Busy, busy, busy

On Saturday, we went to an air force base nearby for their, er, open house. Well, that's what they call it. Okay, it translates exactly as "open days" but that makes no sense at all, translated. Thus: the Royal Dutch Air Force Open House.

Douwe and Daan had enough fun looking up at the planes and helicopters while standing in the parking lot nearby to last them a month; however, we drove there, might as well go in.

They had, I must say, several really excellently planned aspects of crowd control; and at least one very badly planned one. There was a lot of water everywhere, whch was good. There were a lot of first aid units available for people who did not drink the aforementioned and then walked several kilometers on an air force base in the beating hot sun where there is 1) absolutely no air conditioning; and 2) no shade anywhere except in the hangars which strongly resemble really big ovens. (The kids were thrilled each time -- "Look mom, an ambulance!" I think they thought it was part of the show.) * They had people in what I believe were marine uniforms stationed at the entrance with -- of all things-- huge bottles of sunscreen which they glopped into the hand of every person associated with a child and instructed them firmly to put it on the child. There is something to be said for having a really large uniformed person around to dispense the suncreen. I got Absolutely No backtalk about the sunscreen from my sons. Which is unusual. Maybe I should hire a retired marine to come round when we are going out.

Hey, Ernest was Air Force, now that I think of it. I wonder if his uniform still fits. Hmmm.

And they had these little (actually, they were pretty big) stickers which were put on the front or back of every child (depending on the tendency of the wearer to pull it off and throw it away) with the child's first name and the mobile number of the associated adult, which I thought was clever.

Yes, actually, both my kids had them on their backs between the shoulder blades, why do you ask?

Douwe looked at all the exhibits (which were in the hangars) but the only one that really captured his attention was -- are you ready for this? -- the display by the people who do forensics on crashes and other aviation mishaps. Well, the video of exploding helicopters and midair airplane collisions and various airborne vehicles suddenly becoming little balls of flame no doubt had something to do with it. However, he asked me what those people in the video were doing, so I told him they were trying to find out why the crash happened, and they could tell by looking at the pieces (the display thoughtfully included a lot of various pieces of formerly airborne machinery in various states of investigation). He asked how that could be. So we went through the displayed bits and pieces and I talked about them. He said, "It's a puzzle,". I agreed it was like a really big puzzle.

So for a short time he decided that he did not want to be a pilot, he wanted to do puzzles when he grew up. Though after Ernest took him in the F-16 flight simulator, he was back to being a pilot.

Daan enjoyed the mock Battle of Britain quite well, and disliked the F-16s because they make too much noise. He wanted to know what the bombs were, because they were not fireworks, and I told him that sometimes you just need to blow something up, and when you do, then you use a bomb. This seemed to satisfy him, though it did earn me rather a lot of bombing in the tub since then.

The Apache Helicopter stunt team (which has a real name and is a fighting unit, but I cannot remember it now) is really amazing and they left the rest in the shade. The formation flying in the jets and the stunt flying was pretty cool; but what can I tell you, it wasn't the Blue Angels. (lol) .

Today I got to do my penace for not paying attention to the sun; I put on sunscreen, but only once all day. My kids, well, I was very busy greasing them up, so they are just fine. I however, am a lovely red on my arms and, since it's Father's Day, we went sailing. So I got to spend a 90 degree day with long sleeves on to cover my already burnt arms.

I'll remember the sunscreen next time.

*Apropos, I would like to point out that my children were wearing sweaters to school this past week. Then it was 30 degrees this weekend, which works out in the 90s if I am doing the math properly. Next week: snow. Kidding.

This picture has not ben rotated

The damned thing really can fly upside down.  It is a very strange thing to see a helicopter fly upside down.

The Prodigal

Last week, I sent some email to some folks stateside and suggested that I had some free time should they have anything they would like for me to do. I should have known better.

Ernest, who goes where the wild goose goes, has at least for the moment had enough of migration and has come home from Brazil. Just before he left for Brazil, he sold his apartment. He did not buy another one, because he was after all going to Brazil. So the wild goose is apparently nesting for some period of time right here in Brabant. In this very house, in fact. In the room which used to be the room where the computer is.

