be a way to go. i dunno what would be better. to die in your sleep, unaware that you are going. or to die watching the earth rush up to you, knowing these are your last seconds. hmm.

thats too morbid for a morning.

anyway. so my old lady. she is a happy person. but i think she is lonely. i wish i could do more.

i think i will bring a pastry for the coffee today. it was her birthday last week. she might like that. i would get her flowers, but the guy who walks her dog gives her flowers every day and she sometimes gives them to me when she doesnt know what to do with them all. i think he is secretly in love with her. but she thinks she is too old for love.

this made me smile.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7513571.stm

(watch the video too).

cheer up, little one.

my life is so small. i was browsing around in the blog world and reading about the lives of friends and acquaintences who are off saving the world or at least talking about saving the world while i am barely even thinking about the world outside of my little life...and i just got kind of depressed. partly because on the one hand, so much that other people are doing seems so futile in countries where their efforts barely make a dent in the larger picture of poverty, injustice, etc. (though i am sure the lives they do affect are better off and appreciative), and partly because i feel only more useless, lazy, and ignorant than i did before. in fact, my biggest concern at the moment is this very fact, that i lead such a small life, how lame is that? of course, i keep telling myself it is only temporary. i am waiting for the next step and cant really do much until then. i feel kinda like i am in limbo. though, i shouldnt be too hard on myself. i can give myself credit for holding out till the end of the year with that daycare project. i didnt really feel like i was doing much there and sometimes it was just so hard to make myself go watch a bunch of two year olds run around the room playing or crying for mama. but today was the last day and the mothers seemed very grateful and seemed sorry to see me go. i got a bouquet of flowers and a coupon for a spa and a couple of sticky handshakes from the kids who still cant pronounce my name correctly (to one i am tarratata, whatever that means). and then there is the old lady project, which despite the fact that my dutch story writing is going very slowly, is proving to be a success because we both enjoy each others company and that is really the whole point of the project in the first place. and my little guatemalan spanish tutor kids are starting to repeat words in spanish sometimes, so i view that as a success. perhaps a small life is good, after all, with its little successes and tiny accomplishments and small circles of influence. perhaps i should accept that i will not be a saver of the world but just a...what do they call it? a cog in the whole machine of human civilization? whatever.
i will stop feeling sorry for myself.
and maybe next year i can put my efforts into saving the insane and troubled of this little country so i can pat myself on the back once in a while.

yesterday luuk and i dined with the hendersons. we get to have them on this side of the world for a year. they havent changed much, though all the kids are taller, sabine seems quieter, rose seems to talk more, roger seems more relaxed, and inge seems happy to be home. they found the perfect house for a philosopher to write and think in, and it seems like they will all be happy in their little nest surrounded by fields, canals, and sheep. it was good to see familiar friendly faces and catch up on lost time. we will be taking advantage of this year with them only 1.5hrs away, i am sure.

meh.

its amazing how quickly i become incredibly lazy when i have nothing to do or anywhere to be in particular. i turn into this big lethargic blob staring blankly at the computer or tv screen, allowing ridiculous amounts of empty and useless shit into my head instead of doing something useful, productive, or educational with my time. you would think that i would take advantage of the opportunity to finish that book that i have been working on for weeks. or maybe start some repair work on some of the old furniture. or that painting that i cant quite get to look right on the last corner of the canvas... the only interesting thing that i have done with my time lately is play with Lucy and attempt to teach her not to dig holes in my flower pots.

i am not tired.

you know what is one of the best feelings? waking up refreshed, feeling like that (almost) uninterrupted full night of sleep was useful. for once, i am not tired. and its great!

lovely way to start the day...

our friendly and unafraid little mouse has been making his appearance in our living room quite often throughout the week. we decided to keep the door to the kitchen closed so that he might starve and be forced to eat off of our traps... instead, he decided that the food in Lucys cage looked good enough to try to sneak out. no idea how he managed to fit through the cage bars, they are barely over a centimeter apart.
this morning i noticed that Lucy had made a big mess around her cage. wood chips everywhere. when i took a closer look, i saw a suspicious looking grey little blob in the middle of the cage. upon closer inspection, i realized that it was a mangled, bloody, and completely headless mouse.

yes.

our rat fixed our mouse problem.

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...