notes to self :: corona edition

1. try not to be an asinine racist. even if you're frustrated. and tired. and shot through with the anxiety of the whole world, which because of some kind of connection to the whole (capital w) that pema chodron claims you should be thankful for, you are utterly in tune to. and which is actually freaking you the fuck out.

2. try not to sit at your desk all day, never getting up to pee or eat lunch, having one online meeting after another, recording some of them with camtasia because they're not really meetings, but software tests and then not really editing that much because there's no time and you really have to pee. try not to send evidence of your asinine racism to other people because you didn't edit the damn video and you have too many notifications turned on. and seriously, just refer to #1 and don't be an asinine racist in the first place. shame on you.

3. try to go outside. go for a walk. skip around the lawn. jump rope for half an hour. lie on a quilt under the big red maple tree and stare at the sky. whatever you do, just. go. outside. now. well, not now, now, because you should really be in bed.

4. get some sleep.

5. don't read all. the. news. and whatever you do, don't listen to it, because then you will hear that spray-tanned satan's voice. and this will not help with #4.

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.

i need to be where facebook is not

being in severe pain changes you. it makes you feel outside of yourself, not normal, crabby. it feels like you'll never be yourself again and through the fog of the pain, you can only dimly remember the outline of that self anyway. it makes you hard to be around, petulant, demanding and even more impatient than usual. in short, you are a bear cat. and you can hardly even stand yourself. i suspect it's even worse when it's nerve pain, as it's relentless and unforgiving and just. doesn't. let. up.

it makes me even more disgusted by the endless array of crap on facebook than i usually am...

~ um, i think that art does not mean what you think it means.

~ yes, we get it, you're not getting any. maybe you shouldn't have left your husband?

~ trouble in paradise? that's the fourth or fifth male chauvinistic anti-woman joke you've posted in the past week or so. are you also not getting any?

~ enough with the humble bragging...you are just. so. #blessed.

~ i seriously doubt that you will ever win that "dream" holiday to malaga, but share away for the tenth time.

~ and i hope, for your sake, that you also don't win the rabbit fur trimmed boots with matching studded skinny jeans that that clothing store is giving away.

~ this year's simplified red starbucks cups represent a design trend towards minimalism, not the work of the devil.

~ are you a little obsessed with cats or what? (see, i even annoy myself.)

~ shouldn't you have had to actually ATTEND that university to get that excited about their football team?

~ that ben carson guy is batshit crazy with his pyramids as giant grain elevators theory (among others...)

~ aphorisms rule the day, there are no deep thoughts.

~ all of those local "news" items are marketing for local businesses - don't pretend to be journalists when you're marketeers.

~ i don't know what's worse? poodles or labradoodles? ugh.

it's clear to me that i need to be where facebook is not until this pain subsides...

100 happy days :: day 83

two years ago today, frieda badida was born

she was molly's last kitten.

poor little molly was so tired by then that i had to gently wipe away the membrane so she could breathe.

i'm so glad i did.

she's quirky, sweet and wonderful.

and only occasionally expects to be let in the window at 4 a.m.

happy birthday frieda.

* * *

so many things tumbling in my mind to write about...ghosts, communing with the dead, what makes a good marriage (can you tell i'm listening to podcasts?), getting older, fears, plants, asparagus, peonies, gardening in general, memory, foxes, chickens, feathers all over the yard, buffy the vampire slayer, magic, painting, children becoming who they are, schools, whether it's ok to be the smart one, boarding school, summer holiday, content management systems, kittens...i could go on, but right now, it's all jumbled up. 

* * *

elvendale, not just where the LEGO elves hang out. 

a case of friday arbness

my head is full of all sorts of random things, so in the interest of clearing it out so i can get on with some important work on a big project, i thought i'd share them with all of you...

~ there was a little dog with an underbite that was always in front of our main street grocery store when i was a kid. i hated that dog. he was terrifying. i think he belonged to one of the checkout ladies. to this day, when we want to indicate displeasure around here, we stick out our bottom teeth and do the "mean dog" face.

