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weeknotes

weeknotes, 46/26

a less exciting week, spent keeping an eye on one of the senior’s food intake, ahead of a scheduled colonoscopy. it’s hard for elderly people to manage these things on their own — the instructions are always long but somehow still ambiguous enough to make it extra confusing. :( add a big storm to the mix (with delays and lots of services closed), and you basically spend the week eating clear jello and chicken soup.

one of the good things of being in the “village” (in reality, a small city, but our senior lives on the edge of it, which is practically countryside) is that the municipal pool there is excellent — and recently opened a sauna inside. :D i went several times.

speaking of swimming, on friday we returned home to aveiro and i was able to take LJ to the pool! they managed to change her swim class to one with a friend of hers and a female teacher, and things have been going better lately. hurray for much splashing and no tears!

well, the universe seems to somehow be conspiring against us, because no sooner did we leave one senior, another started requiring supervision… so now here we are in porto, to keep an eye on my father this time. there’s some doctor appointments booked for next week, and we’ll see how that goes.

in the meantime, we’ve explored a bit of the leça green corridor, which we had only heard about before. the river is still quite polluted, but steps are being taken to improve it and it’s nice to see so much wildlife around it already. i spotted lots of moorhens and a cetti’s warbler on my walk! i’m very proud of managing to keep up my walking streak lately, despite the weather.

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books weeknotes

weeknotes, 45/26

a very normal week in aveiro, just getting back into the swing of things. i’ve been trying to walk at least 5k steps everyday, to try to keep the cholesterol in check, and so far, it seems to be working — my latest results are the best ever! ✌️ it’s also a nice way to discover the city, bit by bit.

i visited the library to swap a few books, and stumbled on ana ventura’s “mudar”, which was just delightful. such subtle story telling, without any words! every time i looked, i noticed some new details.

this was a good week for reading, overall. i also finished john green’s latest book, hollywood ending and roz chast’s can’t we talk about something more pleasant?, which felt like a deja vu because it mirrored so well our experience with the seniors. this passage in particular hit very close to home, because we lived it earlier this year: us staying on the couch, a mother in the hospital and one very confused father who couldn’t remember things very clearly…

speaking of which, we checked on all them on the weekend, and brought home a bunch of persimmon from the farm. aaaaaaah… autumn, my beloved!

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one second everyday

october 2026 — one second everyday

october was world postcard day month!

but it also saw us back in tavira, back in slovenia and then finally back to aveiro. in between all of this, push bikes, nature, chickens, halloween and peking opera masks.

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weeknotes

weeknotes, 44/26

back home in aveiro for a bit of a strange week, spent mostly back and forth caring for an iron-deficient senior (who required a couple of blood transfusions to get back on her feet). i empathize, because my usually low ferritin levels are currently being dragged even lower by a malfunctioning baby box. 🙄 ah… the joys of perimenopause!

still, the week had some fun stuff in it! on friday, i went to a “peking opera mask workshop” by the local confucius institute, where we learned about this art form and even painted our own masks. i also got to meet my teachers in person for the first time!

and on the weekend i spent an afternoon with little niece, looking at my brother’s new chickens and old tractor, and also taking the kid on her second ever halloween walk. halloween is not a big thing in portugal, with just a few kids trying their luck here and there — but there’s one small village nearby that goes the extra mile, and we went there to check it out. whoa, i was not expecting such a mega production… and so many people!

the kid came home with lots of lollies and gummies and loved the whole thing, though afterwards she was so exhausted from all the excitement that she just fell asleep without having dinner…

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in slovenia weeknotes

weeknotes, 43/26

another week in slovenia, soaking up all the autumn colors.

the weather turned a bit gloomy halfway through the week, but it was still plenty of time to go see the mountains and the lakes, and even visit the beekeeping museum, some 10 years after we first heard about it!

a few days before the half-marathon, paulo fell and scraped his knees and wrist. the wrist was still hurting him this week, so he went to the hospital and got himself a splint (hurray for european health insurance!)… which made for less driving around. but we still very much enjoyed ljubljana, wrote postcards, walked a lot and i even met an old penfriend from a decade ago!

we always say we should go back more often, and this time, there was even talk of retiring in this country someday… who knows! :)