2010-day31

So January is almost at an end and it's been one hell of a month so far. Ups and downs with my general health and well being, busy for work and for Marcus who must be away for work, and snowy as all hell. Oh wait..hell isn't supposed to be snowy.

We had another dump of snow this weekend, it was pretty amazing actually. I not so gentle reminder of what winter can be like, I am pretty happy actually. I like this weather, but then again I know how to deal with it, after all in St. Anthony snow was a part of life for around 4-6 months.

I am grateful for this amazing life that has prepared me for all these experiences.

2010-day30

It is a very good friend who drives through snow storms to come fetch me so I can attend her Birthday party. I am deeply humbled and very grateful.

2010-day29

It's too early to make any sense, so I will just state that I am hugely grateful for the coffee machine that does everything for me at the push of a button.

2010-day28

I was up at 3am this morning and I could not get back to sleep, and since Marcus had to get up at 4 anyway....

One good thing about getting up at the crack of doom is seeing the moon and the wispy rushing clouds sweeping across the sky after a snow storm. The down side is not being able to photograph it so instead I present you with this morning's sunrise.

It was stunning though the image you are looking at is what the camera saw not what I saw. It changes things, this camera but sometimes I don't mind because some of the images that it makes are gorgeous, like this one.

So I am grateful for these anomalies.

2010-day27

A great lack of sleep makes me groggy this morning. The husbands mobile phone alarm went off at 4 am. It does that sometimes for no apparent reason. I have to work today and tomorrow will also be a lack of sleep night as M has to get up super early ( like 4:30 am early) to fly to Barcelona for work. ergh.

This morning it's back to being overcast and gray and we're expecting snow. While I am really enjoying this winter it was wonderful yesterday to see the sun. It shone all day and was a welcome change to the gray gray gray. It was bitterly cold for here but warm in the house.

I am fortunate to be able to live in a warm house with all the comforts of modern life.

2010-day26

Sometimes it's the surreal things which capture one's imagination.

A dead angel fish in the middle of the pavement is not something you see every day, you know. It makes me think about alternative times and realities and so on...

What is the story with the fish?

I am grateful for these pockets of oddness that drift in and out of my life.

2010-day25

So call me a kid at heart, I still get hyped when packages bearing wonderful toys come to my door.

2010-day24

"My Lord Winter is a hard man. Small and lithe, he walks with quick steps and dances hard upon the cold earth. He is not much taller than I but his strength is great. He has skin as white as first snow and his hair is as black as the ice you cannot see. His eyes are as blue and as brittle as the coldest, clearest of days that only come in the heart of his reign.

When he walks the land all things must lie down and die or sleep depending upon their nature. His laughter brings the frosts, his tears, the frozen rain and snows. When he is happy the world lies in stillness but his anger is a wrath the like of which is seen at no other time. The storms he brings last for days at a time and the snows drift high hiding all that you can see. His love is a cold kind and his heart is like frost upon the window.

His world is blues and blacks and whites. The light is clear, the colours are hidden. When he comes, and he must, it is the time for things and for people to rest or die. He is the final word. He is the death with many faces and when he comes with his mask of bone then you will know your last winter.Then according to the nature of the &oul you will either go to the Summer Lands where magic rules and it is warm always or you will know only his winter lands and suffer eternal cold."

Why Winter Chases Autumn- The Fiddler's Tales

2010-day23

Once upon a time I lived here, in this fantastic apartment on South street. It's gone now, burned in a terrible fire. Long after I moved out but still..

The crow boys now reside in Germany. They are happy, like me.

2010-day22

Winter, in all of its infinite beauty. I never thought I would ever be so pleased to see icicles, they are momentary jewels for the winter gods to adorn themselves with.

2010-day21

I started work this week for this year. I am on a yearly contract that is part time. I am allowed to work a certain amount of days / hours a year. This is a way of allowing people to work without them or the company having to pay taxes and fees. The upside is what I make I keep the downside is I am limited to what I make and I don't pay into social insurance. However I don't mind.

I work at a computer company that is unusual and wonderful. What I love most about it not just the job I do, something that defies definition because it changes all the time, but also the people I work with as well. I love being there and I love being with these people.

I have two university degrees and a diploma in animal health technology and none of these pieces of expensive paper really mean anything towards what I do at this job ( I don't discount their use but they would not really count towards my qualifications) and yet of all the work I have done this job is the one I love the most which is kinda weird.

I am unbelievably grateful that I was able to go back and work there, even more grateful that it could be arranged on my terms ( ie part time so to speak).

