Well, yes. That’s one of my garden gloves and it’not empty. It’s kind of silly, we know to always shake out our shoes or garden clogs before sticking our toes in them (our scorpions aren’t deadly, but their sting does hurt like crazy). But it never occurred to me to check my gloves.
Luckily this glove started moving when I picked it up, so I didn’t stick my hand in it yet. You can imagine I dropped it immediatly (I may have screamed).
And then it took me ten minutes to get that lizard out. They act dead when they feel threatened, so poking with a stick didn”t work. I was too scared to pick the glove up with my hands (some of these lizards have a nasty bite), so I used my long handled but very blunt pruning shears and accepted the risk that I would cut off the finger of the glove.(I didn’t). After a few shakes the lizard dropped out. It ran off so fast that I couldn’t take a picture of it to complete this story (how rude!).
I finally found the library! Yeah, I know that sounds silly, but they moved in the summer (when we were away) and I just couldn’t find the adress they listed on the website (google maps isn’t all that acurate here). But two weeks ago, I suddenly saw them, right at the side of the road I drive on almost weekly, because it connects the two supermarkets I go to most frequently. That’s so great!
I usually get books on alternative medicine or regional history and stories from the library. They have a lot of books in their collection that are no longer for sale.
What I took home with me this time, top to bottom: – in the 60’s a priest asked local people for stories about the past and lore. He wrote them all down without comments or analyzing. His books are such a great source! – a book about menopause. I’m still trying to figure out some facts about that. – the first book of our famous island herbalist. I bought the other one, but this one is out of print. I have borrowed this many, many times and I’m slowly copying the information in my notebooks. – a book about the healing powers of water. Could be interesting if they don’t go over-the-top with the spiritual stuff (that’s an extremely fine line with me)
I think they also have a good selection of fiction, but I read a lot of novels on my e-reader, so I’m never really checked those out. Since I know people will ask what fiction I’m reading: I’m on a Morgana Best binge – if you like cozy mysteries with a bit of paranormal, you should check her out. I just finished 18 (!) books in the Kitchen Witch series and now I’m binging her Vampire and Wine series. I also read Practical Magic and it’s prequel Rules of Magic, by Alice Hoffman. Yeah, there’s theme in my reading these days 😉
I’ve been wanting to make a post like this for a while, but I really hoped to get a list of ten and I never got that far. Oh well, baby steps. Three is good too.
One: Tea. Tea in general, but this tea is very good. And yes, drinking that specific tea means… let’s just focus on the good stuff, okay? (part of me wants to whine about being sick all the time, but I’m trying to keep myself from doing that – and isn’t this a sneaky way to do it anyway?)
Two: The birds are back! We stopped feeding them because they hardly ate any of that sugar (they are called sugar thieves for a reason), but I guess there aren’t as many flowers anymore. It’s so fun to watch tem.
Three: The sky. I know, I’m a broken record about this. But it’s true. It’s so beautiful, Sometimes I forget to look, but when I remember it always makes me feel so much better.
“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” — Dolly Parton (quote found here)
I was looking for a quote that would sound more beautiful, poetic, literary, magical, spiritual, I don’t know. But this one resonated with me. Because it’s the simple truth.
I’m having one of those I’m-not-feeling-so-well-weeks (actually it’s week two already) and I’m running out of blogposts. I usually have some prepared, or at least a list of ideas of what I can write, but I’m coming up empty today. I browsed last week photo’s and saw I took pictures of the clocks in our house, but I can’t even remember why I did that. Was I going to talk about time? I do think a lot about time, so I probably was.
But what was the POV for that post? That you might want to stop time, stop aging, but you can’t? That I suddenly find myself to have moved up a generation? It’s true. Since my mom died I am (at 51) the oldest woman in our immediate family and now that we have a grandson, I feel that shift even clearer. I’m “oma” now (people have been asking what I’m calling myself. “Oma” is the usual word for grandmother in Dutch, so I’m sticking with that). Lots of thoughts and feelings about that, but was that really what I wanted to share? I don’t know.
