Archive for awards
>Just another Sunday.
>
I was up during the night doing computer things, and didn’t go to bed until early this morning, where I slept until 8:30 am. I got up and made myself a cup of coffee and laid down on the sofa and slept another hour or so. Then I really was awake. I was just fooling myself before that. So I made myself another cup of coffee and turned on the computer, but soon realized that I had to take poor Jesker for a walk, so I did that first, otherwise he had to sit too long with his legs crossed.
I quickly got dressed and with my hair uncombed and my face unmade up, I took him out. It makes no difference if my hair is combed or not, it is supposed to stick out in all directions anyway and I have to wash it and can’t do a thing with it right now. Yes, I’m having a bad hair day. Remember those? Because I sleep on my right side, the hair there always gets squashed and never looks attractive, no matter what I do or how much wax I put in it, it’s squashed hair.
During the night I went through my inventory of books at LibraryThing and picked out the authors I liked best and then checked to see what was available of theirs at Bookmooch. Not everything was, but my wish list there did grow and I will be notified if a book becomes available. I have sixteen books to send, almost all of them inside Europe. I do make one exception for someone who lives in Japan. I’m staggering sending them over a period of two months to ease the expenses. Soon I will start a third month if the demand keeps up. Right now I am expecting 24 books and I’ve already filled two spaces in my bookcase with mooched books. I’m working on the third one now. I will have mooched 55 books.
It’s going to be cleaning day today, because I’m expecting my friend Lucienne for coffee tomorrow afternoon. I have to vacuum the apartment and clean the bathroom and a cat barfed under the computer desk. That’s always a fun job to do. Somehow I have to put my reward system into place again, but I don’t know what I’ll reward myself with this time. Maybe I’ll just allow myself to sit at the dining table with a cigarette and a glas of juice. When I have to clean the apartment for some reason, I’m never as happy about it as when I do it out of my own free will. I rear my head just a bit. I don’t like the motivation, cleaning house because someone is coming. It rubs me the wrong way. Of course, I’ll do it, but reluctantly.
I have written another six sentences which you can read on my writings blog here.
I got this award from Friend of the Bear some time ago, but then forgot all about it, sorry, Friend of the Bear. Thank you very much!
Then I got this really nice award from Tessa Edwards and I had quite forgotten about it also, so I want to thank Tessa one more time for it.
And finally, what reminded me of these awards, was this award that I got from Gail this morning by email, so thank you very much, Gail.
Feeling very much overwhelmed, I am not capable of handing out these awards right now. I feel I have to be in the proper frame of mind for that, so I’m going to do that at a later time. Probably after I’ve cleaned the apartment. I do want to give it my proper attention and not forget anyone important. That’s the worst thing I could do.
Actually no, I’m going to keep it really simple and hand them out to the first blogs that pop into my head and all of them get all three awards, even if they’ve already got one of them.
- Big Blue Barn West
- Friend of the Bear
- Minnesota Matron
- Nuts in May
- The Other Side of Sixty
- At the Farm
Okay, that’s the end of this post. I’ve got to clean the apartment now, either that, or take a nap. I think I will take a nap. That sounds like what I need now. Have a great day and enjoy whatever weather you have. It is gloomy here, but cozy inside.
Ciao,
Nora
>A damned stubborn woman.
>
Of course, I slept late this morning and so did the dog and we both took our merry time doing the waking up ritual of me drinking coffee and smoking my cigarettes and him getting petted by me and then eating his breakfast and laying around digesting it before he had to go out and unload some.
So, I let the whole morning go completely to waste and spent it sitting behind the computer reading emails and reacting to Facebook comments and reading some blogs.
I don’t know if you can completely call that a wasted morning. It all depends on your priorities and if having clean baseboards is more important than sitting around generally being in an excellent mood and being kind to your animals and making sure that everyone is happy.
In my book inner peace and happiness come first and foremost before anything else. If I can reach that state of mind, I figure that I’m having a good day and that is what my life is all about. Doing the dishes and emptying the ashtrays and picking up dog hair are secondary issues that will all happen at one moment or the other, sooner or later.
