Right now I am…

… not capable of writing a cohesive blogpost about one single subject. So I decided to go with a right now post today.

… feeling a cool wind blowing. So happy with that.

… hearing birds singing. They like the cooler weather too. Sadly, I can’t hear them too well. I’ve been fighting an ear infection for two weeks now and it still hasn’t cleared up

… looking at the garden and having mixed feelings about it. I’m very happy that it’s growing so well and that things are so green right now, but it does need some work and I’m not sure when I’ll feel up to swinging pick axes and other big tools for all the weeding and pruning I need to do.

… binge reading Katie Fforde. I really like how British her books are and I love that her characters (both men and women) are normal people, not the unrealistic perfect beings so many feel good/romance novels seem to have.

… hoping to get a bit more productive later in the week (that infection will clear up soon, yes?). There are so many things I’d like to do and so many things I need to do.

… not knitting as much as I want to (because of all the reading), but I am having fun with that hat (I’ll share an update later this week).

… trying to think ahead. We’ll leave for The Netherlands in less than five weeks and we’ll stay there four weeks. I want to leave the house behind clean and the garden… well, I guess I should let go of the idea to make it perfect before we go. It’s the rainy season, things grow so fast now. But it would be nice if I had some maintenance done.

… telling myself to take time to get better first though, and not to overdo it as soon as I feel better (as I normally do), because I really want to feel good when we’re in The Netherlands. We have a grandson to play with, Christmas to celebrate, a daughter getting married and lots of family to visit.

… wishing you all a great start to your week.

One of the things on my extensive list of things to do today was to write a blogpost. I did finish almost everything else on that list but now I’m so crazy tired that I can hardly think. But I still want to post something. Skipping more than one week usually leads to skipping months and I just don’t want that.

I was kind of hoping to be able to write a knitting update, but truth to be told, I’ve hardly been knitting these days. It’s so crazy hot and humid, that even knitting with cotton doesn’t really feel so great. Also, I’ve had a headache that lasted over a week and while knitting is relaxing, trying to figure out how to finish a top with too little yarn for the obvious ways, isn’t.

Between headaches I have been working on my computer, but I spent that time working on my Dutch blog. The tiny bit of income I have comes from people who read my books, so it was time to reconnect with them a bit. I also have to prepare a blogpost for that blog today, but I thought I’d give you guys a little update first. If only I knew about what…

There’s a lot going on in my mind, but I don’t think I can put everything into words in a way that I won’t mind being out there for everyone to read. I’m still struggling with feeling at home and I’m really irritated with myself about that. I have to say though, it doesn’t help that it’s so hot these days. I’m trying to tell myself to just wait it out, do only what really needs to be done and after we’re back from the Netherlands, it will be a bit cooler. At least I hope so.

This morning I tried to film myself doing household chores, because I still have this idea in my head that I may want to start doing YouTube some day. Well… let’s just say I’ll need to get used to seeing myself moving around. I was thinking: gosh, I look like an older woman. Yeah, that could be right. I am 52 after all. In my mind I’m still 18 though, so I’m always a bit shocked when I see myself. And of course all the girls women I watch on Youtube are a lot younger -and fitter- than me. But that’s exactly why I think I should try. I’d like to see more normal women over 50 doing clean-with-me videos and vlogs.

My goodness, this post is all over the place, isn’t it? But I guess that’s a good image of what my mind is doing right now. I just can’t focus.

Anyway. Wishing you all a great start to your week. I will check in Thursday (I think) with that knitting update.

(that picture? Yeah, another one of my crazy ideas… show my face more often. Oh well, I’m just going to leave it. But please don’t start telling me I should do make-up. I don’t really like make-up, but it would just rinse of my face with all the sweating I’m doing these days, so it’s just no use.)

Happy Easter Monday!

Is that a thing where you are? It is in the Netherlands, and also here on the island. So despite my intention to start full on blogging again, I’m now on my phone, trying to at least post something, while we’re still in long-weekend mode.

Today is also Seú, the harvest parade, and one day we’ll go and watch that, but I think we’re staying home today.

