It seems that we still have some summer weather ahead of us. The square in front of our house is full with people spending their Saturday afternoon at one of the cafes. Right now, Pickle is lying upside down with his feet in the air taking a nap. Henry and George are stretched out and possibly dreaming about dog treats. Olive is nowhere to be seen, hopefully she is in the shade somewhere.

This morning, the boys and I went on a walk with Mevrouw Van G. She’s a sprightly 80 year old who we met one day while walking. She offered to give Henry a lift on on her walker since he seemed to be lagging behind. We ended up making our whole round of the city center with her and exchanged addresses. She doesn’t have pets anymore and the local shelters think that she is too old to have another one, so I invited her over for coffee and pets. She took me up on that offer and now we have moved on to walking together on the weekends.

Due to the weather today, we picked her up at 10AM and spent a good hour and half walking through the park and back around the windmills. She is tiny and can tell lots of stories about what it was like here earlier and in Rotterdam. She’s a widow now and today I learned more about the story of where she met her husband. He was a painter and journalist and she was a dancer. They met in a cafe in Rotterdam that was full of creative types. Apparently his creative tendencies were a big disappointment to his family, who thought he should be in business. She said that the first time she met his parents, she didn’t know who his mother kept talking about. His mother kept refering to this Adri person. That was her husband’s given name but outside of his parents’ house, he went by Pieter.

I’ve learned that is common in The Netherlands. People choose their own “roepnaam” which translates to “called name”. So an Anna Cornelia Herminus becomes a Ghislaine and a Johannes Hendricus Martinus becomes a Joop. A Mariette becomes a Jette. It can get confusing.

The next few days should give us more of the same type of weather. That will mean that the long walk of the day will be in the morning instead of the afternoon. Since I broke the big ice tea container yesterday, now I have to microbrew. 😉 That’s what you get for cleaning something before you use it, you break it!