Very Interesting

But since I titled the previous post ‘Not Particularly Interesting’ and lots of you thought it was interesting and could relate to it, I can’t guarantee that this post is Very Interesting indeed.

Aaaanyway… hubs had ‘intake’ conversations with his surgeon and the anaesthesiologist (hey, typed that correctly in one go! At least Windows Live Writer doesn’t say that it doesn’t recognize the word, so it must be correct.) and they’ve drawn on a picture of what your inside looks like, what they will be removing from his inside. Man! I was shocked. About a quarter of his colon and lots of stuff around it. I thought they would just cut away the tumour and a little bit around it to make sure all the bad cells were gone, but no! They are going to have a ball with the knife in there.

And they will try to do it through laparoscopic surgery, also known as keyhole surgery. Which I thought was almost unbelievable, especially when you see what they want to remove. But in fact there will be multiple ‘keyholes’. Should however during this surgery become clear that multiple holes won’t be enough,  they will do a – what I call – CSI  on him. So cut him open from top to bottom, almost from the neck to where the male parts are. One big hole.

In fact, we had friends staying over this weekend, and she’s a veterinarian. When hubs told her about the laparoscopic plan, she couldn’t believe it either. “We just cut open the belly, take out the intestines, lay them out on the table and are very careful that the inside of the belly stays clean”, she explained. “But hey, I’m talking about fourleggers of course and I’m sure your surgeons know what they are doing”, she tried to reassure us.

We are hopeful the surgeons know what they are doing. They have mentioned that he could wake up with a stoma, temporarily or not. Small chance, but still something to consider. Oh, and if you are squeamish, look away now; they will remove a large part of his colon and have to make a new connection to his rectum, which they will do by inserting a stapler via – I don’t know another way to explain it – his backside and stapling the colon to the rectum again.
I know!
I will never look at a stapler in the same way again.

I’m not sure if hubs appreciates me telling you all these intimate details, but hey… just look at it as educational information.

Surgery will be next Wednesday.

Good News deserves a Fat Bastard

Today was Result Day of hubs’ colon cancer examinations. And the news is good. They found nothing else, except for the rather large tumour we already knew is there in his colon. The tumour is on the border of his colon and his rectum. But fortunately they have decided it can be treated as colon cancer. If they would have decided that the tumour was situated too low, hubs would have had to undergo chemo- and radiotherapy first. So, since they have decided it is in his colon, an operation only will do. And, unless they discover something scary about the tumour when it is removed, that will be it.

It must have been all the positive energy and thoughts and your prayers, don’t you think?

When hubs’ doctor delivered the good news and we talked about what the next steps in his treatment will be, I said: “Good! And now we’re going to buy some ‘Moorkoppen’ to celebrate.” (‘Moorkoppen’ are hubs’ favourite pastry (and ‘rijstevlaai met slagroom’ too actually)). So on our way home we stopped at a bakery and bought some ‘Moorkoppen’.

One could consider the name Moorkop to be politically incorrect if one is very sensitive about these things. It means something like Moorish Head, probably referring to the delicious chocolate topping on the choux pastry? But I’m sure the Moorkop doesn’t mean to insult anyone. Their sole purpose in life is to be delicious. Choux pastry, lots and lots of whipped cream and chocolate and for the healthy touch a piece of sliced pineapple.

In fact, I googled ‘moorkop’  after I wrote the above and found this: The origin of the name moorkop lies in Den Bosch. There was a house named ‘de Moriaan’, and the residents were well-known for their cooking. They specialised in delicious patisseries. At some point in time a pastry made by the cooks became a popular delicacy and someone shouted: 'it looks like a morenkop' (a ‘morenkop’ is a stone head of a moor, or black man, that hung above many pharmacies). Our moorkop came from the name 'morenkop'.

And if one eats too many of these, one becomes a…

… fat bastard. That’s right.

I saw this Rose (haven’t found out how to get the ‘accent aigu’ above the a or e; the combination ‘e or ‘a doesn’t work on this laptop, so if someone knows the trick, please let me know) in a supermarket and I couldn’t resist it. Look how cute the hippo is. And I mean; Fat bastard. Does that not bring a smile to your face? It does to mine. And it doesn’t taste bad either.

We might open a bottle tonight with a couple of friends who want to celebrate the good news with us.

Now we have to wait for hubs’ operation, which will take place later this month. They gave him a book full of information about the examinations he’s had and about the operation and apparently they will let him go home after the operation ‘if the patient can pass wind’. WELL… what can I say. To me that seems to be a wise decision from the hospital’s point of view. I hope he doesn’t pass too much wind when he gets home though. I could do without another flatulent guy in this home. Biggles passes enough wind for the entire population of our village me thinks.

Petje (the cat) is extremely brave to pick this spot to have a nap. I’m happy to say that she did survive the gas attacks and that she didn’t get squashed either. They were both really comfortable actually. It’s amazing. I know.

Raindrops keep falling….

…on my Hosta .

