Sick...but on the mend

Song of the day: “Nervous” by Gavin James. Gorgeous song, and definitely not bad to have in your head.

So…whazzup? I hear you wonder. And if not…? well, I’m going to tell you anyway. Hah. Not a whole lot has been happening since the last post, in particular since both big brother and I were hit by some sort of awful flu virus last week that basically wiped both of us out. For a whopping eight days. Seriously, there was vomiting (for me, anyway) fever, hurting all over, the shakes, in the end we slept several days away if for no other reason than  being unable to do much of anything else. Gawd, that was pretty darn bad! Even now I’m not back to normal, despite having been able to do my qi gong again for the past two days, (just barely) things are still going difficult. But better, thankfully. Slowly, but steadily, we’re getting there.

Went grocery shopping the day before yesterday because it had been three weeks, and anything remotely fresh was gone, including every last bit of what we had in the fridge…except for half a white cabbage that has been in there for, what, three weeks? Yeah, there abouts. Jeez! The groceries were very necessary, but we seriously postponed them for as long as possible due to being sick.

Did manage to finish the edit, despite losing those sick days, or at least we managed to finish the cutting out of scenes (it wasn’t easy either) and checking if that was still working. It was, for as far as we could see  while being that frigging close to the story once more that we could barely see straight anymore. In the end we just had to tie the knot and send it as is, hoping that we didn’t mess up somewhere along the way. We’ll know soon enough, I guess. Our editor has the book now, and soon we’ll have to go through the whole thing again, changing whatever stuff she found. I hope that by then my head will be clear again and that I have some distance to the story once again.

Managed to do some cooking of late…it’s inevitable. A dish or two of it will end up on the cooking blog, I’m sure because I’m really enjoying them. A very good pasta, and a nice stir fry bulgur mix that you simply have to try some day.

Put a b-day gift in the mail for mom just a couple of days ago. Should have done that at least a week ago, but let’s face it, last week I couldn’t get out of bed if my life depended on it. Hah. So the present will probably be a little late, darn it.

Finally gathered enough energy to vacuum the house yesterday, which was really necessary after the past couple of weeks. Things were a mess I tell ya…and poor big brother (he was two days ahead of me health wise) had to get back to work yesterday, too, so you can imagine what state he was in when he got home after 9 hours. He was actually pale in the face, poor fella, and slept half the evening away on the couch.

Had a flat tired today, so we were lucky to have bought one of those tire pumps that can run on the battery.  Made our afternoon outing to the supermarket (forgot some stuff on grocery shopping day) a little easier. Had to get some lettuce, endive because it was on sale, and some nice cutting shears for the garden. Yay.

The weather is nothing to write home about. On the most part it’s gray, although we did have a few sunny days in-between, the sunshine tempting enough for both of us to decide to just try for a vegetable patch this year, despite it not being sure that we can even stay here through the summer. If nothing else, I get to relax a little by getting my hands dirty in the earth. Looking forward to that bit of it. Outside stuff will be a welcome change to working at the computer a lot, and it’ll save a buck or two with the veggies we get from it…if we stay here long enough to actually manage a harvest. Hah.

What next…well, for the next few weeks, while waiting to hear from the edit, I’ll be working on one of Saving Nina’s sequels, and maybe some on the already finished manuscripts that still need some work. If we do that, we might be able to get more stuff published quicker, meaning that we won’t have to find as much “normal” work to get by. That would be incredibly nice.

Okay, gotta go.

Quick like

Song of the day: “What do you mean” by Justin Bieber, naturally. I know, embarrassing, right? Still a cute song.

This will just be a quicky post, more to let y’all know that, yes, I’m still alive. I’ve got good news, but I don’t want to jinx it with a massive post, so you’re going to have to be a little patient for my next blog to discover what it is…I hope. Could all turn out to be a bust, so I might end up depressed and never post again. Hah. Just kidding, of course I’ll post again. Y’all know better than anyone that I always come back, no matter how bad things are. I mean seriously, after all the shaite you guys lived through with me here, we all know that only death would stop me…maybe. *wink*

But anyway, other than the potential of good news in the near future, things are going steadily. Big brother is working full time now, which is heavy on him, poor thing. In-between writing, editing, keeping the house tidy, cooking meals, and doing the groceries, I am applying for work. Not having much luck so far, but luckily I can keep myself busy.

