Yesterday the mail came through the door with an unusually loud thunk. I don’t get much paper mail so this was a call to strong to resist. Even Henry and George had to come along to check it out. Turns out among the ads, there was a bright orange envelope with a Chicago return address. Woohoo, a card from Rupert and Meredith! Not just any card either, it plays a unique soundtrack. I’d like to share this with you…

GG and I have opened the card multiple times for the humour of it! I know, I will be 44 on Saturday and I am still laughing at things like this 😉

What really is a scandal is that I haven’t sent Rupert his birthday card yet. Now the challenge is finding an equally appropriate card. It’s something I am going to put considerable effort into. I can’t have a Cher moment and “Turn back time” but I can send it with extra postage, to support the postal carriers of both countries. Seven different reminders just popped up to tell me that today is Rupert’s birthday.

Rupert, congratulations on reaching 39, with none of your hair intact but all of your teeth. That’s a milestone of itself. Thanks for being part of the dynamic duo of R&M and always being up for teaching the family about the importance of fun. I hope that you never really grow up 😉 When I hear really strange Dutch words and phrases like “Gebrouwen door Vrouwen”,  s’Hertogenbosch or Texels Scuumkoppe I can hear you say “Watch your mouth”and it never fails to make me laugh. Tonight, while I write this, I am toasting you with a Gin Weizen from the above mentioned GdV. 🙂

I’m so glad you were here over the New Year and I know that we’ll be meeting up again this year, in the mountains of North Carolina to play Family Survivor. I am really proud to be your (big) sister and can’t wait to hear you laugh again!

A big Squeeze from the big Cheese xoxoxoxoxoxox

The reminder popped up yesterday that today, which was Mother’s Day in 2009, Mikha died. It was Raven’s first Mother’s Day at home and we had gone to have brunch with my mom that morning. I think now how strange it must have been for Raven, to be there with my mom and I. At this point, he was 9 and had just come to live with me the month before. I know that he must have wondered where his birth mom was.

We went home afterwards and there was Mikha in my room, unconscious and having a nonstop seizure. Straight to the vet with him holding her crate like it would explode and me driving as fast as possible without endangering anyone to get to the West Seattle Animal Hospital. Mikha had been through some surgery the week before and pronounced healthy and definitely ready to go a few years more. She was 18 at the time. The vet on duty took her back and they did xrays to find the cause. And they tried to stop the seizure with an elephant dose of Valium. In the meantime, Raven and I sat in the waiting room, singing songs from the Canoe Journey that we had been learning at the Duwamish Longhouse.

When the vet came out, she told us that Mikha was calm now and the best thing to do would be to put her to sleep since the x-rays showed that she had cancer in multiple places. I called my mom to tell her and ask her if she wanted us to wait. She said “No” and then it was time. Sitting on the floor in the exam room, I held my terribly angry and dysfunctional dragon in a feline form in my arms, with my new kid next to me and held her while the vet gave her the shot.

Mikha had been with me half my life by that point, precisely. I adopted her from the pound in New Jersey and kept her in my dorm room until I was expelled. She was an intimidating force from the first day we met. I picked her up at the pound and she tried to bite my fingers off and not in a playful kitten way. The guy at the pound told me that she was a mess and I was better off leaving her behind, unadoptable he said. So, of course, I took her home.

And for the next 18 years, she was my grrl. We moved several times and she definitely got the short end of the stick when it came to attention sometimes. If I think about those moments, it doesn’t make me feel like a good pet parent. But she had a good friend in my mom, who she would tolerate in my absence. She ruled Lientje and yet my favorite picture of them shows them sitting back to back high up in the window at the little house.

Mikha was tough. She would sit on the front porch and neighborhood cats would cross the street to go past our house, instead of crossing directly in front of and in reach of her. She had tufted ears and a stocky frame. I have a thing for tabby cats. Lientje is one as well.

Mikha is buried in the backyard in Seattle. Next to her grave is the Japanese maple tree my mom planted. When I was there in March, I took the little cat statue from her grave and brought it back with me. Now it sits next to the urn of Moortje’s ashes.

I had to the privilege of serving as Mikha’s personnel for 18 years. I don’t know what’s out there when we are not here anymore but I like to think that she’s with my Mom and Raven… causing her own share of trouble.

I’ve just spent a very productive hour with my feet in the portable bubbling foot spa while practicing my banjo. Kind of like a hillbilly pedicure 😉 The pedicure culture is more of a medical one here so last month I ended up buying my own foot bath for 25 euro and free delivery.

