Flowers

We've been blessed with lots of flowers lately. A friend has the lovely habit of giving great bunches of flowers every time she feels there's an occasion to celebrate. And she uses almost every situation to create a celebration! This one was to celebrate the fact that we got a house. Then last week another friend dropped by to give Marinda an encouraging bunch of flowers because she's still feeling sick. And today I got two bunches of flowers as a thank you from my volunteers at work.
I love a great bunch of flowers. The colors are great, inspiring and give a lift every time you look at them! And in Holland we're blessed with flower stalls around every corner where you can get a big bunch for very little cash. It's lovely!

Ramblings

The smell of frying salmon is floating up the stairs, almost making me nauseous. Herman is frying up his dinner. He came home late so I fixed the kids the ultimate easy meal of macaroni with ham and cheese (REAL cheese and REAL ham, none of those packaged thingys here!). Tristan is off to soccer practice and I've been doing odd jobs keeping myself busy. Laundry and dishes and suchlike. Kind of peaceful to do these routine things!
I have a huge shopping list of things I still "need" to get before going to Ethiopia. Like new underwear for example. Ridiculous really, but suddenly I find it appalling that my underwear is falling apart and I feel I cannot confront my mother with my shreds. So new undies it must be. (I know, I know, you really don't need to know these details!) I will not get thongs though. I still cannot get used to them and only wear them when in desperate need (like with white pants) or when I think it will make me feel sexy (though often the effort is wasted, because Herman is not particularly charmed by the state of my butt------ yes, I know! Even more information you don't need!).
Making a list is satisfying though, because I get the feeling that I have a good overall picture and I have the great satisfaction of checking things off when I have them done. I'm even one of those people who when she does something that's not on the list, writes it down anyway just for the sheer pleasure of checking it off!
I'm now off to do the last thing on my list for today, clearing away the laundry. Hope you have a good day!

What to write?

I'm finding it hard to know what to write because so much is going on I don't know where to start and I live in fear of boring my readers. I guess I should go back to my original reason for writing, which was more because I wanted to and not so much because I wanted to "entertain" people. So if I go back my original motivation then I think it will do me good to write about two little hopeful things that happened today.
I got a call from somebody who has a foundation for Third Culture Kids. She's giving it up because she's moving out of the country, and has approached me to see if I can take over some of the work. It sounds like fun, it also sounds like something I would like to do, and am capable of doing, but it's not paid! But I'm going to explore the possibilities anyway and see where we end up. It would be funny if this came back in my life because a number of years ago I was quite involved in the whole missionary kids/third culture kids networks and I had imagined myself doing something quite like this. I'm not very very excited yet, because I'm pretty sure finances are going to be a big problem, but who knows what this will lead to?
And secondly I got a mail from this same person giving me the adres of somebody in this area who was looking for people with a similar background to mine. So I sent off a quick mail. Maybe person will be my first non-family contact in my new home town! You never know. And I found out that there's a womens meeting in this town in january. I've enjoyed them here every now and again, and will go visit it there and maybe mix and mingle and find some new contacts. Hopefully it will not be filled with older ladies in flowered dresses :-)
There, at least I've written down my hopeful things of the day. And I just remembered another one! We had job interviews today and have decided who is going to be my replacement. And I'm quite happy about her! That makes it easier for me to let go of my work, feeling confident that my replacement will be able to carry on what I've started (don't mean to sound arrogant, just conscientious!).
Enough for now. Time to see if I can get rid of this headache!!

My favorite position .......