One year ago : the very beggining

One year ago, it was a Saturday. I was recovering from my last heart broken and a psychosomatic flu. It was the first day I was not spying Facebook to see what message he had write. Instead, I had convinced Fredrik to join.

Lately we had started to become closer. We were chatting every day together. He had comforted me in my sorrow with infinite kindness. Immediatly, he became my confident. I guess that my story touched him. The classical story of someone stuck between two half relationships. I had came back with the father of my kids after a one year broke up. But … I still needed my secret farfar away love story to handel it. When this one ended, my life lost its false balance. The world seemt to have crashed. I wasn’t sure to be able to handel the life I had if I didn’t had this little sunshine to enlight reality. I decided to give up this time, - definitively, I though – to believe in romantism.
« You have done enough, Wendy ! » did I say to myself « Stop to dream ! Now it’s time to grow up. Focus on your partner, on your kids, on your family. And for what you are missing, go back to spirituality instead of falling in love. You had enough crush in your life. Now, you have done with this. Universal Love, that’s the real answer !»
We can say that I prevented myself to fall in love again. I strictly forbidden it to me. Instead, I started to do yoga, to read books, to meditate, and to pray…

My prayer was « Please, dear angels, allow me to enter in contact with you again. I‘ve understand. I want to stop this cycle of failed relationships, and falling in love. I want focus on Universal Love. ». The miraculous answer happened that Saturday.

I was supposed to visit my Hollander friend Andrea. Another friend was supposed to pick me up, and drive me there, in the middle of the country, but he resigned at last minute. I was tired, a little bit depressed still and the perspective of three hours of travel by train discouraged me. A last client came very late in the shop and made me miss my bus. Then I gave up my plan of travelling.

I wrote in Facebook : « Finaly, I’m not going to spent the week end in Holland :( »
Fredrik answered : « Too bad for Andrea, but good news for me ! »

In a way I could not explain to me, I was relieved. The sun was shining. The leaves had already taken their autumn colors of yellow and red, mixed with tender green. For the first time since the last weeks, I biked back home the hearth light. I felt that I would spent a nice week end on MSN.

Life is a chain of unpredictible events. Sometimes, the irony is so perfect, that its hard to believe that no entity is behind it.
When I came back on MSN, Fredrik asked me if Margret (his ex girlfriend) and Tuukka (a guildmate) were together. And then I felt really stupid ! I had insisted he made a Facebook accoumpt, and by doing so, he suddendly had access to all my pictures, including those of the Guild Meeting in London, where Margret met for the first time her finnish lover. There was nothing « wrong » with this story, but Fredrik didn’t know, and those who knew had been careful to not let him guess it. I felt suddendly extremly guilty, selfish, and fool ! I had hurt the one who was so nicely curing me?
So, I dropped MSN, get my GSM, and phoned him : « Hello Vizann, it’s me...Aozora. I’m so sorry. ».

I think it’s the last time we used those names.

And so started the week end which changed my life. A chain of sad events which drove us to paradise. We talk the whole night together. I was alone, protected in the darkness of the living room. Everyone else was alseep. And me, I was discovering the sweetest person I ever met !

- Wendy

Wendy&Fredrik's adventure at the Belgian Coast

Thursday 12 august

As we could not afford holidays in Italy, or a city trip in London, we decided atleast to go at the sea for one day. The meteo wasn’t so promising, but Thursday was the only day without much rain (as they said), so we couldn’t miss it!
We left the house reasonably early, or well, not too late, with our two Nakamura. We rode fast as we had only 30 min to arrive to the Braine l’Alleud railroad station and get the train for Ostende. Once arrived, we fold our bikes, slip them in our gigantic bags, and sat in the hall, as there was obviously – sunny day during the holidays - not a single seat free.
We arrived at Ostende at 12h. The weather was nice. The city, an old fashioned bath station from the 19th century, was full of life. There was a festival or a party of some kind by the gothik and dark cathedral, and a lot of people in holidays enjoying the harbour, or the commercial street.
We ride fastly to the sea. On the “Albert promenade”, we immediately targeted the shop were we would buy our sandwich and our “crème glacée artisanale”. Yumm Yumm : Pistache-Cookie for Fredrik, Pecan – Nougat –Tiramisu for Wendy. We ate our ice-cream facing the sea. It’s always pleasant to watch the horizon, it appease and open the mind.


