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.

Hit by the muse...

Song of the day: “You don’t own me” by Grace. Very cool version of the old song, I’ve gotta admit. Sure, the movie it was for was pretty much carpy, but that doesn’t change that the song was good.

So, yeah, not a lot has happened since the last blog. Been pretty busy with studying, naturally, which regretfully takes a lot of time. Had some frustrating moments there, since this particular part of the material involves law, which is convoluted, boring, confusing and whatnot. It takes time, discussion (and boy do we discuss stuff, because on more than one occasion we get stuck on a part in the lesson books that just doesn’t make sense. Grrrr) and more time if for no reason than that often I need to go back and reread stuff. Seriously, law books need a proper editor! Jeez.

Still working on the edit. In all honesty we are taking our time in that regard, wanting it to be good before we risk sending it out as well. There are some scenes where get snag on, meaning more discussions, but this time the old familiar one that involves fierce debates about sentence structure, punctuation, grammar. Like the other day we were seriously arguing about a sentence that went like this: “the guard’s nod assured her that he would keep an eye out.” Or something along those lines. It was downright ridiculous. We argued for more than twenty minutes before I finally decided to just erase the sentence and put something else down. Darn it. Very frustrating, if a tad funny in hind sight. Personally I’m rather glad that no one needs to witness such arguments, because they are of course completely silly.

I do have a job interview next week, as a driver for shuttle busses at a hotel, which should be interesting to do at least. It’s not a enough hours for sufficient earnings, but it is something at least. I’ll let you know how that works out. I like driving, so in that regard it would be fun. And the earnings would be good.

Got a call from a temp agency the other day, but apparently that was still from when I had filled it in at our previous place, so it was of no use. Pity too, since my application at the temp agency was focussed on the whole cooking bit. That would have been very nice, darn it, but can’t be helped. Too far away.

Big brother had a job interview today (he’ll also have one at the hotel as a driver but this one was for full time) at a big company supplying home appliances to people’s homes. It would require him to deliver and install, which should at least be interesting for him. The only thing we have to figure out is the logistics of it, since both of us will need to get at work a considerable distance from home. Don’t know how that is going to work, so yeah, I’ll have to keep you posted about that too.

Had a wonderful cooking experiment with chickpeas that other day. Very yummy. Perfect finger food too, and easy to serve with a nice dip like garlic sauce, mustard or a sweet ‘n sour chilli. They’re fried little balls, so they went well with a salad, or beside fried rice, or with a very hot chilli beans stew. Definitely worthy of repeating, and very easy to make…not to mention healthy.

Been eating a lot of salads lately, which is unusual for me. I don’t mind salads, but I’ve never actually had that I was in the mood for them, only in the height of summer, but lately I’ve got a hankering for them, so I’ve been overdosing on raw stufsies. Loads of carrots, cauliflower, lettuce, tomatoes and spinach, the latter because I was at the doctor’s for a blood test and the basic test shows that my blood is still off. It sure explains why I am often still tired, despite having caught up on my sleep shortage from the last work year. This of course means that I’ll have to be back to get a more thorough test to see where the problem lies this time. Not looking forward to that. It is starting to look like my severe anemia in the past has become somewhat chronic and which is now  reluctant to be solved with good nutrition. Grrrr. Can I just say for a moment that I seriously dislike that, so I am definitely going to work on that in the near future. Again, I’ll keep you posted.

Went on a nice bike ride the or two the past few weeks. First one into the country, rather than go to the gym, now that weather still permits such outings. And just a few days ago we headed on into the city to have look around for the first time, which was nice. Didn’t get home until twilight (yikes)  with my bum hurting like heck because a thirty minute ride stretched out into a two hour trip that did an excellent job of providing exercise. Had been inside for several days, and really needed some fresh air, so it did us good. Added to that we had a couple, or three trips to the gym, and that was nice too.

What else…gawd, I had a sleepless night sometime last week because I had this rather splendid idea for a short story that I just had to write down before I managed to stop thinking about it and could go to sleep. I’m thinking a demon hunter, set in Atlantic City, contemporary with, of course, a hint of romance in it. Got most of it worked out in my head, along with the story which is supposed to happen all in one night. I’m rather excited about writing it, if you must know, because it has been a while since I have been hit by an idea like this out of the blue. For the past few years writing has been very much like work. Work that I love, but work still, and this was different; this was a muse hitting me right he between the eyes. Yay!

Well, that’s it for now. Time to hit the sheets and catch some Zzzzzs. Need them, if you must know. Had too little of it last night.

Never enough time

Song of the day: “Flashlight” by Jessie J…I know, a tad embarrassing to have this little ditty in my head, but it is incredibly sweet. Hah.

Well, life has changed dramatically, but oddly enough it is still incredibly busy, regardless of the sudden lack of a job. Guess I’m just not any good at not having anything to do except what I chose to do. When I chose to do something, it is simply just as time consuming as a job. Hah. Am still looking, so keep yer fingers crossed.

