Meme

A book meme! What could be better? Thank you Dori!

Here are my 7 (ok then, 8) random book related facts.

1. I taught myself to read dutch when I was about..... 8 or 9. I grabbed a book out of my dads bookshelf and started sounding out the words and then found out I could read them!

2. My love of James Michener stems from when I was about ten and read the first chapter of his book about South Africa, The Covenant. I couldn't get through the other chapters then, but I re-read that first chapter many a time. I recently re-read the whole book. It was an eye opener about apartheid! I love the way Michener combines people with history.

3. My reading is severely mood related. I pick books randomly and love to have a wide variety to chose from. Experience has taught me that it's no use picking a book that does not appeal to me at the very moment that I'm looking at it. If I bring along a book I think I might like some other time I invariably end up not reading it. Making a list of books to read is a sure fire way of making sure I don't read them.

4. I am a walking disaster when it comes to buying books. 9 times out of 10 I will spend my money on some book I do not finish reading, or one that I hate. That's why I love libraries!

5. Around the same time I started to read dutch I discoverd a delightful word play. Flower and flour in english are bloem and bloem in dutch! What are the odds of that?!? I remember being charmed by this play on words and pronunciation for days. (so!?! I'm a bit weird... who cares!)

6. Reading is pure escapism. Yet I often find that issues that are in the forefront of my mind will have "magically" resolved themselves after reading. Some part of my brain keeps working, even when I'm filling the rest of it with sometimes senseless words.

7. I married a man who does not read. Ok, sometimes. One or maybe two books a year. He doesn't get my reading, I don't get the fact that he can watch sports for hours on end. Ah well... when he watches sports, I cuddle up and read. It works for us!

8. When I read I'm dead to the world. It literally takes several seconds for speech to enter my brain. Which means I get yelled at a lot.
mom....Mom... MOM!!!


Now I should be tagging others, but I'm not going to. But please feel free to share a random book fact in my comment section. Curious minds want to know!

Update

Just watched: Spiderman
Still reading: Rose Madder

Today

The lasagna is in the oven, salad is ready to be served. All that is needed is the setting of the table and the baking of some french bread. I'm so looking forward to this meal!

Today I
- cleaned Tristans room
- did 3 loads of laundry
- cleaned my shoes (after the stoute cross, they needed it!)
- went for a bike ride and a climb up a tower with a friend
- unbuilt a bookcase (cannot for the life of me figure out the right way to say this!)
- went to Harderwijk with Herman to look for new glasses
- grabbed the opportunity to check out 8 new books from the library in Harderwijk
- and took a quick peek into one of the churches there
- made the lasagna
- paid some bills
and later on I will hopefully
- call a friend
- download some pictures
- and settle down for a good read.

What did you do today? I'd love to hear!!

My New Look, otherwise known as "Ode to Renzo"

Renzo totally pimped my blog.
I love it!
Do you?

I'm spending the last weekend of my vacation at Renzo's house. I wish he still had his site up, so I could link you through to it. Working on the computer is only one of his many talents. He also made a curry that made my tastebuds leap with joy and he painted the selfportrait you can see on the right.
When I'm with Renzo, I get pampered and spoiled, a lovely experience that I recommend to everyone!
I spent a lot of my time reading Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet. Wow, that's one heck of a book! Meanwhile Renzo was sweating away behind the computer, tweaking and tweaking and tweaking some more in order to create my new look.

See the logo in the right hand corner? Renzo made it for me a couple of years ago when I was looking for new jobs. I still use the logo on the letters I send. I love it because of the primary colors and the figures in it. I see myself in each one of the figures. Sometimes I'm the individual on the outside of the group. Sometimes I'm the one bridging the gap between the group and the individual, and sometimes I'm just a group member.
We used the colors as the basis for the rest of the blog.
I can't believe how much work it took though! We (or I should say Renzo) even tried a little sidetrack to Wordpress but then logistics forced us back to blogger.

