hungary, you say? #tbt

she had no idea of the troubles that lay ahead.

you will be relieved to know that even when you have what is arguably the best job in the world, you can still have a bad day. that bad day will likely be brought on by computer issues, which nearly frustrated you to the point of tears. in fact, the tears were there in your eyes, unbidden, but you managed to realize how utterly ridiculous it was and fight them off. no inanimate object or ridiculous software setup should have the power to make you cry.

but it might have the power to make you be sort of absent from yourself. so absent that you forget your purse at the office and don't realize it until you're all the way home and going to the grocery store, which you then can't do since you don't have your purse. so you kind of stumble home and hope there's enough in the fridge to come up with something for dinner (there is).

and then you go out to feed the animals and find that talking to the cats and searching for the latest place the hens are hiding their eggs and measuring out grain and carrying buckets of water and the smell of hay and the crunch of contented horses eating their dinner will actually go a long ways towards making it all better. because tomorrow is another day and your purse will still be there when you arrive at the office. and even tho' your computer isn't talking to SAP (who can really blame it), it will still be a mac and it will eventually all get sorted out.

and you take a deep breath and have a glass of wine (despite your best intentions) and you realize that life is pretty good anyway. even when the help desk is in hungary.

* * *

in the midst of a bad day,

a project like this collaboration between olafur elliason and ai weiwei (and the world)

will give you hope.

monday will sometimes bite you in the ass

it's a balmy 8°C (46°F) outside and foggy. the winds from last week's storm (the increasingly aptly-named bodil), have finally subsided and it's so still you can hear water dripping from the trees. in many ways, it's a really beautiful day, despite it being grey. but it's also a monday and sometimes monday just bites you in the ass.

it actually started already when i woke up with a start, far too early, thinking of a group of friends i had 25 years ago in california. they were a shallow lot and hadn't crossed my mind in years. it wasn't a nice way to wake up. so, as i am wont to do, i grabbed the iPad and checked in to see what was happening in the world of facebook. near the top of my feed was a local friend, expressing delight that she could hear her elementary-age children in the other room, getting into their stockings for their advent calendar presents, and exclaiming "shit and fuck" with delight over their gifts. it made her feel like she'd really picked the right presents. yes, these swear words coming from the mouths of kindergarten and second graders, were words of joy and christmas cheer. and their mother was proud.

after all these years, i do realize that our english swear words, while in widespread use in denmark, do not carry the same meaning or impact that they do in english. and i freely use them, even the f-word, myself. however, i never get used to them coming from the mouths of babes. i just really think that's not cool. and it still causes an almost literal jolt of culture shock when i hear (or in this case, read) it.  i commented on the post that where i grew up, if i'd reacted to my christmas gifts with swearing, i'd have had my mouth washed out with soap. one of the others commenting on the post responded that there was nothing about swearing. she didn't even recognize shit and fuck as swear words. i knew then it was going to be that kind of day.

soon after that, my child began texting me, plaguing me to let her get the office package for her macbook air. yes, my child, requesting to put a microsoft product on a mac. she may as well have asked for a ferrari with a ford engine. it made me realize i've utterly failed as a parent. so, determined to end it all, i headed down to the lake. only to find that the tree from which i had planned to hang myself had toppled in the storm. trees around here just give up so easily.

ok, i wasn't really going to kill myself, that was just for dramatic and humorous effect.

soon it was time to go pick up the child from school. she and her friends got in the car and began talking in a sort of pidgin danglish and it was driving me completely mad. i was so not in the mood for it. it was like when someone keeps repeating what you say and you want them to stop and they won't. i had that same panicky feeling that comes from that. like it might never stop and you will probably have to stab someone before it's all over. and then there will be a mess and the explaining to the parents...

but then the phone rang, it was a neighbor, telling me that our horses were out and running around in the fog on the road. so we rushed home. the girls jumped out of the car (thereby ending the danglish madness) and grabbed them and started walking them home. and yes, they were just hanging out on the road. silly horses. then some maniac drove by at high speed and the two they had hold of got away again and the chase was on. and do you think that asshole took a look in her rearview mirror at the chaos she had wrought? no, she did not. but i grabbed a bucket of grain and a couple of leadropes and we got them in. they were all snorty and excited after their adventures.

i kind of just want to crawl in bed and have this day end. but i guess some days are like that. especially mondays.