mood: bleak

i'm sick. i haven't been sick like this in a long time. it started yesterday when i was driving with a colleague to copenhagen. i suddenly knew i was going to throw up and luckily he pulled over quickly. then despite attending a workshop, i continued to throw up the rest of the day. by the time we drove home, i was getting achy all over and i'm sure i had a low grade fever. miserable. i went to bed immediately with a kitten and tiktok and slept for 10 hours. so far today, no throwing up, but the thought of food still turns my stomach. i have kept a cup of tea down, so that's something. 

so i'm hanging out in bed with travis, my comfort kitten, candles burning and my laptop on my lap. and i'm thinking about all the madness in the world. in the early days of this blog, i would have been on the barricades, writing about it. the incomprehensible slaughter of innocent women and children in gaza, the way the war in ukraine drags on, but seems to have been forgotten in the face of the horrors being committed by israel and hamas. the criminal trump's increasingly fascist behavior and his likelihood of being the nominee. i just don't know what to say. or do. i feel rather helpless in the face of it all. 

here i am, tucked up in my cozy, warm bed, fretting about some stupid bureaucracy imposed on our little creative group by the local bank and recovering from the flu while the world rages out there. and i can't help but berate myself for it, wondering if it's similar to how ordinary germans just sat back and let hitler do all he did. did they feel as helpless and wrapped up in their own pettiness? 

the body knows

i've been sick all week. fever. headache. ringing ears. persistent cough. it's that time of year, but also surely my body saying "enough!" i haven't been that happy at work of late. my wonderful boss left. what's left of our department has been tossed to and fro across the organization, used as pawns in political game-playing, for more than a year now. we've landed with a manager we were told was interim, but who is looking more and more permanent and who hasn't, shall we say...settled into the role as of yet. even tho' it's been six months. good colleagues are fleeing. there's too much work and too little appreciation. and come january, there is micromanagement on the horizon. and i think that my body took a look at all of this and said, "you need some rest honey. you need to snuggle under the covers with netflix and a kitten and get some rest. you need to stop worrying about things you can't change or control and get right in yourself. and if it takes giving you a temperature of 39.6 for two days, followed by slowly ramping down to almost normal as of today, then so be it young lady." my body still thinks i'm a young lady, you see. and my body knows me and what i need. but it also knows that i don't listen to it very well, so this time, it took extreme measures, and i listened. and i'm starting to feel better.

when is a cold the flu?

you have a cold - it's the kind where you're achy in your shoulders, your ears are ringing, you're coughing up small balls of phlegm from a very sore throat and though your nose isn't stuffed up,  every breath you take is too cold on your sore throat. and it does no favors for your general mood. and by you, i naturally mean me. on top of it, there's another mass shooting at a school, and another bunch of horribleness flares up on facebook among the gun-toting set. i hate being confronted with the wilful ignorance of people i grew up with. the world is becoming so polarized, i honestly fear for all of us. and there's no sense engaging with the deplorables, no amount of logic or reason will seep through their thick, redneck, racist skulls. they sent out their useless, ineffectual, insincere thoughts and prayers and next week, there will probably be another shooting and nothing will be done about it. especially if the perpetrator is white. hands will be wrung and more white supremacist mental cases will buy assault weapons. and that orange jackass in the white house will pose for photos with his grimace and a thumbs up and then rush off to his tee time. and if your head is all stuffed up and your ears are ringing, you might feel rather hopeless about it all.

and it will be compounded by other things which facebook brings to you...like awful, sad stories of a horribly sick little girl who is also being slathered with hopes and prayers - everyone apparently conveniently forgetting that a god that would turn a fever into pneumonia and cardiac arrest in a little girl, doesn't seem all that merciful or inclined to perform miracles. but on that front, you can kind of forgive the thoughts and prayers, because they probably at least bring comfort to those involved. you just mostly wish that facebook didn't involve you in these things.

and you wish this stupid cold or flu or whatever it is would run its course and loosen its grip. hmm...maybe a few thoughts and prayers sent my way would help...

