Stockholm i mitt ❤️

 

We started the week in the southern sun, let's end it in the northern shimmer. Ha en trevlig helg, sötnos älsklingar, var ni än är.

Bate forte o tambor 🥲

 

 

That, sweetie darlings, is Pelourinho, Cidade Alta, Salvador, Brazil. How long does it take to get down to Cidade Baixa? Thirty seconds by elevator. Oh yes. Look it up! This world is full of wonders, isn't it? 🥰

Dear life

Temperature: freezing, thawing, freezing, thawing…you need skates just to take out the trash. My choice? A pair of Icebugs. Fantastic. There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad gear.

Drinking: chimarrão aka maté.

Eating: roasted tomato and garlic soup.

Watching: a procession of photographic travel memories march all over me. Thanks for the reminders, you sadistic algorithms.

Listening: closely to the ever-changing Covid rules and restrictions. Got my booster shot, never leave home without an FFP2 mask, will still get Omicron any day now, they say.

Reading: from the English TBR list: just finished Realm Breaker by Victoria Aveyard. (If you love Tolkien but hate him just a little bit for not writing more female characters, this one’s for you.) Reading Billy Summers by Stephen King. (An assassin embarks on one last hit; it's also a love letter to writers and writing). The only upside to this pandemic: I’ve been going at those TBR lists at breakneck speed. Heaven.

Writing: a happy 50th message. There will be plenty of those to write over the next few years.

Thinking: Oh, those Novgorodians, flexing their muscles, trying to turn back time when the present and the future pose a challenge you are obviously ill-equipped to deal with, why else would you be focused on things of the last century or are you just that clueless and callous, and that goes for all you gentlemen in need of manning up and stepping up and showing true strength and leadership not through sad displays of last millennium macho bullshit but a firm resolve to not let tomorrow’s adults inherit problems they had no hand in creating. Wanna be a big man? This world is aflush with opportunities for you to show just how colossal you truly are. Just leave the guns, ammunition and attitude at the door, please, it’s 2022 and this is the Get Shit Done Saloon. Hannibal’s Hatchets & Helmets is just down the road. You can’t possibly miss it, it’s right next to Burger Khan.

Feeling: both wanderlust and saudade, that bittersweet longing that always grips me around this time. North and south, the tropics and the Arctic, light and dark... Missing my sister about to turn forty, and isn’t it cool we’re both girls of summer born on opposite hemispheres, and oh the joy I felt when she was born, a little sister after a little brother, what more could a big sis ask for, and how I wish we could all be together to celebrate her and our beautiful, manifold extended family, this life that has given us so much to be grateful for.