Beautiful Belgium

Brussels, Belgium - what an incredible place. Not only will I be digitally scrapbooking pictures from our trip there, I will be making scrapbook pages the old fashioned way. Pictures of place that beautiful deserve both. Here's one of the first digital pages.

Easter at Mimi's House

What can I say? I love to show off my grandchildren. Adorable, aren't they? This is a fun page - lots of colors, not too cluttered, a lot of emphasis on the pictures. I love it!

Warning: Word Purge Approaching

The writer in me is restless. I feel as if I have a huge jumble of words clogged up in my brain, twirling around and around like a tornado. I get this way when I have personal obligations pressing on me - you know, financial stuff, my husband's rapid-cycling moods of late, worry about any number of things. I think I would feel better if I could just open up my brain and take out the swirling word tornado. But it's not really the word tornado that is giving me grief. It's all the other "life stuff."

I'm the world's worst procrastinator. Seriously, the absolute worst. I will put things off until I have to break my neck to get them accomplished. When I was working, if I had something to do that I dreaded, I had to make myself get it done right away in the morning, because if I didn't, I would waste the entire day just finding inconsequential things to keep me busy to avoid doing the thing I didn't want to do. This whole procrastination thing is one issue I never explored when I was seeing a therapist. So, I don't know why I procrastinate so badly, but I do and it gets me in hot water sometimes. But, I'm still glad I never addressed it with my therapist. Jeez, I gave her enough mental bats to swing at me as it was.

That's the reason I quit going to her after a year. I always felt she was never satisfied unless I left her office crying. And I just started to feel beat up every time I went to see her. I just stopped going. I told the front desk to cancel all my appointments, but I never said anything to her directly. Mainly because I knew she would pick up one of those mental bats I had so freely armed her with and swing it at my head.

So, I guess it will always be a mystery why I am a procrastinator. Ah well, there are worse things than being a procrastinator. Although sometimes I'm pretty sure that my husband equates it right up there with being a serial killer. I can see the headlines now:

Serial killer strikes again, City terrified!

and then, right beside that headline:

Serial procrastinator still at it, husband felled by the stress of it all!

Okay, I can hear you all laughing, but it's not funny. Have you ever been awakened bright and early by a barrage of questions? "Did you remember to blah, blah, blah? And don't forget to blah, blah, blah. Don't tell me you haven't done ABC yet!" All of this while I'm attempting to swim up to consciousness and make sense of the words my husband is firing at me. It is not a pretty picture. I've learned now to just say yes, yes, yes, of course I did. Then he leaves the house, happy as a lark; and I kill myself that day getting everything done that I said yes, yes, yes to.

I work better under pressure. When I have a deadline to meet, I will meet it or die trying. And it doesn't count, apparently, if it is a deadline I have set for myself. It has to be imposed by a third party to light a fire under me. I don't know why that is. Go ask my therapist - but I warn you. Be careful, she has deadly aim with those mental bats.

I feel somewhat relieved at having spewed words onto the page. You, dear reader, on the other hand are probably asking yourself, What the heck just happened? Was that a tornado, or what? And the answer is: Yes. Yes it was--a word tornado and boy, oh boy, do I ever feel better!

Digital Scrapbooking

Have you ever done any digital scrapbookng? At first I wasn't too fond of it. I like the "hands-on" approach of traditional scrapbooking. But the more digital scrapbooking I've done, the more it's grown on me. I've even been designing my own background pages and that's really fun. Over the next few days, I'm going to post some pages that I'll do on my custom-designed background pages. Watch for it - I think you'll like it.

Oh, the Places You Will Go!

I had to find a new boyfriend in Dam Square, because my last one (see picture below in preceding blog) was nowhere to be found. I chose this guy because of his really white teeth and the fact that he's such a snappy dresser.

Amsterdam was great this time around. There was just the right amount of chill to the air, no rain, lots of sunshine - just perfect. The hotel was great, the food was waaaaayyyyy better than I remember it from the last three times we were there and we were able to do a lot more sightseeing together than we've done before, thanks to a lighter schedule for Hubby at his conference.

We went to a wooden shoe factory where we saw the automated process that is now used to make wooden shoes. Fascinating! There are two machines - one to carve the shoe out of a big block of wood and another to scoop out the inside of the shoe to make room for a foot. The machine that shapes the shoe works on the same principle as a key duplication machine. The "pattern" shoe is locked into place, then the block of wood is locked in next to it. The machine operator turns the machine on and presto-chango a few short minutes later, you have a wooden shoe. The new shoe then goes to the second machine, where the inside is scooped out by an automated drill. Then the shoe is buffed and sanded and placed in a storage place to "cure." The wood is very wet, so it has to dry out for quite a while, but once it dries and hardens, the shoe is virtually indestructible. Somehow I still can't imagine how wooden shoes could be very comfortable, but supposedly they are. I didn't feel the need to buy a pair to test the theory, so I'll just have to take the shoemaker's word for it.

We saw three of the last operational wooden windmills that still exist in Holland. At one time, there were hundreds of them, now there are only a handful left. We even got to go inside one of them and see the inner workings. It was amazing. As was the Cheese Farm, where we were treated to a demonstration of the process for making Edam cheese.

