the spirit is willing...

....oh, ok, i admit it, the spirit is also very weak. in theory i want to live more simply, not have so much stuff, not define myself so much by the stuff. i love the IDEA of that. however, i'm trying to put together a brand new kitchen here. like the kitchen of my dreams. and that involves stuff. pretty stuff. stuff like this:

hans j. wegner's classic "y" chair

i know, we already have 4, but we need 8

we're gonna have guests!

and this tom rossau lamp was just so gorgeous.

so i heard myself say, "give me two."

oh. and one of those, please.  in red, to match my retro smeg fridge.

and i do so adore a good café latté. 

and it has that retro feel to go with the...

yes, i believe i already mentioned the smeg fridge.

what is even more worrying is the high i get from such an expedition. the sheer elation that infuses my being when i acquire (or even just order) gorgeous, high quality kitchen and dining room items (disturbingly close to the happy feeling i had last week when i bought my iMac and brought it home and just gazed upon it, caressing it ever-so-lightly). it makes me SOOOoooo happy! like jump for joy, do cartwheels right there in the middle of shop (luckily i did not, as they have a lot of breakable things), engage in insane happy dance kind of pure happiness. i will appreciate these things in my new kitchen. we will use them every day. because they are good quality, they are an investment in sabin's future as well (ok, that smacks a little bit of self-justification, I GET THAT).

as soon as the house is done, we're totally on track towards a simpler life...i'm sure of it.

what i would save if there was a fire

about five years ago, i nearly burned the house down when some candles that i thought were very far away from the curtains turned out not to be. thanks to a little bitty sabin, who said, "mama, den is burnin'" and the fact that i'd just given her a bath and had a plastic bathtub full of water at hand, i put the fire out before it had done too much damage. and we got a new floor upstairs out the deal from the insurance company, so, as ma ingalls would say, "all's well that ends well." i try not to think about the fact that it was about 10 more seconds from being too on fire for me to put out, so we won't really go there.

but ever since, i have thought about what i would try to save if there was a fire. and what comes to mind every time is our red smeg refrigerator. if it weren't full of various incubating life forms, i would also throw a whole bunch of other stuff inside of it before dragging it out of the house with my superhuman strength.

see this picture over on across ø/öresund as well. it's red week!

i love that refrigerator so much so that when i threw out the idea to husband over dinner that in light of global warming and rising sea levels, we consider living on a boat instead of getting a farm property, he said, what is the one thing you'd want from the house, since you'd only be able to have one thing on the boat and i immediately, without hesitation, said the smeg. (dang that was a long sentence.) it's beautiful. bright. shiny (mmm, shiny). it's red. its rounded, retro curves are just totally lovely (note mini-lesson in it's/its usage). if we move, it's coming with us. and yes, i stuck those frogs on it with that blue tack substance (so as not to harm the shiny surface). aside: at our house, we refer to blue tack as consultant snot, by the way.


anyway, back to what i would throw inside it before dragging it outside...

: : the requisite boxes of pictures from my time in the balkans and the early days of our relationship
: : my macbook pro
: : my iMac or at the very least the Time Capsule (so I'd have the 34,000 pictures i've taken in the past year)
: : the nikons
: : rolleicord and rolleiflex
: : a little box of treasures from when sabin was a baby - she was born 10 weeks early and i saved some of the tiniest clothes she had (they were really tiny, she weighed 1500 grams)
: : that picture of husband building his first structure
: : my blankie

have you thought about what you would save if there was a fire?

manifesting and reverberating

i keep reading about this reverb10 thing around the blogosphere. and while i'm not much of a groupie (oh please, who am i kidding?), i'm really enjoying the stories i've seen here and there and everywhere. and as we know (perhaps all too well), i'm a reflective sort of a person and i'm definitely up for some manifesting of 2011. after all, writing is the new praying (a concept i feel a bit like i lost sight of as 2010 progressed).

so, since's already dec. 7, i think i'll do a quick catch up all-in-one post.

