MERRY CHRISTMAS

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year :-)

xxx

Went shopping

I went shopping with a friend and her 6-year old daughter to buy birthday presents for their younger daughter/sister.
We went to the town of Groningen. When friend goes into town, she parks her car at a free parking lot at the edge of the city center and takes a special city bus from there. I just park the car in a parking garage in town. She thinks her way is cheaper. I thought so too. Turns out that it makes no difference financially. Only her way is much more exciting.
Because wow... the bus drivers of the city buses apparently think they are Nikki Lauda.

These buses are extra long. I believe you would call them an articulated bus. With a harmonica section halfway which makes it a very flexible vehicle. About every 15 minutes one arrives at the bus stop near the parking lot, waits until it is brimful of people and then the chauffeur pushes the pedal to the metal. And I'm not kidding.
All seats were taken when friend, daughter, I and about 20 other people arrived at the bus stop, so we had to stand both on the way into town and later that afternoon on the way back to the parking lot.
'Hold on tight', friend warned me. 'The kids love this bus ride.'

When all the people who were standing in the bus were involved in quite an intimate physical relationship and we couldn't be pushed closer together, the driver closed the doors and went into Nikki Lauda-mode. He took every corner at full speed and red traffic lights were ignored for as long as possible, maybe they turn green when you're almost there... you never know, until he realized that they stayed red and hit the breaks at the very last minute. We, who were standing, clung on to each other for dear life. Six year old had fun.
'I... can... see... why... she ... likes... it', I said catching my breath, 'it's like a roller coaster ride.'

The light turned green and OFF we went again... full speed ahead. It was quite the experience. 'They all drive like mad', friend smiled. 'Hang on, left turn coming up...'

In fact... has anyone of you seen that Harry Potter movie? With the night bus? Same driver.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FArmRa092H0

Anyway... when we arrived in the city center, the driver opened the doors and we all stumbled out. Weird to feel solid ground beneath our feet.

'I'm hungry', six year old said.

'Okay, we'll grab something to eat first (it was lunchtime)', friend said. We happened to be next to a churros stand. 'Let's share a portion of churros and make a plan de campagne', I suggested. Which is what we did.

'I need to pee', six year old said.

'Okay, we'll go to V&D (large department store) and you can go to the toilet there', friend said.
The toilets in V&D are on the fifth floor, top of the building. We had to shop for things there too, so we circled down again, browsing almost all floors for birthday presents and other necessaries.
About two hours later we were back on the ground floor again.

'I'm thirsty', six year old said.

'I'm thirsty too', I said. Friend agreed. Fortunately V&D not only have a restaurant on the fourth floor, but also one on the ground floor. So we had some sandwiches and drinks and visited the perfume department to try out some nice smells.

'I need to pee', six year old said.

'She's kidding, right?', I asked friend
'Unfortunately not', friend said.
So we went up to the fifth floor for the second time. And took a straighter route down after six year old had done what she needed to do.
And then we finally saw daylight again. It was a beautiful day. And extremely busy in town. We wrestled ourselves through the masses to find the nearest toy shop to score the specified toys on the wishlist.

And then we had to take the rollercoaster bus ride again to get back to the car.
This time we had to shuffle through to the harmonica-part of the bus. Which was even more exciting. The floor turns under your feet when the bus goes around corners. Whoohoo....!!

I'll just park the car in the parking garage in the town's center next time. Thank you.

Would you like my autograph?

Finally something blogworthy happened. Can one's life be more boring than mine? Probably, but honestly, I haven't had any inspiration for a blog story all that time that I haven't been here. So if you've all collectively left me... I can't blame you.

Still, on the off-chance that someone likes to share my smile....

We have a subscription to a glossy equine magazine here in the Netherlands and in their latest edition they asked for people who'd like to write blogs for their new, yet to be launched website. They asked for people who could write about a specific goal they have with their horse, for example; if you're training for an endurance-competition, are you taking up eventing...

People who were interested had to send in a blog, 250 words max. (! very difficult, 250 words is nothing) and then they would choose from those.

