Messy garden

About two weeks ago we discovered that something in the bathroom had to be leaking. There was a big ugly spot visible on the ceiling downstairs.

My dad came to the rescue and tried to fix the toilet. But it wouldn’t stop leaking. Turned out that the toilet tank had a crack. In-wall toilet tanks are supposed to last for at least 20 years, but the previous owners probably wanted to save a few bucks and opted for a cheap one My dad had to break that part of the wall down and we ordered a new tank. Never thought I would go shopping for an in-wall tank, had no idea what it looked like until last week

Now the downside of the renovation work is that me and my hubby have to clean up the mess each day -for a good couple of hours- because we have to use the bathroom. I hope it will be finished by next week because I want my clean and uncluttered bathroom back!

We’re also working on the garden, you can see in the picture what it looked like a few weeks ago. The gravel will be replaced with bricks and my brother in law is helping out with the plants. If everything goes according to plan it should be finished in two weeks. I can’t wait to start decorating it ^_^

Thursday night (in the Netherlands) we turned on CNN to watch the news on Michael Jackson. In the morning we found out he had died. Although I wasn’t a huge fan, his music was there during my childhood and teenage years. It’s weird that he’s gone now. I feel so sorry for him, he never seemed to be at ease. I think his father is largely to blame for this, forcing him to perform at such an early age. My hubby and I had a discussion about it and thought it looked a lot like the way Elvis had died. This is the cartoon he made about it. Today I read the blog post that Lisa Marie Presley wrote and it explains a lot.

Half Mast

Before I start this story you should know that I’m not very fond of Queen’s Day. Somehow a mass of -mostly drunk- people dressed in orange doesn’t attract me at all So these last few years we usually go for a nice walk, which is also a great excuse to take pictures.

I started the day behind my computer, to read up on SLR camera’s . But at the beginning of the afternoon my hubby noticed on Twitter that there had been a car accident in Apeldoorn. It didn’t sound that alarming, until we saw the actual images on the news.

The crowd was lined up 4 rows deep to see the royal family passing by in a tour car. Suddenly people flew through the air after a car swerved across police railings. Not much later the car crashed into a stone monument. You can see the videos on Youtube, they’re a bit shocking though: video 1 and video 2.
Judging by the distance and speed of the car, the driver intended to ram the tour car carrying Queen Beatrix. Also the driver of the Suzuki told the police men who arrived first at scene that this wasn’t an accident.

By now we know a bit more about the man. He’s 38 years old and had lived in Apeldoorn previously. According to neighbours he was friendly but pretty much to himself. Also we learned from his landlord, that he planned on leaving his appartement tomorrow (in fact it was already rented to someone else). I hope they’ll find more clues. Because frankly I don’t think he’ll live to tell his reasons, since he’s badly injured.

Sadly 5 people have died so far and 12 are injured . I wonder what this day will look like in the future…

When the first sun sparks show up and the temperature gets above 15 degrees you’re practically considered an idiot if you stay inside in the Netherlands. So I’m writing this outside on my Macbook. It sounds very romantic, but believe me since our cat is using the backyard as one giant litter box, it’s not that great

This time of year is a great excuses for all the neighbours to get outside. Resulting in mechanical do-it-yourself sounds and motorcycle noise. I’m under the impression that about half the men in midlife crisis purchase a motorcycle…

I don’t know how you feel about this, but I get very curious about my neighbours’ whereabouts. For instance the neighbour to our right always seems to make a certain sound, like she’s constantly walking around the garden on her flip-flops. Today I peaked outside and saw her indeed walking around, but topless. Haha, I found this quite amusing. The previous owner had already told us about this, so I guess he’d looked outside the same bathroom window as well. Personally, I would never walk around topless. I don’t see the point of getting evenly tanned and mother nature gave me small boobies (which I don’t mind at all ).

A family with a 2 year old girl is living on the other side. Not so long ago a new resident got to live on their balcony. It’s a rabbit named Frutsel, it didn’t took me long to figure that out since they talk a lot. The girl is quite funny though. I’ve seen her trying to feed the bunny cookies and today she was holding a cellphone against it’s ear. Frutsel wasn’t that amused though, he was sitting there frozen, like she was about to eat him. Not much later her mother told her not to jump up and down next to Frutsel, because otherwise he would stop eating again. Poor fellow, I hope he’ll get more relaxed eventually. The girl looked down from the balcony and spotted Kuchi laying on my lap. She pointed down and shouted: “Kittycat!” while making miaow-like sounds. Kuchi look up, relieved to see that she wasn’t inside reach. I guess he doesn’t like kids that much

Oh, I was finished writing this when the father of the girl came home. The mother snarled at him, apparently they’re not in the best mood. Yes, sitting outside in the garden beats all the television soaps out there…