Life is a bitch and I.......

Dear Bloggers,

Have you ever wanted to shout, scream, yell till the world knows about the pain you are going through? 

My wife has changed a lot in the last year and yes we all have to get used to the fact that she is standing up for her rights at this moment she is finding her new boundaries and not everyone is pleased with her or her attitude. We end up in fights and most of them are about nothing at all. Last night we had another one when we were cleaning in the kitchen and was explaining me that I was doing it wrong. I was tired and easily fired up as I felt that she needed to kick me down. I totally lost it and I shouted and yelled at her. There wasn’t any effect.

I nearly cried but my heart still felt pain. I was hurt. My emotions needed an outlet. An outlet to express sadness and hurt. Especially when this feeling of hurt was a result of one’s own family members bad temper, the mind just froze and the heart experienced a complete maddening sense of sorrow. What happened to us am I not the man that she loved anymore. Am I just treated like any other pet that lives here? I poured a cold water shower on my head. It helped me calm my nerves and move on with the rest of the evening. 

Tears still continued to flow when I was lying in bed but maybe after yesterday I actually realized that no, this is not the time for self pity. Living in 2013 and crying about and for people who treat you like dirt?? 

I guess I need to just walk away from them. There isn’t any point living for them. A dog’s tail can never be straightened. Never!! But this doesn’t mean I am gonna allow people make my life miserable. I have always been there to support them in their needs and all I get in return is anger and hateful words.
No, this should come to an end as my life is much more important and blessed to surround myself by such people. I was preparing tea in the morning and thinking “it’s gonna be her birthday in April, why not plan a big birthday bash.” I am sipping tea and thinking about party ideas. Hmmm.....let us see how many friends we have left after all those years.

One hour later I hand over the land-line phone to her and suddenly I am faced with angry glares. I shouldn’t have handed her the phone. I am not supposed to think for her. How on earth am I supposed to know which one needs to be rejected and which one she is gonna invite. She didn’t tell me anything before and how should I know this? 

I always thought I’ll try and be the best husband as I can be. But I guess no amount of efforts I’ll never reach that stage… For her an ideal husband means “No interference with me and just listen to me.” but yes, when I am in need of help you should be there, No excuses!! 
I don’t think that I am the right person for her anymore as there is hardly anything left of what we had. We loved to do things together and had a lot of fun doing all kinds of jobs around the  house. Just to make it our own project. 

The relation is suffering of it as well. That’s what is hurting me the most but by the time I poured ice cold water on myself and got ready for bed the feeling of hurt slowly evaporated and blogging about it made me feel less disappointed. 

I didn’t do anything wrong. Being yelled at for not being handy enough cleaning the kitchen pisses me off and without knowing anything about her bloody mood swings as we are not doing enough around the house. If every move that you make is criticized you start moving less and less. It sounds crazy but it absolutely isn’t my fault. 

The Old Sailor,

A day on the lake

Dear Bloggers,


Last friday I had a day off and the neighbors of my inlaws asked if we would join them on a boat trip on the Frisian lakes and watch the final of Skûtsjesilen on the lake (Sneekermeer). Of course as an old sailor I said yes that would be great eventhough the weather forecast predicted rainshowers, my wife was panicking a bit as our youngest daughter should wear a lifejacket. I did not see any problem there as she has her swimming diploma A and the waters are quite shallow in this area.

A skûtsje (pronounced 'skootshuh') is a Frisian sailing boat of the tjalk type, originally an ordinary cargo boat, but today a prized ship and one of the icons of Frisia (Friesland, or Fryslân in Frisian). Skûtsjes were built from the 18th century until about 1930, 12 to 20 m long and on average 3.5 m wide, with a maximum of 4 m (based on the standard dimensions of Frisian bridges and locks).


Skûtsjesilen
Originally an old tradition between cargo skippers, skûtsjesilen has now become a sport. Every Summer the skûtsjes meet to race each other, and much store is set by winning, as the victor will be famous all over Fryslân. Many skûtsjes are supported by villages or municipalities (financially as well, for this is not a cheap hobby!) and sail for the honour of their home town.

