When last I wrote, I think I was having a long layover at Frustration Station. I am pleased to report that I managed to depart that station and head on down the tracks. Which is not to say that there haven’t been some trips through Frustration Station since I last typed, they have just been shorter. Well, except for that one Thursday that I was supposed to go up to Groningen, only to have them announce at Zwolle that there were no trains further up the track for at least two hours. Turned out to be more like four hours before they figured out it was time to put in busses. By then I had already turned around and taken the train back to Rotterdam Central.

Tomorrow morning Pickle and Olive are going to the vet to get their chips and to get neutered. They are definitely growing up fast. They have reached the level of responsibility where they are allowed to go out into the garden. Olive can do some amazing balancing on the smallest of ledges. She also can climb vertically and she seems to have a complete disregard for risk. Pickle spends alot of his time trying to catch up or meowing for her to come back down off the wall (or the ivy or anything else up high).

Yesterday we went on a 2.5 hour walk with the Historical Society. The boys accompanied us and I think they really didn’t understand why we would walk and stop, walk and stop, walk and stop. However, they were on their best behavior. I think GG and I are the youngest members of the Historical Society and we always have the feeling that when we show up, the general consensus is “Look, new and young blood! Quick, get them to commit!”

Last week, I did a week’s worth of paid work in Amsterdam. It was the first paid project for the company. Well, the customer still has to pay but you get what I am saying. I feel like it was a pretty big milestone, to land that first project. I learned a lot and I hope I taught their team a bit from the perspective of the outside world. They certainly won’t be thinking that an entrepreneur is by default a man after last week. 😉

Today I got a stern talking to from the Rotterdam police. Turns out that the photos we were making for an article about diversity in IT were technically a disruption of public order and safety since we had the traffic tunnel behind us. It was quite exciting, they were very serious about their jobs but they were not buttheads. We agreed to move to a less obviously disruptive location 😉

It’s Friday evening and the boys have eaten. The kittens are running up and down the staircases, practicing their acrobatics.

There’s something wrong with the plumbing in the house and the toilets are not flushing properly.

Yesterday, I spent 8.5 hours in the car going back and forth to Groningen. I stopped by Marum on the way back to spend some time talking to the air around Mom and having an enormous cry.

Today I spent six hours watching videos of a speaker and presented my feedback to her for what is supposed to be a collaboration. Only to have her disregard all of the feedback and ideas and to take all of the work I did and go right back to the list of bullet points that she originally gave me to work with.

Yesterday, the whole session in Groningen was a waste of time because it turned out that the people giving the lecture had their idea of what they were going to provide and we came there with another one.

I went to Amsterdam on the wrong day for my banjo lesson and then got stuck in the car for 3.5 hours on the way back with the dogs in traffic… to go 45 miles.

I’ve spent more hours than I care to count trying to rework and reposition things that people have provided to me as their workproduct. And I have had to refocus everytime on providing them with the room to improve it themselves.

Individually, these things wouldn’t be such a big deal. But in one week, plus a few other things – it’s a little frustrating. I feel like I am not making progress, which is one of the ways I irritate myself the most.

Tomorrow, I am going to start on the garden again and spend this weekend in digital detox. I am not a brain surgeon, there is nothing so important that requires me to be connected. I’ll try it all again on Monday and see if I can’t make something positive out of next week.

Here’s hoping your weekend is a good one 🙂

Today, I had my first encounter with calling 112 (the Dutch equivalent of 911). I was standing in the sun at Rotterdam Centraal, waiting for my tram when all of a sudden an older gentleman goes flying off the curb and onto the tram track. He landed on his arms, shoulder and face and there was quite a bit of blood right away. We got him back up off the track and while the other two bystanders were checking him out, I said I would run off to get help from the train station.

I ran inside to the info point, telling them what happened and asking them to call for an ambulance. In seriously bureacratic fashion, the woman says to me that I need to call 112 myself, they will respond much faster. I was like WTF?? So, I call 112 and get put through to a dispatcher. I tell her where we are, what happened and that this gentleman is bleeding from his head. She tells me to make sure that he doesn’t eat or drink anything and she will dispatch an ambulance with “spoed” (haste). I ask her how long she thinks this will take and she says that they will be there with spoed.