~ discussing ideas is probably my favorite thing to do in the whole world. it helps me think things through and get lots more clarity on the ideas. sometimes, i have so many, they jumble up in my head until i write about them or discuss them with others. i'm super lucky to have a variety of people that i can call on when i need to think things through. husband being the main one of them, but there are others. and they know who they are.

~ i got such a chuckle out of reading this tongue-in-cheek review of the new super heroes set with wonder woman and her invisible jet. in the comments you'll see that some of the other readers weren't quite so charmed. to them i say, relax and don't take things so seriously.

~ speaking of LEGO, this new blog is shaping up to have some intelligent views on our favorite plastic brick. ok, so there are only two posts so far, but both were well-argued and obviously carefully researched.

~ i'm so enjoying my kerosene fragrance sample tin. it's fun trying a new scent every day! i'm wearing copper skies today which, despite its lush description of amber and tobacco, is definitely not me. it starts off with a dusty, powdery toilet paper kind of vibe and deepens into the kind of sickly sweet scent of a chennai slum. i will allow that it probably smells great on someone else with very different chemistry than me. and less memories of sickly sweet chennai slums. kind of amazing how scent can call up memories quite unbidden.

~ our friends at #stuckinplastic reported on some troubling take down notices received by some legographers on red bubble this week. i wonder what the implications of this are on the enormous community of people out there taking photos of minifigs? once we buy them, can't we play with them however we wish?

~ i realized today (yes, i'm a bit slow) that facebook bores the shit out of me.

~ we had this amazing frost all day today (see above photo of of the unicorn sparkle fairy - hey, i made a MOC!). :-) it's the kind of frost that comes from a freezing fog. and it's the first time this winter of ours has had any beauty in it whatsoever. it was a welcome change.

~ it's the child's birthday on sunday. and she's off on a one-day ski trip to sweden at midnight tonight, but will be home to have cake on sunday. i can't believe she's nearly 14.

i think that will about do it, so i shall wish you all an awesome weekend. remember to stop and photograph the frost, will you? and always carry a minifig in your pocket.

saturday on thursday or just another random list to clear my head

things i've learned in the past few days:

~ do not be tempted to cook with the beautiful, smooth, fragrant, white inner bark of an oak tree. it's bitter as hell.

~ once you have had the iPhone above, you cannot go back to an iPhone below. i smashed the screen on my 4S the other day and am borrowing a friend's 4 while it's at the iPhone hospital. the 4 is not the same as the 4S - it's slower and apparently cannot be used for actual phone calls (not that that bothers me all that much). i guess i didn't really know this as i went from 3S to 4S back in the day.

~ oak is heavy. really, really heavy.

~ a photo of a baby bunny is almost a shoe-in to go explore on flickr.

~ not all writing is equally easy. the more you care about it and the closer you are to it, the harder it is.

~ good things really do come to those who wait - we've waited three years to eat the first asparagus from our garden. it was heavenly.

~ when you read the no. 1 ladies detective agency books, you will want to drink excessive amounts of rooibos tea.

it feels like it's the weekend, but it's only thursday. that's because it's ascension day in denmark and therefore a holiday. because the danes are so religious and all. not. but hey, it's like having a saturday already on thursday, so i'm not complaining. here's hoping your thursday had all the goodness of a saturday as well.

ponderings as the holiday winds down

questions i'm currently pondering:

~ will spring ever come?

~ what is the shape of now?

~ what is the feeling of now?

~ what is the look of now?

~ what do i want to be when i grow up?

~ tho' i've read lots of complaints out there about daylight savings time, i still love it. i'd rather have my light at the end of the day, thank you. it cuts back on television time and lets you sleep a bit longer.

~ what will i read next?

~ will i ever really be able to quiet my mind and meditate? (and will it help if i do?)

~ as much as i think the notion of coaching is a snake oil worthy of p.t. barnum (there's a sucker born every minute) or scientology, do i actually need one? or would it be better to just go running?

~ is it ok to be a snob? 

~ is it ok to assess the blame in order to avoid taking on someone else's bullshit? (husband says yes and i'm inclined to believe him.)

~ how can i introduce play into my everyday? and is there a way make a living doing so? (without involving too many children.)

~ i need more happenings in my life. and pop-up shops. and restaurants. and quality coffee. and organic veggies.

