another trip around the sun

i suspect 53 would have felt like a hazy and blurry year, even if it wasn't tainted by the coronavirus bringing everything to a standstill. it's one of those blah ages that don't seem to count for much. it's neither here nor there, and the difference between 53 and 54 isn't really a significant one. i guess i'm inclined to think that i'll like 54 better, mostly because i'm partial to even numbers, though frankly odd numbers of things look better. hmm, i wonder how that bodes for 54? not that i look all that great after the sedentary year in front of my computer.

however, i have all kinds of good intentions for 54. i want to do 10,000 steps a day. i'm going to take up my daily 750 words once again on the 750 words site and i'm determined that four days a week, those words will go towards the novel. i have about 7,000 steps to go today, since most of it was spent at my computer working. also it's rather cold, windy and grey outside, so not all that inviting for a long walk.  see, i'm already full of excuses. but hey, it's my birthday, so i can decide, right? maybe the 10,000 steps starts tomorrow. but first, a glass of wine.

that's the kind of thinking that got me through 53. and this whole corona bullshit. that's still not over, despite how weary we grow of it. and they're slower than mud at vaccinations here in denmark. 

but back to this birthday thing. it does feel like i'm in a place were they don't matter that much anymore. it's still awhile to 60, which will be the next significant date and since they're putting off retirement age, i'm not even sure that's that significant anymore, so maybe it's actually 70 and it's a long time until then. heck, look at joe biden, he became president at 78 and he seems to have found himself - he's not making any of those old gaffes he was known for, he's just getting down to business and being seriously presidential. it's so refreshing and my ptsd from the trump years is fading and i'm even sleeping through the night sometimes. i no longer wake up in a cold sweat, worried about what embarrassing and horrible thing the president has done. it's such a relief. 

apropos my birthday, i picked up a long-ago ordered book from the library today. i ordered it so long ago that i didn't even really remember - i think it was back in october. it's nobel prize for literature winner louise glück's averno.  on the back cover is a fragment of her poem october (capitalization hers):

Come to me, said the world. I was standing

in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal--

I can finally say

long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure. Beauty

the healer, the teacher--

death cannot harm me

more than you have harmed me,

my beloved life.

and that feels like the right note to end these musings on another trip around the sun.

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whoa, cool AI-assisted story here. i'm not sure what i feel about it.
i think i am at once intrigued and horrified.

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i think i am sad that zoom dysmorphia is even a thing.

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juicy talk of fauxbrége fakes in an hermitage exhibit.

i learned about them in dearest, a very fun jewelry-oriented substack.

on the young side of the old people now

as of today, i embark on a new decade. it was a great day. colleagues offering congratulations all day, good wishes pouring in on facebook and instagram and via text and email, a gathering for drinks & snacks at the end of the day that ended in thoughtful gifts, some kinda crazy gifts and much laughter. a big bouquet from husband. and a trip to louisiana, that landmark of modern art, with a friend in the evening. it was a great start to this new phase. my friend mentioned a colleague who said he was super happy when he turned 50 because he was a youngster again - being on the young side of the old people now, rather than on the old side of the middle. i like that thought. another friend said, "if you haven't grown up yet, now you don't have to." i like that as well. i'm weirdly ok with it. it's the next logical step. i started a new project today as well - i'm going to do a daily video for a whole year and put them together, one second each, thereby having a video record of my 50th year. the child gave me the idea. i think it's going to be interesting to think in video. i'll continue my daily photos as well, as that's now completely ingrained in my way of being. happy birthday to me.

100 happy days :: day 23

a really good cup of coffee. 

a mug that fits perfectly in my hand.

pretty afternoon light.

birthday weekend catch-up

it was a fun-filled birthday weekend. i don't usually much care about my birthday or make a fuss, but this time, with a visit from my first cousin once removed (that's my first cousin's child, if you want to know), we made a festive weekend of it! good food, plenty of wine, lots of laughter, accidental dressing alike, a trip to louisiana, a scavenger hunt to find my birthday presents, more good food, more wine and more laughter. oh, and cake, delicious cake, that i didn't have to bake myself. even tho' the weather turned colder again, it was a lovely weekend.  i collected lots of happy days, so i've got to catch up on my posts for that as well!

i'll be back soon to process all of the weekend's experiences...but now, it's finals week on australian master chef and i've got to watch it! i don't follow much television, but australian master chef rocks.

