Gaz leak

Do you believe this or what.

Yesterday evening the new heating installation and boiler were installed, kids had been in the tub, everyone relieved untill I smelled gaz.

Now a while ago when we were installing all the closests upstairs we discovered some gazpipe that comes out of a wall.
No kidding.
We thought it was out of order, did several experiments (light a match and wait for 10 seconds) (duh..course not)
but apparently the thing is leaking.
And apart from that, there was no electricity at the back of the house.

What is going on here peeps?

We have just renovated the entire place, i mean the bags are still in the living room, painters are doing their thing and now the big bad pig is going to huff and puff and blow the house down?

This morning at 6.45 the electrician stood on the doorstep, to be followed by 3 painters half an hr later, the builder is coming too and the door still needs to be fixed.
Who said we were nearly there?

Dentist

Yesterday afternoon we had our regular check up at the dentist and the little brown spot that M. had had for about a yr now had turned into a hole.
After our dentist had discovered that, he said he'd do the whole bunch of us first and then fill it, which was a wise decision.

Oh. and he had already been so brave!
Now that he turned 6 he's getting some super fluor injection by getting two bits-don't have any other word for it, you know those things that a horse gets into his mouth- filled with -in his case- strawberry fluor and he has to held that in for 3 mins. He's got a bowl in his hand so whenever something starts leaking he can catch it, coz he's not allowed to swallow it thru.
Did you ever have that when you were young?
Didn't ring any bells to me.
After about 1,5 min. you saw panic arising in his eyes; OMG, i can't hold it in and I may not swallow, they're suffocating me. That's when he understood what the bowl was for.

And he was so proud of his 'big'tooth that the dentist discovered at the bottom of his gums. Most kids in his class have at least one loose tooth or maybe even 2 or 3 big teeth already and I sometimes see him touch his teeth in the mirror to see if his are starting to move.

But...
the hole.

Ofcourse he'd never witnessed this so in the beginning he still laughed at the dentists jokes and happily layed backwards in the chair.
Then the dentist explained how he was going to put the tooth to sleep, so he wouldn't feel anything about it afterwards, but that he was going to get a little prikje now, but M. Already having his 'gele slip' for judo could easily handle this.
And at first it seemed he did.


But then after spitting and feriously trying to wipe the tears from his face, he thought he was done but the drilling and filling had even to begin!

So with a lot of persuasion we got him backwards in the chair again, with the assistant hovering in his mouth and the dentist going on with the drill.
At one point he really freaked. They tried to put a tampon in his mouth coz he hardly opened it anymore, but the strange feeling of his half-stiff right face and about 3 hands moping around in his mouth was too much.

Still, the dentist was waiting with the filling in his hand and saying; you have to get back now, otherwise this will already be too hard to use.
So, under the promise that this would be only 5 seconds, he went back.
Immediately the dentist and his assistant went back doing what they were doing; saying OK M. remember this will be over soon and after I have counted to 5 you're done.
I chipped in saying; and I am going to help you all count.
We couldn't drag it anymore so started.
One

you're doing great.

Two.

Three.

almost there M.

Four.





And....


Five.

Oh, it was horrible,
the very memory brings back tears in my eyes.
He was just so scared and I could imagine very well what a rotten feeling it may be.

I am sure however that he didn't feel a thing.
The dentist had given him so much narcotics that even at the dinner table he had a mouth like Sylvester Stallone.

So, word is

they're starting with the new heating installation tomorrow which means we can get into the house this Friday !
Tomorrow R. is having a final discussion with the expert on the total amount of the damage and he is frantically collecting all sorts of bills now in order to prove what the items we lost costs.

The front door can still only be opened by kicking it in, so I hope something can be done to that quickly too. Then the painters have to do their thing, the wooden floor in the kitchen has to be sanded and painted (meaning we'll have to move out again for a couple of days) and ofcourse the cellar simply had to be restored.
But at least we can shower!