Anyways, the study is going steadily. Gotta admit that the book of law that is covered in the beginning is both frustrating and fascinating. The latter because knowledge in any shape or form always is, and the first because there are typos in the lesson material, and several of the test questions that I had to answer in my first test, were not covered adequately in the material. I checked. In fact, I had to go online to find explanations of the material, because it wasn’t there. Grrrrr. Contacted my course source, conferring with them about this particular problem, and they suggested that I keep checking online until they have looked into the matter. Hah. This made me laugh, not only because it was funny. But no matter, I’ll muddle my way through, I assure you.

Sent out manuscripts to 11 different publishers, so I’ve been pretty busy with that, and yes, we’re still editing A.I.L. which is a serious source of frustration to both of us. I remember this part of the editing process well, I tell ya. We had it with NERFS:SN, CH and ATOL, and now we have it with this one too. Some of the texts just don’t flow to both our satisfaction, meaning that we get into heated debates that have either of us walking away to cool off at the drop of a hat. It has no use to get so frustrated with it, really, since experience has taught us that after we struggle through this stage the improvement will be noticeable, but still it is difficult time for both of us. Nothing gets your spirits down as a few pages that you get stuck on for an average of 1-2 hour per page. Grrrrr.

Been to the gym a few times since the last blog. Yay. Didn’t have much time for it in-between study and editing time, cooking meals, normal daily chores, the inspection of our house yesterday (all is fine. We made the place look good, so we won’t be seeing much of our handler. Yay! No matter how friendly he is, it is a stressful idea that someone is checking up on you) and working the yard, as we’re semi-obligated to do every now and then. Considering we’re often short on time, we went for a walk into town the other day after we discovered that we were too late for the gym, and yesterday evening for a nice long bike-ride so we’d have at least some movement. The problem is, we have a cheap membership with the gym, which limits our arrival time to five in the afternoon, this doesn’t always work out when we are elbow-deep into an edit.

Had a cozy get-together at and with the neighbors. Six adults, two kids and a handful of cats. Was a nice afternoon-evening with beer, wine, finger food and soup where we all got to know each other a little better, because, let’s face it, there is not much time for that with everyone being incredibly busy. We got the busy parents, both working on our left, and the young couple, a professional drummer and a waitress-looking-for-work-in-the-neuropsychology-branch behind us. Add the brother and sister writers, looking for work too, and you’ve got an interesting bunch. Hah. Was a nice evening, though, which resulted in coffee later in the week with the mum and dad while we discussed the chores that had to be organized around the yard on the rather splendid autumn day.

Weather-wise things are looking bleak. We had a few sunny days, but on the overall things are starting to look gray, gray and…well, you guessed it, gray. Not that much rain yet, but I’m guessing that will come soon enough. Also, trees are starting to lose their leaves, and by now we need central heating because the temps are rapidly dropping, especially up north here, where the ground is flat and the wind comes rushing in off the sea. It’ll be interesting to see how winter will be, eh?

Lately I’ve had a serious case of the nibbles later in the day, so I’ve made a nice healthy batch of oatmeal cookies with raisins nuts and the likes, rather than risk buying cookies of undetermined origin. Works well, and it’s healthy at least. Also made lasagna the other day, loads of veggies, for visiting a friend. Otherwise I’ve been making lots of soups, which work rather well in this weather and a rather nice red cabbage risotto last week. Was surprised how well it worked, actually.

Went to visit tenant, who seems to be doing well at the senior home. She is starting to notice that her stubbornness is not doing her any good, because her memory is not as good as it used to be. Had several instances where she threw up a lot of fuss about certain subjects, only to realize later that she remembered wrong, which startled her. I found it a little sad to see, especially her confusion about it but it can’t be helped. Can’t protect anyone from reality, can you. Anyway, the place is good for her. She gets stimulated to be creative, as in drawing and painting and the likes, meaning that her motor skills in her good hand have improved, and because she always has to wait her turn if she wants to get around the building, and can’t stand that, she has started using her own feet as propulsion when she’s in her wheelchair, hah. In fact, she is basically going from one room to the next in the home, and that is really good for her.

She was very excited about her granddaughter’s 18^th birthday coming up this week, wanting to give the girl a present, but not knowing where to get it, so I found a rather nice bracelet for her, with a card that she can give as a present the next time she sees her.

Yard work has been rather wonderful, despite the scary amount of nettles all over the place. Yikes. Had one slither its way under my sweater and doing its worst on my belly. Hah.  But we did quite a bit. Cut away lots of dead stuff, revealing loads of little treasures underneath the piling masses. Found bushes, flowers and whatnot, which made it very satisfying. Will have to get our hands on some better garden tools soon…especially since we’re going to have to cut back the pollard Willows somewhat desperately. Poor things haven’t had a proper trim in years, so that’ll take some time.

Also filled the potholes in our drive sweep, for which our car is tremendously grateful, and had a repair done on the car, which, thankfully wasn’t so expensive that I had to sell my kidney, or something. Hah

Well, that about sums it up for today. Gotta bet busy.

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.