Fighting back

Two skaters in Drenthe, 2012

I remember a cold winter's afternoon. I was still in primary school and must have been about 8 or 9 at the time. We were due to visit my paternal grandparents that day and stay the weekend, but first there was the skating races we were having with our school. Because of the cold the ditches in the park had frozen and it was all perfect. 

Perfect for everybody else but me, as I was cowering in a corner somewhere having a bad headache. It wasn't my first, but usually they came during the night and a children's aspirin would cure them. This time it was during the day and I felt awful.

Seven of us in a shower cubicle, I am the one in yellow.
1986

During my teens I can only think of one time where I had a headache, on a school trip to London. Then during my twenties the headaches became more frequent, but whether that was due to the huge quantities of strong coffee I drank or to the fact that I actually had more migraines? Who knows, but the problem was really born then. 

After moving back to the Netherlands in the early '90s, I used medication for a short while. But being in my early 20's and having to take medication for something that was not life threatening, felt a bit stupid and I stopped taking them. 

Fast forward to now. Migraines have become a very unwanted part of my life. And up to a few years ago I actually worked as normal, even during attacks. Taking aspirins and paracetamols and ibuprofen and whatever over-the-counter meds there are. Nothing ever worked. 

I hope to soon start a new job as a bus driver again. And having to deal with migraines on a fairly regular basis is not something I want to do. So, I am fighting back! This morning I went to my gp and asked for preventative medication. 

From tomorrow I will start on Beta blockers. Again, as I think I had those in my early 20's as well. The first week I will be on half the dose to get used to them and then I will go to regular dose. Fingers crossed they work!

A missed photo!

Belfast Zoo, 2018

I just want to apologise to my Norwegian friend for not even posting a photo of a spider. There are not that many around at the moment and I wasn't really feeling up to hunting down the few that may still live in nooks and crannies. I promise I will try to do better!

Anyway, my weekend was mainly spent on the couch doing extremely little. It turns out that the cold I have (not that severe really, although my nose may not agree), was hiding a migraine. And because it was hidden behind the cold, I didn't take the meds in time. By the time I did take them, they had such a hard job to actually work, that it took ages. 

Picking what to have

But, finally on Saturday the M started going down a bit and I was able to at least enjoy some time with just Miss O. Living with parents is all fine and dandy, but sometime you just need some time alone. 

On Sunday I felt okay and the M decided to stay away as well, which was good, because I had promised my mum I would do the laundry and I was going to bake an apple pie because a friend was coming over for the day. 

Yummie!

In the afternoon said friend and I wanted to go to a restaurant and my friend couldn't find her car anymore. That in itself was bad enough, but it was absolutely pouring down! Not the best for me. Fortunately we found the car eventually (about 15-20 minutes) and we made our way to the restaurant. 

It was a Japanese restaurant and they had all sorts of nice small bites. It was really good and next time I hope I won't have a cold so I can enjoy it even more! After dinner I drove home, making sure the car was parked about 10 meters from the front door. She stayed for a while, chatting to my parents who had come home and then left for her family again. It was a good day.

I had two of those: crème brulée!
My favourite! Albeit not very Japanesy

Today I made a start with my course. Of course I jumped ahead and had to backtrack slightly, but I am now on track again with the right bit to do. I will continue that tomorrow and learn some more!

So, that's it from me. Back to reasonable health (the cold is still here). 

While the cat's away...

Well, the cat's still at home, it's the parentals that have left. But playing is not really an option at the moment. The cold I talked about yesterday is quite bad in that it gives me an absolute stinking headache, reminiscent of a migraine. But alas the m-meds didn't work. 

Basically I have to 'sick it out' as they say. So, if you do want to feel sorry for me: please go right ahead! 

I missed a day!

I was all set to post something new every day. Or in the case of carnaval: hash over the same subject for three days. 😉 But alas, yesterday it seemed as if there wasn't much to write about. Well, there was, I just never got the energy to do so!