dec. 1 - one word: as we well know, one word is a bit difficult for me. i'm a wordy one. and i hate choosing or committing myself to but one thing. you see, i like LOTS of words - challenge, beauty, peace, mindfulness, sophistication, travel, create, meditate. but if i think about what one word marked 2010 it would have to be change. we changed our home, our jobs, our entire lifestyle. 2010 has been all about change - changes we chose, but changes that were at times difficult nonetheless. if you'd asked me at the beginning of 2010, i would have said i wanted it to be about creativity, but i'm afraid it wasn't that. not nearly enough. and if i think towards 2011 and what i'd like to have it be about, it would have to be daring. i want to dare in 2011.

dec. 2 - writing: "what do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?" what gets in the way of my writing is that i drain my energy on things i shouldn't drain it on. but as of today (dec. 7), the main energy drain has been jettisoned, so i expect that to change already now in 2010. and i can't WAIT to see what happens in 2011 with my writing (and everything else) now that my energy is my own again.

dec. 3 - moment: "pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year." it was a perfectly gorgeous long midsummer evening. the light stayed around 'til almost midnight. the three of us - husband, sabin and i - walked down to our lake, which was as smooth as glass in the golden evening light. the reeds and iris along the edges, whispering in the occasional very slight, warm breeze. we launched our little old boat and paddled around, out to the gorgeous lilypads where i took photos to my heart's content while we laughed and talked together. tho' it was high summer and we were on water, there were no pesky mosquitos. it was just the most perfect, happy, golden evening, together with my two favorite people on the planet.

dec. 4 - wonder: i think a big contributor to my moments of wonder during 2010 has been my 365 photo project. the act of having to look around me and find something to photograph every single day often made me stop and notice my surroundings in way that i wouldn't normally have done if i weren't doing such an intentional project. i want to somehow carry that intentionality into 2011 (tho' maybe without being quite so slavish about it - and daring to take more photos in film only).

dec. 5 - let go: it was a year of much change and i sadly let go of our old house, my blue room and my red smeg. i also let go of a most beloved professor. but i think the worst thing i let go of this year was far too much of my energy and to causes that didn't deserve that essential part of me. that's going to change in 2011.

dec. 6 - make:  what is the last thing i made?  this relates to that energy above...i can't really think of what the last thing i made was and that concerns me. i sewed quite a bit for sabin in october and i made a christmasy centerpiece for the dining table with hyacinths yesterday, but i'm not sure that counts. i let that diminished energy make me less creative and that's precisely what i want to avoid in 2011. we're decorating a new bedroom for sabin for christmas and i'm going to start by making a cuddly quilt for her new room tomorrow when i get up.

dec. 7 - community:  where did i find community in 2010? i definitely found it in the BC365 project group on flickr.  and when we moved, we found community in the real world on our new road - nice and helpful neighbors with good stories to tell. i was fortunate to find community among some really wonderful people who i worked with in manila during november. and i can't forget the wonderful weekend at blog camp berlin. so community both in cyberspace and in my actual community. can't really ask more than that.

i think this reverb10 thing is going to be quite cathartic. would you like to play along too? imagine what we can all manifest in 2011 if we just write it all down? writing is the new praying. i'm not going to forget that again.

goodbye poppelvej (that rhymes, you know)

literally my very last shot of the old house. it's empty now (aside from that smeg stove and refrigerator (shh, don't mention the war....i think i mentioned it once but got away with it...)), but a new family will move in already tomorrow. and so we can begin on the next steps....

...it'll be interesting to see where they carry us....

"heavier than a dead preacher"

enough of the oak floor is now in to bring in the centerpiece of our kitchen.

that would be this "købmandsdisk"

we bought it from the long-haired gentleman at the other end.

i wrote about him previously. 

it took quite an effort getting it in (hence the title of this posting).

and here it is standing in its place in the kitchen.

the bit where the wire is sticking up out of the floor on the left

is where the smeg stove is going to stand.

hopefully within the next few days.

the view from the other side.

