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Week 38 & 39 of 2034 (Year in Review)
The middle weeks of September were challenging, to say the least. I first saw some inklings that there was a very severe weather event blowing our way mid-week 38 and when the rains came, they came. They arrived. It started raining sometime on Thursday and didn’t stop until later on Monday. Not only does that seem like a downer, everyone was predicting it would flood and there were warnings to prepare for floods at the level of 2002 or 2012. We filled all fillable containers in our house, made sure all bathing and washing of anything was done and felt nervous the entire weekend as I anxiously monitored the situation…
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Life, Lately: Autumn With a One-Year-Old
Happy autumn! I thought a catch-up was overdue, so here’s what’s been going on with us lately here in South Bohemia – life on maternity leave with a seventeen-month old toddler. THINKING… When I get free time, my mind is just a jumble of the hundred things I have been wanting to do. Writing it down in my planner, a series of random papers or a Google Doc has been saving me. Right now, Mouse is have an unusually long midday nap and I’ve been frenetically choosing activities: have lunch, pay bills/life admin, weekend plans… but then “which learning tower should I buy?”, I need to plan Christmas things already!,…
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Life Lately: And That Was Autumn With a Baby
Now with a five-month-old, I can barely sit at a computer for more than ten minutes each day – I’m embarrassed that this post took me about two months to finally publish. I am really taking to heart “sleep when the baby sleeps” so my very few minutes of free time is going to rest and self-care. Sometimes I manage to write a whole e-mail. With an infant that is demanding more and more attention daily, that is definitely what’s working for me right now. With Alex back to work in mid-September after about two and a half months as a new little family, things have reached a new level…
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Autumn Celebrations + A Delicious Drink {Recipe}
I am already beside myself with excitement that the holiday season starts in two weeks! After last year’s Christmas market cancellation, I think I got my sense of joy and whimsy back and I’m ready to enjoy the coming season to the fullest! I couldn’t believe that in the single-digits of November the market was already under construction in the square! I have already smelled the ceremonial first waft of spiced punch, a phenomenon which happens every year and is always ceaselessly thrilling, as the punch stands are already out and blazing with business. Alex was joking that every year we have the same conversation, “Are you excited? It doesn’t…
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Autumn, Lately
This year hasn’t been a banner year for the old bloggity-blog by any means. It’s hard to write when a) you are doing a million things and this space has frankly taken a back burner, b) there’s too much to put online, or c) somethings that are going on, you wouldn’t want to put online anyway. It’s also dispiriting when your favorite blogs on the interweb have a) gone dark or b) gone behind a paywall. (If you’ve got a cool blog or know of one, holler at me in the comments because I’m out of ideas!) I miss blog reading. Remember the days that everyone would post their daily…
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Autumn Lockdown Feels Like
Do you think optimistic, positive people ever just… lose it after awhile? I consider myself one of those and was wondering when that breaking point would come. After holding it together so well since lockdown started in March, I’ve had more work than ever before (none of this Corona free time) and I guess last Sunday, in mid-late November it all sort of came to a head. It came to me today that of course our Christmas trip abroad would be cancelled this year – it would be folly to go through with it. I thought of all the sadness and destruction that 2020 has wrought. I wondered when I…
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How Does Your Garden Grow
A couple of weeks ago, we had the most beautiful late October day you could ever dream of. Even now, in the late afternoon the sun is already setting, I couldn’t help think as I walked home with a basket full of vegetables from the garden plot for the second to last time this season how lucky we were this year with this beautiful Indian summer I keep raving on about — this sort of weather would even be out of place for late September, let alone October. Readers may know that this summer was the first year I had my own garden plot in the earth to work with…
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It’s November (Life Lately)
Hi friends, happy November! For the first time in awhile, I did not manage to make the annual ‘Spooky Movies to Watch in October’ list. Shame, that. Just for anyone interested, we did continue with our October Movie series and watched in the following order over the course of the month: The Raven (1963) – A Vincent Price classic. Hokey but perfectly Halloweeny, and containing one of the funniest spooky scenes in cinematic history: a magic duel between Price and Boris Karloff (not in a monster role) from thrones. It has to be seen to be believed. ᇫᇫᇫᇫ The Babadook (2014) – Creepy, a bit dystopic, that feeling of losing…
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imagine peace on viðey island
as one of the main reasons we went to iceland was to celebrate my mother’s birthday as a family (which luckily happened to be directly after iceland airwaves ended), i started thinking of something memorable we could do together. one of the first thoughts that came to mind was a day trip to viðey island. you may remember how much i like tiny islands? having been to flatey (which is only just a tad bigger) in the west fjords on my last trip, two years before. it is really not often talked about, but there there are a handful of tiny islands in the kollafjörður bay (of which viðey is…
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november, lately
hello all,happy thanksgiving week! it started snowing sunday night and there was a blanket of snow on the ground by monday morning – and still snowing (despite what the photo above from a lovely day last month shows!). i really got in a more wintery mood in iceland as there were no leaves on the trees anymore and festive decorations all over the main streets, but there is absolutely nothing like a blanket of snow on a monday morning to get your week going! (if you like snow, that is) since coming back from my trip, i’ve just felt like there are endless things to do – catching up on…
