Family | Typing this in my mum’s my / our dining room, waiting for my brothers to come back from their skiing trip to catch up and just spend some time. As the whole house wouldn’t be lived in for a week my Bro3 had turned down the central heating and it’s a bit chilly. I have no idea how to turn it back on and I don’t want to mess up any settings so I’m drinking lots of hot tea. I’m quite glad that we are in no real hurry to make decisions about the house and who might move in on the ground floor (me probably at some point). But I’m so not ready to think about that and start any kind of process for it. Let’s get life back to some kind of new normal when the worst of the pandemic has past. I almost wrote when the pandemic has past, but it won’t ever really, turning endemic and all that. We’ve all read about it.
Other people | When I say “we’ve all read” I obviously mean my social bubble which includes family, friends, neighbours, coworkers and the like. I still wonder from time to time how the people outside my bubble get their information about COVID and recommendations and regulations and all. And I’m not talking about the anti-vaxxers and their like. I have an idea where those people get their information. But the regular folks, who two years in still wear only cloth or surgical masks, ill-fitting in such a way that you could easily pour liquid down it from above . Wearing the masks below their nose. Still. And sometimes – not too often anymore thank God – I genuinely wonder: Do they really not know better? And why don’t they? [Yes I know, there is a whole big bag of social, economic etc reasons to unpack] Or do they just not care that much? Sometimes I wish I could live as seemingly carefree as those people do. Not worry so much! And I know I worry way more than I need to, but still. Re: COVID I have reason to worry and I envy those who don’t or do not have to.
Grief | (You didn’t think you’d get a grief free post these days, did you?) Though it’s more memories than grief possibly. I visited my mum’s neighbour and long-time friend of the family yesterday for a coffee. Because the weather was so bleak here the last few days I hardly got out the house / car, so yesterday with a bit of blue sky it was time to walk over and check if she’s home. She misses my mum as much as we all do, I think, so it’s nice to connect over that and to have one of the few remaining people from that generation to chat with.
Work | I worked overtime yesterday. Not much. But on a Friday! I usually don’t because I’m in need of my weekend. For the first time in a while I felt like I actually had accomplished something. Although I still feel bad too often about things which are out of my responsibility. Or at least not my responsibilitiy alone. I don’t want to go into details here, but…. yeah, I felt like I actually did my work properly yesterday. Which hasn’t been the case too often these past few weeks/months. So I’ll take it.
LEGO | As I see myself more or less housebound for a while longer and am a bit sick of TV and my books I’ve decided to start working on the two remaining sets I bought some time ago. I also finally broke down and ordered the world map a few minutes ago. I refrained from that for so long for two reasons: I thought I had wall space to put it. Yesterday I stood in my lobby and looked at the holes in the wall still left from the hooks and hangers I had replaced with a coat stand last year. Thought about with which to cover that. Looked and the wall and thought, that the world map might just fit in nicely.
The other reason was that I was worried that might not enjoy working only with tiny round or flat tiles for a whole big project. After the coffee mentioned above I drove to a toy store to buy a tiny set with mostly flat tiles to test if I’d be ok with doing that for a while. And I was.
It will always be your Mum’s dining room. Keep it that way.