21 drawers.

we had an oak countertop put on top.

and i will paint it creamy white over the next week.

we were so happy to stumble across this beauty, which once stood in a shop somewhere (we unfortunately do not know where). we had looked in all of the kitchen stores and were not pleased with what you could get for your money there..prefab cupboards that cost a fortune and aren't even solid wood. 

so we decided to make this the centerpiece of the room. there'll be plenty of room for lots of people to roll out and make cookies at once. or chop veggies for fajitas. and lots of storage in all of those drawers. 

i'm certain this will be worth all of the effort! i intend to survive it!

cooking and evolution

a number of years ago, when my father-in-law was still alive, i sent him an article from the new york times on how cooking had pushed evolution. he was the inventor and first professor of technolution, the study of how technologies have pushed evolution, so i always had an eye out for articles and books that explored such themes. his thinking about the article resulted in the illumination above, which hangs in my kitchen, right near my stove. peter had developed a pictorial language through which he expressed the concepts. all of the drawings have human figures and a circle within a square inspired by davinci's vetruvian man.

harvard anthropologist richard wrangham has written a book called catching fire in which he explores the importance of cooking to human development. peter would have been so interested to read it (he died just after new year's four years ago). what's interesting is that wrangham pushes back the cooking a lot farther in time than has previously been postulated (tho' you can see from peter's illumination that he thought that too). he says that already 1.9-1.8 million years ago, on the cusp between australopithecus and homo erectus, our ancestors began to cook. further, the relationships created around the hearth between men and women were essential for our development into the evolutionary stage we've reached today.

cooking our food, especially meat, gives us quicker access to the nourishment and the energy it brings with it. wrangham argues that our small teeth, small stomach and relatively short intestinal system point to food being cooked much earlier than previously thought. already as homo erectus, we were cooking, he postulates. and it was important that while the men were out hunting, the women were at home tending the fire, so it would be ready when the men returned with the meat. of course, the women also learned to cook roots and things while they were waiting around for the meat to be delivered. i've read only a review of the book, not the actual book, but it's on my amazon wish list for sure and i'm anxious to read more.

interestingly the roles haven't changed all that much. tho' today's men can do some cooking too, it is still a task that falls largely on women's shoulders. and i know that our nightly meal is an essential part of our day, something that mostly i prepare, tho' husband is very helpful in the kitchen. we eat together, as a family, around the table. and although it's much easier on us what with kitchen aid mixers and smeg stoves and such, maybe it's not all that different than our distant ancestors. i do wish peter was here to discuss it.

the color of my world

with all of the painting and arranging and decorating that's gone on around here over the past year, i find myself thinking about colors and the effect they seem to have on me. it's clear, looking around our home, that color is very important to me, but why is that? when i'm surrounded by bright and vibrant colors, i feel brighter and more vibrant myself. tho' because of the industry i'm in, my clothes tend towards blacks and greys, tho' i often have a jewel-toned shirt under my grey suit and almost always some funky tights of some sort, usually in a bright color. so perhaps it's in reaction to having to wear drab colors at work that my home is very colorful--turquoise walls and darker turquoise ceiling in the atelier, goldeny-orange walls in the kitchen and my beloved red smeg refrigerator--all speak of a deep need in me to immerse myself in color.

i was resistant to husband's desire to paint the new dining room white, but have to admit that i like it, because of the way it sets off the colorful book jackets which line the walls. the neutral, warm coffee cream walls of our bedroom are counterbalanced by a rich turquoise velvety bedspread and the colorful heather moore patchwork.

but how does color make you feel? can it lift your spirits or dampen them? it seems to me that it can. if the colors are warm, do they warm you? or cool you if they are cool? are you inspired differently by different color palettes? check out these pictures..one of which i "warmed up" in lightroom and one which i "cooled down."

is there a difference in how you feel when you look at them? for me, looking at the top one, i can very nearly feel the glow of warm candlelight (even tho' it's really only a preset lightroom filter) and i feel inspired to make something snuggly and warm from the fabrics.  the bottom one gives me a feeling of crispness and makes me want to make something a bit harder-edged, with crisp, ironed corners. both are actually inspiring, but in wholly different ways. that's interesting, isn't it?

