Revolution!

Today, I created quite a shock at work: I arrived in a SKIRT and had my hair straight down without a clip! Last Friday I went to my hairdressers' and Saturday I bought my first skirt in ages!! But, since I have lost nearly 3 kilo's in the past weeks, I could buy it in a smaller size than I used to have! Wow! For a woman who always wears trousers, wearing a skirt is a small revolution. Well, tomorrow it's back to trousers again and hair in a clip. As my former colleague Wanda used to say: "Don't get carried away now...."

Sonja Bakker?!

Well, my dear friends, the time has come that I woke up and decided that I should loose some kilo's because 6 weeks from now I need to put myself into a bathing suit! But that's not the only reason of course. Lately I have noticed that my clothes are quite tight and I am definitely not going to buy new ones! No, the kilo's will have to go. But, this is easier said than done of course... What will be my strategy? Should I join the increasing amount of people who are doing 'Sonja Bakker'? Love says this is not a very social diet, he will not and cannot join me. Also, he believes that the menu's are boring, only meat, vegetables and patatoes. In the bookstore I have a peek into her book. It looks quite good, but I will listen to Love's advise: just eat less. So, my dear friends, this is what I am doing now for a day or so: eating less. I have bought the 0% fat yoghurt, didn't buy any chocolates, and: I WILL DO LESS HAGELSLAG ON MY SANDWICHES!! This is my biggest offer of course.... Anyone who happens to know me, must know that I live on hagelslag :-( And on top of all this, there is: doing more excercise. Almost every night I walk 1/2 to 1 hour with my neighbour, and the last 2 days I worked out on the cross trainer for 1/2 hour. This is in fact quite boring, but not with Ferry Maat's Soul Show hits on your head! Great! Party time!! I expect the kilo's to fly off and I will keep you updated on the result of course! Wish me luck!

This is where the hard work is done... Did you see the dust coming off that one? :-) Obviously hasn't been used in ages...

Clean up!

This afternoon I kept myself busy cleaning out my closets. This means: going up and down the hall with the removable clothes rack from one room to the other, because my clothes are in two different closets. Office suits in one and casual wear in the other. And besides that I have two large storage boxes in the attick, to store clothes in a bigger or smaller size. You will never know, I might loose a little weight someday, like I did in the past. That's why I keep clothes in different sizes: 42, 44 and 46.

As I am very attached to everything around me it is very hard to throw things away. But today I was very brave, I got rid of all my old shoes. 16 (!) pairs of shoes in a large plastic bag are waiting to be taken to the Salvation Army clothes container.

The things you find when you are cleaning out your closet! A couple of old bathing suits, and one bikini (now that's a long time ago!), and a beautiful lingerie set I kept as a memory of the years when I was 20 and easily fitted a size 38/40. Luckily, there's still an old picture to look at :-)

Radka thought: "as long as they don't want to get rid of me....." and fell asleep in her 'basket' upstairs.

Bathroom Princess

Radka is our one and only Bathroom Princess! It's her favorite part of the house. Such wonderful cool water running from all these taps.... and the shower! oh, lovely to drink the left water in there.... And she doesn't even care when she gets wet! Every day the same ritual unfolds: Radka running upstairs, bursting into the bathroom and jumping into the sink. There she sits and waits patiently for us to have had breakfast. Most of the times she thinks that we don't know that she's sitting there judging from the continuous screaming from upstairs.... Why do we always seem to have cats who just love water? :-)

Joehoe....anybody coming and turning on the tap for me please??

That was worth waiting for....mjam.....they don't put such delicious water in my cup downstairs!

På norsk kurs igjen!

I kveld jeg har gått på norsk kurs igjen. Det var hyggelig slik som alltid. Vi hadde veldig god kake, fordi Elle hatt fødselsdagen i går. Jeg har lært om adjektiven. Det var ikke så lett, men likevel sammenlignbar med nederlandsk. Jeg høper at jeg kan også snakke norsk snart! Elleve leksjonene til :-)

20:10

Every day at exactly 20:10 Radka 'goes off'. She starts screaming as loud as she can and this will not stop before you have given her the contents of one of those little bags with meat or fish. Gourmet is her absolute favorite at the moment. We suspect that she can tell time, because she knows when it's 20:10. Amazing! It's also very handy, because I don't have to look at the clock to know what time it is! You immediately have forgotten all about the screaming when she comes to thank you, having a hard to miss salmon smell hanging about her.

State of Happiness

Just recovered from a weekend in a cottage in the woods. According to the commercial of this cottage parc we were in a 'state of happiness', well we sure were! We celebrated an important birthday, we all tried our skills on the magic sticks, we saw 'X-factor' on the TV all together occupying every inch of the the small couch, for dinner we had a wonderful gourmet with strange food combinations (egg mixed with bread...yuk!) and finally a nice walk in the woods on Sunday afternoon. After the walk we looked very much forward to tea with 'vlaai', the famous cake of Limburg. But who would have thought that they would still be selling vlaai on Sunday afternoon at 15:30? No way, everything sold out! Although we skipped the children's farm this time, it was a nice weekend after all. Who said: "No, I'm definitely not having any more of these weekends in a cottage"? ;-)