I biked home and looked left and right. Maybe I could see the red heart attached to the key bunch. Double vision wasn't helping because I wasn't seeing two key bunches anywhere... I got home, brainstorming on my next action plan, when lo and behold!!! what did I see?!! The beautiful red heart, dangling from the lock closing the gate to my back yard. Oh WOW. I had forgotten it when leaving! And thankfully, no one had passed and taken them so they could scare me in the middle of the night. Someone had done some mighty good protecting of those keys of mine. And it wasn't even good friday.
GONE. I checked my pocket again. And again, and again, and again. Really, totally, very gone. NO house keys, only an open pocket from which my mobile phone had tried to escape. The bike ride had been nice and the sun a true relief after all the rain of the last few days... but until this moment. Now, I had to suppress panic. Someone had spare keys. There was no address on my keys so the finder couldn't use them. It was ok. It could always be worse, to quote my dad. What comfort.
I biked home and looked left and right. Maybe I could see the red heart attached to the key bunch. Double vision wasn't helping because I wasn't seeing two key bunches anywhere... I got home, brainstorming on my next action plan, when lo and behold!!! what did I see?!! The beautiful red heart, dangling from the lock closing the gate to my back yard. Oh WOW. I had forgotten it when leaving! And thankfully, no one had passed and taken them so they could scare me in the middle of the night. Someone had done some mighty good protecting of those keys of mine. And it wasn't even good friday.
0 Comments
Well folks. This last Saturday marked a year since my last operation! I'm afraid this operation wasn't so immensely memorable to others as it was to me... :) So just a reminder - it was the last preventative operation, but very intense: looong (10 hours), with pain as result, giving me a huge setback in my rehabilitation. But with the good intention, to prevent such a thing from happening again. Enabling me to see myself having more years in this life... enabling me to experience the burning flames of today! The story to that - I was peacefully cooking, a thing for which I have enough energy if I get myself around to thinking up a meal, going shopping for the ingredients, preparing the stuff. Today, I did it. But remember, cooking for me is playing with fire. While I was watching the pan that was boiling my potatoes (over real flames on my gas stove), all of a sudden I caught sight of my dish towel hanging dangerously close... close enough that it had been able to catch fire from the flames under my pan!! I quickly grabbed the towel. I blew and blew and BLEW, then threw it into some water. All ok. Thankfully. My times are in God's hands... and it wasn't my time yet. Just like it wasn't my time last year with the operation! Or four years ago, with the hemorrhage. When will it be? I don't know, but I plan to do a lot more playing with fire until that time :) Literally and figuratively. I'm not sure if non-coffee drinkers can possibly appreciate how urgent one's need for coffee can be. Let me assure you, it can be quite urgent. I foresaw a grave problem yesterday, when my coffee was obviously finished. My trip to the supermarket earlier yesterday had enabled me to get oh-so-needed coffee, for which I was duly thankful. But alas! This morning, upon hungrily opening the bag, I found out I had bought coffee beans! Oh the tragedy. (and I know I know, there are a good many other tragedies that are WHOLE lot worse than this one, but for me this was my tragedy for the day. Well maybe for the hour) I had no coffee grinder in the house, and there was no way I was going to go back to the supermarket for yet another bag of coffee. Dilemma's dilemma's. I sped off with my bike (with motor) on a coffee quest. To a supermarket after all? Outside I thought of something much better. Coffee at a café, in the sun! I found a beautiful spot, and a while later a lady joined me. It was the perfect moment to share about my tragedy and better yet, about my God who is able to work tragedies for the good of me who loves Him (romans 8 verse 28). And of course this goes for coffee needs. I would never have met this lady otherwise. But it also goes for hemorrhages. I don't think I would have written a book otherwise. I definitely wouldn't have been so very thankful for this moment in the sun with my coffee, otherwise! (here a true example of coffee beans, by the way. totally unuseful when wanting to brew coffee without owning a special coffee-grinder)
It's this thing we say in Dutch all the time. We use some kind of saying (sayings are abundant in Dutch) and then say 'literally and figuratively'. It annoys me to bits.
Sometimes this makes sense. The other day I was cooking over my gas stove with its flames and matches, and I thought to myself, cooking for me is always playing with fire ('spelen met vuur', meaning being akwardly close to a very dangerous situation). This is a Dutch saying which in this case, was relevant both literally (I was actually using fire) as well as figuratively (cooking is always a bit dangerous with me). But sometimes, there is NO WAY the saying could be meant literally. When people say, "With our beautiful family portret, her new haircut was so ugly that it was to me a thorn in the eye ("doorn in het oog"), literally and figuratively!" I personally don't see how this could possibly be meant literally. I just don't see it. It is SO illogical, that to me is just a thorn in the eye. Figuratively. Good grief, it's 10:30 and I've already been doing adventurous stuff.
