I certainly qualify. I used to be somewhat graceful, but now I find myself completely lacking. I'm supprised I haven't switched to a complete collection of velcro shoes so I don't trip over my own laces or maybe only tapered pants so my pant-legs don't get caught in my bike chain.

Apparently the bio-bag-trash-truck-people decided (yet again) to play an april fool's day joke on us. It doesn't matter where we put it (our bio bag) at least once every six weeks or so it's still there when we get home. Bio bags are bad enough after sitting on our kitchen shelf for a week, so retrieving rotting biodegradable rotting trash from the sidewalk isn't a very welcome event. I know we'll end up bringing it back in, though Eva declared that this time we're just going to "leave it." It's gross either way--besides the fact that it makes me feel that our neighbors are going to think that we put the bag out too late on a Tuesday morning!

There were many chances for real april fool's day jokes. I could have told Eva that I had made a scrumptous breakfast and then not have made it...or perhaps set the clocks an hour later so she'd think she was late only to find she had an hour more to rest and eat the scrumptous breakfast I hadn't made.

However, I didn't. It was a common early-spring day in belgium complete with scatter showers and chill. As Eva and I have figured that we're growing up, as we now use umbrellas, when I headed to school I grabbed the black umbrella (How we ended up with it, I'm not quite sure. We rarely buy umbrellas unless we have to and we oftentimes lose them somewhere in the process of living.) and headed to Little Debbie who was parked particularly well in a great location.

It was my first chance to use the window-wipers, defrost, rear defrost, and rear wipers--and I was so very impressed with the rear-wiper! We may not have a passenger-side rear-view mirror, but we have a rear-windshield wiper! How cool! I even managed to figure out how to use the rear-window-spray. It's not really a spray, more of a ooze or a trickle. It's much like the spilling of windshield-wiper-fluid from a coffeecup I left on top of the car. But still, it's cool.

At school I found another suitable parking place and headed into school. I was running a bit late, nothing traumatic, but enough that it was disappointing. When I got to the room, however, only two people were there. The philipino woman and the polish woman. Was THIS an april fool's joke? We mulitplied to an additional Morrocan guy and myself. Finally a teacher from another class came in to let us know that Lut, our teacher, was sick. Was THIS an april fool's joke? Apparently not. The Polish girl left a note on the board that said, "Lut is ziek" and I drew a box of Kleenex. Moulad also arrived and the 5 of us decided to just head back to our respective homes and start the Easter vacation a bit earlier.

I also planned with Moulad to meet him on Friday at the library in Antwerp. How I've managed to undepress myself since last fall without leaving the house very often still, well that's still a mystery to me. However meeting with him and our going over our Dutch will be great for my un-depression, social life, and mijn tweede taal.

I came home with the best april fool's ever. Not really a foolish thing, but just a surprise. I had the most difficult time parking the car, but finally I was climbing the stairs, unlocking the door and revealing myself to the girl opening the door. Who was, consequently, quite surprised!

We settled in for the night with stir-fry and curry sauce made from yesterday's goldmine free leftovers from Leila and Susan. After dinner we got cought up in a documentary on tv about a 15 year old black kid who was completely unfairly charged for killing a woman in an armed robbery attempt. We were so cought up in it and so leary of the outcome (after all, it's a documentary and quite possibly it wouldn't end the way we wanted) that we edged closer in our seats. It ended well, we were quite relieved that justice could somehow prevail, and we headed to bed.

IN THE NEWS:
Long-simmering tensions between Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Army commanders have erupted in a series of complaints from officers on the Iraqi battlefield that the Pentagon has not sent enough troops to wage the war as they want to fight it. Here today, raw nerves were obvious as officers compared Mr. Rumsfeld to Robert S. McNamara, an architect of the Vietnam War who failed to grasp the political and military realities of Vietnam.

ALSO IN THE NEWS:
In a statement attributed to Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader called today for a holy war, or jihad, against the American-led invasion of Iraq.