As I mentioned a while ago, I am going back to school, but last week I had a phone call: there weren't enough applicants to the course and it could not be held here in town. They would try to organise it elsewhere, but that would involve traveling and that would mean costs going up. 

In the end I decided to not do that, but I did still want to do the course. A correspondence course it will be. Not my favourite, but I will just have to do it this time. I managed with my Norwegian course back in 2012, so this should be doable as well. After all, it's only six months.

Some school mates from the 1-year course.
This was on an excursion.

I am not a natural learner you see. I graduated from high school in 1989, went on to do a 1-year course (which I only partly passed) and went to work. And I have worked ever since, only doing job related courses since then. 

This course is not job related as such. Yes, it is to do with planning of transport, but mostly on the goods side (lorries), which is different from the people side (buses and coaches). I think there may well be some cross-over, but mostly it will be different. 

The first box of material arrived this week and I hope that once I get rid of this stinking cold (with accompanying H), I will be able to get going properly. 

The end and the beginning

Yesterday was the end of the feasting and today is the beginning of the fasting (or Lent). The end of feasting was traditionally used to finish off any meat or meat products like fat. So, that's what we did yesterday. 

There were some bacon cubes and fat left over from something or other and as in some countries Shrove Tuesday is Pancake Day (UK mainly), I baked pancakes! And because of the bacon and fat they were a lot more scrumptious than the ones I normally have. 

My parents loved them as well, although my father was complaining about the sugar syrup. It's from Zeeland and he is from Friesland, which is the eternal struggle in this household! My mum buys the first, my dad buys the latter and in my opinion they taste okay, but have nothing on the caramel sugar syrup I like!

At the end of dinner (yes, in the Netherlands they can be eaten for dinner), there was one pancake left over and I thought that I would have that one for breakfast this morning. Wrong! My mum is apparently a pancake lover and had eaten the last one while my dad and I ran an errand last night. Washing the dishes afterwards so we wouldn't notice! A right fiendish action!

By the way, our Dutch pancakes are nothing like those American things. There are countless stories of Americans going to a Dutch pancake house and ordering 10 pancakes, thinking that is not many. As one pancake is the size of a good pizza however... And when you go to a pancake restaurant/boat/mill, they don't just come in pancake, there are fillings galore as well. 

Anyway, that was the feasting done, now for the fasting. I think I will try (see what I did: try) to go without chocolate for Lent. It should be possible, albeit quite hard. We will see how I will fare...

Carnaval continued

Yes I know, I am dragging this out a bit, but there is not much happening in my life right now. Unless you count me getting my Proof of Good Behaviour already! Liking that very much. Anyway, back to carnaval. 

Let's get some historic and religious context here. Originally it was a pagan feast, celebrated as early as 5,000 years ago by the Mesopotamians. The Egyptians, the Romans, basically everybody had a feast where the boundaries between owner and slave were down, where the slave could dress like the owner and even make fun of him. Usually this feast was between the winter solstice and the winter equinox (ie December and March).

Herman Brood (bread) was a musician and artist from Zwolle

When the church entered the arena and they started converting all those pagan peoples, several feasts were kept to not alienate the new Christians. One of them being this New Year's or Midwinter feast. It would however get a more Christian context. 

According to the Bible, Jesus fasted for 40 days in the dessert, before he was eventually taken from his disciples and died on the cross. There had not been something to mark the beginning of the fasting period before, but now there was!

The basics were still the same: dress up or down, make fun of your 'betters', eat and drink. But now, instead of celebrating the coming of spring, it would announce the coming of the fasting period. It would start on the Sunday and finish on Shrove Tuesday. Three days of painting the town red. Then from Ash Wednesday, the fasting would start.

When the Reformation started in Europe, most countries (even the ones that remained Catholic) abolished carnaval, but in the years that followed some have taken it up again. It is celebrated all over the world, New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro being the most famous ones of course. 

