the view from sunday night

a luxuriously lazy weekend - sleeping in, leisurely tidying up, sorting and throwing out a bunch of old papers (what a relief that was!), hanging with the cats, and husband, watching netflix (altered carbon = meh due to odd casting, dirty money = too distressing, comedians in cars getting coffee = just what i needed), baking bread, making spelt "risotto," because it's what i had in the cupboard, roasting a chicken, getting all the laundry done, catching up my 365 tumblr, planning husband's birthday dinner, photographing the first snowdrops - in the snow, no less, making and keeping a vow not to get dressed all day, cutting out and painting pages of an old book, reading a frivolous and unserious novel. it was, in other words, exactly the weekend i needed.

we are so pressured these days to make sure every moment has meaning, but sometimes, what you need is to slow down, stay in your pajamas, read a rather trashy novel (carl hiaasen's skinny dip, in this case), light some candles, drink coffee with extra cream, snuggle with a cat and damn any guilt feelings over any of it. down time like this is as important as all of the things we chase and the hours we work to make and do things that are important to us and/or our jobs. and i would do well to remember that. 

maybe allowing yourself a shouldless day* is the best way to take care of you and give yourself the mental space for the rest that life offers. and by you, i mean me. but i do also mean you. 

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collect all the books.

it's good for you.

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the case for reading bad.

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some cities are just better for revolutions.

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magazines - collected.

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lovely, lovely audio stories (in danish) by julie thing.

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what you leave behind when you immigrate.

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*shouldless day - from the episode of death, sex & money with ellen burstyn. 

#fivethingsfriday

1. why didn’t i write a book to my child from when she was born? of course, it wouldn’t have been this luminous, beautiful thing that knausgaard wrote. but it would have been my beautiful thing. for my beautiful child.

2. this dark, dreary, rainy part of the year is hard to get through. but candles and comfy socks and cats make it more bearable. all seasons have their time.

3. jane the virgin. what a series! so charming and full of hope amidst the drama. and we need hope amidst the drama these days.

4. life can change in an instant. hold on for the ride. so tight.

5. other people can never really understand your life. no one is in it like you are. this is both terrifying and beautiful.

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these seem much longer on instagram.

catalog of a day :: the natural order of things

my child is in new york city. she bought me a stick of the milk holographic highlighter, it's hard to find, but she found it at urban outfitters. you can never have too much highlighter. i spent the day at a shipyard. it was full of the acrid smell of welding, containers filled with piping, miles of wires, the clang of metal on metal and beeping cranes. i loved every minute of it. it's raining. i'm watching billions on hbo nordic. and drinking a g&t, made with...wait for it...belgian...gin. it's not bad. it's nice to be home with the cats. and husband (tho' he's at a meeting, so technically, he's not home right now.) if the photo above were a loft you could live in, i'd move there. instead, it's the upper deck of a ship that will be delivered in may. they have a bit more work to do. but look at that light. and that height to the ceiling. i could deal with both of those. tho' i'd probably need glass in the windows. i can't get enough of the marvelous vinyl café. today on the way home, husband laughed so hard at the story about the carwash that he cried and could almost not see to drive. i went to yoga three times this week. the light is returning. i am in the final days of my 40s and honestly, it feels fine. like the natural order of things.

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interesting things to read: 11 non-political stories. this terrifying piece on trump's puppetmaster's plan to destroy the eu. and because you'll need to think about something light-hearted after reading that - this piece on the locations of 80s movies. and this totally amusing piece on (possibly) the world's smallest lego ship.

notes to self

just leaving a few things here, so i remember them...