Have been picking up my fitness again. Don’t like the lack of activity, so doing more fitness is definitely a must. Also, that stupid leg of mine where I had my operation is bugging me again. The one vein they missed is playing up, so I might need to get back to the doctor for that in the near future. Darn. I hate that.

Had a nice visit with our former colleague last week, and with his wife and newborn son. Cute little fella, and only six weeks old.  Got to hold the kid, too, which was a little scary, considering how small he was. Also got to play with their labradoodle a bit and that was cool too. Fun dog.

Spent the second day of Christmas with family down south. The trip took 2.5 hours, but it was very pretty down there. Flowing green hills (despite winter) sunshine for the day, and a wonderful house belonging to our aunt…well, sort of our aunt, more by law, I think you’d call it. Gorgeous massive kitchen that made me so jealous. Seriously, I want a kitchen like that, some day. Littlest brother was there, stepmom, our father, stepmom’s  mother, sister and brother, so we had a nice full table. Was a very nice afternoon, with five or six courses spread out over five hours. By the time we got home, a nother 2.5 hours trip, we were starving again.

Did a full-blown cleaning session of the house the other day, which took a couple of hours, but the result was splendid. Much, much better. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been vacuuming, dusting and cleaning horizontal surfaces, it is just that if you go at it with the full focus that I used to apply at work, you really notice the difference. Hah

Been working on the books a lot. Edits, some writing, and synopsis, and whatnot, prepping several stories at the moment. Want to have some stuff ready before spring to start sending out again.

But that’s it for today, just a quicky update, I fear. Be patient with me please.

Thoughts, dreams and reality. :-)

Song of the day: “Hallelujah” originally by Leonard Cohen, but I’ve been having covers in my head ever since I got curious and found a whole batch of them on Youtube. Seriously, there have been oodles of people who did the song…and in many beautiful ways, I might add. Worth a spin, if you like the song!

So, yeah. Had a bit of relapse with my cold. It was gone, which had me getting back to my workout routine all excitedly for over a week of daily workouts of over 45 mins a pop, only to end up with my cough coming back full force and a fierce pain in my throat that took me three days to get rid of again. Grrrr. No worries, though. At the moment, considering I don’t have a job or anything (well, I am doing some serious writing at the moment, so that is debatable) I’m not doing my workout in one allotted time (seeing as it is a known fact that for a little while after your workout your immune system has a serious drop) but am stretching it out through the course of the day with five to ten minute exercising sessions. Annoying, for sure, but doable for the moment. Hah.

I have broadened my job search from night reception work at hotels, courier and facility management to--sit down, don’t get caught unawares—work as a jack of all trades in greenhouses. Saw an application for that recently, and thought, what the heck. I’d get to work with plants, be inside a relatively warm place most of the down, and get, according to statistics, decent pay. Now, I’m pretty sure that my resume (and lack of official qualifications) isn’t going to look very impressive to these people, but still, it’s worth a shot.

Been doing a lot of reading online lately, including on American politics. I have friends on either side of the fence, so it can’t really be helped, and considering that this is not a political blog, I am definitely not picking sides, but it is a big event in history, so it’s gotta be mentioned. Admittedly it is a fascinating thing to watch, really, hearing both sides hammering away at each other, guessing what is going to happen based on he said-she said kind of stuff. I can only think back of this blog back when the last president was picked. Basically everyone thought that finally all their troubles were going to be over and he was basically going to achieve world peace. Back then, I said it was going to be pretty tough for the guy to live up to that, and it was. With this future president, I can only say, he’s probably going to surprise people. Right now, there is such a low opinion of him that even if he manages to do one thing right, he’ll astound people, let alone if he does a couple of things moderately well.  Puts the last president at a bit of a disadvantage, but from what I understand of him, he rather likes martyrdom, so basically he got what he wanted.

As with all things, we’re going to have to wait and see what happens in the future.

