Fracas Noir – Susanne Waldau – te Brake ~ for better or worse

A long but in essence good day is coming to an end. This was my last day in the office before my maternity leave. I haven’t been in the office for almost 2 weeks, working from home instead, so it was quite a heavy journey carrying my laptop bag which weighs a ton. I shouldn’t [...]

Waking up in this family is like finding yourself in an asylum. This morning was no different. Apart from waking up slightly earlier than what I have done for the past two weeks as today is my last day in the office, all was as it should, i.e. I had a shower and started my [...]

Today is Victoria’s next to last day in school before the vacation. She has a party this evening and she has apparently been planning this event for weeks. I wonder how different it is to be a tween today than 20 years ago. On the surface they appear completely different breeds. I recall using blue [...]

Last night I got a call from Reinout. I was in bed upstairs and he was on the sofa. As we haven’t figured out telepathy yet, mobile and skype are frequent means of communication within our three storey town house. Reinout was on the couch with the dogs and thought it was a brilliant opportunity [...]

My day has been slow and tedious. Everything takes twice as long to do. Work, cooking, cleaning etc. Loads of stuff I don’t even bother doing any longer. The wash is still in the washing machine since yesterday. I haven’t put a new cover on the bed since Cecile had her accident (at least I [...]

Today as I turned on my mobile I had an interesting voicemail from Reinout. “Hey Love, with me. It’s reeaaally amazing…so I’m driving to the bank and I need to find a gas station. So I drive to the gas station, but guess what it wasn’t there but there was something else… a police control. [...]

Many people may not know of this but I have lived for 12 years in the Netherlands. And still I don’t speak the language. I am not going to enter into a diatribe on this subject. I can only profess to being completely oblivious to the Dutch language and shall probably remain so for at [...]

Today Victoria asked me what I wanted for Christmas. It dawned on me in that moment that in fact I hadn’t bought a single Christmas present yet. I did a quick calculation, only 9 days to go.  Victoria’s question prompted a moment of thought. Although it’s the not the gift but the intention behind it [...]

This week is my last week working for Ex Machina before my maternity leave. It’s with mixed feelings of course, but truth be told, my body and mind are somewhere else.  The last couple of weeks have been especially difficult as I get so little sleep during the night. Therefore I have mostly been working [...]

Out family is like a zoo. Apart from two kids (Victoria and Reinout) plus one on the way, we have two dogs, one cat and a hamster. In the summer time our family extends to two ducks that frequent our garden,  a pond full of frogs and a heron that feeds on them. It’s a [...]