Life, My Months, Reading
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March 2022: daylight, dust and romance

Three side-by-side photos of the same seaside landscape in early spring, showing a white boathouse, the ocean, and faraway mountains. The weather changes from heaps of snow and heavy clouds, to less snow and wispy clouds, to bare ground and blue skies.
Three side-by-side photos of the same seaside landscape in early spring, showing a white boathouse, the ocean, and faraway mountains. The weather changes from heaps of snow and heavy clouds, to less snow and wispy clouds, to bare ground and blue skies (this is purely symbolic, as the snow naturally came back).

Outside:

Bright, bright sunshine. The first day you could smell the ocean again (you can’t when it’s very cold outside). Two squat herons. Cat tracks in the snow. Lots of helicopters and military boats. Dry asphalt, in the short-lived Fool’s Spring we had for a week. Daylight for well into the evening, now that we’ve set our clocks to summer time. One glorious day out, buying two nail polishes, trying to flirt with someone (and realizing the pandemic has severely corroded my witty banter abilities), and also buying my own fruit and veg (instead of getting whatever the person packing my online order gives me). Had breakfast on the terrace, safely wrapped in my puffy coat and SPF 30.

Inside:

Sun into the entire apartment at seven in the morning. Partially lowered blinds on Waiting Days (that is, my most tired days). New-to-me lacy curtains in the bedroom. Packed away the beeswax candles. Also struggling to keep up with housework because of many Waiting Days, and so much dust (any tips for how to have… less dust?).

Three photos. The one in the middle shows a half-finished green shirt on a dressform in front of a glass-fronted cabinet. The two surrounding it show the inside of the shirt collar and its hanging tag, first unfinished, then pinned into place.
Three photos. The one in the middle shows a half-finished green shirt on a dressform in front of a glass-fronted cabinet. The two surrounding it show the inside of the shirt collar and its hanging tag, first unfinished, then pinned into place.

Making:

I’m this close to finishing my green linen shirt, which is good as I’m sure we all feel I’ve been working on it forever (in fact, forever = since January). I’ve made lots of plans, but for vague purposes, mostly trying to find ways to somehow enjoy those flare-ups. No crochet, because wrists, but thankfully more freezer soup. General mess, because flare-ups. How is it possible that dishes pile up so bloody fast? I swear they’re inviting all their friends over to join the mayhem when I’m not looking.

Also, I bought a small French press and small glass cups from Ikea, and have been using them particularly for my favourite fruit teas. I like things that make everyday activities feel more special. And fruit tea really does taste better in glass cups (whereas cocoa in them would be all wrong!).

Thoughts:

For the love of everything that is unholy, can we stop this thing that so many straight contemporary romance novels are doing these days, where the heroine gets to be imperfect and plus sized and sometimes disabled and not a walking stereotype, but the hero has a muscled, tall Hollywood body and a massive penis and keeps picking her up and carrying her everywhere? It’s boring and old-fashioned and in no way better than when the female characters are objectified. (Also, some of us genuinely prefer to dream of other kinds of bodies!)

Oh, and after so long of feeling frustrated with my style, I have finally done the radical thing and committed to one — at least for the rest of 2022. More on that another time!

Three images, all in moody, golden sunlight; a rumpled bed with white linens; the usual seaside landscape, this time with the rising sun over the mountains; the morning sun shining through a crack in an almost closed door.
Three images, all in moody, golden sunlight: a rumpled bed with white linens; the usual seaside landscape, this time with the rising sun over the mountains; the morning sun shining through a crack in an almost closed door.

Reading (some of it):

  • “The fellowship of the ring” (the audio version, while hand sewing).
  • A little of several different books, putting them away and then picking them up again randomly.
  • I found the most beautiful poem on Instagram, “I want to wake up” by Bhanu Kapil, and promptly bought the poetry collection it’s in (“How to wash a heart”). Isn’t it magical when the right words just come to you, delivered on a silver platter? I haven’t read the whole collection yet (I prefer my poetry slow), but what I have read has been sharply beautiful.
  • “A Psalm for the Wild-Built” by Becky Chambers, which has immediately become one of my top five comfort books (maybe even top five period!). It’s about a tea monk and a robot in the future, but it’s one of those books where the plot isn’t the main thing, and thus people either seem to love it or hate it. Consider yourself warned, or encouraged, depending on your tastes!
  • So. Many. Romance. Novels (“Get a life, Chloe Brown” and “Act your age, Eve Brown”, both by Talia Hibbert, being some of my favourites).

Watching:

  • “Bridgerton”, for its colours and soundtrack and general penchant for loaded hand touching.
  • “Moulin Rouge”, while feeling utterly sixteen again.
  • Season three of “My Brilliant Friend”, which was quite disturbing sometimes, but also gave me lots to think about that didn’t directly relate to general news, so the thinking was still welcome.