The other thing I’ve been reading up on is 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd wave feminism (I know, how controversial am I today, right? I swear, I’ll keep it mild, and won’t do this a lot) and have come to the  conclusion that I am more of a 2^nd wave feminist. Serious, the 3^rd wavers are completely bonkers! The hate that is coming from them, the convoluted logic and full blown hatred toward men in general, it’s astounding…especially since these women, well, girls really are either my age, or younger than me, and have not faced the problems that 1^st and 2^nd wave feminists faced. In fact, the majority of these girls seem to have been coddled, helped at every turn, and now think that it is time to get back at the “oppressors” for the evil deeds perpetrated towards the generations preceding them.

Now, if these girls were living in Middle Eastern countries, Asia, Afrika or whatnot, I would understand, seriously, there is some evil shaite going on around the globe, but they’re not. These are girls and women in Western countries where they are protected, supported and helped by not only the law, but by the general public too. They have healthcare, the opportunity to educate themselves, work whichever job they wish to pursue, and basically live their lives the way they want, and yet they figure they have to fight the opposite sex and the establishment for rights that they already have. And all this while there are women in this world who are really bad of. I have to say that the stuff that I have seen online about these so-called feminists is nothing short of embarrassing (for me anyway), if not downright insulting toward women with real problems. Feminism has definitely gotten a bad name because of these entitled girls trying recapture the “magic” of brah-burning for a plain and simple game of “getting back at” and what can only be called an underhanded attempt at gaining power in the world over the back of men, but most especially other women.

Okay, enough silly things that thankfully don’t much affect my world at this juncture in my life, it might, at some point, but not yet. I’ve been having some seriously weird dreams lately. Several have been downright icky, in fact. Like the other day I was dreaming of this evil serial killer who used a metal garrote to literally saw the hands of a woman. He was starting on the second hand, lots of gore, lots of screaming going on, when I finally managed to wake up. I was seriously freaked out from that one, but will admit that this particular dream is going to do really well in a book at some point.

Luckily I had some nice dreams, too. One of them included grandpa still being around, which was rather nice.

So, there was a rather big storm in Spain, which had us worried about family, friends and pets for a while. Seriously, there was a red alert and everything. There were floods that caused two deaths, lots of properties destroyed, animals in distress, a tornado over sea, even, and gawd knows what else. Reassurances were a long time coming, but in the end everyone I knew reported back with an “okay” so that was a big relief. Jeez. The only plus that comes from this that the water reservoirs that have been close to empty for the past decade or so, have filled up to almost 40 percent for the first time in 20 years!

Writing wise I’ve been doing relatively well at the moment. I am doing an average of 2K-3K words a day, at least, so the book is steadily progressing. Yay! At the very least I am completely back IN the story, which certainly helps. Yay

On the cooking front I’ve been doing some experimenting lately. Made a rather interesting pumpkin pie the other day, also a lentil/beet salad that went well with the folks I made it for, but didn’t resonate well with yours truly. Hah.

Littlest brother’s visit has been rescheduled to this weekend. Something came up the last time, so that was a no-go. Considering big brother and I were still battling our colds back then, neither of us minded all that much.

So that about sums up this blog. I’m sure I’m forgetting important stuff, but that can’t be helped. I’ll be back.

We'll see where it goes

Song of the day:…hmmm, I’m not entirely sure. I had a weird one in my head during the night, it was there every time I woke up, like a friggin’ echo,  and now that wanna write it down here, for the life of me, I can’t remember which song it was. Ah well, better to be grateful that I don’t have that earworm anymore, right?

Right, what to tell, first  a bit of semi-good news. Big brother has a new job, full time, near the airport, meaning quite a bit of commute, poor boy. It’s kinda good for him, I think, to have to be there without me buffering conversations and such. He’s on his own, needing to make contact and what not. It’ll be cool to see how that works out, whether he’ll gain some confidence in that regard. He’ll be working at a big company, transport and installation of big household machinery. He comes home with stories of his new colleagues, which is kinda weird for me too, considering normally I’m right there when the stories are made, so to speak. It’s different, I’ll say that much for it.

