Amanda Blog and Kiss

I think only girls can understand what other girls are talking about.

I always considered myself a guys’ girl until recently when I met a few girls who I got on with so well that guys seemed small in comparison.

Sure, guys’re fun to hang out with for a laugh, but its the girls who really get you on a deeper level. And I think that if you don’t get that, then maybe you haven’t met the right girls.

It’s 6 o’clock in the morning, and I haven’t been able to get back to sleep, due to several reasons, but mostly my own thoughts.

There’s a drunken English nutcase of a girl snoring on my sofa. There’s a very sleepy Irishman sleeping in my bed, and an Australian is shacked up in the room next door with probably another English girl (or two). Even the dog is snoring away.

It appears from all of the snoring that I seem to be the only one who can’t sleep tonight.

As I sail through adulthood, I find myself both resembling my parents in some respects, and differing from them in quite a few other respects.

One thing that I do often is mimick my mother, because first of all it’s so easy and funny and second of all, if you know my mother- she really gives me a lot of material. But I stopped the other day mid-mimick and realised that SHE used to mimick HER mother all the time, and not only that, but SHE now sounded like HER mother, and I sounded like HER mimicking her mother. (Are you still with me people?) What I’m saying is that the mimicking has now grown one generation, and history is yet again repeating itself.

I see some resemblance with my father as well. When he used to pick up my brothers and I, he would ALWAYS, without fail, stop off at the supermarket and leave us in the truck for a good half an hour or more while he got the night’s meal. He wasn’t the kind of person who did weekly shopping. He was definitely a daily grocery shopper, and it used to really annoy us because we had to sit in the car and wait, bored out of our minds and really aching to get home and watch TV or something just as mindless and stupid.

Thinking back, I believe that the grocery store was his quiet little haven- a place to escape from the chaos that was our household- 3 kids, 3 dogs, 2 cats, and both parents- and to unwind after his shifts at work. And it was one place where he really got inspired, coming home afterwards and cooking up something really kick ass.

Here in Amsterdam, I live just across the road from the grocery store, and I think we pretty much go just about every day for a few things to sustain us for one more day, so I totally understand where he was coming from now. I like wandering the aisles and thinking about what I would create if I had any iota of the skill that my father had in the kitchen. But, unfortunately, that is one of the areas where I differ from my father, and I think that with a little more attention and a little less TV in my youth, it is one area that I could have learned from him.

Chances are, if you are before or behind me in the checkout line at the grocery store, I am pitting your groceries against mine in a battle to see who is the healthiest.

“He’s got THREE bags of chips, a cheese block, and wine and only that tiny carton of milk. Must be a bachelor. I’ve got spinach, fruit drink, mushrooms, and corn. Yeah, so maybe I have cashew nuts and dog treats, but I still win.”

Sad, I know.

It seems I cannot live a peaceful existence for any long amounts of time. If it’s not one thing popping up to destroy my delicate little bubble of happiness, its another, and then another and then another.

So many things are going pear shaped these days that I have to start wondering- did I kill a puppy in a past life or what? What exactly did I do to deserve all of this?

And then I realised what it was: I decided to move to Holland.

If you thought that Belgium was full of red tape and tedious beaurocratic bullshit, then you must have never moved to the Netherlands, because Belgium doesn’t hold a candle to the Dutch government. They are asking for everything short of my first born child so that I can stay here with a student visa, and that’s just for the right to breathe the expensive Dutch air- without even getting down to work permits.

Which is where my latest drama is unfolding. It’s deja vu. This is exactly what drove me out of Belgium, and now its happening here too.

Oh well, at least I can stay in the country this time, and I suppose being unemployed again isn’t so bad now that the beautiful weather has kicked in. I’ll just hit the parks with the rest of the unemployed, homeless, and junkies and maybe sell crack to earn some drinking money. Hey, if it works for them, right?

Two weeks ago I was going to post a blog about how great the week was, starting from a friend from Rotterdam visiting for a great 3 days, then through Queen’s Day and the Flaming Lips concert and a great canal boat trip, but then the good days kept happening and happening and happening, and then I just didn’t know where to start and where to end a blog, so I didn’t even bother starting one.

This is just to reiterate that I saw the Flaming Lips in concert recently at a really small venue, and can honestly say that they are kick ass in concert. They have a lot of energy and the music is great, and I am drunk right now after yet another night out so I have to go because its taking longer to correct my spelling mistakes than it would be to just wait until tomorrow and write this then.

Bye, and sweet dreams. Speaking of dreams I had one last night where I was pregnant. What does that signify?