1) has lost weight and gained it all back

2) has tried half-assedly to lose weight all whilst eating a pizza

3) has come one year further and had no change pretty much in body mass

 So, maybe, just maybe, since there are still a few people coming around here, I will dust this thing off and hit the weight-loss trail again.  Seeing how I still have the same amount of self-loathing as last year and the year before, maybe 3rd times a charm?

Been working through a lot of stuff in therapy and it seems to be working, slowly but surely!

My weight… where was I???  If I remember correctly, I’ve actually pretty much stayed the same.  I weighed in this morning at 95.8KG.  Been more serious the last couple of days with the program – just want the weight OFF and I don’t want to be in the SAME position this time next year.

 It’s funny, the end of the year always brings a lot of reflection.  There are a lot of things I wish to change.  Things I will change.  I refuse to be in the same position next year.  I refuse to have the same struggles.  No, next year is going to be THE year I get my shit together (Take II – since I did that several years back for a while).  Weight off, stop smoking, job which doesn’t consume all my energy, paid what I’m worth… all of that I will have next year.  I’m learning to focus, to pay attention to myself, to love myself, to concentrate on the good things that I have and the good things I will achieve.

I want to thank Helen and Amanda for still coming around here, even though I wasn’t posting!  Much appreciated!!

Outside is a Chinese girl (I can say this because she is, in fact, from Beijing) who is speaking half-dutch, half-english.  She explains she came to see her classmate at number 82 (last apt on our floor) but the classmate isn’t home so can she wait inside with us?  We both (R & I) sort of looked at each other like, “what should we do?”.  I mean, what would you do?

I decided to go with my instincts and let the girl in.  She has a seat, I offer her a drink and we are just chatting.  This was about 20:45 mind you.  She said she would just stay a half an hour and then go check on her friend again.  Well, she didn’t leave until almost 23:00!  While she was a VERY nice girl (woman, 33 yrs old) she could TALK.  Wow!  Totally not what we expected.   I pretty much know everything about this girl now!

When she finally left, we both had this sort of deer-in-the-headlights look on our faces.  It was probably the most surreal evening I’ve had in a long time!

 My hair turned out well too

Today

Yesterday

Why don’t people just contact me or leave a comment?  I’d be happy to help with anything I can.  Especially “translate bull shit into dutch”  LMAO!!

I have been sick though.  Got the stomach bug that everyone else seems to have or have had already.

Kids were with us this weekend but we didn’t really do much.  Just some things around the house.  T was ill on Thursday and Friday so that was half of us who didn’t want to be too far from the WC.  Though on Sunday I “taught” T a little bit on my old violin – she’s been asking for so long to play so I agreed as long as she was going to take it seriously.  I had that violin since I was 10… it’s a little bit big for her and hard for her to hold.  Give her another year or so… and see if she’s still interested… she swears now she REALLY wants to play.  I’m not so sure…

P was a little doll.  So sweet.  I love how he hugs and kisses me all the time.  Even though he can be a real pain in the butt he just KNOWS how to melt our hearts.

That’s it pretty much. 

1) Losing Weight/ Using Weight Watchers

2) Expatriates / “Love Immigrants”

3) Stepmoms

4) People who are funny (huh?  does that mean I think I’m funny?)

Something I find very interesting are “girls” like me who live in another country basically to be with the one they love (OK, I didn’t come here for that reason, but I am here NOW because of the one I love. 

I like to read the different viewpoints.

I like to get confirmation on things, even if they are not nice things being confirmed (Amanda’s run-in with the doctor’s assistant being one example).  I like to hear about people changing and adapting to the culture.  I  like to hear about what is important to KEEP from their own culture.

I sometimes make “fun” of the Dutch to my lovely boyfriend.  Not too seriously and not too harsh because he is DUTCH after all.  It’s simply not nice to be too harsh about my observations over the last 12 years.  Nearly every Dutch person that I become somewhat close to (there aren’t many)  actually agrees with the things I say / have observed.

One of the things I heard in the beginning all the time was “not possible” .  This is a Dutch favourite.  This actually means more like “not probable“.  You go to a shop and say:

“Do you have this item in Red in size 44?”

“If it’s not on the racks, we don’t have it”

“Could you check in the back [call another shop/suggest something not completely out of the ordinary] for me?

“No, that’s not possible.”

“Not possible?”

“No, not possible.”

