Yesterday I drove Bex back north to Schiphol since she needed to return to Seattle. Since she left, it seems like GG and I have lost a little bit of our momentum. In other words, yesterday evening was a meeting of the Slacker’s Club. We ate boerenkool again because it was easy to make from the ingredients left over in the refrigerator and did a lot of talking about what needs to happen in this house.

Tomorrow the electrician is coming. That is priority one because the limited light facilities here are cozy but make it a pain in the ass if you need to do anything after dark. Number two, the stairs in the dark are a bit of a Choose Your Own Adventure chapter! In retrospect, maybe we should have just paid the ridiculous amount of money to keep the lights that were here. However, it turns out that our electrical panel really needs some tidying up and hanging the lights can be done as well.

Smoke detectors are not mandatory here… so in addition to the light fixtures GG went off to pick up tonight, there should also be some smoke detectors. Our house is predominantly stone walls but still…

The boys are doing quite well. It’s fun to watch them run through the house. Right now, they are having their post dinner nap and George is farting in his sleep. Oxygen masks will be falling from the ceiling!

I was back in Amsterdam today. Tomorrow I won’t be and then Friday again. Let’s just say that I am clearly giving my train card a work out. My designated train nap route seems to be the distance between Schiphol and Leiden. It’s about 25 minutes. I like to sit up top on the big yellow Intercity trains. It works just like a good rocking chair…zzz. I am waiting for the day that someone taps me on the shoulder to tell me that I am snoring in the Silent car and would I mind napping in the non-Silent car? 😉

I’m on the big yellow train from Amsterdam back to Schiedam. It’s dark outside so I can’t see the farmland outside but it’s a great moment to write a post 😉

I’m still trying to work out this train thing. If everything goes properly, it actually takes me 8-12 minutes less time to go with the train than with Astrid but it does limit the amount of stuff I can take with me. Like for my banjo lesson tonight, I couldn’t bring my banjo and I couldn’t take my banjolele home. I was already managing my backpack and my lunch this morning.

Today I gave formal notice that I had left the city of Amsterdam. You are technically supposed to do it within 5 working days of your move but I look at as 5 working days from the day the last moving truck arrived. 😉 Feels a little strange – like I know that means Astrid will never be able to get a parking permit for the city again because they have since passed a law that anything older than 1998 is ineligible for a street permit.

As for the other side, well, Bex and GG have been working tirelessly to transform 4 trucks into something livable while I have been learning the commute patterns. We did spend Saturday evening sitting on our terrace, above the garden with lots of snacks and wine. So you know, apples and guacamole are quite a tasty combination together, in my opinion. Sabine joined us and a good time was had by all.

The next morning I got to practice my weird hospitality tendencies and we had breakfast outside. The weather made it impossible not to enjoy. In the afternoon, we drove nearly to the border to visit the farm of someone GG worked with 18 years ago. Not just for the enjoyment of the countryside but to meet Pickle and Olive. In six weeks or so, they will come home to us. Pickle is the runt of the litter and he has a really big voice for one so small. Olive is a little more reserved. 

Our new house feels good. GG says that I snore less! The dogs are welcome everywhere – Friday night we had dinner in one of the old windmills that surround the city. The owner told us that the boys were certainly welcome and definitely better behaved than many children 😉 They did settle down very nicely under the old table and waited patiently. Perhaps they were inspired by the surroundings! What does eating in a windmill look like?

On Tuesday morning, at 0730, the last moving truck arrived. This was the one from the storage warehouse where I still had 3.5 chests of stuff that came with me when I moved to the Netherlands. We have had various conversations about whether or not our new house would actually be big enough for all of the stuff we have. Well, I can assure it is. We might even have room for more – although we are certainly not planning to bring anything else into the house!

I still have to adjust to the feeling that everything is now under one roof, including us, the dogs and things like this amazing pair of certificates I found yesterday while I was sorting for downsizing (aka the Bex Flow).  Issued to my mother when she was still fancy free and working at the Dutch embassy in Washington DC, were two certificates (with grades). She had taken the courses titled Essentials of Data Processing and COBOL Fundamentals of Programming. This was in the early 70s. I never knew this about her. When I saw them, I felt like I was really predestined to be doing this work. 🙂

From the storage truck, there were 27 tubs included. I managed to get through 12 of them yesterday afternoon, without falling apart more than twice. I will save all of that for when everything is unpacked. I did alot of recycling – including finally letting go of my junior high school folders – complete with band lyrics. I still have many more to go and from there we move on to the file boxes. My mom’s handwriting is everywhere on things – that makes it harder.

