Holy Sh*t, we leave in 10 days

OK, Christmas has kinda leapt up on us!  We leave to go have xmas at Eldest's place in 10 days!!!! How did that happen?????

Fortunately I've been thinking about this quite a bit already, so I have a fair idea in general of what I'm getting for folks, and Eldest's two room mates are going to be there to expand the festive fun, and substantially lower the average age of the event!  Should be a blast, honestly, and at six, we'll have enough people that Xmas dinner will be maybe more than a chicken.  We'll see.

Sitting here, planning what to buy and where to buy it!  We're taking trains and ferries to get to the party, so we're carrying just a knapsack each as we'll also have a slightly skittish dog with us.  A bunch will be bought there, and gifts must be small or edible!!!! 

I adore Christmas, I have to confess, pretty excited.  Keen to cook too, this year, feeling motivated!

Walking the dog

Stella Petronella and we are thoroughly settled in, I'd say.  Obviously over time it will all evolve, but we're all pretty comfy and we have our routines in place!  (Good thing, cause we're about to start travelling with her a LOT!)

But, there is one thing that we are still really really working hard on, and that's walking on a leash.  She's bigger and heavier than Chuck was, about 5 kilos more and is seriously strong.  When she wants to she pulls like a monster.  Truly, it's like having a rope around a horse. My back does not love this.  It goes out from time to time, and I try hard to do all sorts of exercises and sleep right etc etc etc to avoid it springing out on me, but Her Stella-ness if she's in a real mood, can do it to me.  So, she absolutely must learn to walk well on a leash.

My sister in law came to visit and as I've said before gave us the miracle tools to teach this to Stella, now it is mostly persistence, and she has come a million miles and can walk for quite long periods of time with the leash actually loose, no tension at all.  This is my goal for 100% of the time. 

We're not there yet. 

This morning was pretty horrible.  NOTHING like when we got her and she pulled like an absolute train All. The. Time, but still, she was towing me around.  The biggest difficulty was that it was Saturday morning, everyone was out walking their dogs and she wanted to go into town rather than over to the off leash park in the next town. 

Now, she is seriously fascinated by other dogs and wants to watch them, smell them and go up to every single one of them.  So every time we see a dog, or cat, she starts to pull.  We're working on this, but it's a battle.  I may get her to sit instead, but eventually she needs to learn to not drag us over towards whatever she sees.

By the time we got back from our walk this morning, we were both a little grim around the edges, it had been a trying time.  This afternoon went soooooo much better!!!!!  So much better.  We went into town even and it wasn't tooooo bad!  Not so many dogs out, which definitely helped.  Over Xmas the kids will have to be equally consistent with her, I'll have to show them how, cause she simple has got to learn this, or I can't walk her.

Tomorrow?  We're going to the off leash park.  No questions asked.  She's off leash for 90% of a three hour walk, and we need a little joy after the hassle of today.

It's all learning, but sometimes learning is more fun that others. 

ooops! Sinterklaas

Well, you make your plans!

We had the day all laid out, had an idea of what we were going to do...and it mostly went according to our plan, except the last little bit!  I ran a little late finishing some work for the uni, and we left the boat at around 4.30.  No biggie, stores close around 6ish, and the grocery store later still, around 9.

We get up to the hardware store at 5:15. Closed up tight as a drum with a note on the door.  OK, well.  As we walk through town, a lot more stores are closed.  We start to wonder, is it a holiday or something?  We get to the cheese shop, closed.  Hmmm, what day is it?  Dec 5th?

Jeez, it's the day all the little dutch kids put out their clogs for Santa (sinterklaas) to put presents in!  Ah haa!  How did we forget!!

It's one of the wild things about living in another country, you just don't instinctively know when the holidays are!  Even after all the years we were in Catalunya there were some that came as a surprise every year.

So, happy sinterklass to all the Dutch kids, hope you were good, cause apparently if you weren't he'll put you in a sack and take you back to Spain to teach you to be good.  (echos of slavery????? though honestly, the weather's better there, so you know, it wouldn't be all bad!)

And, continuing with the food theme, cooking!

I've suddenly found myself collecting recipes to cook at Xmas when we're all together!  I saw a mention of Shaker Lemon pie, which sounded amazing, it uses two whole unpeeled lemons as the filling!!!!  Plus a lesson for making almond torrons, very simply....then I mentioned that the to man and he said he'd like beer nuts, well, while looking for that recipe I came across about 6 different seasoned nut recipes!!!

OH my.