GG is watching the Feyenood – Excelsior match. The weird part is that TV channels cannot broadcast what is happening on the screen since only one channel has rights, so instead they are simply showing coverage of the 50K people in the stadium and providing the radio commentary for play by play. It’s an interesting workaround.

Tonight we are going to see Depeche Mode. However, that’s not til 9pm so that leaves plenty of time today to do other things.

Yesterday, the boys and I met up with Little C and Mika to go and explore another set of woods. We walked for around 2.5 hours in the woods which was a nice way to spend a sunny Saturday.

As for me, I survived the first week. Tomorrow my new manager is back from vacation so I imagine that we’ll have a conversation about what this new job really should be about. On Tuesday it’s the “Choose Your 4 Interns” show so I better practice asking thoughtful questions 😉

P.S. I forgot to hit Publish yesterday afternoon. Well, that saves me from having to go back and click Edit 😉 Depeche Mode was terrible… I left the concert hall after 30 minutes to go hang in the hallway/bar. What a disappointment! I did get to read all of the news happening in the world and spend a good portion of my time people watching.

Tomorrow is the first day in the new job. I am not sure I am ready for this yet but I imagine that like most things, I will learn by doing and by not giving up. This will work as long as I don’t let the voices in my head speak up too often or too loudly.

This week off was a really great one, not quite long enough to do all of the things I had planned to do. Then again, learning not to do everything on my list of things to do during a week of no work is an important development area for me 😉

On Monday, I went to the Amsterdam Museum which is housed in the building that served as the municipal orphanage from 1580 to 1960. The museum was fascinating. My only disappointment was that to go in the exhibit titled “The Little Orphanage” you had to have a kid to gain admission. Next time, I’ll borrow one.

Tuesday, Little C and I took the dogs and headed off to the Noordoostpolder – which is where the tulips all grow in field after field. We spent 7 hours touring around Friesland, stopping to look at a church that was for sale (mysteriously right after I had said to her Ï have always wanted to live in a church” and there it suddenly was)  and making a list of various other places we also needed to go and visit. We stopped in some woods along the way to let the dogs run and after that, it was pretty much three small dogs snoring in the backseat of Astrid for the rest of the way.

Wednesday, we loaded up the car again, this time with GG and drove to her childhood home. Her mother’s birthday was Wednesday and it was time to meet the aunts and uncles. GG and her sister told me that I should feel fine about my own Dutch since they have a German uncle who really has a terrible accent. He’s even named Wolfgang. It was a good evening, interesting to be around so many people who have known GG all her life. They were definitely curious about this American. I had asked GG to give me a list of each of her relatives, along with a distinguishing physical characteristic so I wouldn’t get the names wrong. I managed not to mess up any names. And, yes, my Dutch accent was pretty good 😉

Thursday was King’s Day. Amsterdam in particular turns orange. We had a pretty mellow version of it until the evening where the celebrations were lots of fun but left me with 12 hours of unbelievable hangover. As GG says “we’re not 18 any more”. That meant I missed lunch with a friend on Friday and had to skip Happy Hour at the Van Gogh Museum. The idea of going anywhere near anything with an alchoholic content is vastly unappealing at the moment.

Saturday I made up for the lunch I missed on Friday, much to the amusement of my friend Sabine. We went to the north of Amsterdam and spent our time exploring tiny alleys along the dikes, where there are houses built on the top of them. I am not sure where my next move will take me but an old brick house on top of a dike overlooking the river has a great deal of appeal. From a practical perspective, probably a better idea than a church in Friesland.

As for today, it was tackle the garden day. The grass got mowed (weed whacked) for the first time ever, the flowerboxes replanted, the lounge furniture cleaned up and placed for sale – so as to make room for something else, the windows washed and all of the left over beer bottles from the family visit in December finally returned for their deposit. 6 euro and 80 cents worth of beer bottles!

I also managed it through most of the week to not look at my email and not think too much about work. I read four books and genuinely tried to be a little bit more chill.

I am excited about tomorrow, nervous too.

While tomorrow is my last official day in this role, the celebrations of my pending departure began last night. After the second to the last visit in Radiation B3, Little C and I went off to meet Big C (my manager) and our colleague, Marion. The women of my team (past and present) wanted have a proper launch me off into the world dinner. It was an evening that provided yet one more reason to be thankful for these amazing people who have inspired, laughed with me, pushed my buttons and more than anything believed in me during the last few years. Even when it looked like everything was imploding in my work environment, these were the women who looked at me and said “You can do it”.