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i love these beautiful photographs of prosaic soviet-era locations in siberia.

100 happy days :: day 22

my birthday presents from my family - a chemex coffee carafe, organic coffee and four new coffee cups made by a nearby ceramics artist named nina lund (i wrote about her atelier here). best of all, these were all purchased locally. the coffee carafe in a little interiors shop called bark interiors where the owner has just got great taste and has gathered an awesome collection of beautiful things, beautifully displayed. the coffee from a brand new little organic shop that just opened in our little town. and then, ceramics by a local artist. it makes a big difference in your community when you shop locally. (my dad taught me that.) and this was definitely one of many happinesses on my birthday. not least of all because my family put together a scavenger hunt for me to find the presents - it involved invisible ink, a long, long string, a climb up into the treehouse, a couple of maps and a brass bucket hoisted up in the rafters. a most happy (birth)day.

100 happy days :: day 21

that magical feeling of infinity in yayoi kusama's gleaming lights of the souls at louisiana. if there hadn't been a long line outside of it, we'd have stayed in there much longer. it's utterly magical.

100 happy days :: day 20

homemade food, made together with other people while laughing, telling stories and drinking wine. definitely today's happiness. and these sweet potato chips? delicious dipped in garlicky aioli.

spring comes in time for my birthday

take two rows of shiny glasses, glistening in the sunshine. fill them with a refreshing st. germain cocktail (sauvignon blanc + sparkling water + st. germain), add five amazing, different, interesting, funny, creative women. and you get a wonderful evening of drink & draw. there was more than that - some good food, some building lego (naturally), a lot of laughter, some playing with stamps and drawing and sketching. and it was pretty much the perfect way to lead into my birthday.

unfortunately, my birthday decided to greet me with a fever and stomach virus and so i slept through most of it and didn't even have cake or a special dinner with my family because i was too sick. i was feeling somewhat better today and managed to bake a couple of cakes (one for work tomorrow and one to use up our old bananas) and even planted 102 strawberries in the garden (it was good to get some fresh air). but it will be an early night because i'm definitely not back up to full speed. i did have a bit of a wander around the garden, photographing signs of spring, so i will leave you with those...

it's my birthday and i'll go to copenhagen if i want to

i don't have any deep thoughts about my birthday. it's my 46th, so i'm getting pretty good at them by now. what's funny is that when you reach these middle years, you lose track of your own age. i've thought for months that i was already 46 and when husband's eldest daughter recently pointed out to me that i was turning 46, i realized that she was right. i guess it won't be much of a shock since i already thought i was there for pretty much the whole past year.

i'm celebrating with a little trip to copenhagen. lunch with a good friend (who i'm making come along for the ride), a bit of poking around in art supply shops, a visit to my favorite tea shop and undoubtedly a little workout for my camera. at 46, that sounds like the perfect birthday.

happy weekend, one and all.

on my birthday...

i should not have to:

~ change the litterbox
~ clean the chicken coop
~ muck the stalls

(hmm, there is a decided poo-related theme here)

~ or do any laundry.
~ or dishes.

but i should get to:

~ wander the yard in the fog with my camera (they promise it will burn off and the sun will shine).
~ gather the fresh warm eggs from the chicken coop (i get to do this every day).
~ stay in my pajamas as long as i want.
~ spend the entire morning on pinterest if i want to.
~ putter around in the garden.

this evening, we will:

~ go and see bonderøven - a charming self-sufficiency guy who has a t.v. program and should be quite entertaining.

