The German artist Martin Schongauer made this engraving in 1475 representing the temptations attacking St. Anthony who though wearisome remains unfaced by the various demonic creatures plucking and pulling at him. Now try to replace St. Anthony's face with mine more in the state of that other, most likely more familiar, great work of art, Edward Munch's The Scream, and you will have a pretty good visual picture of how my week was. I.e. I was less serene in dealing with all the tugging and pulling than dear St. Anthony, but then again, I am no saint. Anthony was trying to medidate and through all of this he prevailed. I am trying to write a dissertation... but somehow all of my devils take priority.
See the creature with the long snout beating at poor Anthony with a stick, in my week that was a miscommunication with the architect (had in May) which now came to light and escalated. At the very best, some major work which we expected to be done in September (one of the things I was actually planning on flying down for) will not be able to get done until December (if we are lucky.) At the very worst, this miscommunication will cost us a very large sum, because we ordered and are having made all the windows, which it now turns out we should not have, and could be rejected by the historical commission. Yes, we are just a little irked at the architect, but we are working it out. Hopefully.
The ugly things at the bottom tearing away at the saint's robes were the fever and rash caused by a nasty virus that got into Evelina's little body and which caused her to be sick for two days and two nights, and morphed her into a very cranky and clingy little toddler. On top of that she got three major shots yesterday morning at her 15 month check up which made her even more miserable. She did not really fall asleep until 5 a.m. this morning. After about 4 nights of waking up several times a night I am very much reminded of what it was like when she was just a few weeks old. Except that she is now much heavier to pick up, more difficult to deal with when she is screaming, and I don't get to take naps during the day. Hopefully, she is on the better hand. Although we have been warned that the chicken pox shot could flare up next week sometime. Yeah!
Then there is the problem with my email. Minor really, but quite annoying. I have already made two trips to the MAC store to get it fixed and will now have to go a third time taking the desktop computer in. Quite a drag!
There are a few more devils which have been gnawing at me, but hey, this is a blog, not a diary. All to say, we enter into the weekend quite exhausted and drained and no, we did not see a spark of fireworks on the fourth. Oh well, I think in all these years I have lived here we maybe made an effort to see them 3 times. And since we are not reall BBQ fans either, not red-white-and blue-toting Americans, the 4th is not all that much of a big deal. It was a day off for Robert, but spent as I said, with a sick baby. We tried to leave town and make a little day trip, but we turned around half way there, because Evelina was so uncomfortable and that nasty rash just popped up suddenly making me quite worried I couldn't enjoy the trip anyway. We will give the day trip another shot tomorrow. Fingers crossed.
Good news is that everyone is indeed working very hard on our house and I expect to have some more pics next week. I hear that the contractor will start chipping away at the plaster and uncover the original brick work which we are keeping "naked" so to speak. We have also decided to fill in the open space of the loft with a glass floor/ceiling resting on steel beams, so we are pretty excited about that. We still need to hear from the engineer and of course are awaiting a bid on this. Let's hope we will not have to nix this as I have seen some pictures of this type of construction and it looks pretty awesome.
In Belgium today the "bouwverlof" starts. This is a three week vacation for all people who are working in the construction sector as well as sectors connected to it. It is an estimated 400,000 people who have off until the beginning of August. The entire construction sector is down. We are lucky as it seems our contractor equals the Duracell bunny and wants to keep on going. Gosh, I wouldn't be surprised if in Belgium one could fined for working during mandatory time off! This weekend then this break will result in nearly all of those 400,000 people and their families getting into their cars and driving to France, or Spain, or Italy, or where ever as long as it is South, there are beaches, and the sun will be shining. Imagine the roads!
And in the US the frenzy over Apple's Iphone has slowed down after last week's release. I will admit, it is the first gadget phone I silently yearn to own. But I will wait for its European release. I will just have to wait to be hip a few more months. Ha.
Will keep you all posted, greetings from Texas wit love, vanessa
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