Or was I going to say the opposite? That no matter how much time passes, I find that I actually didn’t change all that much, even though I have so much more life experience? I can cope with things better now, at least on the outside, but on the inside? Still that shy, insecure little dreamer I was 40 years ago.
Maybe I was just going to muse about how time seems to fly some days, while other days just won’t end. But we all know that, don’t we? Time flies when you’re having fun.
Or was I going to write about my poor time management? About the fact that I’m just not capable of keeping a schedule and fitting everything in? I wrote about priorities a few weeks ago, but well… eating my own words now. I’m having a really hard time deciding what is most important. All the things I want to do seem equally important and I really want to fit them all in, but I could use an extra hour (or five) every day.
Anyway, to be honest I don’t even have time to write elaborate blogposts today. I have a long list of other things to do. And a headache. Oh well, I’ll manage. And at least this ended up being a blogpost of sorts.
I have a love/hate relationship with the “One Word” tradition. I usually don’t chose the words, they just “come to me”. I know that sounds weird. But I usually think of a word and dismiss it for various reasons, only to find out that it actually was a really good word for that year. Like “relax” for 2018, which was such a stressful year, “home” for 2019, when we moved to Curaçao and struggled to settle down. In 2020 my word was “accept” and I knew from the start that there would be a lot accepting to do, because my mom was dying from cancer. But little did I know there would be so much more to accept that year.
The word I can’t shake off this time is “heal”. And yes, that is very fitting. I have a lot of healing to do. Physically, mentally and emotionally.
I know the next step is to come up with a complete list of tangible goals related to the word, but I have a really hard time doing that. Is it even possible to really grasp what it means to be healed? And how do I turn that vague idea into actions and steps I can take to reach that state? Also, I don’t think that’s how the One Word thing works for me. It’s just a reminder of something I need to focus on. So, I tossed the list I started (that is an ongoing theme in my life – I love making lists, but sometimes it’s way better to toss them) and just try to stop and wonder if something I’m doing or want to do is actually helping me to heal or the opposite.
So, here we are. I wanted to share my word, but I don’t really have anything to say about it. Yet. Maybe I’ll share more later in the year.
(totally unrelated picture , though you probably could find a deeper meaning in sprouting seeds that are still in the pod. I just think this is a really cool thing mother nature does – a lot of trees on Curacao have seeds in pods and this how she gives them a headstart in that harsh climate)
I guess the Januaryis the time we do that, isn’t it? Making plans, listing ambitions? I usually am way too positive about what I can actually achieve. And, weird enough, especially after a year that didn’t work out the way I hoped at all.
2022 is a very good example of a year like that, but I do notice that I’ve been on this planet for over half a century now (ouch, that sounds so much older than “I’m 51”). I let myself get carried away for a little while, because that’s just fun, but then I got more practical.
Prioritizing is a skill that I had to learn over the years (don’t we all?) and I’m finally getting the hang of it. I have a big garden and a very messy house (we’ve come far from the state we bought it in, but there’s still a lot to do), I have to do the taxes and all other administrative tasks for my husband’s company, work on my books, and I have family members to talk on the phone with (for hours, literally). Also, I live on a beautiful island, in a house with the best view one can get, so I really want to take time and fully enjoy all that. Not to mention the crafting, cooking and reading I love doing so much.
Don’t worry, I am going to continue blogging here and I do hope my audience will grow a bit, but the rest of my online ambitions will have to stay on the backburner for a little while longer. I will work on it in the background when I can, but I’m not going to dive into it fully, or commit to a schedule unless I feel that I have the time, mental space and energy to do that.
Starting a blog focused on herbalism for instance. I’d love to delve much deeper into that subject than I’ve been doing here and I feel it will also hold me accountable to make more time to study herbs, keep doing research and collect my notes and knowledge into something more tangible than “I am pretty sure I read that…” But that takes time and dedication and I’m not feeling up to it yet.
Another thing on my list of things I’d like to do is experimenting with Youtube. I go back and forth between loving and hating the idea of filming bits of my life. But I already found that editing is a whole lot of work, so maybe now is not the right time to start doing that.