Yesterday at the course we had a very boring discussion about pixels and a very interesting one about the cohesion between ISO, diaphragm and sluitertijden, whitebalances and stuff like that.
In the back of my mind I do understand it, but I'll need a lot of practice to see it for real.
On my way over to R'dam this morning I tried to shoot a picture of one of the storks on a lamppost next to the A13 and almost bumped into my neighbor.

The pictures that I saw of my fellow photographers at the course are so much better than mine!
I really wonder why they are taking this course and sometimes feel like an idiot myself.
On the other hand, I've got lots of room for improvement (and I will, really, that stuff about light and diaphragm alone will get me there) and I cannot imagine they have that much opportunity to improve.
I hope.

Typical case of cognitive dissonance.

Some pics for my homework assignment

I just can't stand it that one minute these things work and the next they don't so every half hr or so during ironing i 've tried to upload a picture.
Lo and behold.

These are gorilla's, sorry cows in the mist.
I have made 4 themes;

1. on the road
2. kids
3. convention
4. turkish party (yesterday just across our street there was this party on the street so i grabbed my camera and went over. You have to get rid of a certain shyness just taking pictures of ppl you have never seen, but i am getting the hang of that

and these pictures belong to the first theme

1 hr later;

i might as well skip this day, coz 1 picture is all i could manage. Ok. You've got your way. I quit.

Update

Fucker de fuck fuck
I have just looked up LFF and must seriously apologize to all of you who have registered.
For starters, although the bill for it lays on my desk, the site is nowhere to found in the search engines.
The paying mechanism doesn't work.
It contains old and wrong info

I've mailed P. that i need to speak to him urgently.
In fact i've phoned and mailed him a few times last 3 weeks to let him know i wanted to talk about the site, but that's what you get with freelancers; he's got other assignments right now and i have allready paid his bill so why should he run for me?
It's a miracle tho that 142 ppl have already registrered.

But i want to move on with it.
To say i am frustrated is somewhat of an understatement.

Exciting stuff

O man, i really hate these stupid computers.

For the better part of the past 2 days i've been trying to upload my homework to the server for the photography course but the ftp service is out of order. So i searched thru all the cd's we had to see if some could be used, but all of them are full or readible only.
I've been to the office to collect some new ones but they need to be burned first and i don't know how that works.

AAAARRRGGGGGGGG !!

And the post i made yesterday for this blog was in the middle of being published when our internet connection dead.

God those things get me so pissed.

what else did we do this weekend?

• hang up 4 pairs of curtains (any idea how much velours curtains weigh?)
• dragged up 4 matrasses
• made 5 beds
• washed 5 laundry's
• ironed half of those
• unpacked 6 boxes that were returned by the cleaners (what a way to pack they have; panties next to hats, next to towels, t-shirts, gloves, socks, pillow cases. Anyone ever suggested to these guys to pick a topic and use that per box?)
• washed the dirty dishes that were still in the dishwasher ! The porcelain of some of the plates had creaked (?) during the heat so some looked to have black spiderwebs over them. You're right, we threw those away.

What can I say.

Another exciting weekend gone by

These past days

have been hectic.
Slowly though, things are getting back to normal.
Electricity in the house is working almost, but at least the pc is connected and so is the washing machine. Yahoo!

To give you some insight on what the cellar looked like after the fire:

Today the builders are back again (they're driving R. crazy. Ppl say they will come at certain times but don't show up and nobody calls to reschedule or tell you anything!) and someone will also come to see what can be done to restore the front door.

Whatever happens; R. C. and i will go back this weekend. The boys stays over at Toos' and we're just getting there to have some more space and for instance put some curtains back up, get some ironing done. The usual exciting stuff.

With the company we've been at the Convention the last 2 days and T. is in the plane to Portugal right now. Work is waiting. Later.

It's Prinsjesdag today

It's hellofbusy at the office.
After I kicked out 2 clients yesterday I raced down to the photography course where we had an intro on sluitertijden, diafragma's and histrogrammen and levels in Photoshop.
We have on ongoing assignment during this course, to take at least 1 picture a day.
Here's what I took on the fly-over this morning, driving from The Hague to Rotterdam.

