extremely loud &incredibly close

a book by jonathan safran foer.

i am so pleased with my new book purchase! its so good i cant stop reading it; which is incredibly convenient because i've needed entertainment while sitting in a empty apartment last friday and now sitting in my boyfriend's parents house; blaaahhh. nothing worse when you're not even in your own home to do nothing. at least then you're familiar with what to do to keep yourself occupied. but this book is so good.
i must admit i have a talent for picking out really good reads; i have friends that always want to bring me to the book store with them to help them pick out a book, like i'm some sort of expert or something.i'm really not, and its really easy to find a good book. heres how, according to me:

first you must not mind wandering around a bookstore. i've come to learn that i have better luck just going to the "literature" section rather than a specific genere. but thats me, i suppose if you absolutely know that you love mysteries or that your favorite author is danielle steel or whoever this doesnt really apply to you. but i dont have a favorite author, nor do i have a favorite genere, and i'm guessing those people who have asked for my guidence in a bookstore have the that same problem.

so anyway, i like to look through "literature" i then browse through the books stopping to look at anything that has an interesting cover or an interesting title. these are the first things to grab me. i then read the back of the book, i also read the reviews on the cover aswell. i do this because if it says things like "bitterly funny i laughed through the whole thing" blah blah, i think thats pretty important because i too want to laugh through the whole thing. but if the reviews dont say anything that makes me go "wow" or invoke a type of emotion i wouldnt mind experiencing through a book then i put it down.
after reading the back covers and the reviews i go to the first page. the first page is also very important for me because if i struggle through the first page than i dont want to even bother. if i find the writing style smooth and moves at a good pace and captures me then i'll def be sold. and thats all i do. so obviously the cover and the title dont neccessarily have to be fantastic, but if someone doesnt even know where to begin, like me-i never know what i'm looking for when i walk in, then its a good place to start because then you wont be overwhelmed by all those books.

like this book here, i just happened to be walking by and it was on the top of a stack of books on a table display. a bold red spine, bold red title and a drawing of a boy chasing a flock of birds. it caught my eye. the back synopsos wasnt terribly interesting but the reviews said "dazzling" "heartbreaking" and "beautiful" which sounded better so after reading the first page i couldnt even possibly put it back. heres a little clip:

"...another good thing is i could train my anus to talk when i farted. if i wanted to be extremely hilarious, i'd train it to say "wasn't me!" every time i made an incredibly bad fart. and if i made an incredibly bad fart in the hall of mirrors, which is in versailles, which is outside of paris, which is in france, obviously, my anus would say "ce n'étaispas moi!" "

how could anyone say no to that! and it hasnt disappointed yet!!it really is "beautiful" just as the independant on sunday says.

The apartment

We did most of our moving this past weekend. All we have left in the house are the clothes and dishes we'll need for the next week, a mattress, the desk and chair and a few boxes. It echoes in here its so empty.

we moved the mattress into the living room so we could have something to sit on. Gregory is loving it because now he can watch TV as he's going to sleep. I've told him I don't ever want a TV in the bedroom. Mostly because he's a fanatic. Plus he falls asleep to it and NEVER turns it off. So it'll wake me up throught out the night until I finally wake up enough to realize that its late and he's already sleeping and then I get angry thinking of all the uninterrupted sleep I could of been having. So it was my idea to move the mattress and I figured he could have a treat for a week. However, waking up this morning was no treat, for either of us! We both had stiff necks and backs. uggghhhhh sleeping on a thin, saggy, unsupportive-European mattress nearly broke us. And gregorys tone went from "yay!!!! Mattress in the livingroom for a week!" to" ugh god, can we do this for a week?"

1 thing I didn't think of about the mattress in the livingroom: you can see right through the kitchen window. And what's through our kitchen window? Only about a dozen construction workers working on the roof of the house next door. So I stretched and yawned and did all those ugly waking up things people do only to look over to catch eyes with someone on the roof across the street.yes. perfect.

so day 1 of 7 in the empty apartment is pretty much the same as usual only now I have more room to slide across the floor in my socks. Cleaning must commence. Thursday is a holiday so there will be a cleaning party here. Guests include: me, Gregory and gregorys mother. She invited herself because she's a cleaning fanatic. Saturday everything goes! Sleeping at his parents house for the weekend. And we get the keys to the new place on the 29th. And then everything starts all over, only in reverse.