* * *

knausgaard's journey to understand russia.

beautiful.

makes me want to dig out my turgenev.

* * *

and it turns out john b. maclemore of s*town fame made some music.

it involves ambient and field recordings mixed with tor lundvall's work.

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do you know jonathan pie?

you should.

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the food you take you with you when you immigrate.

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i like these short, short stories.

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need more podcasts?
there are some new ones on this list.

being sick is such a waste of time

"Her secret, if indeed she kept one, might be that we cannot comprehend how different our lives are from everyone else’s," on Diane Arbus, from this piece in the american scholar.

i was part of a community art project last weekend. it was a waste time home party and the concept was developed by artist anja franke. the event was part of a cooperation between trapholt, an art museum in kolding and the 7 communities that make up the triangle region of denmark. our local art associated played host to the event, together with our local library.

the idea is that your admission ticket to the event is a piece of white porcelain, probably something you found at a flea market or which was lying around your home, not used all that often. so a "waste" piece of porcelain. everyone who comes gathers to eat a meal together using the porcelain and then, when the dinner is over, it's all washed and the group embarks upon painting their interpretation of the waste time pattern onto the plates, cups and bowls. the painted pieces will be part of a larger exhibition in september at trapholt.

with the influx of refugees spreading across europe, the question of home was central. it was also important for us to include some of the refugee families that live here in our little town. we were fortunate to find a syrian family who was willing to cook the meal that we all shared. and i got to help prepare the food. we worked together in the library's kitchen all morning and i tried to learn as much as i could about syrian cuisine while i helped. it's quite a mediterranean kitchen and not unlike the cuisine i know from the balkans, turkey and greece. we had so much fun in the kitchen, laughing and joking as we prepared the food. i've posted some pictures of it over here (in danish, but the pix do speak for themselves).

part of the program was an all-too-short salon, where questions about home, waste and time were posed and discussed in small groups. as i've been lying around sick this week, trying to get over a miserable summer cold, i've had occasion to ponder the list of questions. there's undoubtedly a whole series of blog posts in the questions, but i found myself focusing on the waste section, as being sick feels decidedly like a waste of time. and since i've covered home a lot here on mpc, i'll save that and time for another...well...time.

"when do you feel that you're wasting time?"

i definitely felt like i was wasting time this week, as i wiled away the days in bed, blowing my nose, drinking tea, coughing and generally feeling miserable. even tho' i skyped in to meetings at work and actually got quite a lot of work done on documents since i was without the usual interruptions for cake or lunch or conversations that happen at the office, i still felt like being sick was such a waste of time. it comes with a feeling of frustration - with myself, with my body for succumbing to illness, for not being able to do enough, for not having energy, for feeling crabby and achy and out of sorts. being sick is just such a waste of time!

i tried to put into practice some of what i've learned at yoga about listening to my body. getting sick was surely my body's way of telling me that i needed to slow down. but i couldn't help but feel impatient and want it to just hurry up and get well so i could get back to all of life's obligations once again. but that seems to be taking some time.

but in the end, i've given in to my dull headache and all that snot clogging up my brain and said i'd return to work on monday. and i've rested and snuggled with the kittens and tried my very best not to consider being sick a colossal waste of time. and i might, just might, be starting to feel just a little bit better. just in time to care for husband, who seems to be coming down with the damn thing now too. summer colds are the worst.

when do you feel that you're wasting time?

* * *

the perils of following healthy living blogs.

arbness between coughing fits

i haven't got the heart to clean the outside of that window. those are frieda's muddy pawprints on it and i can't bear for them to be gone. not quite yet. i did, however, clean the inside of it, which you probably can't really tell by looking at this photo. maybe in the spring.

if the "recipe" calls for a box cake or store-bought dressing or jello or box pudding, it's not a recipe.

