MissLeonie.com

Today is Liam’s birthday. He’s turned 24. Happy birthday to Liam! Unlike last year, I won’t be sending him a birthday-present filled box this year. I figure, if he’s coming over in eight days, he might as well unwrap his presents then. That’s right, LIAM IS COMING OVER. In eight days! This boy is determined, I tell you. He is flying via Finland. Because that’s the most logical itinerary. I am a lucky, lucky girl.

I guess the ponies did their job. I didn’t dare to talk about any of this before, because for a long time, we weren’t sure we’d be able to make it happen. The worries about whether he could come over or not felt private, so I decided not to discuss any of it until it was a done deal. I’m normally not very superstitious (ask my mum who tried to stop me walking under a ladder on Thursday…), but this was so important. I’m absolutely thrilled that he’s coming over. It got to the point where I was scared to hope, but it has all worked out, and I’m so happy.

What I’m less happy about is my skin. (Guys, this will be a girly paragraph. Be prepared.) I’m not happy with my skin, or rather, the effects a fancy moisturiser I bought have had on it. I went to my local pharmacy before the break, because I was under a lot of stress and my skin wasn’t liking it at all. They suggested a certain Vichy moisturiser. The word moisturiser suggests that it will, you know, MOISTURISE? Right? Instead, I woke up on Friday with crackling skin. My face felt like sandpaper and the itching…. Dear God, the itching. And did I mention the redness? And the sickly yellow skintone? I looked a right mess. I’m going to take it back to the shop when I get back to uni. I hope they do refunds. In the mean time, I’ve gone back to trusty Olaz moisturisers.

I don’t know what the protocol is with moisturiser issues. I don’t know whether you can return to complain when you’ve used a product several days. Part of me thinks I’ll tell them what happened, they’ll giggle a bit, say “Unlucky!” and point at the exit. That would be bad. At the same time, I feel cheated out of good money. There’s a reason I asked for advice at a pharmacy, and they got it wrong. Big time. We’ll see.

Despite the skin terrorism, I went shopping with my sister in her uni town yesterday. When I got on the bus in the morning, there was a thick fog. A local myth warns about “white women” (witte wieven) in misty weather, and I saw plenty. These white women are just shreds of thick fog, of course, but I like the idea of white witches roaming the meadows in bad weather. By the time I got to my destination, the fog had disappeared. We spent a lovely, sunny afternoon shopping our little bums off, laughing and having fun. I’ve sometimes wondered if my sister and I would ever have a relationship like that, being slightly argumentative around each other most of the time. It now turns out that we weren’t destined to be the female Cain & Abel. I couldn’t be happier.

Whoa, active day. I don’t think I have been so energetic since I was twelve. I’ve been yawning my way through today because I slept too much (more than 12 hours - possibly taking the concept of a lie in a bit too far).

I went for a BIG walk with my mum, walking rather quickly and only stopping to take the occasional photo. Not long after I got back, it was time to babysit my favourite 9-year-old. He’s an active little boy that I have been babysitting since he was about two. We did a bit of skating first, then somehow, I got talked into peddling a little kart around with three kids on the back, and finally, we played all sorts of ballgames until his parents got back. Suddenly, one of the kids we were playing with spotted a hot air balloon coming over very low. I ran inside and grabbed my camera.

What a lovely, lovely day. Please excuse me while I pass out into a coma, though.

I have finally manged to finish the book that has been linked under “currently reading” on the right hand side for at least four months. It’s amazing that I managed not to finish a book I like so much for so long. Nick Hornby’s “A Long Way Down” is an excellent read. I liked it even more than “How to be Good,” which was fantastic already.

The book is funny, but not in a laughing-out-loud hahaha sort of way. Its genius lies in the fact that when you look up “irony” in the dictionary, it has a photo of Nick Hornby. The back of the book does too, full page, and in colour. It didn’t really need that… I cannot recommend this novel enough, though. It’s a great read. Hornby really manages to get inside the brain of four completely different people who feel like killing themselves on New Year’s Eve. Do they? There wouldn’t be a novel then, would there? How does it end? Pick up a copy an get reading, kids.

I haven’t thought of a new book to read yet, mostly because half the books I bought and haven’t had a chance to read are still in Australia. However, that might change soon. That’s all I’m going to say about it :P

This afternoon, a little boy with incredibly curly hair rang the doorbell about sixteen times. When I answered it, my neighbour’s son, roughly two feet tall, asked if I would help him put his new skates on, and could I teach him how to do it? Why not, thought I, and I asked him to give me a couple of minutes to finish my tea. Mum told me to skull it (pretty much), because “a minute” is a very short time for little boys. Sure enough, 30 seconds later, the doorbell rang again (this time only once, cause I tickled him and told him I got the message after one ring). I got the box with the new skates out of the back of his mum’s car, and proceeded to put them on, supervised by a 9 and a 12-year-old.

