Tag: life

Three things that make me happy

~ Maggie ~ 4 Comments

Silly things, maybe, but that doesn’t matter, does it? As long as it does make me happy.

1. making. Something. Even when my current projects aren’t really exciting, it makes me happy to work on them. And to dream about what to make next.

2. cleaning. Hmn. Really? Well, yes. Sort of. I have to admit that after days and days of scrubbing bat droppings off my walls and floors I was not really into cleaning for a while. And that showed in our tiny apartment. Ahem. But yesterday I kicked myself into gear. T. was working at a client’s location and I knew he would be home late, so I put on some cleaning videos on YT and just started. It felt so good!

3. that cat. Okay, he’s not a thing, but he does make me happy. I never realized how much I missed having a pet until he came along. He waits for us outside when we get up and comes around begging for attention (okay, and food) a few times a day. Our landlord says we can take him with us when we move and I’m glad about that. I’d sure miss him.

Linking up with Carole’s Three Things

Three things – home is more than just a word

~ Maggie ~ 9 Comments

I read some blog posts about the ‘one word’ thing this week (here and here) and realized that the word I dismissed is actually really present in my life this year.
Wait, let me find that post… … …  Hmn, I thought I blogged about that, but apparently, I didn’t. Or at least I can’t find it. Oh well, I’ll explain.
I dismissed the word ‘home’ because when 2018 ended and 2019 started, I didn’t feel at home anywhere. We didn’t have a house on Curaçao yet (and as you may remember it was quite a struggle to find one) and the Dutch house was more or less sold and also staged for viewings. It didn’t feel like my home anymore.
So choosing ‘home’ felt wrong. I was already depressed and a bit homesick, no need to focus on that. And since I couldn’t come up with another word, I just skipped the whole one-word thing.

But looking back, this whole year has been about ‘home’, so I might as well embrace it.
So, here are three things I learned so far.

– owning a house that I love definitely helps to feel at home. Since we bought the house, our tiny apartment feels more like home too, the whole island does. When things go wrong I still tend to think ‘I just want to go home!’, but lately that is followed by ‘Oh wait, I am home and I don’t actually want to go back to Holland.’
I guess having a place to root is really important to me.

– having my stuff here also helps. I did blog about that. We brought just a few bits and pieces, but having them around makes this furnished apartment feel like more than just a place to stay.

– the hard part is still being so far away from my family. T. has been away for work more than usual this past week and I realized that this island will never be home without him, even though I love it so, so much and we will live in the house of my dreams in a few months. I felt homesickness rearing its ugly little head even during those few hours alone. There was also some stuff happening with my family and I felt the distance harder than ever.
If something ever happens to T. (I still worry about his health a lot) I will probably move back to Holland. It’s true what they say: home is where the heart is. Right now the biggest part of my heart is here, so that’s good.

Linking up with Carole’s Three on Thursday

A real 'Curaçao' weekend

~ Maggie ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes our weekends here are very boring. Enjoyable, but not much to talk about afterwards. Just relaxing, driving around, not doing much.
Last weekend though… Not boring at all.
We started with our (almost) daily swim at Daaibooi Beach. I remembered to bring my camera this time.

Then we went home to take a shower (and admire some flowers).

We usually go to Mambo beach on Friday evenings (told you, kind of boring) but this time we went to Blue Bay Happy Hour, to meet some friends and to meet some of their friends.
One of them was a dinosaur.

That was such a fun evening! We were invited to join them at the beach the next day. So on Saturday we packed our cooler (with beer for T. and water for me), grabbed some snacks and off we went. To Kas Abou Beach.

Can you guess where some of our new friends come from? Let me zoom in a bit on their floaties.

Yep, that’s an American Eagle. The other one is a Trump floatie. We stayed the whole afternoon. Swimming, talking, snacking. Loved it.

On Sunday we went to a Food Festival, but next time we’ll try it for dinner, not for lunch. It was really hot and not very populated.

The burrito we had (first time we tried one!) was very good though. And the hot dog we had a few hours later wasn’t too bad either.

We drove around the island for a while and then we headed home, but on our way home, we remembered that Kokomo beach has a familystyle Happy Hour on Sundays, with a rock band playing. One of the things we really miss on this island is good music, so we decided to check it out.

The music was great, so we stayed until they stopped playing. And we got to watch a perfect sunset too.

Also, this happened. Found a shop that carried (some) knitting needles and cotton yarn.

So now I’m knitting myself some potholders, because I actually need them. But I guess I’d even knit something I don’t need, just because I’m so happy to be knitting again.

How was your weekend?