we finally saw star wars: the force awakens today. i enjoyed it, but i wasn't wowed. if you ask me, it all felt a bit too familiar...remote desert-y planet, cute, quirky droid containing a big secret, everyone tries to get their hands on said droid, guy in black helmet with voice modifier in torment, wise-cracking indiana jones type shows up, a visit to an out-of-the way quirky pub run by a woman who is ET's cousin by the look of her,  big battle where against incredible odds, a ragtag fleet defeats the baddies, ending left wide open for continuing sequels. along the way, echoes of lord of the rings with the odd horde of nazis thrown in. it's an odd mish-mash symbolically. highlights? adam driver as kylo ren, that badass rey girl, finn the former stormtrooper and carrie fisher as general leia.  and of course, harrison ford as han solo. there is comfort in familiar things. 

i hadn't had a bad cough in a several years, but i've got one again now. it keeps me from sleeping any appreciable length of time in a row. it gives my stomach muscles a good workout. and i'm very grateful it didn't happen a month ago, because if i'd had to cough like this right after my back surgery i'd definitely have insisted on being taken to the vet to be put down.

that's come up a few times of late.

i spent a lot of 2015 not sleeping enough and it seems to have continued into 2016. i hope to remedy that soon.

numbers 1 and 4 on this list are so much me. i'm going to try to remedy that this year.

don't even

this was such a lucky capture, i can't believe i got it. scout wasn't in the mood to play and he firmly put a stop to it. it didn't last long, of course, but it was pretty funny. i woke up on saturday with a very sore throat and it's developed into a full blown cold/flu thing with loads of phlegm, aches and an occasionally-spiking fever. there's nothing to be done for it but drink loads of tea with honey and curl up in bed with the cats and endless episodes of miss fisher's murder mysteries on netflix. if you haven't seen this australian agatha christie-esque series set in the 20s, you must watch it. it's witty and charming and the costumes...oh, the costumes. they will make you long to have lived in classier times...

100 happy days :: day 15

i'm down with a bad cold, but looking for the happy moments anyway. a cup of tea. rereading mma ramotswe and snuggled under the quilts.

spring comes in time for my birthday

take two rows of shiny glasses, glistening in the sunshine. fill them with a refreshing st. germain cocktail (sauvignon blanc + sparkling water + st. germain), add five amazing, different, interesting, funny, creative women. and you get a wonderful evening of drink & draw. there was more than that - some good food, some building lego (naturally), a lot of laughter, some playing with stamps and drawing and sketching. and it was pretty much the perfect way to lead into my birthday.

unfortunately, my birthday decided to greet me with a fever and stomach virus and so i slept through most of it and didn't even have cake or a special dinner with my family because i was too sick. i was feeling somewhat better today and managed to bake a couple of cakes (one for work tomorrow and one to use up our old bananas) and even planted 102 strawberries in the garden (it was good to get some fresh air). but it will be an early night because i'm definitely not back up to full speed. i did have a bit of a wander around the garden, photographing signs of spring, so i will leave you with those...

goodbye april

april wasn't kind this year. it was cold. it was long. it was windy. did i mention that it was cold? we were all sick at one time or another. we're all coughing. some of us currently are running a temperature. more than one of us. i'll be glad to see april go. please, please, please let may mean spring.

remembering to be different

i had a lot of thinking time over the past week. it's kind of ironic that it takes being sick to give you the time for proper thinking. why don't we give the attention to thinking time that we need to on a regular, daily basis? and it struck me that we humans, we're never satisfied. i complained all week about being sick. instead of appreciating that i got the chance to rest my body and my mind during a week (the winter holiday) when not much work could be done anyway, i whined about it on facebook. instead of appreciating that i could lay in bed and read harry potter 'til my eyes crossed, i whined about it on facebook. (i'm starting to think facebook might be the problem. if it wasn't such a forum for whining, would i have done so?) there was actually no better time to get sick if i had to be sick.

early in the illness, i talked to a friend who had come to my drink & draw evening. she thanked me, said she had enjoyed herself and that it was a very different experience. and i couldn't help but bristle at that characterization. which only proves that we humans are never satisfied. i had done all that i could to make it an experience that departed from the norm - from the food, to the tonic to the gin to the drawing to the conversation. and yet, when it was recognized as being different, it gave me a moment of insecurity. i suppose i felt a pang of it being a bad kind of different (tho' i'm quite sure that's not what she meant). and i just couldn't help but feel a little bit insulted, just for a moment. and then i relaxed and remembered that being different was what it was all about. it's good to be different.

