FRIDAY's FAV FIVE - RANDOM 5 FRIDAY

1. Aqua gym makes hungry ! Therefore Dominique and I decided to go to "La Brioche" which had been a simple bakery for years until the owner's son took it over and had the excellent idea to serve breakfasts and brunchs ! It is the only place in whole Waterloo where you can get a breakfast from 8 am on ! Poor tourists who arrive earlier in our city have to wait with an empty stomach in their cars until something opens around 9 !



Not only they serve excellent coffee with croissants but also sandwiches, eggs etc. Their choice of beautiful looking cakes is wonderful ! Dominique studied the card before we both choose sandwiches with a salad.

2. I suddenly got an cleanliness attack, which doesn't happen very often, took advantage of my attack



and emptied the two shelves over my bed, cleaned the shelves and the cats and put them back. I didn't see any difference at least from far, but I swear the amount of dust was considerable !

3. My mood is rather morose this week, this January gets on my nerves, it's not winter, it's just nothing but rainy and grey days.



When I look outside I see a grey sky and took a picture of this pigeon which I thought to be an eagle, without my glasses. What a disappointment when I saw the result ! Inside it doesn't look very encouraging either, everywhere I look, there are lazy cats laying around.

When Mr. G. gets up in the morning the first thing he does after having served himself a coffee, is switching on the TV, and so generously loud that even my neighbors can listen to machine guns, exploding buildings, stupid political speeches, reports of murders, etc, everything you need early morning to start a cheerful day ! And each morning it's the same discussion, I ask him to turn down the volume, and he pretends that it isn't loud. 

4. To cheer me up, I went to the hairdresser, because each time I saw my head in the mirror my hairs looked like my mood, just hanging down in no order it badly needed a cut. As usual my hairdresser and I had a lot to chat, I talked about my grandson, she about her son, they both have the same age are both "cars" and "Spiderman" fans and busy with potty training. As all people now adults went through the same procedure, there is hope that it will be finished soon, until it may restart at an old age.

5.  Since I have such a nice view now on our street, for once there was a little crowd, men and women looking dull and grey with leaflets under their arms and I recognized them immediately, it was a group of Jehova's witnesses. Of course they rang at the door and of course I didn't open, I had no intention to change my believes whatsoever.

Last week I offered Nicole a DVD showing flames in the TV like an open fire, this week I brought her fishes !



Now her TV looks like an aquarium and the water bubbles peacefully. We had a cup of tea and were full
of compassion for poor Charlie, who had a little surgery at his paw. One of his claws had grown inside.



I suggested to put on a little sock on his paw to protect the wound from dirt. Nicole found this a good idea and will buy some baby socks for him until the wound is healed. So next time I hope that Charlie will wear a more colorful sock with maybe a Superman design.

I also finished my picture in my painting class and started another one, for the moment it looks like a red "@" on a black background,  my subconscious must be obsessed by my emails.



more participants at Susanne at Living to tell the Story.

and



More participants here at A rural Journal.

JAM JARS MUSIC

 Letter "J"

When I was a little girl, my mother started to make jam usually at the end of the summer. She put it in jars and covered them with cellophane so that no air could get in and spoil the jam. She bought a lot of different fruits and cooked them in big pots in the kitchen and then filled the liquid jam in the jars. She made a lot because it should last over the whole winter months.



When she had finished she carried all the jars to the basement, together with other jars containing vegetables and put them on shelves. In the 1950, there were no refrigerators and vegetables hard to get during winter times. I loved the basement, each apartment owned one, they were divided by wooden pannels which allowed me to peek into the neighbor's cellar to see what they had stocked for the winter. Our cellar also had three big wooden boxes, in one were all the potatoes for the winter, in the other apples and in the third coal for the heating.

I loved the jars because of their different colors and one day I had an excellent idea. I had a little metal flute on which I could play some melodies. So one day when I was looking at the colorful jars I took my flute and pierced a small hole in the cellophane. I loved the sound it made "ping" and each jar had another sound. I continued making music with the jars and made holes in all of them.

When my mother discovered the holes in her precious jars, I couldn't understand why she got so mad and was so angry. After all I hadn't done nothing naughty, only music. She gave me no slap or punished me,  she only asked me why I had made the holes ! I explained about my music and the nice sound the jar made when I pierced a hole, and even wanted her to listen, but strangely she didn't want me to make more holes and told me that now she had to do all this work again. I think I was punished enough when I saw her carrying up the jars three floors, put them in the kitchen and covered them again with cellophane. My poor little heart was full of pity to see my mother running up and down the stairs. She didn't want me to help, as she was convinced that I would drop the precious jars. What I didn't realize at that time was that food was something so important. You couldn't buy whatever you wanted,  like today. Nothing was wasted either, she knew something very well,  what I had never known. Hunger ! It was so shortly after the war, food was something very precious.