As I reflect on the past 1.5 years in particular, I have realized how much having women to inspire me at work has shaped where I am going to next. I’ve spent most of my life working in areas where women were scarce and rarely in positions of leadership. If they were, they almost seemed so far away that having a normal conversation with them was not something I would attempt, figuring they were busy enough. I think that before I moved to the Netherlands and after, I have surrounded myself with strong, independent women in my out of work life and that was a good way to keep going. Yet it really does make a difference when you find them working for the same employer that you do. In my last 1:1 today with Big C, I thanked her for that and let her know just how much having her as role model has impacted me.

This afternoon, it was my farewell lunch with the team. I had secretly hoped and not so secretly said to GG and Little C that if I was lucky, no one would show up and I would be spared your classic introvert’s nightmare of being the centre of attention. It wasn’t made any more appealing by a week ago Little C telling me she needed a picture of me because they were planning to put on the cake, that Big C thought it was the appropriate thing to do. I was appalled. I said to Little C “Why can’t I have a Minion cake? What is this bullshit with putting a photo on a cake? I am not dead!” She told me that it was an English custom and Big C was insisting on it *eyeroll*

Here’s what was waiting for me when the cake came out…

I think this goes down as the second best cake of my life. The first being the one my mom made for my 11th birthday of layers and layers of home made cream puffs between ice cream. She told me it was a once in a lifetime cake based on the number of hours that were involved in putting it together. This cake definitely places a high second, in 43 years.

As the cake was shared, there were the usual Knights of the Round Table behavior of banging on the table calling for “Speech speech”. You probably know by now talking is not a problem for me 😉 I told them the truth, that it hadn’t really hit me until last night that I would be leaving people. Instead I had focused on finishing up all of the job responsibilities, juggling the new ones and not stopping to actually give place to my feelings. I acknowledged that each and every one of them had contributed to the person that I am through the last 3.5 years and that I am going forward into this amazing job based partially on experiences from the current one and being part of that organization. It’s completely true, even the shittiest moments taught me something about myself and gave me another set of skills or determination. Most importantly, it helped me to keep building for new things as the losses came, both at work and at home. Anyway, I got verklemmt and teared up and they got uncomfortable with so much emotion 😉

After lunch, I had a meeting with some of the interns that will be working with me in the new job. Which was fun and inspiring. Hah, they think I know stuff 😉 And then came the real moment, going to pick up my new business cards from the mailroom. That’s when you know it is official, when you have business cards! Mine say very boldly (so there’s no shying away from it) Program Manager – National Empowerment Plan. Yowser…

Today was Little C’s last radiation – Hurrah! Which is probably something I want to celebrate even more than my new job!

Tomorrow will be one last day of handover meetings and then at 1645, or probably slightly later, the auto responder goes on and says “For the old job, please contact so and so” 🙂

Thank you for being part of my inspiration!!!

it’s the tail end of Easter weekend here. For us, it is a four day weekend, which seems like such a large amount of free time on Thursday evening. The next thing you know, it’s already Monday night *sigh*.

Let’s see, aside from the fact that it was Easter, Saturday also marked one year with GG. In true to us fashion, she had dinner and theatre ticket plans with her best friend and I was hosting 28 women at the meetup. This pretty much describes our relationship very well, two independent types who happen to like being together alot but not at the expense of our individual selves 😉

This morning, we drove down to Delft, where GG’s sister is in the process of renovating her new house and had Easter breakfast with her sister and her parents. Henry and George were also along for the festivities and greatly enjoyed their own personal Easter eggs.

Then it was off to the garden center to score a weed whacker – for the small amount of grass that I have, some new plants and a new bed for the boys. They were pretty happy about that, George has just come over to climb into it. I figured it was about time to put their car seat back in the car and I had a 25% off one item coupon!

We’re counting down, four more working days to go. On Wednesday night, the team members I am closest to are taking me out for a farewell dinner.

And as for Little C, on Friday, we had the visit with the doctor before the trip to the holodeck. She has three more to go. This Thursday will be the last radiation. I’m excited for her. It means that we have three more tries to figure out how to get our portraits hanging on the walls of amidst all the important people. We thought it might be fun to see how long it took people to notice…

literally translated, that’s April does what it wills. Probably in response to the weather originally. Last week, Sabine gave me a book to borrow called (in Dutch) Amsterdam: History of the most free thinking city in the world. It’s written by Russell Shorto (an American). I got to page 57 and realized that I was missing the most critical parts, the Dutch was too much. I borrowed it as an ebook from the library (in English) and I am so glad I did. Once I am finished reading it in English, I will go back to the Dutch version and start all over.

