All I wanna do is read books

I've fallen into a massive hole. It's quite dark here and I'm a little unsure of how to get out, or whether I want to. I might just want to stay here. But it might not be a good idea.

Sometimes I get like this. When I don't really want to deal with anything, and all I want to do is read young adult fiction, preferably lots of books in a serie, a fantasy world completely other from my life and where exciting things happen. Exciting things I can feel a part of, but have no responsibility in. I can just be a passenger on a journey and take it all in.

Fictional worlds are wonderful places. And it's where I want to spend my days at the moment. It's cold here, I have a lot on my plate and I don't really particularly feel like I can handle it all.

For some reason I am a person who's generally very much in charge, on top of things, organised and I make stuff happen. I like things to go my way and I will go through plenty of effort to make sure things do go my way.

But making things go your way is quite a lot of work. And I think sometimes my energy to make stuff happen my way is just gone. I just want to flip the switch and become a passive person.

I want to be a tourist in my life, I want to pay lots of money to make someone else do the planning and organising and I just want be taken on a journey.

I still want stuff to happen. I just don't want to be the one to make them happen right now.

I want to be warm and sleep in the middle of the day and let my brain reside in a world of Shadowhunters or Divergents or Grigori. I don't want to make my lunch. I don't want to do my work. I don't want to cook dinners. I don't want to go to the supermarket. I don't want to be the mum. I want to be the kid.

I want to be a kid.

But I'm 33.

I know this feeling won't last forever. Soon I'll want to be in charge again. But not right now. Right now I just want to curl up and hit the pause button while I devour one book after another until I feel recharged.

I think books are my power charger. And I just need to spend enough time plugged into books until I am 100% again.

I think I'm at about 17% right now. Got some more reading to do. I am going to slack off for a few more days. Screw the house work. Screw the feeling in my stomach that says I have so many things to do.

I am enjoying my books. I feel like I might even read enough to want to write again. Write fiction again. It's tantalising. There's ideas brewing my my creative brain.

There are sentences popping up in my head that I want to chase and pin down with words on a screen. Who knows what'll happen next.

Home is where...I am?

I'm back in Australia. Home sweet second home. Or first? I can't tell anymore what's really home. I think it's here in Australia now. I'm not sure how to feel about that. But I am happy here, and that's what matters. I can have two homes. That's fine.

It's good to be back. It's cool and windy, but there's quite a lot of sun. There are lovely friends and my wonderful, sweet husband and of course the cutest, funniest dog I have ever known. Everyone is pleased to see me. I am pleased to see everyone.

Yet, I'm feeling a bit shit. I am tired, I can't get motivated and I feel like I'm being lazy and unproductive. Some might call that a jet lag. I don't know why I am expecting myself to be 'more' or 'better' than I would expect others to be if they were in my situation.

Expectations. Funny things. I don't know about you, but since my teenage years mine have shifted entirely. I used to have lots of expectations of others, and now, I'm expecting very little from others, but me - I have to be everything for everyone.

The reason why I no longer expect so much from others is because I used to get terribly disappointed when people didn't do what I was hoping for. So I adjusted my expectations. It's better this way, because I don't get so disappointed anymore.

But then I found a new frustration. I was constantly letting myself down. But that was because I was expecting too much from myself. Why?

I am very kind to my friends, I am very forgiving and understanding and caring. Why can't I be that for myself? Why do I expect things from myself that I wouldn't expect from others?

I know I am not alone in being stupidly critical of myself. I see it in my friends. Especially my girl friends and my gay boy friends. My girl friends are so hard on themselves, and my gay boy friends strive for a perfection that is almost unhealthy. They have amazing bodies and wonderful minds and yet they want to be bigger, better, more. I can see that they are just fine as they are. They are lovely. Why can't they?