Right now

~ Maggie ~ Leave a comment

Right now I am…

:: so happy to be on Curaçao again
:: finally (after 5 days) feeling synched with local time. My jetlag was serious this time!
:: enjoying our first sunny day. It rained an awful lot these past few days.
:: smiling when I think about the forecasters that told us to expect some ‘minor flooding in the usual locations on the island’. Typically Caribean relaxed way of coping with things that cannot be changed.
:: laughing at ourselves because we fell in and out of love with a 300-year-old monumental building (second and third picture) within two days of arrival. We looked at it, loved it instantly and started dreaming about all the possibilities. And then we found out how much bureaucracy we’d have to deal with… Hmn. Nope.
:: smiling because on Saturday we found another, much more realistic dream home
:: keeping my fingers crossed that we will be able to buy it (need to sell the Dutch house, officially move to Curaçao and get a mortgage approval before we can put an offer in)
:: having mixed feelings about jumping in so quickly. But oh, it’s such a beautiful house! (last picture)

These days

~ Maggie ~ Leave a comment

Finding time for blogging and knitting is hard these days. Life right now is chaotic, messy and full. Not all bad things, luckily.
Though there has been another big session of hospital knitting. We spent five hours (!) last week at Emergency. I won’t start ranting about that day, but most of that time was spent waiting for help, not actually getting any. Oh, and the cardiologist (an intern) let it slip that it’s quite common for a new arrhythmia to appear after an ablation. Well, they didn’t tell us that before we decided to go through with the procedure…  My husband was really close to not doing it because of the risks involved and this information would have made up his mind – what’s the use of poking around in your heart and burning cells if it’s ‘common’ to be back at square one within weeks?

Anyway, we are adjusting now. He’s taking natural medicine to keep his heart rate low and that seems to be working. He rests when he feels tired or weird and we’re trying to pick up our lives where we left off.
Which means our house will be on the market next week. That is if I manage to clean and organize and weed the last tasks on my todo-list away, while T. takes care of the last repairs. I have lots of emotions and thoughts about leaving this house and my garden, but at this point, I can’t find the right words for it.

And honestly, I don’t have time for it either. This post I’m writing after finishing some computer work (of course I got a editing job that needs to be done… um, as soon as possible), but I should be organizing photos, cleaning out closets, weeding the garden or something like that.
But it’s been bothering me that I didn’t post anything for two weeks, so there you go.
I’m not sure when I’ll be back. You might expect things to calm down when the house is on the market, but my experience in the past six years is that moving house is always a complete chaos in our family (always two at the same time, or sickness, or travels in between) and I’m quite convinced that this one will be another one of those. We’ve booked a trip to Curacao on October 10th, so I guess there’s a really big chance we need to empty the house before that. But that would mean it sold quickly, so no complaints here.
And the other possibility of chaos, my husband’s health… well, I’m trying to ignore that fear. Don’t ask how that’s working for me 😉

Thanks for all the well wishes on my last post. I’m sorry that I’m not really reading and commenting on your blogs these days, but I’ll try to pick that up again. I’m hoping on Curacao I’ll have plenty of time to sit down and catch up.

Okay, time to go. Wishing you all a great week!

Three things making me happy today

~ Maggie ~ Leave a comment

1. My yarn stash. I know it’s not that much, but it’s enough for me right now (with a move to the other side of the world still in the works). I love being able to browse through it and choose what to use for the next hat.

2. Rain! Oh, I’m sure I won’t be that happy about it in a few weeks. Or months. Because this is actually normal around here most of the year. But it’s been unusually dry around for two months. My garden (or in fact the whole country) really needed a few rainy days.

3. This leather backpack I found at the thrift store yesterday. It needs a bit of love (it was completely dried out and stiff, I’m working on cleaning and greasing the leather), but it’s still in very good condition. I’m really looking forward to using it.

Linking up with Carole Knits’ Three on Thursday

47 – lots of candles and other facts

~ Maggie ~ 4 Comments

I was out of inspiration for blogposts, so I decided to google the number 47. Why? Well, as of today 47 is my answer to the question: “How old are you?”.  I do know that it would make a lot of candles if we did the whole birthday cake with candles thing…

It feels like a weird age. Fifty is getting closer and closer. I’m not young, but I’m also not old. That’s why they call it middle aged I guess 😉
I used to think by now I would be older and wiser, but well, I’m not. Older yes, but wiser? Hmn.

Though I am wise enough to:
1. not to be ashamed of my age
2. be just happy and grateful that I’m alive
3. gift myself a day off. I’m allowing myself to do whatever I want (like writing a blogpost about the number 47) and to postpone the things I don’t want to do (laundry).

Wikipedia told me a few interesting facts about 47. I already figured out it’s a prime number (I am a bit of a nerd), but I now also know it’s a safe prime (that means it’s the outcome of 2 times a prime number plus 1).

47 is the atomic number of silver. Rather fitting for this age, I guess. I had my silver hairs dyed last week, but I do have them.

47 is the number of the French department Lot-et-Garonne, which is the only place in France we actually like. We even spent a few vacations there (we have friends that own a chambre d’hotes in Lot).

47 is also an interesting number if you are a Trekkie. I sort of am, but I never knew (or noticed) this (link to youtube).

It turns out 47 is an inside joke at the school (Pomona College) one of the writers attended. He incoorporated it in a few episodes and the other writers joined the fun. It’s all over the place.There is even a complete website about the use of 47 in all Star Trek series.