So I thought about it for a couple of days and decided I'd try to become a Bit-blogger. My goal being: to train my 'home bred' foal Evie into a lovely, easy going riding horse.

Wrote a tiny 250 words-blog about it and sent it in.

And just now I got an email from Bit. I've been chosen to be one of their Bit-bloggers.

Oh no... the pressure... haha. Now I háve to write a monthly blog. Which is more than I've written for this blog in the last year. Hopefully it will trigger the writing-nerve and will give me inspiration to write here too.

I have enough to write about Evie and all things horsey, but I don't want to write only about horses here.

Oh, and the other fun thing... one of my photographs has been published in a Dutch photography magazine and they've asked if I want to send in another one of my photos that they are thinking of publishing too. No guarantee that it will be published, but it is the thought that counts.

This is actually the fourth photo they've wanted to publish, but stupid me hadn't saved the first two in a large enough size. Ah well... one learns as one goes through life.

So... would you like my autograph?
Who knows... it may be worth real money one day. When I'm a famous photographer/blogger. Chuckling... Probably not. But it's the thought that counts. I think.

To cheer you up, although it's probably an old one...

A little boy got on the bus, sat next to a man reading a book, and noticed he had his collar on backwards. The little boy asked why he wore his collar backwards.
The man, who was a priest, said, 'I am a Father..'
The little boy replied, 'My Daddy doesn't wear his collar like that.'
The priest looked up from his book and answered, ''I am the Father of many.'
The boy said, ''My Dad has 4 boys, 4 girls and two grandchildren and he doesn't wear his collar that way!'
The priest, getting impatient, said. 'I am the Father of hundreds', and went back to reading his book. 
The little boy sat quietly thinking for a while, then leaned over and said,
"Maybe you should wear a condom, and put your pants on backwards instead of your collar.."

Hi guys and girls...

Okay... so, I'm not going to say sorry again for being such a bad blogger. I'm alright, just busy with other things. Like photography for instance. Thought I'd share a photo with you from a baby-shoot (nobody got hurt) I did a couple of weeks ago.

I do hope you're all well. And yes, I'm forever making plans to write a blogpost or just post a photo, but well... for some reason it just doesn't happen.... deep sigh. I will be a better blogger... I will be a better blogger... I will be a better bl...

How to be HAPPY!, 2

Jay, over at the Depp Effect, started a new meme: How to be HAPPY!
It’s quite simple, so if you are one of those people who likes to share the little things in life that make/made you happy, and you want to spread the happiness (oh, ugh, that sounds far to sweet), join in. Here’s the brief:

‘How to be HAPPY!’ is a brand new meme. It’s about finding the little things in life which bring a smile or a glow of warmth to our hearts and souls during our daily lives. Why? Because it’s the way all these little things add up which truly determines if we are happy people, not the big stuff like a lottery win.

To enter, write a post about one thing which has made you happy in some small way recently – it could be birdsong, a favourite smell, a particularly good loaf of bread, a blue sky, anything! Then scroll to the bottom, click the Mr Linky graphic and add your blog post details to the Linky which will appear in a new window, and you’re in.

As you might have guessed, I’m in!

What made me happy recently? Well, there was this:

One particular morning in the beginning of December 2012, the light was rather beautiful. So I grabbed my camera and went outside to take some photographs and try to capture the golden sunlight that gave the fields and trees opposite our house a warm glow.

It was a Sunday morning and it was very quiet. Lovely. I took some photos of the field right opposite our house and decided to take some shots of the view a little bit further down the road. And as I walked along the field I noticed something odd.

There was a mug standing on one of the fence posts surrounding the field.

That was weird. I was pretty sure the mug didn’t belong to one of the cows, nor did it belong to me. And there was no other human being in sight. Yet… someone must have left it there. I’ll translate what it says on the mug, because that was what made me smile:

“You’re looking good and you’re getting more charming each year.”

Isn’t that nice? Someone left a very complimentary mug on a fence post. For me? Of course. Just for me (in my dreams). How very, very nice of that someone. How did he (must have been a he, and a very handsome he too) know that I’d be there, taking photos of the golden sunlight? It was quite puzzling.