i can't help but think about color during this dark, dreary, grey time of year when the sun, while probably shining up there somewhere above the clouds, never really breaks through. perhaps it's that weather and the darkness of the northern winter that draws me to fill our home with vibrant, vital colors. we are surely shaped by our environment all the time, but i don't think we're always particularly mindful of it. maybe next time i feel a case of SAD coming on, i'll wear something bright and sassy and see if that helps.

in spring a (not so) young woman's fancy turns to...cocktails

the sun came out at long last this afternoon. the garden table beckoned. the birds sang. and after a long day at work, the lure of a relaxing cocktail was irresistible. but i didn't feel like an ordinary glass of my old pal chardonnay, nor was it quite warm enough to break out the rosé. the sun-kissed late spring air whispered of something a bit more exotic, something a bit seasonal, something sweet yet tart. in short, a cocktail worthy of one of the first late spring sunshiney days.

i stared into the refrigerator and caught sight of the bright jar of rhubarb syrup i made last weekend, bright and inviting, flecked with black specks of real vanilla suspended in its sweet, slightly thick pink goodness. we'd start there. there was also the ubiquitous bottle of schweppes indian tonic in the fridge-that's-not-a-smeg (sigh). i turned to the liquor cabinet and spied the bottle of thylandia genever, a danish-made, slightly golden historical (tho' newly produced) gin precursor with a whiff of juniper about it. hmm, it sounded perfect. and it was. i give you the rhubarb gin fizz...

the rhubarb gin fizz
it's pinker than this, i couldn't resist a bit of processing

much closer to the true color

you don't need controversial historical gin relatives to make this, use your favorite gin or even vodka. to make the rhubarb syrup, i cooked down about 30 rhubarb stalks (mine are a bit thin, if yours are thick, use less), very slowly with only a little water. after it was cooked, i put it in a strainer over a bowl and let the gorgeous pink liquid drain through, overnight, actually. i didn't press it a whole lot, as i didn't want any bits or pulp in it. then, the next day, i put the clear tart juice back in a pan with a generous cup of sugar (it was probably 3+ C of liquid) and a whole vanilla bean pod that i sliced in half and slowly brought it to a boil. i put it into a canning jar and sealed it, but it's already half gone, as we've used it to make sodas all weekend. as a soda, we had it mixed with plain water or schweppes lemon or fizzy water - it just depends on what you're in the mood for. but it's pretty heavenly with the genevere. tomorrow, i'll give it a whirl with the real stuff - hendrick's, my best and favorite gin (loved by a small handful of people, all over the world).

to make the cocktail, i poured about 3 shots of the rhubarb syrup into a tall glass, one generous shot of genever and filled it up with tonic. perfectly tart yet a bit sweet and with just the right hint of vanilla.

normally, i post recipes over on domestic sensualists, but this one seemed more like a moment of perfect clarity. i am brewing a rhubarb post for over there, so do check in with us soon. but first, grab yourself a nice springy cocktail.

haunted

are there ghosts among us?

since moving to an old house (it was built in 1898), we find ourselves in conversations with people about haunted houses. despite actually hoping this house is haunted, it hasn't thus far shown any sign of it, unless that sense of irritation i sometimes feel overwhelmed by when i'm working in the kitchen isn't caused by missing my smeg stove and refrigerator from the old house but by a dissatisfied spirit instead. maybe one who, like me, has good taste in kitchen appliances.

there's a guy in the neighborhood who told me about one evening when he was watching t.v. and felt a weight on his shoulder. he thought the dog had come up behind him and laid his chin there, but when he turned, the dog wasn't there. the same dog raises its hackles and growls at thin air, so he's pretty sure that his house is haunted. he says occasionally all of the pictures on the wall are suddenly hanging crooked. i love such stories, they give me goosebumps in a very good way.

we had friends to dinner last evening and they live in an old farmhouse as well. they've traced the origins of their place to 1600-something and in one of the barns found evidence of a stone floor from that original building. their project is even bigger than ours and they actually think our kitchen is nice in comparison to the condition of theirs. (i haven't seen theirs yet, but find it hard to imagine how bad it must be if ours looks good in comparison).

