This strange life of mine

Just really, really, very busy with my master's thesis which is due in, like a month and I haven't even got the first draft finished. Yay me!

Yes dad, I know I'm a big old fatty who prefers to sit behind her computer and write or knit instead of excercise or who prefers to nom on a bit of chocolate instead of gnaw her way through a carrot.

Doesn't mean that it's right to be oh-so-frickin'-funny and joke that maybe I should "go to the gym" when I complain that my clothes don't fit. Clothes that I bought six years ago and rip at the elbows when I bend my arm because *gasp* I have grown so my arm have grown.

Doesn't mean that you should get so god damned offended when I storm out either and yell that if I can't take a joke I'm no allowed to make them either.

Oh and dad? That gut of yours isn't muscle.

Because all the men I know in real life are either idiots, related to me or gay or, in some cases, a combination of these. Ye gods, I can't imagine what it would be like to be straight in these circumstances.

Enemy: mosquito.

Damages: covered in itchy bumps.

This means, of course, war. It's a crafty thing and it knows how to hide and wait until I've gone to bed which means I have to be crafty too in choosing my weapon.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I present my weapon. Lemon Balm. Biological warfare in the most basic sense of the word.

Wrong tense. I went to the theatre yesterday and it managed to set of four major spaz-triggers in two hours. Wheeee! Thank goodness that I picked up a new ball of yarn for socks so I had something to do and keep me just this side of a full-on panic attack. Before you ask, no, I was not voluntarily there. I was there because they were putting on a play my teacher thought the class had to see.

The whole thing played with my fear of being at a wrong place, being somewhere new and unfamiliar, lots of shouting (on stage) and they suddenly dropped this whole bunch of barrels from quite a height on the stage. I think that the last was supposed to signify things falling apart or something. I just know that it scared the living daylights out of me every time they did it.

It's very annoying to spend several hours on the verge-but-not-quite-over of a panic attack. Not that I like panic attacks, but it's like being in a small space with a huge piano dangling over your head. You're just waiting for it to fall.

I needed a measurement. To be precise, I needed to know how big my sister's head is all around (57 cm, by the way) to knit up the leftover yarn into a hat to give with her gift for her birthday. I don't think anyone routinely has a list of head circumferences on hand.

Hmmm. Problem.

I heard a question from her room. Did I have any fun books to read? I glanced at my rather meagre Discworld collection. Why yes, yes I did. I grabbed one Discworld and Sex and the Single Vampire (which she refuses to read for reasons beyond my understanding) and the tapemeasure, skedaddled of to sister dearest and gave her the books, or book because she refused to as much as touch Sex and the Single Vampire. While she looked the book over, I took out my tapemeasure and struck.

Now it either says something about my sister or how she thinks of me because she sat perfectly still. Still as in 'Oh god if I don't move maybe the grizzlybear on the other side of the tree won't see me' still.

"Heh," I said, "your head is 57 centimeters around."

"Why did you need to know that?" she asked.

I rolled up my tapemeasure, gave her one grave look and answered, "You don't want to know."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I got away with measuring my sister's head without betraying my intent.



Another story all together:

I walked back from the bus stop to my home. It was still light out. Some children were playing on the street and among them this little three year old. He turned around and looked straight at me. The street behind me was empty. The boy opened his mouth, pointed at me and, guess what he squealed? "Mommy!"

It didn't help that the boy's father burst out laughing while I stood there, gaping like the proverbial fish on dry land. A mother, I am most definitely not.

My mother isn't exactly the brightest bulb around. This is a well known and accepted fact, even by herself. She has moments of stupidity which go unparalleled. For example, quite some years ago during winter when there was a literal layer of ice covering the roads and she had to go out and walk the dog my dad and I told her to pull socks over her shoes before going out.

She went out, came back and told us she was never doing that again because it was freezing cold. Guess what? She forgot that there was supposed to be a shoe in between the two socks.

I love her all the same, even though she pulls stunts the average four-year-old would consider too stupid to think of.

Thing One

Lights in bus: *go out*
Bus driver: Oops?


Thing Two

Bus driver: Okay, am I supposed to take a left or right here?



In other words: today's commute was... an experience.

There is no justifiable reason for a spider to be bigger than the palm of my hand. Even less so for a spider that is bigger than the palm of my hand to be in my house.


p.s.: yes Rex, I saw you hiding behind the couch from the Big Bad Spider. Scaredy-dog.

So the government fell. Again. I've watched a few of the debates going on and it was confusing enough for me, let alone people who aren't familiar with the multiple party system. The general idea is, I think, whether or not the Dutch should stay in Uruzgan. The PvdA (Partij van de Arbeid = Dutch Labour Party) says 'hell no' while the CDA (Christen Democratsh Appèl = Christian Democratic Appeal) says 'oh I don't know let's see'.

They actually spent half an hour debating the definition of the word premature. Ask a teenage boy, they'll know!

Then one of the Ministers pretty much called the other a liar and... yeah. Things went down hill fast from there. I don't know what good it will do. At worst we'll get Wilders in the Senate, which I doubt because no other party will do business with him and he's kind of funny in the House of Representatives since he'll outright call people on being liars and 'loony'.