Over at the House-front things are going totally different than expected. Opposite to what's said before, we will have the curtains, carpets, matrasses, coats, in short all stuff that had to be specially cleaned, back today.
But..
The plummer/electrician, is not going to start before next week's Monday and will need at least 2 days before we have a new central heating and boiler installation.

That means another weekend in The Hague.
And it's not that bad, it's just that everyone has very little privacy (the 6 or sometimes 7 of us share one big room basically) and we don't have a place to sit outside or something like that.
And with so many ppl on such a small space, it already gets dirty just putting 6 pairs of shoes of.
Christel -our cleaning lady- went over there yesterday and proudly announced she had thrown away 14 dirty buckets of water.

Ok.
So it's Prinsjesdag today.
Meaning our queen gets to ride her golden carriage and presents the governments plans for next year.
Also because of this Thea and I are at a convention tomorrow and the day after, where we meet all sorts of ppl involved with HRM and Payrolling.
And the day after that Thea goes on holiday, leaving me alone with a shitload of work.
So looking forward to the coming days.

Holy Moly

Or hooly mooly as M. says.

This weekend we had to tank.
80 € for a full tank !!

80 €
Still can't believe it.
In old money this is almost 200 guilders !!

Ieder nadeel hep zijn voordeel

Aldus Cruijff.

Want...* drum rolls*
Yesterday evening a friend of R.'s called to ask if he was available coz he had a job offer !
There is this big bank doing a HRM and Payroll outsourcing project and they need an independant consultant !
Hehe.
Well, i am waiting for the contracts to be signed before the flag goes up !!

And...
the electrician started this morning and a new cv installation has been ordered.
And J. is coming over this morning to see if the internet connection at home can be fixed.
Yahoo!!

Supernanny

On Dutch television we have about 3 programs about brats and supernanny's. We have an english JoJo (who visits american families btw) we have an older american nanny and there's the dutch shallow equivalent too.

R. and i accidentally zap into one of them and usually we love it.
it makes us see, there are ppl out there who are doing an even worse job than the 2 of us.
I mean you can think you are having a hard time with 1 kid, until you have 2 of them and you long for the day there was only one.
Somehow we got crazy and had our 3rd one (and if we had started at a younger age, we'd for sure have 4 or maybe even more kids but let's not get into that one).

And i know other parents are watching too, coz the other day R.and i were taking the kids out to the big M. and while we were in line and the kids were running around, soon to be joined by 2 boys, their mom was behind us holding a baby. One of her boys smashed C. on the head and she tried to get him beside her.
Which he didn't do obviously.
We looked behind us and smiled understandingly when she said;
"I know i should get down on my knees now and speak to him with a low authoritive voice"(that's what JoJo always says :) "but the baby is in the way"

Anyhow.
at these supernanny programs the mom is usually at home, dad's not to be seen and they have at least 3 children.
These kids smash each others head in, run away, wreck the house, don't go to bed, don't eat/stay at the table etc. and finally Nanny comes to a rescue.

Yesterday there was a couple with at least 5 kids (we couldn't keep count, camera work was zooming in on a kid with a pillow over his head and stuff like that so we couldn't see who was who)
They were bad !!
Really really bad.
And dad thought mom wasn't up to it, so mom just shut up entirely and the nanny said this family was one of her biggest challenges in her nannying career so far.
The thing why i am going on about this episode is; C. has grown a habit of having pain somewhere suddenly whenever she doesn't want to do something anymore or gets scolded coz we don't want her to do sth.
They had wining kids too and she said they should use words for their emotions and stop wining.
So, this morning i tried to explain to C. she was probably angry coz she couldn't come along with us to Rotterdam and that's what made her say her knee hurt.
Thing is, when you have about 5 minutes to get your shoes on, look for your keys, say goodbye to everybody and..
it's not that easy to keep your cool and sit down with a 2 yr old wining toddler.

On the other hand, she can be the cutest of them all with her little girly manners and smiles.

And how is my own supernanny doing?
Fine I suppose.
Not getting much sleep I think with her boyfriend being over.