~ how can i be a better friend to me?

~ when will i stop using that essie nail polish that destroys my nails?

~ do you think you are drawn to the things you need, just when you need them?

~ where is the outrage in the danes over the coming teacher lock-out? (it starts tuesday and will last indefinitely.) and what do people do who don't have a child old enough to be left home alone in front of the internet with her iMac?

~ why don't people don't write letters like this anymore?

What is needed is constant work, day and night, constant reading, study, will…. Every hour is precious for it…. Come to us, smash the vodka bottle, lie down and read…. Turgenev, if you like, whom you have not read.

that's not quite true, i have read turgenev. and my bottle of choice is gin.

but of course, chekhov wasn't writing to me.

* * *

how fabulous does this version of alice in wonderland look?

with art by yayoi kusama.

circles are everywhere, i tell you. everywhere. it's the shape of now.

monday loves

candles in the windowsill on a grey and rainy day.
a book that reminds me of the importance of being deep.

new pages in an old art journal.
writing in library books.
cozy new socks.

a fresh to-do list.

and a fresh week in which to accomplish it.

an abundance of raspberries from the garden.

the new j. peterman owner's manual.

unexpected sources of reason.
and some not so unexpected, but amusing nonetheless, mostly for the swearing.

happy monday, one and all.

some days are like that

it's been a weird monday. i was writing a whole other blog post and then a bunch of stuff wanted to come out and it kept clouding up what i wanted to write, so i just have to write this and get it out of the way. some days are like that.

~ moving horses will always take longer than you think.

~ australia is the worst movie i've ever seen. period. everyone involved in it should be taken out back and shot. especially nicole kidman. and whoever put together those backgrounds against the stuff shot in the studio, they should be tied up and made to watch the film repeatedly for the rest of their lives. even if their eyes have to be propped open with those metal thingies from a clockwork orange.

~ if you're a nurse and you have to take a swab halfway down someone's throat, perhaps just a teency weency little explanation or maybe even a "hello" before you come at them with the extra long q-tip would be in order. just sayin'.

~ if you need to get an x-ray of your lungs because you've been coughing for three weeks straight, go at lunchtime. there's no waiting.

~ people who write knitting books leave out a lot of stuff that beginners will have questions about. like how to remember whether that last row you did was knit or purl, or how to tell if you forget.

~ it seems that divorces come in bunches...another of sabin's classmates' parents are splitting up. she says it's the 6th in her class. apparently marriages fall like dominoes. i'm pleased to not know any of the whys and wherefores of any of them, but feel sad for the kids.

~ i have to make 600 (ok, that might be a slight exaggeration) cupcakes tomorrow. i'm thinking rainbows.

ok, i think that about does it. now i'll get back to the post i was really writing. some days are like that.

twisty trails of monday ponderings

~ still coughing.

~ i love inflated titles - so i gave myself one: director of creative services. next time, i'm going to be an idea consultant. tho' i'm still most partial to storyteller.

~ i watched a documentary last evening about the jewelry of cartier and copenhagen's shamballa jewels. they are both equally pretentious, but in very different ways. it got me thinking about the state of pretention in the world these days. i think it's in flux. whereas it was pretentious to consume the right brand, now it's becoming a pretense not to.

~ i want an herbarium in the garden.  one like cadfael has in ellis peters' crime novels set in the 12th century.

~ nothing brightens one's day quite as much as fresh, new moo cards.

~ a couple of months ago, i bought a .dk domain. if i'd known then what i know now, i'd never have done it. you see, there's a protectionist cartel around the .dk domains that makes it impossible to use them without buying hosting in denmark. no google sites, no blogger, no shop site like someammo. they've got it fixed so that you MUST pay a premium for hosting in denmark. it's a protectionist scam i tell you and i feel it's quite outside what i perceive as the spirit of the internet. i will never again buy a .dk domain.   that said, i have given in and paid their mafia-like extortion fees we'll soon have it up and running and i'm going to be pleased to show it to you!

~ i'm tired of this non-wintery winter. i could really use a good and proper snow before it's all over.

~ that said, the return of the light is already noticeable and these balmy days do make it wonderful to go for a weekend walk.

