More Structure for my Blog?

More than once I changed my blog, but I confess that after a time I returned to a mix of everything that moves me. 

Some of you blog every day - and thus write a sort of diary. 

Some of you do great research for their articles and dive in deep; others specialise on one or two topics. 

I like the form Urspo ("Spo-reflections") uses: special topics or questions on chosen days of the week - but I neither want to be a copycat of him - as our great poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe described in Faust: 

You’ll sit forever, gluing things together,
Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps,
Blowing on a miserable fire,

Made from your heap of dying ash. 

nor do I intend to write 3 or 4 times a week. 

But maybe I can give my blog a bit more structure, for example with these headlines:  

1) What made me laugh this week (or angry - THAT one is easy, living in a foolish world - but as my dear friendandwhatsoever late Barefoot Doctor said: "What you focus on grows", thus I choose to smile). 

2) Remarkable quote(s) I found this week 

3) HomeBasics (title of my book, and here patching up useful tips for household and everyday life) 

4) Nature... and culture this week (including books I read, movies I watch, music I listen to, or exhibitions or a walk through the wood, a special flower or wild thing). 

I'll give it a try right away. Last week: 

1) What made me laugh: 

I laughed when at the return from Zoutelande in the Netherlands I got this postcard from my Berlin friend Christine: 

Rough translation -                        ALMOST  (written as if it is the name of a famous city or posh bathing resort) 

                                           I'd have experienced something!

(Hahaha - the dream of all travellers, tourists and explorers. And then you sit somewhere on your handkerchief in the sand.  :-)  

2) Remarkable quote: 

"I'm no longer an emotional homeless person" 

(Michel Friedman, publicist, in an interview of DIE ZEIT)   

3) HomeBasics 

This I can put as well into "What made me laugh": 

in Germany our government surpasses each other with ideas to save energy in autumn and winter (US of course, while THEY ride their fat official limousines). 

You might have read the "short shower advice" given by our minister of economic affairs, Robert Habeck. And now (I swear this is no joke!) you'll find articles in newspapers like: "To Wash Oneself - a Self-Experiment for One Week"(really! I do not make this or the following valuable tip up!!) that reads: "How to use a wash-cloth". 

4) Nature and culture: 

Today I turned nature: 

into culture: 

                                                    

That was very much appreciated by Son, DiL and the triplets - served with whipped cream... 

Now I need your honest Feedback, please! 

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?