stormy moods make for stormy weather

it's been a changeable week weather-wise. one of those weeks where i feel like i'm causing the weather with my moods...sunny, bright and glorious one moment, blustery and spitting the next, pretty much precisely how i've felt. of course there is a chance it's the other way around and the weather contributes to my mood and not vice versa.

despite the wonderful news on monday evening and the soul-nourishing event tuesday night, the rest of the week has been a series of petty irritations. an unnecessarily snotty mother at the stable. the fiasco that sabin's trip to st. petersburg is shaping up to be. political agendas. a strange woman who asked me to move my car from "her" parking spot in a public parking lot, where spots don't belong to anyone in particular. a dull, all day headache that prevented meaningful work or thought.

small irritations, but irritating nonetheless, especially when all lumped together. especially because they chip away at the good energy that came with events of the early part of the week. each taking a little bit of it away, until it feels like there's not enough left and you need to find a way to tank up again, but you can't because of that infernal dull headache.

maybe it's all just PMS, or rather DMS, since i think it's actually worst during, not before. but i realize that's too much information. i only talk about it because it really is a factor. moods are not something static or even or stable. they go up and down and you're in high spirits one minute and down in the dumps the next. just like our changeable weather - sunny one minute and raining the next. the good bit is that's the only way to get rainbows.

but a walk in the garden, photographing the autumn fruits on a beautiful morning before the rain comes, really does help. especially if accompanied by gathering a big batch of fruit, throwing it in the steamer to make juice and having the smells of warm raspberries and warm elderberries fill the house. it may not make the headache go away, but it helps.

happy weekend, one and all.

* * *

pet words.  

my conscious ones (at the moment) are: topography, synesthetic, troglodyte, xenophobic.

i wish they were: transcendent, elated, vast, encompassing.

in reality they are: actually, supposedly, apparently.

what are yours?

* * *

and speaking of words:
creative swear words.
made up words.

this too shall pass

Stræberen by Leif Grønhøj

grrr. sometimes everything is just so irritating that you want to scream!

your bra doesn't fit right.

you can't find your garden gloves.

people keep asking you where stuff is.
and you have no idea.
or can't be bothered to explain.
since you're looking for your own gloves.
and if you knew where stuff was, you wouldn't be looking for them.

your child wants to be waited on hand and foot.

which you know is your own fault, since you usually wait on her hand and foot.

but that doesn't make it any less irritating.

the wind keeps blowing the straw you're trying to put out around the strawberries away.

and the straw is making you sneeze.

the chicken wasn't done when you called everyone to dinner.

and your soufflé fell a little bit during the waiting.

there's nothing on t.v.

and they changed the whole online t.v. guide and now it's buggy as hell.

and on top of it you can't find anything.

and all these petty irritations make you lose the awesome happy buzz you had after  a two hour guided sculpture tour in the sunshine (more about that tomorrow). 

and it all makes you wish, just a little bit, for menopause to come already so you can be done with PMS.

tho' you're still irritated at that stupid dutch hairdresser for suggesting you were already menopausal for coloring your hair dark last summer.

whatever.

this too shall pass.

but a cocktail would help.

it was a dark and stormy day...

blame it on the moon

Rxbambi tagged me earlier this week to do a list of six things that get me pissed. initially i was going to make a list of my favorite kinds of gin, but then i realized it wasn't that kind of pissed.  on that particular day, i was feeling that the world was quite rosy and couldn't actually think of six things, but let me tell you, now i can...

1. big sisters using sabin's mobile - sabin's big sisters have their own mobile phones, but they always go nuts texting all of their friends on hers when they're here, because theirs are the pre-paid card kind and they don't want to use up their own SMSes. i'm normally fine with this because we've got an unlimited SMS plan on sabin's phone, she doesn't use any herself and so it seems ok that it gets used. UNTIL....i learned today that they had subscribed to some stupid spam-like SMS thing that repeatedly sends you texts about a hummingbird and it costs 15DKK every time. that's $3. which translates to $36 a month. which pisses me off like you wouldn't believe. especially because i hadn't looked closely at that bill and it's now the 3rd month the charge appears there (so much for my attentiveness to bills, eh?). i hadn't looked at it because sometimes sabin calls my norwegian number when i'm in norway and i thought it was just that. it wasn't. grr.
2. whipping wind - it's been blowing steadily for two days and i'm really. really. really. tired. of. it.
3. people who send an invitation to a party (that's not a wedding but just an ordinary dinner party) three months in advance - i have no friggin' clue whether i want to have dinner with you three months from now. call me the day before. fokken danes.
4. sexist misogynist dinosaurs in shipping - i don't actually encounter them very often, but when i do, it pisses me off like nothing else. do. not. underestimate. me. just. because. i'm. a. girl. or i shall plant this jessica simpson stiletto squarely in your eyeball.
5. Thuesen Jensen - they're the danish importer of Kitchen Aid products. they have no web presence--their "website" goes to an eLearning log-in thing. they are impossible to contact, no phone number, no email and they are absolute rubbish at service (which one supposes is why they are impossible to contact). they are giving Kitchen Aid a bad name. i have on two occasions now had a problem with the Kitchen Aid food processor i bought last summer. and twice, instead of just giving me a new one and then dealing with it on their end, they made the shop send it in, taking nearly a month to fix it both times. so, i've been without my food processor (which i use regularly) for two of the eight months i've owned it. i just got it back again, with a new bowl on it. why didn't they give me that the first time they took it, since it was the same problem both times. i really think Kitchen Aid should know how bad they are and what a bad name they're giving to Kitchen Aid. i only know their name because i dragged it out of my local shop. and now, i hope that this reference to their name comes up the next time someone googles Thuesen Jensen, because they are complete and utter crap and should have their rights to import Kitchen Aid taken away. when someone pays 3500DKK ($700USD) for their fokken food processor, they expect it to work and if it doesn't, they expect to have a new one that does work inside of about 3 minutes. end. of. story. it better stay fixed this time, or you all will be reading about this on a daily basis. (sorry to threaten you when i'm really threatening them.)
6. people with the wrong priorities - certain family members recently failed to be there on two big occasions--mathilde's confirmation and the party celebrating aunty M's dictionary. i think that's really friggin' selfish and egotistical. you can put off going to your precious summer house where you go every weekend all summer long for things that happen only once in a lifetime. how often does a young person get confirmed (if they're not baptist or whatever)? and how often do you celebrate the culmination of ten years' work? get your fokken priorities straight. there are certain things you are simply obligated to do. these two things were prime examples of them. 

hmmm...it seems like it might be that time that rolls around every month when husband gets really annoying. why do you suppose he does that? speaking of him, where is he and why isn't he making me some dinner?

perhaps i need that gin list after all:

1. hendrick's
2. beefeater crown jewel (in the purple bottle)
3. g'vine
4. bombay sapphire
5. beefeater 24
6. the local indian gin i had one time in chennai (believe me, it was the only good thing about chennai)

on that note, i think i'll go check out how we're fixed for tonic. i know i just bought limes...