I decided to take a photo of the mug. And then I took some more photos of the fields. And then one of the neighbours, who’d been walking his dog, approached. “Hi, it’s a beautiful morning isn’t it?’, he said. “Hmm, it is. And what made the morning even more beautiful’, I smiled, ‘is that someone left a very complimentary mug on one of the fence posts.’

‘Yep, that was me’, he said. ‘I often take a coffee with me when I’m walking the dog and when the mug is empty I just leave it here and pick it up on the way back. Actually, the mug belongs to my wife.’

Okay, so that did shatter my dream. But still, it did make me smile before I knew the true story of the mystery mug.

‘How to be HAPPY’

Jay, over at the Depp Effect, has started a brand new meme: ‘How to be HAPPY’.
Here’s the brief:

‘How to be HAPPY!’ is a brand new meme. It’s about finding the little things in life which bring a smile or a glow of warmth to our hearts and souls during our daily lives.  Why?  Because it’s the way all these little things add up which truly determines if we are happy people, not the big stuff like a lottery win.

To enter, write a post about one thing which has made you happy in some small way recently – it could be birdsong, a favourite smell, a particularly good loaf of bread, a blue sky, anything! Then scroll to the bottom, click the Mr Linky graphic and add your blog post details to the Linky which will appear in a new window, and you’re in.

I’m in!

Winning the lottery would probably make me happy, why not, but it isn’t very likely to happen as I never buy a lottery ticket. So my happiness is pretty much dependent on the smaller things in life that make me smile.

Here’s something that made me HAPPY:

At the funfair in Groningen last September I saw these ladies who were fanatically trying to win a cuddly toy. It was the unexpectedness of seeing the two middle-aged bums sticking out and seeing how focussed these girls were, that made me smile. I just had not expected two middle aged, practical types to really ‘go for’ something like this.
Notice the little bear, hanging above the ladies,showing us his bum too. So cute.

Well, it made me smile

And there I was…

… in the A&E department in hospital. Carefully holding my left wrist with my right hand, hoping the pain killers the GP had given me would kick in soon. I gave the ‘letter of recommendation’ the GP had also given me to the nurse behind the ‘Welcome To A&E, Make Yourself Comfortable, This May Take A While’ desk.
Actually, the sign above the desk just said ‘Reception’.

‘Please don’t drink or eat anything’, the nurse encouragingly said, ‘in case you’ll need an operation.’

That morning I’d fallen off my young horse. She didn’t mean to throw me off, she simply made a silly jump sideways, pretending to be startled by something and I simply forgot rule 1 of horse riding: keep one leg on each side of the horse, soles of your feet pointing towards the floor. Before I knew it, I had made a lovely butt-shaped indentation in the sand and the soles of my feet pointed towards the sky. All of me was fine, except my left wrist. That hurt a bit, but I remounted and rode for another 10 minutes or so. I then brought the horses to the field, gave coffee to a visiting friend, decided not to muck out the stables because of the sore wrist and took a book from the pile of books waiting to be read. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, so I tried to relax a bit. The wrist started to look alarmingly blue with strange swellings. I wrapped it in an elastic bandage and waited until hubs came home that evening.

He decided that I needed to ‘go see the doctor’. The doctor decided I needed to go to hospital, so hubs dropped me off there and went home to take care of the Brinkbeest-zoo and muck out the stables. ‘I’ll call you when I’m done here’, I said and there I was, in the A&E department in hospital.

It was the night of the semi-finals of the Eurovision Song Contest. For those of you who are not familiar with this annual event, each country that’s a member of the EBU-UER (don’t ask, I never heard of the EBU-UER, until I just tried to find out which countries can enter in the Eurovision Song Contest) chooses a singer or a band and a song to send to the contest, every country gets to vote and the one with the most votes wins (gosh, really?). Now, in recent years the country with the weirdest act has won, so almost all the other countries thought ‘we have to send weird acts too’, which made the whole event even weirder than it already was. And not weird in a good way. Just weird in a weird way.
The A&E waiting room has a television and someone had decided that we should watch the semi-finals of the Eurovision Song Contest. As if we weren’t suffering enough.