And why can't I cut myself some slack? I have been home for a week and I am disappointed I didn't go to the gym yesterday. I have been to the gym three times in the the last seven days. That's fine. That's good. But I want myself to be lean again when summer comes, and for some reason that means I have to jump straight back into lots of gym and healthy eating every single day.

That's not a realistic thing to expect from a tired, jet lagged person. I have worked hard at my mum's place, doing seriously tiring physical jobs nearly every day. I have been quite sick. I have been travelling heaps in a short amount of time. And I have had many, many emotions. I would forgive my friends for being just a little bit exhausted. I would think it normal for them to need a few days to do little but recover and get back into daily life.

I have caught up with lots of people since I got back, I have been very active. It's ok to be not active right now. To just read and write and spend some time in my studio finally starting on my leather bag.

So, right now I am going to stop feeling bad about what I'm not doing. I am going to feel good about what I am doing. Like going to make myself a cup of tea.

On the loss of teenage wistfulness and melancholy

Ok, so I have to admit something. I might be the happiest I have ever been in my overall life now, but I am also the least inspired.

I have so many things in life that I would never, ever want to say goodbye to: a wonderful husband, beautiful and hilarious loyal friends, the cutest puppy in the history of the planet, a comfortable home, food, travel and a body that does what I want it to do. The life experience of a 33 year-old Dutchstralian.

My life is so full of goodness. I can only gush about what good things have come my way, least of all the power and strength to stand in this life and face challenges knowing I will be ok and come out stronger than I was before. My wonderful mother has taught me so much already that I am wiser than she was at my age.

I know there are people who find comfort in talking to me - it is one of the things I am most happy about, that I can be there for people and give them support. I have faced times when I craved friends like that and didn't have them.

I am incredibly level-headed now. I give sound advice. I see the world in a realistic way. I know good things come to an end and it's ok to let things go. It's better to have enjoyed something and say goodbye than to long for it forever. I know sometimes it seems life is ridiculously hard, but that if you just hang on, things do get better.

But to my romantic spirit is dead. Honestly. As a teenager and in my twenties I was possibly the most wistful and melancholy person ever. Every song was about me. Every romantic love story resonated with me. The world was cruel and beautiful and there were angels out there who would one day come and take me away to a world in which I belonged. I believed in the kind of love you read about in teenage fiction. I was easily in love and as easily devastated when it didn't work out. I believed there was a soulmate out there for me.

I knew how to pine for someone. God, I was good at that stuff. I wrote and wrote and wrote diaries full of poetry. I wanted to live in a castle in the woods with billowing curtains in the full moonlight, with a handsome angel-prince who would sweep me off my feet on a daily basis.

Now when I see castles, I wonder who would vacuum all those endless amounts of rooms.
I do not have a diary. Or write poetry.

I can spend months away from my husband and know that when I get back, we are still totally fine and our life together will be full and warm and wonderful. I love him endlessly, but I know I am ok and whole without him. I am not half a person without the man I love, and he is ok without me. I don't think he is my soulmate, because we are very different people who just happen to connect in a very strong and certain way. I don't think he understands my soul. But that's ok. I realise I don't need a soulmate. I have many beautiful friends who each support my soul in their own way.

It makes life easier, but maybe less...I don't know...beautiful?

I have had all that romantic lovesickness in my life. I have received painful love letters. I have sent them. Written in pencil, written and rewritten. My tears have smudged the words. I have been physically sick with heartbreak after being rejected by beautifully fucked-up boys. I have slammed doors and screamed passionately in rage.

But that's not me anymore. I'm pleased in a way. I have something that so many long for. Something people pine for in the way that I used to pine. I have a happy marriage. I have a man who stands by me, who lets me be me, who travels with me, who builds me a house with everything perfect for us, who wants me to be happy, who is there with open arms every time I come back from Europe in all my Dutchstralian duality.

But it takes effort to step back to see what I have. When you're content, it's easy to lose focus and concentrate on the little things that are nothing important, like bills and getting the car serviced and buying dog food.

