4 a.m. storms

i was awakened by the rain just before 4 a.m. it's been raining a lot in recent days, but the sun also breaks through and it's nice for a short while, luring you outdoors, only to be chased inside again by another deluge. changeable, unpredictable, much like life. it would be easier to cope with if i was better at going back to sleep when it wakes me. night before last, there was rain, thunder and lightning - husband even got up and unplugged the router, since we've lost it to lightning before. funnily enough, that night, i didn't hear a thing and slept right through. when i wake, i have a bad habit of looking at my phone. these days, it's filled with distressing news about mass shootings and the racist, bigoted president who inspires them. and one article just leads to another and suddenly an hour has gone by. it's hard to go back to sleep after reading about all that. it can feel so hopeless, this downward spiral we seem to be in. and my worries about my gorgeous child choosing to go live there among all those guns seem especially acute at 4 in the morning. no wonder i can't get back to sleep.

wednesday witterings

i have wasted 24 hours of energy and sacrificed a good night's sleep over the most ridiculous casual vacancy-esque local control-freak, power-hungry, senseless game-playing situation that should never have been a situation. but i always think of these things as fodder for an eventual novel. or at least a memoir. i do wonder when i'm going to get around to writing that? and somehow, just like that, my brain cleared of it sometime this afternoon. possibly because we are having glorious autumn weather - sunny days, just the right temperature, no wind. i am so affected by the weather, both good and bad. and by a new set of possibilities opening up. dare i say there is excitement and hope stirring in the days ahead? and a trip to copenhagen.

can you have a kitten for a spirit animal?

we have to take our sunshine however we can get it these days. what you can't really tell in this photo is that the sun was shining brightly simultaneously with it pissing down rain. i'm not sure why the rain didn't show in the photo. maybe because of all of that dazzling green. or maybe it's demonic rain that doesn't show on camera. whatever it is, i swear it was raining.

the weather has sucked for weeks now and it's affecting my mood. the dismal danish election results didn't help. we knew we'd landed in the middle of the danish countryside equivalent of orange county, but learning that 41% of the population in our area voted for dansk folkeparti, the most xenophobic, conservative, right-wing party in denmark, was disheartening to say the least, especially with their attitude towards foreigners, what with being one and all. i'm still not over it. and neither is husband. he's now joined two political parties, to try them both out and see which one is for him.

at least we have kittens. they do help improve my mood. i was feeling a bit down and decidedly headachy at one point today, having one of those (thankfully seldom) moments of reading facebook and feeling like the whole world has a way better life than me, and the kittens scrambled up to me and proceeded to bombard me with their cuteness until i felt better. cats are the best therapy.

i also spent some time weeding in the garden and watering in the greenhouse. that helps too. there's something just so honest about weeding. you can't get around it and it just takes the time and effort that it takes. and it's so strangely satisfying. so much of what we do today is ephemeral, just a series of 0s and 1s when it comes down to it, but weeding, you can literally feel between your fingers and you can actually see the results of what you've done. it's so wonderfully analog. and there are days when that's precisely what one needs. but a kitten or two doesn't hurt.

i wonder if a kitten is my spirit animal?

* * *

there is a real (im)migration crisis going on in europe

and this article (in slightly strange norwegian english) brings it home.

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a bit of inspiration from

seven decades of soviet photography.

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and for a laugh?

buzzfeed showed pictures of danish stuff to non-danes.

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if you're listening to season 2 of the start-up podcast,

you should read this piece on their feature company.

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.

haven't even made a dent in my list

it's one of those weeks. the list was long (two pages) and tho' i steadily worked on it, there are very few items that can be checked off. many of them just take time, but it's also because i did a lot of things that weren't on the list at all (maybe i need to put them there and cross them off to feel better). but on the whole, it leaves me here, on friday afternoon, feeling like i didn't accomplish much of anything this week. and a dull headache, i also have a dull headache. and it's been cloudy all morning, tho' they promised sunshine. the danish weather people suck, they just make shit up instead of actually trying to predict the weather. seriously, if everyone were as bad at their job as the danish meteorological institute (institute no less, the nerve!), this country would long ago have gone under. the norwegian weather service, however, says to expect sunshine later today, so i imagine my mood will improve. and now i'd better get back to that list...

happy weekend one and all!

i'll take a do-over please

they don't call it hump day for nothing. this day felt full of humps. small, annoying ones. the kind that leave you feeling you didn't get anything done, despite doing many small things. i think it was my attention span as well. it was short. so i could only do small tasks before wandering off to some other small task.  not a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day, but just a rather blah and wasted one.

i think it's because we've eaten far too much meat and far too much junk lately. when you don't eat right, you don't feel right. pizza last night didn't help, tho' it tasted oh-so-good at the moment. that's the way of pizza isn't it? piping hot from the pizza oven, crisp lettuce on top and a drizzle of ranch dressing. it's quite heavenly then, but later, when the carbs let you down and your stomach feels heavy, you realize you shouldn't have done it. i was just so sluggish today.

our weather hasn't helped. it's the coldest, rainiest summer in memory. and i've been through a lot of cold, rainy summers in this place. the sun came out this afternoon and it was actually pretty nice, but still not nice enough not to need a jacket while i stood on the sidelines of sabin's riding lesson.

husband suggested a little walk down to the lake at about 10:30 p.m. and that at least made the day end on a good note. it was gorgeous and peaceful down there. and when the sun comes out, it lasts for a long time. at least that's something.

who needs sleep?

a beautiful fog settles in along the creek

do you ever get the feeling that sleep is a waste of time? it's not a feeling that comes over me very often, but it does occasionally. and tonight is the second night this week. it happened as well on sunday night. it's a very awake, very alive feeling and it feels like to try to sleep would spoil it, interrupt the flow. i can't make the feeling come and i can't predict when it will come, but i recognize it very clearly.

sunday night, i don't really know where it came from, but tonight, i think it's because it's completely magical outdoors (this photo in no way does justice to the magicalness).after days of rainy, grey weather, it was sunny and beautiful all afternoon and this evening was perfect  - still, golden and wonderful. we grilled in the graden and we'll be able to pick the first bowl of strawberries tomorrow.  a day of welcome warmth after all that rain has made tiny carrots and beets finally show up. i swear the potatoes grew 10cm today.

it's a very switched-on feeling, like i can go on working and thinking and processing until it gets light again. and not only like i could, but that i should. it's a very intense feeling. and tho' it sounds perhaps a bit manic, it's different than that, because i don't feel like hurrying or buzzing around. it's like my mind is very open - to ideas, to possibilities, to the universe. and i have to grab onto it and not miss it. but i can do that in a quiet way, without flurry.

i was trying to explain this yesterday and i'll admit it sounds stranger "out loud" here on the page than it does in my head or than it feels. have you ever had this feeling? do you know what i mean? please say you know what i mean.