the first night they slept in their house last summer, they had a strong feeling that they were unwelcome. it freaked them out so much they actually got up in the middle of the night and drove back to their old apartment to sleep. regularly, they wake up in the night and the humidity has shot up to 75%, from a normal 60%. they actually got a humidity detector (what's one of those called?) and documented it. they wake up from it and then within minutes it dissipates and goes back down to the normal 60%. they've tried to trace it to the furnace and such, but can't find any physical reason for the humidity swing (and they're both engineers, so they should be able to). one night, after it happened, they could hear their dog down at the bottom of the stairs, wagging his tail and greeting someone, as if it was one of them going down the stairs. they regularly hear footsteps overhead when they're watching t.v. and have combed the attic, looking for evidence of an animal, but there is none.

they also have both seen a blueish male figure passing through a wall and crossing the room. the lights flicker when he's there. they took a closer look at the wall where he passes through and realized that there had once been a door there but it is now covered up. they were both in the room and they turned to one another and one said, "did you see.." "...the blue man," finished the other. they had both individually seen him and not said anything.

i get the most delicious creepy sense when talking about such things. i get completely covered in goosebumps, but i feel it in a very thrilling way and i don't feel frightened by it. in all honesty, i totally have ghost envy. i want one too, but i 'm not sure you can wish your way to one.

husband and i laid awake talking about it last night (that's what you get for drinking coffee at 11 p.m.). husband, thinks it's flashes of access to another dimension. one that we don't normally see or feel. we recently saw the others, a 2001 film with nicole kidman (who i normally hate), where you realize at the end that she and her children and the servants are dead and still living in a big house that a family has moved into. it's a well-done film and raises that question of whether when we die we just move to another plane, but still hang out in the surroundings where we were. if so, think of the layers upon layers in an old house. i do wish i had access to the ones here.

so much to say....

grab a cup of tea, i'm back!!

yippee! i'm back online and although it's only a 3Mbit broadband connection on the ancient wires coming into this house (10 was what they ordered), still, it's a connection. and i have so much to say that i don't really know where to begin!

~ do i write something deep about how it feels to be beginning so many things anew - job, home, horse - at this stage of my life, when i'm supposed to be settled in and enjoying things as they are?

~ do i try to be funny about my weird manifestations of OCD in the midst of the chaos of boxes (how dare husband just put the silverware in the dishwasher randomly and not keep knives with knives and forks with forks)?

sabin and matilde the wonder horse

~ do i offer peaceful, zen-like thoughts about how good it is for your soul to spend time with a horse (thereby excusing myself for the excessive amount of horse pictures i've contributed to the BC365 pool of late)?

~ do i bubble over with joy over how friendly and kind people here are - people like our neighbors, who are letting us board matilde in their wonderful stable? or sabin's new teacher, who has handled her transition in the kindest, best possible way?

~ do i tell you about how the cat is so traumatized by her first experience outside here (we don't know what happened, but she was out all night) that she refuses to poke more than a whisker outside the door now a week later?

sigh...another windmill...this one near Aalborg

~ do i go on and on about how i want to live in a windmill (and yet there's no windmill in sight on our property)?

~ do i wax philosophical on how sad it made me to go over and clean at the old house, which is empty and echo-y and filled with things like quality oak flooring and smeg stoves and refrigerators that i am sorely missing in this house?

~ do i attempt to express how much i've missed all of you and what you have to say and apologize for how long it's going to take me to catch up (if that's even possible)?