But the absolute best part of our trip was the side trip we took to Brussels, Belgium. We rode the train from Amsterdam - it was a two-and-a-half hour trip. Brussels was incredible. I fell in love with the Old-world charm of the city. I took picture after picture - the architecture there is stunning. We drank Belgian beer, ate genuine Belgian waffles and bought Belgian chocolates. Brussels is breathtaking in its beauty and the people were charming - very warm and friendly.

On the train ride back to Amsterdam, I found myself marveling at the fact that we were able to hop on a train and a few short hours later, step off the train in a whole other country! The train system in Europe is amazing. We want to go back and tour Europe by rail.

I'm still jet-lagged, so I hope this post makes sense. My brain feels quite mushy at the moment, truth be told. I'll write more about our trip on another day when I can gather my wits a little better.

Farewell, So long, auf Wiedersehen, Adieu

Hubby and I will be jetting off to Amsterdam tomorrow for a week-long stay. He is going to attend a petroleum engineers conference and I am tagging along to... what else? Shop, go to museums, shop, go to Delft, shop, hang out in my hotel room and write in the peace and absolute quiet with no chance of being interrupted, shop, and then shop more. I don't know what I will do the second day.

This will be my third trip to merry olde Amsterdam. Since I've only been blogging a smidge over a year, most of you probably have not heard my rantings about the last time I was there, two years ago. If I had been writing then (which I wasn't - because I was basically insane, courtesy of the probate of my dad's estate) and if I had been blogging, you would have read my tale of woe about what a wretched time I had in Amsterdam.

The weather was horrible - not cold like it is supposed to be, so I packed all wrong, which made me very bitchy the whole time. Some idiot (and I'm not naming names, but it wasn't me) made our reservations at the completely wrong hotel and I was not happy about that, so I was a bitch about that the whole time - a very passive, aggressive bitch, mind you. I had a bad hair week, so I was really bitchy about that and I was fat(ter) then, so you know how bitchy that can make you, especially when you are trapped in a country of svelte, healthy people who either walk or bike every-damn-where so that there is not an ounce of fat on their bodies.

And then there was the anti-American sentiment. It was horrible. I've never felt so hated in my entire life. Of course, the bulk of the anti-American sentiment came from my own husband. I was the Ugly American to my hubby and he was indeed very anti-American. In retrospect, I would have to say that I probably deserved it, but if any of you ever tell him I said that, I will call you a damn liar. As I said, I was insane at the time - thank you very much Andrews, Texas and my deceased dad's blood-sucking wife and her blood-sucking sons (oh! did I say that out loud?) I'm much better now. I've been to therapy. I am medicated. And I am older and wiser.

Plus, I have lost a few pounds, have a good haircut and found my sense of humor once more. This time, I'm packing for any kind of weather the Weather-Gods of Amsterdam may choose to fling at me. Oh, and we are staying at the right hotel this time - thank God! It's an American-style hotel, as opposed to the typical European-style hotel. I've discovered that we Americans like to spread out. We want ROOM, dammit, and lots of it. We do not want to have to edge around the bed to squeeze past the dresser into the bathroom. While we're in the bathroom taking a shower, we want a FULL shower door, or at the very least a shower curtain. And God forbid that the closet door is open when you want to come out of the bathroom, because if it is, you might as well just take a seat in there. But, we're not staying at that hotel, so all is well.

As for the anti-American sentiment, I have found a solution to that as well. It's a miracle, I tell you. I have been trying a new tack (yes, that is how you spell it according to Webster's Dictionary - tack: (intransitive verb) to modify one's policy or attitude abruptly) with my own personal American. I decided that I would not get mad at him and act pissy over every little thing he did or said and that I would throw the passive-aggressive thing out the window; in short, that I would actually try being nice to him. You know, it's amazing how well he has responded to that. Who knew? I think I may be on to something here.

So, for any of you who ever heard me swear on everything holy that I would never travel with my hubby again and that I damn sure wouldn't be going to Amsterdam with him when the next conference came up, well, just forget I said that. I wasn't myself. Now I am. Myself, that is. Kinder, gentler Myself.

Happy, happy, joy, joy!

Every picture tells a story...

If you have a scrapbook addiction like I do, you know how expensive this hobby can get. I have a whole room full of scrapbook materials, tools, stickers, die-cut machines, quote books... you name it, I've got it. Add my photo addiction to that and you've got a real hobby explosion! I even have my granddaughter, Olivia, hooked on scrapbooking.

When she comes to my house, that's usually the first thing she wants to know. "Mimi, can we scrapbook?"

As much as I enjoy traditional scrapbooking, I've come to appreciate the ease and versatility of digital scrapbooking as well. The picture to the left is another example of one of my digital scrapbook pages. This one features my friends, Debra and Ramon; and there are even a couple of pictures of me in there. I like the way this particular digital scrapbooking program allows complete freedom, as opposed to some of the programs out there that only give you the option of pasting your photos into pre-formatted templates.

Below is another example of a digital page. For this one, I started with a blank page and used pages and elements that I bought and downloaded on the internet. There are so many fun items available.

Once again, my inspiration for this page was my friend Debra, pictured here with two of her weight-loss surgery buddies, Ramon and Yvonne. That's Ramon in the back, behind Debra and Yvonne wearing a pair of Ramon's pre-surgery shorts. Pretty amazing!

As I mentioned a few blog entries back, I will be opening my scrapbook business - The Storyteller's Nook - in the very near future. Watch this site for the announcement of my web site which will go live within the next two weeks.