My goal in life is to always strive for the most contended state of mind. I dislike strive in my head and complications. I simplify the processes in my head down to the most basic ones. Everything is neat and overseeable. There are no loose ends. I suppose I have a monk like attitude toward life. Maybe like a Buddhist monk, except he wouldn’t depend on coffee and cigarettes.
I think the dog’s eyes are becoming worse again and I will probably have to go back to the vet. There is junk in the corner of his right eye and it looks kind of red. It seems to be an ongoing problem that’s not going to be resolved easily. He won’t like going to the vet and it will be a slightly traumatic experience for him again, but there is no other solution.
Oh yes, before I forget, I was given an award by the WiseWebWoman and, of course, I have to display it and hand it out to some other people, which is always the tough job.
I am passing this award on to Aims, The Rotten Correspondent, grit, Maureen, Elaine, Mean Mom, Maggie and Laurie. With great thanks to the WiseWebWoman, of course.
Here’s another award of my own that I want to help into the world and hand out to some people that I am particularly fond of.
I want to hand out this award to Lisa, Diane, Babaloo, Bev, Frances, Ann, Lane, Jo and Cheryl. Please pass it on. Oh, and not to forget, WiseWebWoman, of course, hee, hee.
I just took the dog out for a walk and it is a wee bit cold out there. I have the heat on in the apartment, but I’ve just put on an extra cardigan, so now I am wearing two. Very fashionable! I’m also wearing two pairs of leggings, but that is not noticeable. For the fashion conscious, it can’t be too cold outside, because it messes up your carefully chosen ensemble. It’s not good to wear a long thick woolen cardigan over a happy little flimsy dress. Besides, you do want your nicely chosen necklace to show up. There is a lot of grace, however, in being warm. I don’t underestimate that.
You can see how preoccupied I am with my looks. You’d think I was a regular Barbie doll. It’s not like I have a great body or anything. I just pretend I do. I fuss and preen like a bird of paradise in the morning. After that I figure everything is in place and I don’t look in the mirror much anymore. Especially not in strange mirrors, because you know how god awful bad you always look in them when taken by surprise. Never glance in a mirror or a shop window when you happen to pass by, keep your eyes averted at all times.
Well, that just about does it for me. I am all done writing things down. I have no other thoughts in my head. Except those concerning chocolate, but that is another story.
Have a happy day!
Ciao…
>First things…
>First things first. I had let Mean Old Middle Aged Mom know that I coveted awards again, after I had said at one time that I would no longer accept them. I don´t know what was wrong with silly me when I made that statement, I must have been suffering from sunstroke or something. Anyway, I do want awards again now and as you can see for yourself, I´ve displayed all of mine in my sidebar. Call me a twit to care, but I do. Mean Mom was kind enough to share her latest award with me, which is very generous of her, but that´s the way she is, despite her name, and here it is.
It is my intention to give this to 5 or 6 other people, so let me put my thinking cap on for a minute or two.
Okay, I want to give this award to the following blogs:
- BeanPaste
- Chicken and Cheese
- grit´s day
- It´s a mad madge world
- Nuts in May
- The Potty Diaries
- Whopping Cornbread
Done my duty? Yes, done my duty! So, now on to other things.
I just watched a program about a Dutch team of reporters that is following the election in the States from Kenton, Ohio. They are interviewing ordinary citizens in a diner. People who have lost their jobs and their houses and who tell about who they are voting for and why. Most people so far want to vote for Obama, although there was one somewhat incoherent couple who were going to vote for McCain, because they felt it was nobody´s fault that they had lost everything, because of the husband´s injury to his foot.
There is going to be live coverage about the election all through the night for people who want to stay up and watch it. I think I´ll go to bed and hope for the best and turn the TV on in the morning.
