i love getting dressed up. i love an excuse for it. any excuse, and any type of dressing up. so, when matt and i heard that some of dick’s friends were having a masquerade for their birthday party this weekend, we begged to be invited along.

it was a good party, and a chance to meet some of dick’s friends again, in a new setting (for me). i really liked many of them. and there was a room set aside for dancing, which was really perfect. i danced a lot. so did matt. so did dick, actually. happiness.

a reprise of the entire evening is impossible. i won’t even attempt it. i wish we’d been able to go somewhere else to sleep, though. as many of you minnesotans know, i don’t like to spend the night at other people’s houses with lots of people. i get tired of people, and really start hating them. well, that happened. it’s uncontrollable. so i tried to take space by hanging out on the terrace, but that made many of them think i was sick, and then continuously ask me if i was ok. which is worse. oh well. we managed to escape pretty early the next day. if i’m lucky, most of them will remember me more from earlier in the evening, when i wasn’t sick of people. i had some really fun conversations with lots of people.

the next day, we went shopping at a couple of favorite places in amsterdam. that was also fun, and i found a really gorgeous dress and boots that i really wanted, but unfortunately were very expensive, so i had to skip them. oh well.

i have just returned a few minutes ago from an excursion to an art gallery with some women in the international women’s club. although there were few things that i really liked in the gallery, my brain is filled with ideas. so, what am i doing typing here? good question. i have other things to do. and part of me just wants to lie around with a book and continue recovering from the weekend. ha. and you see where my moment of motivation just disappears….

so, i had to go running way too early this morning, because annemette had a 10:00 dutch lesson with desiree. she picked me up at 8. ick. but so we ran, and when i got back, i spent 2 hours on my terrace, cleaning it up. even though some of the dahlias and sunflowers still had buds, i cut them down. with all the demolition dust, they looked pretty crappy anyway. so i cut lots of other things down, too. trimmed some of the herbs. then i dug up all the tuberous things for the winter, since last year i had a lot of rottage. too wet here. then i harvested tomatoes and tomatillos, and cleaned up their areas, and emptied the varieties of poor sad basils and cilantro into the compost. it’s been very cold and wet for too long, and everything looks pretty awful. anyway, i need to get over to intratuin sometime this week and see if i can pick up some kind of mulch to put over things, and i need to plant the various bulbs i’ve bought in the last few days, and then the garden will pretty much be done for the year. that’s good. i’ve been pretty lazy about it for a few weeks, and it really needed that. i’d like to buy some evergreen trees to put around it. maybe i’ll do that, too. and i need to bring the fig inside (requiring figuring out WHERE to put it).

then i had lunch, and made some snickerdoodles because it is fucking cold in the house and that gave me an excuse to turn on the oven. oh, and had a shower. and did some laundry. and read for a while.

and then i thought: oh, i need to figure out what needs doing on my halloween costume! so i pulled it out of the attic, found that cat has pissed on part of it (i can’t figure out when!), and discovered my long lost edible honey shimmer dust tucked into the costuming box. yay! i’ve been missing that. i can’t find the little sequined slippers that go with the bellydancing costume that is part of my overall costume (which is NOT a bellydancing costume), so i might need to make some, so my feet aren’t cold at the party.

speaking of parties: anyone reading this is invited to our halloween party, on the 29th, here in maastricht. yay!

then i messed around online a little. i need halloween decor. finding good stuff here in europe is damn hard. i miss target and michael’s, and joann fabrics. i can’t believe it. and i’m thinking about last-minute weekend trips for matt and me. i was thinking turkey, but well, what i found was for a whole week. perhaps barcelona or something instead. dunno. a friend is having a party on friday night, but we wanted to leave for the whole weekend, starting as soon as matt can get off work on friday. we’ll see. last resort: we go down to paris for a couple of days. no harm there! i love paris.

well, that’s that. student coming at 5:20 tonight, and i need to go get the stuff together for him. ciao! and i have too many things on my mind, and curiosities that are being contemplated to continue just documenting my day like this. silliness.