Pech

"Pech" is an excellent Dutch word, it has a satisfying sound when you say it. It means, oh, something like "bad luck". Not deadful, looming bad luck but really annoying bad luck. Like the blade on the boat breaking plus the repair guy being on vacation, which together mean we do not get to have the vacation we wanted to have. At least not when we wanted to have it. Or like this: you go out on the bike to get bread. Because it is only two minutes away you carry an open, canvas bag to put the bread in. Just as you step out of the store, the heavens open and it begins to pour buckets. * That sort of thing.

Or perhaps you have left your camera on the boat when you are going to the Breda balloon fiesta and thus will just have to remember what it looked like. And your darling husband went to get it but it is not, he assures you, there and is lost forever and probably Daan threw it off the side right after the flag. Which you find hard to believe, he wasn't gone long enough to have looked in the whole boat and you could have stuck it nearly anywhere to keep it safe.

Hopefully you, er, I did not stick it anywhere really clever or the kids'll be graduating high school before I find the stupid thing again.

*ahem*

The festival was fun, even though owing to rain there was not a balloon in sight. Well, there was one lying on its side on the ground which was for people to go into and look around. Lucky for us we were amoung the first in, as we were thereafter chased out and the attraction was closed -- too much wind making it hard to keep the thing in place.

But it was fun, sort of a very small town carnival thingie, with moon walks and ball pits and really crappy food. Dutch snack food when it is not fried involves Coca cola served warm and hot dogs served cold -- I always want to yell "Why do you think they call them HOT dogs, you moron?" but I have not yet done so. Ugly American and all. Trying not to let down the Side.

And furthermore they serve hot dogs (when bread is incuded at all, some places you are treated to a room temperature hot dog wrapped in a napkin and otherwise naked) on french bread rolls, which is really a violation of the laws of nature.

In any event, without going into it, it has been a week which has caused me to wonder whether Mercury is not going retrograde -- when traditionally messages go astray, things get lost, and the poltergeists are generally on the rampage. In other woods, Pech. Just Pech.

If it does not get better I am going to have to resort to drawing a picture of the black cloud plaguing me on a piece of paper and mailing it to a fictitious address. Well, or a real one, if any of you really piss me off this week, lol.

*This actually happened, on the same day we had to come home from vacation (which is why there was no bread in the house). I actually started laughing, as the whole day was beginning to resemble a bad movie.