Confetti

So, enough school mistress today. I hope you enjoyed the remaining photos and little films I had.

Carnaval

On Saturday I wanted to get to town. I needed some different coloured threads and there would be a parade because of carnaval. Which is what I went to see first.

I didn't have the best view: several people in front of me bobbing their heads up and down, but overall I was okay. We stood for a long time waiting though. And the two minutes away was easily ten minutes, but eventually they started coming.

The first two photos are of people finding their way to the beginning of the parade or just to their friends. It seemed to me that a lot of effort had been made to look fun. The lady with the green face actually had a little (stuffed) dog slung over her shoulder!

The third photo is of the head of the parade. He was a member of the official carnaval clubs that exist in and around our town, hence the head gear. 

This was part of one of the floats. Those floats are quite old and will be used year after year. As long as they can get rid of all the 'snot in a can' of course!

This gentleman was dressed as 'Dorus'. He was a variety artist, who did mostly sketches and singing. One song of his dealt with two moths living in his coat, because "you shouldn't wreck young love". 

I loved this Japanese/Chinese inspired ladies/gentlemen. They carried signs around as well which were quite funny, but I didn't manage to capture any of those! Which was annoying.

The last thing I want to show you is a little video I shot as well. One of the floats that came by and the type of music you can expect to hear during the carnaval weekend: loud, silly and loud!

Photo on Sunday 2019-08

Crocuses in my parents' garden

The first daffodil in my parents' garden

Mill on the IJssel

As I was standing on the dyke looking out over the River IJssel this week, I took some photos of the village on the other side: Hattem. And thanks to my lovely lens, it actually seemed quite close as well. 

At the right of the photo, you can see a mill. At first I didn't realise it was actually turning its sails, thinking it was a trick of the eye, but as you can see in the photos: they did. 

The mill is called 'Fortune' and is an old flour mill. This one and its ancestors have been there a long time, taking advantage of the wind.

The way the sails are positioned when paused tells you something about what is happening to the miller. The top position for example would mean Short Break. And the position in the third photo would mean 'Happiness', due to a birth or something similar.  Other meanings were Sadness, Wedding/Party or Emergency. All expressed in the position of the sails.

During the war, they would also use the sails to tell people in the surrounding area what was happening. Like 'Enemy Approaching' or 'All Clear'. 

I will try and get closer to the mill soon to show you a bit more.

Enjoying the spring weather

A zew? A cobra? Whatever it was, it was weird!

Last week I showed my Mum's orchids to join in for Nature Friday, which is organised by those lovable canines Rosy, Arty and Jakey. This week I decided to enjoy the nature that was actually outside and helped by the absolute gorgeous weather (summer temperatures in February), that wasn't a hardship at all.

I already showed you some of the photos I took with my smaller camera and decided I needed to go back with my better camera to get some really good shots. I had planned to do it on Wednesday, when the weather was still really lovely, but in the end I went on Thursday. The temperatures were still good, the sky not so much. 

The home of the...

But I still managed to get some good shots. Now, there was one main reason I really wanted to go back for and I know I will be back later in the year as well, because what I saw were...

...stork

Storks! Usually storks travel south for the winter, but there are always some that find their home in the Netherlands nice enough to stay during the colder months and as long as there is enough food and the weather doesn't become too atrocious, they should be fine. 

I didn't just see storks though, there were also a lot of geese. Not sure whether they are on their way north already, or whether they stayed as well for the winter. There were quite a few of them in the flood plain of the River IJssel and occasionally some of them would take off, honking for the others it seemed.

The third animal I saw, albeit from a distance, were bees. There were about 10 hives or so and there was already a lot of activity in front of them. There won't be much for the bees yet though, although daffodils are starting to flower already. 

Pollard willows that have just had the chop

Do you know I spent my teenage years in this town and I moved back home to my parental home now. I had never realised it was so close to the River IJssel! Only five minutes on my bike and there is peace and quiet and birds. Fingers crossed for curlews during summer!