make it so....so it seems

I just spent the last hour recklessly crafting with my flatmate (yes the one who dubbed my twin Delilah) painting cardboard, finding inspirational life commentary from dinosaur comics, burning stroopwaffles (on accident) and hot colored bend-ie at the neck plastic straws (on purpose), cutting up old sweatpants and stringing them to brown-paper-package paper. Strenuous evening.... a lot goes down when trying to avoid a looming 15 page-11 point font-1.5 spaced-crazy-Dutch-style research paper. I am pretty sure that when I last posted it contained a vacuous pledge to be more prompt on the updates. That was a lie. I won't make those promises anymore, but I will say I'll try a little harder to avoid such truant posting habits. It's bad form. Don't want to keep you hanging for too long (assuming someone reads this....heh).

Today I sent my best good shamsterdam accomplice, M.J., away on a plane to Ireland that is eventually bound for the States...I think it put me in a restless funk that really just wouldn't allow me to accomplish any constructive goals. After trying to read an article I didn't finish I ran up the steps of the NEMO (here's a nice pic
http://www.e-nemo.nl/index.php?id=5&s=85&d=551&l=585) to plays some Chinese freeze tag, catch a birds-eye view of a green leafy Amsterdam and pretend I was still a child. Perhaps I am.

I left M.J. at the airport stressed and sweating trying to shave 6 kilos off the weight limit by donning 25 layers of clothing. It's become a kind of trade mark ingenuity stunt for him on budget flights with limited storage :*). It was quite comical dispite the imminent threat of a legitimate break-down looming on the atmosphere. One bag of discarded shirts, underwear and a book about irish fishing tales later I gave him one last hug as he headed for security. Last night we made sushi, danced around my kitchen in Tina Turner fashion while belting out Godspell tunes, packed up some and watch some Narnia, among other things...it was so good. One thing for sure is that by the time I go I will be so ready to be the leaving instead of the left. It's like some kind of osmosis, this gotta-get-gone packing and cleaning, this selling of trusty bikes and turning in of keys- its leaving this puddle of reflection at my feet that I can't quite jump over without getting wet. But I think it'll help me transition into the living back in a family mode I haven't been in in a long while (think high school, hmm).

Lately I have been______ ---->fill in the blank with the following: visiting the International Criminal Court in The Haag (coupled with a strange city tour by a racist local, plus a sikh temple), had an impromptu latka feast with Andy and Julia and then got warm fuzzies thinking about 5th grade and Mrs. Poe (I want to be just like her when I grow up) and the crazy latka stories I wrote during free time, had a pannekoeken onbijtje, finished a paper on sex trafficking in Eastern Europe (I highly recommend Victor Malarek's The Natashas), went to a Dutch wedding, attended (but did not particiate in) the drag queen olympics- think 500 meter sashay- continued my field work in the Red Light with Alice, the Dutch Muse, befriended a homeless man named Peiter who strums his guitar outside the Albert Heijn grocery store on the corner, adventured with my Alexandra the sculptress to the Zuiderbad for some institutionalized naaktzwemmen (another one of my personal social experiments, heh), hosted a good friend from WJC, Monsieur Wingfield, and his Okie vrienden, caught the end of the Women Restiting Violence National Disarmament Day shindig and met a woman who has done literally everything I want to do and then some (and was thus inspired), saw the Queen at the WWII memorial day service, went to the first Zulu Opera, soaked in the aura of my grandparents whom I love so dearly, escaped to Italy for a bit with a good friend and madam Obert..... and acquired a spunky bright blue acoustic guitar :*) that was in no particular order, by the way.
I get kicked out of my home-for-the-past-9-months-home this Tuesday. Then off to the land of Weiss! (the family who is taking me in for the summer)
alles goede mijn vrienden-- tot struks-- betsy