* * *

who's the barbarian?

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why we love the pretty.

a walk in the woods

i'm finally surfacing after a week-long battle with the flu. it was a mean one - i've not been knocked down by a flu like this in years. i didn't even turn on my computer tuesday, wednesday, thursday and most of friday, so you know it was bad. i mostly laid in bed reading harry potter. i was even too weak to sit upright and knit or watch t.v. i didn't even get out the iPad and the netflix, as that seemed like too much trouble. poor husband didn't get a nice anniversary dinner and i still owe him a birthday cake. but perhaps this coming week i'll remedy that.

our winter is quite mild and to clear my head of the last of the lingering germs, husband and i went for a walk on this very still, just above freezing day. the air was cold and crisp and fresh in my lungs and felt like just what i needed. our snow is gone, leaving the world a bit grey, but if you look closely, there are bits of magic here and there.

i hope to keep glimpsing them in the week ahead as i slowly surface from my flu.

feverish thoughts and a gratuitous bunny photo

i'm sick. but at least there are bunnies. i tried to fight it all day, but i'm aching all over, my head is incredibly stuffed up and my ears are ringing so loud i asked my family if they could hear it. i had a fitful, feverish nap this afternoon, where i dreamed that husband put our big old giant webster's dictionary outside on a trash pile. i found it flipping in the wind and a bit wet from rain and i was so mad, even after i woke up, that i had to call husband and yell at him. he felt that was a little unfair, pointing out that he couldn't help what was happening over in my dream life. i said, what if that's real life and this is all a dream.

things you can do when you have a cough

have i mentioned that i have the cough from hell? it's keeping me up half the night and giving me fits all day long. i get some relief from this opium-laced cough syrup, tho' it also leaves me unable to operate any machinery heavier than my iPhone. the lack of sleep is making me decidedly crabby.

so i went to the library for a little inspiration. i picked up a book of pretty pictures of workspaces and fell in love with the light and with the ladder and with the stacks of books in this shot.

the low ceilings around here meant my old ladder from the bathroom at the old house was too tall to be used, so instead i took one side of an antique iron bed i brought over from the US when sabin was a baby and used it as a ladder to hang up some works in progress - both as decor and as a reminder to work on them.

i picked up another book at the library...of course it's on nordic food and i love the look of this vegetable garden bread - leaving the veg rustic and whole in a focaccia - i'll definitely be trying this as soon as i feel better.

i pulled myself together and hung up some of our paintings that we did at the old house. they used to hang in my blue room and now they're on the wall behind the couch. i don't know why i didn't hang them ages ago. it makes it look like people actually live here.

there was even time for a bit of bunny love. the bunnies are wild demons as they chase one another around the cage, but as soon as you bring them inside, they're snuggle central.

and now, back to my knitting...

what do you do to pass the time when you're feeling under the weather?

deep thoughts from a fevered brain

tangled thoughts

when you're lying around sick for days on end, you tend to watch too much television, since the concentration required to read a book, or for that matter, the strength required to hold up a book is just too much. and by you i mean me. but watching all that television makes you (again, really me) think about a lot of stuff...

~ like how you've always had performance anxiety when it comes to ordering in mcdonald's or burger king or those places. totally tongue tied when you reach the front of the line. and if you can speak, you definitely can't remember what it was you were going to order. (you = me)

~ the weird obsession politicians seem to have at the moment with apologizing. the former leader of the danish communist party is on the latest wave. he's now apologizing for having been a communist. since he's just a socialist now. as if anyone knows the difference.

~ the implications of the apology thing and how it indicates that politics have gone off on some strange emotional tangent. and that can't be a good place to have gone.

~ what happened in the mine stays in the mine.

~ speaking of socialists, apparently mario vargas llosa isn't one anymore and that doesn't please the swedish literary establishment. you're not sure you're that fond of the swedish literary establishment. you were just grateful you'd actually heard of this year's honoree.

