Put a bird on it, or, belated merry Christmas to me

The Dutch start the holiday season early*. As it's not really the point of this post, I won't go into detail (but if you'd like to know more, you can follow up at Wikipedia), but suffice to say, it all begins in late November. The overeating, the festive spirit, small children constantly bordering on expectant hysteria....and....the gift giving. We celebrate with the Man's family, and this year we went traditional. We set a maximum price and then everyone drew names, made a list and went away for a year.

I drew the Man's aunt, who has excellent and exacting taste, which made me both a little bit nervous and, oddly, also set me at ease. I could figure out, more or less, what she would like; I just wasn't sure that I would be able to find it for the price range we had set ourselves. Before leaving the house, I narrowed down her list to the two things that I thought that I could probably manage to find; namely a nicely decorated wooden kitchen paper towel holder, and a wind chime. I'll admit - the wind chime I got. The paper towel holder, though, notsomuch. Still, I looked, and I looked, and I looked and everywhere I found expensive wind chimes. And I found plain wooden holders. And nice metal holders. But no attractive, wooden, paper towel holders. Lord knows, I looked and looked.

In all of this searching, though, I also found buried at the back of a quirky little store, the paper towel holder of my dreams. When I first spied it, I thought it was lovely, but not quite what the Aunt would have wanted. It wasn't wood, it wasn't painted. Still, I'd keep going back to look at it. And then, finally, I found a nice wind chime. Thank goodness. Sinterklaas was saved! I stopped thinking about paper towel holders and moved on to Christmas gifts for the Man and the Toddler. Apparently, it stuck in my head though, because when I opened my gifts on Christmas morning, I was secretly a little bit sad that it wasn't one of my presents; this despite the fact that I hadn't really even hinted at it.

Today, when I was riding past the store, I noticed that they were having a post-Christmas sale and, as if some other force was controlling me, I found myself walking in and buying it.

We've been watching the Portlandia series (which I highly recommend) and the moment the Man saw it in the kitchen, the very first thing out of his mouth was "Put a bird on it".

City bird, country bird

The weather in Amsterdam has been getting warmer and warmer over the last week or so, and I feel fairly comfortable saying that Spring is here. Flowers are blooming, the breeze feels a little warmer, there's a pleasant smell of new growth on the air and everywhere previously grey spaces are becoming green.

To make the most of this, Jason and I have started going for walks in the evening, exploring the twists, turns and small neighborhood squares in our area. In accordance with Spring, the sounds of birds are everywhere although this unfortunately can take the sound of pigeons. Last night, though, we came across a sight that was entirely new to me.

I'd heard, of course, stories of how wild parakeets and parrots are major inhabitants of most major cities, but had always thought it was an urban myth. I'd never imagined that in addition to escaped pet birds, though, that there could be a community of escaped chickens and roosters out and about. And yet, on our way home, there they were; a tree full of chickens, and a few roosters wandering around on the ground.

City girl that I am, I'm inclined to think it's cooler than the wild parakeets. Parakeets I've seen, but I can probably count on one hand the times I've seen a rooster up close and personal.