It was windy and a bit cloudy, but we didn’t had made all this way to not plunge in the water. So we agreed that despite the too chilly temperature for our taste, it was important to get a bath in the brownish water of the North Sea. It’s then that Wendy noticed that she forgot to take the swimming clothes she had prepared the morning.
We hesitated…If Fredrik boxer could barely be taken for a swimming pant; Wendy’s underwear didn’t allow the confusion at all. It was so silly and so sad to go to the sea and not taste the salty water! After a long moment of hard thoughts, Wendy decided to hide herself in a beach parero she hadn’t forgot, and to swim like that. Fredrik toke one of the two towels and his teeshirt that he let on the shore a little bit further.

Splish splashhhh !!! Water was good, and refreshing. There were a lot of waves and it was so damn fun to swim and jump in the sea. There is a simple joy in this which fill up with happiness. Jumping in the waves together, that’s how life should be!

But then Fredrik realised that the tide was growing and that…Where was his teeshirt and the towel !!!!! This really broke out the fun for the three minute we spend searching the poor clothes in the water. What will we do, with wet underwear, wet parero, only one towel left to dry us and no teeshirt for Fredrik! He finally found it, dropping in the sea, just in time. We spent some time in the sand together, trying to read our book and get dry more by the wind than by the sun, disappearing behind larger and larger clouds.

We ended the day by a little ride on the “Albert Promenade” , and then decide to go back home before the rain finished to wet the last thing dry we had left.

We stand only 4 or 5 hours at the sea, but was definitively worst it. We spent a sweet and cozy evening–night in front of the computer to relax after this day, and we spent the whole morrow reading books in the sunny garden.

Cupcake and Mid night cake

What to do to keep kids busy and entertained along a rainy day? There are not so much pleasant solutions.
You can let them watch television the whole day, or playing diverse video game, including World of Warcraft on your own acoumpt, on your own computer!!! But this is not really healthy, nor very educative…and you do not have access to your computer anymore.
You can also take the time to play with them a game, on table, such as “Le jeu du Loup” (The game of the Wolf - age minimum : 3y), “La pyramide d’animaux” (The animals pyramide – age minimum required 3y) or “Labyrinthe” (age minimum 7y ---ooooh harder that one !!) . But I bet that you would prefer to play World of Warcraft instead, or even farmville on Facebook.
Or you can let them play what they want, let them run and yell, and fight and cry, make mess everywhere and you finish the day with a huge headache.

Let’s share today a super trick that will rejoice the heart of every parents and babysitters. The ideal solution for everyone is …. to cook cupcake! This solution have many advantages : Cupcakes are easy to cook! Cupcakes are funny to make! Cupcakes are cute! And cupcakes are delicious!
Everyone can participate to the preparation of this pastry. Every kid (and older) will enjoy to decorate cupcakes with coloured melted whitechocolate, little smarties, nuts, and sugar forms of all kind. It’s like playing with plasticine, exept that you can eat your creation after!
When cupcake are done, it’s a real pleasure for the eyes. You can expose them proudly in the living room, prepare some tea, rejoice, and …..EAT THEM ALL!!


The problem with cupcakes exposed in the living room is that they are extremely tempting. Especially along a long night spend in diverse night activities. But the cupcakes can not be eaten unless you want hear cries the next morning.
The ideal solution to this problem…is to cook a mid night cake! Mid night cake is easy to cook! Mid night cake is fast to cook! Midnight cake is delicious! No one will know you have cook a mid night cake, you can keep it all for you only!

Ahhh! What a delicious feeling of freedom when you cook and eat a good cake together at 2h the morning when everyone else is sleeping! That's how life should be !

Healthy food!