I also found out that I won’t be one of those mums who feel incredible guilt at every kid-related thing they get wrong. I put the skates on WITH THE BALL OF PAPER STILL IN THERE. He remarked that “it did hurt a little bit.” Oh. Heh. He’ll live.

He was very excited about the prospect of moving with the speed of light. It turned out that standing up was a big enough challenge for day one. As I stood behind him, grabbing him when he was about to fall over, he confided in me, “I think shoes are easier.”

Today was another day of sunniness. I finished the novel reading in a sunny spot on the carpet. It seems I wasn’t the only one snoozing in a patch of sunlight today… Mum and I walked to town for a number of little errands. On the way back, I suggested we walk past my grandmother’s old farm. The farm is more or less in the middle of town, with a big patch of grass. No one is currently living there, because the last tenants destroyed the place while my grandmother was too nice to say anything about it. They barely paid rent, too. Nothing says “thank you” like ruining a farm that has been in the family for over five generations. In the grass was a chubby black and white cat, eyes only barely open, snoozing away. I bet he’s glad it’s Spring too.

…there’s always ponies. The one on the right is somehow related to a pony that was named after me. I only know that because her nose is funny the same way Leonie the Pony’s nose is. Fear my horse-knowledge.

I have a few things that I desperately want to work out at the moment. I’m not going to jynx them by discussing them here and now, but let’s just say that ponies help, and I thought I’d share.

I do like my pizzas. In fact, I tricked my mum into letting me make pizza today. I think that if my mum had a website, she’d write about how she tricked her oldest daughter into thinking that she had succeeded in convincing her mum to let her make pizza, though. I fear I may be the trickee here. However, did I mention the pizza? Who cares about dignity when there is pizza involved?

I did the dough and some of the toppings of pizza numero uno, and then got a mid-pizza dip. So really, my mum was tricked into finishing up dinner. She said she’d get right on it, after she put the paperwork to have me disowned in the mail.

I have been sleeping fantastically well in my old bedroom. The curtains in my uni appartment don’t block out the light all that well, but here, my room is pitch black. When I wake up, I can’t see a thing, but because I’m half blind, I’m pretty used to it, light or no light. I figure if anyone is going to sneak into my bedroom to kidnap me, they might as well be as visually impaired as I am. It’s only fair.

On Sunday, we went for a nice big walk. We must have been out walking for over two and a half hours. Dad has now got my old digital camera, which has improved the general mood substantially. Instead of having to wait while I take six macro shots of a leaf, he can join in the fun. All the photos on the Flickr page are still mine, though. Enjoy!

I haven’t been doing as much watercolour painting as I would have liked to. Part of me is scared to ruin the fancy paper, part of me is a little bit lazy after the last two crazy weeks, but yet another part did think to bring the paint and the paper with me. Mum and I even had a look at all sorts of watercolour paraphernalia in a fancy art shop. We’ll see what I get up to this week. I’m getting a little better at it each time I try. Who would have thought that being creative isn’t completely terrifying?

On that note, the flash fiction assignment I handed in for my creative writing class only got a B. The teacher said it was a good piece of writing, I believe the word “skilled” may have been used, but it wasn’t exactly flash fiction, because I tried to stuff far too much into it. Thankfully all these assignments go into a portfolio. We get to work on all of them after we’ve got a first batch of comments, so we can up our grades when we hand the portfolio in at the end of the semester.

On a final academic note, I have found two brilliant teachers who are willing to be my referees for my MA degree applications. I am finishing my letter of motivation today. And then the waiting begins: will I be accepted? Fingers crossed!

I made it.

It’s Thursday night, I’ve handed in (most) everything and more importantly, I made it through my terrifying literary studies exam. It may be a 100-level course, but it freaks me out, and I’ve done a full literature track and then some. I managed to answer 11 questions out of 12, and we only had to answer 10, so it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Because I didn’t die.

I’ve also done the dishes for the first time this week, more or less. I didn’t have pets yet, but I really had to do some cleaning. The desk, however, still has midterm mojo. That photo? Not staged in the slightest, unfortunately, and very recent. The desk doesn’t get to complain though. It doesn’t have to sleep with BOOKS IN THE BED, like me.

There are a few more little things tomorrow, but the worst of it is over. Holidays, here I come!

