i could work in my pyjamas every day

while i wasn't completely alone today, there was sunshine and time for a solitary walk. i also helped husband move a load of wood and getting out in the fresh air and stretching my limbs, doing something physical helped - i so often forget to reside in my body as well as my mind. aside from some hours of work (which, since i was home, i could do in my pyjamas), no one really expected anything of me. that, and the pyjamas, were very welcome. i found a little bit of time to read some more long read pieces that i'd been saving. like this one, which, like yesterday's, is also about home. and this one about anna akhmatova. what are you doing to find peace and comfort in this liminal space between christmas & new year's?

stitches, objects and memories

ever since working on cleaning out our mother's house, i've been pondering things. the things we collect, stockpile, accumulate over a lifetime. the mundane things - bowls in which we serve dinner, glasses for milk, ceramic bulldogs, socks, tea towels...

i had some breakable glasses wrapped in the tea towel above for the trip home. the glasses are cheery ones from the 50s - with a pink check and a gold rim. i didn't notice that this tea towel had a careful hand-stitched repair of a hole until i went to iron it yesterday. and i welled up. mom must have sat down with it and carefully stitched a fine little oval-shaped patch into place. i find myself wondering when she did it. she couldn't have done it today. she's losing her words for things like needles and thread and while her fingers might remember how to make careful stitches, i'm not certain her mind could any longer make the connections necessary to do so. what made this particular towel worthy of repair? it is a nice, soft towel of the kind that are hard to find these days - the kind that actually absorbs water and which is soft enough to clean your glasses on and have them end up clean. that's part of why i used it to wrap up the glasses, i knew i would appreciate using it when i got home.

mom's house is full of objects and we donated, gave away, threw away and burned a great many of them. but there were things here and there that i wanted to save and take home - like these glasses and this tea towel. i'm not sure what to make of my choices. i don't particularly remember the glasses from my childhood. i think they are something she collected at a flea market in the years after i left home, so there aren't memories attached to them. but still, they spark joy (a factor my sister swears by after reading the marie kondo book). and it means something to have brought them home with me, across half a continent and an ocean. i feel comforted when i use them.

it is, in many ways, a situation without much comfort, this losing your mother to alzheimer's. i have been able to read about it a little bit now, but still haven't found anything that i feel like is the book i need. i think i deal mostly by avoidance. i don't call her much, because it brings it to the surface, hearing her repeat the same stories - the relocation of her cats to another zip code (as she puts it), the evil people who took her driver's license tho' she wasn't hurting anyone, the whereabouts of her (multiple!) guns - hearing her search for words and stumble around in her decreasing vocabulary. it's too raw and distressing. so i seek comfort in drinking my gin and tonic from cheery glasses she chose or fingering the mended stitches on a tea towel. and it hits me that the tea towel could have been my grandmother's and the stitches hers. and she also had alzheimer's and was eventually erased. leaving behind a mended tea towel, that i muse over at my own desk in my home in denmark, so far from where the stitches were stitched. and i wonder if objects can be repositories of memory. and if it will also happen to me...

* * *

speaking of memory and objects, matisse found joy in things as well.

* * *

an interesting piece on alzheimer's as a women's issue in the lenny letter.

it's the little things

finding joy in the little things...like unexpected gifts from longtime bloggy friends. thank you so much! small acts of kindness, generosity and love like this are getting me through these mad political times. the kitties think those little fabric kitties and bunnies are for them! and now all of my pagemarkers will be kitties! 

* * *

it seems i'm not the only one with post-election stress disorder.

* * *

meanwhile, in an alternate universe:

the hillarybeattrump website

* * *

i do hope gates & buffet are right about a return to a fact-based reality.

* * *

best troll of the week:
the guys who handed out russian flags to the stupid crowd
listening to the cheeto's speech at the cpac meeting.

a beautiful mess of a weekend

what a weekend. it was full of laughter and gin and playing cards and making good food and father-daughter time and travel plans. and while we laughed about trump's remarks on a fictional swedish terror attack, we mostly stayed away from the cheeto's latest antics, for the sake of our sanity. and it was good. it was a beautiful mess of a weekend. and we all needed that.

* * *

how much do we now love the (former) swedish prime minister?
#tweetoftheweek
and more humo(u)r from/about sweden.

* * *

i normally don't think much of these "reduce your stress" lists,
but this one made sense.
and in these times, odin knows we need to reduce our stress.
it might have helped that it was in harvard business review.

* * *

i'm not sure what i make of this.

it seems a bit like left-leaning conspiracy theory.

but on the other hand, it also seems plausible.

* * *

i must say that i think buzz feed was right to publish the russian dossier.

* * *

dangerous and nasty. that's what we get with the cheeto president.

* * *

andrew sullivan on the madness of the cheeto.

self-care in the age of trump

i am genuinely distressed by the trump presidency. i spent years loathing ronald reagan and the younger bush, but they seem so tame now in comparison. i think it's made even worse by the fact that obama, who was the very epitome of grace and erudition, preceded the cheeto. the contrast is stark.

my stomach is in knots, i wake up at 3 a.m., wondering what he's done now, and i'm still clenching my jaw. i can't even have the fillings i lost due to all of the grinding of my teeth fixed because i can't open my mouth wide enough for the dentist to work on me, thanks to what is beginning to look like permanent tightness in my jaw. and i realize that i need less facebook and more self-care. i need to do something other than obsessively refresh the nytimes website. it's time to take care of me.

so i snuggle with cats. make up fresh combinations in the juicer (grapes, carrots, oranges, ginger and turmeric). i got out a beloved sweater that's developed a few holes and i'm working on visible, pretty embroidered repairs. i read some of the mary oliver poetry that i bought and a jo nesbø thriller that i picked up at good will for a dollar. i put down a few ideas for what i'd like to do photographically in the coming year. i finished and put away all of the laundry (and yes, this is self-care - it feels so satisfying to know the laundry is done). i stayed in my pajamas all day. new pens. netflix (i'm almost done with season 2 of how to get away with murder). a long, hot shower. i have candles lit all around. and best of all, i took a bit of break from facebook, if only for a few hours.

i think i'll be ready to rejoin to the real world tomorrow.