Listening:

  • A playlist I have of music that feels lush and sweeping and intense and romantic.
  • Another playlist of mine with Spring Music, that is, light and cozy and not-annoyingly-cheerful stuff that dips its toes into folk/folklore/melodic jazz territory.
  • anything Lord of the Rings related, like my own playlist of only the cozy film scores (no orc themes, please), and also “The Middle-Earth Songbook” by Roxane Genot/Karliene/Gustavo Steiner.
Three photos: the boots and jacket of someone sitting outside on a wooden terrace partially covered in snow; a selfie of yours truly, a white woman with a wavy brown bob, wearing a navy top and two silver necklaces; a small French press and a glass mug on a dresser, filled with bright red tea.
Three photos: the boots and jacket of someone sitting outside on a wooden terrace partially covered in snow; a selfie of yours truly, a white woman with a wavy brown bob, wearing a navy top and two silver necklaces; a small French press and a glass mug on a dresser, filled with bright red tea.

Wearing:

A brief stint of wearing earrings. I normally only wear my tiny silver hoops, but decided it was time to branch out again — which I did, for about three days, while remembering how inconvenient earrings are when you’re mostly horizontal on the couch. So back in went the tiny hoops, and on went my signature necklaces instead.

My hair swept back, as I’m growing low-key bored with my fringe. Wide-legged sweatpants, which are so warm and also feel more fancy than my tapered ones. Things in my Committed Style (yes, blog post to come).

Nail polish. Believe it or not, this former style blogger hasn’t worn nail polish in years, and didn’t even own any for ages. Now I have two: a classic red, and a medium pink that’s also kinda red/brown and feels classic in a different way.

Favourite memories:

People making dinner for me. Outside Day with the vegetables and the quasi-flirting. Reupholstery shenanigans. Discovering Plottr and intensely pouring the contents of my brain into a more stable, more organized place. Kind people in my phone <3

10 Comments

  1. Guðrún says

    I love these roundups and so look forward to The Style post! I wish I knew how to have less dust, but unfortunately I’m as much in the dark about it as you. ‘Tis a battle we all must fight.

    • You are a peach 😚

      And yeah, I figured if there was some magical solution to dust it would already be well-known, but I thought I’d just check anyway. I am losing the battle 😂

  2. Miriam says

    These posts are so lovely. I wish there were only twenty days in a month, so I wouldn’t have to wait so long for the next.

    I hope Smula will learn to climb furniture in the near future.

    • You’ll have to ask the planets to dance a little quicker, then! Or if you invent some kind of voice-teleporter (or does that already exist..?), you might be able to get some sneak previews.

      As for Smula and Bob, we can only hope that one day evolution will give their children’s children wings. Imagine how cute, tiny flying robot vacuums!

  3. Karen says

    Loving the shirt, gorgeous colour! Beautiful photograph of the light coming through the crack in the door. It could easily be a metaphor for life at the moment… But on a simpler note, it’s soft, classy and comforting.
    Incidentally, so are wide-leg, sweatpants. Wonderful things 😊

    Looking forward to the Committed Style post.
    Take care. 🤗

    • Thank you, Karen, I very much agree on the colour! And yes, both light in the dark, and wide-legges sweatpants are small and necessary comforts, aren’t they? Thank you for commenting ☺️

  4. Bonnie says

    Ooh, I have the perfect straight contemporary romance novel with a make protagonist who isn’t an incredibly muscled stereotype – Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon! It also had wonderful mental illness representation, and a female protagonist who shared my love for reading days.

    Have you read any of Becky Chambers’ other books? She is one of my favourite authors, I have loved everything she has written. The audiobooks of her Wayfarers’ series are perfection!

    • I’ll definitely check out that book — and also: are you possibly from the future..? As the book isn’t officially out yet, I mean. Do you happen to like fish fingers and custard, maybe?

      And yes, I’ve read her two first Wayfarer ones, I esp loved the second one (so good in audio!)! I found the third book trickier to follow in audio format and haven’t been in a sci-fi spacey mode for a while now, but hopefully I can get around to the last two in the series now that my brain can do text versions again.

      Oh, and if you like Becky Chambers, you might like “Light from Uncommon Stars” by Ryka Aoki, it has a similar vibe!

      • Bonnie says

        I’m not from the future, but I am from Australia, maybe it had an earlier release date here? I’m used to us getting things later than everyone else, it would make a nice charge if we got something first for once! And I am definitely adding “Light From Uncommon Stars” to my to-be-read list.

        • I mean, Australia kinda IS in the future compared to Norway, you’re several hours ahead! And yeah, no, the book won’t be available in the US kindle store until April 18th, so you may bask in your rare first-ness 😄

          Let me know how you like the Aoki book — it’s a weird one, but in a good way, I think!

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