I’ve finally burnt a huge load of photos off my little laptop. It’s kind of weird: before I had this laptop, I had a very old school computer with about 8GB of hard drive space in total. It managed, though, bless its poor, old socks. I couldn’t use iTunes and Photoshop at the same time or anything, and MediaPlayer always made it cry (very slowly), but it worked. Now I have 60GB of space, and I filled it up in no time. It doesn’t help that my handsome new camera takes photos that are at least 2MB in size each, nor does it help that I have expanded my music collection quite a bit. Liam donated his iPod photo to me when he upgraded, and now I have a little OCD thing going where I want all my music to be on my computer at all times. I had a similar thing with my photos, but I finally deleted all the ones I’d burnt off today, because I had about one GB of space left in total. Not so good, no.

The only reason I did some laptop-technical organising was procrastination, of course. You won’t find my room in a cleaner state than around midterm and final exam time. Only… maybe not right now. I don’t remember this happening ever before, but I have actually got so busy that I haven’t had time to do much procrastinating. All students know it’s true: you get work done twice as fast when the deadline is mocking you from the near distance, grinning cruelly while pointing at its watch.

I’m trying to get as much done while not losing my mind. Last weekend, I was so tired I had trouble reading: my eyes would just glaze over. I just need to make it to the end of the week. I only have to make it to the end of the week. My family have been real sweet: I have homemade food from both my mum and my aunt. I might even make it to Friday well-fed style! Now if only the weather would clear up a bit.

I am so sorry for the complete lack of updates. You will not believe the week that I have had, a week filled with headaches, deadlines and very little sleep. This upcoming week is midterm exams week. Thankfully, I’ve only got one midterm, but there’s still plenty of paperwork (portfolios and the like) to be completed. Most of my teachers seemed to want to get all the assignments out of the way last week. This week will still be a tad stressful, of course, but I’ll be on my Spring holidays by Friday. Hurray!

Today, I finally met the latest addition to my family, the little boy that will ensure the survival of our last name. He is beyond cute. Like I said to my family, I don’t want any of my own yet, but damn, babies make good toys. He smiled and made little sounds and fell asleep in my arms. Awww! And babies are fantastically warm. Fantastic.

Everything is trying to tell me that Spring has kicked in today. Not only is it warm and sunny, I’ve seen a fair share of young and impossibly cute animals. Rabbits, lambs, daschunds…

My parents and I went for a walk near Arnhem before I got on the train home. My sister, the one-legged Paris pirate, wasn’t there, as she wouldn’t arrive back in the Netherlands until later. She’s on a school trip to the city of love. Her blisters gave her some tough love, though. Apparently, they started an infection in her foot. Foot and ankle swelled up last week, and she was hurting like hell. Being the protective sister that I am, I dreamt about her in some strange setting remarkably similar to my grandparents’ house. Some creep was trying to do bad things to us, and I was trying to keep my sister safe. She said she almost had the same dream, only it wasn’t the same and I wasn’t in it. My sister is an amazing story teller.

A doctor in a hospital over there put her on ten days of antibiotics and four to five times 1000 grammes of paracetamol a day against the pain. One-legged Paris pirate is on her way home and she’ll be fine. We’re never letting her out of the country again.

So my sister wasn’t on our walk. You obviously know more about my sister’s foot than you want to at this stage, so I’ll move on to the cute part of this post. We had just got out of the car and started walking down the hill, when my mum shouted a random “it’s a dog!” I saw two people walking up to us, but no dog. Until suddenly, the tiniest little mass of legs and ears galloped up the hill. It was a little dark brown daschund pup with a blue collar. He was running to keep up with his owners. They passed us, and as we were cooing and laughing hysterically with how cute this puppy was, he suddenly stopped running, looked at his owners, looked at us, and ran back our way. He ran right past my dad, and stopped between my legs. I gave him a bit of a pat and he rolled over, belly up, looking at me with his little friendly face. So I gave him a (gentle) belly scratch and then told him to go back to his people. And off he ran, little legs galore. I want one.

PS. I haven’t got any photos, because I forgot to bring my camera on the weekend.

I was listening to the Cage podcast on the train. Now, I listen to the Cage, an Aussie breakfast radio show, quite loudly on my little iPod. It’s all amusing banter and you don’t want to miss the punchline because the person in front of you feels the need to have a phone conversation with a friend AND THE ENTIRE TRAIN CARRIAGE.

What you REALLY don’t want to do is miss the punchline because the person behind you is CLIPPING HIS FINGERNAILS. On a train! What kind of person clips his fingernails on public transport?! Bits of Nailclipper Person are flying everywhere, little half moons of a man overly concerned with his manicure will be sat on at a later stage of the train’s schedule, by people who really don’t want bits of stranger stuck to their pants. It’s absolutely disgusting. The man even had a designated nailclipper pocket. That is wrong on so many levels.

In fact, I’ve been so disgusted by this overly comfortable behaviour that suddenly, two thirds of my traintrip were over. While I was jotting this down, I suddenly found myself in Nijmegen, well into my journey, almost home. And I was still disgusted. So very, very wrong.