But I miss writing. I miss not being able to live without writing. I miss having my diary full of poetry. I miss words coming into my head, forming sentences and not being able to carry on until I had written them down, considering words, finding exactly the right ones to say what I felt.

Now I often just need three words: I am content. Life is good. I am lucky. I am loved.

Or four: I never feel lonely. I like my own company. I am good at stuff.

But sometimes I find her. That girl I was. I find her in songs by London Grammar. I find her in teenage fiction. And I love her. I pine for her. I want to hang on to the moments that I am her again, because it feels so passionate. It feels so beautiful. But she's not real.

I am her right now, writing this. It feels good. I wish I could do this more often. But reality does not allow adults to wallow like teenagers. There's bills, cars needing servicing, dogs that need food bought.

But that's life. It's no fairytale.

Time Hole and a gorge

So I had all these plans of what I was going to do and achieve while I'm in Europe. I was going to have time for stuff I don't have time for back in Australia. I don't know how I still think that that is the case after coming here every year with too little time to see everyone and do everything. Maybe it's the optimism I've inherited from my mother?

It's just over a week before I go back to Australia. My time here just disappears down the black hole of wanting to do too much. I forget that hole is there every single year. A girl should learn!

Mum and I just got back from a whirlwind tour of channel hopping. I flew to London, spent just over 24 hours with my very dear friend Phizz and another friend Lauren and we had a short but sweet time catching up. Too short! Then it was Provence, then back to the UK, then back to France and then home. In 12 days. Boom.

So after London I flew to Marseille and met my mother at the airport, picked up a rental car (a Fiat Panda...it was...uhm...not sexy or fast) and we made our way to a little town that is in no way really beautiful or exciting but holds a hotel with many happy memories and a very wonderful man called Jerome who works there. My lovely husband and I met Jerome on our honeymoon at this hotel five years ago, and we became good friends. Since then I've been back nearly every year to see him. I have enjoyed every single one of those trips and spent a good amount of time laughing my arse off with Jerome.

We took a little tour together on his day off, in his new cool Polo (not in the Panda, as he wouldn't be seen dead in that!) with the roof open and very awesome music from across the eras playing. I'm not sure how my mother felt about the music as she always drives in silence (I know!) but I for one enjoyed the disco, the 90s pop and the moody tunes of Lana Del Ray.

The weather was glorious, the lavender in early bloom and we had an amazing day visiting small towns and making very inappropriate jokes in my mother's presence. I showed him the Youtube video of the Sound of Music mother superior swearing, and he was rapt. It's right up his alley, the more swearing, the better. Me, I only swear when it's funny or when I'm really angry. This was a lot of funny swearing. In front of my mother. Shame on us!

Our time in the Provence was very wonderful, and very short and also involved a severe test of my driving skills - which I botched but passed. As in, mountain passed. As in, my mother chose a route that involved me driving a very, very narrow road along Les Gorges de La Nesque (also called the mini grand canyon), and it was a drive of fear and anxiety. She made me drive it up hill. In a manual car (I only learned how to drive a manual a few years ago, and that was in Melbourne by just practising). In a rental manual car. On the right (wrong?) side of the road. By the end of the gorge, it goes for 20 ks, I was a sweaty mess of nerves. I don't know how long it took us, and I can't tell you whether it was beautiful (I hear it is). All I know is this: NEVER AGAIN. Maybe with somebody else driving.

There was another incident that same day, which had me feeling the same, only I was more tired after a day of driving, so luckily it didn't last as long. It involved me driving up the narrow road towards La Abbaye de Sénanque, with cars parked on both sides, pedestrians, and tons of cars going both ways just so we could turn around there. Or so I hoped. It's a gorgeous abbey, and looked just like the pictures only with more tourists. Many more tourists. We have visited it before, so we didn't intend to, but a million other people did.