Okay, here’s where cultural understanding can be difficult. I assume that means an ambulance will be there within 5 minutes, since we are in the city center. Or not. In the 17 minutes it takes, a young man and I are busy asking questions of this gentleman (turns out he is 80, married an American and has lived there for 18 years) to make sure that he doesn’t fall over or pass out. When the ambulance shows up, the paramedics stroll along leisurely to us like it’s no big deal. I was expecting a little more urgency. After all, you don’t know how serious it could be.

Nah, they were like “we’ll clean you up, sir and you will be on your way in 15 minutes”. I walked with them to the ambulance, passing on all the information I had gathered and the paramedic was completely disinterested. So, there you have it. Emergency Response in The Netherlands. Literally focused on “Doe Normaal” (Act Normal).

Mental note to self: renew your first aid certification and knowledge because waiting for a response might be too long…

And then the rest of the afternoon sort of escalated from there. By the time I got home, it was to find a crisis for one of my employees – which is going to involve major beaucratic untangling. Right when I had finished putting that fire out, I got a text from an old crush telling me that she has tumors on her ovaries and in her abdominal cavity and it’s not looking so good.

Plus George fell down the stairs today and then he and Henry got into a terrible fight at dinner time and I yelled at him and sent him to Time Out. He’s now skulking around like he’s afraid – which is not good for his seizures.

Ironically enough, on my way home, I stopped at our little grocery store and was talking with the owner about how yesterday we had a friend down from Amsterdam (Marianne) and we spent the afternoon in the sun on the terrace, dogs and all. I was really learning how to relax on Sunday and not feel like it was a preparation day for Monday… To quote Alanis Morrissette “Isn’t it ironic?” 😉

I’ll try this all again tomorrow…big sigh.

Listening to the Violent Femmes as the mighty yellow NS train brings me through the Dutch countryside on my way up to Groningen. It’s Thursday which means that is a 605AM train from Rotterdam Centraal to Groningen. Yep, first train of the day. At the station before even the Starbucks opens (slackers). Wow, this music brings back memories of my high school years!

Unfortunately, this morning there is someone sitting across from me. Usually, I have the route from Zwolle to Assen (heh, from Z to A) solo and this is about the time that my coffee wears off and I snore for the ride between the two. Not this morning, so I am typing away in attempt to keep from giving into the temptation!

Normally I take the train from Groningen too but tonight I have to be in Amsterdam so I am catching a ride down from Groningen with someone I used to know from the MS days. Not only is Vincent a very interesting entrepreneur, he is also a champion ballroom dancer which I would never have expected from him. Previously I used to give him advice on how to deal with big corporates and now I am going to be asking him advice from the startup experience. 😉

Tonight I am hosting the montly meetup and then tomorrow I sign all of the paperwork for transferring my rights to my Amsterdam apartment to the new owner. I think that’s going to feel a little weird. I like where we live now and it would be very uncomfortable to going back to a place where everyone can see into your garden. Our current garden is kind of like a fort and I like it that way!

Sitting on the couch, serving as harbor to Henry and George. Olive was here a moment ago but she has moved to the corner of the couch so as to get away from the snoring.

We had to take George to the vet today because yesterday while neither of us was here, he had a seizure downstairs in the office with my IT person and had a hard time breathing. I was all the way in Groningen when I heard this and you can imagine the sorts of worst case scenarios that have been spinning through my head.

The vet couldn’t find anything obvious other than George sounds a bit like he has a sore throat. She did some secret vet trick by pressing on his throat which should have made him swallow but instead made him cough. She sent us home with cough syrup. I forgot to ask if it is liver flavored or something equally disgusting. Maybe I can get GG to try it if I pour it in a whiskey glass. 😉

Yet another week flew by. Looking at my notes, I think I have even more plans than when I started the week. That’s not a bad thing. I really think we might be on to something, that things are really close to coming to vibrant life. That would be nice! Actually, that would be amazing. 🙂 Let’s not kid ourselves.

I’ve got to write this out before I have my mentoring call this evening. Somehow the only fitting soundtrack is Guns N. Roses. I don’t know why, but a group of longhaired, surly, men in overly tight pants seems like a good mood companion.

