Wednesday, September 1, 2010 – 11:48 am
I’ve just come back from a lovely short stay with friends in northern France. They live in a beautiful converted barn which dates from the 17th century. Or maybe the 18th. I’m not too good on dates. I’d only just recovered from falling off a chair when putting a salad bowl away, thus splitting my head open and despite clutching a piece of frozen fish against my head, ended up with a huge and painful bump when I decided to knock my head again when getting out of a 2CV. That sent me flying on the pavement and my head was promptly seen to by our hostess.
Kenny won’t invite me to go anywhere again with him and he’s supposed to be stopping here tomorrow to take the Twat and I out for dinner. I must try and stay upright.
Brussels was warm and balmy last night but I’m almost tempted to put the heating on today. My toes have gone blue and I’m back to drinking steaming mugs of tea again. My letterbox was full of spam and a bank statement, my inbox had a job application rejection – and more spam, notably from that charming young boy who used to leave insults here.
My run to the Dole office was amusing as usual. I had a fight with the door only to be told by a passerby that it was shut. I was convinced that it was Monday today for some reason, hence the confusion. My monthly visits are getting to be depressing as it’s almost a year since I have been out of work and this is a first for me. Still, Belgium has woken up after the summer holidays and hopefully something will come along.
And I think it’s time that Hermie sleeps indoors at night now. I’d hate his claws to go blue.
Thursday, August 19, 2010 – 9:00 pm
I sometimes wonder how the Belgian ambulances work so maybe somebody can put me straight.
Last week, a car hit a bollard as the driver tried to make a u-turn and ended up turning over completely, trapping the two people inside. I ran to the car along with several other people to see if I could help and was immediately asked to call an ambulance.
As the hospital was very close I expected to hear the sirens pretty quickly but no, I appeared to be engaged in a game of 20 questions. Realising that there must be quite a few hoax calls made, I presumed that the person at the end of the phone was simply getting details of the accident and then relaying them on to the paramedics that had already left the hospital. Questions such as the location, and what had actually happened were expected, but when I was asked if anybody was hurt, I began to think that somebody was taking the piss.
Finally, I think I was believed and as I left the scene where other do-gooders were helping out, I told them that I had called for an ambulance, and at last heard the sound of sirens approaching.
It reminded me of a time when I had to be rushed to be hospital here – I ended up in the back of a police car as the ambulance was taking so long.
My Good Deed of the Day was slightly squashed, I admit, but thankfully, nobody died.
Wonder Woman. Come to me and do your Good Deed.
Monday, August 16, 2010 – 10:23 am
My parents made a brief visit to Brussels again this year and so I met up with them the night they arrived and had an excellent supper at Jardin du Nicolas and then prepared for a barbecue with the children the following day. We weren’t sure whether or not the rain would hold off but it did and thanks to my dad’s faux pas by saying that “women think barbecues are such wonderful ideas because all they do is watch the men slave over the barbecue”, I managed to order my dad to make the salad as I knew the children were rather excited to show off their barbecuing skills. My mum and I sat and chatted away which made a lovely change.
During the afternoon my parents showered us with gifts of cheese, mint chocolates and the children received their Christmas and birthday presents which is always lovingly wrapped up in an envelope. My father has promised to pay for a new pair of glasses for me as I can’t afford a new pair myself. I count myself very fortunate indeed.
Next year will be slightly different as it will be my parent’s fiftieth wedding anniversary and they are presently thinking of renting a gite in France for a family gathering. I’m wondering what I could paint gold without it looking too kitsch.
Todd had some good news as his dad had found him a job as a postman for the next 2 weeks. Despite the early mornings, he wasn’t too fazed by the idea, and I think it’ll do him some good, especially all that exercise around this village on the bike they’ll give him. He will also be given ‘security shoes’ which had us all wondering. My father guessed that they are probably handed out as a security measure against guard dogs.
Well, it’s a possibility, I suppose.
Monday, August 9, 2010 – 7:27 am
There is nothing more that pisses me off than somebody fucking around with my life. Sunday morning started out fine – until I tried to Skype someone only to find that Alexsander123 had hacked into my account and was quite happily using it yesterday. Fortunately, I only had about €1 credit, so no loss there – but my contacts have obviously all gone. I’ve managed to recuperate 4, but there were quite a few more. So if you want to keep in touch with me, just drop me an email.