~ or do i just make a list of stuff to get how overwhelmed and bottled up i feel after being ostensibly offline for two weeks out of my system and hope that something good comes out tomorrow....

house tour: an inside view

during my week at home sick with the dread disease (whatever it may be - the two doctors i've seen don't really agree, but it seems that some of the many meds i'm now taking are beginning to work), i've had time to give myself a little talking to about this house. i was having moments of depression and even anger about how awful it is and how little the previous owners seemed to do with it. and i was missing my beautiful kitchen on poppelvej. i won't say that i miss it any less (yes, you, my pretty red smeg), but i've talked myself around. there are things i can do to make this livable in the meantime before we build-on and create a brand new and even better kitchen. and we did, after all, choose this, so it's not like i've been forced into this situation (tho' leaving the appliances behind is something i've been forced into, but we're not going to go there. again.).

i thought i'd give you a little glimpse of the inside and what we have to put up with until the renovations can take place...

looking into the living room.
naff ceiling constructed out of rough planks normally used for making fences.
covering up some of the horrible, cheap office-style carpet with my turkish rug.

i chose to put a few books (gardening, decor and craft) and things we love on the shelf, in order to make it seem more livable.
the carpet is yucky office-style carpet and that depresses me a little bit.

the curtains were on the windows, but i dressed them up with some fabric circles.
as you can see, that's the corner where i sit and knit.
sabin's scarf in colorful mercerized egyptian cotton is going rather slowly.

the kitchen from hell.
still pepto bismol pink (i will remedy that in the near future, for reals).
this crappy linoleum floor depresses me as well (i can't even get it clean!) - i miss my oak floors!!

but at least i have my kitchen aid and my posh red kettle.
and the window above the sink is nice.
plus there are lots of cupboards, and that's good.

i despise that stove (and refrigerator for that matter).
for one, it's not gas, for another, those glass-topped stoves just seem so fake and cop-outish somehow.
and the left front burner is totally iffy - sometimes too hot, sometimes hardly heating at all.
when i stand in the kitchen and get worked up about missing my old kitchen, it's because of this stove.

our bedroom - obligatory basket of clean laundry at the foot of the bed.
i'm good at doing laundry, but rubbish at putting it away.
great light from the window - i like that.
the pictures look a bit random on the wall, because we just used existing nails that were there.
it's hard to tell, but i also dressed up the curtains with a turquoise border - they were plain cream colored.

sabin has been allowed to set her inner artist free and is painting what she wants on her walls.
circles on the left and a little jackson pollack action on the right.
the t.v. will be hung on the wall once she's finished.

the one and only little bathroom - shower only, no bathtub (don't get me started on how much i miss my bathtub).
as husband says, it's actually the best room in the house.
by which he means it's the one that's been most recently redone.

and my little desk area - looking quite a lot like it did at the old house - some things can't change too much.
the light is also nice here, tho' the window looks out on a naff little entryway with makeshift clotheslines.
the people who lived here before were apparently obsessed with clothelines - they're everywhere there possibly could be one.
note the pretty scarf on the doorknob - it's from the magnificent debra! and i love it!

the indoor spaces being what they are, i had to create a homey outdoor space.
if the sun would just reliably shine, i'd be out there all the time.

i found out that tho' this looks fetching under that tree, i've got to move it.
too much bird poo.

we've been discussing the order of our renovations quite extensively. our architect is nearly ready with some drawings for us and we're getting excited to see them. the expansion of the house is essentially going to be a separate, new building off the back of the existing house. it will be one large room that's kitchen, dining area and living room in one. it will be joined to the old house by some kind of exciting, creative, mostly glass solution (at least we hope that's what erik will come up with). so it will be possible to build it first while continuing to live in the old house. once it's built and we have a new kitchen up and running, we can tear down the old main house, which currently houses the kitchen, and do the renovations to the "left wing" of the house, where our bedrooms, bath, laundry and living room are at the moment. now, if the old house would just sell....people keep looking, but they don't seem to be buying.

happy weekend, one and all....

construction zone

building on....bites. if we could just fast forward to the bit where the new room is there and i'm setting the table for a nice dinner with friends in there, cooking it on the new stove and taking chilled south african sauvignon blanc out of the retro red smeg fridge....but alas, that's not the case. instead, we're living out of boxes and wearing shoes inside to avoid all those yucky dusty bits that are on the floor around the place. rooms are torn apart. people have to lie on our bed to watch t.v. we're living out of boxes and suitcases. there's nowhere to relax. i'm crossing my fingers that it'll all be worth it. if i survive....