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it's funny, i'm not really that fussed about birthdays. my family got up this morning and made me breakfast and brought me a mug of steaming tea - it was a very nice way to wake up. but mostly, it feels like a regular day. i don't really feel older than i did yesterday, and 45 is just a number (30 + 15) - it isn't as old as it once was, says husband, who turned 47 last month.

sometimes it does seem strange that at a time when you're "supposed" to be settled in - with the perfect house and the perfect career - that we basically started all over again with a house that's a ten-year project (8 years to go) and i'm embarking on a new venture with new partners, rather than just having a paycheck every month. starting over when we're supposed to be comfortably enjoying the fruits of our previous labors.

but then, in the stillness of a foggy morning, i wander out to the pasture with my camera and i see the horses peacefully munching away at the grass that's springing forth. and even tho' it's not perfect - it's messy and a huge job and sometimes hard and frustrating - it just feels right.

i'm in the right place at the right time and exactly the right age.

hello thirty-fourteen

happy birthday to me

i always think that perhaps this year i'll make one of those lists...you know the ones, where you declare all of the things you want to do before your next birthday. but again this year, i think i'll pass. i have a lot of balls in the air at the moment. i need to be open and adaptable to be able to catch even some of them. if i'm focused on a specific list, i might miss.

i mused a bit on this last year, when we were about to embark on this huge change...moving to the countryside, changing jobs, moving across the country. but i still believe it. which isn't to say that i don't believe in setting goals, i just don't believe that goals always hold over the course of an entire year, especially not personal, private goals. and that if you're too focused on them, you might miss something, some golden opportunity. and frankly, i'm too old to miss any opportunities. so i'm going to keep my eyes open and i'm going to enjoy being thirty-fourteen.

the age of contentment

a lake makes a nice birthday present. but i got that loom too.

i got an early birthday present yesterday when the realtor called and said that the seller had accepted the terms we'd offered on the property over in jutland (this is property #2, to our knowledge, the dog sled has never arrived at the owner of property #1, as we've heard nothing from those clowns). things are really falling into place. it seems both like it's taken an eternity and that it's happened in the blink of an eye. in just two short months, everything we thought about moving to a farm has changed. we thought we'd move to one here in our area, but now, we're packing up and moving across the country. it's funny to think that the whole thing was initiated by a friday afternoon phone call from a friend as i walked from one terminal to the other at copenhagen airport, picking up the blog campers back in january. one phone call can change your whole life.

window on a whole new life.

since it's my birthday, i had mulled over making one of those lists of things to do before my next birthday, but in light of the enormous shift that's happened in our thinking and in our lives, i'm not sure that it's worth setting out such a list. because it's so hard to know where life will take you and if you're too focused on a specific list, you just might miss some golden opportunities. what if we'd not opened our minds to the possibility of a move to a new area? then we'd not have new jobs and a 17-acre farm with a lake and a house built in 1895 (for a good quarter of the price of what a similar property would have been here). what if we'd stayed focused on our original little list of things we thought we wanted? i shudder at the thought.

of course, that's not entirely fair to lists of goals and many of the goals on a list as long as mine would be - if i were making one of those 43 things to do before i turn 44 type lists - would be more frivolous goals, like the one from last year's list that said, "become blog of note." i also had more ephemeral things on the list like "be more present," and "dare more" and "believe more." i suppose some days i fulfilled those goals and some days i didn't. i never had things on my list like "run a marathon" or "lose weight" (tho' i undoubtedly should) or those typical resolution-type goals. it would be more fun to have something on it like "make cupcakes once a week" or "talk to a stranger once a day," but my photo-a-day and art journal calendar projects are enough for me and since they're not specific to my birthday, it seems a moot point to make a list.

but it's weird with birthdays when you've reached my age. tho' it's a bit ho hum, i feel comfortable being 43, it feels like the right age to be. it's where i'm at. i wouldn't want to go back and i feel there's still loads to look forward to. it's likely that i'll never run a marathon, but that's ok, i never wanted to anyway. it's interesting that as i look both back and forward on this day, i'm quite content to be right where i am.

a little self-present for my birthday. a felt brooch from lilfish studios.

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i've written more about the new property over on livet på landet.