If I continue in English it would also help to improve it, because although I read my books in English - Game Of Thrones - I sometimes stumble enough when I have to speak it. It all seems to me as if I recently done high school and try to write something apprehensible. So if I write in English my 'friends' overseas can also 'enjoy' my troubles and daily concerns.
So the last blogs were about the refurbishment of my house. Instead of selling it and buy a new house - what would be a 'temporary' house - I decided to do great improvements. This has been a good decision but I could never anticipate of how I would feel during the days with dust cleaning over and over again, strange people in the house, things that went wrong and brought me to tears.... Now phase 2 - the first one was the terrace on my roof - is coming to an end but seems never completed because there are always little things that have to be done. The danger in it is that you never finish these things because after a while you are tired of being busy with it all the time.
The garden is not as excited as I would love to see it: only grass and some dull trees and some kind of self crawling bush. A low maintenance garden. Pretty boring. I myself like a cottage garden with fruit trees and all kinds of fruit bushes and eatable plants, roses, flowers, hidden places and lots of birds. The house looks great, but it is not my style.
The master bedroom is as big as my living room and the bathroom is also quit big with marble and granite, a bath - which we never use - and a shower you have to dry every time you use it. The space is awesome and when we were there for the first time we lost sight of each other several times. So there is also a basement with a garage - the owner never uses it for his car but it is stacked with bikes and other things people tend to keep when you have space enough -, the sauna and a barber shop, where the owners spouse cuts hair for a handful of customers.
The view you have when you stand on the front door could be better: you see a business plant - Total Green - and there is some traffic to and from it. When you stand on the terrace your view is better: you look over the flower fields of the polder. Flowers kept short because it is the bulb they want and when you let it flower, all the energie goes to the flower. So they cut it, so the only thing you see is green plants, no flowers. This time the fields contain dahlia's and the bulb of the dahlia's is harvested later in the year. The bulbs of f.i. tulips are harvested somewhere in may or june, depending on the weather.
Then on the southwest side you see your neighbors who are like 100 meters away. In between a meadow with two horses who are not very social - they always walk away when I pass - and at sunset with rabbits and white storks, lots of gulls, which make a hell of a noise in the morning. On the west where the sun sets, you have the canal which separates the polder from the main land. The polder is about 4 meters below sea level and even the canal is much higher than the land right next to it. We are protected by a dike on which is a road much used by cyclists. Unfortunately also cars of which some drive too fast for a road such as this.
The dog is a boxer of about 8 years old. He has arthritis in his hind legs but he is cute and he is called Fred. He does not drool that much like boxers tend to, only if he knows he gets his (doggy)biscuit. The sad thing is that I have to leave him at home when I go to work. Fortunate for him he has space enough to wander about and do his thing if he needs to. I go to him during lunch time to walk with him. This week my turn, the last two weeks Jan was home and so he could do it.
And tomorrow is our last day at the mansion. I took a day off to clean the house - about 100 sq meters to mob - and take everything home, which is not that much: some clothes and some utensils we took from home like our KitchenAid blender - for the smoothies each morning - and mixer - for our bread Jan makes. Back to my three gold fishes - the only pets I have - and back to my own house, my own bed, my own couch and back to the noise in the street which annoy me all the time. It is such a relieve to wake up in the morning and hear nothing but the screaming of the gulls - which sit on the roof of the mansion - and the sheep and gooses in the distance, the tractors which drive on and off in this time instead of four or five trucks in the narrow street in front of my own house with the generators left on while waiting to wiggle their way backwards in the unload dock to deliver to the supermarkets in front of my house, with that annoying beeping sound and sometimes honking of the cars who have to wait too long. There are also like five schools so you can imagine that in the morning, starting from 08.15 till 08.45 it is like hell with all them parents bringing there children by car to school. What's wrong with using a bike or walking.... So I have to make sure I am out of my house, out of my district before 08.15 when all hell breaks lose.
But I love my little house. It is like a warm bath when I enter it and sometimes it can be real quiet. I love my garden although not that big, I love my little pond with the three fishes and the water falling in it - to break the noise of the street - and I would love it even more when all this refurbishing is over and done with. But in september phase 3 will start: the bathroom. And I will have to deal with the dust over again....
Keep you informed...
