Improved livingroom

Finally I have had some time to work on the new livingroom - to make it fit our new sofa :). Note the new flowers in the window - I wanted something fresh, instead of my half-dead old flowers....Since we spend a lot of time downstairs, D has most of his toys there and they are usually all over the place. Now I've tried to create a space for him and his toys - it remains to be seen if he stays there...but as long as most of the toys stay there I'll be happy :). My dear friend S in Helsinki, where we stayed overnight after the flight from Paris, gave D a wonderful present - a...jaguar (I think...D says Tiger :), now he can guard and protect our new sofa. Of course I need new curtains as well...I brought home some samples on Friday, but it'll take some time before I can go back to get them. It struck me that our livingroom is now becoming more and more "my" room - with colours and things I like, when so far I've been trying to respect my mother's things. So I guess now it's really she who lives with us and not we who live with her.

I was getting really worn out towards the end of the week. The falling snow from the roofs has caused extra worry and work - on Friday morning I was twenty minutes late to work due to the darn snow. After my cousin had cleared away the load of snow in front of our barn on Thursday evening, more snow had dropped down on the side of the barn later on without my noticing - and my car was parked behind it :(. To make it worse the temperature had suddenly dropped so the snow was icy and heavy. Last night it snowed again and it's really difficult to showel or rather "push" away the snow, since the ice on the ground is so uneven due to the the tractor tracks. I felt a hot hatred for the winter on Friday morning! I know it doesn't help, but life has been so hard this winter, I don't know if I can take more winters like this, this is the simple truth. I can't afford to hire a janitor to help me, but I can't do it all by myself either. Someone suggested I could try to rent out the house, but I think it might be hard to find someone who'd need as big a house as this, and where would we go? If any of you feel like spending a winter here - pls get in touch!!!

To top off the week I also found out it's unlikely I'll be able to continue as an assistant next autumn - my contract runs out in the beginning of June and there are others who have worked longer than me who will be out of a job. I'm really sad about this, the part time job has given me the financial security I have needed, but also a "context", colleagues, an employer etc. I have also been able to do other jobs in the afternoon. Unfortunately I haven't had much time to write - actually, hardly at all. Right now I have lots of ideas for articles, but no time to write and I don't even know who'd buy them. So once again my life in six months is a big question mark. I'll try to have faith - things always seem to work out somehow. If I can't continue as an assistant, that means there would be more time to write, less stress in the mornings - but more insecurity with the income. But there is a small chance I can continue like this, so I'll try not to worry.

On Friday night I was going to the indoor swimming pool after dropping off D at his dad's - only to find out I had forgotten the swim bag at home. When I get too tired, I start forgetting things and it just makes everything worse, I feel the universe is out to make life for me as difficult as possible, preventing my attempts to relax or find some release in the middle of the struggle. When I got home I was almost at breaking point, but a night of good sleep, a more energetic feeling on Saturday - and I'm back to normal. Trying to make everything work out.

I actually had a very good day yesterday, managed to clean at least part of the house (of course something got stuck in the "pipe" of the hoover, so I couldn't finish), went for a short walk in the beautiful sun with a friend, had a bath and treated my hair with some henna I found on Friday in the shop (where I went instead of the swim...), had dinner with two friends I haven't seen for months and finally topped it all off with a concert and a visit to a pub with two other friends. There we got a bonus concert, a young girl and boy were singing and playing the guitar really professionally!

At the "Jeppo Windorchestra" - concert together with the band "Toby Loth" (playing a kind of "fantasy" music - a bit hardrock, a bit Celtic influence, interesting!) I was practicing photography in difficult lighting. I really have such a hard time with the technical bit of the camera, but I can only hope that little by little I'll learn to take good photos in any kind of light.

Now I should continue with the hoovering (got out the toy that blocked it....) and putting away laundry, and cook and....

Thank you to those of you who still occasionally check out my blog. I hardly ever read any other blogs anymore (simply don't have the time) and as you notice, the posts here aren't too frequent either...I'm active on Facebook, though, it doesn't take long to write one sentence now and then and check out friends´ sentences :).