Four months later

Last friday, september 4th, the police reports about the tragic Queensday event came out. Not much news unfortunately, but nobody really thought so anyway...since the madman who caused it all died as well.

Because of this everything was all over the news again for several days of course. Pretty emotional especially since every TV-programme that talks about this always thinks it's necessary to use the images of the attack, without a warning.
Not a pretty sight especially since my uncle is visible, and recognisable, on most of the material.

My mom was asked by one of the major newsprogrammes to tell her story, well her reaction to the reports at least. Live on tv. Channel 1. Prime time. Sitting in between the major of Apeldoorn & a forensic psychologist.
She was nervous but she did it! She didn't really get the chance to say all she'd have wanted to say of course, but she did good...I am so proud!

Click on 'bekijken' in the link below to watch the show.

Krezip - Sweet goodbyes, HMH Amsterdam GOODBYE CONCERT

Great concert, glad I got to see them at last...at their last show!

Anna Ternheim - Summer Rain

'You never know
Until after the shock
When you wake up
What’s broken what’s not'

Silence...

Don't really know what to write, don't know what to say to people either other than telling what happened.

What happened?
Some madman drove through a crowd of people in my mom's hometown Apeldoorn yesterday. The queen & rest of royal family were there to celebrate Queensday, the biggest & best party of the year in NL. He was aiming for their bus but missed...the Royal family, audience and millions of people at home witnessed this.
I was one of those people, slightly hangover after a night of hardcore partying during Queensday-night we were watching the live report, having breakfast, laughing at Maxima's strange hat...and then this happened. We only realized a little later that lots of people actually got hurt. Disgusting sight.

We watched for an hour or so, but what can you do...you go out and try to enjoy this wonderful day with a weird feeling in the back of your head. So I did...went to Gouda with a dear friend where I met up with more good friends.
And then I noticed my mom had called me twice. A little later she tried to call again. She left a message. A message which made the world stop, 'I'm on the way to the hospital, your uncle is severely hurt in the Apeldoorn incident'.
When I'd finally got hold of her and my sisters I tried to get it together and realize what happened..but I don't think I did, still don't think I did even if it's a day later.

Last night was waiting and watching the news. Then mom calls again, saying it's not good. More tears. And talking with my friends.
Later I decided to go home and try to call my mom again, no news...they were gonna spend the night there.
Weird night, weird dreams...numb when I got to work. Made the mistake to pick up a Metro on my way there and realized there's a close-up of my uncle in it, plus several other photos where you can see him.
Mom calls, bad news...too much fluid in his head, end of story.

Silence....

Things

Of course I SHOULD be blogging about the fantastic weekend i had in Copenhagen last weekend, or at least about the great concert there. Or i could blog about the concert i was at last night...or the concerts & trips that are to come...
Or even about some stuff that happened in the past few months when i wasn't really blogging.

But näh...i'm too lazy for that! Instead I'll show you my cool new Converse's, my street & my 'new' bike.
I finally finally got an 'Oma'-bike...a lifelong wish haha! Mr. Giraffe-bike was kind of dying (well he almost let me die by stopping in the middle of the street!)...so i traded him in...literally, i got a 10euro discount on this bike by trading him in...quite funny when you think about the fact that i once spent 15euro's to buy Mr. Giraffe haha!

My purple All Stars...they were made for me!


While biking home in my street this afternoon


My bike is in fact the nice & shiny one in the front




Bye bye Mr. Giraffe

Mr. Giraffe back in 2006, in Amsterdam, with Stina!

Per Gessle - Doesn't make sense, Pumpehuset Copenhagen

Unforgetable night, roll on Amsterdam!

My Binkie, 1996 - 2009

Binkie didn’t have an easy life. The story that I have been told is that he was taken from the streets and brought to an animal shelter. He was then adopted but soon taken back as he didn’t get along with the other pets in that family. Later he was adopted again and he then lived with his new owners for some years before he ended up with me now almost 6 years ago.

Binkie and I needed some time to get used to each other. People who didn’t have the chance to witness this; Binkie could meow quite loud (also called screaming), especially when I got home he used to be very ‘angry’. He wasn’t really angry, he was mostly screaming for attention.
He could sometimes follow me around the house until it annoyed the hell out of me, but he also enjoyed sleeping sessions on the couch or windowsill for hours and hours. When I pulled him up he would press himself against me and rub his head against my neck while purring loudly. He didn’t only purr loudly, he could also snore like a grown-up man. There have been a lot of times I woke him up in the middle of the night because he was snoring so loud that he woke me up!

Binkie and I were a team. Visitors were welcome, but he much rather had me all for himself. As far as I know we had a lot of good talks together, but not everyone will understand that.
When I had to leave Binkie home alone because of some sort of holiday or whatever there were always my dear ex-neighbours, sisters, parents, Elise or aunt Annie who didn’t only feed him but most of all gave him the attention that he always wanted more than food.

Binkie wasn’t the healthiest cat, he was on a special diet because of feline lower urinary tract disease and weighted over 7 kilo’s, which made him a big cat.
In the fall of 2007 he became ill, he ate less and less and in the end lost over 2 kilo’s of his weight. It turned out that Binkie had kidney-failure. The only remedy was giving him drips to try to clean his body of all the toxic that he couldn’t get rid of himself and it worked!
I gave him the drips at home and after a few months his blood levels were almost back to normal again. March 2008 I stopped with the drips, the only thing he got was medicine (that he liked eating, thank God) and a special diet. And it all went well…for a long time. His kidneys were damaged though so once it would go the wrong way again.

Once arrived 3 weeks ago. The vet & me had good hopes that the drips would do the trick again, and it seems to be going in the right direction at first but in the end he slowly went downhill; he didn’t eat properly, was lying on the couch apathetically, wasn’t waiting screaming behind the door when I got home… He seemed to be doing a bit better all of a sudden last week, but in the end I had to face the fact that he had more & more bad moments every day.

On Friday night I had Binkie put to sleep. He will be cremated one of these days and his ashes will be scattered on a nice green field. Binkie was almost 13 years old.

Binkie was just a cat, but he was MY cat and the sweetest cat in the whole wide world.