As for me, yes, I had a job interview that seemed to go well enough the other day. If I get it, it won’t start until January, so at least I’ll have some time to write still. Got some serious ideas rolling through my head for the banshee’s story, so I really want to get back to that soon. Added to that, I still need to work on “Gun” a bit, despite having promised myself to focus on romance for a while. I got an idea that might help me to get the story unstuck, so keep your fingers crossed…but I was talking about my job interview, right? Well, it would be as a chauffeur, not a lot of hours, which I like, in particular since they pay relatively well for those hours, so, yeah, let’s hope I get it.

On the down side of it all, with big brother and me soon working at different locations, we don’t have much choice, we’ve been looking around for a very cheap, very frugal car for the past week. That meant loads of driving around for me, test driving, checking rust, (you wouldn’t believe the carpheaps people are trying to sell) booklets, license plates, because yes, you do have to be careful that a car is not legit, and whatnot. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to get the dozen we’d selected online down to three, of which big brother made his decision. It’s the smallest, basically a covered moped, hah. Can you imagine big brother with his 6’ 5” in a teeny weenie car? It makes me chortle. We’ll be picking it up Tuesday, so keep yer fingers crossed that it all works out. I sure look forward not having to get up at six to bring big brother to work. Hah.

Did some sewing lately. This area of the Netherlands I can’t really find stuff that I like at thrift stores, so I get smaller sizes that I do like, and work on them. Let me just say, I look pretty bohemian most of the time. I got seventies jeans, people. As in legs so wide the darn thing practically looks like a skirt. I love it. You can’t believe how comfortable that is after all the silly skinny fit jeans you can get by the dozen these day. Hate that design. I’ve yet to see anyone over a size zero look good in it. *sigh*

Been experimenting with cooking a little. Now figured out how to prep bulgur, which isn’t bad, I tell ya. I might write it down for the cooking blog, one of these days.

Winter is really coming now, we’ve had a warning that the first wet snow might be coming soon, we’ve got lots of northern winds, the trees have already lost more than seventy percent of their leaves, we’re getting a lot of rain, so yeah, winter is close. Don’t particularly like it, but what can you do, right?

Did see a rather lovely movie the other day “Mr. Deeds”  with Eddie Murphy. I was wonderfully surprised to see him in such a serious role, and in such a lovely  little story to boot. I read some reviews of the movie, which were positive toward him, and yet demolished the rest of the story, which I didn’t get at all. It was the whole thing that set a beautiful background for his role, made him shine even more because the story wasn’t from his perspective, like usual, but from someone who loved him dearly and made him better than good, it made him GRAND. Seriously, it is definitely a movie I would suggest you’d have a look at. I enjoyed it tremendously. It brought Eddie Murphy back for me.

I’ve had several requests lately to review books, some of which I agreed to, despite being short on time, as usual, grrrr. But I haven’t gotten around to it, bad Sammi, bad Sammi.

Fitness has been sporadic what with the busy schedule since the last blog. I do squats and such whenever I get sore from working at the computer, or studying…I’ll get to that soon…and push ups, sit ups, stretches and whatnot, so I’m not letting it slide, no worries.

Been in a very strange mood lately. Moody almost. Snappy even. Been missing the dogs like mad, and don’t really understand why it is worse now. Perhaps it has something to do with living out here in the country where having a dog would be totally awesome. But alas. Can’t be done. It is not allowed with anti-squatting. Makes me want to publish a friggin’ book or two so I can have a place of my own where I can do what I friggin’ want, like have a dog! Grrr

Have been studying, don’t have much choice in that regard, since we paid for the dratted course. Hah. But, it’s not going bad. We’re into the third section,  did our second test and only had on of 24 questions wrong, primarily because it appeared to be a bit of a trick question, we could have had it right if we had assumed some things that weren’t actually in the question. I don’t know if that was intentional and that they want you to make assumptions, or if something had been accidentally left out. Whatever it is…not bad, only one wrong. Gotta hold onto that little victory after weeks of frustration, reading boring laws.

Edits…well, that hasn’t changed at all. Seriously, there’s times we’re at each other’s proverbial throats. Nuff said.

Had our father and his wife came for a visit last week. Had a nice afternoon. Had pastries with tea, went for a walk through town, cooked dinner and talked about lots of things, including our new place, their new place and such. It was nice.

Well, we’re going to see how it all goes from here. I got stuff to do, things to arrange and…gotta go.