Since the only time I have to work without sixty million interruptions from my offspring is in fact between 10 pm and 2 am, this was on that front a touch awkward. erahem.

We have no network at home despite having a gracious plenty of computers and the only DSL hookup is in that room. A network is of course the obvious solution; however, this would require some effort from Dearly Beloved who is at this moment after all working two jobs and is not especially in the mood for domestic requests. And anyway despite being a real wizard at it, he hates, hates, hates doing all things related to networks.

The obvious place for the computer was in fact on the other side of the wall with the DSL hookup. Unhappily, that space was occupied by Daan's bed. The obvious place to move Daan's bed was next to the cabinet with the kids' clothes; unhapily this space was occupied by a large empty fish tank big enough for Douwe and Daan to lie down in together (please do not ask me how I am certain of this). And though I have not studied physics in any depth, I am nevertheless familiar with the notion about two objects and the same space at the same time. I am also familiar with the Doctrine of the Small Female Person, to wit: when you need something large moved, mention it in a helpless way to the nearest large bearer of the Y chromosome, then go make tea or something.

Did I mention that Dearly Beloved is presently working two jobs, just finished completely redoing the cellar, and is Not In The Mood for.... surely I did.

Well, the problem was solved quite handily when I brought to Ernests' attention that I really needed to work but could not and added the bonus that if the computer were not in that room, I would not need to be tracking in and out of there several times a day.

So Ernest moved the DSL line and the computer and the fish tank (which is now on its side on the roof and has miraculously transformed into my new cold frame, hot damn can't wait for Fall lettuce) and Daan's bed. Which was very nice of him.

Now I have to go to the Ikea and buy chests of drawers for the kids and move all the book shelves and.... why? Because once you start making changes, it's like rabbits in a warm hutch, they just start multiplying. Hope I can get it all done before July. Oh, yeah, and my work, too.

erahem.

Just another meme

A bow to Jozet, who tagged me on this one.

1. Estimate the total number of books you've owned in your life.

Oh. My. God. Do I have to count the collections of Golden Age Science Fiction and of Erotica which I sold after I got out of college and just before law school respectively because I needed the money? The dirty books made me more money than the science fiction, it must be said.

Do I count jointly owned books? All my children's books were jointly owned and all my books now are jointly owned. My children now own a fair number of my children's books, come to think of it.

And all the books I trashed reading them in the tub and writing in the margins? And the ones I bought and then returned to the Book Nook a week later to trade in on new ones? Do I count the ones I never read or started and tossed?

The stripped copies I used to get by the box from my pals who worked at the bookstore?

In my life? Oh dear.

I have been alive and literate, let's see, on the order of 2 thousand weeks as I figure it.

I want to say a million, since the number of books I have owned seems to me to rival the number of stars in the sky or grains of sand on a beach. Why I have not had to build a whole new house to accommodate them I have no idea. I surely could build a house out of them, should the End Times be closer than we had thought.

But realistically, I would call it about 20,000.

2. What's the last book you bought?

For myself? Or for anybody?

For myself, I recently bought "Q" which is pretty good but slow going; and "The Birth of Venus" which is a nice historical fiction bit of fluff. I also stole a biography of Rasputin from my father when we were in the States.

I bought "The Visitor" and "The DaVinci Code" for Dearly Beloved, the latter because he wanted to read it in English.

Okay, I did not buy "the DaVinci Code", I stole it from my mother. Er, I mean, I mistakenly put it in my suitcase and was aghast to discover it when we got back to Holland, yeah.

Well, I am bringing it back in July, geez.

3. What's the last book you read?

I am now rereading the Rasputin biography and last night I reread the Mists of Avalon becasue I was not up to any nonfiction. I do a lot of rereading these days, as my options for English language books are limited.

4. List 5 books that mean a lot to you.

They all do, I am a reading Don Juan, eternally in love with whatever I am reading at the moment. (Well, as long as we are on the subject of erotica, I suppose a reading Juliette, as I am not seducer but seduced....).

I enjoy reading the side of a box of cornflakes as much as the most scintillating prose, though the cornflakes rarely give me anything to talk about afterwards so I rarely mention them. But I found out which ones I really wanted to keep when we moved and I had to get rid of a lot of stuff. That's when you find out what you cannot live without -- when you have to pay to have it shipped halfway around the world.