Today I wonder  how was it possible that you could keep potatoes and apples for months in your cellar and they didn't rot. Today you keep an apple for a week and it becomes brown and potatoes grow sprouts after two weeks at the latest ! Even the so said "organic" once !

After these first musical experiences I got a real flute for Christmas !



which I still have.


more participants at Jenny Matlock's Alphabet Thursday

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

more participants here



(got picture by a friend)

ESCAPE TO THE COUNTRY

Many of you know the BBC series "Escape to the country". As the weather was nice I thought it would be a good idea to do the same and just go to the country side around my city.




I stopped at an modernized old farm house and admired these beautiful horses with these strong legs.



The streets have a name, but they haven't changed in centuries !



Some beautiful mansions





smaller houses





almost little castles



a park in the middle of the town



cobbled streets













and nice little houses which haven't change, and if there weren't the cars, one could thing the time stood still.

MY WEEKEND OF JANUARY 18

This weekend was really nice ! First we went to see a play in our City Hall's theater. The play was called "Tics"



It was hilarious, we came out our bellies hurting. The play described 6 people who had a special tic. The eldest one suffered from the Tourette syndrome, the worst, which means that in the middle of a sentence he suddenly comes up with the exclamation of obscene words or socially inappropriate and derogatory remarks. We really learned a lot of very vulgar words !

The second one was a lady who ran all 2 minutes to the bathroom to wash her hands, the third calculated everything, hours in seconds, years in weeks, hours and seconds, the fourth couldn't walk on the floor because there were lines, the fifth, the young girl always repeated her sentences twice (even when they were very long) and the 6th, the old lady was obsessed that she had forgotten to turn off something in her house and made everybody mad as she always wanted to go home to switch off the light, turn off the gas etc.

All these 6 tics made the play so funny, but it wasn't a stupid humor it was actually rather sad. Nobody would like to have such a disease. Imagine you speak to a mayor for example and put "fu... you" in the middle of a sentence or even worse.

On Saturday morning I met with Cezar and Léia ( Bonjour et Bon Voyage) who were in Brussels because they had driven their son to the airport. His flight was at 6 am and the poor parents had to get up very very early. But still they wanted to meet me and at 8 am they called. They already were in Waterloo, and wanted to have a light breakfast, but Waterloo still sleeps at that time and everything is closed ! A real ghost town ! We met at the Carrefour parking and of course recognized each other immediately, our cars were the only once on the parking ! After a hearty greeting I drove them to the only place which is open in Waterloo for breakfast ... A bakery who had the good idea to also serve breakfast.



We had a nice coffee with freshly baked croissants and Cezar enjoyed a yummy chocolate cake. It was as if we had known each other in real, ever since we met on our blogs. We chatted and chatted and time went by, I wanted to show them Waterloo and also take them home, but they were so tired that we preferred to do this another time. They originally come from Brazil, and are in Europe since 6 years. First in Luxemburg and then in a real "hole" in the middle of Flanders where people are very narrow minded and not stranger friendly at all. The most famous madhouse of Belgium is located there too and it is a miracle that they didn't become mad ! We just visited the Waterloo church across the street, which is famous because it was the hospital where the wounded soldiers from the Waterloo battle were taken to.

I so much enjoyed their visit and once again thought how wonderful it is that through blogging you meet people from all over the world which probably I would never have met without my "Window to the world" !




In the afternoon I went to Nicole, was welcomed by Charlie who opened the door for me and then wanted to play with his ball. I had brought a DVD imitating an open fire for her Television, and she was delighted when the logs started to burn and she faked to heat up her hands ! It looks so real and also makes the noises of burning wood. Instead of looking at a dark TV screen, we looked at the burning fire.

On Sunday it was grey cold and windy and not really an inspiring weather to go out. So I spent the day with blogging, sorting out pictures, choose posts from my old blogs to review and correct them as I want to have them printed as a book.  A so said "Best of". That's quite a lot of work since I have to go back to 2006 ! And when I watched TV a stalker watched me too ... Arthur staring at me through the window into the living room !