I might have forgotten to say that Bex arrived on Monday and was so full of energy. She was exactly the direction we needed because we had started to have moving paralysis. WIthin 45 minutes of arriving in our new house and one cup of coffee, she had us moving like an army and making progress where we had been stuck. There’s been a lot of laughter and sarcastic remarks flying around our new house.

The boys are getting a little more used to things. They are settling in. Now to find a good dogwalker and house sitter for the days that we are not home!

Today we will meet up at the old apartment and finish the yard because tomorrow the photographers come and I hand over the keys to the real estate agent. Freaky.

Right now, my brother, Rupert is running the Chicago Marathon. He’s passed the 30 kilometer mark. I know this because I am following it online. I can’t even imagine how he must be feeling at this moment! I think it’s an awesome accomplishment and am having a proud big sister moment!

I am having to rely on a different kind of endurance. Let’s just say that the move didn’t go anywhere nearly as smoothly as it should have, for all of our planning. Friday morning, I was still loading the last bits into Astrid, right before the floor finishers got there! We’ve been unpacking all weekend. I know we have made alot of progress but it still feels like we’ve gotten nowhere.

GG has earned the night off and is at the U2 concert. I am sitting on the couch and listening to the boys snore.

I am so glad to be here. It’s a huge adjustment for the boys, especially the whole stairs thing. They know to wait at each landing for me to go back and get their brother since I don’t trust my balance up and down Dutch staircases with a wiggling dog under each arm. I think I am going to need to upgrade my Fitbit to the one that tracks staircases as well 😉

The house is beautiful. I can tell the difference between the Catholic and Protestant church bells, which is a useful skill. 😉 We overlook a square where our closest neighboring building is the city hall, which was built in 1668. It doesn’t get more storybook than this!

It’s very different here, compared to Amsterdam. Far more diverse and open. I was walking back from the store last night and passed 3 boys who were probably somewhere between 12-15. Big night for them as they were urging each other along to get to the snack bar. In the middle of walking through them, I was hit by a wall of smell. One of the boys calls out to me in Dutch “Ma’am, he let out a fart!” To which I responded “Oh, I know, I can smell it!”

Welcome to the neighborhood 🙂 We’ll try not to wreck the charm that you have going on here!

Today George turns 13. Henry turned 13 last Sunday. I know that for dogs this makes them rather beyond middle aged. I see that there’s a little more grey and white in their fur and it’s a bit easier to sneak into the house without setting off the Small Dog Alarm Service. However, when we go walking on sunny days, the sound of their nails on the sidewalks of Amsterdam is still at a pretty rapid pace. It’s a good sound, I know how fast they are walking just by listening. It struck me in particular today as we were walking to the parking garage for the last time.

For nearly five years, we have been walking to the parking garage to pick up Astrid. When I first moved here, there was a 13 month waiting list for a street parking permit. However, I could shelter Astrid right away by signing up at the convention center’s parking garage. We continued to park there even after I got a street permit. I can’t tell you how many times the boys and I have walked to the garage. Since parking works literally on the monthly basis here, Astrid left the garage for the last time today and now she’s parked right outside the door.

Long overdue (as in I have never done it) GG showed of her Dutchness by washing the front windows of the house by hand. I feel like window washing is a big thing in the Netherlands. They look amazing and the plant bed below them also got a nice makeover. That’s that whole curb appeal thing 😉

It’s been a week of people saying good-bye in surprising ways – including an amazing good-bye party from the people of my favorite terrace (organized in secret with GG) and then another from the meetup.

Then today I suddenly had the panicked thought of what was I going to do with the boys for the next few weeks during the day? Our first project starts tomorrow and we don’t have someone yet who will let the boys out during the day. I came out of the shower, firing 20 questions at GG about what were we going to do with the boys, etc. And that’s when she calmly replied that she had taken the first half of October off because we were moving. Somehow I missed that 😉 And I am also the one who said “Why waste vacation days on a move??”