1) My OED. I am still limping along with the two volume condensed and will someday own the edition which takes up an entire bookshelf -- is it 12 volumes now? But I love my OED and its little magnifying glass. I also love my Yale Shakespeare especially since I got it at the Book Nook for nearly nothing.

2) My copy of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". I love Uncle Bob, even if he only has three male characters and two female characters which he recycles endlessly. And the female characters all have huge tits (except one) and are eternally beautiful and have IQs over 200 and are improbably even tempered and submissive. I don't care, I love Uncle Bob anyway.

3) All my Ted Sturgeon. I don't care if he's not fashionable.

4) "The Cornucopia" a collection of recepts and cooking lore from 1390 to 1899.

5) "The Phantom Toolbooth" and "Three Men in a Boat" come in as a tie for fifth.

My spouse could no doubt add to this list should he read it, he probably remembers which books I agonized over and which ones I tossed without a qualm better than I do. I generally block out traumatic experiences.

6. Tag 5 people!

Sorry, Joze, I don't pass on forwards, I am the end station of all chain letters, electronic and otherwise, and I don't tag people for memes.

Though I would pay large sums to find out sue's answers to these, and actually also my spouse's answers -- but he doesn't even have a blog.

School Pictures

Below you will see Daan's school pictures. There is also a class photo but I cannot get it to scan properly -- imagine a regular preschol class photo with all the kids and teachers, don't they all look pretty much the same? Daan is very clearly saying "cheese" in that one.

In any event, let me know which ones you want and in what sizes, those of you related to me, I have to order by Monday.

Number 3

Number 2

Number one

Bilingual Marginalia

I now know why Douwe often answers the question "How are you?" with the name of the person speaking to him; and often answers "How was school?" with the name of his teacher that day or the names of the children who were there or sometimes the names of the children who were not there.

It has bothered me a bit now and again, it seems so odd for him to answer a completely different question. I have chalked it up to the language disorder. Well, It was a problem with auditory processing, I think. But, um, somebody else's.

In Dutch, the question is, "Hoe is het met jouw?" (How is it with you) or "Hoe was het op school?". (How was it at school). The first word is pronounced "Hoo".

Did you get it yet? I didn't, for a very long time.

Today he was pretending to talk on the phone with his father. I asked him in Dutch "How is it with your father?"

He said in english, "No one, but he wants me to come,".

So I asked him what he meant. He said, "No on eis with papa, so he wants me,".

Ah. He hears the English word which is pronounced the same way when we ask that question: "Who is it with Papa?". "Who is it with you?" "Who was it at school?"

How did I miss that for so long?

Another one?

No, mom, I have a ten year IUD for which choice (which I made at the age of 37) I was the butt of much teasing amoung my friends, remember? It was an easy choice, actually. Considering both my mother and my grandmother had more than 2 decade age spreads between their oldest and youngest children; and that neither started having children especially early; and that neither had the benefit of fertility drugs, well. I can do simple math. So, no, not another child.

Would you believe another bird?

You know, my spouse does not even look like St. Francis af Assisi and probably could not tell a statue of St. Francis from a Bologna sandwich. Though he can almost certainly find either Assisi or Bologna on a map as he is very good at geography He is also apparently very good at finding lost little birds.

It isn't fair; he wasn't the little boy who brought home various waifs and strays and nursed them back to health. That was Ernest. Dearly Beloved was the little boy with the dead lizard in his pocket because he stuck it in there and forgot all about it until washday. So what's up with the birds?

The latest addition to our little pensione is a very young jackdaw which is, for those of you in the South, very much like a crow or a magpie. It is in short the anti Noah (Noah being the dove he nursed back to health and released last year). A jackdaw is black with a grey head. They eat, it turns out, primarily meat. It certainly has a beak for eating meat -- one of the websites I was looking at warns that they like shiny things and that you should be careful about your eyes for this reason, woo hoo.

