Ant day.
Since the weather got summery I've been longing to go to the little nudist beach by a little lake just outside Amsterdam and lie in the sun in my birthday suit. The beach is too far away to reach on my own though, so I'd anticipate the weekends when the husband and I could go by car. The first time we went we couldn't find the right place and I got tired walking around and we had to go home. Every weekend since, without fail, it was overcast and windy and much too cold to strip down to skin.
We've had really changeable weather this year. It would be warm, sunshiny and summery, and then it goes back to typically Dutch cloudy and overcast for a few days again, with lots of rain, and then almost tropical hot again. I usually really *like* the rain, but with the quick changes, even *I* get moody and a little down.
Yesterday I had to wear my woolly sweater (wool/silk mix, actually) & today it was 29 *degrees* *Celsius* (84.2 degree Fahrenheit). So, finally! Beach!
There were ants everywhere today. Little ones, huge ones, little winged ones, huge winged ones. I've never seen the winged ones before unless it's been hot at least three days in a row, so I was very surprised to see them. It wouldn't be my only ant-related surprise of the day.
The beach was lovely, even though I got sunburn. I watched swans stick their bum in the air as they munched on underwaterplants, a little two-year old kid splash the water with his foot, run back up to the beach, giggle, run back to the water and do it again, and I read 'de gevleugelde kat' which is still good. (I bought it on impulse after reading the smashing first couple of pages in the bookstore. Good to find that so far the pages that came after live up to the beginning.)
I started out with my towel on the grass, and that's when I got my second ant-related surprise. I thought a blade of grass pricked me, but when I looked it was an ant. Not one of the big, scary ones. A small, garden-variety ant near my elbow. I didn't know they could bite. It did. Just to convince me, it bit me again. It left three little red dots in all on my arm.
I considered going home at that point, but the weather was lovely, the view of the water was lovely and we'd just got there. I remarked that if you're going to go to the nudist beach, the arm is not the worst place to get bitten. And I was promptly bitten on the bum.
Inspiration struck, and I moved my towel onto the little strip of sand just before the (freezing!) water. The ants, both big and small still tried to colonize my towel, but mostly one by one and at least I could see them coming. One of the big ones had a brown and black striped behind, like the semi-precious stone we call tijgeroog (tiger's eye) in Dutch.
Then we packed our towels up and went to get the Saturday groceries. The weatherreport on the car radio said there was a chance of thunderstorms and hail later in the day. The husband and I looked at each other, and then at the beautiful, gorgeously sunny day outside. I can't stress enough how lovely the weather was. Paradijselijk. :)
Between six and seven the weather got weird. I couldn't tell if it was high or low pressure, but it was so stifling I got a headache and felt nauseous (so I'm guessing high). The husband called to say he'd arrived safely at a friend's birthday party in Zeist. On the digital dashboard display he'd seen the outside temperature drop eight degrees celsius in ten minutes. It was completely still there, silence before the storm. I reported there was a moderate breeze here.
About half an hour later the wind started blowing, and it started raining lightly. The terrible pressure lifted. I stood on the balcony and watched the BIGGEST, GREYEST cloud cover the sky. I think it took less than half an hour for it to cross Amsterdam completely. I could look left and the sky was still blue, then there was the grey cloud, and on the other side the sky was a lighter grey, with lightning flashing behind it. When the cloud passed overhead, things got really dark, almost night-time dark, only not, because what light there was was really different.
I stood and thought of my ancestors who according to history were afraid of only one thing: that the sky would fall. It started raining in earnest and I wondered if they were afraid of all that water coming down in one big sploosh, or if it was a more metaphysical fear.
So, I like negative ions (colloquially known as happy ions) a lot, so I went for a walk (there are *lots* of lightning deflectors around here, so I was quite safe), I got rained on a lot, found the little, local supermarket was still open and decided against buying icecream which I regret now because I'm too tired to bake amaranth cake, and even if I wasn't I forgot to buy dried cranberries. Then I went to take a shower, and when I came back out it was daylight again.
The sky is midnight blue now (though 't isn't midnight on the clock) and I'm going to forage for food in the kitchen, and then probably to bed to read some more of 'de gevleugelde kat'. Or refresh LJ a couple more times. Whichever I feel like. :)