Busy, but some pic updates again. ;-)

Song of the day: “You don’t own me” by Grace. Cool song. Heard it at the Suicide Squat trailer, knew it from a long time ago, and now have it in my head together with, “I spent the summer on you” by, well, a whole bunch of fellas. Hah.

So yeah. I’ve been busy. Most of it involves editing, so in that regard, YAY! Been prepping quite a bit of material these past couple of weeks, because we have about two months to spent on prepping stuff for publishers and we want to use every second of it. Are about four chapters into an edit. Sent out two manuscripts, a query letter have another one ready to send out, hopefully, today, so keep yer fingers crossed, please, we only have a few months to invest in this round, then the basic job search has to start becoming serious job search. Until the time comes of the hopefully good news, we are having a nice time editing “Accidentally in Love” which contains a lot of good stuff that I forgot to remember over the course of the past few years since writing it. That is good news, right?

Well, what’s been happening? The house is basically in order now.  Bedrooms sorted out…well mine anyway, big brother still has his open suitcases in there, clothes in messy piles on top of them, nightstand basically in front of the door, hah. But that’s his problem. Thankfully I can just close his door and not see it. I know it is there, but I can keep myself from doing anything about it, don’t you worry.

Had some time to work on my house plants. Poor babies had all outgrown their pots, so basically I spent an afternoon putting them in new ones, which made them looked better almost instantly. Was so nice to get my hands dirty that way, especially because the weather was cool and sunny and I could do it outside for the most part. Actually found some really nice affordable pots of some of the transplanted plants yesterday at an attic clearance sale in town. You can find the nicest stuff at places like that, can’t you? They were even cheaper than our usual thrift stores.

Met the father of our neighbors, who was born in our house. He had some wonderful stories to tell over coffee in the kitchen, including that the farm had been his great grandfathers in the late eighteen hundreds and that some years the entire top of the farm burned away due to a mistake from the power company. And he said that the small house beside us was the summer house where they used to live during the summer months until they were a family of 11 children and there simply wasn’t enough room in the small place. Hah. I’m not surprised that it was too small. 11 kids! Yikes!

Anyway, he comes here a lot. I think he’s missing the place somewhat fierce now that he lives in a senior home in town, and therefore comes over to work in his son’s yard, and work on their future shed, which is a project they’re busy with during whatever free time they have.

As for news…Big brother and I have finally decided on a study, so we’ve been pretty busy with that for the past few weeks. It is one that you can do at home during the studying part, but at some point we will have to do theoretical and practical exams elsewhere. So far I’m finding it rather interesting, in particular there is lot of law involved in the study. I’m getting to know the constitution, privacy laws, the roles of government officials, what they ARE allowed to do and what not. In how far are you obligated to cooperate with the law, and when are you allowed to say no, etc etc. All very fascinating, and if nothing else, it will be an excellent source of information for the writing. Already there are loads of ideas playing in my head.

Our other neighbors are a young drummer and his girlfriend who studied Neuropsychology, and is trying to find work in that. A very nice couple that have a very social life, from the way they come and go during the course of the day. She came over yesterday to introduce herself (had some cookies with her and everything) and we had a nice cup of coffee with the three of us before she returned to her place for dinner. She and her boyfriend were going out later that night, so she didn’t have a lot of time.

I finally found a rug for the corridor and the living room. I had one for the living room, but it was old and worn, and the red (it used to be in big brother’s apartment) clashed with the Spanish tile. So I found a very daring one. It is a bright grass green, which oddly enough works with the coconut rug in our office corner and the anthracite rug of the sitting corner by jumping right out of the red Spanish tile. Brightens the place right up…which I had hoped for, but doubted about due to the fierce green. The red rug is now on the blue kitchen floor, so that gives a nice contrast too. There it doesn’t look all that worn, thankfully. In fact it looks rather cool there with all the blues and yellows.

Next I’ve spend a few bucks on cover foil for the kitchen cupboards. They were of this rather worn and ugly, dark brown oak, and I wasn’t allowed to paint them, so I got the idea to get this fake beach wood pattern vinyl plastic of a light-ish white, gray color and covered the center of the cupboards with it. At the very least, it looks lighter, and that was my aim. Still have to get another role, but they didn’t have the stuff in stock, so I’m going to have to look for it at other branches of the store.

