The Dutch Files

January 2008
Best - The Kid’s birthday party that was classified as “the best we ever had!” by his friends. Serious challenge for the upcoming one… *shudder* We’re thinking Glow in the Dark Mini  Golf (I just realized we call that Midget Golf and how awful a term that is!)
Worst - Finding out that The Kid in fact had inherited The Ex’s gene that can cause Brugada Syndrome

February 2008
Best: Admitting to The Guy that I was kinda falling for him even though we were just emailing and had never met, and him telling me he felt the same way…
Worst: The Guy’s plans to visit me for my 38th birthday falling through (yeah, yeah, the 39th is coming up in just under 2 montsh… so ya know, get your asses in gear!)

March 2008
Best: The Guy making it over to Dutchyland and *BOOM* I was in love! And so was he *swoon*
Worst: Getting a txt message from The Guy early March that his older brother had died in a car accident.

April 2008
Best: Taking some of my foreign colleagues and The Kid to the annual local flower parade. It was a blast and I gained a few new friends!
Worst: Taking The Kid to the Child Cardiologist for the first time for his check up on Brugada symptoms

May 2008
Best: The Guy making it over to Dutchyland again for a week! And him and The Kid meeting eachother and hitting it off! & learning that The Kid does not show any symptoms of Brugada Syndrome yet.
Worst: Dropping The Guy off at the airport to fly back home.

June 2008
Best: Jill coming over to Dutchyland and us finally getting a chance to hang out!
Worst: The worst thinkable happening to the little sister of The Guy and consequently many bad memories of my own ordeal flooding back.

August 2008
Best: Having my blog friends take over my blog during my summer vacation
Worst: Having my blog friends take over my blog during my summer vacation (nah, just kidding) and Jill having to move back to Florida.

September 2008
Best: Getting MY ass on a plane to the US for a business trip that included seeing The Guy! And meeting up with Penelope on my way over there. And learning that Backstabbing Bitch got her sorry ass a new job per November.
Worst: Getting my ass on a plane back to Dutchyland after seeing The Guy and him getting stuck in Houston during “Ike”. Oh, and moving the department. That was a winner too…

October 2008
Best: Hearing I am gonna be an aunty again in May!
Worst: The Chief pulling the plug on my Boston (and NY) trip for summer 2009 and in a really nasty way (by email, from the other side of the globe, wimp!)

November 2008
Best: Seeing the back of Backstabbing Bitch and having the door hit her ass on the way out!
Worst: A new stalker that is bothering me by phone and ultimately turned out to know my address too, leaving notes in my mailbox. And the realization that The Guy and I are not gonna see eachother again for the remainder of the year.

December 2008
Best: Finding out that yet to be born one I am gonna be an aunty to from early May is a girl (oh, didn’t tell you yet? it’s gonna be a girl! again), starting out a great new colleague at the office… and being at the threshold of a brandnew year (cuz damn! I am ready for that one)
Worst: The Guy’s dad suffering a massive heart attack on Dec 26 and getting bypass surgery (5 bypasses!)

Yeah, so all ‘n all, even though one of the best things in my life evah, falling in love with The Guy, happened this year, I can -aside from that- not consider this a very good year (and I am sure from his end he’d agree with me). There’s just been too much shit. It’s been a rollercoaster… Then again, it could always have been worse, there’s a lot to be thankful for as well, so I am not complaining (well, not too much anyway).

I hope next year will be better! I hope I get to see The Guy sometime soon! I KNOW I will get to see Penelope very soon! I hope The Kid’s annual tests at the cardiologist turn out right as they did last year and I hope they grab my stalker by the balls… that would be a good start, huh? That’s not asking much, is it?

I hope you’ll have a great New Year’s Eve. I will be spending it at The Mom’s place with The kid and we’ll be staying overnight probably. See you on the flip side!

I had a post scheduled for today but I pulled it.

I just learned that The Guy’s dad has been rushed back into surgery. The Guy is rushing back over to the hospital as we speak. This while we thought his dad was on the mend with a good prognosis. My heart is breaking for him, his dad and the whole family.

I am not sure at this point why he was rushed back into surgery but it can’t be good.

So I am reaching out to all of you. Please send all the prayers, good vibes, positive toughts and whatever else it is you do to his dad. I can’t have The Guy loose his dad, just can’t. I just can’t have the man that has always been a dad to my guy slip through our fingers, even before I have ever had a chance to meet him and thank him for the great guy he raised (and not after that for that matter).

Hon? Hang in there. I know that emotions are running high and that you are scared shitless of what could happen. I am sending all the love, and good vibes I have for you and your dad. Vigorously hoping he will pull through this one, as I know you need him around for a long time to come. Thinking of you! I Love You!

UPDATE: The Guy’s dad is stable again. Apparently one of his heart sutures ripped and he nearly bled out. They were able to correct it during surgery and are now keeping him under very close observation.

OK, so one of you who recently started using Twitter, asked me the other day how I kept up with everyone’s tweets on Twitter.

Well, honestly, I’ve been trying out many applications lately and I’ve ended up with liking just the one.

I like Twitter and keeping up with what’s happening to my friends during the day…Especially on the days that I have time off and am at home, more especially on days that I spend slouching on the couch being ill, as I have over the past few days… which get’s me bored out of my skull…

I hate having to go to my Twitter homepage all the time to see what you guys are shouting out into the Twitter-sphere. It requires clicking and moving away from the browser page I was at, and I forget and miss all the good stuff!

I love the idea behind Tweetdeck, which is actually a great application, but that also requires me to move out of the page of the browser, not even to another tab, but to my desktop and me no likey that. I am all about convenience and not having to switch windows all the time.

