Cravings

It's been a while ... a new life has started since ...

First, I lured the Laplandkiller into living in Belgium here with me, instead of him keeping me captured in the high north. We now live together in my little flat, which is sometimes a bit too small ... it was hard in the beginning to share my private space with somebody else. But now we seem to have found a kind of symbiosis in our mutual messiness. We are playing house with the cats now, having fun with their specific characters they each have. I know that my bf is more of a dog/poodle lover, but it seems now that him and the cats have accepted each other. What am I saying ! The cats swirl around his leggs when he comes home, as much as they do with me.

Second, colleagues and friends around me are baby-booming. November has been a realy succes for diaper companies around here. So I have been looking at baby pictures more than is good for me.

Third, the craving started ... I never thought it would happen to me ... no, not me, I would resist it ... Ever since elementary school, I have been saying that. Why do I change my mind now ?!

There was no use in resisting it, and yes, I accuse the baby-boomers.

So I gave in to the craving of .... crocheting

I hated it when we had to learn it in school. I loathed the struggle with stitches and patterns, the sweaty hands and squeeking yarn over the hook. It gave me goosebumps.

But I was so in need of cheap cuddly baby presents. First I tried origami and diapercakes, but after finding out that:

a: diapers aren't that cheap

b: feeling ridiculous in buying diapers with no kid hanging around me

c: Kat saying:' origami, cute, but, what do people do with it?'

I changed quickly to the soft feeling of yarn in my hands. So coming up soon, pictures of my experiments with the hook.

Oh yeah, fourth: as we both are addicted to chess, after all, it brought us together, we subscribed to the chess club again. So now, on tuesdays, you can find me struggling behind the board again.



this was our life in a nutshell,

yours truly,

Heidi

ps: don't forget why I keep on writing in English:

Shopping Shame

I needed to go shopping ... I needed to shop badly. At some periods in a woman's live, she just wants to go into the city and spend money. So off I went, looking for a trolley to fit in the hand luggage of an airplane.


The trolley had to measure up to some requirements. Of course the thing must be able to be stuffed into the luggage compartment of a plane. Since, due to my again florescence love life, I am going to travel by plane few times a year, a trolley would come in handy. So, it had to be rather small.


The precious thing also couldn't be too expensive. Most of the bags that I found were far too expensive for my little nurse salary. It was going to be a long search. I strolled the city for hours, bought a lot of other stuff and finally, finally found what I was looking for.


'Do you know if this trolley is allowed into the hand luggage on the plane?' I asked the lady behind the counter.


'I think so', she said, 'but the smaller one of them will most probably be allowed. But, you also have to see how big your child is, it must be able to pull it without trouble.'


My mind went buzzing. Should I play along with her, pretending that I had an eight year old daughter travelling along ?


I bent over the counter, making sure that nobody could hear me and whispered to the lady: 'Don't tell anyone, but I'm buying this for myself ...I like the shape of it very much'


The woman leaned forward to me and whispered back: ' No problem, madam, I sell them a lot to grown up people', and she winked.


I tried the trolley, bought it, and happy as a child showed it to my gay friends while we had coffee and cake at Popovs.


You want to see my new gadget ? Here's a pic :

Sowing the Seeds of Love

I have been working hard in my garden the past week. Since it's my own now, it might be worth it to plough through the earth and get myself dirty.

As I tried to get rid of the bald patches in the lawn, I sowed some grass before my previous night shifts started. I did so, as not to trample over the newly sprouted plants with my plump feet during daytime hours.

Last week, when night shifts ended, I went outside to check on the result. It had been raining a lot after a dry period, so I expected a good result.

You can't believe what I saw : A big, fat pigeon was sitting in the middle of the lawn, peacefully choosing between the seeds and the fresh grass sprouts !

I had to chase it away myself, can you ever believe that ! I have three cats and they were all sleeping sound inside of the flat. They can at least take turns in guarding the garden, that's my point of view of how matters should go around here !

No food for them tonight, that's for sure !

Tournamenting Kalix

I promised more stories about my trip to Kalix, so here we go. My chess buddy is coming over to Belgium next month, so this might be the right time to talk about the chess tournament in Kalix.
Lakke, who works in a bookshop, organised a special chess competition for me, in his shop, between the books. It is here that I found out that Swedish people are very friendly, they even let me win the competition !
In the pictures you can see my buddy Maaarten who is losing against me, Lakke with his good luck green beret and poor Niklas, who lost all games.
Oh yeah ! Here are the results :

The international strong coffee chess competition located in Kalix (Sweden), 19Th April 2007, special guest from Belgium

Heidi - Sven 1 - 0
Niklas - Lakke 0 - 1
Sven - Niklas 1 - 0
Lakke - Heidi 0 - 1
Heidi - Niklas 1 - 0
Sven - Lakke 0 - 1

Signing important papers

And on the third day, it started to rain very hard. The plants in the garden of Eden, refreshed themselves, eager to suck up the water after a month of dryness, silently awaiting their faith ...

And the little blond girl went to the dark office hole of the Immo people. Another horrible Immo man shook her hand and tried to convince her to sign a compromise to buy the flat. But the little girl told the other mighty immo man, that she didn't like their aggressive approach and that she wanted certain conditions added to the compromise papers.

The mighty Immo man laughed and tried to make the blond feel even more blond, but then the little girl waved with the visit card of the Almighty Bank People, telling him to phone them and she persisted.

The Immo man cursed and shivered again, putting the extras in the compromise as she wished.

And so the story goes, the little blond girl hopping to her own home, being relieved and happy. She realized in the past two weeks, how much people supported her and what friendship meant to her. And when she got home, her brother had another surprise for her ... Thank you so much, little brother, you helped me a whole lot of a whole lot !