Oh yes, I have to show you those collages. Well, I´m a bit bashful about it, but I´ll do it anyway. Oh, you´re not going to believe this, but now I can´t find the photographs that I relocated on the PC somewhere in a folder. I don´t know where the heck they are. I am looking and looking and I can´t find them. I know where they are supposed to be, but I can´t find the location. Gggrrr…
Okay, let me not get stressed about that and pretend I can do that another time when there is no American election on TV. I am listening to it with half an ear, because I don´t want to miss anything. I don´t understand how there can be people undecided who they are going to vote for on the day of the election. Surely you must know by now. Or did they have their head stuck in a hole all this time?
Tell you what. I am going to get my pajamas on and make an early night of it. As it was, I had to take a nap on the sofa this morning because I had not gotten enough sleep last night.
Good luck with the election and all of you a good night.
Ciao…
>I Love Your Blog
>
I came by this award the easy way. All I did was visit Debs at The Lehners In France and she was giving it away to her first 14 commenters, so I took advantage of that. It’s not every day that I come by such a pretty award that easily and I did seize the moment. You can’t blame me, can you? But now I am going to stick to the rules again and hand it out to 7 deserving people who I hope don’t have this one yet and will be happy with it. So, here we go. I am giving this award to the following blogs:
- Big Blue Barn West
- Crystal Jigsaw
- Missing You Already
- Nuts in May
- Swearingmother
- For the Long Run
- Fairymix.com
There, I’ve been a good girl and done my duty and I hope I’ve made some of you happy with this little token of my appreciation. I’d give all of you a chocolate cake and a bunch of roses if I could, but distance prevents me from doing so. You’d be surprised if I showed up at your doorstep with those things in my hands, wouldn’t you?
Now I’ve got another problem on my hands. I got one letter from the Tax Office saying I’m getting 4 months worth of rent subsidy, and one letter saying I am getting nothing at all. Of course, I called about it right away and the woman I got on the phone could not explain it, but she promised me that someone would call me back with an answer within three days time, between 9 and 11 AM. Today is the last day. If nobody has called me by 11 AM, I suppose I will be calling them and in the meantime, I am down to my last 2.31 Euros. Yes, I like to live dangerously, but I had in fact counted on the subsidy money already being in the bank. God forbid anything should go smoothly when it comes to my finances.
I am trying to remember what I did yesterday, but my mind comes up with a great big blank. I know I was very cold every time I went outside. We had no rain, but there was a cold wind blowing that made you shiver in your shoes. I am constantly wearing a scarf now when I go out and I think I want to start wearing a double layer of clothing. Today I am wearing thick socks and when I walked the Überhund just a while ago, I made it a short walk, because I thought it was too cold.
Every year you have to get used to the cold again and learn to dress for it and remember to wear enough clothes. It’s really not so much the low temperature, as the wind that makes you cold. I remember the first year I was back in the Netherlands and it was January and it was cold and I was so miserable and thought it was the most awful place to be. Well, I came from California. We would stand at the bus stop, waiting for the darn bus to get there, and just curse the wind that blew at us across the empty fields. The only person who wasn’t miserable was my son, who moved to Alaska some years later.
It is true though, that the cold seasons make you appreciate the springtime very much and you really do stand full of awe when everything turns green again and all sorts of stuff pops up out of the ground. This summer went by quickly, though, and we didn’t have much of one. One day it was springtime and then it was Autumn again. It was over and done with in no time at all. We certainly tried to be optimistic by wearing our summer clothes, but very often we deceived ourselves and were under dressed.
Now, of course, some people are hoping for a cold winter so that the Eleven City Skating Tour can be held. Thousands of people participate in it, but it can only be held if all the canals and lakes are frozen over with a thick layer of ice. The Tour is 200 kilometers long and the last one was in 1997. I, for one, don’t wish for a winter that cold, but I do remember kids skating on the pond where my sister and I walk the dogs. We also had a lot of snow then and all over the place there were snowmen in the gardens.
My father and I had the tradition that we would go for a walk in the first new snow of the winter and as it usually started to snow in the evening, we would be the first people to make footsteps in it and we always liked that very much. My father was a sledding and skating father. That’s what he did with us in the wintertime when there was always snow and ice, it seems. Isn’t it great that nobody can take your memories away from you? All by yourself you can cherish those, no matter what.
