July 10, 2003 : purple flowers
Excluding the late-night heart-to-heart talk that Eva and I started having somewhere around 11pm, today was the most worthless and wasted day of my entire existence.
Eva did manage to finally go to the VDAB this morning to turn in some paperwork, but selfishly speaking over myself, well I did nothing. (I did cut about an inch off my hair in a spastic fit of doing "something") My nothing didn't start until Eva returned. We had a minor spat that involved any number of dumb random items (dumb for sure! They are always dumb when people are stressed out and when it takes only a minor thing to put one over-the-edge!) and then finally we sorted ourselves out enough to head to Broechem to fix our bikes.
Before we left, however, Eva finally got in touch with the mechanic in Luxemburg. This is the same guy who originally said 400 and then upped it to 750. Eva said, "we've decided to fix it" to which he said, "I won't fix it." !!! What on earth? Why is this happening? He explained that the car was so old that he didn't want to bother fixing it because if it broke down in the next few months we'd blame him. He said, "it'll probably end up being around 1000 to fix it once I'm through" and that, he admitted, was steep and not worthwhile on our part.
On one hand I see his point, as the amount is steep to fix an old car. But the car, on the other-hand, was in great condition except for the belt that was hidden from view and 20 years old at that! I'd break if I was a belt that ran round-n-round every single day for 20 years too! But really, couldn't he have said this two weeks ago? Couldn't he have said this the day it happened? Couldn't he have just said, "1000 Euros" back then? We wouldn't even have thought about it. We would have thrown in the towel right then and there!
So we back up our bikes and head to Eva's mother's house where 2 additional notes/letters/envelopes are stuck into the door. (this is, once again, only a reminder to us in the future of what a chaotic couple of weeks this has been!) I swear, each time we approach the house I expect some sort of disaster to have taken place. So far, so good.
On our plate this afternoon were three somewhat simple tasks: see about scooter and decide if it should make the trip to Antwerp, attach dynamo bike lights to bikes, and attempt to fix Eva's gears on her bike.
How simple can this be? The answer is: very, very unsimple. The dynamos came with no instructions whatsoever, and though the concept is simple enough, it didn't seem to work. None of it worked. The dynamo doesn't fit onto my front fork, it fits onto my back wheel, the headlight's wire is too short, and besides all of this, well it just doesn't work!
In the gears category, we had only one pair of pliers and a handful of screwdrivers. Apparently when Eva's father left, he took all the tools with him. This leaves us in a gigantic house with only our feeble one-room studio apartment size/amount of tools. Thus, a wrench, one hammer, one mini-leatherman tool, and an assortment of screwdrivers and "L" shaped widgets. (I can't think of the name at the moment...those silly little things that ship with every single IKEA purchase, only we have a whole set). Needless to say, the gear-help didn't help.
Two down, one to go. After the minor successes of previous scooter attempts, we figured today might be the day when something the scooter would prove to be the only thing that would work out for us. We envisioned ourselves flying over the streets of Antwerp once again, with red and blue helmets and perhaps a new spray-paint job on the scooter itself. Well that obviously didn't happen.
We tried and tried to get it to start as easily as it did just a few days ago. (not that it did really well on that occasion either, but it started easily enough for us to consider taking it to Antwerp!) We tried and tried. We looked under the plastic casings to see if everything was where it was supposed to be. It wasn't, but after we connected the thing that wasn't, it still wasn't. (I'm into using repetitive language today)
Strike three.
But wait, there's more! We were supposed to go to Brussels tonight, but as the afternoon shifted into early evening, our awaiting party in Brussels called to see if we were "on our way" or "coming" or even "ok." I apologized and thanked him for his patience and concern and told him it was a "rotten day" and in a moment of pure genius, he remarked that if it was such a terrible day, then we'd best not have our meeting, as to not continue the saga of spoil and ruin. (verbose paraphrase)
Eva began cleaning up the kitchen in the house and I began picking up the tools and bolts scattered all over the driveway. After finishing my task, in a few moments of reflection, I spotted a vine on the side of the house with huge clusters of bright purple flowers. I stuck my nose in one of the bunches, looking out not to disturb the inch-worm (more like centimeter worm) that was hanging out smelling the smell as well.
mmmmmmm...
Delicious isn't quite the world, but I'm looking for the smell-equivalent. For that 15 seconds I was ok. Everything was alright. No worries, simply little purple flowers under my nose.
Eva came outside and though I tried to convince her to smell the flowers, I don't think she did. Instead we headed back to the garden-space where the bio-boys (our nickname for them) are still attempting to have a garden. Granted, they never said that they'd be good at it, but they really don't appear to be very good at it! No one obviously has every told them to tie up tomato plants, to prune them, or even to space them out. It was a tomato forest in one section of their circle garden, and weeds! 5 carrot plans, several rows of onions, and a whole "mess of beans" that were there rotting on the vine. The pumpkins, however, seem to be doing alright.
And of course this makes me thinking of gardening and the tools of the trade I should be learning/should have learned from my mother. My dearest mother who has never had soil so dark and fertile as this to work with. I can't imagine what she'd do with a plot of ground like this. Belgium has yet to see such a green thumb! (though in dutch I think it's green hands!)
So maybe eventually my sweetest Eva and I will have a little plot of our own. I'm nearly up to eating everything plantable! (save the beautiful but icky eggplant.)
The ride home was also a wee bit better than the rest of the worthless day. We talked about all sorts of options to snap us out of our current "state of mind." We discussed going to the carnival and riding the death-defying ride that neither of us really wants to ride, just because we don't want to ride it, and maybe that'd shake us up a bit. We discussed driving to the ocean and taking a dip in the freezing cold water just to startle ourselves. We talked about going to Utrecht and visiting Heleen just because we can and should. We talked about driving to Paris but then we talked about our to-do list, our tomorrow priorities, finances, and then decided it was unpractical.
I want to be unpractical again. Spontaneous. Carefree. (somehow I've linked this return to the real Andrea with the following statement: I need a job!) Job or no job, the real me is sitting in this body somewhere. I've just got to find her.
IN THE NEWS:
A bomb exploded outside a central Moscow restaurant killing a security agent in an attack authorities said was the work of a terrorist ring training female suicide bombers for national strikes.