Among different decisions of how to make our life together sweet - such as the one to buy some fantastic bamboo chairs for the garden, or the one to download a lot of series and movies to watch together – we decided to start eating more healthy. This was a big project, because, separated we're not the best example of healthiness when it comes to food. But when we are together, our joy, enthusiasm and natural gourmandise drive us to believe ourselves to be in eternal holidays and feast every day with all the deliciousness we can find.

So, we – or rather Wendy – established a little program of very healthy and low energy food. We followed this program bravely, eating a lot of fruits, vegetables, and proteines, and (for now) saying goodbye to all our edible sins.


But this week…this week we have succumbed! Thursday, we made a rich dinner. With a spoon of potatoes and meat in pepper sauce! Then we yielded during our geek night, and we eat Swedish cookies with our tea. Not so much however…It was almost reasonable.

Friday, our laziness agreed with our gourmandise. Always a very bad combination! Instead of preparing a nice light dinner to compensate our earlier excess, we ordered Chinese takeout; some springrolls and other dishes. The much heavier food was so different for us at this point, that we only managed to eat the first meal left the remains for the morrow after. This dinner still didn’t stop us from buying a big pot of Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream: chocolate and marshmallow.

And then, Saturday. We should've stopped here, and started being more reasonable again, as was our initial plan. What we really did though, was to eat the remains of the Chinese takeout, and at the evening get another box of Ben & Jerry's. Caramel and macadamia nuts! “Whatever", we thought, "It's saturday today, we'll be more reasonable tomorrow.

But today, Sunday, we didn't find that courage at all. As we had been either inside or in the garden for the last few days, we decided to pay a visit to the Museum of Music. And after our educative excursion, we finished the afternoon in a thai restaurant. It was very good, and so was the third bin of Ben & Jerry's we ended up eating afterwards.. (Cookie dough!!)

Mission in Bruxelles

Today, we took the trip to Bruxelles. The travel time is a bit long, 45 minutes - especially in this heat.Today's mission was to find an outfit for Thaïs (Wendy’s daughter) who will participate for the first time to Avatar, a yearly famous LARP event in Belgium.

This she will attend with her two uncles (Wendy's brothers), Corentin and Thomas.

So, our adventure started in the middle of Saint Gilles, an area in Bruxelles with a particular atmosphere. It's basically a cocktail of poor population, artists, strangers of any country and older people, it’s easy to find cheap shops there of any kind and every taste. This including the world-spanning arabic shops: cheap, exotic and kitch. We visited four shops in a row, where we at each found one piece for the costume. End result: little rogue! Not bad.

However, we were not done. Just so we didn't make the drip just for this outfit, we decided to go further in the “normal” commercial area and buy books in the Waterstone English Library. We got two books for Wendy (the book 2 and 3 of The Runelord serie writted by David Farland), Fredrik had enough books to read for now.

Hungry, thirsty and tired, we ended to stop by one restaurant Ekxi, sort of bio fastfood for Bobo ("Bourgeois boheme", aka rich but ecologic/spiritual/artist-esque people) After some back and forth, we got a chicken salad. Nom nom! 

On the way back, we saw the typical street musician, but with a fairly non-typical instrument. The easiest way to describe it would be a big bell / wok-pan with lid on kept between his knees and used as a percussion, apparently an instrument concieved in Switzerland, year 2000. The sound is not much unlike the kind of hammered-to-shape "beach-style" metal drum that's often heard in tropically themed music. 

At the point of writing we're back home - still warm from the sun, but cooling off with some lemonade Wendy made (also nom nom). It's almost time for dinner (and later, more slacking?). 

\o

Sun day

For today, we had big plans. We were to arrange the garage and the room of Wendy's kids, which up to now had been mostly used as storage space. We were firmly decided to be efficient today!
However, the sun was generous since the first hours of the day, so we decided instead that we would atleast enjoy the morning outside in our little stone garden.
We get our breakfast, comfortably sat onto the blanket, with our books ready to be read.
And we enjoyed the morning, and also the afternoon. And we didn't put one foot in the garage...Not yet. Perhaps we'll find the courage to be more reasonable this afternoon? And afterall the question is : is it really reasonable to work enclosed in a garage while you can get the sun nicely along a summer day?