Ah, I’m reminiscing, I’m in that sort of mood. That won’t get the dishes done and the laundry clean. I’ve got to snap out of that instantly, but it was nice while it lasted. Now I am going to do some useful things around here, because I don’t remember doing many useful things yesterday. It is a lost day.
Have a good day, you all.
Ciao…
>An Award.
>Diane Clancy has decided with her whole kind heart and everything, to give me an award for which I am very grateful. It has been a while since I have gotten one, because at one point I decided that I did not want to get them anymore, but I have changed my mind recently and become greedy again. I am undecided if I should display the awards that I have gotten so far in my sidebar, or if I should show an award once and leave it at that. It’s a decision I’ll have to make some day. Anyway, here is the award:
Now comes the hard part, I have to give this reward to seven other people and list them here and link to their blogs also and leave them a message on their blogs. This is where it all gets very tricky you see. Try to think of only seven people I would give this award to is hard, so today, I am going for some unusual choices, people you may not have heard of before.
Here they are in no particular order and I am not going to mention the individual’s name, as it is not always known to me. The blogs I am giving this award to are:
- Liebfraumilch and Lipstick
- The Potty Diaries
- Chicken and Cheese
- Her Bad Mother
- The Other Side of Sixty
- Whopping Cornbread
- The Wandering Writer…and her dog
A round of applause for them and for me for getting that part done. Now all I have left to do is go to their blogs and leave them a comment.
Oh boy, I think I am finally recuperated from installing Ubuntu and I am trying to figure out if it was all worth it. I think I will give it a week of working exclusively with it and then decide if I like it or Windows better. I think I have to get used to the way Ubuntu works. It is so simple and bare and not at all cluttered with things the way Windows is. I feel like I am missing things that I should keep looking for.
I think that for my photographs download I will keep going to Windows, unless the Exfactor comes up with a solution like he said he would. He was here yesterday to take a look at it all and to bring me a very small pair of plyers to repair my necklaces with, some of which had started to fall apart. Luckily, all of them while I was at home.
I slept a lot during the day, on the sofa and the Überhund was mighty confused. He does however sleep on his sheepskin rug and shares it happily with the cats, because there is enough room for everybody. It was a brilliant idea to put it under the coffee table, if I say so myself. I think he feels safe there and it is close to where I sit usually.
I have been wearing my high tops almost nonstop, because they are so comfortable and the next time I am in that store, I must look to see if they have another pair in my size, which they didn’t when I got these. It would be good to have a spare pair around in case I wear these out quickly. I think they are cool enough to wear a lot and to safe my boots for when I really get gussied up.
Today I am expecting my last expenditure, a gray long sleeved tunic that is a size 44 and that will hopefully stop my spending spree for now. Unless I find many cheap things at the second hand clothing store. Anything is possible.
Today I must go to the tobacco shop and I really should go grocery shopping, but if I don’t make it today, I can go tomorrow. It all depends on when the package gets here.
We are having some sunny days here. Not quite summery, but pleasant nevertheless. In the mornings it is cold, but when the sun gains in strength, it get positively warm. I thought I had lost that jasmine that I had transplanted to the pot out front, but there are some new little leaves on it, so I am hopeful that it will be okay by another few weeks. It is winter blooming jasmine, so it should be showing some growth this time of the year.
The poor cats have run out of Perfect Fit to eat and now have to eat ordinary Felix cat food and they don’t like it. They have distinguished taste. They have been spoiled by me to think only the best is good for them and they are right. No food additives and no food coloring and other junk. Gandhi is my case in point, the less she barfs, the better the food.
Well, except for the awards, this has not been a very exciting post, but I can’t always be such a sharp and witty humorist. Sometimes, I am just plain dull.
Have a good day people, I think I will yet have a nap or two in me.
Ciao…
>Awards.
>Since I have been out of the running for a while when it comes to giving out and receiving awards, I don’t know if it is a done thing at all anymore, but I am going to put my foot in it and hand out some awards to people whom I have recently discovered and who I think deserve a little token of appreciation.
