Life: June 2008 Archives

Should I summon my dream lover with yarrow under my pillow? Nine flowers or nine blades of grass?

I packed up all my unread books today. I don't need to buy a new book until 2010. Curiously, I got two copies of my bookclub book, The Book Thief,  from Amazon. My first thought was 'fuck, did I click 2x on that!?' then I saw it was an error and thought 'wow, I'm lucky.'

Midsummer's luck, maybe?

Never in my life had I considered tracking my period, until this year in March when I got kind of interested in knowing when it was going to happen next and whereabouts in my pms cycle I was. I have a calendar in my diary, provided kindly by Opzij magazine, (a feminist magazine here in Holland) which allows you to track and predict your menses based on when the last one started.

It gets better than that (and there is a reason I'm telling you this). Today I found, via browsing, a website called Mon.thly.info which sends you an email telling you when you'll be getting your period based on the dates you've entered in previously. I was able to enter five months of data and now the calendar will give me interesting details like which day and phase of my cycle I'm in, like this.

Today apparently I am on day 16, having ovulated on Wednesday and my cycle averages 28.2 days. If I'd wanted to make babies yesterday was do-it-day.

Imagine how useful this will be for planning when to get pregnant, for when you hit the menopause? Or when not to book your holidays? And aren't people just so clever sometimes?

Now someone needs to make a PMS calendar based on the same information except instead of your own email you enter in your boyfriend/boss/co-worker's emails and they get an email that week saying 'Beware of the bitch!'

'I've looked for love in stranger places.' - Melee, Built to Last

The distance from Amsterdam Schiphol to Harare Kutsaga is approximately 5109 miles or 8222 kilometers. Flying time is approximately 17 hours including stopovers, either in Nairobi or Johannesburg or both.

The approximate number of days since I last saw my parents is 2008.  There were approx. 2191 days between that visit and the one before.

London - Harare cheapest fare is around 627 euros.

There are 120 days until my dad turns 70. So I'll be up 63 days if I can get back in time...

• I bought an epilator. It's a nice thing, once you get over the fact that instead of the 5 minutes in the shower doing your legs that it used to take you, it now takes half an hour to achieve the same result. And you end up with this ghastly uber-prickle situation whenever you get goosebumps. Nasty!
  
  
• I just paid my daycare bills all the way back to October. They hadn't billed me yet so I got a bill for 2600 euros in one go. Ouch. More shocking than the epilator.
  
  
• I had my hair cut short at my local hairdresser. This is the kind of hairdresser where you can't make an appointment but you have to wait in the queue. It cost 22 euros versus 60 at the middle-aged-lady hairdresser I went to before who cut my hair all wrong. The fancy-pants hairdresser I went to in Amsterdam was 150 euros and this haircut is better than any I had from either. I had to wait 2 hours for a place but still - score!
  
  
• When I was in the hairdressers one of the daycare workers came in. This is someone I've known for almost 6 years, since Seb started at pre-school here. She'd been fine all along until about a year and a half ago when I noticed that she was behaving oddly. Subsequently she started working at the daycare that the kids are at now and a few weeks ago I noticed that she was drunk when I picked up the kids. I reported it to the owner, and she was placed on office duty, away from the kids, and was supposedly getting some help. On Saturday when I saw her she was absolutely shit-faced.
  
  So, what to do now? Tell the owner of the daycare? Keep quiet? This is a difficult situation for me because part of me is sorry for her and part of me is still the little girl that had to deal with alcohol issues growing up.
  
  
• On Thursday I went to see Martha Wainwright in concert at Paradiso. It was good, but I was tired and she sort of went on and on a bit in some of the songs.
  
  Con: the going on and on.
  Pro: she looks like she's having a kicker orgasm during some of the songs. Go Martha.
  
  
• The next concert I have tickets for is Radiohead on 1 July. I'm considering Alanis on 13 June, but listening to some of the new songs I'm not so sure... some of them sound a bit nasty? Moratorium is ok. Here's a preview clip for the whole album. The thing about Alanis is that she makes me wonder if I'll ever grow up? I mean, it doesn't look like she has.
  
  
• It's almost the end of another school year. The kids finish school on the 27th June and then go into daycare for the summer. I'll be working mornings only while I recover from my neck injury, but they'll still be at daycare the majority of the time to allow me to rest. After the summer Joe goes to Group 3 and Seb to Group 6.
  
  They don't know about the divorce yet. They'll be going to a workshop in the summer where they'll be with other kids in the same situation and be encouraged to work through their feelings. I hope when we tell them that they'll be able to adjust quickly to their new situation and understand that they actually have more time with each of their parents, separately.
  
  
• Watched Atonement this weekend. Sad, but James McAvoy is a joy to behold. He was a joy in Shameless too. Chloe thinks so too.
  
  
• My new car is a Hyundai Getz 2005 model. It looks like this one. Same colour, just with a sunroof too. Nice huh? I'll try not to crash this one!
  
  
• Comments are still broken. They were never really intuitive with this version of Movable Type and now they're absolutely broken. Sorry! One day maybe I'll get around to fixing them. I've tried re-enabling comments but nothing works. Until then, you can mail me. Link in the sidebar.