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weeknotes

weeknotes, 9/26

aaaaaah… a whole full week back at home! :D :D :D i can hardly explain how relaxing it feels to be here and to have time again. we’ve taken it easy this week, focusing on the big stuff and getting re-acquainted with being by ourselves. it felt so, so good.

we saw hamnet this week and i’ve been reading howl’s moving castle and listening to when the cranes fly south. the latter is about a senior that is being cared for by his son and some social caretakers and his experience of aging. it’s hitting me a bit hard, having just put father-in-law in a nursing home… but maybe there’s no better time than now to read it.

i went back to the gym today! my right forearm is still a little achy but getting better and it was good to be back to using all the muscles that haven’t moved these past couple of months. they did some maintenance on the sauna and it was extra hot, which felt amazing. i missed it so much!

we went out to eat a few times this week, as if we were starved for food from around the world (indian, korean, japanese, pizza…). but we also ate stuff from our own little plot, which is bursting at the seams with broccoli, cabbages, lettuce, radishes, chard, coriander, etc. maybe it’s all the rain that fell in the last 2 months, or maybe it’s the lack of humans fussing over it — but either way, i’ll take it and make some healthy meals out of it!

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just life

2025 in books

we’re kind of taking it easier this week, so i have some time to write about the things i wanted to write at the end of 2025 and didn’t get to. like the books i read!

2025 was good, reading-wise — not record-breaking, but it’s not about that. there was a lot of fiction and romance with comfort authors (like emily henry or ali hazelwood) appearing multiple times. i read through a few different fantasy series too, but also non-fiction topics like tuberculosis, politics, or chernobyl. i think the highlights of the year might have been atmosphere (book) and project hail mary (audiobook).

once again, children’s books were practically the only books i read on paper, and the rest was mostly digital loans from different libraries that i read on the kindle. i went so few times to the local library that they’ve canceled my card 😅 (though it still works for digital loans, somehow). i don’t know what i would do without the kindle anymore — my eyesight is not as good as it once was, and i find reading normal paper books (with their tiny fonts) really uncomfortable. audiobooks continue to be a companion for boring chores, the gym or long train rides.

this year, the letter C won the alphabet count, followed by S and T! i did worse than last year though, with more letters missing.

i also did worse in diversity, reading from less different countries overall… 75% of my reads seem to be either from the US or the UK. oh well!

i think i would like to try to diversify my reading a bit more again — not just in terms of nationalities of the authors, but also in terms of publication year. somehow it feels like i mostly read contemporary authors, but there’s a lot of older stuff out there that is probably interesting and has shorter waiting times at the library.

that said, when i pick a book to read, i mostly go with the flow and what i feel like reading in that moment… so i’m sure soon enough i will forget about these “resolutions”. 2026 is not up to a great start, reading-wise, but we’ll see where it takes us! :)

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just life weeknotes

weeknotes, 7-8/26

more of the same: half of the time spent holding onto all the threads at work and the rest just trying to get things done at the in-laws. new hearing aids, bathroom renovations, dentures stuff, physiotherapy appointments, pressure washing the cement floor outside so that it’s not so slippery… the list is endless. the more time one spends there, the more things there are to do and fix.

things are finally settling down with the boy’s father at the nursing home, as the medical staff there found some old-school medication that helps him sleep at night without making him drowsy during the day. apparently it’s something they haven’t used in years and years, and everyone was happily surprised that it seems to work so well for him. i’m just grateful they didn’t give up — and that they had the resources and the patience to keep trying new things. we were so lucky with the place we ended up picking… i don’t take any of this for granted. our senior is still a little lost, but he’s in good spirits, clean and safe and talking about planting potatoes and beans on the gardens outside.

we watched one battle after another, and i finished listening to the correspondent, which was unexpectedly touching. i swam a few times in the municipal pool and took the kid to her swimming lessons too. the last time we were there she threw a huge tantrum over a band-aid that needed to stay on a scraped knee at all costs… but after awhile (and with the help of a really nice cleaning lady, who fetched us a new band-aid), we were back on the water with the class. 😅

and then the sun started shining again and it felt like heaven. i think maybe we had forgotten what blue skies looked like! the whole country feels radioactively green and blue now — and warm, almost impossibly spring-like in what is still the middle of winter. it feels like hope!

but i saved the best news of all for last: WE’RE BACK HOME! it’s for a short period of time only, but i missed all of this so much these past 2 months — the brightness, the birds, my heated blanket, the salt ponds, my bike, the almond blossoms, our favorite restaurants, the local cine-theatre… and most of all, the quietness of life when it’s just the two of us. <3 words cannot describe it, it’s like the world is right again.

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just life one second everyday

january 2026 — one second everyday

january was all family, all the time. there were hospitals and ambulances and doctor appointments galore, but also some time with little niece and a lot of slow-motion domino games at the nursing home.

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weeknotes

weeknotes, 5-6/26

a quieter couple of weeks, working mostly from home with the heater on max the whole time, very much rinse and repeat. some good nights of sleep, finally.

we’ve slowly been fixing stuff around the house, going through lists, putting systems in place to deal with old problems, decluttering and waiting for the boy’s mom to be well enough for us to go home for a bit. voting ahead of the election to be able to disconnect from the news cycle earlier.

we’ve been visiting the boy’s dad at the nursing home, where he swings between being sedated or making a fuss and keeping everyone awake at night. the people there seem to take it in stride, par for the course, which is at least a little reassuring… but it’s hard not to worry. dementia means that he’s always a little lost, relying on muscle memory that fails him in an environment where everything is new.

otherwise life has been boring and yet grating, like cabin fever. it feels like it’s been raining non-stop for almost 2 months now, and everything is perpetually wet and damp. we’ve been watching the news in constant dismay of how waterlogged and destroyed the country is in this never-ending carrousel of winter storms. we count our blessings while drying clothes with de-humidifiers and prayers.

i’ve been reading cheesy stuff, cat sebastian and the heated rivalry book that everyone has been talking about — this feels like all the “literature” my brain can process at the moment. better times will come.