Hazy Thoughts

 

Do you know that feeling: if you haven't done something for some time, one suddenly starts to hesitate. I hesitate to paint, I hesitate to write my blog, I hesitate to follow my routines.

Coming home a week ago from a beautiful little holiday in Zoutelande (Netherlands) I have to adjust.

 I take a few steps back from my life, look hard, and see some things I will change.  

My ideas are still a bit foggy and resemble the beautiful Bavarian landscape here in the morning (the photo I took two days ago). 

But the sun will come out, contours will become clear, and ideas will pour. 

Hopefully. 

PS: I add a typical (a bit sentimental, but that IS typical German) Volkslied sung by late Rudolph Schock, which mirrors my little valley here in Bavaria: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAW53mcXFTY 

Holly Golightly - Breakfast at Tiffany's.

 

I was always fascinated by the name "Holly Golightly" in Breakfast at Tiffany's. 

Nowadays I try to travel that way - lightly - and what you see above is one of my two "posh" little suitcases (the other one is sensible grey-silver-black :-) 

They are of the size that is allowed as hand baggage - and as I always try to minimise weight and number of things I take with me, I can survive with one (!) of these suitcases for a week. The most difficult problem are always the shoes - of course I wear my trainers or boots on my feet, but if one has dresses to wear that will not do (young people think differently about it - and yes - I prefer to run through a city in trainers too - but then with Jeans, not a dress). 

The two suitcases (the glamorous pink one is from Heidi Klum's Next Top Model :-) ) are in hot demand by the triplets. The run with them through my flat - well, and the suitcases look a bit more -- used.--- 

But they still are in one piece - thus one will tomorrow accompany me in the train to Berlin (hopefully, as since two days I have a cold - NO covid, no fever - just a plain old cold). 

And the KaDeWe in Berlin has a Tiffany Shop. Though they do not serve breakfast there :-) 

Invitation to my blog "Britta's Happiness of the Day"

 

This time I want to invite you to my "favourite child" - my blog "Britta's Happiness of the Day", https://burstingwithhappiness.blogspot.com. 

I combine a photo that I have taken with a poem - this time it is "Queen Anne's Lace" (Daucus carota), a wildflower that always fascinates me with its little dark spot in the middle of it, accompanied by the breathtaking poem by William Carlos Williams, "Queen Anne's Lace". 

I translated it into German (sometimes I am so crazy to translate a German poem into English) - and I always write a comment - this time I indulged in plunging into the deep waters of biology, symbols and poetry. 

I am interested if you like it - and recommend to see it in the version as "flipchart" - a patchwork rug of photos (if you turn the photo, you see the poem). 

This one is for Pip

 

Dear Pip, you couldn't imagine my non-woke Angela Davies Hairdo - I still didn't find the official photo on my old drivers license - but I found this   :-)     

Long time ago - dancing and singing... 

Sleeplessness

 

Since my private Tsunami my sleep is mega-bad. I am healthy (everything was checked with stunning good results, only my melatonin level was very low, as I had suspected - now that is ok too), I eat well, move a lot, am optimistic, thankful and financially secure, have many friends and the Flying Dutchman, and call myself happy. 

So why do I sleep so very bad? I fall easily asleep (I established a routine), then I sleep till 3:30 or four o'clock a.m. (round about) - then I wake up, pulse racing, and my mind starts to rattle, about things that look like piffle in the morning. And that I know at night too - yet I can't stop.(That cock in Bavaria either, and the dear sun tries without success to peek around the very, very darkening curtains).   

No sleeping pills for me, there I am adamant. My flawed way to cope: 

I go to the kitchen (in the dark), heat a cup of milk and add some honey, (I am convinced that my blood-sugar dives when I am asleep - maybe that wakes me up? I do not have diabetes), then I walk back, lie down - and the CD-player above starts to play his role as knight in shining armour. 

I put the ear-plugs in and listen to the soothing voice of a German actress, for half an hour she is speaking a meditation, I listen, slack...and if I am lucky, often doze away. Otherwise I have done a very fine meditation - but am tired the next day. 

 

Now I test naps at midday (together with that meditation). I am still not sure if that helps.  

What do you do when you can't sleep? 

Any suggestions? 

(Our Grandmothers cross-stitched a German proverb on pillows: 

"A clean conscience / makes a fine pillow" - but THAT I have, honestly.) 

  

My Cup of Tea (Little Stories of Your Life)

 

There are two favourites - and that tells a lot about me: very often between two extremes. 

The cup which I use most often is a mug. Relaxing cream white bone china, Wedgwood. Snagged from a discontinued line in the classy porcelain shop Lindemann in Hildesheim - a shop with intimidating older salespersons, clad in black, and the shop now closed long ago. (Do you know that prices for valuable porcelain as Meissen or KPM crashed deeper than many stocks now?)

As often I didn't buy as much as I "should" have bought - I had just become a young mother, and we had bought the huge Art Deco villa, thus money was scarce and I thought well before spending it.  

I only bought four mugs and added two round teacups with saucers (one long called from this mortal life, and I don't know whether the shards brought me luck, as a German proverbs promises). Those cups are in my Berlin apartment, the four mugs are justly divided between Berlin and Bavaria. 

The mugs feel so wonderful in my hands - glossy and unexcited, and you can trust them to keep the soothingly warmth for a long time in their bone(s) china. 

The tea I mix myself - but that is a different story. 

And that of the second favourite cup too. 

 I just bought this book and might follow its interesting suggestions.                                          

Query: are you content with this font? I like it because it looks as if I have written a letter to you - but maybe it is difficult to read? 

The Joy to be a GrandMa

 

I love to be a GrandMa, a Grande-Mère. The triplets call me me "Nana", and look blankly when some of the village people speak of me as their "Oma" (and I am not amused - "Oma" makes me feel a hundred and two years old). 

I only see advantages over being a parent (though I was an utterly adoring mother of One): 

I feel that I can give unconditional love. 

(I know that this should be always and everywhere so, but I confess: not always easy for me). 

If you know the Moomin novels by Tove Jansson, (if not: hurry and buy a book - preferable "The Memoirs of Moomin Pappa" or "Tales from Moomin Valley", or "The Moomins and the Great Flood"))" - you also know the "Hemuls" - the ones that always try to better children,  doing "educational games" with them, always watching out that the small orphan moomins hold their little tails in a 90 degree angle,... Hemuls paint the rooms of their strict Bauhaus houses in a "Pisi-brown" (Moomins love little turrets and many angles and curlicues) and play in the brass orchestra. Shudder.   

I do not want to play "educational games". As a GrandMa I am allowed to be childish, giggly, forgiving and utterly adoring. And to smell good with a powdery rose perfume, wear bright colours (preferably pink) and say in the evening: "More fun tomorrow!" 

Parents, even if inside they still are a poetical freedom-loving Mumrik, have to change a bit into the despised "Parkwächter" traffic wardens - parents have the heavy "Pflicht", duty, to educate their child (in our case three at once) to become happy social beings. 

I want that too, of course - but although I obey every rule my son and DiL give, I am more lenient, and more relaxed. 

And that is such a joy!