To be honest, it was partly my fault as my Skype account and my old gmail address had the same password so it was easy for Alexsander123 to hack into the two accounts, but if you receive an email from my zoeeee gmail address, beware – it’s not from me.
So yesterday I spent the entire day trying to recuperate my old gmail address but despite filling in Google’s lengthy form whereby you have to include 5 people that you email and 4 labels, they still refused to admit to my identity. And I had to give up my old Skype address as I had signed that up with my old gmail address of which I no longer have any control over.
Great.
The rest of the day was spent changing every single password that I had for every single account that I have – many of which I had long forgotten about and left me in a foul and furious mood.
It was also Todd’s 17th birthday but he wasn’t here all day apart from a quick pop around to the house to insult me again and then off with friends, so I guess he had a good time. I didn’t even have enough time to give him his present and god knows where he is today.
But he’s no longer a minor – YAY!
Wednesday, August 4, 2010 – 9:57 am
Robbie Povey left me a lovely message today saying that:
You are an absolute cunt, your the twat you ugly bitch. go suck a dick you uptight whore.
If it wasn’t for his lack of grammar I may well be upset, but it takes more than a stupid comment like that to hurt me. Besides, everyone is entitled to their opinion.
I do have his email address too, if anybody is interested. I wouldn’t bother myself – he’s given me quite a laugh as it is.
The only thing that he is incorrect about is my being ‘uptight’.
Moi?!
Tuesday, August 3, 2010 – 5:48 pm
The ‘children’ are back again and Todd is none the wiser. He has broken two more doors simply by hitting them and all I was trying to do was talk to him. Perhaps I should ignore him totally and he’ll love me forever, but that really isn’t my way of bringing up a child. The boy has anger issues and takes them out on me as he’d rather not take them out on his father. Ho hum. Tatiana is still working at the local supermarket and Coralie is studying hard to re-take 7 (eeeeks) exams so as to get her degree. So far she seems to be very serious about re-sitting the exams – for which I don’t blame her, as she will have a job in September if she passes.
Todd is finally going into the fourth year next month – at the age of seventeen. That means that he’ll leave school at the age of (almost) 20, but it appears to be pretty common amongst boys in this country. I’m sure that he’ll do very well for himself, as long as he doesn’t decide to become a hairdresser…
I was speaking to the Ex about Todd and his behaviour this morning, along with the fact that there really don’t appear to be any jobs on the market in my domain. So the Ex suggested sending my CV to hotels to work as a receptionist, something that I could do but am not exactly jumping up and down about. But then, if it’s a job – well, I should go for it, despite the awful hours.
Apart from that, I’m keeping myself busy de-cluttering my office (at home) and have subsequently ended up with backache. The days are pretty quiet as nobody is around so I have to do something or it’s back to watching Jezza Kyle again, and quite frankly, life is too short for that.
Tomorrow: hairdressers. The joy.
Saturday, July 24, 2010 – 1:48 pm
Todd and his Mohawk looking happy. I bumped into Tatiana in the supermarket and she told me that he has gone to Poland for a week to be with his girlfriend. Now I know how his dad copes with the boy – I certainly can’t.
There again, I wouldn’t part with my money for Todd to go on holiday, he doesn’t deserve it.
He’s lovely to photograph though.
Friday, July 16, 2010 – 7:53 am
I enjoy spending the good part of an hour washing moisturising cream off toilet doors and the surrounding area. It’s very therapeutic especially when you have to try, unsuccessfully, to get half of the stuff out of the key hole.
This is Todd’s latest temper tantrum – he threw it at the door from the bathroom because I wouldn’t give him €10 to pay back a friend.
The loo does, at least, smell nice now.
Monday, July 12, 2010 – 6:54 am
The best thing I did this weekend was go shopping with Tatiana who had kindly offered to prepare a barbecue before the World Cup final. The poor girl could hardly get me out of the freezer section where I was feeling very comfortable gazing at pizzas as I leant against the frozen peas section. It has been so hot lately that places such as the frozen food section of supermarkets and my cellar are my favourite haunts, although the temperature is supposed to drop by 10° today.
When we got home I found that the ants had found their way in again and there were thousands of the bloody things crawling around my French windows. This time they were mainly storm ants, many of whom had formed small clusters on the actual windows. I wasn’t quite sure how to tackle them exactly until Tatiana suggested getting the vacuum cleaner which seemed the only sensible option as they were crawling all around the entire French windows and it was impossible to see where the ants were actually coming in.