I'm feeling ready for writing again. Looking forward to getting back on track. I missed the blogging enough during my break to make me realize it's not a fad, it's something I really enjoy doing! And this new look is a lovely incentive to keep on going :-)

Do let me know what you think of the new look, and be fulsome in your praises. I will send them on to Renzo....

p.s. please note the fact that my labels are all prefaced by a little tulip!!

Anne of Green Gables

Who among you has not read Anne of Green Gables??? Do you dare speak up??
I LOVE the Anne series. I just found out I can order more books by Lucy Maud Montgomery through an internet book site here in Holland. And two of the books I want only cost 5 euros each! Even my stingy soul will allow me to spend that. I will most definately buy those as a birthday treat to myself. Something to look forward to :-)
I must thank Anne Stoner for introducing me to Anne of Green Gables. She did it with a certain mysticism which practically guaranteed I would love the books. I have them upstairs in my bookcase, almost read into tatters. I think it's been a year since I read them. About time to get them out again!
I saw that they were first published in 1908. Hard to believe that they're still alive and kicking and now available on DVD. That is something I refuse to do. Watching them on DVD is like a sacriledge to my youthful imagination. I prefer trying to grab the poignancy of first reading them.....


(Okay, okay, I'm a little weird!!)

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Books

With high hopes my friend and I drove to the Veluwse Boekenmarkt. It was only a short drive, about 10 kilometers, down a road lined with trees with peeks through to the moor. We saw the sign to the book market, and we saw numerous cars lining the street. So we parked and then strolled around the corner. And what did we see? A country lane, lined with approximately 20 stalls. There were cows in the field behind the stalls.
Hmmm, it looked cute, but it didn't quite match my expectations. I had read that people came from all over Holland to sell books, and that there would be different areas of expertise represented there.
My worst fears were realized when I walked up to the first stall..... piles and piles of old fashioned christian books. Authors that I have not read, but heard about from my grandparents. Theological books, mostly of the reformed kind. Recorded sermons on CD's.
I desperately walked from stall to stall, politely asking each stall holder if they had english books. Not ONE to be found, ladies and gentlemen. And let me just add that every stall was manned by an older man wearing a suit or by a lady wearing a skirt and glasses, with her hair in a bun.
We had entered the book stronghold of the Dutch Bible Belt.

It was not an experience I want to repeat.

Weekend reflections

Sitting here eating a piece of chicken filet, wearing a t-shirt with a new kikoi wrapped around my waist (thank you Sharon!!). The house still filled with the aftermath of having a family of 5 over to stay. (so happy so see that this is possible in our house!). Herman and I came back from the airport and crawled right back into bed for a couple of hours of sleep (the joys of having big kids who take care of themselves!).

It's been a good weekend all in all. We picked up Sharon and her family from the airport and it didn't feel like it had been 13 years since we saw each other! She just had the lovely addition of a husband and three cute kids. We were able to borrow a van that seats 9 (a rarity here, so that was lovely in itself) and then we took the scenic route back to our house where I had a meal of dutch pancakes and poffertjes waiting. I mean, who can go wrong with pancakes, right?!? We had ice-cream at Marindas work and then got the exhausted children and parents off to bed.
The next dawned grey and gloomy, and stayed that way unfortunately. So our attempts at showing the cultural sites in the neighborhood kind of literally fell into the water. In the afternoon we went to my sisters house for her sons birthday party. So our guests got a chance to experience that side of dutch culture! Though my sister manages to make it a much less formal occassion that it usually is in Holland, thank goodness!
We hit the McDonalds for a quick fix on the way back home :-) and then sleepily watched Forrest Gump before hitting the sack again.

