I gave in a month or so ago and joined Facebook.

I've found more people through Facebook than any other networking site. I get to 'chat' with my friends and old school acquaintances all day long now. Yay.

It's making me very very homesick off and on. Feh.

I've found cousins and other extended family that I haven't seen in 15 years, so cool.

They are all uber conservative and every time one of them becomes a fan of something like 'Protect Marriage: One woman, one man', I want to smack them.

I just found a guy that that was a friend of a friend that I used to have a crush on back in the mid-90s. He was one of the coolest people ever.

Two days ago, he died of leukemia.

Facebook, stop fucking with my emotions.

I am writing up longer entries about my experience taking the Staatsexams and my driving exam, but here's the lowdown:

In two more weeks, I can check the internet for my Staatsexam results. In 3 weeks, I'll get snailmail. I am sure I passed all 4 sections.

I took my practical driving exam almost two weeks ago and passed! It wasn't as hard as I had expected. Unfortunately, my high only lasted a couple of hours until I went to city hall to apply for the actual physical license. A mixup between the city and Immigration caused a good 24 hours of stress, but it was all resolved and I can pick up my license this Thursday.

Tags: dutch life

Yesterday was a huge holiday here in the Netherlands, Queens Day, which celebrates the birthday of the last Queen, Juliana. We had just finished having a family breakfast with the inlaws, gotten all packed up and ready to head out to local festivities with them (and furniture shopping for the new house), when the news coverage on TV changed.

We'd had the TV on while wandering in and out of the room getting ready. The members of the royal family were in Appeldorn shaking hands, talking to residents, taking part in little games and activities, admiring kids' projects and listening to local music. They do this every year in a different town. I left the room one moment with the royal family back in their open-topped bus, waving to bystanders and when I walked back into the room, there was a heavily damaged car wedged impossibly onto the wrought iron fence around a stone monument. The camera shot went back to the royal family who were now aghast, hands on mouths. As it ends up, an unemployed Dutch man had tried to hit the royal procession and failed miserably, but he drove straight through a crowd in his attempt, leaving 5 dead and 12 more wounded. These were just innocent people hanging around to celebrate and get a chance to see the queen. Minus the royal family part, we were just about to head off to the exact same sort of celebration.

Since that moment I have been crying on and off at the tragedy of it all. I didn't know any of the victims of course, but it seems that even though my baby is now 6 months old, I still feel things as I did when all the hormones took over back at the beginning of pregnancy. Sad things make me cry more easily and if it involves any children, I'm especially upset. Luckily, none of the dead were children, but there were children ages 9, 15, and 16 in the 'seriously injured' group. I've never been a cold bitch, but having kids seems to be sending me into a new realm of sensitivity on many fronts.

I'm still upset and the story is still on our news as details are added. In the moments after he crashed, the man admitted that he was intentionally aiming for the royal family, but he was braindead upon arriving at the hospital and passed away during the night, so further details may never be known. The sentence for an attempt on a royal family member is prison for life, so maybe it was fully intentional that he ended up where he did. Tim looked the incident up on YouTube later to see other footage and I watched a bit until they showed someone administering CPR on a victim right where they had fallen askew in the middle of the street. I couldn't take any more video after that.

I wish I'd taken today off, like half the company did. There's too few distractions here in this ghost town of a building.

Current Mood: weepy

After a month of waiting, I've finally found out through the school when my integration exam is scheduled for: April 14th and 15th. I'll receive the official letter next week, as in only two weeks before the exam itself. Apparently they don't think that people need more warning to ask for time off of work.

( Assimilation details )

Tags: dutch culture, dutch language

( I remembered how to make a cut! )

Tags: driving, dutch life
Current Location: Werk, nog steeds

The word 'lol' existed in Dutch long before the internet.

What does it mean? 'Fun'.

Prophetic, no?

Here, have some lol:

http://pics.yemii.com/swedish-dance-bands.html

Now I'm terribly curious what exactly a 'swedish dance band' sounds like. Which reminds me: I intend to get together some links of 'traditional' Dutch music to bleed your eardrums with. In the meantime, think beer barrel polka and you're almost there.

Tags: dutch language, dutch life, humor link
Current Location: Werk, dutch style

( Cut for length )

Tags: dutch life

I feel the need to post something more upbeat after the last entry, which I actually wrote a few days ago.

Thusly:

Tags: baby!, photos

One year, five months and 4 days ago a neighbor found my sister face down in her kitchen. A day later my dad called me with the news. My parents were on vacation at my grandma's and it took the police a day to track them down. Six weeks later we had the official report about what we already knew. She'd taken enough pills to kill a large beast of burden.