Our weekend wasn’t a typical Holiday weekend, but it was a good one. We moved our new batteries (150 pounds each) to their spot in the garage, cleaned out said garage (which is not an actual garage, too small for even a tiny car to fit in, but it has a garage door) and than I also cleaned out the shed (which is not an actual shed – remember the little outdoot toilet? we converted that to storage for tools).

I’m always surprised by the amount of trash I end up with after a good clean out. I’m pretty sure we don’t deliberately throw trash in those spaces. Anyway, things look a lot better and organized now.

Tomorrow marks one year since we traveled to The Netherlands in a panic because my father was very ill and then stayed until late August to help him move to a care home and take care of emptying out his apartment. I can’t explain exactly how, but that time messed me up so badly. I am grateful we got to do all that, but I feel like the tiny bit of roots I had finally planted here were torn off. I didn’t feel at home in The Netherlands either, but I’ve been struggling with being back here too. I’m always on edge because it is inevitable that we will get that phonecall again. I know we won’t have to stay for months again if that happens, but my mind is telling me not to settle down, because I am afraid will be uprooted again. I am trying to fight it, but it’s hard. My first focus is always to get the house and the garden in a “we can leave immediately” state. I haven’t even been enjoying working in the garden; I’m just trying to prepare it to be ignored again.

I switched to my laptop to write that last part, because typing that on a tiny on screen keyboard was impossible. I wasn’t planning on writing about it, but I think I’m going to post it anyway. Don’t worry, I am working on it. The first step in healing is to know what you’re healing from, isn’t it? And putting it out there may be just the thing I needed to do to make it more tangible.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to make this a sad post again. The sky is blue, the sun is shining and the birds are singing. It’s going to be a good day.

Wishing you all a great Monday and a good start to your week!

(unrelated picture of a Warawara – I love their haughty attitude)

No, I didn’t quit blogging again. I just skipped a post and than another one and before I knew it I stopped blogging completely and had a hard time starting again. I’ve been thinking about blogging a lot, but somehow I couldn’t find my way back. I kept thinking that I needed something worth posting about and nothing seemed important enough to sit down and write about. Silly, I know. Did I ever write about something important? It’s all just simple day-to-day things around here. Knitting, cooking, gardening, pretty flowers, beautiful sunsets… you know the drill.

But I guess that’s just the problem. A lot of things happened, but nothing I tend to blog about. My husband had a health scare (a new one – I’m used to some things, but this one was different), my father went through another round of pneumonia, I managed to burn myself badly (my teapot spontaneously broke just when I topped it off with boiling water) and my daughter came over for two weeks vacation but got some very sad news while she was here. It’s just life happening, but I guess there’s a limit to what one can handle in just a few weeks.

Anyway, I’m going to try to get back to it. I feel a bit rusty, but it’s time. I did miss talking to you all.

Today I just wanted to check in and say hi. Next week I’m going to try “real posts” again (whatever that may mean).

Wishing you all a wonderful Easter weekend and I hope to be back here on Monday!

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.

Hope you all have a wonderful day!

And now it’s December.

The last month of a year that was… well, hard. On so many levels. I deleted a lot of words about this because I don’t want to pour negativity, sadness and fear into a world that needs just the opposite, both online and offline.

So, let’s just forget about that. Focus on the good stuff. I want to remember 2019 as the year we made our dream of moving to Curaçao come true, the year we found and bought and renovated and moved into that wonderful house with the amazing view, the year we met so many great new friends.

And now it’s December and it’s going to be a great month.
I’m going to allow myself to take it easy this week. Just a little bit of work to do and a lot of happy homemaking and gardening and packing.
Next week we’ll travel to Europe and I’ll see my family for the first time since July.
My mother is still alive and reasonably fit and that fact alone is worth being very happy about.
I have a date with some old friends that I haven’t seen in years.
We’ll celebrate our youngest 27th (!) birthday and meet her boyfriend for the first time.
We’re going to do a belated Sinterklaas and a lot of Christmas celebrating with family.
Oh, and I get to do a lot of shopping. Most of the practical kind (cotton sheets, vitamines, things we can’t get here), but there will be some thrifting, yarn shopping and fabric buying involved too. Fun!
And when we return we’ll be just in time to welcome a fresh new year here on the island we love so much.
Yes, it’s going to be a good month.

Wishing you all a happy December!