Some of the things that I noticed:
- when your friends are old friends, it doesn't take much to get back in touch again!
- americans are so polite! We were thanked every time something was done. For my sober dutch side, this was practically a culture shock. One that I enjoyed!
- having three kids under 5 and travelling..... need I say more? I admire my friends more than ever for taking the effort to stop by and visit us. It is truly, truly appreciated!!
- Sharon is a great mom, I loved seeing her enormous patience with her children. She did not get flustered once, something I envy and admire greatly!
- a day and a half is so short! Next time, we must make it longer.

She, and others like her, are welcome here at all times. Now you all know we can harbor a family of 5 easily (though those dutch toilets....... you'll just have to take the bad with the good). We can even arrange appropriate transportation. And if you're bigger than a family of 5? We'll just scooch in a little bit more and make more room!

Now for the icing on the cake...... I woke up after my nap, went downstairs and discovered a neighbor had dropped by with a box that had been shipped to me. To me? First instinct was to drown my enthousiasm and assume it was my sister who sometimes orders books through Amazon and gives them my adres. But then I noted the adres in the corner. Oh me, oh my, this was truly a box for me! I opened it and found ENGLISH BOOKS people, ENGLISH BOOKS!! My lovely friend Melanie sent me ENGLISH BOOKS!! I am just touched and thrilled to pieces. Two of those books were way up on my list of things I wanted to read, namely "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time" and "eat, pray, love". Isn't that just fantastic? Let me tell you, I shed a tear while reading her card, and every now and again I walk past my pile of books and give them a cuddle. I kid you not!! THANK YOU MELANIE!!

Networking at its best

Remember this unexpected encounter? Well, the woman I met has now introduced me by mail to two other people living in my town. One who is a fellow english book lover, and the other who is a native english speaker. I worked up the nerve to go visit one of these two ladies today. She lives just around the corner! I was graciously invited in and over coffee we talked about books and church. Turns out she goes to the one church that we are considering as an option here in my town! The chances of that happening are not huge, let me tell you. So I came home determined to make an appointment with one of the elders so that Herman and I can get more of an inside look into the church.

Coincidence??After I left her place I went to do a bit of grocery shopping and ran into an acquaintance from the gym. She mentioned that she needed a babysitter, I remembered that the lady I had just visited does some babysitting, and low and behold another connection was made! Very very satisfying. Makes me feel like I'm being of use here in this little town!

Hopefully I will soon meet up with the native english speaker and see if we can get some positive vibes going on there as well. Before you know it I'll be swamped in friends :-)
One good thing will hopefully lead to another... And I'll have something to tell my unexpected friend when she comes back from the States!

Old friends

Yesterday I finally got around to unpacking the 15 or so boxes of books that have been laying around in our attic. It was actually a quite a joyous occassion! See, one of the new things in this house is "my" room. It's our fourth bedroom/guest room/office, but I have the honor of claiming it as mine. I get to decorate it the way I see fit. Now if you think that that is no big deal, let me tell you, that to me it is! As I have written before, Herman and I are very different. Decorating therefore also becomes a compromise between his taste and mine. In "my" room, there is no compromise! YEAHHHH!! Though it's far from being done, just unpacking boxes of my books and arranging them in the room made it feel more mine. As well as finding and placing these: they are like old friends......

I made this lady when I was in RVA. She's travelled with me to every house since then.

I like to mess around with clay every once in a while. It's often very therapeutic. So a lot of my stuff has a story. I won't tell you the stories around these. If you want to hear them, come by and ask! And my stuff is often three dimensional, so I have front and backs of these.

I

And last but not least: this little fellow. I got him on my first birthday, and as you can tell, he has had some hard lovin'.


I'm getting a real kick out of seeing my room come to life!