I thought this morning that I'd finally go to the swimming pool not too far from here. The pool was open from 7 to 9 for swimming laps. I am NOT a morning bird. I sometimes go through periods where I can appreciate how very nice it must be to see the first rays of sun peep over the horizon... but then I give up trying to see this, and I decide sun sets are nice as well. This morning, I thought I'd give it a try again. I wondered about this when my alarm clock went off at 7, though. Unfortunately no word from God, so I got myself up and 45 minutes later I was out of the house. At the pool I took the key to the handicap's changing room and got myself ready. Everything is SO much more complicated when you've got physical problems, when you've got a highly problematic balance and double vision.. There's so much I needed to remember (the key to the changing room, the way to the pool, my bag...) and memory is not my strong point. Then fi-na-lly I got myself into the pool, only - of course - to feel annoyed at the slowly bobbing, chatting people blocking the entire pool. "Go drink coffee in a café!!" I think to myself as I whisk around the groups of social exercisers. After about half an hour of this, I rewarded myself by spending some time in the bubble bath (jacuzzi?). Thinking - umm, where's the bubbles?! After about ten minutes I took the crutches back to my handicap changing room and asked someone about the bubbles. What appears to be the case? A few steps away from the bubble pool, there's a button you press to get bubbles. Oops. It was a huge success, this early morning swimming at the pool. - NOT - I'm not sure what kind of noble stuff I should learn from this. Maybe nothing for the moment. I don't really feel a high need to have an adventure again in the next hours. For those of you who have seen/read the Hobbit, I'm sure you'll know what I'm talking about here. I heard today, that I'm always having adventues. What a compliment! My life sure does contain a lot of excitement, that's true. As of late, these have consisted of a lot of biking adventures.
For example, I took the laying bike (ligfiets) down south, to the large IKEA store which is there. My main idea was to enjoy the beautiful weather, and to buy a thingy to whip up milk. I (somewhat) succeeded in the first, I entirely failed on the second. For one, I got lost. I always get lost these days. On the way to IKEA this wasn't such a huge problem - "I'm sorry, where's IKEA?" but on the way back, it was "I'm sorry, where's my house?" (go figure). I went into a gas station where I stared at someone's map on their phone, but I forgot this information pretty quick. For another thing, I'd forgotten my bike chain. You don't just use one dinky little lock to keep a bike worth almost 2500 euro where it's supposed to be. Especially not for a good length of time, because the chance was pretty big I'd get lost in IKEA too. And then small detail here, but there was snow and ice on the ground. The road to the IKEA before I remembered I'd forgotten my bike chain had been slippery and scary and I was glad I had survived the trip. So how does the story end? I ended up not going into the IKEA... I went back home, without the milk whipper, but with my bike. The bike which now has a motor on it. Today I went biking a little bit again, to a park nearby. I was about to go on an adventure again, except darkness was pretty near, my stomach growled for supper, and my energy didn't feel too high. But the desire was very big. "So God, should I do it You think?" I asked, and I felt His answer was, "Nope". Being in a very obedient mood, I went home and enjoyed supper and warmth. I was very thankful I'd listened this time. Tomorrow I'll go on an adventure again. It's the title of a song I used to play and sing a lot, 'Falling Slowly' in the film 'Once' (see picture here). I didn't have much experience actually falling though, to be honest. I didn't dream of mounting a bakfiets and falling with it, nor of trying to walk and losing my balance. I also didn't imagine sitting on a chair and having it give way underneath me. Come to think of it... I haven't really done any imagining in this area in recent times either. Sometimes the strangest things can happen... I was visiting some friends and was sitting at the table, feeling the meal slowly sink. I turned in my chair to listen to a conversation going on behind me when - kaboom! - the chair collapsed and I was sprawled on the floor! As could be expected from me, I lay there laughing my head off. Actually remembering the situation right now, I'm laughing. Someone advised me to wear a helmet when I ride the bakfiets. Maybe I should wear a helmet at all times, especially when I visit these friends? |
Mattanja OosterhuisHaving grown up in diverse places on earth, I suppose I've learned to make the best of what comes my way. Such as a hemorrhage. After this bleeding in my head occurred in dec. 2010, my life has come to look different. On my blog I write about some of this. Archives
March 2018
|