Niet te veel, hé

yesterday afternoon gregory's friend Dimintri called me. he asked if i wanted to do something. i was very suprised because no one ever calls to see if i want to do something in the middle of a weekday. and even more so, no one ever calls from WEST FLANDERS to see if i want to do something. so i said yes. i was a little nervous because we dont see Dimintri too often and i never hang out with him one-on-one. i just really hate thoseawkward silences when you dont know what to say anymore. it makes me anxious. but there was none of that!

he came all the way to gent to pick me up with his little three year old daughter, Alicia, in tow. wow. what a great little kid, honestly. we drove in the car for well over an hour, do to construction work everywhere. we even stopped at an auto supply store for a half hour. during this whole time she only fussed maybe twice for maybe 5 minutes each because she was thirsty. hell, so was i, Dimitri's car was HOT. she was AWESOME and quiet. who doesn't love that about a child. after the car place we went to the park where she could play. we drank soda, ate apple cake and watched alicia play on everything. it was fun.

to round off my busy afternoon, Dimitri and i even saved a couple of children on our way back to his house. as we were driving along i happened to see 2 small children (one was younger than alicia and the other was probably around the same age or maybe a year or so older) dancing on a small ledge of the upstairs of a house. i gasped and Dimitri said "what??" i pointed to the children and he was worried too so he pulled over. he knocked on the door and asked the woman who opened the door if it was normal for her children to be playing on the ledge like that. she looked confused, stepped outside of the house and saw the horror!! she ran upstairs and grabbed her children. now i dont really think it was our place to question her parenting but we couldnt very well leave knowing there are children on the roof. the youngest one thought it was so funny. she was giggling and waving and dancing. meanwhile i'm in the car wringing my hands together mentally willing that woman's fat ass up the stairs faster. we were hero's.

after returning to Dimitri's house things calmed down. alicia had to go to bed. before bed she was drinking some ice tea. she apparently wanted alot, but in small quantities. so dimitri had to constantly keep pouring her more and more and each time she'd say over and over "niet te veel, hé" which means "not too much, eh" she said it in the most cutest littlest girlie voice that she made it sound like something worth writing about.

Moving

We officially have begun our move. We'll be moving into our new place for June 1st. Well, we'll be moving on the weekend before, really. This is good because if we hadn't found anybody for June, we would of had to pay rent for both the house and the apartment.
as we expected the apartment was really easy to get rented. We put our for rent signs up 2 Sundays ago and its rented already. We never even had a chance to post it on the internet. A few hours after we put up our signs someone called about it, they said they had another apartment to look at on Friday so they'd let us know. Then on Thursday night another couple called about it and they came to look at it on Friday night. They ended up taking it. They needed something right away and we needed to move right away so we both win. Plus we sold them our wardrobe aswell. Anyone whose bought something from Ikea knows what kind of hell their furniture is. For those of you who haven't: they have a DIY policy. Its suppose to be cheaper that way or something but you have to purchase EVERYTHING separate, right down to the screws. And their directions are just poorly drawn men assembling the thing. No words or anything. So you really only have a one page cartoon drawing to help you assemble your furniture. And basically once its up its up and don't bother taking it down because you'll never get it back together again. We wanted something different anyway. Our 550€ wardrobe is now sold for 425€ a little less than what I wanted it to go for but oh well.

so I started packing up today. WhatI could anyway. We know 2 couples that JUST moved andI asked Gregory to see if they have any boxes they want to get rid of. "no I'll ask my mom for some" last night he came home without any boxes."I'll get them tomorrow" he said last night. This afternoon "I'm gonna ask if my grandma has any" why he just doesn't ask the people that are SURE to have boxes I really don't know. But if he doesn't come home with any tonightI'm going to kick his ass. Considering it is my job to get us packed up and out, becausI'm home all day and he isn't. Just because he's unorganized doesn't mean that's howI want to do things.