The past 8 months have been intense and frantic. Along with all of the new things I have been busy learning, there have also been tons of emotions that tend to get swept to the side because something else needs to be done. I think that’s probably why I am having a hard time shaking this particular thing, now that I look at that sentence.

A young person in my life called me today to catch up and to find out how things were going. She also wanted to tell me about some conversations in her workplace that she was struggling with. Individuals that I know and truthfully don’t spend much time thinking about. Or let’s say WAY less time thinking about them than they do me apparently. I was one of the topics of the conversation and when I heard what was discussed, I was just so frustrated.

I felt like it was so unfair of this person to be talking all of this shit about me. None of which is true. Especially that I am so angry and burning all my bridges when all they want to do is “help” me. Okay, number one, I am not angry – I am focused on building my company and making change in the world. Combined with my home life and other things I place a priority on, that means I am not interested in having meetings for meetings sake and spending time with people who are more concerned with maintaining the status quo than doing something to change it. Get over it and yourself – I don’t need anyone’s permission to do anything except my own. That’s what rocks about being your own boss.

Number two, they called the program that I was working on with some other companies (who switched directions in mid program because they weren’t ready to take the risk on the future) an “epic failure”. WOW. I was unaware my irritation could go that high that fast 😉 But I know what it really is – I am reacting to them calling the people in my program “epic failures” and they are not. They may have less privilege to access and do things a bit differently but they are sure as shit not failures.

This is the part that makes me batshit crazy. This kind of commentary and wasted hot air from someone who has every benefit of privilege and has zero empathy and compassion for anyone that doesn’t look like her or can help her look like a winner. I have to let this big boiling ball of energy go. Not blindly where it can bounce of buildings and knock out power lines but into something positive.

I tried going for a walk with the boys but somehow the weather picked up my mood and all of a sudden the winds were gusting like crazy, it was hailing and we were forced to hide under a small roof of a building. It was a pretty great visualization of my mood though! 😉

When I am suitably mature and calm, I will have my mentoring call and appear to be the voice of reason. 😉 And in between I am busy writing content for the new version of our website that needs to launch Monday.

And for the hell of it, the message I have to my former colleague who thinks we failed “Nanny, nanny boo boo, stick your head in doodoo because I don’t need permission from any of you.”  😉

It was sixty degrees and sunny today. Hard to believe that two weeks ago we had snow! GG is packing her gear to head off to Winter Sport in the mountains of Germany tomorrow with her family. I am anticipating wearing shorts and getting out the telescoping yard tools to start Spring Sport tomorrow in the garden!

In our garden, we have a three story wall with ivy growing from the ground to the top of the wall – which is technically the neighbor’s house. Tomorrow, I’ll practice my rusty gardening skills and make sure that the ivy doesn’t climb over the third story. I can’t wait not to have to wear socks!

The kittens have grown enormously, most in length, legs and tail. I am still waiting for their heads to catch up with the rest of their bodies. They have also graduated to being allowed to run up and down the staircases – mostly to tire them out. Proving that they have springs for legs, they can jump four feet into the air now. Pickle is the more outgoing of the two but Olive has her own special determined charm. Like when she wants attention, you need to look out because her head seems to be made of concrete and she rams it into your chin in particular when she wants attention. She is also fascinated by the computer screen and teleconferencing so every time I need to Skype or whatever, she attends.

I’m busy going from one hustle to another, to generate business for the company and keep everyone headed in a unified direction. It’s definitely an exercise in rodeoing cats sometimes.

This week I had two of my three mandatory sessions for inburgering (becoming a resident). These are the sessions about Dutch values. I’m in a big group, of 24. I’m the only one from the US and it’s been a really powerful experience. The women leading it have taught me a thing or two about inclusion, at an entirely higher level. The model we are participating in was developed in Rotterdam and is way better than expected. Not some stuffy, bored civil servant reading from a PowerPoint.

When I hear the stories and experiences of my fellow newbies, I am confronted by how easy my immigration journey was in contrast. It’s also given me a number of things to think about, what it means to be an American and where I sit in the world. We have one more session to go, next week.