*look of total confusion covers face*

Really you could insert “not possible” into any situation.  It happened a lot.  Then I moved to the Hague where it didn’t happen so much.  I wondered often if it was because there was such an elite percentage of foreigners/expats there.  All the ambassadors.  The Queen herself.  Big Wigs from the Oil companies.  Members of Parliament.  The service level was SO good and I really loved it there.

It’s different in Arnhem.  Although it’s not BAD, it’s just different.  Well, we also don’t go out as much either so maybe I can’t compare very well.

Then there is the shrug-your-shoulders-I-don’t-know-not-my-job look.  You know, when dealing with something very important like the hospital, or the government, immigration, town hall, that sort of thing.  One person tells you one thing, another person another thing, you want answers.  Ultimately you will get this shrugging.  No one really enjoys doing more than their “job”, you’ll have to check with Jan-Jaap who’s on holiday for 3 weeks.  Lately I’ve been shrugging in gest with the One I Love and we’ve been laughing about it.  Hard.

My favourite -the cluster-fuck.  Lack of queueing.  I mean it would be asking WAY too much to have people actually stand DECENTLY in a queue and wait their turn.    Once I was at Schiphol, standing in one of two queues at the ABN AMRO bank machines.  There was one person in front of me.  The woman who was aan de beurt in the other queue suddenly went to OUR machine when it was free, cutting off the woman in front of me.  Feeling quite feisty I said something to her.  She told me she was “in a hurry”.  Oh.  I guess the rest of us aren’t.  Go ahead Miss Look Like Everyone Else KLM Stewardess.  You are WAY more important.  I was riled up.  She was riled up.  So much so that she forgot the €10 she took from the machine.  Yes, €10. 

That was a more civilised situation.  I imagine that was because most of us who WERE queueing, were not Dutch.

I suppose I could go on and on about my experiences here, but I also want it to be clear that I’m very positive about the Netherlands.  No where is perfect. This is more “home” to me than I’ve every felt anywhere else (Well, I REALLY enjoyed Portland a lot!!).  This is the longest I’ve lived anywhere for this long.  There are SO many things I love about here – many “things” are actually feelings.  The feeling I get when I see families bicycling together on a sunny Sunday afternoon.  The feeling of security that I have, that I can always go to the doctor, no matter what.  Driving through a city on the motorway and still seeing fields of cows and sheep.  Driving through tiny villages and truly taking in the landscape.  There are no mountains here and that IS a “negative”, but I can GET to the mountains pretty quickly if need be.

There’s only ONE thing.  I truly wonder if I would have made more friends by now.  I do think I LET the culture and language hold me back (which is silly, I speak the language and I’m pretty much integrated…).

Just some randomness for a Wednesday morning

 Yesterday my colleague brought cheese and worst (can’t stand the stuff, it looks like cat food to me – blech!!) to celebrate her birthday (which was in August) and her “something” from school (she’s not completely finished because she’s still in school as far as I know).

Anyway, cheese and worst.  Cumin Cheese and Regular creamy tasty cheese.  In blocks.  So easy to just pick up and pop in your mouth.  I probably had a week’s worth of points just in cheese.  I am weak to the Cheese Master.

So there is still cheese in the fridge here at work – I’ll just have one…  mmmmm, that is SO tasty!!!  OK one more for variety.  No.  I think I’ve had about 6 pieces now!!!  I wish I could just throw the damn cheese away!  It’s worse that chocolate for me,  I’m sure!

I really need to get my fat arse in gear or this weight is NEVER going to come off.  Especially if I’m all blocked up from cheese!

The weekend was really good.  On Friday we went to pick up the kids at school – of coruse we’d arranged it with D first but kept it a secret from the kids so they were happily surprised.  They’ve been asking to go bowling again for ages and there’s just always something going on where we just don’t have the time to do it.  The last weekend we had the kids we brought them home a few hours early (per request) so we thought we’d get a few hours in return.

So we went bowling and funnily enough T kicked our butts practically all the way through until I caught up with her and we both had a final score of 100.  R was in 2nd and P last but of course he was SURE he’d won because he had the least points!   5-year-old logic!

After bowling we went to this Pancake place in Oosterbeek – we love it there because the service is so good, it’s a big place, but it’s never overcrowded.  Plus the dutch pancakes are to die for!  Then we had to take them back home, or rather to their Oma and Opa’s place as they were staying there that night.

