feeling blue about old my blue room

i've been in an intense adobe premiere pro course for the past two days. my head is full and i'm quite frankly exhausted. i was searching my flickr for a photo of pretty paper to use to encourage folks to participate in an art journaling workshop this weekend and i stumbled onto photos of my old blue room. and i got a bit, well...blue about it. i miss that beautiful space. somewhere i could leave projects out and where i could have multiple projects going on at once. somewhere to light a merry fire in the wood-burning stove, listen to music and hang out with friends and drink wine. and then cyndy sent me a blog post she did about my blue room long ago, which included a SONG that she wrote about it. i swear i don't think i knew about this song before now. i think that may have been during that period when i was feeling invisible. maybe it's just that the universe knew that today i would need to both laugh and cry at the same time. thank you so much, cyndy. it was precisely what i needed.

the color sneaks back into my world

i suppose it's just these sunny, summer days we've been treated to, but it feels somehow like color is returning to my world. it's been a tough time recently with molly's mastitis, our chickens disappearing (it turns out it wasn't a fox, they were stolen!), my borrelia diagnosis and then losing frankie. a lot of things happening in quick succession that have sapped my energy and robbed me of my inspiration and, you probably noticed, my words.

despite losing frankie on monday, it was on the whole a good week. i took the last of my antibiotics and i feel myself returning to more or less feeling normal health-wise, tho' i do occasionally run a low-grade fever for most of a day (i hope that stops now), which zaps my energy again. but spending time with sabin in the sunshine, doing creative projects helped greatly.

it's hard to be down in the dumps when your old favorite converse have been turned into bright, cheery rainbows.

the garden, especially the fruit bushes and those strawberries, are in full swing and picking and processing all that fruit makes me feel industrious and satisfied. i know how much we'll enjoy the fruits of all my labors come autumn and winter. that has raised my spirits as well.

the perfect afternoon i spent painting in the garden with sabin on friday also went a long way towards reawakening what has been a dormant sense of creativity. i have a tendency to go through a low-level depression at times without even really realizing it myself, except in odd ways (i think the bits of blue in my hair were an attempt to pull myself out of it that i wasn't even really aware of on a conscious level). it's only when it begins to lift that i realize it was there.

but it is beginning to lift. like a fog clearing away. one that i had become so accustomed to, that i wasn't even really aware of it myself. it likely started with our prolonged winter and ever-protracted spring. then molly got sick and i spent a couple of weeks of sleepless nights, worrying over and feeding kittens in the night. i've also been reading some douglas kennedy novels, which are wonderful, but full of tragic stories that feel like they're happening to friends of mine, so well-drawn are the characters. and i realize now that it has all fed an underlying feeling of blue (and not the good blue room kind).

but today, as i pulled fabric for several baby quilts (suddenly, my friends are all having babies), it hit me that the blue of my world was turning more colorful once again. and it seems at least some of my words have returned. molly is well (and begging to go outside to rendezvous with the papa kitty again (don't worry, she's not allowed)) and the kittens are at at the very height of playful perfection and tho' i miss frankie very much, i now get to keep little frieda, my kitten who smiles in her sleep.

it also helps that dinner came from the garden - fresh kale, shallots and new potatoes. there is little that feels more satisfying than that, unless it's a kitten who smiles in her sleep.

here's hoping that summer is treating you all very well.

word for the day: solipsism

solipsistic. that's the word i would choose as the predominant descriptor of the danes. it's a word i first encountered in college, as applied to dostoevsky's underground man, a character so utterly fixated on himself that he cannot function in the world. or even see it. while the danes are solipsistic in a different way than the underground man (he's quite absorbed in philosophy and existential questions), they are self-absorbed nonetheless, to the point of often not realizing that others exist.

this manifests most often in public space. drivers stick to the middle of the road, seemingly unaware that there are other cars coming towards them. someone backs out of their space in a crowded grocery store parking lot, blissfully oblivious to the existence of other cars and people and carts bustling around them.  the same is true inside the grocery store, where they look up in annoyed surprise when they run over your foot, wondering where on earth you materialized from and without a polite apology ever leaving their lips. this solipsism is the same force that made countless grown adults walk on, not saying a word, as a young boy was pummeled on the street in broad daylight. a sense of being so much in and of oneself, that no one else is needed and therefore there's no need to help or acknowledge others.

it's one of the most bewildering and infuriating things about living in denmark. and i never really get used to it, tho' i am sure that i have to an extent taken on the behavior myself - grown colder and more closed and abrupt. it makes me sad to think of it at times, but it's also exhausting to try to fight it.

interesting, i had what i thought was a funny rant about this in my head when i sat down to write this, but it came out much more sad than i imagined. writing is like that sometimes.

~~~

i don't read a word of french, but if you like stitching, there is some serious eye candy here.

winter solstice: the darkest day of the year

i don't know about you, but if this is indeed the last day of existence as we know it, it surely is taking its time. i'll admit we're taking it quite stille og roligt as they say in danish. in fact, i'd say we're downright making plans for the future. husband signed a contract for a new job today - it starts january 2. it's the kind of job that comes with a car, which is new for us and a little bit exciting. he doesn't know yet what kind of car he'll get, he's still letting it all sink in, i think. i'm voting audi, but i suppose he'll get a reliable toyota of some kind.

a cleaning/decorating/rearranging frenzy is building inside me, but first i have some sewing to finish for christmas. a couple of lovely, warm snuggle quilts for the big girls and maybe a fun bag or two if i get really ambitious. but what it means is that i think that the world will be here tomorrow to rearrange and that it will still be cold and people will need to snuggle up under a blanket.

we cut down a tree a week ago (it had to go anyway), but we still haven't brought it in and decorated it. i think we might not, actually, as horrible as that sounds. we're going to møn for christmas (one of our favorite places in denmark) and we won't be home anyway, so it feels a little bit like it doesn't matter. i think this old, rather uninspiring house stands in my way at times. in a way that makes me slightly depressed. tho' i'm trying to keep that at bay here in the christmas season. hmm, maybe a cheerful, warm tree, with twinkling lights would have helped...

speaking of christmas, i am perhaps feeling slightly humbug about it. sabin has done nothing but complain about her daily christmas calendar. there were a lot of tubes of paint in it, but i thought it was a fun way to give her art supplies. apparently, it was too boring. and it makes me feel bad that i'm raising a spoiled brat who can't even be grateful. i suppose it's my own fault, but it does rather depress me nonetheless. how can i wrest her from the grip of a consumer society? all we hear on the news is that we need to start "using" again, which means spend money on stuff. but really, we have all the stuff we need.  i declared that i didn't want anything for christmas and if people insisted, it should be something from a second-hand shop or flea market. i sincerely hope they listened.

maybe those mayans knew what they were doing, setting the end on the solstice - it is the darkest day of the year after all. it can only grow lighter from here.

* * *

worst words of 2012.

i think she missed out noms and FTW and that she insufficiently blamed pinterest for curate.

here's just an excerpt: "Epic. Adjective. Unless you're describing The Iliad or The Odyssey (and in a high school or college English class), choose anew, friends. Don't make me say this again in 2013."