Let's hope this holds on, we're staying with eldest for 10 days and we'll have to do something to keep them from getting totally sick of seeing our faces before we go!

I'll post if I make something other than Xmas dinner.

Cookies!!!

One of the lovely traditions we've created living on the boat is a cookie with tea (or coffee, or a decaf mocha or even miso soup, as the case may be) in the afternoon!  Hello Peggy!!!!

That of course means that we have to buy cookies, baking them is not a reasonably option on the boat. We've had a bunch of Dutch cookies, particularly the windmill cookies that I remember the dutch kids bringing from school.  They're fine, but I do think they taste slightly undercooked. Plus, they're called 'speculaas' which honestly sounds like a gynocological instrument to me. 

Don't get me wrong, I'll happily eat them, but variety is good too.  Plus there is the packaging, some of the cookies here are so heavily packaged I cannot bring myself to buy them.  Ikea however, famous for their minimal packaging, makes really good cookies.  Honest to goodness, those suckers are delicious.  So today was the day, got on my bike and made the excursion to Ikea for cookies.  10k each way, and well worth the ride.

Got ginger snaps and oatmeal chocolate.  Mmmmmmmmm

Bring on tea time!!!

Reading in a muddle.

How many books do you read at once?

Me?  One at a time.  I read quickly, but I read one book, finish it and go onto the next one.  The man, no, he reads a lot of books at once, at least three of them on the go at any given moment.  Also, he doesn't read as quickly as I do (and remembers much more of what he reads.  Ho hum.)

Right now though I'm reading seven (7!!) at the same time.  I'm not really sure why.  I think a slight dissatisfaction with all of them, so I get irritated and then read something else.  One of them was really good to start with, but has faded.  Another is a weird premise and rather grim, but well written, another not very well written, but part of a series I'm somewhat invested in, so I persist.  Another is great, but a little violent for late at night.  Yet another is a series of essays, fascinating, but not meant for steady reading through, more like snacking.  One looked really promising, but is turning out to be too deeply in the (frankly uniteresting) weeds, and on and on and on.

I'm finding it uncomfortable.  I wish I could find one to settle on and see it through.

to cabbage head or not to cabbage head

Take a moment to have a look at that image.  It's pretty weird.

Honestly!

To me what is weirdest is how calm everyone is!!!!

Well,  I saw this image at a castle near where we're staying, and did a little homework on it.  It's apparently to do with a 16th century Dutch legend about the Baker of Eeklo.  There's a whole write up about it at this site  if you want to really dig into it, but basically if you aren't happy with your head from some reason, you can go to this baker, they'll chop it off for you replacing it with a cabbage as a temporary measure, then they'll kneed it a bit, maybe a glaze and a rebaking and put it back on for you!  According to the story, though I don't think it shows in the painting, sometimes the reworking doesn't go well, and you just have to live with a misshapen head.

Pretty weird.  Honestly.

Oddly, if you click over to the site there is quite an adorable dog looking out at us looking rather amused at the foibles of the humans.  He's sitting next to the basket of heads in the foreground.  Sadly, in this version, he's missing.

See?  There he is from the other page. 

Off leash

Well, well, well...

Today was a lovely day indeed!!!

I managed to throw my back out about two and a half weeks ago, much assisted by Stella Petronella.  We had gone for a lovely long walk, and were almost back when the man ran up behind us at the end of his run!  Stella was delighted to see him, and delighted to run on with him, which wasn't the idea.  So I called her back, put her on leash and the man headed off again.

Have you ever seen footage of sport fishermen with a tuna on the line leaping the tearing, and tail walking?  Yeah.  Like that.

For 20 minutes.

I had to sit down after the first few horrific jolts, and we sat there for 20 minutes, waiting for her to call down enough for us to go on.  All the while, my back was tightening up.  Ho hum.  Once she settled enough we could walk on with her off leash, cause she pulled hard at the best of times and like a train at the not so good.  Not something I wanted to deal with.  I messaged the man and he came and met us for the last section of the walk where she'd have to be on leash.

Surprisingly my back wasn't too bad after  I lay down for a bit, and so I took her into town that afternoon and she pulled like an absolute tank. The. Entire. Time.  Got home fine, but after I sat down for a bit I was all seized up.  Ibuprofen and a walking stick for a few days.  Blessedly I got better pretty quick!  Then Stella got spayed, so she wasn't doing any serious walking at all, what with stitches and then not being allowed off leash, running or jumping so she could heal.

