Gardening

Nov. 1st, 2015 06:44 pm
mekyria: (2013 indonesie 2)
We had no plans for Sunday, as we had quite a busy couple of days last week. On Friday my dance friend Gerie visited so we talked bellydance. She's teaching my classs at the cultural center and she's enjoying it. It's a bit of a tough studentpopulation on account of the students being twenty and physical fit, meaning the classes have to be far more challenging and information dense compared to middle age students.

At 13.00 E.'s private student arrived (trumpet/horn) and I went for a much needed nap. Woke up just in time for our midwife appointment around 17.00 (all is well, we're in week 37 now) and picked up a nursing pillow on our way back. The pillow is making sleeping a lot more comfortable! We left the dog alone and out of the bench for fortyfive minutes and she didn't break down the house. She greeted us standing on the dinner table, looking smug.

Saturday we had a long early walk with Noushka in the off the leash park where we trained a bit on dummy retrieving.E. Left around 16.00 for a repair appointment for his iphone in The Hague and a gig playing dixieland for disabled people. I put out lanter s in front and gave candy to the trick-n-treaters at the door, only one family this year. Maybe more people might show up on November eleventh, during the celebration of St. Maarten. Children go door to door carrying a lantarn and singing songs, receiving candy in return. It's a Catholic holiday and we had some people last year at the door.

Today I received an email in my inbox about gardening, with a tip of using fallen leaves as mulch and compost. It was a convincing story (google: ted talk compost leaves) so E got sll excited about gettig a leave blower and a grass cutter and went to get them at the hardware store. In the meantime I started clearing out the weeds on the square foot garden and moving the remaining plants to one patch. The rhubarb, wild strawberries, strawberries and a potatoplant is all that is left now. Temperature is dropping and we're in the middle of autumn so the timing is perfect for gathering leaves and creating mulch. E. Gathered ten kubic meters and reduced it to about two kubic meters of shredded leaves while I removed dead stuff. The garden looks slightly more tamed now and is ready for the winter.

Time to huddle on the couch, eat mashed onion/potato/carrot and watchs a movie. I nave a feeling that our little girl will be born within the next three weeks so we better get stuff done while we still can.
mekyria: (2013 indonesie 2)
It's been rainy and cold all week and though I made lots of plans for Friday, I just hang out on the couch and read 'Bevallen en opstaa' (Rough translation: delivery and getting back up). It was interesting and most of what I read will be forgotten within three months because of pregnancy dementia. It is quite soothing to read about other people's birth experience as it's a mixed bag.

Today E got invited for a damage control hunt, meaning he got up at 5 am and came back home at 11 am. Noushka and I had a relaxed morning, I woke her up around 9, fed her and went for a walk and then we both chilled on the couch. Having a dog is so much easier nowadays as I am more at ease and she is more mature. She loves to hug and huddle up on the couch, so I can feel her jerky movements when she's dreaming of chasing birds and running over open grassland. I love her and can't imagine my life without her. I wonder if something similar will happen with our baby.

Once E returned, I drove my bike to the local annexe of the public library. I am a huge fan of the public library and even though I've been living here for 18 months, up until now I always drove to the city center for a visit. The local annexe is about 500 meters/ 546 yards from my house by the way. It's small but they have a little bit of everything, plus a subscription to Knip, a Dutch monthly magazine with sewing patterns (They include about 50 patterns in each issue). I borrowed one issue that looked promising with the idea of making some maternity clothes from the knitted fabric I have lying around. I left my bike at the bike repair shop as it is in need of a new mudguard on the front wheel and found out that they register bikes per address, and this bike wasn't registered yet. E bought his electric bike at the shop, I had my folding bike in for repairs but this bike managed to drive around unregistered. No longer! I walked home, I thought that we really did a great job at choosing where to live. In a radius of 500 meter, we have a small shopping center (like, six shops), a grocery store, a couple of restaurants and a bus stop. The ice cream shop on the corner sells delicious home made ice cream and our street is quiet, green and has a children's playground next to it.

