This morning The Burble has a life plan. He's going to go to community college and transfer to UC Berkeley. There he's going to get degrees in Philosophy and Natural History. Then he's going to learn to be a hunter and gatherer and break with society. He even has a song about it. "Wooo-hoooo Burble's got a life plan, woo-hoo Burble's got a life plan."
It's still winter in Holland but Piet got really excited about some flowers in his back yard. I'm obsessed with my new camera and took these pictures (I'm still experimenting with the zoom thing)...
Piet and Mieke have chickens and a rooster so we have fresh eggs every morning. I've never really gotten to hang out with chickens but I LOVE these ones. They make the nicest noises and they're so fat and happy. They even get along with Daan, the incredibly energetic and manic dog. The rooster is especially nice and doesn't wake us up. Piet says he has a "moderate crow", which is actually very quiet and he cuts it off before he's done. It's like "cock-a-doodle..." with no "dooo" at the end which seems to be the loudest part of it. He also takes dust baths in which he digs himself a nice hole in the sun and lies in it.
We delayed out depart to Lieden so we could go to town to get clothes and phones. Mieke took one look at my jeans (which are literally falling apart) and took us to the Dutch version of Out of the Closet. Which, by the way is EXACTLY like the one on University in Berkeley. We found some nice pants for me and a wonderful hippy pancho for the Burble. It's amazing to have clothes that are not torn. Also the Dutch must have more realistic body image because they fit perfectly instead of the American sizes which my ass doesn't fit into and are too long and too baggy in weird places. Also the Dutch don't do that thing where they buy clothes that are too small and plan to lose weight to fit into them, which I've always thought is really strange.
Better clothed we went to the phone store which would have been next to impossible if we didn't have Piet and Mieke with us. Piet discussed various sim cards in rapid dutch for ages. Then The Burble and I had a brief argument in our strange combination of French and English that no one else seems to understand about why Burble needed a cell phone. He feels it's pointless but if we split up I want to be able to meet him at a certain place. I guess it's not surprising that there are NO working pay phones here. Everyone has smart phones including the tourists. It seems like there should be some working phones for old fashioned people like my mother, but I guess there are few Susies here. People sometimes ask me if she's going to change. I just laugh.
I won the argument with The Burble and Piet and his son Gerben provided the ancient phones for the sim cards. I don't really understand how the plans work but we're only using them for emergencies so we'll probably not use them at all.
We had a beer in the town square where Piet proudly told us they used to weigh women to see if they were too light, which (in some convoluted way) meant they were witches. He said they probably did the same to girls with blue hair. I realized that's all they have to do in America. They weigh people and the ones who are poor enough not to attain the 350lb weight of the average American are terrorists. All the 1% can buy their way out of the weight trial. It's a fool-proof solution to the unemployment problems.
One the way out of the city I saw my first windmill. I was so excited!!
In thanks for being so generous with their house and their time, The Burble and I cooked dinner for Piet and Mieke. We made cassoulet, but the recipe was written by an English woman and the Burble decided halfway through that it was completely bogus and that we should abandon it and go by instinct. I told him that my cooking instinct is nonexistent, so he assigned me simple chores while we listened to jazz and Piet and Mieke danced and drank wine. It made me sort of sad, they seem to get along so well and I'm a little jealous of their sons for having such a normal stable family. I think my parents could follow their example.
The Burble called our dish "Slaughterfest" because he hadn't realized it requited meat from three different animals. Plus beans. And not much else. However our adventurous hosts dove right in and even had seconds which really impressed me. And I helped cook and nothing exploded. We did end up setting off the fire alarm but Piet leaped gracefully onto a chair and blew on it till it stopped. I thought it was a successful dinner. After we gathered around and looked at pictures from my mom's 60th birthday which Piet and Mieke attended. They're great and my mom looks beautiful. I hope she saw them but if she did she probably wouldn't like them, she's so self critical.
So off we go to Lieden, where I probably won't have as much access to a computer. But we're staying in a Dutch squat which promises to be exciting.
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