It became very quiet in my life

Dear Bloggers,

Due to the autumn holiday, our kids slept over our old babysitters house. I was at home with oly my wife and we decided for a change not to turn on the television. But just sit down at the kitchen table and discuss our future plans. We ended up talking about our old house and made drawings about what was needed to be done, if we could buy the “old” house back. We had very happy times there and we did not have a lot to worry about. Nostalgia was winning terrain and we left behind more realistic options. We could of course buy a bigger and more suitable house. But what would happen if I all of a sudden would call these people and make them an offer that they could buy our house for a few grant more. And these ideas are coming from someone that has no job, no money and no common sense.

It is about time that they come knocking on my door from the “Postcode Loterij” and let us win a reasonable sum of money. We do not need millions but it would be nice that we could realize this funny dream. Here we go again I simply got too much time to think and my brain starts to overreact. Strange enough I am not the only one that is thinking up these kind of crazy ideas. My wife is coming with even bigger plans for the same property. More and more I start thinking about it , and figure out that how stupid we have been to sell this house. Somehow I am doomed tomake these kind of mistakes in my life.

Somehow I think that I was not born for luck at all. As a young lad, I was not the smallest kid, actually you could call me chubby. When I was approximately seven years old, I fell off my pony and hit the stones in the road. My mum took me to the doctor and he told her that my arm was heavily sprained and I should stop whining. After three nights of no sleep as well for my mum and me, we went back to the doctors office. And my mum demanded to get some X-rays made of my arm. The doctor disagreed but my mum was very persistent and got a note for the hospital. At the hospital they gave the answer that the arm has been broken, but it had started to grow back together again. So they had to break it again to get it better located to make it at least a bit straight.

A couple of years later I was in the same hospital again. I was most of the time having trouble with my flu and having a chronic cold all of the winter period, so it was time that my tonsils were removed. A simple operation you will check in in the morning and in the afternoon you could go home again. Well this was not my case, after a few hours I was bleeding pretty badly and I was rushed back to the hospital. I had to stay there for a week to regain my streght as I lost 1½ liters of blood and my body could not cope with large bleedings or wounds.

My adolescent years did not pass without any scratches when I was sixteen years old and driving a moped, I slipped on a rainy evening and hit a lamppost. Consequences: A sprained shoulder and a damaged ego. And of course a lot of damage on my moped. A couple of years later I bought my first car. When you are young, free and single you might end up like me. I was running a bit out of time as I had to work that afternoon. And I started driving reckless but my speedlevel was unfortunate too high for the road curve that I needed to take. And yes I did hit the brakes but the only thing that happened was that I ended up on one side together with my car. Actually I was lucky that only the side of the car was scratched up and the mirror had broken off. I climbed out and pushed the car back on its wheels had a quick look at the damage and carried on with my journey.

After that there followed some periods that I was quite ok, except being lucky in love. I was a lot on the move with my friends, and we did a lot of drinking unless it was your turn to drive. At a certain point I realized this was not the best thing to do in life and I started studying again. During this period I met my wife. All of a sudden I found luck.

But not for long, as we just bought a house, I lost my job (not my own fault) and after a while I found a job on a cruise ship, when I came home again I had to get used to the daily things again.


I applied for a job on a ferry, but the stress was bringing back bad memories from the past. When the firealarm went off I totally lost it. In my army days I got involved with the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster, so I was back home again. Half a year later I sailed again for the same company on a smaller ship on a different route and in a different job. This went on for a few years and I did some jobs in between as the ship was charterd out or sailing on an other ships route, while their ship was in dock.

When we bought this house and just had moved in, I slipped on the stairs just after we had put our oldest daughter to bed. I tumbled down and crashed into the wall. Next thing I remember that I was rushed into the hospital by ambulance. I had been unconscious for a while. I also fractured a thumb and had a brain contusion. After a week I still had trouble walking straight and I fell over to the right all the time. Furthermore I had trouble with mathematics and all my language skills were gone (Dutch, German and English were needed in my job.) I took me a bit more then 1½ year to get my language skill back to a normal level.

In the mean time I had became a lorry driver but I was missing the life at sea. At a certain point I had to stop with my job distribution for the Heineken company as the left side of my body was starting to give trouble. Extreme heavy pains where knocking me out, when I lifted a barrel of beer. Which had never been a problem at all, but now it felt that I had some broken ribs. I was diagnosed with costocohondritis (Tietze syndrome) from that moment I was forced to do an office job.

After a while I was sailing again with my old company as a receptionist. I really enjoyed what I was doing but all of a sudden my full body gave up on me. After a few months in the medical tredmill I got the diagnose Fibromyalgia. The company laid me off and at the hospital they told me that I had to change my lifestyle. Well let me tell you this: I would stop working if I could afford it. (time for the lottery to stop by my door.) I really hope that no one needs to deal with the idiots that I am dealing with now. It is nearly two months now that they should have send me money from the state of Denmark. But these bloody *#%@#+ ?!? can not find my journal back. It is just a bureaucratic nightmare. I think that they should offer me and my family a free holiday to Denmark when this is all running, all inclusive of course.

Make a wish when you see a shooting star, I will take cover as I am affraid that I might get hit.

The Old Sailor,