between posts that is. Every day for the past two weeks, I have heard the little voice in my head that says “You promised to post after getting back” and every day it gets drowned out by the louder voices of work, move, women’s coding conference, etc that are also competing for attention.

Lynn Marie lands in a few hours and I will pick her up from Schiphol. The guest room is ready – which means I also finally unpacked my suitcase from Italy. The washer is running and the house looks presentable. The garden is another story but I know it is always a good thing to have a task on hand for Lynn Marie. The dogs are drying out since just as we timed our walk and glass recycling run, it began raining. Usually, I try to make a deal with the weather to hold off for 5 or 10 minutes but lately that hasn’t been working so well so we just went for it.

I feel like I was never even on vacation, except now I have this overwhelming daily craving for tomato and basil. Given the chaos that we came back to, I think I will definitely go for three weeks next year. Which means between now and then, I will need to find someone who can drive. Or teach the boys.

We are moving. I have the keys to the new house. We have until Halloween to be out of this one and in the new place. If you have stayed with me before, don’t worry, it is still the same neighborhood so you won’t have to relearn Amsterdam 😉 I do try to be considerate of my houseguests! A few things still need to be done, like closets built since it doesn’t have any but other than that it is move in ready. It was fully renovated this year so it will be our germs only! It is really beautiful, I wish my mom could see it.

It turns out that Cedric will probably be my first guest. He’s coming with two of his friends the first week of November. It will be really good to see him. He’s the only one who hasn’t been here since I moved. And while he’s here, we’re going to engineer the garden with a hanging vegetable garden and irrigation system. He just doesn’t know that yet 😉

I have alot of stuff going on right now. I am trying to keep myself from going too far in one direction or the other. After the first week of November, things should be considerably calmer.

Moortje and Lientje are still not lining up voluntarily for their kidney medicine. I think I need to hire an expert in collaboration to teach us how to work together 😉 Henry is 10 on Wednesday and George next Wednesday so it will be a McDonald’s plain double cheeseburger for them. I think they miss Italy too. I know we all miss the sunshine!

We got back last night. I will write more about our adventures tomorrow. This afternoon I went to celebrate the opening of the new entrance hall to the Van Gogh Museum with a labyrinth of 125000 sunflowers. As a plus, you could take as many home with you as you could carry. Luckily, I had some help.