Category: general

summer is in full swing, and i’m here for it! clear skies, warm nightly breezes, bee-eaters gurgling in the sky…

in the early days of july, there are performances in town every night. our favorites this year were “perceptions“, which was was mesmerizing, and “a viagem” a cute little theater play that takes place in a campervan for an audience of 8. i also enjoyed seeing lavoisier again, and checking out the arabic nights in cacela.

we made a czech mushroom soup called kulajda and it was super nice.

i finished two books. the first was circe, the story of a greek nymph who grows and transforms herself into something different. i really enjoyed it, and by the middle of the book, i was invested in what was going to happen, and what more the gods would throw her way. and i also finished listening to interior chinatown, which was very well read and enjoyable… but different. the format takes a bit more getting used to.

the boy had his third miracle shot, and i ate the first fartura of the summer — always a highlight! :D

later on week 29, we took the train north for the customary 2 weeks of catching up with the family during summer. we kidnapped the little niece for the weekend, and everyone was besotted by her charms — the grandparents especially, but also other little cousins. now that she can crawl and play, she’s like a little doll to them!

to us, she’s just the nicest baby! i hope to always remember how she laughs when the boy tries to (very seriously) teach her to say “paaaauuu-lo!” and her funny crawl-push way of moving around. it feels like she’s on the verge of starting to walk now, but hasn’t quite figured out yet what to do once she stands up. it’s really moving to see all these milestones take place!

we flew back on a monday, and went straight to the hospital for the boy to have the miracle injection, which will hopefully bring everything under control. then we were off to the north again, for the second wedding of the month! my godchild daniela got married, ahead of her move to belgium, and we celebrated with lunch at her parents.

her nieces (my cousins once removed?) are the cutest kids, and we spent time drawing together. the youngest made this adorable picture of paulo:

isn’t it just the best? :D

after the celebrations, we drove south, back home, at long last. our garden in the backyard had grown so much in the last month, and there were tiny tomatoes and peas! these are sugar snap peas, and i like to eat them straight from the vine, as a crunchy snack.

the newlyweds came south with us for a week of sun in the beach, and we cooked some nice food together — including some chinese and sri lankan dishes that we hadn’t made in a long time. it required a trip to the asian supermarket all the way in albufeira, but now the kitchen is fully stocked again and ready for more exotic cooking shenanigans.

and then, out of nowhere, a big dog showed up on our street one day!

he was really huge, but so quiet and friendly that no one was scared. we called the animal services and then the GNR at their referral, and they came to check him. they read the microchip and called the owner, who quickly came to pick him up. turns out, rufus is quite fond of escaping the farm where he usually lives. he was really peaceful though, and for a moment there, made me wish we had the kind of life that can accommodate a dog — it would be nice!

when we were away, my brother and his wife spent some time in our house, and they brought one of their nieces too. the kid left one of her socks here… so i made a little parcel for her, with a story about the sock going on an adventure around the world and writing her some postcards.

that was fun! i hope life slows down a bit from here onwards, so that i can have more time for creative endeavors like these. i feel like i need a whole month of quiet days to recover from the intensity of may.

a couple of slow weeks.

the good news is that the boy’s blood markers have been excellent lately! they’re better than they’ve been in the last year and a half, which is amazing. the boy did take a higher dose of OCS for a while, and is now tapering it off… we’ll see how it goes.

we’ve been keeping to the potato diet, while slowly adding other ingredients to see the reactions. the first was dairy, which was a disastrous reintroduction on the first day, but quickly improved. the second ingredient was chicken — so far, so good. it’s nice to discover these flavors again, one by one. the diet has slowly transformed food from something that was always on my mind, to more of a background thing. i no longer think about going to places with the perspective of eating something there, which was something i’ve always done… it’s weird, but also kind of refreshing.

we’re crocheting carnations in the crafts class, and i’m so pleased with how it’s turning out. i hope i can wear mine proudly on april 25th! speaking of flowers, i bought some tulips at the market, and they made me very happy.

this week, i also installed a watering system on the raised bed, that will hopefully help the garden endure the harsh summer. the system came as a pre-made kit, but was missing some pieces… which made putting the whole thing together a very frustrating experience, with sub-optimal results. :( hopefully we’ll be able to find some more connectors to expand it.

we’ve seen a couple of nice movies these weeks, perfect days by wim wenders (which was so, so beautiful), and at eternity’s gate, about van gogh’s last years. since returning from france, i’ve been curious about his life and work — maybe we’ll go see a few of his paintings on an upcoming trip to the netherlands.

and just today we went to a birdwatching activity in the sapal of castro marim, and ended up seeing a couple of new birds: a red-crested pochard and a pallid swift. swifts are notoriously difficult to tell apart, so it helps to have the experts nearby to point them out. on the way back home, we made a detour to check out a lake that the boy had run by once, and ended up seeing another new bird: a great-spotted cuckoo! we also saw a mama coot with her 2 babies, and the bee-eaters are back in town, their gurgling chirps filling the sky once more! <3

what a week.

– we saw dune 2 in the cinema, and it was great, all deep rumbling noises and majestic desert landscapes.

– it was an intense week for language learning, with lots of chinese but also french, because i’ve been helping my cousin daniela practice for an upcoming exam. i hope she does well!

– the boy turned 43, and we went on a 15km birthday walk, from faro to quarteira. we’re very close to completing the “walk the algarve coast” objective, with only 60 or so kms left! this stretch was particularly nice, because it was done half through the ludo area (where we saw 2 new ducks!) and half through the beach, on a gorgeous sunny morning.

– i’ve been watching young royals lately, and it made me curious about learning swedish. i don’t want to get sucked into the lure of yet another language, but i kind of like how intriguing it sounds — the long vowels, the deep RRs and just the cadence of it, like a staccato of words. i’ve added it to duolingo, just to see how it goes.

– on sunday we went voting, and as the night went on and the results started coming in, a kind of darkness spread over the region like an oil spill. i feel a little hopeless, but mostly just angry. the future which people around me are trying to build is not the one i imagine for the children i love. the first instinct is to leave… but then, who would do the work that needs to be done for things to improve? i guess it’ll have to be us. 💪