january! the first month of the year saw us quietly recharging at home, getting reacquainted with our routines and the things we missed the past few months.
i read a couple of books, we caught up with friends over online dinners, played hanabi a few times, enjoyed all the almond trees blossoming everywhere, hung a couple of birdhouses, good boostered, watched some chinese series and celebrated chinese new year. it was a great month, with quite a few new dishes and birds spotted too.
a full year in the span of 6 minutes still feels a bit like magic to watch. 2021 wasn’t very different from the previous year, and in my head, it got classified as a “pandemic part 2” of sorts. we huddled and hibernated in the first part of the year, then gradually opened up and ventured out of our shells.
there were vaccines, volcanoes in azores, and much time spent with family. there were sooo many video dinners but also some real dinners with friends, long walks and new birds spotted. there was much bread baked too, board game nights, some knitting and some volunteering. the walking desk had its brilliant debut, and the old phone drowned and got replaced by a shiny new one. we bought our house and got a new fireplace! plus, we didn’t get sick, which is a blessing i do not take for granted.
so many things happened, so much joy and laughter shared! i’m really glad and thankful for every one of these days. this could have been a really depressing year if we chose to see it that way, but instead we did what we could to make the best of it. still crossing my fingers we’ll be able to go to taiwan at some point… but until then, we’ll just enjoy what we have right now.
bring it on, 2022!
december at last!
long walks, guests, volunteering, traveling north, spending time with the family… a bit of everything thrown in the mix. :)
ah… november. a month of longer and longer walks, knitting, migrating downstairs to huddle by the fireplace, volunteering and piquena staying over. a bit all over the place, and more sunny days than rainy ones.
– a couple of collared doves have been showing up around breakfast time. it’s nice to see them come back everyday.
– read about the world’s deadliest thing, which was not what i expected. this quote stuck with me:
The lethal dose when consumed orally is around 30 billionths of a gram, which if you want a relatable comparison, is about the same as if you cut a single poppy seed into ten thousand equal pieces and ate one of them. It is an amount so tiny, it really doesn’t make sense.
– dani spent a lazy week of catching up with sleep, books and movies, and it was all going well… until i washed the bathroom with disinfectant and she had a nasty allergic reaction to it. :( one trip to the hospital later and she’s doing a little better, the poor kitten.
– a friend who’s moving to portugal stayed over for a couple of days, so december has been unexpectedly busy with guests. we’ve had meals together and played games — even managed to win at pandemic, for once!
– finished reading “ready, player one” at last, dove into “factory girls“, another china-themed book.