Unexpected encounter

Leaning over the pile of books in the secondhand store, I unexpectedly encountered a fellow english book lover. We ended up having a 20 minute conversation about books, living in my town and how we got where we are. And we exchanged adresses so that we can also exchange books at some point in time. Well, hey! It looks like I may have made a friend of sorts!
We got on the subject of bookcrossing.com. It's a cool system of sharing books! The point is to launch a book after registering it on the bookcrossing site. You leave a sticker or bookmark in the book. The next reader to pick up the book can log in on the bookcrossing site and then you can follow the books travels. I picked one up once in Houten and got a real kick out of it. It's nice to think of books being shared around the world in all kinds of different ways. There's a lot more possibilities with the whole bookcrossing concept. Make sure to take a peek if you love books and reading!

Reunion

A RVA classmate of mine, Melanie, has taken initiative to get some ideas up and running for a 20 year high school reunion. Needless to say, I would LOVE to go!
I lived in Louisiana for three years when I was a teen, and I went to school in Ethiopia and Kenya with a lot of americans so I have a "thing" for the States. The last time I was there was just before I got married. I went back to Carville, Louisiana, with a film crew making a documentary about leprosy. I went to my old school and saw one of my favorite teachers, and I visited with Sharons parents. (I can't remember seeing you, Sharon, were you at college then?). I loved walking through the huge, huge stores. It's a thing of mine. I love going grocery shopping in different countries and looking at all the different foods and spices on offer. Fig newtons for example, cannot be bought here. Icing can only be found in some stores, maple syrup is a rarity, butter flavored popcorn salt.... I have yet to find it. I've read about toothpastes in all kinds of flavors.... not here! We stick to pepperminty flavors or disgusting herbal concoctions that make your gums shrivel. What about the coffee flavors that I read about. My word, I'd love to get a hold of some of those!
So that's at least one thing that I would like to do if I make it to the States. That and drool and drool and drool some more in a bookstore filled with ENGLISH books. Oh my lordy, I think I will feel that I have died and gone to my own personal little heaven.
Besides the sordid materialistic side of me, the personal empathetic part of me (which exists... sometimes...) would also really really like to meet up with old friends, play catch-up and see if my memories correspond with theirs. Because I have noticed that memories can get really distorted through time. And besides that, it makes me feel whole to meet people who knew me back when, as I don't often run into old classmates here in Holland. (that may sound kind of pathetic but I don't mean it to be).
So here's to next year summer, somewhere in the States, visiting with old friends, and enjoying a wonderfully unique break!!

Tulips anyone?

We took a drive today, and this is what we saw:










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Currently reading: Readers Digest from 1984. Yes 1984! I found them in the secondhand store here in town, along with a number of other english books. One of them was so annoyingly cloying (it included cutely bumbling angels, for pete's sake!) that it almost made me gag. Hopefully the other books will turn out beter.

Things I did this weekend

I thought I would entertain everybody by listing the things I did this weekend, AFTER spending even more time cleaning the fridge. Which is finally standing in the kitchen still slightly odorous but functioning nevertheless.

So here's my list:
- enjoyed the sunshine
- planted flowers in the garden
- re-potted our indoor plants (is that an english word?)
- washed several loads of italian laundry
- went to Tristans soccer match. He scored a goal and seems to be fully recovered from all the pain that has been plagueing him over the last couple of weeks (BIG HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF)
- used my "new" oven for the first time to make some goodies for my sisterinlaws hen party (and then burned everything to a crisp)
- went to church only to discover that this particular church still doesn't hold much appeal for us.
- visited my sister and family and had our first barbeque of the year. Lise always has the best barbeques!
- discovered I've pretty much read every readable english book in the library here :-(
- planned a number of visits from friends from our old church :-)

I'm looking forward to this coming week of free days, including one of my favorite dutch holidays, the Queens birthday. More on that on April the 30th!

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currently reading: magazines borrowed off my sister and a sappy, stupid, silly book in which the poor traumatized lovelorn gorgeous female meets an equally traumatized handsome man in a beautiful romantic setting. After some misunderstandings they discover their love for one another and they live happily ever after........ (though I may be wrong about the ending as I havn't finished reading the book yet).

