lovely shining monday

we took a little family outing to the west coast today. as we drew nearer, the sun came out and since it was about 10°C (or 50°F), it was downright balmy, despite the strong winds blowing in off the north sea.

 and the light. oh, the light.

an afternoon of sea and sand and wind and golden light has completely realigned my very soul.

i am definitely ready for the new year now! bring it on!

christmas is here. sort of.

it bugs me a little bit that the danes celebrate christmas on what is arguably the day before christmas, but this year, i've decided to just go with it. the duck is in the oven and i'll be putting the veggies in to roast in an hour or so. the sun is shining, we went for a long walk, the gifts are wrapped and of a reasonable quantity. i have to say that everything is pretty much right with the world.

merry christmas, one and all. may it be perfect, whether you celebrate it on the right day or not.

pagan rituals and the winter solstice

one of these trees is now in our living room, covered with lights and ribbons and ornaments and tinsel. and i cannot even express how satisfying it is that our christmas tree came from our own yard. photos of it in its new location tomorrow.

in the meantime, happy solstice. decorating the tree seemed like the perfect pagan ritual to engage in on this, the darkest day of the year.

tomorrow the light begins to return. none too soon.

make the most of it, wherever you are.

a christmas calm

i am unusually calm about christmas. usually, about now, i rush to amazon and panic-order a kitchen-aid mixer. but that doesn't seem to be happening this year. i feel good and calm about the gifts i have for those i love (except for the ones i haven't yet sent to my parents or my sister or my nephews - however, they're used to that, so it's more ok than you might imagine). i picked up husband's gift today...a beautiful handmade knife in a lovely leather sheath (don't worry, he doesn't read my blog - he says he doesn't need to since he gets to talk to me in person). it was so much nicer to go to the artist's lovely home, have a cup of coffee and talk about christmas traditions and life philosophies than to rush around a busy, soulless mall.

and i haven't gone completely nuts for sabin either, unless buying a 10-year-old an iPhone 4S is nuts (we couldn't expect her to go on using her 3GS when the camera's so much better in the new one). she'll also get a few clothes which she needed anyway and some custom bobbaloos of her real-life bunnies (don't worry, she doesn't read my blog either), but there won't be any over-packaged plastic toys in her stocking this year and i'm quite pleased with that.

we're going to be home this year - we have spotted a tree on our property that we'll cut down tomorrow and bring in, then we'll drink mulled wine and decorate it together on the 24th (which the danes mistakenly think is actual christmas). i bought a lovely, plump duck, so we'll have that with roasted veg and eat ris a'lamande for dessert, like the danes do.  we'll light candles and watch movies and play games and go for a walk (snow or no), feed the animals, play with the bunnies, gather the eggs, give matilde her new blanket and some carrots.

it feels like it will be a calm, warm, restorative time. and that must be what it's supposed to be about.

in which she starts out pious and ends up her usual devious self

i'm learning - slowly, all too slowly - to let go of my expectations of other people. especially the small ones (both people and expectations). for example - if you were copying selected pages of a book that would give you an idea of what that book was about, you would find it natural to include the table of contents, right? apparently, that's an unrealistic expectation on my part. but i have realized that the level of frustration it causes me is COMPLETELY not worth the energy it takes. so i'm trying to let go of such expectations and their attendant sense of frustration. and on the odd occasion when i'm able to, i find it makes me feel lighter and generally makes my navigation through the world easier and much happier.

but it's hard. especially if the failure to meet my expectations makes the person who failed to meet them, in my head at least, seem less intelligent or perhaps downright stubborn. because those things aren't necessarily true. (tho' they are also not necessarily NOT true.)  but once i've decided someone is stupid or stubborn or unprofessional or all three, i pretty much write that person off and they have no chance with me again. this has not always been a good thing. so i'm trying to be less hasty in my judgements when people fail to meet my expectations.

the problem is that the we are FULL of expectations. it's how we navigate the world - cultural expectations, expectations towards what we consider politeness and fair treatment - our expectations guide our actions and behavior. it's so automatic that we don't even realize we have them. hence the frustration and disappointment when they're not met.

i do realize that this is all rather abstract. so here's the deal...i've recently been working with some people who i had professional expectations towards and i have been surprised several times when those expectations, especially of what i would consider a normal level of professionalism, were not met. i was surprised when i was asked to do something that i deemed contrary to my professional integrity. and in refusing to do this thing (it wasn't something illegal, or anything serious like that, it just felt unfair and unprofessional towards the client), i in turn disappointed the expectations of the person asking me to do it and it became a rather pissy vicious circle of disappointment. but i stood my ground because i felt my professionalism was at stake, as well as my sense of duty towards the client. and this wench person doesn't seem to be able to just let it go. she has actually said to me several times since how irritated she was that i maintained my professionalism instead of compromising and just doing what she asked - her argument being "we do that all time."  which frankly, isn't an argument at all. and made me lose respect for her even more, because she can't even put together a proper argument.

but i'm trying to take a deep breath, holding onto the feeling in the pit of my stomach that i did the right thing and just let go of it. being righteous about my sense of right and wrong isn't a good use of my energy either.

it makes it all much easier that i can clearly see a way to use her lack of professionalism to my advantage. mwahaha!

if you think about it...

...santa claus is a rather scary idea. you've got a bearded old man in a funny suit who uses candy to lure small children onto his lap to tell him their secrets. after which, he sneaks into their locked houses via the chimney in the middle of the night, eats all of their cookies, leaves some wrapped packages containing odin only knows what and disappears again into the night, flying away without a trace in an archaic mode of reindeer-drawn transport. still wearing his funny suit and hiding behind that beard.

it's practically the clinical description of a paedofile-leaning terrorist.

who came with that idea anyway?

speed dating and that fizzy feeling

over the past few days i have come to understand the concept of speed dating (i realize i'm quite possibly left behind in the mid-noughties with this notion and perhaps no one does it anymore). speed dating in the sense of a fast, intense conversation with a new person, where you ask a series of set questions and form a quick impression. tho' my purpose was quite different than selecting a date (what with husband being a keeper and all) i think that the almost instantaneous sense of whether you click with a person is actually the same. i have effectively speed-dated more than 60 people in the past few days and there are handful that i could almost instantly tell that i would like to hang out with and get to know better.

during two of the conversations (quick word about my project: over a period of ten days, i'm assessing the english skills of 120+ people who work with children) i actually had goosebumps. i was left feeling decidedly fizzy and longing for more time. interestingly (and to my relief), those who i didn't connect intensely with didn't produce an opposite reaction of revulsion - it was more like the conversation was over quickly and there was no fizz. this reaction only marginally had to do with the language skills of the person in question.

this, of course, got me thinking. what is it that attracts us to other people? after this experience, i think it's something quite subconscious and perhaps even intangible. or it involves a whole lot of signals that we both give and receive of which we are almost completely unaware on a conscious level. i don't even think it has that much to do with the topics being discussed, it's just a kind of instant connection. chemistry perhaps? or maybe an ability to pick up on the energy or aura another person radiates?  whatever it is, i was left wanting more.

i can tell that i need to spend more time out among people. that fizzy feeling definitely gives me some much-needed energy.

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holy crap, i can't stop thinking about this.

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happy weekend, one and all!