Sunday, September 20, 2009

weekend of bluh.

On I think Wednesday night, something tripped a breaker in the middle of the night so we woke up with no power. That problem was easily solved with a call to the landlord (aka Mr Jacobs/Jacobs/architect man).

Fast forward to Friday when Dana and I are making sandwiches for lunch using whatever was leftover in the fridge (a chicken breast and a pork chop). Dana heads off to school, I start doing whatever. About an hour later I get a serious case of stomach cramps and upon texting Dana, discover he has them too. Some fresh mint tea seemed to calm mine down, but I still had a nagging headache. So I popped an anti-inflammatory and went about my evening of making pasta salad and headed off to a friend's birthday bbq. Lots of fun, but I was still visited by the occasional stomach cramp.

Saturday I eventually manage to pull a hurting Dana out of bed and over to Emmaus (second hand sale that's open on Saturdays) and the Polish Market to look for a couch. We found a neat ornate cabinet (with carved owls and fish and skeleton keys to open the doors) for 40 euro to go in the living room, and lucked out at Polish with a 27 euro leather couch (but broke one of the legs getting it into the elevator). By about this time my headache had returned with avengance, and no matter how many pills I popped it would not go away. So to make myself feel a bit better (and soothe Dana's hangover) we made homemade macaroni and cheese, and watched a movie, taking advantage of our new couch and temporary coffee table made of wooden crates*.

Throughout the afternoon my headache progressed into the back of my neck, the stomache cramps returned and brought along a fever. Dana had pretty much the same thing, and let's just say I'm glad we have two bathrooms in the place. We're not exactly sure what brought all this on, but I'm suspecting the food left in the fridge when the power went out, the same food we put into our sandwiches a couple days after. I have no idea how long it was off for, but that's the only thing I could think of.

Today the digestive stuff is better, but instead have those lovely monthly cramps that make me wish I wasn't female. Dana's mostly better too, but we still have fevers and I still have a headache. We're pretty irritable at each other right now, but we managed to (mostly) successfully make our first Dutch pannekoeken (thin, crepe-like pancakes), and some "hammekoeken" (our name for pannekoeken with ham in it). The mix was some cheap "Euro Shopper" brand mix, but it was still pretty tasty. Although I must say I miss maple syrup. The 'traditional' syrup here tastes like molassas.

I think Dana's trying to configure the living room furniture right now, and normally I would go help to save the floor from being scratched, but I'm lying in bed and lazy and comfortable so I'll let that go.

The churches outside (there are five I can see from our roof terrace) are going nuts right now. Bells a ringin'. Such is a Sunday in the Netherlands.

v

*Dana found two wooden crates outside a store in the city centre, and my plan is to make a coffee table out of them. That will be done once we make it to Praxis (the Dutch Home Depot)

1 comment:

edge of uncertainty said...

so when are you going to write about how excited you are that your beautiful mother is coming to visit you in 2 days...now that will be something worth reading! ;-)

love you baby and looking fwd to seeing you soon...mommypants