Send some sunshine over to other parts of Blogworld where it’s raining and this is what happens; they send back some rain.  A little rain was welcome, but it rained all afternoon. It’s sort of a tropical humid environment now. I can see the moss growing on the patio. Life threatening circumstances. Chances are I’ll slip and break something important. Hope the rain returns to sender before that happens. Or that it will be one of our limited edition precious porcelain cups. Or saucers.

Notice the artyfarty stuff going on at the bottom of the photo on the right. It’s a Windows Live Writer option.

Oh, and I’m guessing (I haven’t tried it out yet, but I’ve ticked a few boxes and chose a couple of options) that if you click on a photo now, it will open much bigger and in a new screen. Or on a new screen. Or whatever is the correct term.

The only problem I encountered in WLW ‘so far is that I couldn’t upload the hilarious Youtube video of the fireman (the previous post). So I had to use Blogger for that. I’m not bothered by that. Are you?

Chard

I’m far too excited about this vegetable garden. I might have a mental breakdown if the slugs and pigeons discover and attack it. Let us all hope it will not come that far. I have bought slug and snail pellets for the first time éver and will not hesitate to use them. No more Mrs. Nice Girl!

Meanwhile, yesterday we had our second harvest from the tiny vegetable patch. Chard or perpetual spinach.

I didn’t have a clue what to do with them, so rule 3 came into operation: ‘When in doubt, make a quiche!’ Rule 1 is of course: ‘Brinkbeest is always right’. Rule two: ‘When Brinkbeest is not right, rule 1 will automatically take effect.’ It works for me.

So a quiche I made. And both rules 1 and 3 proved to be correct. Using puff pastry for the base and filling that with sweated down onion, garlic and chard, soft goats cheese, pine nuts, some fresh mint from the garden and a mixture of eggs and cream. And lots of pepper. Some grated Gouda to top it off, 20 minutes in the oven on 200 Celsius. Okay, so maybe it doesn’t look all that appetizing, but it tasted really good.

And for dessert we had something really sweet:

Noticed Snoes’s little paw resting against Phoebe’s back? You can ‘biggify’ this photo by clicking on it. One of those heavenly benefits of using Windows Live Writer. All pictures will get bigger if you click on them. Bliss! And they appear where you include them in your post, without having to juggle them and the text around again and again. And again. Until you are ready for the men in white suits to take you away… That is why the photos in this post are dotted around all over the place. Just because…

Incentives

Last week I bought something in a large department store called HEMA. At the checkout the girl asked me the following mind-boggling question: “Would you like bonkies?”

Now, that is not a question I’d been asked before. I didn’t have a clue what she meant. Would I like what? I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think bonkies is a word in the Dutch dictionary. It sounded like she was asking me if I would like her to hit me over the head. But she could not possibly mean that. Could she? My face must have expressed my thoughts, because she tried to clear things up. ”You get a bonkie with every 5 Euros you spend”, she explained. It didn’t help. But I’m curious (wanted to know what bonkies are) and Dutch (like to get things for ‘free’), so I said: “Yes, I would like bonkies”, and got ready to duck just in case… The girl took a dive behind the counter and surfaced with two small plastic wrappers, containing the illusive bonkies, and handed them to me.

When I got home I put the wrappers on the garden table and forgot about them. (I blame the Lyme. I keep forgetting things. It can’t be age-related. I’m far too young for that. I am!)

When hubs came home, he saw the wrappers and asked: “what’s that?” ”Those are bonkies.” ”What?” ”Bonkies.” ”Oh?” ”You get a bonkie with every 5 Euros you spend at the HEMA “ ”A bonkie?” ”A bonkie.” ”Oh. What’s a bonkie?” ”No idea.” ”Oh.”

Hubs was happy enough not knowing more about bonkies, but I wasn’t , so I opened the wrappers and discovered what a bonkie is.

It’s a marble. With a scary face. And a name. The left one is called Katy and the one on the right is Luv. She appears to have a big plaster on her head. Maybe she got hit over the head. When I Googled ‘bonkies’ I discovered that you also ‘have to’ collect little plastic bodies, called ‘skinnies’, for these faces. With every 15 Euros you spend, you get a skinnie. There are 15 different bonkies and 5 different skinnies. You do the sums. Invented by a marketing department as an incentive for people to buy more stuff at the HEMA, so that their children can 'collect them all!'. I hate that. But I always accept the ‘free gifts’ and give them to our neighbour’s children. And I hate that I do that. But the neighbour’s kids love it. And that is why I can still live with myself.

Anyway, that is not what this post is about.

It’s about the joy of Windows Live Writer. Why did I not know about this before? I’ve been struggling all this time with Blogger’s prehistoric lay-out possibilities, while I could have been enjoying Live Writer. I’m in heaven. In one of the comments made to this post of Jinksy, I first read about the existence of Windows Live (remind me to thank ‘Fletch’). And then she herself mentioned it in this post. And that was an incentive for me to check out the possibilities of Windows Live Writer. Did I mention I’m in heaven?

Are you still struggling with writing your posts in Blogger? Let this be an incentive to you to check out Windows Live Writer. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know. Everything I managed to do is based on luck and coincidence. Ask Fletch. You can find him if you follow (one of) the links to Jinksy.