once upon a dark and stormy night

the rain just never stops, even hollister can't believe it, he's never seen anything like it in his little life. and the winds are back, so it really is a dark and stormy night out there. it seems like it's been raining for a month and the forecast for the week ahead looks bleak. it leaves me feeling dismal and i dream of escaping to somewhere that has sunshine. we are going to barcelona in a couple of weeks, but that seems like an eternity from now. i hope barcelona is practicing its sunshine, because i'm really going to need it. denmark has always been rainy - i remember my first november here, i don't think the sun shined once, the darkness and the rain were just as unrelenting as they are now. i remember that we went out to dinner one evening, riding our bikes, despite the rain. i foolishly wore a dress, it was a bit gauzy and romantic and had a better story than i did, because it was from the j. peterman catalog. it got caught in my bike chain and husband (who was just boyfriend at that point) had to kneel down in a puddle and get it unstuck because i was trapped. that made the rain a little more bearable - both his chivalry and a little bit his suffering. we've been doing all kinds of errands together this week, despite the rain - a trip to ikea, a visit to a fancy paint store where an old man hand-mixed two colors for us, followed by a dinner together at the burger shack (they have the best fries - with fluffy grated parmesan and fresh thyme on top). it's not the same as that long ago dark and rainy night, but it's pretty good. despite the rain.

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.

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.

reality is frequently inaccurate

i am a confirmed collector of quotations. i have small notebooks full of them. many from books and a few from films, but mostly from the clever people who surround me. i remember some years ago, a friend complaining that he could never make my quote book. but if you are trying too hard, you'll never make it. and he did eventually do so, with some quote about biology, as i recall (i cannot currently locate that small notebook, as many of my books are still packed away awaiting the renovations of this house).

but i've found myself thinking about quotations recently. because a lot of them seem to be floating around. there are these trendy postcards with pithy comments on them that i think have been brought on by an odd combination of mad men and pinterest. and those "keep calm and ..." variations. and my facebook feed is full of self-help quotes. platitudes really. and i wonder what it is that makes us need platitudes so much at this particular juncture? they're generally quite obvious and a bit vapid and aimed at boosting our self-esteem. but why do we need that?

is it really more prevalent now than in other times? has world economic crisis really shaken our confidence so much that we need empty reassurance that it's all going to be ok if we just believe, don't look back, crush monsanto, eat right, live in the now, stop medicating, eat raw, grow our own, look for the silver lining?

but what if it's not...what if all of the true Idea People are gone and all we're left with is mediocrity? and these platitudes are the logical conclusion. and what we're witnessing is the end of civilization as we knew it? what if it's not going to be ok?

where are the cutesy 50s postcards about that?

stop harshing my mellow

i read that phrase - harshing my mellow - the other day on facebook and it's totally stuck in my head. one consequence of living outside your native language is losing touch with what all of the cool kids are saying.

but i get it, i get that phrase. my mellow has been harshed a bit of late. and i'd just really like it back, please.

this basket of meaningful stones normally sits on the shelf beside my desk, tho' i've moved it to my standard windowsill scale for its photoshoot. it's raining and wildly windy outside today. and dark. but as always, these stones help me get back my mellow - they're calming and soothing somehow. except when people pile papers and books and assorted lint (and screws) from their pockets on them. people who shall remain nameless, but who may or may not have been formerly known as the keeper. that totally harshes my mellow all over again.

i suppose the prime thing that can harsh one's mellow is one's own expectations. when we expect things...behaviors, levels of intelligence, stuff to make sense - we can only be disappointed. because people will never behave as you expect, nor be as smart as you'd like, and the world will ultimately never make sense.

the swans have it

a week ago on sunday, we had a friend and her two children visiting. we declared the day to be a totally analog day. the only digital photos i was allowed to take that day were of the filling of the jars of honey. other than that, it had to be film or not at all. and wouldn't you know it, my friend and i walked down to the lake and i saw the swan couple that lives there parading their five beautiful children around the still and beautiful lake which was bathed in the golden light of evening. and me without a camera. so i was forced to take a photo of it in my mind. "click" as my nephew would say. but it made me determined to go back down there with the camera.

of course it's pretty much been raining since then, but i decided not to be defeated by the rain and so i went down to the lake, camera in hand (well, camera mostly under my raincoat, actually). and although it wasn't as picture perfect as it was on the day that's preserved only in memory, it wasn't half bad. but those swan parents are seriously protective. as soon as they saw me, they lined up the crew and headed for the other end. and so i stalked through the wet grass and headed them off, sending them back up to our end of the lake.

i'll want to be able to herd them into the ark we're building you see....

after the rain

honestly, i could use some proper sunshine.
it's been a week.
my moods are very susceptible to the weather.
and all this grey is doing me no favors.

we had a glimpse of sunshine late this afternoon.

i brought out chairs, tablecloth, picked some flowers as a centerpiece,

brought some glasses of black currant cordial and a bit of white wine and sparkling water.

we enjoyed about 20 minutes of that golden light.

my family sent me for sausages and started a fire in the new little fireplace at the foot of sabin's treehouse.
by the time i got back, it had clouded over and begun to rain.
and it only took me about 10 minutes.

the forecast for tomorrow doesn't look good.

but i live in eternal hope that they're wrong.