So here's me driving slowly in a massive traffic jam of cars slowly towards the abbey, along the narrow road, cars parked both sides, as well as driving both directions, pedestrians on the road, when we go across a narrow one-way bridge, to find a massive bus coming the other way. I pulled over-ish, hoping he could pass. The driver made the car behind me reverse back up the narrow bridge, with pedestrians strolling along on asif that was a good idea. The car behind me did a terrible job, and I was terrified to have to do the same. Once they were gone, the bus driver looked at me exasperated, and waved his hand dismissively, as if to swat away an annoying fly from a pie, indicating I reverse back up as well.

I had no choice. I reversed back up, much more skilfully than the car behind me, I must say, but snapping at my mother who thought it was a good idea to document the ordeal with her camera. I did not think the stressful situation was something to document. Once I had pulled over on the slightly wider part of the road and the bus had passed, all I wanted to do was go back to the hotel and relax by the pool and get the hell out of that car. Luckily, that happened.

This is only a tiny snippet of our trip, and I will leave it at that for now. Just writing about it again was slightly uncomfortable.

This ain't no disco

One week in, and it feels like ages. I've been back in the Dutchlands for just over a week, and I've already accomplished so much and made my mum very happy. And that makes me happy.

Mum only moved into this place a few months ago, and when I arrived, it need me. And by that I mean that I am the uber-organiser and this house needed 'a few' things sorted. Every room in the house needs something sorted out, fixed or organised, including the garden. There were still boxes everywhere, Mum had lost things during the move that she couldn't locate. For example, I found her iron in the bottom of a box that was full of toiletries and was labelled 'bathroom'.

Me, I like order. My friends will attest that I am a bit obsessive about order, as in slightly OCD. As in, I make my own handbags (with 26 pockets) out of the frustration that normal handbags don't have enough pockets. Yeah.

So far I've put handles and catches on Mum's wall unit (it has 13 double doors, just to give you an idea), I've organised her tool shelves, which is crucial to me being able to build/fix and organise things in any place, I've sorted out her plasticware box (lids! Why so many lids with no containers?), I've unpacked the boxes in the bathroom and sorted them all out, emptied the perished food from the fridge, I've gone through the all stacks and stacks of  boxes in the attic (which is also my bedroom) and labelled them and moved them around to the other side of the room and reorganised the furniture in there, and I spent a whole afternoon with a hoe in the garden. Yes, a hoe. And the hoe gave me a huge blister. (The Dutch word for hoe is schoffel, in case you were curious. Can you pronounce that?)

And of course I cleaned the floors and the kitchen a few times already, as this house needs to be swept several times a day thanks to the black dust cloud that roams around here (a.ka. dog). Oh, and I cooked my mum my famous Chili Con Carne, and put the leftovers in containers (lids! Where is the lid for this specific container? No, it looks the right size but it doesn't fit!) with labels on them in the freezer. That that is entirely unheard of in this household.

And there are about a million things that still need to be done. Probably more than I've already done so far. But that's ok. I like getting things done.

Every time I tell people back in Australia that I'm going to Europe and for how long, they get jealous and excited and wish me a wonderful trip, envisaging the kind of trip that most Aussies who go to Europe experience: galavanting from country to country eating food and seeing sights. But that's not my trip.
In parts yes, it is very enviably that I can visit Europe every year. But I feel that they often don't realise that I do more cleaning and organising here every single day than I do at home, and that I go first and foremost to see people that I love. I know I don't have to do any cleaning or tidying. But my Mum has looked after me all her life, and I want to do the same for her. Also, as I said before, I can't relax when there is mess and disorder around me.

I am also writing my news articles every day, to make euros for us to spend on fun but mostly necessary things. I have to work 7 days a week, 365 days a year. It's not a huge amount of work, and it's great that I can do it anywhere in the world (well, except Dubai, because you are not allowed to visit online casinos there, or even access a wordpress page that has 'casino' in its title) but it's still a daily responsibility that I need to attend to.