I have to make more time to speak to everybody.
I have to do sth about LFF.

Okay.
here are some other blogs of moms i visit regularly;
This single mom has newborn twins

Ans this is a home-schooling mom who's kids would get along great with mine But the url of that one is on my private computer which is cleaned by now but cannot be connected coz we still only have a needrepair of electricity in the house.
I'll get back to that one.

Well, I worried for nothing

coz the whole assignment is cancelled.
Yesterday evening R. received a phone call in which his boss-to be explained she had chosen an internal candidate over him.

I thought R. stayed rather cool and polite on the phone whereas I was quite furious.
How dare they be so unprofessional, rude and stupid !

I just can't believe it.
Whatever you do dear readers, never join Pink Roccade Getronics, or whatever their name is after this merger.
Bunch of lying hypocrites !!!

Skiiing and horses

Today i had to take M. to the schooldoctor. Just a routine thing.
Dont' know why but he brought his medal from the skiiing class.
So, ofcourse, the doctor asks him about this and wants to know if he skies a lot.
Yeah, he says. Distracted coz he had to do a drawing too. But i only do that once a week and not during wintertime but where they have fake snow.
Ok. sure.

And are there any other sports you do?
Err, yeah i ride a horse

This is where i interfere and let the doctor know he's been on a skiing camp this spring once and the same goes for the pony camp he has once been to.
To help the doctor i ask him what he does on Mondays and Tuesdays.
duh, you see him thinking and he says
Judo and swimming ofcourse.

So, after that we go for the eye tests (excellent) and the hearing test (excellent) and I drop him of at school.

C. went to school this morning to get used to the preschools and everything went splendid !
R. was with here this first time, so we'll see how she does next week.
O shit.
I just realize next week R. is working and T. and I are at a convention in Amsterdam.
This whole 2 parents working in different cities- 2 houses in different cities and- 3 kids going to 2 different schools-thing, is starting to creak.

Underwear, R. and Pink Roccade

So here's the deal R. has got at Pink Roccade.
He starts coming Monday for 4 weeks, 32 hrs a week.
And what does he do?
He is going to make a financial planning for an ICT department !!

R!
Who makes a mess of our own financial administration and forgot to pay the insurance bill in time!!

We just couldn't believe it.
It clearly looks like his former boss just didn't have the guts anymore to say he didn't have anything for him and just gave him whatever was left.
He's getting a fair pay so that's not what we're complaining about, but it's just so far from his workexperience!

Anyway, yesterday afternoon i stepped out of the office to go buy some underwear for the boys and for C. At that very moment R. drives by with the boys to go to judo.
My cell phone rings and i just think it's R. telling me what a coincidence and stuff like that, so i answer my phone saying: Yes
"Yes" I hear
I go: hi, i am just off to buy some underwear and panties now.
And then it gets awfully quiet.

Oh
My
God
I might be talking to this new client we're doing a search for.
Arghh !!!

"is this a bad moment to call you?" I hear back
"err, who is this?"
And then the candidate on whose voicemail I had left a message reveals himself.
Pff....

Another weekend

Friday night A. and J. came over to The Hague too, so we've got a full house again.

Saturday we went into town to get new clothes, new lunchboxes (apparently plastic catches smells very quick and doesn't lose them anymore) and rugsacks for the boys, stuff like that.
On our arrival A. and J. left for Rotterdam coz she needed some stuff from home.
At about 4 we get a phone call; on trying to open the door, her key broke !
R. called a lockmaker, who removed the broken piece and now the door can only be closed by the lower lock. I hope no one from my neighborhood reads this blog.

Sunday we went to R'dam coz i had reserved tickets for another musical story in De Doelen.
It was an Oscar Wilde story about the birthday of the Spanish princess Infanta.
Now it was the first time i took C. too and for now the last time.
It wasn't very busy and soon she started to climb other stairs and walk around. The boys were absorbed by the music and the play but one of the ppl sitting in front of us said C. was giving her a heart attack, climbing on all those things. (you should see her in the playground silly cow).
I then took her on my lap on that threw her in a tantrum!
I had just told her that if she didn't behave better we would have to leave, but when the boys heard that, they started pleaing they wanted to stay.