I flew to the US. I cried, but I cried for my parents and my grandma. Mostly, I was still angry - angry for all the shitty things she had done to me and everyone I cared about. Angry for the stealing, the lying, my ruined credit, being taken to court, bailing her out of jail on my own dime - everything that her drug addiction told her was a normal way to interact with people. I was angry that she was so good at manipulation that I myself defended her to other people before she almost killed herself in a DUI and everything came to light. After that I was angry about what we found out, about the lengths she had gone to. Then I was angry that she was a near invalid, that my mother's life was totally consumed with caring for someone that had treated her like less than a human being. No one had been a feeling human being to her, only a means to provide her with what she wanted.

Wednesday, we went to the funeral for Tim's aunt. As we started up the long driveway to the crematorium for the service, I began to cry. I knew immediately that I was not crying for the aunt, who I'd only seen a handful of times and maybe spoken to twice. In the space of one sentence worth of thought, I realized suddenly that I was a lot less angry. Enough that space was created. Space which was now filled with the sadness that should have been felt over a year ago. I cried throughout the entirety of the aunt's funeral. I had the funny-but-not--funny thought that everyone there probably thought I was some sort of empath for being so upset over someone I barely knew.

I'm still somewhat angry, but it has cooled. I remember the preacher during my sister's funeral talking about how difficult she had made life for others, but now with her passing, everything was forgiven. I wanted to laugh out loud at that in the middle of the funeral. Stand up, tell him how wrong he was, that I didn't think I'd ever stop hating her. That the change in her state did not suddenly dismiss all the things she had done over the years.

I spent a long time Wednesday on the phone with my mom. She had wanted to talk a long time ago about all this, about her own feelings, but I had not been ready. I was not in a place where I could listen, truly listen with sympathy, without hateful words bubbling to the top of my throat. It's uncomfortable to start examining things other than anger. Anger feels cleaner, stronger, more justified. It's hard to reconcile the person who did so many horrible things with the person whose last diary told of such loneliness in recovery, such despair over her actions, and finally lack of hope that anyone would ever forgive her, ever let her back in, ever trust her and treat her like a normal person again.

If she were still alive, would my anger have cooled to this point now? Would I have slowly, tentatively, started a dialog with her? I honestly think not...yet. I think it would have been a slower process, that I would not be as far along in healing as I feel now. I'm starting to feel the smallest bit of regret. Immediately after her death, I didn't think, "If only I had reached out...if only I had forgiven something." I don't know if I ever will. That would be dismissive of my right to feel angry over the years of her actions. To look back and see that I am a worthy person that had a right not to be used. Even now, my regret is couched in self-preservation. "If only she had waited longer until I was ready." "If only she had waited until I had my own baby, I could have empathized so much better with how she felt losing her own baby." So now my regret is that she didn't know that there was the possibility of speaking in the future. Would that have been enough to make her stick around through her chronic pain and loss of normal function? Her future of living on disability, unable to work? Her dependence on someone else at age 29?

I don't honestly know. By all accounts, she was in recovery, working the NarAnon steps well. I imagine facing her life as it was now without the drug boost might have been too monumental a task, with or without me. I'm afraid as my anger cools further, I may regret more and more. I seem to be getting more emotional in my older age anyhow. I can only hope that I apply any new understanding to my current friends and family.

Something good may come from her yet...

Current Mood: pensive

Guess an update is overdue, but there's way too much to go into much detail so items will be brief.

Since around January, I've been busy producing this:



Devin Nathanael Dijks (2 days old in the photo) was born October 21, 2008 at 1:29pm. Yes, the initials are intentional :) He was 15 days late, so I wasn't allowed to have my planned home birth; I had to be induced in the hospital. I'm healing well, and he's doing just fine.

In October of 2007, my sister committed suicide and T and I traveled back to the US for two weeks to help out my parents and attend the funeral. I didn't see everyone that I wanted to, but we didn't have much time and circumstances weren't the best.

I finally received my residency permit in November 2007 and thanks to one of T's friends, had a job a week later. I had intended to find a software company that worked in English, but we were pretty desperately at the end of our savings, so I just took the first job that I could, even though it was at a company that only worked in Dutch. Since I my level of Dutch was not up to technical standards, I was hired as a software tester, rather than a software engineer, so I'm still not really doing what I want and I hate my job. It's provided good, needed money, however.

In February of 2008, we found out I was pregnant.

In September of 2008, I was able to finally start my integration classes...the ones I was supposed to start a few months after arriving, assuming my residency application had gone through the first time. Since I'm definitely not a beginner with Dutch anymore, they did not put me in the basic classes, but rather a class with the end goal of taking a higher level exam. If I pass, I will have a certificate saying that I know the equivalent of Dutch that a Dutch high school student would have. I've taken a break for the birth, so it will be a couple more weeks before I return.

I return to work at the end of December and we are starting to look for a house, as we are still living in the spare rooms of Tim's parents. I'd like to move back to the US, but until I have some actual skills or experience that would help me get a job in the US's tanked economy *before moving*, I don't see that happening.

So for now...I remain lost...