I do have a fun trip planned, I am taking mum on a trip to France, to England and back to France, all to see some great people whom we care about so much. I love my family in the UK, so I always make an effort to go and see them when I'm in Europe. And there are some very precious friends that I will get to see as well, so I'm very excited about that. But it's only a very short time in comparison to the time I spend sorting and organising and cleaning, but that's ok.

I'm not complaining at all. I hope I don't come across that way. I choose to do this and it makes me happy. I think I'm expressing this because I don't want people to think I'm a spoiled brat who gets to go and play in Europe for months every year. And because it helps to write down what you feel to sort out your thoughts.

And in my down time here I do get to read heaps, I am halfway through the Divergent Trilogy (thanks for the tip, Sherrie) and I intend to read lots more while I'm here. And the weather is much nicer here than it is in Australia.

Also, I get to drink lots of tea with my mum and hug her heaps. And that's the best.

Words for myself

Hi Team. I know, it's been years. Sorry. Well, it's not like I had a huge following of people, or tried to get people to read my blog or cared whether people read my blog. It's just some words I'm writing, just 'cause. And I haven't had time or inspiration to do so for a while.

But I had promised myself to write for me again, and now that I have time, I am doing it. I have spent a good while writing for others now, and it's my turn again.

I am in the good old Dutchlands, where I grew up. Where I once belonged and now I don't but I still feel like I am attached here and it ties in quite well with the situation going on with my ears.

One of my ears is blocked, and the other has a burst ear drum, courtesy of one of the most unpleasant flights of my life, and being a Dutchstralian, I have taken a few flights in my life. My stern warning to you is: DO NOT FLY WITH EVEN A HINT OF A SINUS INFECTION. But then again, I was so keen to get over here, I might have quite possibly told myself this a few days ago, but I didn't listen. And now I'm struggling to listen because I just can't hear very well and it's hard to follow conversations. Especially when most of the conversations here (other than the ones with my mother) are in a Dutch dialect called Brabants, and well, it's hard for me to follow it even with fully functioning ears, not that they ever worked that well.

Has my life changed in the last few years? Hell yes. I am possibly the happiest I have ever been. My life might be the boringest it has every been, (or maybe not), but it's because I am content. I am a happy little Dutchstralian and I am so grateful that I am.

It's quite strange being so aware of the slow disconnect I am experiencing from my childhood, my teenage years, all that is normal to Dutchies, my youth was here and now I am not young anymore, or specifically Dutch. I am Dutcher than an Aussie, but I am too Aussie to consider myself Dutch entirely.
It's not like I don't belong in either category, but if I had to give myself a description, I would say that I am an Aussie with Dutch tendencies.

Dutch people and Australian people are very different as a society, but they blend well. They both appreciate a good beer (not that I do) and they both like a good football match (not that I do), and at the moment the Dutch are united in hoping to win the soccer world cup, and the Australian are united in feeling irate about a certain Tony Dumb Dumb. I dislike both of those.

Me, I feel kind of tired and jet-lagged and far away from people and puppies than I want to look after because I love them and I feel I could make them feel better. My little dachshund pup Louis has just had surgery today, quite unexpectedly, and I can't stop thinking about how small he is and how much I can love something so small, and how much I can worry about a little dog that tends to be just fine.

It's in my nature to care and look after people, I do it every day. But over here, I can kind of look after myself a bit more than I do at home, and it's quite nice. And to be fair to myself, I need to because my ears are totally busted and need to heal, and my body and mind are exhausted of a few stressful weeks finishing assignments for my postgraduate uni course amongst other things. Life back home is lovely but hectic.

Here, it's slow and though I have spent a serious amount of time being the handy woman that I am yesterday, and I only arrived the day before yesterday, today I did a bit less and it felt nice. Nice but weird. I am not used to having not a million things to do. I love my little doggle, but it's nice not to have to walk him every day. And I love my comfy house and my wonderful husband, but it's nice to not have to look after either one of them.