On Sunday we had a barbecue at the place where E teaches hunting horn. He started teahing there seventeen ear go and cently deided that he wants to stop teaching there, due to life changes,the long commute and the low pay (he receives 25 euro for one hour of class. For his other class he receives 55 euro for one hour). Since it's a hunting lodge type of thing in someone's backyard, Jaap made a tiny shooting range for airguns. I shot an airgunb for the first time and I wasn't half bad at it. Since guns are uncommon in The Netherlands, I didn't take pictures. It's hard enough to navigate through the nunting debate because E is a damage control hunter.

They thanked E for all the years of trying to teach them how to play the horn, candidly joking about their lack of talent and love of hanging out and having a drink. It's more about meeting other guys to hang out with as their musical skills are shaky at best.The barbecue was nice and I drove back home, very, very tired. It was a good weekend.
mekyria: (Kyria met theepot)
My last post was before I had a talk with the Walrus. My Director joined us and was very good in smoothing things out and resolving the issue. Turned out that they are upset, but we can find a way to manage this.

Which was good because I had a busy weekend ahead and I needed to focus on the Bellyfit Instructor Training. I will write more about that later, but it was a very enlightening experience and I highly recommend the Bellyfit course to everyone who wants to learn more about didactic, promotion and structuring of classes in general. I had some great insights into my own bellydance classes that I'll put to work tonight and made some new friends along the way.
mekyria: (Saaidi gold dress)
Life has been good in these past couple of days. Warm fuzzy feelings shared with Mr.R, for example when we huddled up on the couch and I read some highlights from the book ‘Geese, eating the whole thing’ while running my fingers through his hair. I am now capable of discerning different types of geese and judge based on their feathers and bone structure if they are young or old. I mentioned that Mr.R. wants to start hunting, right? I have no interest in hunting but no objection to it either, the people I met that are hunters are all very concerned with nature, keeping the balance and killing animals with a minimum of pain. Eating chickens bred in the bio industry causes more harm to animals than hunting does.  Walking around in The Hague on Saturday, the classic music festival was a bit of a downer because it was raining and cold. The sax quartet was pretty good and braved the weather, they played three extensive pieces that were very well played..
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mekyria: (Default)

I was writing the title and thought:'no wonder I am tired after the weekend'. I'll keep it short and to the point:

Ice skating: I took friday off and mr.R. and me went outdoor ice skating. It was harder with all the bumps and stuff, but also way more fun because we were outside :-) here's a picture:


We stayed in afterwards, drinking hot chocolate, watching 'Over the hedge' and cuddling underneath a fleece blanket.

Meeting the family: Saturday mr.R. remember that his niece turned fifteen. We visited his family, meaning that I met his parents and siblings. When I am with R. I don't notice the age gap, but the party was a reminder that we are a fair bit apart in age. His parents are seventy-ish and his siblings are closing in on fifty. It was nice though, seeing where he comes from.

Chinese light festival: we went to Rotterdam for the Chinese light festival afterwards, something I've been looking forward to because: colorful bright lights! Cute animals! It was all that and R. was also excited so we wandered around in winter wonderland until we got tired.

Student recital: yep, the biannual student recital with my students! I edited all the music and created seperate set lists, dragged a ton of costume items with me, rehearsed for a couple of hours and put on a good show. Only three beginners showed up for the recital, two are determinee to continue with the classes. Yay! It was the biggest recital so far, since we had four short choreo's per group made by me, my intermediates also made four coreo's with help from me. They rocked the place.

Bonus: R. came to watch the recital and had drinks with us afterwards. We left to pick up a second hand IKEA tv thing in Vleuten, meaning that we did some driving around looking for the house, tried to fit it into his car, carried it up my stairs and assembled it. All in a peaceful and relaxed fashion, afterwards I put some of my favorite series and movies on his mediaplayer (am I the only one who knows hoe to download stuff nowadays?), we had tea and he went home. Except that he still had my backpack with phone and wallet in his car, meaning he returned as soon as I whatsapped him from my ipad. I now have my tv on a nice white cupboard with glass door, looking all sophisticated. My tv looks bigger and different from it's new location.

I spent the rest of last night sliding the glass door open and close, making star trek sounds.

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