The regatta season was opened this year, on one of the smaller Frisian lakes. More to find in Dutch on http://www.skutsjesilen.nl/ Eventhough it was not that gorgeous weather loads of rain and pretty strong wind gusts – during the contest some of the days had to be cancelled. Some were to windy others whitout any wind at all. The race on the Sneekermeer promised a good game as the winds were shifting all the time and a windforce 3 to 5 was there. Although some wished for stronger winds - a splendid time was what we had by all. Neighbor Klaas explained a lot about wind and how you should sail in thes circumstances to my oldest daughter. (she really learned a lot and found the game even more interesting than before.) His wife Jeltje served coffee, soup and breadrolls, we had a very relaxed day.


The Eurokotter 9.50 picture used from http://www.vofhelfferich.nl/

When we got on board, I felt as if I’m the only one chartering an unknown destination. (Yeah, right.) With the cool breeze enveloping me, I close my eyes, grip the sides of the boat and wish that the destination is worth all the troubles that I have at the moment anyway. It is hard for me to except that I am from now on a diabetic and that I should lead a regular life. It is hard to change your life without any stress as everything in your life is turned upside down. I try to enjoy the boat trip as much as I can and after half an hour I start to relax and enjoy the unpredicted beauty of todays weather, nature is gorgeous anyway and the water is pretty calm.

By the time the boat reaches the calm portion of the lake, I thought a smooth ride would finally start. But then the engine starts to power up. The skipper hands the wheel to one of the people that never sailed before and teaches them how to manouvre on the lake between the other boats and what the rules are. Even my wife took the wheel on the return journey and sailed us back into calmer waters. Not all of them are skilled skippers. I felt pretty scared as we ran pretty close to the shore and I had no influence on the steering skills as i was not the skipper, but the reminder to relax gave me an assurance that the situation is under control.



After few adjustments of the skipper, it finally got better. My fear dissipated and I went back to closing my eyes and gripping the side of the boat. A few minutes later, I got a cup of coffee and a good conversation with the skippers wife, now I was sitting comfortably. My eyes were widely open and my hands were loosely positioned at the sides. I started to enjoy the ride. We talked about the boat as it is a lovely little ship with plenty of space. Klaas and his companion are building these ships themselves as it is his daytime job. To give an impression have a look on their website Eurokotter.nl If I had the money I absolutely would have bought one. Maybe in the near future when we have sold our house and I would have a more steady job I can do this. I totally fell in love with the steady sailing and the spacious envirnment of this ship.

I tried to do what the others do; I opened my eyes and loosen up a bit, but my mind is playing games with me. Relaxing is hard work at the moment. Then I saw the beautiful clear line that divides the muddy brown and dark bluish color. I started seeing other boats of different sizes manned by brave men or women. I saw on the shore a few fishing man who caught a big fish, the numerous fans that man the shores to watch the final day of the competition, all the other boats that are anchorred that we are passing by and the crashing of waves against the shoreside.

After an hour of rolling with the waves, we were finally closing in on the spot were we should anchor. The skipper gave me instruction to hold on as he will drop the anchor his wife mans the wheel and I have the lookout position for the other boats at our stern. The skipper has a lot of knowledge about the grounds underneath the ship when he drops the anchor it only takes a few minutes to put the boat in position. As we are only layin on one anchor point the boat drifts around on the wind. When our neighbors behind us run a few metres of extra anchor chain we have nothing that is in our way. After the Skutsjesilen is done we have another cup of coffee and get ready to go on our home journey, after an hour we arrive in the harbour and lay the boat in it’s dock. We say goodbye and thank them for the wonderful trip and drive home. I had a splendid day out and my kids enjoyed the sailing as well.

The Old Sailor,

I should be so lucky part 2

Dear Bloggers,

OPINION: The road to hell may well be paved with good intentions, but nobody told me that you would have to listen to a chorus of whingers along the way.