This was the Dutch entry in 2012. She didn’t go through to the final. I wonder why not (not).

And then there was the Irish act:

The Russian grannies came second in the final:

Actually, I believe Sweden won with a really decent song. So perhaps next year other countries will send decent singers to the contest too. Whatever. I don’t really care. If it had been an evening at home, I’d have never watched this. But I had to.

The other entertainment while waiting for my X-rays to be taken was provided by a loud woman who had brought a louder friend and four even louder kids to the A&E. The loud woman was in a wheelchair and the louder friend parked her in the waiting room and flipflopped (nice weather remember?) away to take care of the administrative side of things, while the kids flipflopped to the coffee and tea-corner and tried to get third-degree burns by making themselves tea (tea and coffee are free for the people waiting in A&E, but they serve hot water for tea and coffee in those large thermos flasks, under which you have to hold a plastic cup with one hand while pressing the top with the other hand, which even if I was allowed to drink something I couldn’t do because of the probably broken wrist. Still… a dry mouth wasn’t the worst of my problems.)

The loud woman sat in her wheelchair in the middle of the waiting room and grabbed her mobile. She started to call the first person on her list: ‘HI, IT’S ME, YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHERE I AM. I’M IN HOSPITAL. H O S P I T A L!! YES. I KNOW!
I’LL TELL YOU. I WAS CYCLING HOME AND CAME PAST THAT POND, YOU KNOW THE ONE, NEAR MY HOUSE, AND THERE WAS A SWAN AND IT FLEW UP JUST AS I PASSED AND TO AVOID IT I HAD TO MAKE A STRANGE MANOUVRE AND I FELL. AND NOW I HAVE A REALLY SORE KNEE. IT’S IN A BANDAGE. I’M IN A WHEELCHAIR. YEAH. … (name of friend) BROUGHT ME TO THE A&E AND NOW THEY ARE GOING TO TAKE X-RAYS. YEAH.. OKAY… BYE

She put down her phone. A collective sigh of relief went through the waiting room.

Then she took up her phone again and phoned the second person on her list: ‘HI, IT’S ME, YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHERE I AM….

And we all had to hear the whole story again.

By the time she called the third person to tell where she was, I and some of the other people waiting mumbled ‘swan, flew up, fell down, hurt knee, blablabla’ and we collectively sighed again. The mad woman telephoned at least 8 people and repeated the whole story VERY LOUDLY!!!!
I swear, if I had had the use of both of my hands, she’d no longer be alive. But then again, I wouldn’t have been in hospital either.

While mad woman was informing everyone where she was and why, her friend flipflopped into the waiting room again. ‘HERE!!!’, she shouted towards the kids, who had managed to survive the tea-making-adventure with only minor burns, ‘GO FIND SOMETHING TO PLAY WITH. THERE ARE TOYS IN THAT CORNER. WE’LL BE HERE FOR A WHILE!!!’

‘HEY, GUYS, IT’S THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST!’, loud woman shouted towards her friend and the kids. ‘PUT ME IN FRONT OF THE TELLY AND GET SOME CHAIRS. WE’LL WATCH IT TOGETHER. IT’S FUN!! OUR INDIAN HAS A CATCHY SONG! I KNOW ALL THE WORDS!!! I CAN’T HELP SINGING ALONG WHEN IT’S ON THE RADIO!!!’ And towards some other people in the waiting room: ‘DON’T YOU LOVE THE SONG CONTEST? I LOVE IT! I’M GOING TO SING ALONG!’ The people smiled and nodded. Rule 1 when dealing with idiots, try not to upset them. ‘CAN SOMEONE PUT THE VOLUME UP?!’

‘Oh God’, I moaned.
’Is your arm very painful?’, the man sitting next to me asked concerned.
’Yep, that too’, I smiled.
’Oh’, he understood, ‘They are rather loud aren’t they.’
We leaned back in our chairs and tried to not be there.

Finally it was my turn to get the arm X-rayed and to see a doctor and then the arm was put in plaster and then I phoned hubs and then he came to get me out of there. Hooray!