I am definitely glad she chose not to listen!

Saturday morning, coffee number two in process, dogs in their basket, first full day of autumn, making dinner plans for tonight with Marianne, adding to the list of things to do next to me and taking a moment to write.

Yesterday the permit for the moving truck to park came, which suddenly made this move that much more real! It could also have been the pricetag for the permit that shocked me into looking at the calendar and really counting the days!

We’ve put ourselves on a pretty tight schedule. It looks a little bit like this:

• 1 October, we sign for the house and mortgage and the official transfer happens – keys are in our hands at the end of 17 chapters of signatures.
• 2 October, the new house gets cleaned from top to bottom.
• 3 October, GG moves from her house. Dogs move in the evening. Packing at my house.
• 4 October, I move.
• 5-7 October, we try to unpack as much as possible so we can welcome our first guest.
• 8 October, first guest arrives with her amazing special organizational super powers and incredible sense of humour.
• 9 October, storage arrives – yes, all of the things that came with the ship when I moved here.
• 10-15 October, paint floors and garden for my old house. Goes on the market on the 15th.

In the midst of this, the company has it’s first project starting on 1 October. For once, I didn’t do anything to plan it this way – like with the idea of being the most effective person ever. It was simply a matter of grabbing chances. It will work out but it will be rather stressful.

Early this morning, I had a dream that we were living in the top floor of a big warehouse that each room was slightly worse than the last. In between the rooms, which were filled with the belongings of previous inhabitants, there were also all kinds of creepy noises. I kept trying to get everything presentable. And then just when I thought there were rats coming out of a wall, there came three cats. They were in descending size from largest to smallest, two tabby cats and one unusual cream colored one. I was relieved because I knew that if there were cats, there were probably no rats. 😉 Then I woke up right about the time I was going to reach out to one of the cats to see if it would accept me. It doesn’t take a PhD to figure out that I am clearly having some stress about the move 😉

I’ve got more to write but the list of things to do today is pretty lengthy so I’m going to tackle that for now.

On Monday afternoon, GG and I went to meet the sellers of our new house and talk about what we wanted to keep. They are moving into a mid 70’s bungalow style that is being completely renovated to be super modern and they don’t want to take their furniture from their circa 1850 home with them.

Really, we were only interested in the ceiling fans and the garden furniture because they have very different taste. Lots of enormous leather pieces which is not my thing. Turns out, we actually will have to pay them for the lights. Yes, really. The lights that are in the kitchen, on the ceiling, in the hallway. Yep, all of them, if we want to have any light. In the Netherlands, people take their lights with them when they move.

You can imagine that all I want to do is say “Really? The lights? You are going to spend hours taking them down and the chances are they don’t even match your new home. And if I don’t want to stumble around in the dark in the first days in the new house, I have to buy your exisiting lights?” We’re not talking about Tiffany lamps here either.

To me, this is taking things just a step too far. I had gotten somewhat used to the idea that you also take your closets with you, etc. But LIGHTS?? Needless to say, the party that buys my house will not only get the closets, all appliances, the floor but I will even throw in the lights!

In the end, we also chose not to go for the ceiling fans. They wanted to take them with them and wanted to charge us 250 euro for each one… that’s more than cost of them new. GG had to specifically tell them that they could take the fans, but it was fine to leave the electrical work in the ceiling, before they took that too.

I bet they don’t cover this topic on Househunters International! Now you know, if you are thinking about the Netherlands!

Fighting my way through a bit of the flu, no doubt due to all of the transition stress. Had our first company meeting this week with all of the people who are jumping on my crazy train. It was really great – so much energy, curiousity and weirdness. We’re going to have an amazing time! I picked a good bunch of people.

Right now, I can apply that to so many things that are happening. It’s Sunday afternoon, just before dog dinner time and I grabbed myself a cup of coffee and sat down to type despite the four eyes looking up at me and hoping an exception would me made to the clock. 😉

For starters, I’ll answer the kind invitation from Immigration and Naturalization to accept the conversion of my work related over visa to a new visa to stay for the next five years! The invitation came Friday afternoon while I was on the phone with the Tax Ministry – for the company. I didn’t expect the decision so soon so I figured it was a message telling me I needed another four forms in triplicate to vouch for the fact that I am not GG’s mail order bride. Imagine my surprise that the decision came in 25 days, far faster than the 90 days they told me when I applied!