Things that go bump in the night

I'm reading The Mist by Stephen King. Maybe I shouldn't be, because I tend to get spooked easily. Some nights when I go up the stairs I end up running the last couple of steps up because I'm scared the bogeyman is after me! So Stephen King might not be a very wise decision. I didn't read him for the longest time out of principle. I didn't like the fact that he wrote so much horror. I like a good thrill, but ever since I "watched" a horror movie when I was a teen (I was actually cowering behind the sofa with my hands over my eyes and ears, I'm really not kidding!) and then ended up not being able to go to sleep without the lights on for weeks afterward, I have an aversion to horror. And I really do think there is an evil world out there and I shouldn't be encouraging it by reading or watching "satanically tinted" books or movies. There, I have spoken!
But then some of my principles have become more watered down lately. There's a fine line between fantasy and horror, demons and fairies, and I have discovered that Stephen King hovers around that fine line as far as my interests are concerned. He writes well, and some of his books are thrillers, not horrors. Not too sure about this one yet, I think it could get pretty creepy and have me scared to look out my windows or to get out of bed to go to the toilet (you never know what may be hiding under your bed!).

Books

I read a book today by Nora Roberts ( River's End). About three pages into it I figured out "whodunnit". I kid you not. And yet I finished reading the entire book! Couldn't work up the energy to check the last page to see if I was right, so I just continued right into it. And then got all bothered about the totally unrealistic sex scenes going on in it. My goodness gracious me. I don't know about you but nothing like that goes on in my life! I don't think it's humanly possible to live up to that kind of standard ;-).
Though as teenager books like these just fed my romantic soul with all kinds of illusions. I read a book about that too, called The Cinderella Syndrome. It was a good book about how often women are fed a lot of drivel and get unrealistic expectations about what romance and relationships are all about. The subtitle is "don't poison your future with fairy tale thinking". There is a lot to be said for being realistic, after all that is what we deal with every day!
Or does someone out there have a fairy tale relationship and a sex life that is up to "romance novel" standards?

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currently reading Girl from the South by Joanna Trollope

Reading Orgy

Today I read three books, one of which I started last night. That's about 800 pages of print. I'm not sure if I should be ashamed or proud.

What I read was the following:
- The Windmill by Stephanie Gertler (really liked that one!)
- The Girl who loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King (pretty good as well, not too much "spookiness")
- The Loner by Josephine Cox (predictable and much to sweet for my taste)

The books were accompanied by large quantities of snacks. That is definately not something to be proud of.

Methinks I'm trying to hide from something............

Art

Every evening there's a news program for kids on the tv. Headlines made simple, and some fun information thrown in. Today the fun was about an artist who makes "art" out of poop. Yep, that's right. Not only did he make art out of poop, he also got a chance to show his "art" in a gallery. He walked around the gallery telling the viewers which poop belonged to his wife, daughter and son. The poop was encased in seethrough plexiglas, placed on plates, or formed into pie pieces.
Now I am writing all of this down rather factually, but let me tell you I don't feel very factual about it! Deep down I find it disgusting, in more ways than one considering the nature of his art, that anything as silly as this can be labeled as art and is taken seriously in any way at all!
My brother is an artist, no questions asked! And yet he gets no media attention and has to struggle to survive as an artist. Yet somebody who plastifies poop is deemed worthy of mentioning on the kids news...
What on earth is this country coming to!!

