Reflect on things I'm grateful for

but I have moved this goal to my lovely, lovely, paperblanks notebook. Couldn’t resist an excuse to finally buy one!

- amazing weather
- finding a worthy cause for a paperblanks notebook. Will get one tomorrow!
- Lots and lots of lovely, free books from work!
- a fun pianolesson
- a lovely new Händel piece to play.
- nice plans tonight and tomorrow
- managing to keep my flat nice and tidy for a record long time! (which in my case means one whole week!;))

- Lovely weather
- The opportunity to be acting culture editor for two weeks. Ridiculously stressful, but a good opportunity to make the editors notice me!
- The real culture editor (who is at the office, having a great time just writing things and not being in charge for two weeks) saying he spent a lot of time talking about how great he thinks I am at an editors meeting today. He says he’s mentioning to the other editors that they really can’t afford not to hire me permanently every chance he gets. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the power to do anything about it, and it’s unlikely he’ll get anywhere with that any time soon. But it’s great to know someone there really wants to keep me and tries his best to help.
- Reports that Cora is having a ball with my parents. I’m so exhausted with this editors thing, and I have to work longer hours, which means more time alone for Cora. My mother came over yesterday, and I went on and on about that, so she probably felt guilted into bringing Cora back home with her to give me some time off. But my dad is totally supexited about having Cora over, and just called me to report that he and Cora had spent hours at the beach today, and she’s constantly supexited about her luxury life at grandma’ and grandpa’s:)
- A sparkling appartment, as my mother spent a day cleaning it while I was at work yesterday. She said she’d just cleaned the windows, but she just can’t stand dirty and messy appartments, so she decided to clean the whole place, probably more thproughly than it has ever been cleaned.

I’m also very grateful for Simone Kermes and her arias for Cuzzoni. Nothing like some good Händel arias to get me through a day of cleaning! Pity I have all my windows open so I can’t sing along at the top of my lungs. One must be a little considerate of one’s neighbours when it comes to loud and ridiculous singing I guess. ;)

Update: The Curlychaos residence is now as sparkly and un-chaotic as it will ever get. Ahhh. Now: coffee!

good progress in getting a descent, clean flat! I’ve been cleaning obsessively for a couple of hours now. There is of course a reason for that, I really clean and tidy for no reason. ;) The reason is that the landlady is coming over tomorrow. She’s bringing a new lease contract for me to sign and said we’ll do it here so she can have a look at the place. I’m very sure that is just a routine thing to make sure tenants aren’t wrecking the flats and make sure things are up to code in all flats. But I of course panic and start thinking she’ll find out I’m a total slob. So, obsessive cleaning. But, it will be lovely to have a nice, tidy, clean apartment anyway, and I’ll try hard to keep it that way afterwards. I’m thinking one more hour of cleaning and then things should be looking fine and I can relax with my book.

- my new CD! I got a CD as a gift that wasn’t really my thing. So today I swapped it for Tolomeo, by my music hero Mr Händel, and the lovely Il Complesso barocco. Looking very much forward to listening to this one!
- Reports that Cora is having fun on her weekend holiday in the mountains.
- More supefficiency today. Recycling, shopping, tidying and pianopracice.
- Gymnopedie no 1, which I just started playing on piano. It’s a good piano exercise for me, as I have to move my left hand up and down a lot and hit the right notes, which I find hard. At the same time, it’s very easy, so I could start playing the first page right away, which makes it fun.

- good books! I’m reading a good one now, that helps take my mind off problems and complicated issues.
- Getting some stuff done today and feeling quite efficient. I’ve done some necessary shopping for boring things, picked up Cora’s haircutter, which is now hopefully repaired and working, and I went to the organic store to get a big bag of organic dog food for her. A bit of a luxury, as it is a bit more expensive than the food I usually get for her. But it’s more animal friendly, made from free range chicken, it’s hypoallergenic and there are no artificial additives at all, which could be a good thing for a dog with allergy issues. And Cora adores it.
- Feeling a bit calmer.
- Nice plans tomorrow.
- My mother offering to buy some things to cover all the small holes in my walls (no idea what they are called in English), the result of the previous tenant having a million pictures on the walls. She said she can come over with them on tuesdag, and then clean my windows while she’s here anyway. ;) OK, so I’m 36 and should be able to clean my own windows. But I’m exhausted and constantly struggling to keep the appartment not looking like a hurricane just went through it. With little success. So window cleaning simply never makes the priority list. And my mother being quite old fashiones when it comes to cleaning issues, tends to not be able to look at my dirty windows, and so she cleans them. So, everybody wins really, I get clean windows, and she won’t have to lay awake at night thinking that her daughter is living with disgracefully dirty windows. ;)

- My ex taking Cora with him on a weekend getaway to some cabin in the mountains. I always miss her terribly when she´s away, even for a day or two. But it´s a perfect solution. He gets to spend time with one of the two coolest poodles ever, she gets lots of fun and more exercise than usual, plus 4 people to give her constant attention instead of one, and I get some me-time to relax and not have to go on walks 3 times a day, which I desperately need.
- Free books. I´ve been wanting to read one of Cecilia Samartins books, lots of people recommend them. So I´ve reserved one at the library, but so has everyone else, I was number 192 on the waiting list. They have more than one copy, but still, it would take forever. But, today all of a sudden, the book publisher called and offered me an interview with her on monday, and sent me all three of her books to prepare. Yay!
- Almost free books. A lot of book publishers cooperate on what they call a “book yard sale” once or twice a year, which I happened to find information about since I work with books a lot these days. So I went yesterday and found 3 very interesting books for 100NKR for all three, which is next to nothing in comparison with usual bookprices around here.
- Not having to work on sunday. I was supposed to, and the secretary wasn´t happy that I said it was a problem for me to work this sunday. But I have worked way too much overtime lately, I am so exhausted I´m getting a bit worried about my health, and I seriously need this weekend. And she said ok, luckily. Hopefully, I´ll be able to make this weekend about relaxing and doing nice things, and not focus too much on problems and worries.

no longer having to sit between Hiccup and Talks-to-himself! Ahhh, the peace! Every time Talks-to-himself walks by my desk, usually talking to himself, it reminds me how lucky I am not to have to deal with it all day every day. Oh joy. I’m now sitting next to a guy who coughs and clears his throath a lot, which used to annoy me. But, now that I know what sitting next to seriously annoying and ridiculously noisy people is really like, he is a pure blessing in comparison, and I rarely think about it at all.

I might be working more in the weekend section again soon, and I’m now sitting with the culture journalists, but I’m definitely planning to hold on to my new desk for dear life. If necessary, I’ll just have to explain it all to the weekend editor. And since I’m now on short term contracts again, working here and there, people hopefully won’t find it too strange that I’m not sitting with the people I actually work with. My fear is that they might need the desk for some other temp in the culture section, but well, hopefully they won’t. Plus, by sitting there, I make sure the culture editor sees me every day, and hopefully thinks of me when fun assigments comes along, such as concert reviews.

- nice walks in the forest with Cora today and yesterday. It’s so lovely to see her being her happy, bouncy self again!
- Cora having some more fun playing with her little toy poodle friend this morning. It’s a pity we meet them on our morning walks, as both the other owner and I have to go to work, so there’s not that much time. But they did have a few minutes of happy running and bouncing around the park. They’re so cute the pair of them, they look so much alike and have exactly the same body language, and yet the size is so incredibly different.