My Year of Meaningful (2011)

I started this over a week ago and then just couldn't be bothered....

18.Nov.05:
I find myself frustrated today.

SO I will reflect on happier times.

This weekend was pretty happy.

I can't believe we still have beautiful yellow and red leaves on trees... it really is a mild pre-winter this year. Good, especially when you're worried about someone's "First Irish Year".... I hired PaulW from holland this summer and that means that he's experiencing his first round of irish seasons, and well, the autumn/winter is always what gets people really messed up in the head. So he's getting a good (abnormal) intro for his "First Irish Year". Lucky prick.

My F.I.Y. was 2002... the year we arrived.... in August. Late August. It was mild for about a week. Then the rains came. They came the first week of September. It rained . . . .
. . . all through September. . .
. . . all through October. . .
. . . all through November. . .
. . . all through December. . .
. . . all through January . . .I see where I'm going with this ANYWAY it friggin rained til March and this whole time I'm like teary eyed and begging my baby "pleeeeeeeeease take me back to Australia". . .

(I just now realize my mom has the same story about their first summer in a ghetto 3rd-floor flat in downtown Jeffcity Missouri back in 1970-whatever, 110 degrees and no A/C... " OH John, pleeeeeease, take me back to Colorado..." GROSS!!!)

So anyway, Paul seems to be happy enough with his new life in Ireland, I guess. He's not the feedback-givin' kinda guy. But like I said, he can't complain about the weather... he's had it damn good. Plus we have good jobs going on at work and he's getting a lot of opportunity for big design projects that a graduate out of Amsterdam would never have the opportunity to do back home. I just feel sorry for him being lonely and not being able to find a nice hoochie momma with whom to snuggle in front of the gas heater with on these cold and dreary nights. What can you do about a guy who's too shy for his own good, at age 27? I mean, he's cute enough, what gives?


Anyway the weekend was nice, it included one of the last beautiful autumn dog-walks of the year (probably) and we got good and liquored-up on saturday with S/L as is becoming habitual lately. Crawled home around 4am and I drunk-dialed Heidi who DIDNT ANSWER THE PHONE (Damn you HG!!) so I instead proceeded to Drunk Blog my agression about my lack of tolerance for people who won't leave us alone about being childless "at our age" WHATEVER!!!... hence the previous entry. (BTW it didn't stem from S/L, they don't harass us about that. . . it's everyone else). L. just assumes we'll "come around" in good time. ??

Sunday we played squash and even though I had more than the legal limit of alchohol in my bloodstream, I still managed to beat Hannes for the first time in ages, so I don't know WHAT that says about my game. . . who knows?

It was a nice weekend altogether.

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25.Nov.05
Thanksgiving Run-down...

Being that the Family C is my only connection with the homeland, naturally they had us over for Thanksgiving festivities. It was actually semi-pleasant. I haven't had a "Thanksgiving" in. . . well, I remember coming home for one in 1996 when I was living in Memphis. Back in Aus, Ray and I would get a roasted chicken from Nandos or something, but it was never a real thanksgiving. OH WAIT I just remembered when I came back to Wyoming in 1999 I went to Mangler's house in Jackson for turkey day with her family. That was my last one back stateside.... So anyway, it's been a long time.

Being that the Family C has 4 kids (all under the age of 6) it almost reeked of home. Except for that there were the only 2 americans in the house. He had gotten a can of pumpkin sent over for the pie, and had managed to scare up some sweetpotatoes and stuffing and even some cranberry sauce. Irish kids are funny... they think every holiday involves presents. Spoiled brats. So to keep the peace, they got christmas crackers. Which are kinda like presents. I mean you pull the ends of 'em and little crappy toys fall out. That's kinda like a present.

My parents & grandparents called while we were there, so I had to talk to them. My brother was totally bored and uninspired, there aren't many cousins left around the area anymore so it was him and the geriatric contingent this year. And my mom dominated the phone call as per usual. I got 1 sentence out of my grandfather: "I'm still above ground... grumblegrumblemmmph" and my Aunt Mary and Uncle Ray both got on for about 4 minutes each. Damn uncle Ray busted me on the fact that I had blocked him from my email address... he wasn't supposed to figure that out.... he was all like "well I thought maybe you got too many of my conservative republican forwards, so you blocked me??" Hmmmmm, d'ya THINK?!? I had to play it cool and tell him maybe he didnt have my "new" address or something. CRAP!


The cool thing about this thanksgiving was, because we PLANNED everything with our friends for it, it actually was something to look forward to for a few days... I could hardly even get any work done on thursday because i WAS actually almost... well, excited? I snuck out of work early, Hannes got a half day off, and we were there with the C. clan, having brandy alexanders as early as 5pm. We even took FRIDAY off too! I had some annual leave to burn up, and we made it a really nice, hangover day.