~ that sally hansen complete salon manicure really stays on.

~ why is it that the kids from the most religious families are always the ones who get pregnant in high school?

~ can a fever actually melt the inside of your ears?

~ speaking of ears, can everyone hear that ringing in yours?

~ why is it that one teenager in the house can make it feel more crowded than 100 people?

~ how many episodes of hannah montana did they make? and why?

~ will it take WWII-style rationing to make us really and truly consume less?

~ can you tell i'm starting to feel better? (this time you is actually you.)

that time of year

just a pretty picture of our backyard to look at while i snuggle up in bed with a mound of books and a mug of tea. i'm fighting it off valiantly and i think i'm winning. it seems everyone has the flu, swine or otherwise. it's just that time of year. frankly, i hope it is swine flu, somehow that seems more exciting. in the meantime, check out the comfort foods for those under-the-weather days, over on domestic sensualist.

greta garbo moment

there are entirely too many days off during the christmas holiday in denmark. it all starts the december 24, which the danes think is christmas, although in truth it is christmas eve and in fact, they even CALL it juleaften, which can only be translated as christmas eve, but still they open all of their presents that day. it continues the 25th (first christmas day--and what the rest of us, who can read a calendar, like to call ACTUAL christmas day) and the 26th (second christmas day, or boxing day, as the canadians call it (not sure what that means, but i do like the idea of it, even if i sometimes accidentally call it wrestling day in a fit of sports confusion)). then, this year, came a weekend on the 27th and 28th. so five whole days of everyone being around underfoot. and i was sick during all of it. then, there were two days where people could have ostensibly worked, but why go to work when it's only two days and you have six weeks of vacation to use up? then it was new year's eve and seriously, who wants to work that day? obviously on new year's day, there's no working, there's just the recovering from the party the night before. and today, which could have again been a potential work day, it's already friday, so why go to work? that would mean showering and shaving and dressing and inconvenient things like that. and then, it's the weekend again. and have i had any peace? any alone-time? any quiet? you may guess that i have not.

and i have grown accustomed to my alone time. for the past year, i worked mostly from home, so i had whole days all by myself in the quiet of the house, with the music i wanted to hear playing in the background. i had at least from 8:10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. alone every day. and apparently, i became dependent on that alone time, because all of this togetherness is driving me a bit batty. there's always noise of some sort...whether it's supertramp (it's a disease husband has and i don't really know how to cure it), or the Wii, or the 600th episode of hannah montana. now sabin's big sisters, who live mostly with their mother, are back and that makes her all chirpy and excited and she never, ever stops talking. and they watch hours of inane crap on MTV, which used to at least play music videos once in awhile, but apparently has stopped that in favor of all kinds of "reality" shows about celebrity homes.

on the whole, it has me feeling tetchy and generally out of sorts. it doesn't help that the laundry has piled up, the bathroom sinks need cleaning, the floors need sweeping, the christmas tree needs undecorating, and we're totally out of foodstuffs (the grocery stores were closed many of those above-mentioned days) and are reduced to toasting the mold off a couple of heels of bread because at this point, frankly a little antibiotic action would probably be good for me.

and i did both bathe and venture out today, along with six gazillion other people who were also out of pasta and milk and eggs and green vegetables after days and days of being holed up in their houses with their families. and, contrary to my desire not to consume, i bought nearly $200 worth of groceries (we were out of EVERYTHING including toilet paper and laundry detergent), some embroidery thread, printer cartridges and a pretty white macbook laptop for K for her birthday, which was new year's eve.  how am i ever going to draw all of that? especially if no one will leave me alone along enough to concentrate on it?

do you sometimes just want to be left alone?

tripping headlong into 2009

me and my headache are still together. it seems we're inseparable. i've given it countless ibuprofen--including the good liquidy-inside green advil kind and more excedrin, with the high grade caffeine in them than i can count, but still it refuses to leave me. and i can't laugh at all, because every time i do, it causes a major coughing fit, which only exacerbates the headache. i'll be happy when this flu is over. poor husband has it now too and is at the stage where he leaves drifts of used kleenex in his wake. he has about another week to look forward to. he will definitely not be taking his usual new year's dip into bursesø (seen below in more summery times) this evening.