The children have named it Grijsje, which means little grey in Dutch. Well, it's the grey equivalent of naming it Blackie -- Grey-ey doesn't flow right off the fingers or the tongue, does it? Paul wants to call it Loki for the Norse god of chaos. He is aware, as it is sort of a hobby of his, that it was actually Odin who had the two ravens. But he points out that they had really impronounceable names, even for a Dutch person. Apparently Mozart had a pet jackdaw and Paul will settle for naming his bird whatever Mozart named his, if I can find out what it was.

The bird has expressed no opinion.

Did I mention upon whom it has devolved to find out what this thing is supposed to eat and feed it and clean its cage and make sure it is regularly handled and cared for and so on?

Grumble, grumble. I after all have nothing else I need to do.

Busseldag

Today is Bussel-day. Didn't you see it in your calendar?

The Bussel, you see, is the name of a community theater here in town. And Douwe's school is putting on its annual school play. Douwe's class, it appears, will be playing the kabouters, which are gnomes. They are to sing a little song, which Douwe has practiced so often that Daan knows it, too. They are apparently to tumble around at the feet of some other people at some point, as he has been practicing that, also.

Beyond what he does at home, I have no real idea what the play is about or what the kids are supposed to do as this has not been vouchsafed to the parents. We are to be surprised it seems. He is supposed to wear blue jeans, which annoys him very much as kabouters do not wear blue jeans. I have been instructed to put him in the blue jeans over lunch; his teacher has apparently been made aware of his annoyance. Unhappily, I have no idea why the kabouters have to wear blue jeans so I canot explain it. This will make costuming more difficult.

Oh, and after that they will apparently go offstage and be attacked by a large dragon which Douwe will try to fend off long enough for them all to get into the hot air balloon which will evidently be waiting and they will all fly away. But he is not at all sure that he will be able to manage it and it is possible the dragon will eat one or two of them. (Yes, I do think he made that part up, actually.)

Given the imagery of his imaginings, I do hope that this play does not feature a certain dragon slayer's terrified bolting from the stage. We shall see.

Here is my birthday present

This is the view from my window. Immediately to the right and outside the frame is a door which opens onto the roof.

And these are my other birthday presents

And this is the reason

That I have not put a table and chairs up there, and there is a really very sound deadbolt lock with a key on the door. Which key is hidden in an entirely different room. That is, this is the view of Nel's lovely garden from my lovely garden. Please note the complete absence of any kind of barrier preventing small boys from dropping from one to the other, inadvertently or otherwise.

*shudder* It will remain a garden of my own for as long as I can manage, or at least until they are old enough to shinny down the drain pipe.

Happy Birthday

Did you know that my beautiful sister shares a birthday with John Wayne and Lenny Kravitz and Hank Williams, Junior? But she is far too young to know who Lenny Kravitz is and is now opening a new window and Googling it.

Her horoscope for today is: Opportunities for friendship, pleasant associations, and enjoyable social interactions occur now. Personal relationships are harmonious and rewarding. Also, financial transactions go smoothly for you and material benefits are possible at this time.

This is the horoscope for Cancer. I know she is technically a Gemini, but due to an unfortunately timed golf tournament she is unquestionably a Cancer despite having been yanked into the world most rudely and too soon.

If she wants to know what her horoscope is not (that is the one for Gemini) she can look it up herself; I know the real deal. I am, after all, and will always be her Big Sister. And if your Big Sister doesn't tell you where it's at, who will?

Happy Birthday, Sistah Thang.

Obscurity

It occurred to me recently that nearly everything I know something about or find interesting is obsscure as hell. I suppose I ought to have noticed this sooner. But I didn't so here we are.

Since one of the obscure things I know something about is secret codes and so on, I also know that there is a principle called security by obscurity which is the opposite of full disclosure. The idea is that the exploitable weaknesses in your system ought also to be hidden; part of your code can be the fact that nobody knows where the message is irrespective of where the key is. Perhaps I should found a school of psychology on the notion of obscurity.

I know a great deal about fairy tales and myths and legends. But what I know about them is where they came from and how they travelled and how we figure out what purpose they serve. Did you know that "Ring Around a Rosy" has absolutely not one single thing to do with the Black Plague or with death and was almost certainly written in the 1800s as part of a party game for little girls?