Saturday – We cleaned and tidied but in a really nice relaxed way.  The place was already super clean from when we had the open house, we just needed to tidy up a bit and give a once over to the table, dust, that sort of thing.  Something that has bothered me for quite some time is that I have no friends really in this area, no social life.  I met a couple of girls back in February/March this year who actually live near me, one in Arnhem, one in Doetinchem and we have discussed setting up a cooking club specifically in our area (there are plenty of other clubs and groups in Amsterdam, the Hague, Utrecht, etc, but nothing in Gelderland).  Anyway, to make a long story short – we’ve gone out together, just the girls,  a few times;  once for dinner with partners (all the boys are Dutch, the girls are American, English, Australian)  and now it was time to have some action in the kitchen!

I had some allergies to deal with, so my idea of grilled salmon wasn’t going to fly.  Instead I made a non-breaded Chicken Parmesan, home-made tomato sauce and linguine.  I have a booming basil plant so I asked one of the girls to bring tomatoes and mozzarella cheese and I’d do a little salad with the fresh basil and some olive oil/basalmico.

We drank lots of lovely wine, the Chicken/pasta/salad turned out so well (I am amazed sometimes that I can cook something for the first time and it’s truly GOOD), everyone was happy, chatting, getting along well.  The other girl brought dessert- my, my, my!  Also extremely tasty but not good for the waistline.

They all left around 23:15 as everyone has busses to catch.  We stayed up a bit to watch a Depeche Mode DVD and then crashed out completely probably an hour later.

Sunday – I felt like a real grown-up.  I’d had a “party” and the house wasn’t’ trash, no one puked in the WC,  nothing was even broken during the course of the evening.  We’d even soaked the dishes the night before!

I did sleep in a bit as I felt a bit fuzzy from the night before.  Drank tons of water and then got myself started.  Cleaned the kitchen, did more laundry and then got started on my closet… the dreaded closet!  Basically I have all sizes from 40 to 48 and they are (were) stuffed in the closet, drawers, in plastic boxes under the bed, in the kids’ closet… everywhere.  I don’t need those things reminding me that I have nothing to wear that I like.  I don’t need those things laughing at me and making fun of the way my body is right now.  I don’t need those things sticking their proverbial tongues out at me every time I unfold them and try them on, even though the last time they didn’t fit me either… tossing them back in the cupboard and holding back tears.

What I did:  well, thankfully I got some great advise from www.organizedhome.com and I pulled ALL the clothes out, separated them into sizes, put ONLY my current size in the closet and the rest packed up in boxes indicating the size.  As I get smaller, I can then get rid of size 48 and go to my box of 46′s, open it up and decide from there what I want to keep and what can go.  Obviously, when I get down to 40 I’ll have to check if my clothes are still somewhat in fashion, but most of my stuff is pretty classic so I’m not too worried about it.  I did throw away stray socks and all underbits that were not in my current size.  One of my rewards as I get smaller will be to buy new sexy underbits.  A girl SHOULD have nice new panties – not have to wear the old ones!

I also sorted out all my shoes.  Boots that I can’t wear because my calves are too big.  Shoes that aren’t really appropriate for the weather.  Funky shoes that I just won’t wear as a fat girl.  So they all went into the box and some even into a pile of give/throw away.  I STILL have at least 12 pairs of shoes left!  It’s enough!

The feeling I had this morning when I went to my drawer, pulled out a current sized panty,  a current sized bra, a current sized tee,  socks that didn’t gather at the ankle (and matched), and my black leather ankle boots that I thought were missing was that of pure satisfaction.  It’s amazing that decluttering your home actually declutters your soul at the same time

We still have several works in progress, but it really makes me feel good to have this kind of control in my life.  It makes me so much stronger!

BAGGY BUTT SYNDROME

Equally horrific of course is

DROOPY DRAWERS SYNDROME

I suppose it’s hard to have anyone take you seriously when you complain about these two diseases, that tend to go hand-in-hand with one another, after all, it’s your OWN FAULT that you’ve come down with these illnesses!  YOU are the one getting fit, losing weight, looking good… YOU are the one who has to deal with the consequences!!

Even today I took a sneaky peek at the scale (it’s gone up, but not much;  I just need to get myself to the gym and make sure I stick to points next week) and I thought “The scale number went up, yet my pants are falling down???”  I don’t get it.  Even my (fat girl) belt is pulled to the last notch.  They are so falling down that the bottom of my jeans actually drags the ground.  I tried to put on an old pair of heeled boots but no success there… calves are too thick.

Unfortunately there is nothing we can take for this syndrome.  All we can do is wait it out until we can fit in the next size down…