A long and lazy weekend

~ Maggie ~ 6 Comments

We had a long weekend here. Friday was King’s Day, a public holiday.
We planned to stay home and work on the house, but we weren’t really up to it (I had a cold and T. pulled something in his shoulder last week), so we ended up visiting Gouda for a few hours.
King’s Day is traditionally the day we’re allowed to have “free markets” all over the country and it’s always fun to look around. We didn’t buy anything though, partly because of the whole “moving to another country” thing (we’re trying to get rid of stuff, not add to it), but also because there just weren’t many treasures to find. Mostly toys, children’s books and (boring) clothes. Maybe the good stuff was already gone, we were kind of late to the game.
We tried to find a place to have a drink after the market, but all the restaurants and bars were crowded, so we went back home.

The rest of the weekend I spent like this. Knitting, reading, browsing. I guess we needed a bit of a reset.
I’m reading a magical cozy mystery series (currently on book 3), The Kitchen Witch series by Morgana Best. Not as brilliant and funny as the Matchmaker’s series, but rather entertaining and perfect for reading in bits and pieces while knitting (those were affiliate links).
I’ve also spent some time reading through the archives of Soulemama’s blog. I love her blog and her writing, but browsing all thirteen years (!) of her blogging also gave me some perspective on my own life in that period (I’ve been reading along most of the time, found her blog in 2007). Weird maybe, but I’ll take whatever works for soothing my crazy, worrying, emotional, perimenopausal mind 😉

I’m almost done with the second sleeve of the cardigan and then I’m going to put it all together with a yoke.
The Mystery Knitalong is sort of frustrating. I’m not sure I like how the colors work out. I’m thinking about frogging the whole thing and starting over with different colors. I wasn’t sure about the whole variegated yarn thing from the start (I never like it) and should have followed my instincts instead of the directions (those clearly stated two solids, two variegated). But that would mean I’d have to find time to go yarn shopping again. Hmn. It’s not that I don’t want to, but this week is an extra busy one – I have some editing (on someone elses novel) to be done on top of all my other tasks.
Anyway. I still have that cardigan to finish and I think I’ll be focusing on that this week.

Linking up with Jeannie Gray Knits’ Makers’ Monday

p.s. did you make hats last month? Please consider joining my monthly Mad Hatters’ Link party

Not enough

~ Maggie ~ 10 Comments

This morning I cleaned the kitchen, the bathroom and the toiletroom. I took all sheets and blankets of the bed, washed them and I hung a load of laundry outside (second load is in the machine right now). Oh, and I watered the plants.
This is only half of what’s on my list of weekly household chores and it’s lunch time already. We just ate and I’m trying to get myself to tackle that other half.
Actually, I sit here wondering how on earth a few months ago I managed to finish everything on my list in the morning, work on other things in the afternoon, keep up with my daily tasks and drive to my parents’ to help them move and sort through their things at least once a week.
When I said this out loud, my husband replied: that’s why you collapsed after the holidays. Hmn. I did? Okay, maybe kind of. But that’s not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear that I could easily do more than I do now. Way more.
He told me I always seem to think I don’t do enough and then he also mentioned he stopped denying that, because I just don’t listen.
Well, it seems I just got permission to stop cleaning and pick up my knitting, doesn’t it?

There has been knitting. But not enough. Really. I thought I would be almost done by now, but I’m not.
I had the body long enough to not look ridiculous and started the sleeves to find out how much yarn I would have left (I’d rather make the body a bit longer). And that’s sort of where I slowed down an awful lot. I’ve got two sleeves half done. Yes, two. When the first one was wide enough to switch to circulars, I cast on the other sleeve on dpn’s immediately. I don’t like knitting on dpns, so I thought I’d better get it over with. The second sleeve is almost at the same point now, so I hope to pick up pace again tonight. Oh wait, no. I could start immediately after I finish this post. The vacuuming will have to wait. I did enough. So glad we had this conversation, honey 😉

By the way… Have you seen this? It’s a murder mystery knitalong! Two of my favorite things combined. I already downloaded the prologue (it’s really cleverly written!), but I need to go shopping for the right yarn (the colors you need are in the pdf). And I need to find time to actually knit along and maybe even communicate with the other participants (that’s what makes a KAL fun, isn’t it?). Not sure if I can  make it happen, but I so want to do this…

Linking up with Jeannie Gray Knits’ Makers’ Monday

Three things

~ Maggie ~ 2 Comments

Three things that make me happy this week:

1. sunny and warm weather. Today we’ll get temperatures over 25 degrees C (close to 80 F)! I know, so early. That seems to be a trend here in The Netherlands. Early summer weather in spring followed by a cool and wet summer. But we’re not thinking about that yet (we’ll be on a tropical island for a while anyway). Right now the whole country is in summer mode. Spanish music on the radio, shorts and skirts everywhere and probably large traffic jams on the roads to the beaches.

2. working in the garden. And even more: working in the garden when it’s sunny and warm.

3. eating outside (had our first bbq yesterday), sitting outside, knitting outside. Being outside and not getting wet or cold, but soaking up sun and warmth instead.

Okay, maybe that’s actually just one thing making me happy. Oh well.
Still going to link up with Carole Knits’ Three Things 😉 Oops, forgot she’s on vacation…