yes, i am still alive!

this is a photo of the funky custom wallpaper at the charming pyjama park hotel in hamburg. it's got all kinds of stuff going on on it, so it felt appropriate after my long silence. we've had lots of summer activities going on. a wedding to attend, friends to hang out with, a school shopping trip to germany, getting the child prepared for boarding school (she leaves on sunday!), she's got the new macbook in gold and she's over the moon. we still haven't had much summer here in denmark and we nearly melted from only 32°C in hamburg the other day. we're just not used to the heat after our dismal, cold, rainy summer! they promise some warm days are coming our way, but i'll believe it when i see it. i promise a proper post soon, but in the meantime, there are some good links below.

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an interesting post on the blurring of lines between content and advertising in podcasts.

and an opinion piece as well, that continues the musings.

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are you fucking kidding me?
how ridiculously tone deaf (and moronic) is phil gramm?
ceos as the oppressed in society? give. me. a. break.

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i saw a different version of this list that didn't leave north dakota out.
instead it said that south dakota had told north dakota that the bar meet-up was next week.
i'll admit that made me laugh out loud.
go on, click through and see what your state would be like if it were hanging out in a bar.

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need to shake up your photo mojo? here are some great ideas.
thank you to bill for the link!

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a sobering analysis of the current state of american politics.

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listen to this week's this american life.
it's important. i'm shocked and appalled at the rampant racism in the country of my birth.

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?

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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.

what a weekend

despite the rain and cold of our sad excuse for a typical danish summer, the strawberries are producing. three buckets we managed to pick today. there were more, but the energy faded before we could pick them all. they'll be there tomorrow as well.  energy was low because we got home around 4 a.m. last night after attending husband's middle child's gymnasium (high school) graduation festivities. on graduation day, the kids got to the ceremony in the morning, then drive around in a decorated and highly dangerous looking open truck, drinking all day long. they visit each student's house, where the parents try to get salty snacks down them and the odd red bull to keep them going as they go back to their beer and cider and odin knows what else on the truck. hmm, i don't seem to remember my high school graduation being that much fun.

i'm also tired because i've probably got a case of borrelia, which you may know as lyme disease. husband removed a tiny tick from the back of my arm a couple of weeks ago and on friday, it felt like my whole body was breaking down. it started with nighttime leg cramps, which hurt so badly they caused me to throw up from the pain. then, i developed a fever and chills felt generally very unwell. this was no fun because i was visiting friends and not at home.

i called my doctor back at home and he recommended that since i wasn't home, i should go to an emergency room. i did and ended up spending the whole day there, getting a battery of blood tests while doctors ruled out a blood clot in my leg (which i feared it was initially). while lying there waiting for the various tests, i read webMD on my phone (i do not recommend doing this) and diagnosed myself with addison's, deep vein thrombosis and type II diabetes. however, i came across a reference to lyme and remembered that tick from a few weeks ago, so it wasn't all bad. i told the doctor about it and she immediately nodded, saying it made sense in light of my symptoms.

i had actually been to my own doctor last monday with a strangely achey, stiff neck and a swollen lymph node but they couldn't find anything then. the blood tests on friday showed that my body was in full swing fighting some kind of infection. i will have to have some more tests with my own doctor this week to have it confirmed, but they started me on the heavy antibiotics recommended for borrelia immediately.

what's worrying is that i've read that borrelia is on the rise - doctors are seeing more and more cases of it. sometimes people realize it very early (like me) and sometimes it takes years. if it takes years, it can cause serious damage to nerves and joints that people never really get over. i'm hoping since my tick bite was only a couple of weeks ago that i'll escape that fate. tho' i got a little freaked out on friday, thinking my body was suddenly failing me, i'm glad it made a commotion over this so i could get treatment.

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.

after the rain

the solstice has come and gone, we're on the downhill side of the light. i don't want to even think about that and thankfully we won't really see it for awhile. it's still light 'til 11 or so and the sun comes up around 4:30 a.m. (that's kind of annoying). if it would just stop raining, we could soak it in properly. it rained most of today, and i did my best to ignore it, spending time tending to various chicken emergencies (a variety of nesting hens, chicks hatching and general kerfluffles), planting radishes, picking strawberries and weeding in the garden anyway (note to self: it's easy to weed when the soil is wet). thankfully this evening, the sun broke through just in time for a glorious, golden sunset.

we've had days of good food (way too much meat), writing on the table, laughter, a trip to the beach, a proper bonfire for skt. hans (midsummer) and an afternoon at the flea market. i have a million notes of things to blog and tons of photos to share, but that will be for tomorrow. right now, i've got a date with orhan pamuk at the museum of innocence.

a day at the beach or bundle up folks, there's a reason they call it the north sea!

so that summer thing just lasted the one day. today dawned cloudy and got windier as the day progressed. determined to defy it, we packed up our wellies and headed for the west coast of denmark, which is now only about an hour away. it was cloudy when we first got there, but we (being me and sabin) were dressed for it (husband wore shorts, trying to prove his viking-ness, i guess). but the sun did eventually come out.

i love the beach.
todays haul: 24 heart-shaped rocks, 7 rocks with eyes, 9 pieces of beach glass

a bit cloudy, but the north sea is fantastic nonetheless.
it can literally blow all your cares away.

bonding time. he was probably making up some story or other. 

there was a big group of kite surfers on the ringkøbing fjord

have i mentioned that i love the beach?

since summer is so unreliable in these parts, you learn to take what sunshine you can get and do stuff anyway, even if the sunshine isn't there. we were so glad we went to the beach today. the sound of the surf and the wind whipping your hair is just good for the soul.

more tomorrow of all the stones we gathered....