I was listening to the Radio the other day and they were discussing how we were sliding of slowly towards some sort of hell and there was no way we would ever look back on these present times as the "good ol' days" like they had back in the fifties and sixties.

What a load of ….....
We all know about the 'glass half full or glass half empty' metaphor and I hesitate to suggest that the current level is starting to be unreflective of the unimaginable bounties that we currently possess.

In other words, our glasses are almost full and too many of us are nagging about the bit that we are missing at the top.
I started writing my blog today as I wanted to expound on some of the more positive things that are going on.

Well, today I wanted to write about how incredibly fantastic it is to be alive in this modern age. 'What are you on?' I hear you say.

No, nobody laced my breakfast with ecstasy this morning.

I sometimes think the opposite is going on.

Maybe the whole population is being drugged to suppress their excitement and enthusiasm at their good fortune to be living in these wild times.
I was tripping around my house this morning belting out the chorus of Kylie Minogue's 'I should be so lucky' and my five-year-old was telling me to stop singing. It looks like they have got her too. Kylie is good example aswell if it comes to being positive, she is really a strong woman as she was struck by the horrible disease called cancer. Never let your head hang down, but fight.

It is all very well for me to keep on telling about how great it is to be here, but I must qualify my assertions.

I have always believed if you want to understand your place in the universe you must look at the wide view.
Fundamentally, each of us is just one of nearly seven billion bipedal apes shuffling around on a big spherical rock trying to procure a few basic needs- namely food, shelter, and, if you're lucky, a bit of reproduction.

It looks as though we have achieved these basic requirements rather well and by all accounts most of us are in bloom.
Judging by the number of overly corpulent persons crawling down the streets of the western world, many of us are not flowering at all.

It is a rather telling paradox of our times that our problem is not that we don't have enough to eat; it is that we can't stop shovelling tasty morsels into our gaping mouths.

At no time in the history of civilisation has there been societies where the general population has been so affluent that they have been able to consume all the meat, sugar and carbohydrates to their labouring hearts' content.

Yet we still complain.

Our car is not new enough, taxes are too complex, society is too crime ridden.

Reality check: You have a car. Your taxes bring are wide range of services that have become essential to your life. You probably haven't been a victim of a serious crime recently, and if you have been, just remember you are still here to fight another day. (there are two things we are sure of in this life: death and taxes.)

Let's go back a couple of thousand years and you can be sure that things wouldn't nearly have been so rosy.

Some of your brothers or sisters would have surely died in childhood.

Disease would have been a constant threat.

Running water and functioning sewerage would have been but a distant dream.

And murder a not uncommon practice.

Do you think they sat around the fireplace bitching about issues like whether or not we should put folic acid in our bread?
We are much more unlikely to die a violent death these days than at any time in history. Something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler.

In fact, our ancestors were far more violent than we are today.

Indeed, violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth.

I like the idea of Thanksgiving eventhough there will be thousands of turkey's killed for it.

I don't know exactly who or what we are supposed to thank, maybe God, maybe some exotic religion, maybe your mother, but I think it would be good to spend a day every year reflecting on the fact that our glasses are almost full to overflowing and the little things that send us into apoplectic fits of self-pity and disgust are really just a small beer.

You don't need to wait until this special day of reflection though.

You can do it right now.

Look around you, examine the detail, think of where you have come from and where you are going and if you really get it, if you really, truly understand the situation in which you currently exist, it should blow your freakin' mind.

If you can't climb out of your own reality so easily, but there's a place somewhere in your surrounding that might do the trick.

Surrounded by some pieces of our beautiful nature and if you don't have any kind of happy feelings as you consider your place in the universe you really have been drugged into submission by some dark forces determined to keep you from being happy.

I'm the first to admit that I'm not always the paragon of cheeriness and positivity, but the concept that we are all extremely fortunate to be here is never far from my thoughts.

It is great to be here and I hope you can see that too.

You all enjoy the rest of the summer while I take off to the next door neighbors beautiful country and relax for a few days.

The Old Sailor,