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I'm going to add what I'm reading to my posts from now on. Keeps you and me informed about my "intelligent" reading habits (ha!)!

currently reading: Three Fates by Nora Roberts

A little pang

I went to the library today with Tristan. He is not usually a reader, but has to do a book report for school, so what better opportunity? While in the library I gently tried to steer him towards the Chronicles of Narnia. He didn't go for it. And that gave me a pang. I've given up getting Marinda interested in the books I used to read (and sometimes still do). Like the Chronicles of Narnia, Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prarie. I know it's utterly impossible to get Tristan interested in Anne or Little House, but maybe, just maybe he would be interested in the Narnia books? Helaas, helaas as they say here (it means unfortunately, unfortunately) I couldn't tempt him enough. Instead he went for a book about two kids and a german shepherd dog who get into exciting adventures with diamond thieves.
It gives me pang because there's not much of my youth that I can share with my kids and books have been such an important part of it. A lot of my memories include loving books, and books influencing the way I think and feel. The books I mentioned above are an integral part of me growing up and have helped form my character. Writing it down like that makes it almost sound ridiculous. Oh well....
I'm consoling myself that sometimes, in a hopefully far future, I may have grandchildren that I'll be able to pass my book loves on to!

Meme

My first meme! I got tagged by Melanie. (Thanks Melanie, now I feel like I really belong in the blogging world!). And being tagged has finally forced me to figure out how to put a hyperlink in my posts.
Well, this meme asks me to name 6 quirky things about myself. You would not believe the amount of time I have spent thinking about this. Maybe due to the fact that I have this terrific head cold which limits my range of thought quite badly. In fact, I'll name these colds as my first quirky thing.

1. Head cold
As a child of my parents I claim partial ownership of this particular way of having a cold. It's not your average runny nose, coughing type of cold. No, we bring it up to another level. Colds hit my eyes, but only one at a time. That means that I walk around with one red, glazed, swollen, burning, teary eye for a day or two, and then, when I think things are getting better, the other eye gets hit. It's hard to be taken seriously when your eyes are two distinctly different sizes and leak spontaneously! People look at you worriedly and then ask if you're all right. Then the nose run. I have frequently felt a strong desire to stick a tampon up my nose, it's that bad! Some people may be able to work with a cold. It's not something that I think my colleagues would appreciate..

2. Lyrics
I love singing along to songs, but am a total dingbat when it comes to lyrics. For years I sang "I can see clearly now, the rain has come". Or what do you think about "smoke is sin" instead of "smoky sings"?? Or "Although we've run to the end of the road"?

3. Reading
I read obsessively. Some people do not think of this as being quirky, just annoying. I have read while biking, while frying pancakes, while cooking, while hanging up the laundry. In a car, in a plane, in the train, while walking along the street. Any place, any time, is a time for me to read.

4. Humor
I have a vulgar sense of humor. I like dirty jokes and double entendres. I cannot however, tell jokes. I am very very proud of myself when I manage to make a group of people laugh, I think of it as quite an accomplishment!

5. Math
I have a traumatic aversion to math thanks to my sweet 4th grade teacher who had her own unique way of getting a point across. The result is that anything that has anything to do with math can almost have me hyperventilating. You can ask me what two plus two is, and I will know, but anything beyond that dissappears in a big bog of fear. I am exaggerating only slightly...

6. Whistling
According to my family, I cannot whistle properly. It has become a standing family joke to laugh at me when I'm whistling. Evidently I pucker up my mouth in an absurd way and produce a breathy noise that they love to imitate...

That's it for my quirkiness for now! I would now like to tag Michelle, Sharon, Lise and Renzo

Acceptance

I read this quote the other day

"The thing is, it’s a bit sad to accept yourself.
You face all the things that you will never be.
But to be yourself is the only way to be happy."

What especially struck me is the part about facing the things that you will never be. One (very minor and pretty unimportant) thing that I am facing is the fact that I'm not an intelligent reader. Maybe you all already knew that, but I'm experiencing quite a sense of sadness about it! I figure that my gift for speed reading combined with the fact that I am moderately intelligent should make for a person who does read Shakespeare and Jane Austen. But every time I try, I just don't want to! And then I feel guilty for reading less intelligent books.
So it's out with my need to seem intelligent and in with the love of reading anything I can get my paws on. Murder, science fiction, fantasy, fairy tales and even a bit of romance, welcome! I'm just me and accepting this little part of me makes me more myself and makes me a lot happier!