• do not leave your tweezers at home for a whole week. your eyebrows (and possibly those around you who have to look at you) will suffer.
• that organic california chardonnay you bought was a bad idea - it tastes like oily peaches compared to the lovely, crisp south african whites you normally drink (even molly noticed).
• cat farts are the worst.
• but cats are otherwise the best.
• clowns are scary a.f.
• but not as scary as donald trump.
• they can keep århus (long story).
• really cool content about björk.
• i did some voicing in a real recording studio this week and admit i found it addictive. i want to do more. perhaps that podcast i've been putting off? why have i been putting that off again?
• i wonder who is going to take care of the cats when husband ends up in the folketing and is also in copenhagen all week...
• when the weather is glorious throughout september, i can welcome and love autumn again.
• also, i need to hold onto the memory of the good weather when it gets grey, dark and rains throughout november.
• gilmore girls makes a great background to a rainy sunday afternoon.
• thank odin for netflix.

cataloging and compos(t)ing the weekend

i swear something happened to the blue of this photo in the upload. it doesn't look like that in iPhoto

a weekend of physical work outdoors. spring cleaning - of bunny cages, stalls, the chicken coop and the little barn where we store the chicken feed and feed the cats. plus lots of work in the garden. planting willow and moving some little oak trees. husband is creating a oak "hedge" in the middle of the garden to create a bit of protection from our ever-present west wind. cutting down last year's raspberry canes, working in the strawberry beds, preparing the soil for moving some asparagus that's way too close to the rhubarb (we didn't expect the rhubarb to do so well and get so big), fertilizing all of the fruit trees and bushes (that horse poo from the stalls had to go somewhere). it felt great. fresh, cool air. lots of sunshine (today at least). results that you can really see when you're finished. happy chickens. happy bunnies, happy horses. and the cats thought it was awesome that we were outside all day - molly and tiger thought we were there just to hang out with them. we even ate lunch in the garden today, it was so nice outside. tho' it clouded up and rained at the end of the day, i was tired by then anyway, so it was ok to go inside.

such a list of activities might sound a bit boring, but it felt so satisfying. there is something about honest, repetitive physical work and fresh air that soothes the soul. much of the time, i listened to various podcasts (99% invisible, radio lab and benjamen walker's theory of everything). it was good for my mind. the work was good for my body. and i think cleaning and tidying was good for my soul. it's just nice to do tasks where you see a concrete result when they are done. there's also something to there being no shortcuts. all of these things just take the time they take, there is no shortcut. i think it was just very good for me. i certainly feel much more at ease inside my skin at the moment. ready to welcome the week ahead with open arms, whatever it may bring.

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i did quite a lot of reading this weekend as well. i've got several books of essays on the go. ursula le guin's the wave in the mind. i've never read le guin before, but i do admire the way she thinks and she says, "i think best in writing." i can so relate. i'm picking and choosing among the essays in this book, reading whatever grabs my fancy, but her thoughtful way of looking at the world definitely makes me want to read more of her work. i'm not sure why i never had read her before. i especially enjoyed her essay on fiction vs. non-fiction. 

i'm also reading siri hustvedt's book of essays, living, thinking, looking. i have enjoyed her novels, but these essays are grabbing me much less than le guin's at the moment. there is kind of a haughty, over-wise, pretentiousness in them that i'm just not in the mood for. it's rather disappointing, actually, as i normally love her work.

the last volume is musings on mortality edited by victor brombert. it's got pieces on the topic by such folks as tolstoy, kafka, camus (the reason i ordered it from the library) and virginia wolff. not exactly light reading.

i'm also reading all russians love birch trees, a novel by olga grjasnowa on my iPad via the kindle app. i am not impressed with the kindle app, i must say. i haven't actually read that many books that way and i've never used a real kindle. i, a great writer-inner-of-books from way back, cannot stand the dotted underlining of passages according to what others have underlined. the help claims you should be able to turn it off, but it doesn't seem to work, at least not in my version. i find it so distracting and it makes me just loathe it. the app, not the book. i'm enjoying the book. it's fiction that feels quite autobiographical, which is interesting in light of reading the le guin. she talks about the way that writers are influenced by their experiences and suggests that they form a kind of layer of compost from which the writer draws her fiction.

quite fitting to think of words that way when my weekend was spent in the garden, don't you think?

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another thought-provoking look at the LEGO community

on the building debates blog.

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go for a walk and find the answers to life, the universe and everything. 

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this rather makes one not want to be on twitter.

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this will give your brain pain. in a good way.