Tag: LJ

weeknotes, 24-25/25

we were back in tavira and then immediately hosted my brother and his gang, including little niece. she’s almost 2, knows lots of words and her favorite is a very clearly enunciated “não” (no). she likes ice-cream (frozen banana whizzed with yoghurt), pizza and blueberries, making soap bubbles, listening to stories and going to the slides in the park. she does not like to walk by her own 2 feet and demands to be carried everywhere, like a tiny tyrant princess.

other than that, i just feel stretched very thin and in need of some quiet weeks working at home to recover. i never seem to learn the lesson that i need buffers of time between stuff — it’s always too tempting to cram things, to batch trips together and make traveling more efficient… but the result is that everything seems to overwhelm me and fall apart. *sigh*.

weeknotes

weeknotes, 11/25

a week in the north, catching up with family and friends, and running all the errands. on our way to the hospital for the post-surgery check up (all good) we got rained on so hard that it felt like we were inside some cartoon, with rain just being poured on us by a crazy god. maybe it doesn’t rain that hard in the south? or maybe we just don’t go outside when it does, not really having to be anywhere in particular on any given day.

my only surviving grandma (who makes the best fried codfish) turned 90 years old and the family threw her a little birthday party on the weekend, with her 7 living children and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. it was a loud and happy affair, as these things tend to be. it was also nice to spend time with tiny niece, and hear her say “a-na” for the first time. :)

entertainment-wise, we played carcassone with my brother and his wife (the big box, filled with expansions!) and i finished 2 books from the murderbot series. now i’m on the last one, and it feels a little bittersweet to be almost closing this chapter. :(

i also went swimming three times this week! years ago, i used to be really lazy whenever i went north, and do zero exercise for the duration of our stay. but last year, i started leaving a bag there with all the pool stuff in, and it changed everything. i got some pool cards for the swimming pools near my parents and the boy’s parents and just started going there. it works!

the bad news was that i seem to have caught a bug, either from the kid or from being rained on so much lately. *sigh*.

weeknotes

weeknotes, 51-52/24

these were some weird weeks.

we took the train north a little earlier than our usual christmas schedule. being flexible on dates allows us to book cheaper tickets, which is nice, and in retrospect, i was glad we came earlier because we’ve had plenty of downtime to be sick and spend time in hospitals: paulo got some food poisoning just before christmas, i got some high fever that morphed into a pestering throat ache… plus a nodule on my thyroid that we’re currently investigating. *sigh*

other than that, just the normal christmas things: being with family, consuming inordinate amounts of food, seeing friends, reading, kidnapping the little niece for a few days of cuddling.

christmas day brought together several families, and we were 28 people at the table, kids and all! the smaller ones were very excited about santa coming to visit, but cautious and shy when he actually got there 😅

i got some nice christmas gifts: books and postal-themed things, handy 3d printed objects from my brother, an underblanket that makes my bed toasty warm, a pijama and an insect bite healer (a sci-fi gadget that makes insect bites stop itching within seconds). plus, a new macbook air to replace my 9 year old one, which was not a christmas gift but felt like it. it’s so smooth and fast! i must have been very good this year! ☺️

i finished a couple of books these weeks, eleanor oliphant is completely fine, and where’d you go, bernadette (both nice reads), as well as a few children’s books that i offered to my cousis. “where’d you go, bernadette” made me want to take a cruise to antarctica, something i’ve always considered a little silly. i’ve even exchanged emails with the group that manages the quaint post office at port lockroy, but now i kind of want to go see it for myself and help count penguins!

on the last day of the year, we rented a little flat in the middle of nowhere to ring in the new year with friends. it was super quiet, with an amazing window into the surrounding mountains. just our thing.

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, 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*.