yay for monday!

yay for monday and yay for heidikins!  and yay for super cool ruthie pearl reusable shopping bags! and yay for me, because i won this in heidikins' happy birthday roxy (roxy is her super cute shiny red bug) giveaway!

ruthie pearl 

reversible

"aunt jean" print

eco-friendly shopping bag!

i had to choose the one with red, in honor of miss roxy and of course, my red smeg. :-)

i already always, always use canvas bags for my groceries, but it will be so much fun to have a pretty new one that i can reverse as my mood dictates.  thank you heidikins and thank you ruthie pearl !!

i can't wait to have it in the basket when i ride my red bike down to the red mailbox:

taken with diana+ & cross-processed

i hope you wake up to a happy surprise this monday too!

...and now, to work for me.

of murakami, reality, home and possibilities

"it's no wonder you like to read books about reality, since you live so far from it." -- monica, starbucks, copenhagen airport, 10.09.08

my sister meant it better than it sounds. we had discussed murakami in the car all the way to the airport. i had said that what i like about murakami was his exploration of reality or rather realities. she said that likes how the language makes you trust those jobless, 30-something male characters. i was on my way to oslo, she on her way to chicago. they were calling me by name overhead, but i still had to get a grande latte.

what she was getting at was the crazy reality of our life at the moment. we've just (almost) finished getting our house the way we want it and now we're considering moving. not just down the street, but to another country. and at the moment, we don't really know which country. will it be norway or singapore? they sound diametrically opposed, but what they have in common is shipping. both are big locations for shipping. and i'm in shipping. and husband is considering getting into shipping as well. and there are exciting opportunities in both places. for both of us.

but it's all up in the air right now. theoretical. the stuff of pure possibility at the moment. and the subject of much conversation and speculation and scheming and imagining. how to make it work. scheming ways of having it all. it's hard to imagine parting with our house at the moment (i will definitely be taking that red smeg, no matter what, even if i have to sail it to singapore). but, could we afford to keep our house and buy another home? (that depends on the offers really and those are also theoretical--strong possibilities, but not definite yet.) norway is really, really expensive and if i think that, in comparison to denmark, it must be super, hyper expensive, because denmark is pretty expensive. if we had a house in denmark and an apartment in singapore, is that really realistic? how often will we get back and use the house in denmark?

in other words, where will life take us?

and this, combined with our home improvements, have had me thinking about home and what it means. and i'm not the only one, tangobaby wrote about home recently as did hele at truth cycles. it must be something in the air.

what is home, really? is it a place? a house? an apartment? fabulous red appliances? or is it a life lived together with those you love most? can anywhere be home, as long as those you love are there? could an artificial disneyland of a place like singapore really be home? or will it be the mountains of norway? or will we stay in the house that we have spent so much time and labor (not to mention money) getting exactly as we like it? which reality will we choose?

or is it really that we love dreaming towards some new possibility? that looking forward towards the next big thing is what we do, it's what makes us us. it's where we feel most at home, dreaming and scheming and looking at the next fork in the road and choosing which path to take. so perhaps that's my answer...we take our home with us, wherever we go. maybe it's not a place at all, but is within us. a reality that we make every day, as we live it and breathe in the possibilities.

i have to say i like that idea. and i'm looking forward to seeing how this all pans out as the picture gets clearer in the coming weeks.

* * *

and with jon stewart's daily show playing in the background, recapping last week's convention farce, i become painfully aware that my musings and considerations are luxury problems indeed.

this makes me happy...

thinking about what makes me happy (for the next time when i'm feeling down and want to remember). these are not necessarily in order.