Then this "theatre-woman" comes over and says we're a nuisance for other ppl and do we want to leave. Ok I say, but i've got other children too and if you want to babysit them so they can watch the end, i'll leave.
Since the fire however especially C. and M. cling to me more than ever, so in the end, we all left.

It's difficult for the children.
Living on a floor about the 3rd of our normal living space, no place to go outside, mom and dad constantly reminding you not to scream or run coz you might annoy the ppl living above us.
We'll make it though.
They' ve got Judo this afternoon to let go of some energy and i hope in 2 wks time we'll be back in the house. (i have a secret plan B that reckons we'll be there this coming weekend, but i am keeping that quiet coz sofar all of my dates have been overruled)

R. is having his final job interview at Pink Roccade Getronics this morning and i'd say we deserve some good news by now, so go get 'm !

Things are looking better

We've had the thumbs up from the insurance yesterday afternoon and R. and i drank a glass of champagne to celebrate.
I was getting a bit nervous coz it took so long, but finally the longsought yes came.

We ate at Lucas's, one of M.'s best friends (although these things change rather quickly; i set a date for T 2 weeks ago, to play at Reollo's tomorrow but they've fallen out of love last week, so i think i am going to reschedule :)

That morning R. had allready checked out of the hotel. Our bill had gone up to 1200 euro and as we we're not hearing anything, thought it best to take the savest road.
My sister offered us her former "house" in Den Haag (btw T. ; Moniek said they're leaving as of October 1st, did you know?) and he had already gone over there to air the place, turn on the fridge and stuff like that, so we made the beds, read a story and put the kids to bed.
is was a relief to finally be together during the evening and after a short night (R. had to be at the doctor's this morning coz he bit his lip so hard about a week ago he's got some sort of elephant man lip now; the doctor will remove the swelling next week) the guys who came to clean the place came over.
I just heard from R. that they also start with a needrepair for the electricity and then we hope the front door can be replaced.
We can only open that door by kicking at it now. A habit C. has grown very fond of. Especially at other doors, such as at the Albert Heijn, the bakery etc.

Part II

At 9, everybody was sort of ready to go downstairs for breakfast ( there was hardly anything left, so that's when we decided, we better move on to another hotel) and after we had finished the last sandwiches and beschuitjes we went back to the house.

The smell is just terrible.

I decided to go over to my mother to get some washing done and R. decided to air the house as much as possible.With our last breaking in in mind (someone simply walked in and stole a wallet and laptop) he could do nothing else than to sit in the living room and wait for our return.
Joel took a stroll to town to clear his head a bit.
We did laugh coz the afternoon before, he had given the boys some wonderful storybooks and for R. and me he had a play called "Worst scenario's"
I shit you not.

Anyway, that afternoon we checked in at the Novotel in town and went to the lobby to have a drink and some bitterballen. They did say at the hotel that we had one of the last rooms coz there were all sorts of sports events going on in town and they were hosting different sportsmen.
So we were watching a baseball match between the Netherlands and Korea (we won with 6-2) and then these Korean baseball players walked into the lobby !
I shit you not.

We decided to go out to Betty Bear for some dinner and outside there are several international female cyclist groups and we end up with R., drooling over the most expensive bikes.
Again I shit you not.

Next to us on the highway a Ferrari is waiting for the redlight sign.
The driver gets out, comes over to us and says to Joel; here are the keys, go ahead try it out.
Yes, I shit you.
But...
considering the ways things were going, anything could happen by then.
And the part of the Ferrari is true.

The rest of the night went by rather uneventfull apart from the fact that R. went to my mother's to get the laundry, while i was putting the kids in the tub, and came back, saying that he had had a call from the insurance person.
There were problems with the payment being overdue, so we were out of insurance as up to now.