Same goes for Digsby that actually let’s you incorporate many other social sites… Alas, it is also an application that runs from your desktop (overlapping some of my browser page when I want to look at it in the same window), and, more importantly, Digsby brings in a lot of security risks and spam, and as soon as I noticed that, I de-installed it faster than the speed of light… and guess what? It’s hard to completely de-install all the shit that Digsby puts on your PC so I personally am staying away from that one for now.

I use Firefox and it has some add ons for Twitter that I’ve tried. I first tried Twitbin which is nice cuz it works in a sidebar in Firefox. However, with Twitbin you have to choose whether you want to see your friend’s twits, or replies or DM’s… And you actively have to change your settings if you want to change that.

Then I tried Twitterfox, which actually shows you the “friends”, “replies” and “DM” features in tabs, but that doesn’t update as much as I’d like. The shortest interval you can choose is 3 minutes. It does have a refresh button, which is nice, but you have to rightclick into the settings page to get to it. And the pop up window pops up over my current browser page, thus covering some stuff I am working on at that moment.

For now I’ve therefore decided I like TwitKit best. It opens a sidebar next to your browser page, it has tabs for “public” (displaying all tweets from everyone), “user” (which displays twits of your friends and yourself), “friends” (displaying a list of your friends), “followers” (a list of your followers), “replies” (displays replies to your tweets), and “me” (with your personal Twitter account info). It updates at least every 30 sec, of course less if you want to, just depends on what you put in your settings page, it has (as TwitBin does) the option of a one-click button in your browser tool bar to switch the sidebar of and off, and lets you choose from 4 optional colorschemes..

There is so much more you can do with Twitter than just tweet. Which is shown over HERE and over HERE.

But ya know… I could be wrong and oblivious to some hot new Twitter application or Firefox add on. Sooooooooo, anyone have a better one for me? One that I haven’t heard about that can be incorporated in my browser and do more than Twitkit?

And tell me which one you like best for use on your iPhone/iTouch. I am using Twittelator right now, I’ve tried Twitterific before, but like Twittelator better (though the restriction there is that I don’t pay for iTouch apps, can’t afford it)…

Enlighten me!!! And Twitter On, Peeps!!!

Yeah yeah and all you TwitCritics… that find it all a waste of time… Just don’t twitter… and leave us TwitEnthusiasts to it, ok? I like it, it’s fun, I use it when I feel like it and when I don’t, I don’t… Easy as that! Lighten up, Smile!

OK seriously? I am cursing those stomach bug demons, from the comfort of my living room couch! What the fuck is it with them? Everyone in my family and friends who suffered from that stomach bug was violently ill for a day and then felt all hunky dory again. Not me! Nu-Uh! I am still feeling queezy, my head is exploding and so is everything coming out of my ass… I am sorry for the graphic description but ya know.. it is! “Liquid Ass Fire” as Avi called his a few days ago is a pretty accurate description, I think…

And even though e.v.e.r.y.o.ne. only suffered from this stomach bug once, The Kid is now complaining about diarrhea agáin! So if I am really lucky, I will feel ok tomorrow and have The Kid to take care of again…

Oh well… Life… Huh?

On the up-side: The Guy’s dad came out of the second surgery and is now in recovery and according to The Guy his doctors expect him to make a full recovery. He’s still got a long way to go, but things are looking positive after surgery for 5 (!) bypasses.

Yeah, so I’ll be spending another day on the couch, which The Kid loves cuz he loves staying at home, playing PC and Nintendo DS games, reading, watching TV and taking care of his Mom (“if you need me to make you anything or get something for you, you reálly have to tell me, ok”). He is the sweetest nurse any sick Mom could ever wish for. This morning it turned out he sucks at clearing up after himself though, as I found both the bathroom and the kitchen in a state of total devastation, but he’s forgiven for that, for now…

OK, I have no more yadayadayadabladibla for ya! My exploding head is empty, which is kinda suprising considering I am bored out of my skull… See ya tomorrow!!! Hopefully by that time I will be fine and The Kid won’t be sick again…

No really, I am real ass sick… Fuck, I am feeling the pits… I picked up the stomach bug that earlier this week bowled over The BIL, The Sis and The Kid… I might have to stop typing up this post a few times to fill up the bucket that is next to me on the couch… As I just dragged my ass from the bed to the couch… Oh well, with all the others it was a 1 day bug so I trust that I will be ok tomorrow…

I just talked on the phone to The Guy. His dad had a massive heartattack yesterday and had a quadruple bypass operation last night. They have just gone back in to do a fifth bypass, an operation that will probably last for the next few hours. That’s massive: five bypasses, for a man that is healthy, non-smoking, not overweight… Very shocking. His prognosis for recovery is pretty good though, according to his doctors. I hope that he pulls through and recovers, for The Guy’s sake, as losing his dad would be the worst that could happen to him now. He’s very upset and rightfully so. I talked to him about it, while he was cycling to his hotel on a bike with the squeakiest breaks I have ever heard, as I lost my dad to a similar condition, over 12 years ago, so I very much know what it feels like.

So please all fingers, toes, arms, legs, boobies and whatever else crossed that his second operation will be succesful too and that he’ll recover.

That’s all I have for you today. In between feeling like puking all the time and worrying about The Guy and his dad, and taking care of The Kid, I am pretty much at my limits today. I can’t even be bothered to find an image suitable for the post, so you’ll just have to do with letters and words… and punctuations…

And Hon, though I know that chances that you have time to read this are very slim, this is for you: I LOVE YOU INCREDIBLY! Just the way you are. Hang in there and call me whenever you need to!