Not me, the boys. Today they went to the vet for their appointment. Henry needed to have a tooth removed and his big skin tag taken off, along with a teeth cleaning. George needed a growth from his gum removed, three fat deposits removed and a tooth as well. Things here are alot more involved at the vet than in the US. Here you stay with your furkid while they get their anaesthesia and then you hold them until they are ready to go into surgery. It is not a drop them off and go model. So, at the moment they aren’t doing much except recovering from the narcotics. George has to wear a special suit to keep him and his brother from opening up the stitches. I put him back in his old sweater since it is long enough to cover all three of the stitch sites. He’s going to have to wear it for a few days. He doesn’t look thrilled.

We left the vet clinic today with a Sonicare toothbrush for dogs. The goal is in a few days I will be teaching them to brush their teeth everyday. Yeah, this promises to be an adventure. I just hope I don’t mix up our toothpastes because I am pretty sure their’s is liver flavored!

Dylan left yesterday. I dropped him off at Schiphol on my way to the office. The last night he was here, we tried to sit at a terrace cafe. The weather was warm enough but then it started raining significantly over and over. So, we sat inside and I watched Dylan give in to the lure of fried cheese and fried goat cheese that I ordered for him. I suppose this would be a sign that I am still an evil big sister because if there is one weakness Dylan has, it is cheese. The last thing I did before we jumped on the train to Schiphol was to run into the Albert Heijn to go and buy him cheese to stick in his suitcase. If you ever go out with Dylan and fried cheese is ordered, even if he says it is for the table – it’s not. Order your own! I wonder if I should be concerned that I have moved into this phase of getting a vicarious thrill out of buying cheese for other people.

I am going to spend the next few days getting the house back into order. I could probably clean it top to bottom in two hours of serious work but that’s more focus than I have to spare at the moment. I am pretty worn out emotionally and trying to find a way to recharge my batteries before I go back to Seattle on the 18th.

Going to Marum was very, very difficult. I always used to double check my mom before we went somewhere. For example, making sure she had her passport, etc. Well, I needed someone to do that for me because when we showed up to rent the car on Saturday morning, I had forgotten my driver’s license. Duh. So, while Dylan waited at the Avis with the dogs, I got back on the tram and went home to get my driver’s license. So, we were an hour behind schedule. And then George ran away at the rest stop. He ran all the way into the restaurant, chasing after Dylan. And in the meantime, I am running around the parking lot looking for George while these bikers are astounded that someone could lose their dog at a rest stop. The closer we got to Marum, the harder it was to hold it together and keep driving. It was as peaceful as always. In the area of the church yard where the niche is for Mom and Oma, it is now under the care of the province. There is a sign now that says that children under 16 must be attended and no dogs. I brought the dogs anyway, but on a leash. The irony of all of this is that there is very definitely a dog on the provincial side since I mixed Mom’s ashes with Ninja’s before I placed her in the niche. Ninja was her fifth child and maybe even her favorite, so they belonged together. And in keeping with Mom’s habit of doing things her way, not the expected way, she and Ninja were meant to be mixed together, flouting the rules!

When I went with Dylan to the Maritime Museum, I found some very cool bottles based on old sailor’s rum bottles. I thought they would be perfect for bottling my kombucha. And they are. Tonight the current batch went into the bottling stage and I started a new batch from the Mega Scoby.

I think that’s it for today, I’m exhausted.