So, this morning i brought the children to school, who had their bears with them as proof of an exciting saturday evening and i went to the office.
At about 11 i got a call from the insurance company saying some experts were coming over to check out the damage and see what needed to be done.
In fact 3 experts came over and stayed for about 2, 5 hrs, checking the cellar and having me explaining what happened.
If everything goes well, we'll get the green lights tomorrow and a specified cleaning company will get in and start with the house.
If not, I don't know what we'll do but we'll have a huge problem.

When R. collected the kids from school half a dozen mothers and teachers were almost in tears asking us if everything was OK.
M. turned out to have dominated the opening meeting of that day with all the kids asking him questions (you know Mom, Fenne asked me if it was cool that the fridge had exploded. I said, or you crazy or something?)
And T. spoke the famous words; because of the fire I am even cooler than I already was.

Our weekend sucked part 1

Now my blog had became a bit tame, but wait till you hear this;

As we had heard from Joel things at the hostel weren't working out at all and he had had horrible days working and cooking and cleaning for 30 ppl without ever having had a training, I picked him up from Rotterdam CS this Saturday afternoon.
Luckily the hostel he spoke to in Utrecht, could welcome him earlier, but he just needed a place to stay the few days in between.

Thing is, our cellar exploded that night.

I was just laying in bed, R. was at the toilet when we heard a loud bang.
now we had heard fireworks from the World Port Days all evening, but this did sound a little different and it seemed the house shook too.

R. went downstairs, saw smoke coming from the dishwasher and out of all the kitchen cabinets and soon discovered something was terribly wrong in the cellar.
I had by then unlocked and opened the front door so we could run out easily, went upstairs to shout to Joel something was wrong, put on a bathrobe (made a mental note to start sleaping in pj's), ran upstairs to the boys room where M. had just woken up from all the noise.
As we went downstairs, R. came up again to get T. (he had allready put C. on the street who was picked up by Joel) and we all ran downstairs.
Between us getting up and running downstairs, the smoke had become so thick, we could hardly see anymore and had trouble breathing !!
This is also a very urgent plea for anybody reading to install smoke alarms. Sure will be one of the first things we're going to do.

Anyway, we were outside, R. had been back once to get my cell phone (coz we had had short circuit also) and bag and i ran to the cafe on the corner to yell at them to call 112 (Dutch equivalent of 911) and r. pulled the door behind him.
In fact we were sort of waiting for another explosion to blow out the windows.
it was weird to say the least.

Firemen and police arrived at the same time and after they slammed the door open and went in, R. stayed there and I went over to the cafe were 3 dazed children were being served cokes and where a very considerate police man brought over 3 teddy bears.
Which was really great coz their normal ducks (anyone knowing us, understands what a crucial role the ducks play in getting our children to go to bed) smelled terrible from the smoke.

To make a long story a bit shorter; the firemen think it may be caused by a wet piece of cloth that was used to clean and wax one of the closests. Apparently that can brew and stir a spontaneous fire.
I have my doubts.
I mean we have been living there for almost 7 yrs now, why would this suddenly happen?
Not that I have any idea about what did happen , but ...
Still if they think that's it, that is it.

At about 2 the kids were hyper from the sugar in the cokes and i took them to a hotel. I just picked the nearest one that could have 6 persons but everyone in the pub warned me it was some sort of a junkieplace.
Now if you knew the cafe and the people in it and they would tell you it was a junkie place, you would be as troubled as i was.
I told Joel I would check the place out and if i didnt trust it we would move on.
The doorman was a bit typical but we were all in desperate need of a place to stay so we went in.
It wasnot that bad.
I mean the 3 of us had to stay in one (double) bed, R, had a double bed with another kid and Joel had a spare room so at least we had a roof over our head. I did see immediately that we didn't have any towels but that was for later.
R. was allowed to go back in the house once to pick some clothes, medicines, whatever for the first night in a bag (everything smelling awful) and bring that over, some people allready came to take the tv, stereoset, computer and stuff to clean that and he came over to the hotel at about 3.30 am. By that time the kids were just asleep and we tried to get some rest too.

At 7 the boys were awake as if nothing had happened and we started a brand new day