Days 422-424 – August 3-5, 2012 – Coming back from a summer’s non-vacation…

Number of days in Amsterdam – 422-424

Number of days without a bike theft – 418-421

Days since it last rained – 0

So, yeah… the blog has gotten a bit behind again, but trust me, it’s with good reason.

For one, I haven’t been writing here, because I’ve been writing elsewhere. And when I write elsewhere, I’m doing it to try to pay the bills, and I’m still home-daddying, so something’s gotta give. Unfortunately, it’s this site.

So I let things fall behind a bit, but I do have the cover story from the latest issue of HOST Magazine, and you can read it here.

So now you’re going to get me reaching back into my notes and memories, compiling something akin to one of those “What I did on my summer vacation” reports. Over the next few days these posts will be coming quickly, and soon we’ll all be back to school and up to date.

Crated and Elated -

Back in Detroit, we used to subscribe to a CSA every year. It stands for “Community Supported Agriculture,” and it means that you’re buying a share in a local farm. Every week during the growing season, we’d have a new delivery of fresh organic produce.

Some years were great, like the year where the farm was productive and the produce was handed off by a farmer that Nicole found to be easy on the eyes. Other years not so much, like the year where the weather was horrible, or the year we subscribed to a farm that seemed to be selling the best produce at their stand at the farmer’s market, leaving what was left for the members.

Eventually we found a service called Door to Door Organics, which brought a ton of great food to the house every week, and included stuff we would never have bought and had never cooked with, forcing us to expand our culinary horizons and learn to cook with fennel and collard greens.

Now I really miss collard greens, because they don’t grow them here.

But we did just sign up with a service that I like even better. It’s called De Krat (“The Crate”).

Because Amsterdam is such a big city surrounded by lush farmland as well as the ocean, De Krat leverages all of that to send us a crate each week loaded not only with organic produce, but with meat or fish, items from the dairies, juice and bread.

This was our first krat. I’m looking forward to expanding my culinary horizons once again.

And because we make our own baby food, we’re getting the best ingredients for the Kitten as well.
And getting things all caught up with all y’all is a pretty heavy task, but doing so is a matter of pride. Speaking of which…

Pride Fest -

If you’ll remember last year, the Amsterdam Pride Fest was a big party. It was this year, too, but with a baby in tow, we were loathe to push our way to the front for the parade, so it looked more like this.

Even so, it was a great time, as the Kitten loved the fact that the air was filled with confetti, and we danced with her to all the songs you’d expect to hear at a Pride Fest, like “It’s Raining Men,” “Dancing Queen,” and the entire Village People catalog.

But even so, the day was prone to sudden downpours, and the streets were filled with increasingly drunken revelry, and we (along with Kitten’s BFF and her parents) eventually got sick of the madness, deciding to retire back to the Pijp for a movie and a night in.

Are we getting old, or are our priorities just shifting? I’ll go with the latter, as the next morning we loaded up the Kitten and set out for our longest bike ride yet. We rode to the banks of the Amstel… and just kept following it. We rode and rode, as the city gave way to cottages and houseboats.

At one point, it started to thunder, and we decided that we’d gone too far to turn back to beat the rain, so we continued, hoping to find some sort of shelter.

Eventually, we rolled into the small town of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, just as it started raining. A little resorty town, we locked up and went into a restaurant for drinks and snacks as we waited for it to stop raining.

Kitten sat and watched little kids run around, including a little bot with flowing hair and a pull car. Great, she’s already got a thing for boys with long hair and fast wheels! Actually, though, it’s a little sad – she watches kids run and play, and I can just tell that she wants to join them. I know this time of her as a baby will be over too soon, and I want to keep her tiny, and I also want to tell her, “don’t wish this away, you’ll be running and playing before you know it. Just stay small for us for a little bit.”

But when you want to run and play, you don’t want to hear that.