Cardgames, bruises, friends, make art

So, just before we´re leaving for that crazy weekend trip (riding our bikes 50 kilometres through the rain, to then freeze our asses off in a tent in Holland), I´ll give you a quick update:

We´ve been handdrawing a Harry Potter Card game:

My sons have recently been enthusiastic about those trump-card games. They have a Star Wars one, and a dinosaur one, and one with poisonous animals (a huge favorite).
I love them, because they teach them to compare numbers,  and to read, and to memorize...so, they are super educative. 1000 mommie points to Gryffindor, plus, they keep them educated.
However, it´s been cold and rainy over here, and as you know, Harry Potter is like a religion in this family. We pretend to be atheists, but in fact, all our kids get the Harry Potter books read to them starting at the age of five, and by seven, they need to have them memorized and be ready to quote them at any given time.
They are.
And we do have the large Hogwarts banner in our kitchen. 
So... I could have bought a Harry Potter trumps game - they are probably around 5 Euro on amazon.
But isn´t it so much nicer to hand-illustrate them, and think about the different ratings, and debate which characters we still need?
Some of my favourites are

...Professor Bims, drawn by Mehmet (the ghost who teaches history, for the few poor of you who´ve just seen the movies), or

Sybil Trewlawney, drawn by Ronja, or

Draco and Voldemort - my team evil. The ratings were decided by Mehmet and Miro - I´m really not sure if it´s adequate that Voldemort has 4 of 5 points for Quidditch, but what the heck.
Alltogether, we made a total of 36 cards so far, but I don´t think we´ll stop there.

Wanna see Harry, Ron and Hermione?

 

This is my Ronnie, with her two best friends. They´ve been playing Harry, Ron and Hermione (amongst other things - I think they´ve also been Sam, Frodo and Pippin), and it really fits the beautiful relationship they´ve devoloped, now that their time in primary school is coming to a close. Ah, I love my two sons in law ;)

We had Couchsurfers over again: 

 

An Italian mom with her son, who was a perfect match for my twins.Oh, it was so bright and shiny having them here - it´s a good thing they´ll come back next week, on their way back home. Mehmet, Miro and her Nico communicated so well, and while the kids played, we cooked like an italian family - I made pasta and she made Polenta and I made cupcakes and she made almond cookies and I made salad and she made cheese with mustardo, the most delicious thing I´ve ever eaten, and it was loud and crowded around our table and she told stories about the community-living experiences she has and her night in a russian prison. 

That´s why I love Couchsurfing.

I got a job today!
Like, I mean, a paid job. Like, a four-digits Euro paid job, even if it´s in the smaller four digits region. After the summer holidays, when my sons start school, I´m a working mom.
I didn´t apply for anything, but I hang around in the smokers corner behind school for long enough, so they finally decided to take me in ;)
And I´m really, really excited, because I know I´ll be doing what I´m really good at, well, in fact, what I have been doing for 3 years now, only I´ll finally get a proper payment. My payment. Feels damn good!
The only thing I´m scared of is that I might not find the time to continue writing my books, and I do not want to give that up.

Shortly after I received those news - I sat in class, teaching calculating with Euros - Hermione Ronnie came in, because she´d had an accident in sports:

A rope fell on her head. A rope! Must have been freakishly high, that rope. So, since she felt pretty wobbly after that, we cancelled the scouts camp she´d planned for this weekend, to keep her here for another night. I´ve read her all the child-proof chapters of my books, and she gave me some helpful hints for my fuure plot.
Now she allready seems quite fine, so I think she can just come and camp with us tomorrow.

And you know what Neil Gaiman says:
Make Art.

So she did:

It came with a written interpretation:
The red symbolizes an open wound, coming from the stone she´s adjusting with her hand on the small dowel. The yeollow thingies are a sun going down, and a falling, yellow cloud, symbolizing downfall in general. And there´s an owl. Because she likes owls. And I´m not making this stuff up. She´s just exactly like that. Very... um... poetic.

While we´re talking about poetic and creative conversion from pain into art - let me just show you my video of the day:

Biffy Clyro -- Opposite - MyVideo
Ahhhhhh!
I love love love their videos, always. Even when Simon Neil doesn´t go shirtless. I love how they are totally over-the-top dramatic. How they show this literal walking-away-from-a-carcrash-relationship. And how they include the warped tree from the album cover. And all the glittering shards. I loved this song even before the album release, when I could only find bad quality acoustic versions on youtube, but now, with this video, I love it even more.

Eva´s on her scouts camp, and right when she returns, she can pack her bags again, because she´s leaving for France, where she´ll be staying for two weeks. Tim got his vaccs, because he´s going to Asia next month, for four long weeks. And Ronnie will go on a class trip, too, so it´ll be just me and the boys. Which is lovely, too. And I´m missing my best friend. That, as well. I wish she was here so I could just debate the latest Game of Thrones episode with her. Sir Jaime´s a hero, see?

And now... well, it´s late, and i have to cycle to Holland tomorrow. I´ll smoke one last cigarette, and I might check into this book of mine, and then it´s... Good Night :)