I had another coaching session this morning with Wub the Wonder Horse. This time it was about the future and what might be standing in my way (including myself). It was a pretty intense hour and Wub called “Horse shit” on me a couple of times when I wasn’t digging deep enough. What is standing in my way is something that I need to take action to claim, to accept. So, I will say yes to that as well. Wub and I worked so hard that we got past the 9 month goal and already to the 1 year benchmarks. Overachievers 😉

Early this morning, I decided I would bother Little C on a Sunday. Not because she’s really church going or anything but more because I feel awkward sometimes making contact with friends to do something – like I feel like I might be bothering them or intruding. I am working on this, sometimes with more progress than other times. On my way to Wub, I sent her a text and asked if she wanted to hang out after. So, we did, we went for lunch in Het Twiske – which is kind of a nature area – complete with nudist facilities.  It seems like every outdoor thing I do with Little C, there are nudist facilities near by!

Due to the proximity of all the wasps, we felt it was wiser to eat and drink fully clothed 😉

I also will gratefully be moving in a little over a month. The next door neighbor, that has way too much free time, pushed a note through the mailbox this afternoon, about cleaning up my yard. She has a thing against leaves and I have a tree that I refuse to cut down – completely not on her side.  I have turned down her offers to cut it down for me numerous times. This time it was about dog poop – and there’s actually none in the yard. I didn’t react other than to roll my eyes and think to myself “Can’t wait to move”.

Okay, this really is the worst guilty pleasure song… that must be why I am listening to it on the headphones and bopping around in my desk chair. I suddenly thought of it as the title for tonight, given that things are going so fast, I now have 5 people who are part of the new company. Number 5 said “Hell, Yes” yesterday!

When I started with this idea, I had no idea it would go so fast. I thought I would take the steps in a ritualistic order while I waited out until my contract ended. However, once I started, I couldn’t slow down. Ask GG about the fact that sometimes I am up til 230 futzing around with yet one more solution or proposal!

While there are still things to finish on the company side, like the website and some other things, I’ve already committed to and built our first partnership initiative. We’re starting the first run of the Future Skills Lab on 1 October! This was faster than I could have hoped for and am so excited to be part of!

I think I’ve also made my peace with the organization that I am leaving. Over the past week, through a series of encounters with people and process, I realized that I really did try my best to make it all work – and it never would have. This was a relief. You know I am the person that asks myself 57 times “Is there something else I could have tried? Would there have been a different outcome if I had done X?” Well, let’s just say that the interactions over the past week made it pretty clear that I’m way less than 50% of the problem 😉

I’ve heard that a couple of times in the past few days, that I look so relaxed. Hahaha, and it’s not because I have been sleeping alot, so it must be the peace of detachment!

This morning, I cycled three times around where I needed to be (overthinking it) and spent the morning working with a very interesting group of actors. I had volunteered to be part of a project to help them expand their audience reach while respecting the qualities that made them unique. I also wanted to shift the way they were described – by circumstances. As if circumstances are the way to label people! I had sent some questions to them via their director and this morning I was at their practice. No sitting in a chair and observing, it was 100% participation.

I was really surprised by how much it brought up in me. I left there with a much stronger sense of their troupe and their goals – and how to describe them! It was challenging and fun. Coming soon to an amateur stage near you perhaps! GG and I went to De Parade last night to see “The Sound of Mucus” about the very musical family (13 children) Franssen from Eindhoven. I really enjoyed it, especially as it had alot to do with their very strict mother. I was reminded of mine, particularly when one of her children came home after three days of hiding and she said to him “I didn’t even know you were gone”. I had to think about the story Cedric tells about my mom reminding him to pack socks when he threatened to run away from home. 🙂

We’ll go back to De Parade next week for the full experience with Marianne. Practice sitting under a tree with a good bottle of wine (or two) and checking out the various theatre pieces. That to me is summer in Amsterdam 🙂