2010-day20

art..it's all around us in many guises lurking....

2010-day19

I am surprised to find that I am thrilled about winter. As a child growing up in Northern Newfoundland winters were a creature to be reckoned with and while they were long and cold they were a source of wonder.

I spent a winter season in the Caribbean once and the utter absence of winter was weird for me, I loved the warmth and felt incredibly smug about being toasty sunny warm while everyone back home was freezing their asses off but I also missed it. The blending of one summer like day into the next felt wrong.

When we moved to Ticine winter was also lacking, it's very warm in Ticine but I could see winter as it snowed the tops of the mountains and every now and then we'd get some snow. Northern Germany also doesn't usually get much in the way of winter either...long dark days of dull grey are not winter. But this year wow... the gods were listening.

We got snow, lots of snow and it's lovely. I am eternally and deeply thankful that I can enjoy all the seasons, that I get as much pleasure out of a winter snow storm as I do a cheerfully gorgeous sunny day. That I love rain as much as I love fog and clear nights.

We live in a wondrous world. It's full of the most amazing things every day all around us.

and this winter I am grateful it snowed and the snow stayed.

2010-day18

In this winter where everything has been covered in snow for ages, something that is highly unusual here, I thought I would post some colour. This was the front door in spring last year. I am hopeful it will be just as cheery this year but first winter has to go. I love the stark contrast of the whites and browns and grays of this winter to the brilliant colours of the warmer seasons.

2010-day17

I read a website called post secret. I am pretty sure most people know of it, it's this place where people post their secrets on home made cards and send them into a guy named Frank. You can check it out for yourself here. http://postsecret.blogspot.com/ .

A couple of Sundays back I saw a card which was a picture of a bunch of girls together at what looked like a party, they looked like friends and they looked like they were having the time of their lives. The caption on the card said,"Take a picture of your life. Remember what it looks like. Before it all changes" It made me cry, it still does.

I suppose this is because I have hit that 40 something midlife hell and I look back a lot at the moment, evaluating and thinking about my own life, where I have been what I have done and who I met along the way.

The Polaroid above is one of my favourites but it also is a symbol for that magical time in one's life when the universe is right. Young enough to not care about consequences old enough to enjoy what we have and crazy enough to "do it anyway."

The apartment in the photo no longer exists, it burned down last week. I don't live anywhere near Andrea any more so our days of just going out on a whim are done. In fact I don't live near ANY of my best girls and it breaks my heart some days. I don't regret moving here nor do I regret anything really but I miss certain moments in time and I sure as hell miss people.

I am deeply grateful for the path my life has taken because I have met the most amazing folks along the way and seen as well as done astounding things.

2010-day16

Rudy the raven is looking at you

... it's vital to have fun and be silly.

2010-day15

I used to draw a lot when I was younger but I went through a stage where I just stopped being artistic, there are a number of reasons for this but I won't get into them here. I love this particular drawing because it captures everything I wanted to of this character. I posted it to remind me that once upon a time I could draw well and will do so again, it just requires practice. (lots of practice)

I am thankful that I can draw, and that I have an over active imagination that lets me write stories, come up with cool art and be me in general. At times being a "sensitive artist" is a painin the rear but for the most part I like it. I think it allows me to see the world in a way many people don't, both good and bad.

2010-day14

I am deeply grateful that I have lived so many beautiful places.

2010-day13

While on the drive home from Frankfurt we stopped to get some lunch and saw this. It's pretty amazing, don't you think? Winter frosts on the trees due to freezing fog. I am loving the fact that every day I see something stunning in teh natural world around me.

2010-day12

So, because I am on the road there will be no picture today. The last few days have been busy with travel but without reliable internet. I am thankful that Marcus such a good driver is and that we can travel the way we do. In three days I have managed to bum around one of my favourite cities in German Nurnberg and see Stuttgart for the first time, okay just 1 street but still I saw...

We get to travel together because I don't work full time and it's nice for us both. I am so glad we can do this. We see places we'd not normally travel to in the usual course of life and I get to leaern a lot about Germany, a country I have come to think of as home. I love it here.

2010-day11

It's still snowing here. The country is in a bit of a flap over the chaos from storm low "Daisy". Most people are pretty unused to wild winter weather like this and are not at all prepared for it. It seems strange to me given that the weather reports warned this was coming, people were warned to stay off the roads and it wasn't a huge surprise that this would be a big blow.

