{"id":1536,"date":"2008-09-01T08:53:05","date_gmt":"2008-09-01T06:53:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/?p=1536"},"modified":"2010-05-30T22:18:52","modified_gmt":"2010-05-30T20:18:52","slug":"stick-a-fork-in-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/archives\/1536","title":{"rendered":"Stick a Fork in Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know that saying \u2018Stick a fork in me, because I\u2019m done\u2019?\u00a0 Yeah, that was me yesterday afternoon.<\/p>\n

We went to a BBQ at a friend\u2019s place in Beneden Leeuwen, which is about an hours drive from here.\u00a0 It was a gathering of an expat group that I belong to online.\u00a0 The same one that we met up with the year before last for Thanksgiving<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was really nice to see some of them again, and to meet people that I\u2019ve been talking to on the list but had never met.\u00a0 We did a book exchange there too which was pretty cool.<\/p>\n

\u2026 but DAYUM, it was HOT outside, like hotter than a witches armpit kind of hot!!!! omfg.<\/p>\n

All summer it\u2019s been cool and rainy, and yes, it is my own fault for wishing for nice weather for the BBQ but mother nature didn\u2019t need to be such a bitch about it.<\/p>\n

Let me try to set the scene\u2026<\/p>\n

If you are reading this from back home or pretty much anywhere other than Holland or other similar places in Europe, you have to try to imagine what a Dutch garden is like.\u00a0 Think of your buddy\u2019s back yard where you usually go for BBQ\u2019s, now remove all of the actual yard and keep just the patio (assuming he has a small-ish patio).\u00a0 That\u2019s about the size of a Dutch back yard.\u00a0 Now imagine about 25 people all on it at once, with the BBQ\u2019s, tables, chairs and dogs.<\/p>\n

NOW, imagine the sun beating down on you without a breath of wind.<\/p>\n

That is how I spent the afternoon.\u00a0 Granted, there was some good conversation and all that but it\u2019s hard to talk when inside my brain was screaming for relief.\u00a0 Not from the people I was talking to, but from the heat.<\/p>\n

You probably find it strange that I have no photos, but that\u2019s because I was so hot I couldn\u2019t even think, let alone peel myself out of my chair to take photos.\u00a0 I hardly even ate!\u00a0 That ought to tell you something.\u00a0 Me + BBQ usually means a bellyache and a serious case of the trots\u2026 but not this time.<\/p>\n

I think I\u2019ve found my new diet plan.\u00a0\u00a0 I need to either move into a sauna or crank the heat to an extremely uncomfortable level in my house.\u00a0 Then I will be too uncomfortable to eat.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong, the company was great and I love the people who threw the BBQ but christ almighty, from now on I\u2019m setting limits on my Dutch BBQ\u2019s.\u00a0\u00a0 If they are in back gardens they must have a maximum of like 10 people, OR they must be somewhere with water I can jump into\u2026 like a beach.<\/p>\n

Actually, I did attempt to eat, now that I think about it.\u00a0 They had this sort of free-for-all policy with the bbq, you grab your own meat and put it on the thing (it wasn\u2019t a bbq really, it was more like an electric grill or something).\u00a0 I went in and grabbed a few of the kabobs I had made and threw them on the thing, then realized how damn hot it was standing over it and went to sit down.\u00a0\u00a0 Xander had some as well and was going back and forth turning them.\u00a0\u00a0 At one point someone passed me one and said \u2018this is done\u2019, and I almost vomited in my lap when I bit into blubbery half raw chicken.\u00a0\u00a0 So I threw it back on the grill.<\/p>\n

Apparently we should have stood sweating over the grill because SOMEONE STOLE OUR KABOBS, and Xander\u2019s big fat sausage!\u00a0 OMGWTFGETYOURHANDSOFFMYMEAT!\u00a0 Hello!! Cook your own meat! If you didn\u2019t put it there you don\u2019t get to eat it!!<\/p>\n

I was so pissed off but once again I couldn\u2019t be arsed to get up to get more.\u00a0\u00a0 I just thought oh screw it I\u2019ll eat when I get home, then I secretly wished the chicken was still blubbery for them, since they were eating stolen meat and all.<\/p>\n

On the plus side, Pixel<\/a> was a huge success at the party.\u00a0\u00a0 We had to take her with us because we didn\u2019t want to leave her alone that long.\u00a0\u00a0 There was many an oooh and aaah and a ton of OMG She\u2019s SO Cute!\u2019s.\u00a0\u00a0 I was a proud mama for sure.<\/p>\n

Even Pixel was dying though, poor little thing in her black fur, we had to keep pouring glasses of water on her because she was dying with the heat as well.<\/p>\n

When we got home we both peeled off our sweaty clothes and sat around being grumpy for a while.\u00a0\u00a0 We had that really tired feeling like when you get home from a day at the beach, only without the beach.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m almost starting to forget what beaches look like.\u00a0 I\u2019m getting the feeling that we aren\u2019t going to see one anytime soon if the summers keep being like this year and last year. Rain Rain Rain!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know that saying \u2018Stick a fork in me, because I\u2019m done\u2019?\u00a0 Yeah, that was me yesterday afternoon. We went to a BBQ at a friend\u2019s place in Beneden Leeuwen, which is about an hours drive from here.\u00a0 It was a gathering of an expat group that I belong to online.\u00a0 The same one that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[54,87,35,186,33,57,185,98],"class_list":["post-1536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-life-in-nl","category-tantrums-rants","tag-dutch","tag-food","tag-friends","tag-heat","tag-netherlands","tag-rants","tag-summer","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1536"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4927,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions\/4927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}