Antwerpen: October 2012

Shiny Hair

I read somewhere that raw egg is good for healthy hair. Adds shine.

So I jumped into the shower and lathered two eggs through my hair. When I hopped out of the shower I noticed I had a whole lot of white stuff all through my hair.

I looked closer.

It was the egg.

I’d cooked egg in my hair.

For lunch today I made a cucumber salad with lots of raw garlic. It was a great accompaniment to my dumplings. But it did leave me with quite strong garlic breath, so I googled how to cure quite strong garlic breath.

Amongst suggestions of "chew on parsley” and “drink tea”, I came across one which said “take a spoonful of mustard, swish it around your mouth, swallow and repeat”. It was apparently fullproof, and as I didn’t have any fresh parsley on hand I thought I’d give it a go. I found some hot English mustard in my fridge (the dijon was past the used-by date) and followed the directions precisely.

However now, not only is my mouth is on fire, I seem to still have garlic breath. I think I've been duped.

The Toilet Paper Fiasco

Okay, so I’ll be the first to admit I’m not great with little people (often referred to as children or kids).

There is something about them that brings out the 5-year old in me. I get awkward when they stare at me, I don’t know where to look, so I just stare back. And I don’t like them getting their way all the time. And just because they’re small, I don’t think they have more of a right to lick the entire bowl, and spoon, after I’m the one who spent all the time cooking. With this in mind, I have no idea why I decided it would be a good idea to be a nanny for a little girl. Maybe I thought I would get to eat cake more often.

Perhaps this was my thought process for undertaking job.

The particularly unfortunate girl who I looked after (unfortunate because of my incapability as a child-carer, not because she had pigeon feet or didn’t know the difference between the colour orange and blue) had a ‘pants-wetting problem’.

This here is unfortunate.

One afternoon when I picked her up from school, she wet her pants before we reached a toilet. So I stuffed some toilet paper down her undies. I thought it would work a treat. But she started complaining about the toilet paper, saying it was irritating and she couldn’t walk with it. Between you and me, I thought this was a bit dramatic. So I said, FINE. I’ll get it out, we just need to find a corner to hide behind… We were walking up a big hill and passed an enclosed courtyard, I noticed the gate was open and said this will do, so we went in.

As I put my hands down her pants to pull out the toilet paper I looked up (I thought it was too awkward and not professional, to look down her pants) and then I noticed - we were in the courtyard of a chapel, and God (in statue form) was looking down at me. This unsettled me, mainly because God in statue form does not blink. It was worse than a 5-year olds glare.

The Holy Glare

I started to get flustered and I couldn’t find the toilet paper. So in the end I had to peek down her pants and I eventually found it. Phew.

Till this day I thank The Lord no one walked into the courtyard that afternoon. I would have had some explaining to do.