Mum's house is a mess no matter what I do, mostly thanks to her big black monster of a giant dust cloud dog, but I'm not responsible for the house or the dog or anything at all really. It's really nice.

So now I'm going to do another thing I had promised myself to spend time doing: reading for fun and leisure. Divergent, if you must know.

Fixy

Those of you who know me quite well, and most of you do, know that I like to fix things. It's not only that I enjoy fixing things and the end result, it's also a lot to do with not being able to let broken things be broken. If it's fixable, I will try my damnedest to do so. Lucky for me, I am also quite handy and resourceful, and not too shabby with tools (even the human variety!) I like things to be in perfect working condition, from drawers to computers. Things need to work, run smoothly, life needs to be as easy as possible so that there are no delays and frustrations. That's why I love Apple products, they make my life easier, they are super efficient and help me be organised. I also love the extent to which you can customise everything so it's optimised for your life. (I am not paid by Apple to say these things, but I wish I was.)

I am the only one in our little family of three to be like that. Both my mother and sister are quite able to deal with something being broken in their environment for an extended amount of time.
So I ended up doing quite a bit of fixing at my sister's place last year. For at least six months, if not a year before I arrived last year, her bathroom sink was broken. And by broken I mean that she accidentally pushed her push-down drain plug so hard that she pushed out the actual plumbing underneath. If you dropped something in her sink, it would fall through the plug hole and end up in the cabinet underneath. Of course, this also included the water from the tap. So she stopped using it. When I went to stay at her place, I couldn't believe she could live without a functioning sink in her bathroom for months, when it didn't seem that complicated to fix. I had never really fixed plumbing to such an extent before, but I was sure I could manage.
So I went to her local hardware store, explained the situation to the nice man who owned the place, got the necessary advice as well as what I needed to fix the plumbing. It wasn't hard, the hardest part was the lack of good tools. For example, I had to measure the circumference of her drainpipes by circling them on a piece of paper and taking that into the hardware store. This was mere days before Phizz and I became close friends. It would have been fantastic to have know Phizz then as well as I do now, he would have had all the tools I needed. Nevertheless, I got the job done and it is still fully functioning.

Phizz is, like me, also very fixy and I love that. He is probably even more fixy than I am. He fixes leaky taps in public toilets and other things around that the world not owned by him, which has often made people think he was the hired engineer rather than just a good Samaritan. I don't go that far, but I go further than most. I fix things for people, but often I fix things that belong to others that I need to use just because I cannot stand using broken/inefficient things. My sister's shower and mixer tap really need to be fixed at the moment. It is only because I didn't have the tools with me that it is still spraying water out the side where it shouldn't.

But it is also a new way of thinking that has stopped me from fixing everything: sometimes I just need to let things be broken, because it's not mine to fix and the person I fix things for might not appreciate the time and effort I put into fixing their things, and/or they don't even care it is broken. Often they are things I would only use a few times in my life. They are not my problem. Half of the halogen lights at my sister's place aren't working, most notably the two bedside lights. It frustrated the hell out of me the few nights I have slept there in the last two months, but I haven't replaced them because I couldn't afford to and that's also probably why my sister hasn't. It's not a priority for her, why should it be for me?

But I do love the satisfaction I feel when I have fixed something and it is restored to a fully functioning order. Today I fixed the two spring-loaded dog leads that Mum's dog had broken (by chewing through the cords when we used them to tie him to something when he rather just run around) and now they are just fine again. She bought the second one to replace the first broken one, and she would have had to another buy a new one if I hadn't been around. Those things are not cheap. So I feel extra happy when I can fix things like that.

And so I have a million things that I fix around the world. I like fixing things, I will keep on fixing things until I will be frustrated to the max when I cannot do so anymore because I am old and no longer nimble. But until then, fixy is my middle name. Florence Fixy Nulens.