we would have stayed home this evening, but since we are responsible for both the main course (beef wellington, on which i cheated and used store-bought pate instead of making my own due to the headache) and the dessert (i made another of those gorgeous, delicious jule logs), we are dragging ourselves to the party. and it's not really fair to sabin, who is well and chipper and looking forward to spending the evening with her best friend andreas, so we're going. it is our best friends and they've been warned we're a bit under the weather, so i'm sure it will be a good evening despite our being sick.

watching sabin, i realized that i want to face 2009 more like she faces life. she doesn't wait for anything. she jumps headlong into everything she does. we gave her a number of different games for christmas and she just gets them out and sets them up and wants to play immediately. no waiting for the time to be right. she wants to play right away, right in the middle of everything. it's a wonderful way to look at the world, if you think about it. to just BE in it all the time, not looking forward or looking back, but looking at and enjoying right here and now. that's how i want to live in 2009. fully and truly in every moment that life brings. just as soon as i get rid of this headache...

happy new year everyone, i look forward to experiencing 2009 together with all of you!

reading dangerously in 2009

i'm participating in the estella's revenge 2009 year of reading dangerously. i haven't actually decided which dangerous books to read yet and since i've now had a headache for 24 hours straight, it won't be now that i decide my definitive list, but a couple of those zizek that are languishing on my shelf come to mind, as well as christopher hitchens' god is not great, which i bought awhile ago and haven't yet read.  

there is a great list over on the year of reading dangerously site and perhaps i will pick a few from it as well. but, for now, thinking just hurts too much. man, i hope this headache goes away before it's time to go to that new year's party tomorrow night. especially since i'm making the beef wellington main course.

if any of you have any great suggestions for dangerous reads, do let me know, as i need one dangerous read a month for the next 12 months!

still here

...have just had a bit of a relapse on the christmas illness. back for real when this monster headache subsides.  in the meantime, keep the light on for me...

snot-induced randomness

picture unrelated to this post and strictly for the purpose of cheering me up.

i cannot believe it, but i have my second pesky cold of the winter season. and the danes think it's one day before christmas, tho' i know it's really two. i should be downstairs baking cookies, but i had a fight with my spritz cookie press, which is actually so old (it was my grandmother's) that it's spelled "cooky" on the side of it. if i weren't dying, i'd go take a picture of that to show you. however, i'm laying in bed, under the covers, covered in a veritable snowfall of used kleenexes with an apron on (couldn't be bothered to take it off). i want my mommy.

but she's not here and she's not online. so instead, i share a list of utter randomness with all of you...

1. i have a little plastic captain picard figure by my big computer. 
2. i keep getting twinges of panic as i know the hour that the stores close approaches. that really bugs me and makes me more than ever want to get off this mad consumer christmas train.
3. the cat is snoring somewhere in this room.
4. i have a cousin who gave himself a vasectomy using lidocaine and a well-placed mirror (or so we all imagine).
5. i am a danger to myself when cutting things in the kitchen (i think we already knew this, but i just saw my bandaid and was reminded).
6. i would like there to be more evidence that the light is going in the right direction now, but it's 4:42 and dark as dark can be outside.
7. my sister-in-law was here on sunday and several times out of the corner of my eye i saw her lifting up things to look at the labels on the bottom of them. what the hell was that?
8. i am really happy that we will have christmas, just the three of us, tomorrow and then with my husband's older daughters and our best friends on real christmas day.
9. i'm going to make a duck for the first time in my life (it's organic and french, that will make it good, right?)
10. the danes call today "lille juleaften." little christmas eve. isn't that cute? 
11. i'm hungry for oyster stew, which my mom always makes on christmas eve, but couldn't find any oysters today and didn't want to venture farther afield what with the aches and chills and mountains of snot.
12. i bought some bright green pesto gouda because it looked festive.

as you can see, i didn't have much today...i'm going to go try to get well now.  i wish you a merry merry and a happy happy, whatever and however you celebrate.