Applied for a few more jobs, on as a research person at a PI firm, which I don’t think I’ll get a response to, but which should be fun, at the very least. Another job I applied for is night reception work at a hotel, which held some appeal at least, since the unusual hours usually pay well round these parts.

Visited our father and stepmother a little while ago. They too were moving house, they’re going down south which is going to make visiting in the future a little difficult, but what can you do. We had offered to help out with the move, so after we arrived we spent some time going through stuff on the attic (where we found some pics from our childhood and such, which was fun) and then we loaded up their mattress, bed, some yoga supplies and some stuff that we could still get in and drove it 180 miles south. Was quite a ride, especially we were there just before rush hour and things started to pile up. Unloaded everything, set up the bed so they could plop in bed without effort once they were done moving (seemed a nice thing to do) and then started on our way back. There was a massive pile-up near Boxmeer. Some odd fifteen miles of congestion resulted, but luckily it was on the opposite side of the road. We just got to marvel at the miles and miles of cars waiting impatiently to travel on. Considering we had to return the key, and pick up a cupboard that I just loved for our office, we spent a whopping seven hours on the road that day, meaning that we were pretty much road-weary when we finally got home around eleven in the evening.

Been to a couple of fitness clubs in the area, more or less trying out which one we like. First one was a tad dank, if you get my meaning. Didn’t like the atmosphere all that much. The second one was rather busy, dirty, and what’s worse, their boxing bag was broken. The hard core of the bag had somehow been dislodged, meaning that everything was fine when I was doing my punches and jabs, but when I did my high kicks, and the sideways arm swing at neck height, I damaged both the top of my foot and my wrist. Seriously, I punch and kick hard, because I have a massive bruise on my wrist (swelled up like mad the first day) and I had to bind my foot and add cream from fear I’d done some serious damage. I didn’t because later the next day I stepped (limped, really) onto the threshold of the living room, putting my foot down wrong when something inside there popped. After that the pain quickly started to subside, leaving now only a slightly pinched feeling that you have when something’s been bruised a bit. Much relief there.

Went to visit one of our colleagues in our old town when we had to go there to give back my keys and get the last bits and pieces that we had left for this occasion at my former apartment. Took us about forty minutes to gather the things, clean up what still had to be cleaned, and say our goodbyes to the former neighbors, and then we were on our way. Later we visited with our friend, had something to drink, talked a while, including the latest rumors about the sauna. Things are apparently going poorly with the cleaners. They’re making a mess of things. Not cleaning things properly, adding to the bill, which pisses off the new boss, of course. Makes me a little smug, I’ll admit. We were keeping up the cleaning despite the shortage in staff…and what’s worse, I warned the cleaning company that he wasn’t going to manage the cleaning in the time he’d allotted for it, with the amount of people he’d assigned for it. So, well, than you get war at the sauna between the cleaning company and the sauna itself, exactly as I’d feared. In that regard I’m very happy not to be working there anymore. In another regard, as to the fun parts of the work we did, I still regret the whole thing, but being in the middle of a war is definitely not something I would have wanted to deal with.

So, this brings me to the last bit of today, a few more pics, right?

This here is the before and after of the kitchen...

 Isn't it possitively hideous. I mean, I have nothing against oak, but I'd want to see the original color, not this dark stuff. Grrrr

Not too bad, right. Better than the dark stuff, anyway.
This is the front of the building, after I took away all the messes and washed the windows and frames.

Part of the view.

 The drive sweep we share with both neighbors.

 The backyard that we've been doing some stuff in. That gate wasn't visible, in case you're wondering.

 Neither were these bricks, before we started taking weeds away. Hah

 The living room in the evening. I find it wonderfully cosy.

 The office, with big brother hard at work.

 And the cupboard we got from our father and stepmother.

 

The bedroom. I know, the lines are totally not my thing, but who cares. I sleep there, read a bit sometimes, other than that, I'm mostly puttering around the house anyway. Hah

 Lastly some old pics that I took pictures off...my mom and me.

 And lastly with big brother and me on the right together with our cousins.

 

That's it, folks. Time for me to get to something else. I'll be back.