I did start posting on Instagram a bit more and I even created a seperate account for my plants (plantstagram is a thing – who knew? But I have to admit I kind of regret it already. I may keep posting for fun, but I won’t go full on social media not even to promote my blog. It’s never really been my thing and it would take up too much of my time. I’d rather take my chances on people finding my blog another way.
That said, I did purchase a domain name for my blog and the not-operational-yet herbal blog too. I had a .com for this blog a few years ago, through another provider, but when they quit and we had to transfer our domain names, I wasn’t blogging anymore, so I told T. to let it go. And regretted that ever since. When I started blogging here again in July, that same name was available through WordPress, but I didn’t want to commit to it too much. Sadly, the .com is gone now (why? who would use that name?), so I settled for notastation.blog. I also got rid of the WordPress adds. I may decide to monetize this blog on the long run, but with my current pageviews it won’t earn me any money and it would cost me extra to upgrade to a plan that allows advertising. Also, I would like to be able to chose the adds that appear here, instead of hoping nothing weird will show up. I’ll look into that when I feel I’m ready.
So I guess I wrote a whole long-winding post to tell you that I’m going to keep blogging the way I’ve been doing these past months? That’s a bit of a non post, isn’t it? Oh well, it did feel good to process my thoughts and try to make sense of it all, so thanks for listening.
Do you have big ambitions for the new year? And how good are you at prioritizing?
:: so, so happy to be home. Each time we come back after a visit to The Netherlands I feel more like this really is my home.
:: tired. Very tired. I hardly slept last night, even though my body loves this bed more than the one in the cabin, and I didn’t get any sleep on the plane, since it was a day flight. We left at 2 PM Dutch time and arrived at 7:30 PM Curaçao time (5 hour time difference – it’s a 9-10 hour flight and they took a longer route).
:: admitting I was rather pleased with the new content on their entertainment system though. I watched four episodes of Supernatural, and two movies; Mary Poppins returns, and Pan. Loved both movies very much. Mary Poppins and Peter Pan are two of my favorite story characters (both books and movies).
:: looking back at three wonderful weeks. I’m so happy we got to see our grandson quite often (and the rest of our family too of course!).
:: trying to ignore the garden just a little bit longer. I didn’t do much in it before we left (I was focusing on the house those last two weeks- and sick most of the month before that) and it has exploded. So much new growth!
:: excited to get back into gardening. I really missed it.
:: still planning to write a post about my plans and goals for the year. I like how that keeps me accountable and it also helps to try and put things into words.
:: also hoping to write a to-do list and maybe schedule some of my to-dos. I feel a little bit overwhelmed, but that may also be the lack of sleep.
:: struggling to write something more interesting today. I think I’ll leave it at this and go drink some tea, read a book and maybe even take a nap. I’m going to take it slowly and give myself time to rest.
I was going to write a lengthy post about my goals and hopes for this year, but these last days of our visit to the Netherlands are extremely busy, so I’ll cut myself some slack and postpone that post till later. That is one of my most important resolutions; to give myself a break if I need it. So I guess I’m off to a good start.
For today I had planned to post a whole bunch of cozy pictures, capturing and documenting the perfect little happy moments of our Christmas days. Sounded like a great plan a few weeks ago. But things worked out a bit differently. I didn’t even touch my camera the past few days and I don’t think there were many occasions to take those pictures I imagined anyway.
We did have a good time though.
I’ve literally been staring at that last sentence for hours, but I don’t know what more to say.
Details? That’s just not how I roll with blogging and family matters. When I start writing diary-style posts, it’s all or nothing for me; I can’t tell my story if I have to skip half the details. But a lot of the details are not mine to share. So it has to be nothing. (I actually wrote a post like that and deleted it)
Wise words? I can’t think of any. I’ve already shared the advice I try to live by in times like these: no (or at least lower) expectations, toss the lists, keep it simple, remember it’s just a date. But I still had sleepless nights and a panic attack on Christmas Eve. So there’s that. Do as I say, not as I do.
We did have a good time though.
Really, we did. We had a messy, imperfect Christmas with ups and downs, laughter and tears, and hits and misses. We tried and failed on a lot of things. But we tried. And maybe that’s all that matters.
NOT A STATION 