2 Birthdays and 2 Good-bye’s

I’m sad, he’s sad, so we need to keep on partying. That’s how you forget all about sailorboy leaving for the next 3 months - “it might be a year” kind of depressing period.. His Australian friend’s getting older and wiser, so we’re having a surprise party for him. Sailorboy thought of a lot of beer and tea – somehow seems a good present. So he says, let’s bike there. That means he’s going to bike there, I’m just playing beauty on the back of the bike. He tries to have the beers on the stand in front and decides after 50m it’s really a mad circus balancing the beers in front with the woman on the back while going fast 20minutes.. we take a taxi to my absolute content – it’s cold, man! The crowd at the party there is very exotic and I’m still wondering why he got a giant 50cm artificial key as a present from his buddies. We drink old Dutch gin and have beers after while chasing the cat and having another conversation why you don’t need to speak one word of Dutch while living in the Netherlands. That’s birthday 1.

While we’re starting a good weekend, we should end it up with another good party. That’s in Uitgeest. A small quiet place 30 minutes away from Amsterdam. Or 45minutes away, if you take the wrong train, the one I took. By then sailorboy got bored in the car waiting in front of the station and probably all the friends and relatives thought we were getting action on our way. This was first time of “meeting the family”, so I was nervous like hell. Blood was running to my head making me shy and in need to hold sailorboy’s hand and follow him so not to get in contact with strangers. After some drinks I relaxed ‘til I heroically shouted that I protest to having only 2 kingdoms. That was later that evening when we were playing some strategy team game, where my team got only disadvantages to begin with. God I hate losing.. even if it was a trip on foot to Rome!! For some kind of reason, the birthday boy was talking from time to time Russian with me, so I needed to sharpen my senses and somehow react.. didn’t work that well, so I gave it up. That’s birthday 2.

The good-bye day was almost there, so we decided to have a lunch as goodbye.. Sailorboy’s flight was supposed to be the day after in the morning, so no time for long good-bye’s. A quick lunch would do. So we went to the hotel next to my company, hold our hands. I felt miserable. And even more miserable when thinking I needed to go home to an empty half apartment. The thought of it was pumping up tears in my head. The design hotel is inexistent, the table is inexistent, the food is dry, my soul is empty. That’s good-bye 1.

The next morning I was supposed to wake up horribly early in the morning, get a taxi and get to Schiphol for the waving bye-bye. Just when I was about to order the cab, the phone rings. Sailorboy says he didn’t check the tickets. He’s leaving 12 hours later, that’s in the evening… wow! We get a good-bye night! It’s an unexpected sort of present. Like when you hope something terrible’s going to happen, just so he cannot leave any more. Well, at least we had one more fabulous night! That’s good-bye 2.

And then I waved… ta tar! Until we shall meet again…