So while Tatiana cooked supper for us, I was vacuuming up ants. Storm ants – the ones with wings on. And just as their name suggests, we had a light storm during the Germany – Uruguay game which mucked the satellite around a bit and we had to watch the match in French. Excellent game, dire commentary.
The storm cooled things down for a bit but Sunday was another scorcher. Nevertheless, Tatiana wanted to go ahead with her barbecue, so I prepared a salad – again, as it’s all I really want to eat in this weather and we ate outside before going in to watch the World Cup final.
Great food, dire commentary, abysmal game.
“Mama, watching the corn pop in the microwave has been the most exciting thing to happen so far.”
I couldn’t have put it better.
Sunday, July 11, 2010 – 10:06 am
Some people can simply not live without a computer.
Thursday, July 8, 2010 – 9:19 pm
I love the way Europeans adore their sculpture and this one really caught my eye near Bad Münster Eifel.
Right in the middle of a roundabout.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 – 8:00 am
I went to see the dermatologist again today seeing as I appear to have a touch of the bubonic plague again. As the doctor explained how I managed to catch it again, with details from stress to my coil, she also told me to stay out of the sun. This would be fine if the weather forecast was predicting snow, but that’s hardly likely in these tropical climes. It is supposed to creep back up to 27°C tomorrow and 30°C the next day which makes it very difficult to stay indoors.
Tatiana went to the coast on Monday with her boyfriend and only put sun cream on her face and shoulders – which was an idiotic thing to do, especially when at the sea. Her stomach now glows in the dark and she looks like an extremely successful candidate should she wish to take up a career as a red traffic light.
I mentioned my love of the sun to the doctor today and she was incredibly understanding.
I was prescribed a paper bag.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 – 10:37 am
Todd made a short appearance at home yesterday boasting his Mohawk which looked like a cross between a hedgehog that had been caught under a lawnmower and a Tin-tin hair-do. Apparently the hairdresser refused to shave off the sides completely so he doesn’t look quite as fearsome as I had expected – just a little silly. Todd then went off to boast his bruises that he got when pogoing and being thrown about by fans at Werchter. He has three and they failed to impress me so he started insulting me, then left and I’ve not seen him since.
I’ve already tried out my new lawnmower which is great and doesn’t involve trying to keep the handle up all the time which was what used to do my back in time and time again. I shall do the rest of the garden this afternoon, and I hate to say it, but I’m rather looking forward to it. The pond desperately needs filling up so that’s on the cards aswell before I flop infront of the TV to watch the football.
Coralie may come home tonight – she started working at the hotel on 1 July and appears to be very busy, according to Tatiana. Hermie is busy jogging around his pen although I do like taking food out to him, putting it near his face and using it as bait to see just how fast he can run.
Other than job-hunting, I’m slowly clearing out the house which seems to be taking forever but must be done.
And that was a little bit of this and that.
Thursday, July 1, 2010 – 4:16 pm
I dropped by the house yesterday as I haven’t been around much and the children are chez Papa. After checking on Hermie, changing his water and giving him something to eat I went upstairs to get something from my bedroom.
Hello? Why is Todd’s duvet and pillows on my bed?
Hello? Why is my king-size duvet and pillows on Todd’s two beds?
Hello? Why are there a couple of ‘things’ from my Box of Tricks that I keep hidden under my bed, in Todd’s room?
I stripped off all the sheets and shall be washing them at an extremely high wash and will be disinfecting my Toys for the next week; god only knows what Todd has done with them. This comes as a bit of a shock as I would never have thought that Todd would use my bed linen, let alone anything else.
There again, he did come flying downstairs last week wearing nothing but a very, very small towel while his girlfriend was upstairs, begging for a condom. Fortunately, a friend had a condom that was just within the sell-by-date in his wallet and the evening was obviously saved. For Todd.
I picked up the empty beer bottles that were strewn around the lawn, threw them out and left, wondering how to tackle Todd about using my house as a hotel. But I think I have other issues to think about now as I have just found out something else about Todd.
He has a Mohican hair-cut.
Sunday, June 27, 2010 – 12:02 pm
“I’m still not talking to you, you know.”
“Warn me next time – I hadn’t noticed you’d stopped, Zoe.
Pffffffffffft.