1. lots and lots of art supplies
2. watching sabin dig into the art supplies with her whole being
3. husband's drive to get household projects done
4. having something to look forward to...can be anything from a new job (this week!) to dinner guests to my writing house in the garden to our building project being finished, the mailman's arrival
5. having airline tickets in my possession (i currently have 2 sets, so i'm doubly happy)
6. ruins
7. shades of blue and green
8. my beautiful, colorful yarn
9. good chick music (sheryl crow, alanis morissette, regina spektor, feist...)
10. my iPod(s)
11. cooking some really fabulous food
12. my new juicer
13. a fragrant, hot, steaming, bubble bath, surrounded by candles and in which i sip a glass of wine and read a good book
14. clean sheets
15. the laundry being done on sunday night
16. the red retro smeg refrigerator i'm getting soon
17. henry kloss radios (even better if they dock an iPod)
18. bouquets of flowers from my own garden
19. sitting out in the circle in the garden on a sunny day with the sunday paper and a big pot of tea and breakfast on a colorful tray
20. laughing over a good story

this feels like a good exercise. to think about the positive. it's so easy sometimes to think about the negatives in life. to get bogged down in some petty little things. but really, there are plenty of great things on which i can better spend my energy. so, i think i will.

houses have feelings too or how about some taste, people?

EDITED to add a few pictures....

thank you shannon for the little camera keychain!!
lego "zapper" by sabin - she made it one day when she couldn't find the t.v. remote
my monthly art journal calendars on the left (with april woefully not completed)
and that naff bumpy wallpaper that's on the wall behind has got to go.

dear previous owners of this house (all of them),

i've spent some time organizing around the house. things are started to be settled in and it begins to feel more like our house. we haven't painted or put up new wallpaper or anything like that since it will all be torn apart again in a few months anyway, but i was feeling a strong need for it to feel more like our  home.

but as i'm working around the house, i am consistently amazed at the choices you made...everything from mis-matched ceilings (no less than 7 different ceiling materials) to rope used as a "finish" between wall and ceiling to naff bumpy wallpaper. while i can understand that sometimes money is tight, these choices are not only cheap, but just tasteless and even more than that, careless. had you really never visited anyone who had a proper house and taken note of how doorframes and ceilings are constructed? and did you really have to use that crappy rope in the "old living room?" who told you that looked good?

so many things wrong with this that i don't even know where to begin
there was even woodchip wallpaper on that BEAM at one point for the love of odin!

what surprises me is that there are times when i find that the conversation i'm having in my head about it all is really quite angry about the whole thing. i'll admit i'm missing my beautiful oak floors and red smeg refrigerator (much to my dismay it's normal to sell the appliances with the house here, not take them with you and believe you me, the subject has been extensively cried about discussed in this household), but to be honest, it's not just that. the anger is coming from elsewhere and at the risk of sounding like i've gone stark raving mad,  i think that elsewhere is the house itself. i think the house feels you neglected and mistreated it all these years. that you totally didn't see and utilize its potential.

this ceiling is made of up rough wood that you'd normally build a fence with - not for ceiling use, people!
and look at how they joined the two lists at top? even i know you should cut it at an angle!

but it's also possible that i've reached a point in both my old age and my aesthetic sense where i have a distinct lack of patience for people who lack a sense of quality and doing things properly. i just don't understand why you wouldn't put in a proper ceiling and pay attention to which way you lay the boards in comparison to the hallway just outside the door. i don't get why you wouldn't just buy enough tiles to finish the job or at least find a less obvious solution than using whatever you could scrounge out of a skip at the dump to finish the job. and i really don't just blame a lack of money, it's also a lack of pride in a way. why would you want to live this way? and especially in this extremely design-conscious country, how on earth did you ever have anyone over to dinner?

and it has me thinking about what a home is...it's more than just a building, it's a refuge, a safe place, the place where you can really be yourself and express yourself. it's an expression of who you are and what i'm getting at doesn't really have to do with how much money you have, it's more to do with the amount of care you exercise in making it yours.  i am looking forward to all of the changes we're going to be making here (and the house tells me it is too). in the meantime, it does help a little bit to get out the sewing machine and jazz up the curtains a little bit (even just making them all the right length helps), spread out our rugs and baskets of stones and hang some art on the walls. it makes both the house and me much happier. but seriously, you people really did a number on this place...

sincerely,
/julie and the house that's not a windmill