In one hour and forty minutes, my apartment in Amsterdam will officially be sold. There is the three day thinking time for the buyer and it ends at one minute after midnight. It feels a bit weird still. It seems that I seem to be on 2-3 year cycle for living somewhere and moving on to the next place. The good news is the next time we move, we will have way less stuff!

Henry and George are doing their thing. They will also be glad of warmer weather because they were not fans of the wind! They still don’t like anything that gets under their ears.

It’s Sunday evening and we have been super productive today. We went through the kitchen. GG has this enormous kitchen table, I think it is easily 8 feet long possibly 10. We took everything out of the kitchen drawers, cupboards and assorted hutches area by area. I think there are five boxes and crates of kitchen stuff that are ready to have a new life at Het Goed (The Good) which is the biggest thriftshop in the area. In addition, every drawer and cabinet got reorganized. Here’s the evidence of just the glasses and cups that are moving on.

During the process, which I managed not to have a single temper tantrum, we realized that I remember to say “Thank you” and GG does not. 😉 We also revisted our thoughts on even vs odd matching sets of things and color schemes. It was kind of fun actually. Which is definitely not something I ever thought I would say about cleaning up. It’s usually a case of where I am easily wound up and go from calm to super snarky in about .5 milleseconds.

We held on to the things that mattered and let go of others that mattered less. Even though there were things that came from my Mom and Oma and Opa, I was able to handle it. I kept the things that were the most important to me, that the biggest memories were part of and let the rest go to serve someone else.

Of course, all this reshuffling made the dogs pretty nervous. I think they were worried that we were going to move again. Which we are not, not yet anyway. 😉

About 100 meters from our front door is a multipurpose building for the arts. They have a community cafe for freelancers and two theater rooms, which function as an independent arthouse cinema. Last night, we went to see the  Swedish film “Border”. I am not going to share any spoilers about it. It was one of the most thought provoking films I have seen in a while. To say it was not what I was expecting is an understatement.

Last Sunday, we went to see “The Favourite” at another independent theatre, this one in Rotterdam near the Hotel New York – which is where the Holland America line ships use to sail from. That movie really put all the professional struggles I have had over the past year into perspective. 😉

Moving here to Schiedam has brought an enormous amount of change with it. There’s things to get used, to like stores are closed on Sunday except for the first Sunday of the month. And everything takes longer. At the same time, there’s an appreciation for the fact that people look you in the eye and say “Hello” and that everything moves a little slower here. It’s good for me. We are 20 bicycle minutes from the center of Rotterdam, which is the same distance from my house in Amsterdam to the center, assuming you could bypass the legions of tourists and traffic.

Fridays are the office day for my employees. It’s also Market Day around the corner where the entire three plus blocks are transformed into an outdoor street market. You are also not supposed to park there as we discovered when the police rang the bell one morning at 7:20 AM to remind GG that it was Market Day and she needed to move her car. 😉 This past Friday, I was in Amsterdam in the morning and when I came to the office in the afternoon, one of my employees said he completely understood the charm and why I had moved. It surprised him because the first time he came to the office, he couldn’t understand why anyone would leave Amsterdam, but now he gets it.

I use the train journey to Amsterdam as a reason to read. While I still have ties there, like my Banjo Buddha sessions, friends and work, living here is a place of sanctuary for me. Even when I yell “Slow down, asshole” at the people who are taking the corner at 45 mph. I can’t help it, I can’t seem to just say “Slow down” 😉 And then I think to myself “Wait until I am the mayor.” Mayors are not elected in the Netherlands, they are appointed, which is still a concept I am getting my head around.

We’re going out to dinner tonight, to the little cafe on the corner. After all, we don’t want to mess up the kitchen’s new order with dirty dishes, do we?

There’s no other phrase for how I feel today than “No good, very bad, think I will go eat worms.”

I think one of the things I don’t know how to wrestle with the most is the movement from the active missing to one that just kind of becomes a steady, in the background kind of missing. You get used to it, it becomes part of your life and your experiences, who you are. It’s like a skin tag. As long as you leave it alone, it’s there and it doesn’t hurt or itch or make itself otherwise known. But when you start scratching it, picking at it or what ever your form of getting rid of it is, it starts to make itself known again.