I suppose I get a certain Canadian smugness about winter when I hear all the whinging, it's bad I know but I can't help it. I remember when blizzards went on for several days and knocked out the power so that all you had to heat with was a wood fire and oil lamps. I realise that most people don't have wood fires in their houses any more, we don't here either but you get by.

I felt most sorry for people stuck in drifts in their cars and having to wait out the night on the Autobahn. I have never had to do that, not once though I did get caught in drifts and nearly had a bus over turn once on my way to Deerlake form St. Anthony due to driving in a freaking blizzard. I missed my flight out but the bus got us through in one piece.

Today we have to drive from our nice safe warm house to Nürnberg and it's still snowing all over Germany. So I call up my Canadian life once more and will pack the car accordingly. This will include a snow survival kit ( food, drink, candles, warm blankets and a shovel) yeah go ahead and laugh but if I have to get stuck in the car I want to be warm and have some food.

I am thankful for the experiences I have had in my life that help me to prepare for stuff like this. When I was a kid I loved the big winters, as a young adult I bitched about them...long, hard and cold ( especially in Ottawa) but now I miss them and welcome snow and stormy weather. I am probably the only one here who feels this way but still, I am thankful for the experience.

2010-day10

I am deeply grateful for what ever it is that I have within me that allows for me to play. I can let my adultness go and the kid in me come out.

Yesterday I abandoned all sense of being an adult in favour of making snowmen. I eventually had to get my husband into it as well since I am not strong enough to lift all the big snow balls. I love the snow and the sense of a real winter, not the usual soggy gray we more likely get.

I was thrilled we got snow ( tho it caused total chaos in Germany) and grateful that I can see the beauty and the fun within it.

But I should add being Canadian and having grown up in the North of Newfoundland I get how snow and snow storms work. We heard the weather forecasts and were prepared for it. I even have a small primus stove for the possibility the electricity goes out. We had food, we had water and we were warm.

2010-day9

it's not the devil you know....

this was a fun day.

2010-day8

It was a great day ( mostly) and what wasn't great could be dealt with. It was a gorgeous snowy day and I got to spend it all with one of my very best friends. I got to spend a good chunk of it in one of my very favourite cities and then when we arrived home we had tea and goodies.
So today I am grateful for this day which I will always treasure.

2010-day7

trying to get past this crazy headache I had been sporting since yesterday mostly due to me carrying a heavy bag across my shoulder it occurs to me that I am quite thankful for modern medicine. I try to steer clear of too many unnecessary pharmaceuticals but sometimes it is a good thing such luxuries like ibuprofen and so are are readily available to me.

I am very lucky and thankful to live in a time and age and country where health insurance is part of the country, where I have ready and easy access to such luxuries as aspirin and deeply grateful for the doctors and nurses and lab techs who do their jobs and keep me as healthy as they are able to.

Health has been on my mind a lot lately, I am going down that menopausal slope and my body has become an annoying stranger to me. I had surgery last year and learned I have an incurable disease though not life threatening it can be and is sometimes very painful. I am heartened to know that there is good medical care out there and that I won't go bankrupt should I ever need it.

2010-day6

"The unseen is all around us..."
Twilight is an utterly magical time...

2010-day5

I am deeply deeply grateful for my friends, especially the ones who know me really really well and STILL seem to want to be my friend.

2010-day4

Today we walked for 12 k to the local shop. It was a gorgeous walk though a bit hard given the lack of sidewalks and the fact that my boots after 8 or so years of use gave me blisters. It was nice to have someone to walk with, someone who motivated and encouraged. At lidl we found the stuff we had gone to get, and then we had a nice coffee and baked good break then we went home.
I am thankful I can do this, that I am able to walk 12k and enjoy it ( mostly) and I am even morethankful for the company.

2010-day3

As we danced about the room like crazy teenagers tonight to Lady Gaga I realized how deeply grateful I am for music and my ability to express myself through it. I like all kinds of music ranging form classical to the most ridiculous pop ever produced and some of everything in between. I love being able to dance to most of it as well. Music....I am grateful for it!

2010-day2

It's been an exhausting day of doing SFA. I ate too much, and lounged around with one of my very best friends and my husband (also a best friend). I am so utterly thankful for this luxury and for these amazing people in my life.

oh and I got my period for the 1st time in like 4 cycles, I know it's not a big things for the rest of the world but it's a really big deal to me. So I am kinda grateful for a working biological system - for a change. ( and for pain killers as well.)

2010-day 1

woke up to a quiet overcast sky. Had coffee in bed with the husband, spent the rest of the morning nattering with Andrea. So far 2010 has started off perfectly.

Am deeply grateful for everything in my life right now.