~ did i tell you that i bought a pinto shetland pony last week? her name is pinky. she's feisty and spunky, but overall a good girl and a good ride (tho' you should NOT use a whip on her, as one of the riding instructors found out to her dismay last week). she's a bit small for sabin, but is her birthday present anyway. every kid needs a horse they can PLAY with and our matilde is not that kind of horse. plus, the riding club had need of a small pony for the leadline classes and doesn't have much money. so, i bought her and have lent her to the club for lessons.

~ i love knitting with variegated yarn - i find the gradual changing of the colors very motivating. and my latest scarf is almost done. i may even try to learn to purl on the next one.

~ remember that local community culture group i mentioned?  well, last thursday, i joined the advisory board. i'm pretty excited about that.

~ it's only halfway into the month and already i'm a little tired of using only instagram photos for my 366.

~ and now it's time to go see how many eggs the chickens have produced today. happy monday one and all!

so i've been thinking...

~ everyone should go to the beach at least once a month, just to clear their heads.

~ about whether you can eat the seaweed found on our northerly beaches.

~ and if so, which kind?

~ about the great wars of the last century (i'm reading ken follett's fall of giants, which is set in WWI) and the residues they have left behind.

~ about the need for an editor. and perhaps also a translator. or maybe just some english lessons. unless they really did want people to line up their dogs...

~ that sometimes the best course of action on a sink full of dirty dishes is to pour a glass of wine, turn out the light and go settle into the big chair with a good book. after all, those dishes aren't going anywhere.

~ leaving one square of toilet paper on an otherwise empty roll does not excuse you from changing it.

* * *

what are you thinking about in this liminal week, while we wait for the new year?

saturday musings

we're on the third day in a row of absolutely glorious weather...clear blue skies and golden sunshine, plus it's about 23°C, which pretty much couldn't be more perfect. everyone is talking about how they're soaking it all in, for the coming darkness ahead. it's so glorious it almost feels like that's possible.

it's one of those saturdays, where you run around, doing a lot of small tasks and thinking a lot of small, not very profound thoughts. you know days like that, right?  thoughts like....

~ who decides the smell of things? i accidentally bought some detergent tabs that i thought were for the dishwasher, but they turned out to be for washing clothes (luckily i read the package and didn't find this out the hard way). and after years of buying detergent with no perfumes (i started when sabin was a baby), it is so strange to have the clothes smell so strongly of a scent chosen by someone else. yuck. but throwing them away seemed worse (i had opened the package before i realized the mix-up, so i couldn't just return them to the grocery store) than using them up (tho' with this scent, i'm no longer so sure about that).

~ the way you're treated at the beginning of a job is so important - if your computer and phone and office are ready and they give you a big bouquet of welcome flowers and invite you to their big annual company party on your first day, they've pretty much set the tone haven't they? (all of this just happened to husband. and shall we just say that there's a vast difference between vestas and siemens wind power in this area. and by the way, vestas wins.)

~ you can never underestimate the righteousness of danish women. nobody can do righteous like they can. nobody.

~ we're (and by we, i mean husband) scraping the horrible nasty plastic paint off the house that the morons people we bought the house from painted it with. it was catastrophic for the bricks with that paint and a house that had always been washed with white chalk and not painted. sometimes i still feel so ANGRY at those people and the cheap, nasty solutions they came up with around this house.

~ the roaming gnome arrived at my house today. looking forward to seeing what adventures he gets up to. and if you'd like me to send him to you next, just let me know, as you too can host this little adventurer.

~ what do you wear to a party with 7700 other people (none of whom you know), at which roxette is going to perform? (who even knew roxette was still alive?)

~ we're now up to three eggs a day from our chickens. they're still pretty small, but each egg makes me unaccountably gleeful.

happy weekend, one and all....

believe it or not

an equally random photo for a random post

i am consistently amazed at people's need to tell their stories. seemingly especially if the stories are full of strife and sorrow and woe. they have a great desire for commiseration and in being confirmed in their sense of having been done wrong. it makes it easy to gather material for a book, but i have to say that it is making for a rather bleak story. but maybe there simply aren't any bright spots in the welfare state, even the lauded scandinavian kind.