I want to give the first award to Angelina Williamson of Dustpan Alley who does a great job getting people enthused about growing their own produce and preserving it also, but in a very excited and lyrical way, not so cut and dried as I put it here. I want to give her the following award:
Feeling virtuous and good, I’ll leave that part of the proceedings behind me and tell you that I’ve had a perfectly fine day. I did make a small error in judgment and thought I was awake at 3:30 AM, but I quickly found out that was not the case, as my head kept wanting to fall off my neck, and I went back to bed and slept until 9 AM and the Überhund slept even longer than that, proving my point that he can go for a long time without having to relieve himself, so the show he puts on in the morning is all shenanigans.
Then I proceeded to waste my first hours behind the computer instead of doing more useful things such as dishes and laundry and administration, but there was nobody looking over my shoulder and I thought I could very well get away with it and i did.
I was still waiting for the delivery person to come as I missed her on Saturday and on Monday, but she finally showed up at 2 PM and not only brought my green cardigan, but also my ankle boots that I had been waiting for for over a week. I tried them on first and they fit great and look great and I am a tough broad in them. I like being a tough broad. It’s always been my ambition in life to be a tough broad and at times I have thought I was one, but mostly I was faking it, now I really am one and can fill these boots.
The green cardigan was a good choice and I have several outfits that go with it, so I am well pleased. I like it so much when I am put together well, but I especially like the boots as they do great things for my image, even though you can’t appreciate their whole effect when they are hidden by my jeans. I have to make sure I sit down a lot and pull up my jeans a bit. If I cross my legs it works well. All I need now is a leather jacket and you now, that would keep me warm in winter too.
My nephew turned 14 today, so I went over there this afternoon wit the Überhund, who does not like to share me with so many people, but he has to learn. My nephew had gotten some super duper mobile phone for his birthday, the workings of which are a mistery to me, but I know it has a camera and a radio in it. I like my mobile phone uncomplicated, and oh, when mine rings, it sounds like angels singing in heaven, very ethereal. I like it when people ring me up on my mobile phone.
So, my nephew turned 14 and he is not a rotten teenager at all. He is a good kid. I would like to cuddle with him, but I don’t think he would allow it, but he is very approachable other than that. He goes to the Atheneum, which is a high form of secondary school and he does his homework in the blink of an eye. Very smart, that kid is.
So, anyway, before I went over there, I didn’t completely waste the afternoon. I got all my paperwork in order and filed and I had noticed how dirty the keyboard of the computer had become and gave that a good cleaning and it now looks brand new again. All sorts of things had been spilled on it by me, I can’t blame anyone else.
I remembered to water the plants and the rubber plant is doing great, but I have my doubts about the heather that I have in the pots inside. I think they would rather be outside and they are taking on a petrified look. No doubt I’ll be going to the plant store to get some plants that I can’t kill to put there instead. Maybe something fake or something very hardy like ‘mother in law’s tongue’. I can’t think of the English equivalent right now.
I find doing the dishes to be a very soothing job, because I don’t have that many of them and there are no pots and pans. I wash and dry everything all at once and put it all away immediately. I’ve invested in some drinking glasses and now have enough kinds for when I have company and they are all nice and clean and neatly lined up in the cabinet.
But will I ever have company, that is the million dollar question. I sure don’t seem to be in a hurry to make friends, am I? I sort of neglect that part of my life completely as if it is not important to me at all. I think I must plan a party and invite some people, I think that will be the best thing to do.
I am feeling like having something incredibly good to eat. I always get cravings at this time of the day and make a quick run to the super market to get something good. It’s a bad habit that I have gotten into, but it is oh so pleasant when you want to indulge and the spirit is weak. I am not losing any weight as a result, but I am not gaining any either.
Right then, either way, I’ll stop writng this self indulgent epistle and try to make a decision. It will be a toss up between good and evil. Between kind and unkind. Between indulgence and discipline.
Hav a great day, keep the boogey man away from you as far as possible. He comes in many guises.
Ciao…
Another Splendid Day 