I could, as most of you know, go on and on. Well, actually, I can't as I have to go get Douwe from school and find out what Daan is screaming about. It's his "so happy to be alive" scream, so there's no hurry. But it was sort of a strange thing to realize.

Love

My kids went through my still unpacked suitcases yesterday like the little Vandals they are, and discovered the Playmobil toys which were concealed by all that other stuff. I bought them almost two years ago now, because there was a big sale and Playmobil never ever goes on sale. I had some thought of holding out for An Occasion, but once they saw them that was sort of it.

There was an airplane and a little grocery store and a little bathroom. Yes, the bathroom seems weird, but I was right to buy it because Daan was fascinated with it. The Playmobil guy took about seven showers that day.

Douwe pounced on the airplane, and many trips have been taken to America in the past 24 hours. Also to space, as he cannot decide whether to be an astronaut or a pilot when he grows up. The pilot of the plane we took home, who shoed the kids around the cockpit, pointed out that to become an astronaut one must first be a pilot. So it is not a question of choice -- I wondered if he had difficulty making up his mind, too, when he was younger. He certainly knew a lot about it.

Douwe loves the airplane, he washed it gently at bathtime and dried it carefully and tucked it up under the covers and sang it a song and kissed it goodnight. I found this rather odd, really.

Then I remembered how my father is about his red Corvette. And decided that there are some things that are enduring.

Time and more time

We are talking about time at my house. I have started up a weekly calendar with the nifty magnet thingies we got when we were home. At this moment, our calendar shows a week at a time and the weather today.

The weather magnet got changed three times today, from "cloudy" in the morning to "windy" at lunchtime and "sunny" in the afternoon. May have to rethink that weather thing; there have been days when we would have to use all five options and make some more as well. How many ways can you say "overcast and threatening to rain" in English? In Dutch there are quite a few.

The magnet for "happy birthday" caused quite a stir this morning; I had to explain to Daan again (and again) that when it is someone else's birthday it is not necessarily his birthday, too. Though I finally sang "Happy Birthday" to him at his insistence after he sang it to me. Douwe took me out to the petting zoo and then into town for french fries and a coke after school for my birthday. He even paid for it, though I had to give him the money first.

Well, I suppose I take him places I like for his birthday, too, so we are even. But I was quite surprised; he never did that before. I didn't actually get that it was for my birthday until he said so this evening at bedtime. I figured he just wanted french fries today.

I was the recipient of a rooftop garden for my birthday; I can tell that Nel picked out all the flowers because they were all blue and purple. Conversely, I can tell that Douwe picked out some of the flowers for Nel's garden because they are most decidedly not blue and purple; they are blazing red and yellow and orange. The herbs I picked out myself last week. Dearly Beloved made me two boxes to start the Square Foot Gardening project; only this being Europe it will have to be half meter gardening. I will post some more pictures tomorrow when I get everything into dirt -- the flowers are still in the post they came in. I also have to transplant my strawberries already as they are setting fruit and I think they don't have enough dirt to support his massive growth pattern. In any event, they have to be watered something like twice a day if it doesn't rain.

I also am now the proud owner of a stephanotis plant in a pot and Nel even remembered that I had expressed some small desire to try orchids. So she bought me a smallish version of the orchid we had for our wedding lo these many moons ago.

My sister Jennifer the Younger got her card here on exactly the right day, a feat of timing which may never again be surpassed. Well done. My sister Jennifer the elder bypassed the problem and sent me two e-cards, guaranteed to get there on the right day barring server incidents. (The kids seriously dig the airplane one).

Since the calendar is a hit we are proceeding on the time front with a little kit about time which I picked up in the States. It has a book which covers the notions of time -- seasons, months, and so on -- and has little things you can build and do to do with time. It starts with making your own sundial and progresses to making your own clock, then learning how to tell time from the clock. Douwe took one look at the box and decided we are making the clock tomorrow; the sundial has no moving parts you see.

It lacks a miniature working model of stonehenge to track the solstices and equinoxes, though, bummer. But it seems to have everything else.

However, I expect my children will discard all that twaddle about the cycles of the seasons and phases of the moon and so on and go straight for the real point -- the part that moves and does stuff and can be taken apart is fun, no way around it.

Despite new security rules....