Category: weeknotes

weeknotes, 11/26

we watched “if i had legs i’d kick you” in the cinema which was heartbreaking and hard to watch — but i think also important and eye-opening. to counter that seriousness, i’ve been going through the game changers series of books, which feel a bit like gay hockey fanfiction. maybe someday my brain will feel like something different, but for now, light and easy are what it wants.

after much indecision and postponing, i got myself a second-hand smartwatch on vinted. i’m trying to improve my overall fitness and it’s nice to have some metrics to track the evolution over time. i also wanted something that integrated with the apple ecosystem, which fitbit (my previous step counter thinguie) did not. so after going back and forth quite a bit on which one to get (the choice feels endless), i settled on a garmin venu 2s that was half-price and had no scratches. :D i’m really enjoying it so far!

mid-week we went north to participate in the annual plantation in leiria. this time, my brother also came, even though he broke his wrist some weeks ago and couldn’t really do much. but he brought little niece along, and that brightened up the mood on another rainy morning. in the end, she even got a ride on the tractor!

on the weekend it was my grandma’s 91st birthday, and the whole family came to celebrate the big day, even some cousins we don’t see very often. :) grandma is very old and grumpy, and tends to periodically get on her children’s nerves, but she’s still relatively autonomous and likes to chat. lately, she’s been “couchsurfing” in her sons and daughters’ houses, rotating to the next place when tensions increase. it’s lucky she still has 7 children, so they can all take turns and remain cool!

weeknotes

weeknotes, 10/26

this turned out to be an unexpectedly deep week.

i finished listening to when the cranes fly south, and ugh… what a punch in the gut it was. maybe it’s because we’ve been on the other side of this story so recently, but i feel like this should be required reading for anyone with aging parents. the whole thing is just an awakening call to the realities of aging, from the side we don’t usually hear about: the person who is old. as children, we do what we can to make sure our parents or loved ones are safe and comfortable, but from their perspective, do these decisions actually benefit them? and if they’re not perceived as beneficial, then what are we doing…? it made me take a step back a bit, and look at situations from a different viewpoint.

and then, later in the week, we went to the theater to watch “catarina e a beleza de matar fascistas”, to which i had gotten tickets in december last year, not even knowing if we’d be home for it in march. the play was as poignant as everyone said it would be, both inspiring and really painful to watch to the end. i still don’t know what to think about the whole thing — especially of the public’s interaction with it while we’re all collectively trapped there, forced to listen to hate speech for a long time. the reactions of the audience feel both staged and also inevitable, like people are trying to prove themselves by shouting louder… when in real-life i think we would just switch off the TV. my sister-in-law also watched it recently and was as troubled by it as i was. i’m glad we got to see it though!

we’ve been doing some morning walks outside, to catch some sun early in the day and see if that improves our sleep. i’m not sure it’s having that effect, but it’s still nice to start the day with a walk and an opportunity to notice the start of spring all around us. it feels like hope is coming back with the flowers!

it was the boy’s birthday this week, 44! we went to the west coast to celebrate, where the wind was stupidly strong — even the surfers were staying away from the waves. we had really nice pizza, some bolas de berlim and burek from apolónia. we also started a big stamp-themed puzzle that my brother gave us last christmas!

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!

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.

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.