friday confessions - halloween

it's friday. the day dawned cold and frosty, but clear and eventually the sun made its way over the horizon. but despite the crisp freshness of the air and the last glories of the autumn colors glowing in the sunlight, i confess i'm in a mild depression. and it's not just because voldemort has split his soul into multiple horcruxes and the challenge of destroying them all seems so daunting.

autumn brings about mixed feelings in me. while i love it the most of all the seasons, there is a sorrow about it. the leaves on the ground are beautiful but melancholy in their decay. there is a sense of passing. i have a vague dread of the dark months ahead, made worse, no doubt, by how very dark it gets in these northern climes i inhabit. so in all, i'm left feeling mildly depressed.

i also confess....

~ that panic is about to set in because we've invited 20 3rd graders to a real Halloween party tomorrow and i have no idea what i'm going to wear. pirate? witch? morticia addams? zombie cheerleader?

~ i have a lot of cooking to do for the halloween party. since i've got harry potter on the brain, i'm wondering if i can come up with some butterbeer and cauldron cakes?

~ i love carving pumpkins. we carved the first round last night and will do more this evening in preparation for the party. i'm looking forward to it with a childlike anticipation that almost throws off my mild depression.

~ i wonder if i'll finish sabin's costume before she gets home from school?

~ i do wonder how we're going to fit everything in tomorrow...party preparations, riding lessons, costumes...before the kids arrive at 4 p.m.! eek!

i'm really grateful for all of the encouraging comments and emails from all of you after my post about moving on to something more creative as a job. it comes pretty close to lifting my mild depression. thank you so much.

i hope you have a lovely weekend!

p.s. have you checked out our halloween week over on across ø/öresund? there also will be halloween-related recipes going up on domestic sensualist (as soon as i get some pictures taken). be sure to check out both!

friday confession - last one in the lounge

my dear friend polly (who isn't really called polly, but who will forever be polly in all of our minds) does friday confessions and i haven't done one in a long time, but as i sit here in the lounge, drinking free wine and having a multi-subject IM chat with my sister which involves telling her to just jump in and change her life, i thought that since it had been an awfully long time, i'd offer up a few friday confessions.  forgive me odin, for i have sinned....

~ i love really long sentences with lots of parentheticals.

~ i wish i worked in the same country as i live.

~ i did my first couchsurfing this week. and it was great. it changed my entire week for the better. and i heard great stories of adventures in exotic and out-of-the-way locales.

~ i don't really get those people who choose the nobel prize for literature.

~ i totally get those people who choose the nobel peace prize.

~ i wish they had the really good olives here in the lounge. but alas, they do not.

~ i fear the coming weekend is going to go by too quickly.

~ i'm pretty pleased that i'm going to istanbul on tuesday. even tho' i come home already on thursday.

~ every time a season kicks in in earnest, i'm convinced it's my favorite season.

~ i'm going to tivoli on sunday with a good friend. oh, and my child.

~ i'm really happy the cleaning girls are coming tomorrow.

~ i told husband this week that he was my sanity. and he did that little almost snort that sabin does when she's proud.

~ i fear it was a snort of fear, not a snort of pride.

~ it's a little disturbing to me how few people were on the train to the airport and in the airport today. if the economy is down in norway, it's really, really down.

~ it's mysterious to me why we are working frantically to finish the house and have it in beautiful shape, only to sell it and move away from it. why didn't we do all of this before?

~ i hope you'll all go check out (and vote for) my friend michelle's story in the latest issue of discounderworld. she's awesome. and she's the only other one i know who found her husband in macedonia like i did.

~ i think polly's pictures are getting better by the day.

~ and now, i confess i'm going to fill my wine glass and see if by chance they've put out some olives...

do you have anything interesting to confess this friday?

friday confession - the little stuff

tho' i've been sprinkling my posts with confessions all week (i can kinda see how it gets addictive, all of you catholic dahlings out there), i thought it was time for another round of friday confessions.

forgive me odin....

: : i wore the same t-shirt and sweatpants all day long for three days this week.

: : sometimes we make our smoothies with ice cream instead of yogurt. even in the morning. but we still call them smoothies because that sounds healthier than milkshake.

: : i'm going to be partying and schmoozing working at nor-shipping next week and will likely be quite shockingly absent from the blogosphere. i'm confessing this because it worries me and makes me wonder if i will exist if i'm not online. there will, however, be wine, so i think i'll get through it.

: : i have sprinkled this post with gratuitous shots of flowers that otherwise have nothing to do with anything. (there's a lot of sprinkling going on in this post.)

: : i was a right bearcat this week for about 24 hours due to PMS. husband bore the brunt of it. but he was stoic. which is just another reason why he is a keeper. i even yelled at him for taking out the garbage (not for NOT taking it out, but for taking it out). it was that bad.

: : i'm having trouble getting the child to answer the questions you all posed last friday. she's gone all shy on us. i'm trying to sneak them in over dinner now, but so far, she hasn't fallen for it.

: : i'm going in to copenhagen tomorrow to hang out with a friend of a friend. i've never met her, but my friend assures me she's totally cool. i haven't even blogged with her, so how can i know that's true? i can't decide if meeting a random stranger who may not even exist given that you've never met her in cyberspace at her hotel in a european capital is cool in an adventurous sorta way or just stupid.

: : i have an old man crush on david letterman. i've had it now for 25 years.

: : i often obsessively reread my own posts. editing them 4-5 times to get spacing right and fix typos and other general grammar mishaps which occur since i live outside my native language and am unlearning to speak/write any known language, but instead will end up collapsed in a heap of danglish peppered (but thankfully not sprinkled) with russian swear words.

: : i may have accidentally applied for a job in singapore this week. which is weird because i don't even really like singapore.  but i think it's a great place to be an ex-pat.