I am not comparing my Mom to a skintag. She was way too big to be contained in a skintag! But the missing is like one. And just like with skintags, I know that if I pick at it, the grief will come back again in a full wave. Strange how that works. I remember thinking that grief was a straight line, to be overcome by following a series of steps. I know, what the hell was I thinking?? 😉

So, here we are. Today’s weather is cold, windy and rainy. Also perfect for my bad  sad mood. I wish I could hear my Mom laugh right now or say something offcolor or call me a “tuthola” pronounced tuut whole a . Emphasis on the vowels! It’s a catchall word for a woman who is anything from a bookworm to a bitch and everywhere in between. It sort of depended on my Mom’s mood. 😉

I think that if I were to make a list of the things that I am most grateful to having learned from my Mom, here’s what they would be:

• don’t pay attention to what other people think is normal.
• know yourself and take joy from your quirks and what makes you different.
• don’t give up even when it all seems stacked against you.
• when you love, love fiercely without conditions.
• always use your strengths to help others.
• call out things that you see, don’t wait for someone else to do so.

I think it’s time to hug the pets and put on some Leonard Cohen.

I am not sure how this happened or where she learned this. Olive is a live scarf. As I am typing this, she is sitting tucked up under my neck, watching the screen. This seems to be her favorite place to be when it comes to people. She’s also purring continously which is an interesting complimentary note to George’s deep snoring.

Pickle is sitting right next to me, with his head on George’s shoulder. George is curled up, above his brother. Poor Henry, he never gets a break from being the pet pillow. Olive just sat up so maybe she will move to another location and I can type faster. Umm, no, she just put her head down.

I had forgotten what it was like to have kittens in the house. They manage to get everywhere they are not supposed to, repeatedly. They have graduated from having to sleep upstairs in the other bedroom to being allowed 24/7 on the first floor of our house. That would be due to the fact that the other morning I came downstairs into the kitchen and the breadbag was moving. A mouse shot out of it and ran behind the cupboards. I am not sure how much bread was consumed but looking at the slice that was interrupted, I’d say that it was quite a party.

We have an old house, nearly 160 years old. So far, I have not seen signs of any others but to be on the safe side, the kittens now get to roam as the Night’s Watch (hahahaha). When I lived in Amsterdam, you could hear rats and mice in the walls. For starters, walls between buildings are usually not solid here, they are filled with hay or straw as insulation and also to absorb water. New construction is more advanced but for anything from before the war, you can bet on straw.

You get used to the noises. The rats really scratch. The mice tend to make less noise. If I have to choose, I am a mice person. How is that for an introduction at your next social gathering? “Hi, I’m X. I’m a mouse person. And you, do you prefer rats or mice?”

I have had tapas for dinner for the last two nights. On Saturday, Marianne came to visit and we tried the little tapas bar around the corner. It was so good, I had to make a reservation again for yesterday with GG. Unfortunately, they are closing for the next six weeks or so due to the owner’s need for an operation. He’s also the chef and he doesn’t have a replacement. Tonight I was responsible and ate cauliflower and brown rice with tempeh. Not quite the same taste experience. 😉

Like many people, we are practicing KonMari thanks to Netflix. Yesterday, I went through my closet and I was really motivated to get rid of everything. I wanted to donate it all. Then I realized that if I did that, while it would be radical decluttering, it would also mean that I would have to wear one set of clothes for the forseeable future. Not that handy. I did have so many strange dreams last night about things in the past- coincidence or just tapas overload? They were the kind of dreams that even when you wake up, you go right back into them. I hate those!

Changing of the shift – now Henry, George and Pickle are all under the same blanket. It must be a nice life to be a pet around this place. 😉

I finished the first half of a big project this evening. I had choice stress from which format to do it in – I really wanted to use pen and paper. However, that wasn’t the right format for the potential customer. After doing the equivalent of writing something and then crumpling it up and throwing over my shoulder except digitally and in every Office product, I finally came up with something I liked. If things go well this year, I think I will invest in a digital whiteboard! For now, I will have to settle for something smaller!