Friday was well worth it. We slept til 11, had a bath, bummed around in our fleecey robes til 2pm and generally did nothing. It was the best free day ever. I got a chance to get some work done for the bid-nez, got to do instant messanger for AGES, make breakfast burritos for lunch, and then we went for a leisurly walk to go pick up the car, and play squash... all before I normally would have even been home from the office! It was amazing! People should have free fridays more often! What a concept! (This is, I guess what we're missing, when we use all our 3day public holiday weekends to take trips to . . . wherever)

Saturday was nice too... since we had Friday off, it seemed like the weekend was lasting forever! we decorated for christmas. H really likes to do that. It was even his idea. I guess in holland there isnt so much of an atmospheric-tradition, so he gets a kick out of the music/hot chocolate/decorations/cliche santa-shit about a real english christmas. We put on xmas music and did the whole thing. It was actually pretty cool.

What is not cool is that we have to transfer a SHITLOAD of money down to Botswana this month (it's tax season down there now). . . WHY does this crap always happen before the holidays.!?!?! I find out we're going to have about 10 bucks for the next month, so we just have to grin and bear it, and be happy that what we have planned for next weekend has already been paid for. Then only 1 more weekend to be broke, because then the next weekend is my office xmas party so that will be free, and then the NEXT weekend we're off to the homeland. Let's just keep our fingers crossed for some sort of suprise xmas bonus, so Jill&the hubster can buy a candy bar at the Boston airport on our layover back to MO, shall we?

27.Nov.05

I called Heidi (sober) saturday night while we were waiting for the bathtub to fill up (a serious wait). It was great to talk to her but Hannes gets so annoyed when we talk because there comes a serious diarreah-of-the-mouth problem and it keeps going and going, and he maintains that I act like he doesnt exist anymore. OK that's totally true but that just means we should make MORE phone calls because then we won't have like 30 hours of shit to cover, in a span of about a 1-hour phone call. Normally when I'm on the phone, if he walks up to me, I'll put my hand over the receiver, (after saying "can you hold on one sec?" to the person I'm talking to) and I'll treat him like a decent, worthy human being with whom I happen to be deeply in love. I'll answer his question and/or help him with whatever he needs, whenever. But when it's your best friend from high school who lives on the other side of the planet and you haven't phoned for at least 3 months, it's just useless to even try and get any information out of me. There's like 3 pans of water boiling over on the stove and 3 dogs barking in the back yard and a massive jacuzzi bathtub overflowing in the bathroom, my husband tangled up in electrical wires, and I just CANT SHUT UP. blahblahblahblahblahbalahhhhhh waahhahahaaahahaha! blah blah blah and what what what.

He gets so upset. He's even like "I'm scared to go to your home at Christmas because HEIDI G. is going to be there and you're going to ignore me all the time and leave me alone with your parents! You're going to forget about me!" I don't think it's a jealousy issue, I think he just legitimately worries that we turn into two spinning Loony Toons Tasmanian Devils, rev up our turbo-deisel motor mouth engines and create a superhuman vortex black hole whirlwind of mouth-chaos, which cumulates into two cyclones of babbling doom torpedoing randomly and dangerously off into outerspace leaving a path of death and destruction and broken china and wide-eyed innocent bystanders in its wake. And hannes will be standing there, alone, swearing in Dutch and cursing the day we ever came back to my old turf for the holidays.

We've never been there before, for the holidays, so he just doesnt know what to expect.

He's even asking me about *exactly what* one would be eating for Christmas EVE dinner, as opposed to Christmas DAy dinner. We've also scheduled exactly what days will be ideal for eating Taco Bell food, and exactly what day we can go visit what person, etc.

We're desperately looking forward to the date with Crazy Sarah at Shakespears, in the COU. I think I've hyped this pizza place up so high that he's going to expect the pizzas to come floating out of the kitchen, either that or be so incredible that one passes out from taste-bud-orgasm after one has had a mere mouthful of this heaven-on-a-crust. To be honest, I just remember them being "hella good", and having a wide array of non-traditional ingredients available for toppings, but I've felt the need to glorify the place to the 9th-degrees of uber-fantasy just to get him psyched up. He's also really excited to meet my friend "who has a real placenta in her deep freezer". Novelty bonus!

I'm really getting excited about the holidays, I just really hope that the parent-child relationship I'm heading back to, can survive a week and 2 days in the same house. When people ask "how is it possible you havent been home for xmas in 5 years?" . . . well the answer gets fuzzier and fuzzier in my mind, until it's well and truly refreshed by a visit to the 'rents turf. There will be fights. There will be resentment, there will probably even be threatening and screaming and storming off. There is the possibility Hannes could be miserable, and there is the possibility that there will be numerous occaisions of "AND THIS IS WHY WE'RE MOVING TO BOTSWANA, YOU PSYCHOS!!!" being thrown out. We'll see.

Me and PW made really hot invites for the New Years party. This means I really have to have it now. There's no going back.... HOO HA! Damn, I have to print those this week. . .