: : i've never read any jane austen (i'm sorry bee). isn't that horrible?

: : i really laughed my ass off at heidikins' bikini waxing gone wrong. really laughed. at someone else's pain. like real, true pain. i'm sorry heidikins. i couldn't help myself.

: : because b is doing it and i can't stand not being part of stuff, i'm doing the wreck this journal online journal wrecking course thingie. i'm going now to throw my journal myself into a mud puddle, as i guess that's the first assignment...

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will be back later today with the winner of the helleristning giveaway.

friday confession

i haven't confessed since that first one earlier this month, so i thought it was time...plus, friday confession was polly's original idea with it, so the day is even right.  it is friday, right? i've kinda lost track this week.

forgive me odin, for i have sinned...

: :  i admit this is just another way of doing one of those random lists i love so much.

: : i've used up a rather shocking amount of my kenzo eau de fleur de thé perfume this week instead of showering regularly.

: : sabin and i ate carpaccio for dinner three days this week. plus a soft boiled egg with spears of aspargus dipped into it. we always eat weird raw stuff when husband is away. and yup, that's a super cool heather moore skinny laminx egg cup cradling that egg.

: : i am fighting an urge to go downtown and see if there is anything summery and wonderful in the form of a dress for me. but (aside from the kenzo) i've done so well on extending austerity april into may that it would be a shame to break it here right at the end.

: : and i really want my own pair of converse all-stars, which are apparently affectionately called chucks, but which i can't really bring myself to call that because i am lacking the cultural reference for that name. but that's my own fault for removing myself from that culture for over a decade. i have the same thing with something called "wife beaters" that people keep mentioning. i have no idea what those are. anyway, i want light yellow converse all-stars. i don't know why that color, as i have nothing else that's yellow, it just that the thought of those makes my heart sing. i hope they make them in that color.

: : very often my kitchen sink area looks like above because it's where i draw the line as to how i want to expend my energy allotment for the day. so much for that feature on apartment therapy.

: : i am so relieved that all of my articles are done now and just awaiting the final approvals. and that the feedback that's come in from the various interviewees is very positive. that's a big relief. because my inner perfectionist is one tough cookie to please. and she had her doubts.

: : this week i spent an awful lot of time wearing my old green gap sweatpants and husband's big red gap hoodie, clutching my talisman stone and rocking back and forth in front of my laptop.

: : i took my talisman stone to the bathtub with me. after clutching it in my sweaty little palm all week, i thought it might like a bath. is that weird?  i showed my stone to my mom yesterday on a video chat and she said, "julie, get a life." i thought that was a little bit harsh. and i hope the stone didn't hear her.

* * *

and now for something completely different

i'd like to do a post as cyndy suggested, where you ask sabin and me questions and we post the answers, so please leave your questions in the comments. that is right, isn't it, cyndy?  my questions--with a look on the past and sabin's view on the same questions, but what she imagines her answers will be in the future. as cyndy says, "First car? First date? First day of college? First house? The list is endless..." so think along those lines in coming up with the questions.

and happy friday to all of you. i for one am looking forward to the weekend.

forgive me odin...

this picture has nothing to do with anything

i've just been taking my merfish for a walk again

and the paparazzi are always about when i do that.

i really love polly's weekly confessions and have been wanting to do some myself since i first read hers a couple of weeks ago, but all this blog camp excitement kinda blew away any plans for posts that i had. now that it's coming together and settled down to a dull roar (tho' we could still use someone in the US who would/could host a blog camp: US at the same time as our june 19-21 sessions in DK & SA), i feel a list coming on...

forgive me odin, for i have sinned, it's been...well...a lifetime (what with me not being catholic) since my last confession. however, i hereby confess...

~ it's really windy and blustery outside today and as much as i am starting to believe that google is controlling the weather, i sometimes also suspect that i am. because the weather often reflects my mood. and i feel a bit stormy and restless today. so sorry about that, anyone in my meteorological region.

~ i have to do an interview at my former place of work. it was supposed to be today and i was very nearly psyched up/prepared for it when they called and changed it to monday. in a way i am relieved and in a way, it only prolongs the dread of going back in there. because that place wasn't good for me and it's taken a long time to get over it. and i'm actually pretty worried about what just stepping into that stuffy, cold, stiff environment will do to me. and we don't really have any more space for any more structures in our garden, which is my therapy.

~ those little music player thingies that trigger automatically when you visit some blogs drive me up a tree. they interfere with my alanis, man.

~ i have a tendency, despite my new years' non-resolutions, to leave pots on the stove until they become scary and have incubated a new life form that may or may not cause a global pandemic if i then open the lid and release said life form. which is why i don't risk it. and why i'm jealous of extranjera's maid, even if she does break the glassware. wine tastes the same out of juice glasses, i say. and if i had a maid, she could take care of those pots. also the one outside on the outdoor stove. that one's bad.

~ i'm a little envious of extranjera's creative post labels.

~ i totally have stewardess flight attendant envy. i know they're waitresses in the sky, but they're always so perfectly coiffed with beautiful makeup, artfully swept-back hair, pumps of just the right height, perfect nails and great jewelry, probably bought in duty frees around the world. and they travel all the time. i love to travel. and they get to hang out with pilots and pilots are often pretty cute. sigh, why oh why didn't i become a stewardess?  oh well, maybe it's not too late. SAS does stand for Sexy After Sixty, after all.

~ i'm not above threatening to blog about bad service in order to get better service (be watching for a post on this one coming soon, since it didn't really work).

~ i need to stop obsessing about follower numbers. but it's just so much fun. except when someone stops following and they go down. which seems to usually be after i swear too much or tweet about faulty usage of it's/its. dammit.