Category: weeknotes

weeknotes, 48-50/24

mostly quiet weeks, brainstorming and buying gifts for everyone, writing a million christmas postcards, tying up loose ends, riding the usual anxiety about the upcoming christmas trip…

i asked my brother if the kid needed anything for christmas, and he said she needed winter clothes… which led me to a shopping spree on vinted. it’s a second-hand marketplace where people sell their old stuff, but it’s especially nice for kid’s clothes, many of which are only used for a few months. i managed to snatch quite a few good deals and became a little bit addicted to it, truth be told. 😅

these weeks have been good for reading. i finished the hidden life of trees, which is such an amazing book… you learn about how trees share information and care for each other, and how much they struggle without their forest support group. it really makes you look at trees in a whole new way! i also listened to werner herzog’s the twilight world, read by the man himself in his slow voice, thick with german accent. and i finished she who became the sun, which was intense and beautiful, a wild mix of mulan and some chinese wuxia vibe.

i’ve been trying to get back into running, with the help of the “zombies, run!” app. their couch-to-5k program starts reeeeeeeally slow, with just 15 seconds of running in between 1 minute walks, which feels extremely easy, but i like the storytelling part of it, so i don’t want to skip ahead and miss stuff. there’s a race the family is planning to do in april that i want to try to join for the 10k, if i can keep it up until then.

ever since the conjunctivitis some weeks ago, i’ve had the feeling i had something stuck in my eye, which is not a very pleasant feeling. since it didn’t seem to go away, i went to see a doctor, who scraped my eye a bit (it’s not as unpleasant as it sounds) and prescribed some drops and a cream. it seems to be doing its job and i’ve been feeling less bothered by it.

lately, i’ve been forgetting to take pictures (and make videos) a lot, so i don’t have a lot of pictures to share, but here’s one of tiny niece that my chinese friend qiuyu painted:

isn’t that cute? she’s a wizard with a brush!

these early december days have been sunny and fresh for the most part, around 15 degrees or so. it’s not even properly cold (not like in central or northern europe), but in a house without proper heating, you feel it a lot — it’s enough to throw me into a grumpy, whiny mood and make me dream about escapades to warm places. to curb this grumpiness, the fireplace has been working non-stop, and we’ve holed ourselves in the living room, curtained off from the rest of the house. i wish we could just re-do the whole house and make it better… sigh.

weeknotes

weeknotes, 47/24

a nice, quiet week. the eyes got better, the water levels dropped and work got done.

we booked tickets and arranged accommodation for a trip to sweden next spring, for a work thing. i’m usually a bit wary of booking stuff so far in advance, but it’s also nice to have everything in place and know that it is going to happen. let the anticipation begin!

i’ve been sending tiny niece one book every month for her growing library, and this month’s was “and tango’s makes three“, which is a sweet tale of 2 papa penguins who adopted an egg in the central park zoo. sadly, i couldn’t find it in portuguese, so i picked the spanish version and translated the difficult words in pencil underneath them. i think she’ll enjoy it — she’s very much into animals and their sounds these days. :)

the highlight of the week was a classical music concert we attended in faro. the local orchestra has a series of concerts that are made to be more approcheable and fun for the general public, and it was really nice. lots of kids in the audience, but everyone was pretty much spellbound to the fast music and the shenanigans of the orchestra. and in the end, they dropped balloons from the ceiling! :D

weeknotes

weeknotes, 46/24

another week of my body succumbing to viruses and giving me trouble. the flavor of the week: conjunctivitis! first one eye, then the other became scratchy and itchy, and it’s just… ugh. the drops the doctor prescribed seem to be working, though. dear body, can you please behave? ain’t nobody got time for this.

we booked the trains for our christmas trip up north, and also made plans for the new year’s get-together! somehow, it always takes a lot of energy to get these things done. initially, i thought it might be interesting to use the new “green railway pass” that the government launched recently, but the trains in which it applies make the trip longer and cumbersome, with more changes. :(

it rained a lot this week, and the river in tavira was super high. everyone is on high alert because of what happened in spain some weeks ago, but it wasn’t that bad here. i hope all this water means our dams will be a little fuller, and we won’t have as much water troubles next year. fingers crossed!

weeknotes

weeknotes, 45/24

back home, at long last! :D it always feel like a bit of relief, going through the door, coming back to our things, our space. this time, i brought home some virus from the kid too, so it’s been a week of throat aches, snotty nose and other ailments.

our neighbors told us it had been raining quite a lot the previous weeks, and both the garden and the little plot in the back were luscious green.

the olive tree is full of olives, so we took some and pickled them using a local recipe. we’re not sure which species of olive this is, or how good the result will be, but we’ll give it a try! the birds are super happy with the abundance of olives that falls on the floor too, like an open banquet… sparrows, blackbirds and redstarts spend their days picking at the fruit.

after years pestering him, the boy finally got himself a bike! now we have what feels like a two-wheeled fleet, and it makes me happy. :D planning some nice bike rides, when the weather and my health improve.

i finished reading the bee sting, which was a brilliant book but i was infuriated by the ending. i feel very strongly that 600+ page books should not end ambiguously. *humpf* afterwards, i also finished double blind and artificial condition (murderbot #2), which were both good for decompressing from the longer books. lots of hours on trains and flights (and some insomnia too) make for lots of reading!

weeknotes

weeknotes, 44/24

a chilled week, spent with both sets of parents in the north. on thursday night, we kidnapped tiny niece and brought her to the village to spend time with us and the grandparents.

we stopped to smell the flowers a lot, and play with the chestnuts that fall on the floor. and i got these super huge crayons that were a hit with both baby and older cousins.

at some point (and seemingly out of nowhere), a bat appeared in the living room! it was a big one, and we don’t know how it got in because all the windows were closed at the time… it must have been there for some time. 😱 scared of catching rabies, we ran outside but despite opening all the windows and doors, it took some time for the poor thing to find its bearings and leave the room. what a thing!

in the end, it was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster weekend. little niece is super attached to her grandfather, and the feeling is mutual, with him loudly stealing her attention at every opportunity. i get it, they’re getting on in their years and this is their only grand-daughter… but it’s also my only niece, and i’d like to be able to have some quiet bonding time with her. :( *sigh*.