As a bonus though, my sister in law came to stay for four days and we had a lovely time visiting Amsterdam and the Netherlands!  The real gift though is that she has a new dog and has been to doggie school and she got us and Stella trained in the course of about a day and a half so that she doesn't pull on the leash!!! (much)  (most of the time)

It has been less than a week, but she will walk, with no tension at all on the leash, for long stretches, and the tension on the leash when it is there is light, though I am aiming for none as the norm.  This alters when there is another dog around, (utterly captivating!!!) but we're getting there.

Friday she got her stitches out, and today, bliss, she and I headed out for a lovely long walk, about 2.5 hours, most of it off leash and she was pretty good while she was on leash too.

Bliss - and many many thanks to my sister in law.

My favourite colour

I thought for years that my favourite colour was yellow!  I think it's lovely, bright, cheery, sunshine-y (if you'll allow me that half word).  Then my kids made me realise that I was wrong.  We were in a gallery, and I rounded the corner into a new room and exclaimed spontaneously, "Oh, isn't that painting lovely!!!!"  One of them turned to me and said, with a slightly weary tone, "Of course you love it mom, it's blue." 

....pause.....

Well that was a shocker.  Really? Do I do that?  Then again, I adored being on the boat in the Bahamas and let me tell you, there, between the sea and the sky, let's hope you like blue!!

So I started looking out for myself doing that, and yep, they're right.  If I complement someone on a shirt or a sweater, it's usually a lovely shade of bright blue.  Strangely, I wear very little blue myself.  Wonder what that's all about.

Anyway, this is all to say that I did it again today, rounded a corner in the Rijksmuseum which I was visiting with my delightful sister-in-law and gasped aloud, "Now that is lovely!"   Allow me to show you.

 

I apologize for the blurry photo, and more so to the artist whose name I didn't write down, but it was very large, very bright and very very blue!  

Lovely.

ps.  We also saw an exhibit called Velazquez and Rembrandt.  Rembrandt...oh my, I adore every single thing he's ever painting or etched or drawn.  There is a sense of kindness to his work, a reverence for the people and animals and a feeling of caring.  Velazquez still leaves me a little cold.  

Rembrandt's son Titus

Vermeer, famous for his paintings of young women in window sills, actually paints the most astonishing landscapes, we saw one in The Hague, and there was another today.  They are truly amazing.

Sadly slightly cropped by the phone format.

And then there was this.  Now, still life paintings, meh.  But this?

Honest to goodness, it just glows.

All the above much more amazing in real life, but still!!!

 

Well, that was a ride

One day you're frantically running around The Hague trying to UPS your kids birth certificate to Canada and then before you can have lunch, you're in a rental car driving to Italy.  Sometimes life takes a hard turn.  Though it took a harder turn for my sister in law who'd been in Italy on a cycling trip and got hit by a car, hence our hurried departure.

I'd gotten a general hey how are you message from her while I was running aound the Hague trying to express post youngest's birth certificate to Canada so they could get home, long story but it basically involved an expiring passport and the airline wouldn't let her board.

I swiped the friendly message away as I was focused on the task at hand.  Once on the train back to the boat, I messaged the man who told me about the accident and the fact that she always in hospital flat on her back, not able to even sit up for any reason at all and about to be discharged to a hotel room.  Could we come and help
  Texted and googled the entire way back, chatted with the man when I got there, rented a car for 3 hrs from then and called to find a place to leave the boat.  Wham blam t'ha k you ma'am, and we were off to the races. Mad packing, the only things we forgot were the wall plugs for the phone cables and nail clippers.  Not too bad all told.

We were going to drive it straight, but SIL said she had a friend staying with her overnight anf that the rest of the crew were leaving the next evening so we stopped for the night on the way down.  Italy was Italy, wonderful and beautiful and gorgeous food. And warm.  Mostly we nursed and bought food and cooked and ran errands, but as SiL improved we managed a few outings, Ravena was astonishing, glass bead mosaics dating back forever

#

Walks in the hills and along the coast, visiting Sant Marino (disappointing) some excellent meals at the hotel, oh, the hotel, you could never ever ever find kinder more helpful people.  Ever anywhere.  Astonishing. If you're ever in the area, nstay at Hotel Fedora in Riccione, especially if you like cycling.

Eventually we all headed home, we took SIL to the airport and got her in a wheelchair and on a flight, then we took 3 days to get home.  Stopping in Reggio Emilia, Neuchâtel to learn about the pile dwellers from thousands of years ago, and Strasburg.

Now we're back on the boat in a beautiful quiet stretch of river eating our way through the last of the Italian groceries and getting psyched for going to TO in a couple of weeks.

Wow.  It was quite a ride.