* * *

believe it or not, there are still people (in this otherwise very prosperous ostensibly western society) who don't have any education beyond primary school.

* * *

it's election day in denmark today. the race is close, but it looks like after ten years of the blue guys, it will go over to the red. because denmark seems to have adopted those same colors as they use in the US elections. tho' the politicians are all well to the left of the american ones - blue or red. i don't get to vote, as i'm not a citizen, but i'm confident husband will vote correctly.

* * *

believe it or not, there are people who don't know how to type.

* * *

it's sometimes really, really hard to maintain anthropological distance. but absolutely essential for maintenance of sanity. (this is really a reminder to myself, so if you don't understand it, that's ok.)

* * *

believe it or not, there are people who still have nokia phones.

* * *

my drunk kitchen is totally cracking me up.

thank you bill.

* * *

i'm feeling much better now. sometimes you just have to clear your head of all the little stuff.

time to clear my head

i'm thinking about...



...how much i adore this photograph that i took today. it's one of my favorites in a very long time.

...how many hours i've wasted that i'll never have back.

...totally changing around the living room.

...painting the inside of some drawers a surprising color.

...how lulled we were into thinking there was real summer on the horizon, only to be (cold)snapped back to danish summer reality.

...a sewing/design problem.

...really being a vegetarian.

...the different reactions stress causes - sleeplessness, excessive counting, a sore jaw, curtness, snapping at loved ones, unarticulated and unarticulatable anger, cleaning frenzies (i could go on, but i'll stop here, since it begins to look like i'm in need of stress treatment).

...how badly the garden needs weeding.

...reseeding some of the things that didn't seem to come up and whether it's too late for that.

...what a great week sabin has had with her friend maria.

...how much i love the design (of the front page, not the little scrolly bits in the actual page windows) and (dare i say it) the down-to-earthness of GOOP.

...how unintelligent chickens seem to be (standing on top of each other up on a little ledge where they're not meant to be, but apparently desire very greatly to be).

...how on earth this can be true.  and is sarah palin shitting her pants now that bachmann is taking her flaky inarticulate freak for president role?

...whether i can apply for asylum in denmark if this lunatic beats obama (thankfully it's early days, so this may not be necessary).

...how i know i read and really liked jonathan franzen's the corrections, but i'm reading it again and find i have little or no recollection of it and am a bit mystified by the passages which i underlined on the first reading. i must have been someone else then.

...how much of a bust today really was. and how i'll never have it back.

...if i get a good night's sleep, tomorrow will be a fresh new day and i can begin again.

things i don't get...

there are many things i don't understand, but i thought maybe throwing out a list of the ones vying for attention in my head at the moment might help turn off the obsessive counting thing that's also going on in my head (what is that about?).

...how the sun has shined for ten days straight in denmark without that ever having happened previously in the nearly 13 years i've been here.

...why they say global warming is a bad thing (see above).

...why the victoria & albert fabrics weren't hotter than they were.

...sherbet pips mania (even as i admit, i fell for it too (can you say charm packs?)).

...photoshop textures (there should be a law against using too many at once).

...the popularity of said photos on flickr.

...what it is that makes a photo popular on flickr.

...why we don't regularly wear hats.

...botox.

...why they stopped making boston legal.

...why the people in this house are completely unable to return the kitchen shears to their rightful drawer.

...the incomprehensible vanity of pretentious "poets." (wish i dared to provide a link.)

...why both the mailwoman and the garbage man skipped us yesterday.

...how i managed to take about 50 photos in bright sunlight at 3200 ISO.


getting all that out should help the counting somewhat.

*  *  *

this is very clever.
and this is making me long to go to istanbul.

and here's what the new blogger dashboard looks like:

i hope it comes  to all of you very soon, i love it! tho' the new compose space is a bit more word doc-like and thus slightly intimidating in all of its space, but i'm already getting used to it. and i do wish the labels would pop up with suggestions from your previous labels, like it did in old blogger (i'm still hoping they fix that). there's also that thing that it's back to publishing posts at the time you began them, rather than the time you hit "publish," which is a throw-back to way, way old blogger. i'm also hoping they fix that.