It is fascinating 🙂 For starters, it is a quick orientation on why certain streets carry certain names and who those people were in Dutch history. It’s also an introduction to Spinoza and Erasmus — so I am building myself quite a reading list of where to go further.

Yesterday, Henry and George met Mika for the first time. This is the second Mika in their life, since Lientje’s cat companion before Moortje was also a Mikha. The canine Mika is a little less terrifying than the feline Mikha was 😉 After Little C’s time in the holodeck – I can’t help but making the association between radiation and the original Star Trek – we headed off to the meadows of Twiske where dogs can roam free and you can cross all kinds of bridges, see llamas and cows on the same farm and breath deep that unique smell of Dutch springtime, manure, grass and sun. I really like that smell.

Yesterday was a reminder of how good things are in their very ordinary way. Sometimes, in the stress of the moment or the stress over what could be the next moment, I don’t notice what surrounds me. Walking with Little C and the herd yesterday, in the sun, without worrying about the time, reminded me of how good my life here is. 🙂 An unexpected bonus is that since Little C is a dog parent for the first time, she walks with a backpack complete with water bowl, water, dog food, treats and every other thing you could need. Only a bonus for us hangers on!

In other news, eight more working days to go. I got the news this week that I will be responsible for a team of four interns. Umm, I am pretty sure I said last year when I was weighing career paths that people management was completely not my thing after spending a morning playing a board game that’s all about management. Be that as it may, I will be getting four. I have to select them from a pool of a 100 and build a team with them so that during the six months they are doing their internship, they are definitely part of building something. Something tells me I am going to be working from the office a great deal more in the coming weeks…

As far as the rest, even though my official start day is 1 May, I’ve already begun doing both jobs. I am not surprised… for the moment it’s a matter of setting some boundaries 😉 I’m looking at it like Scrum, iterative development that delivers value in every sprint 🙂   Luckily, that’s a way to organize my thoughts in a good manner and a good way to work with teams. I need to teach them that 🙂

At any rate, 8 more working days to go. I’m looking forward to my week off. I have plans to wear a hole in my museum card and to leave the city at least once on a day trip!

It rather sounds like a stereotype of what people think happens in Amsterdam, doesn’t it? Well, before I get credit for a more exciting life than I have, I should disclose that it all happened in the context of Little C’s appointments today in the hospital.

Since last week, we’ve been meeting regularly in waiting room B3 for her daily radiation. Today, after radiation, we got to go to the Special Effects room. It has a fancy French name that makes it sounds like a Michelin starred restaurant. But really, it’s where they make the body armour from latex and silicone for later on during the radiation treatments – somewhere around treatment 15. Of course, we were super curious about every step of the process. The tech was really excited to talk so much about his work and walked us through every detail, including how to start doing this at home. If you should want to, of course.

I’ve figured out how to get to the hospital via bike now that the spring weather is here. It’s a good ride, takes less time than by car since I can park right out front of the entrance – and I don’t have to pay for parking 😉

They have “invited” Little C to come five times a week. It is a five week cycle so that means we will get plenty of stamps on our coffee cards…

I noticed when I walked in the entrance today that the hospital has a strange aroma of urine and bacon mixed together. I am pretty sure that’s not a new line of industrial air freshener. At least, I hope not.

The radiation techs are used to me now. I try to meditate while the treatment is happening and match my pace to their instructions over the speaker to Little C to breathe in, breathe out. It’s a little fast to be restful so I will have to keep it at my own pace. The tech asked me if I did that every time? She just noticed it for the first time today – I think she thought I was taking a nap in the chair previously. I should tell her that if doesn’t sound like there’s a hibernating bear in the room, I am not napping 😉

Twelve more work days of this job, thanks to the 4 day weekend for Easter. I am taking the last week of the month off so that I can start in the right mental space on 1 May. I am a little anxious that I don’t have enough ability to think deep thoughts anymore to tackle this work. However, I know that’s not something I can’t start doing again, once I shift gears. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself!

George is back to his normal self, his stitches healed beautifully and that obnoxious collar is gone. He’s much less accident prone now. I think it must be a relief for him. I know it is a relief for the rest of us not to hear him crash into things!

Aside from that, spring is here and I am reminded again of what a beautiful city this is!

