Auteur: Gudrun

I am home all alone for the first time in 7 months, and I just LURRRRRRRRRRVE it !!

Gonna take an ice tea, the paper, and gonna sit outside in the sun and enjoy having no one around.

Wow. Feels good.

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There was no ice tea in the fridge and I couldn’t find the paper (Bart had taken it upstairs into his office, he has never done that before, and since he wasn’t home, I couldn’t ask), but still I enjoyed my precious little bit of freedom…

Yet I was very happy to see my little sprog again. He did very well at the day care 🙂

It’s strange… People kept telling me about maternal feelings, yet I could never even begin to conceive how much I’d love that little helpless creature. It’s a totally different love than the one I feel for Bart. Oddly enough our love has deepened a lot too, something I didn’t deem possible either.

Yesterday some guys came with a couple of tons of equipment and trucks and the like, planted a giant generator the size of our garage, and cut off the power in the entire block. After about an hour and a half power came back on, thanks to that terribly noisy generator right in front of our house, across the street. The power company had issued a warning that the power was going to be cut for half an hour.
Great ! We shut all windows, let down the shutters, closed all curtains, and still we could hear the roar of the generator throughout the house. Needless to say sleeping was just great. Ugh.

For today they had announced a power cutoff from 10 to 12 and 15 till 16. Since we have a webdesign company, that could be a bit of a problem, but hey, there always is stuff to be done without internet, and the laptops could take over for 2 hours. At 9.25 power went down. Hmmm. Half an hour early, so no coffee made yet, and Bart hadn’t transferred the data he was working on to his laptop. Great. At 12 I went outside and asked a guy how much longer it was going to take. “Oh, at least another couple of hours”. WTF ? I found my camping stove and heated Wolf’s veggies, so at least he could have a decent meal. We had bread. By that time both graphic designers had already left the house and sought other workplaces, since power was really needed. For us there wasn’t much to do: Bart slept a little, I embroidered. No PC, no cooking, no telephone, no babyphone, no lights to go to the bathroom, no Olympics on telly, no hot water. We couldn’t even do the chores, like washing up, ironing, mowing the lawn…
Finally the power came back on at 15.45 ! Bart is filing a complaint and asking for a compensation for lost work hours. If he had known beforehand, they would have moved for the day. Hmmm. Grrr.

Back is broken once more 🙁 I can’t pick up Wolf, let alone change him or give him a bath. I sure hope this will get better shortly, annoys the hell out of me. Confined to the couch once more, ugh. Luckily it’s weekend and Bart can take care of him. I wanted to start painting though, I don’t have much time left before school starts again.

Tomorrow we go to this picnic at Gwen’s parents’ place, a big big garden with pool and everything. Her son Leander turns 5, so I just picked up some color books etc. for him. Yep, managed to do grocery shopping with this back of mine, although I had to ask a guy to put the stuff in my car, couldn’t do it myself. Next Thursday my niece’s eldest daughter turns 4, so I have to go there for cake and later on food too. Yay, I go to children’s parties now ! Of course it’s just because hanging with the parents is so nice, cos Wolf is still too young to really enjoy it. He loves watching older children though. And I must admit, they never asked me to come as long as I wasn’t a mom myself.

Went out to buy a bed for Wolf today. I had lent one (and a lot of other baby stuff) from my best friend, whose son is 5 years old already. She was waiting for an adoption to come through though, they wanted a child between 1.5 and 3 years from South Africa. Thus she kept all stuff for 1.5 years and older, giving the rest to me. After nearly a year of waiting, they finally got word, and the baby is called Ernest, and 10 months old ! A lot younger than expected, but just as welcome.

For me this means returning a lot of stuff, most of which is not a problem at all, since I got a lot from my cousin too. The only thing that I didn’t have double, was the baby bed. I called around a little, but as my mom says: beds are not that expensive, and is used quite a long time. Moreover, if we want a second child… SO I went out and bought this beautiful dark iron baby bed, much more my style than all those wooden things. Me happy, and only a mere € 45 spent. 🙂

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Spent most of the day grocery shopping, and varnishing the cupboard I’m revamping.
Tomorrow I have a big dinner here at home: it’s my mother-in-law’s birthday, and she and Bart’s dad, brother and his girlfriend are coming over for elaborate lunch. Usually she would do the cooking, but she has too much on her mind (and nerves) these days, so I’m doing it instead. She didn’t feel up to doing it herself, and didn’t want to go to a fancy restaurant because of Wolf. When we offered, she seemed very relieved, but insisted that I would get it ordered and ready-made. I said yes, cos she wouldn’t take no for an answer, but I’m cooking the whole shebang myself. The menu:

* Champagne with cheese crackers, deep-fried cheese balls and apricot halves filled with a ricotta-chicken-cinnamon-honey mixture

* grilled scampi with honey, with a side salad

* Boursin soup (boursin being a French cheese with garlic)

* pheasant (which my dad shot) (rolled in bacon, stuffed with French cheese) with mushrooms, chicory and pommes pins

* tiramisu

* espresso/cappucino with home made coconut cake

Do you think this will suffise ?

Just had roleplay evening, and it went quite well, despite the fact that we were all nearly killed by two stupid zombies… It seems all we can roll are checks and fumbles, no normal rolls. Bizarre.

My eldest brother just called from this major festival, he and my kid brother are ‘dying at the Cure’ right now, and he called to let me hear a part of ‘Pictures of you’. Seen the Cure like 6 times now, even attended the Trilogy Concert, but still… My heart yearned, if it weren’t for Wolf…

I had too much juice and way too many marshmallows, feeling sick now. Bleh. Going to bed, gonna take the sprog along, hope he continues sleeping.