I am sitting in my very favorite coffeeshop,  Dubsea . Over the years, I have probably spent more time drinking coffee and eating Mighty-O vegan donuts here than anywhere else. I’ve also had some of the most important conversations in my life here, even if I didn’t always know it at the time they were happening.

I came here around 12 this afternoon. It’s now 4pm *snicker*. Shortly after I got my first coffee, Sibelle walked in. What followed, after I walked up to her and said “Ma’am, I want to make a complaint” was three hours of totally amazing conversation. I am collecting inspiration to draw on for what kind of impact I want my new job to have. I have Sibelle to thank for today’s dose and Jan for yesterday’s.

The day started a little rocky because I needed to sign over all the documents for my mom’s van and send them to my brother. So, you know, signing the title was another concrete reminder that she’s gone. My brother had a really good idea to donate her van to an animal rescue group where he lives in NC. This has been a struggle for me. So many memories of my mom involve her boxy white 1989 VW Vanagon. If I wanted to know where my mom was hanging out, I’d check the usual places for signs of her van. When I was getting ready to move,to the Netherlands, I shipped the van to Cedric in NC, thinking he would get good use out of it and go camping with his dog. Well, Cedric has a truck and turns out he didn’t really need a van. While we were in Cologne, he said he wanted to donate it. I know it is a really great idea, I am just having a little trouble letting it go out of the family. Really, my first instinct was to have it put on a ship to Rotterdam and I would get it from there and drive around Europe. Hello. I know. I barely drive Astrid 8000 miles a year now, what the hell would I do with two elderly cars?

So , I sniffed up the tears and went to the post office and sent the documents off to NC. While I was standing in line, I noticed that they now have Wonder Woman stamps!!! You bet I bought a sheet, exclusively for framing. I thought that was so cool, Wonder Woman stamps. If I still lived here, I would be writing extra letters just to send mail with these stamps!

I am sitting at the long table at Dubsea and the women at the end of the table are having a huge discussion about their sexual choices. Whoa. I am not sure if I should put my ear buds on out of courtesy or if I should give their conversation the space it clearly needs – public airing.  Well, the question answered itself, one party left.

I have another 90 minutes before I am due to meet my tenants. The point is to hear if they have decided to stay another year or if I am going to need to make other arrangements. I think they will stay, since the housing market here is pretty competitive.  In the mail, I had 8 unsolicited letters wanting to buy my house, as-is. Umm, no thanks, creepy property tax stalker types.  They range from the down home aw shucks kind of letter to the would be sophisticated types with made up names that sound like pharmaceuticals. I haven’t finished opening the mail, I kind of got tired of it.

Tomorrow, I’m off again. I’ll be landing Thursday morning, heading home to unpack and shower, and then off to the TechSummit, where I am expected. I guess that means that I can’t be watching movies the whole flight home. It’s a good thing I watched three on the way over 😉

While I was waiting for the bus this morning in the drizzle, I got a message from Delta that they already knew my flight out of Amsterdam was going to be delayed and that there would be downstream impacts on my connecting flight. Because it was early, the buses were only running every half hour and then when I got to the train station, there were two stranded trains so the airport trains were not running every 6 minutes like normal either. Fast forward to going through the security lines, which where slow moving and full of extra checks, even the priority ones and I made it to the gate just as they started boarding.

Due to exceptional headwinds, they were already predicting an hour of extra flight time. Yeah… so when I got here to Portland, I missed my connection and the next flight available isn’t for another 5 hours. I did the only thing you can do in these kinds of situations… walk to collect steps so your Fitbit competitors don’t get too far ahead of you because you spent 10 plus hours sitting in a chair. Luckily, Portland has a Burgerville inside the terminal. Burgerville is something of a local awesomeness that Lawyerella introduced me to first. And then we got my mom into it as well. It sort of became the theme that whomever would be driving past Portland or flying through it would bring Burgerville veggie burgers back for everyone. One time we even brought 30 back – we called from another exit. It’s funny, it is something I hadn’t thought about for years and suddenly there it was. In honor of my mom’s favorite I ordered the Anasazi burger (veg) spicy. It brought back alot of memories.

I have been thinking about that lately, memories and the trajectory of my life over the past few years. Especially now that I am at another crossroads point and going to start something new in terms of my worklife. And it’s been nearly a year with GG. I wish I could say I had some shining insights to share that would solve multiple problems but it’s not that far along 😉

Anyway, by the time I land in Seattle tonight, it will be somewhere around 5am Dutch time so I am pretty sure that I will mange to fall asleep in record time. I have a list of things and appointments to take care of between now and when I leave again on Wednesday.