Feeling pretty blah now, and all because of my sweet little obnoxious one…
I had to go to school today, last day before two months of summer break, so I had asked Bart to feed Wolf. At 11 I could sneak away so I fed him myself, before going back. After the first reception, I sneaked away again to my old school, where I was invited to the reception too, since one of my old colleagues/friends was retiring. Felt so good to be back there, to see all those people, to feel loved and appreciated again by my colleagues. Anyway, the reception was followed by a barbecue, and they all invited me to stay (there was plenty of food anyway), and insisted when I declined at first. I phoned Bart, and he said it was ok, he would defrost some milk and bottlefeed the little one. Just as I was saying that I was having such a good time, enjoying myself and chatting away, my mobile rang: Bart practically begged me to come home cos Wolf refused his bottle. WTF ? He had a bottle twice before, and drank it without hesitating. So I drove home, reheated the bottle, but indeed, no go. I ended up breastfeeding him again, and feeling pretty blah, since it was no use going back. Hmmpfff. I really was having a good time…

Went to this weird event last night: a party in a highway tunnel 🙂

They upgraded a main road to a highway, and turned a crossroads into a decent intersection. This week was the grand opening of the intersection, so they turned the so far practically unused tunnel into this big party area. We had a big reception with a pleiad of small munchkies like scampi, goat cheese wrapped in bacon, etc etc. Then there was a walking dinner, and then this concert by a famous cover group. It was… unusual, but since tunnels are hardly designed to have great acoustics, we left at 23.00u cos of the noise.

All in all a special night, moreso since it was our first night out together without the baby. My brother and his gf came to babysit, and they enjoyed it, they said. Wolf did cry quite a bit though, but that is mostly due to his teething, I think.

My eldest brother just popped in too, with an orange T-shirt, flashy sunglasses and this big black curly wig: ready to go to the city parade 🙂 Last year there were 100.000 people, now they expect 350.000 cos Berlin doesn’t have a city parade anymore, and this is the last major one in Europe. I can hear the beats up here even 🙂

Went on a small shopping spree, “therapeutic retail shopping”, as glod calls it. Yesterday evening I kinda broke down, since Bart is very busy and doesn’t have time to take care of the baby at all. Wolf was crying again and I couldn’t take it anymore. This morning, even though he actually couldn’t spare much time, Bart came to me and said that I could spend the morning (ie. two hours) to do the shopping I needed to do. So I went grocery shopping, but also went to a clothes store. I didn’t really need clothes, yet I bought something new for Wolf’s baptism on Sunday. No, it wasn’t black – ick, surprise ! – but a red linen pair of 7/8 pants and an egg white top to go with it. Also bought two black tank tops, a black pair of 2/3 trousers for Bart and a matching T-shirt and shorts for Wolf. Paid a grand total of € 54 (approx. $ 60), hehe 🙂
Also had some ‘fidelity’ coupons at Delhaize, so I brought back this cute outside kids’ pool, with this big whale tail on it (it’s more than a meter high !) and, if you attach the hose, a fountain. Should be fun this summer when Wolf is able to sit and play. Me happy girl again, even though I’m doing all kinds of chores around the house that take up your whole day, but don’t leave the impression that you did anything at all. Ugh.

My little Wolf is such a sweety ! Yes, he can be obnoxious at times, but most of the time he’s a happy baby, looking at the world around him, sleeping snugly in his crib, laughing at his mom… I know my world is pretty one-sided at the moment, but actually I don’t care that much. I still see a lot of friends, I do play roleplay every Thursday, I still have a social life.
Last Monday I went to this fancy restaurant with Faust, for his birthday. We had a real nice time 🙂 and Bart took care of the little one. Yesterday Faust and another friend from Antwerp, who I hadn’t seen in a long time, came over, and we sat outside in the garden sipping white wine and chatting and laughing our heads off. Tonight promises to be a beautiful warm evening too, but most of my friends have other things to do than to enjoy the garden and the wine and the company. Too bad 🙁
Thursday = roleplay, Friday I’m going for dinner (again) with kimmekepunk and another friend from back when we were in highschool, and on Sunday the little one is going to be baptised at 11.30u. After the ceremony we’re gonna have champagne here at our house for all who attended, and then we’re going for elaborate lunch with the family. Will be nice too.

I’m really enjoying the weather at the moment, even though it would be nice if it was a little less warm, and I love to see my turtles sitting outside in the sun at the brim of their new little pond.

Happy, contented girl here, as usual 🙂

God I was sick last night ! Had been feeling less than 100% for the entire week already, but that was due to a bad cold: sniffing, sneezing, coughing, generally being the Great Snotty One. That was the reason I cancelled our dinner date with Gwen and Erik, two good friends of ours, on Saturday. On Sunday we went to wimmekepunk and kimmekepunk and played the Lord of the Rings boardgame. Good fun was had, and Wolf was the nicest boy you could imagine.
Didn’t sleep well at night due to the coughing, but hey…
On Monday I did feel worse: head was completely clogged, so I cancelled my dinner date with Faust, my very best friend. I had made reservations in this really good restaurant for his birthday, but alas, had to take a raincheck. Good thing I did: half an hour after I had dinner that Bart cooked for me, I suddenly
started to feel mean ass cramps in my stomach, my entire belly, my bowels. God I felt bad ! Was twitching and spasming and generally doing everything I could think of to make the cramps go away. After a while I started vomiting too, and got diarrhea. Cramps did last though. Even when I drank a glass of water, it would come back out half an hour later. Can you imagine the way I fed the baby ? Bart was at hand, to take him whenever I had to run to the loo.

Luckily this morning it was better, I even managed to get some sleep. Still feeling a bit queasy, but a LOT better than last night. Wonder what it was. Some kind of food poisoning ?