Hundred Days of Happiness - Week Five
Coming into the homestretch of the holiday season
It’s raining, dark and cold as the last “working week” of the year is getting ready to commence. Trying to wrap up straggling loose ends before Eerste kerstdag and Tweede kerstdag - First Christmas Day and Second Christmas Day (Christmas and Boxing Days) - break up the week and work basically shuts down. Looking back at these entries it feels like so long ago and it was only two weeks ago. Time - like the world these days - has gone a bit wonky.
#dinner #homemade #crisp #december #day29 #100happydays Tonight’s homemade dinner from “Crisp”. Simple, healthy and abundant and I didn’t have to think. I just followed the recipe and their ingredients. I don’t like the mental load or decision overload of food planning and this helps so much!
#karate #growingupdutch #exam #geslaagd #geel-slip #yellow-slip #december #day30 #100happydays Our son had a very full day and at the end took a Karate Team exam to graduate from a white belt to a yellow-slip on his white belt. He practiced for weeks and he did great. I took tons of photos and videos of him which as a proud mom I want to share, but as we respect his personal privacy we do not put his face online any more. Many thanks to karateteamutrecht for teaching him so well.
#baking #growingupdutch #sourdough #homemade #december #day31 #100happydays A friend of our son’s was over after school and they both helped Dad make bread for the week. DH has gotten incredibly good at baking over the years and this week’s bread was delicious and beautiful. Our son loves to help out in the kitchen as well - and so he got to tip the loaf into the hot pan and to ‘score’ the bread to make it split beautifully.
#gardening #heritage #legacy #plants #roses #newgrowth #december #day32 #100happydays When my mother visited in late September, she brought over three cuttings from a special rose bush. This rose bush was planted by my Granny and grew in her garden in Fleet, Hampshire for many years until her death in 2003. My mother then transplanted the rose bush to the public garden on her street in London. She brought three cuttings to us here in the Netherlands and one of the three cuttings actually successfully took root. I have kept it inside to give it some extra love and help and since it's "warm" it has decided it's time to sprout some new branches, I'm not going to disagree and I am hoping this means good things moving forward. We also started growing an avocado from a pit. 🤞🏼
#mail #cards #holiday #december #day33 #100happydays I might have bitten off more than I can chew, but I am doing my best to send out Christmas/Holiday/Seasons Greetings cards. I even have spreadsheets and a google form so people can send me their current information. It seems like an important thing to do, to create and foster connection and community right now. But, I'm "behind" and doing this by hand because I cannot figure out how to get the google spreadsheet of information to print nicely on labels without wasting a ton of paper because they don't line up perfectly. So I am stressed but I am also happy to be doing this. I am holding space for all the conflicting feelings 🤣🥰😆
#webdevelopment #coding #sysadmin #docker #wordpress #work #december #day34 #100happydays I have a new semi-part (getting close to full) time mostly remote job and I'm loving delving into lots of different projects. One of the many projects I have been tasked with is to overhaul the website for the organization and since I have been doing WordPress freelance work for the past five years and this is totally my bailiwick I jumped at the chance. I normally develop on a staging server online and then push to production. This time though I need to build locally on my Mac. I successfully installed Docker & Docker Composer & got WordPress up and running on my local machine without any help from my programmer husband. I even understand most of what is being spat out in the console. I have this loop in my head that "I am not a coder" and I'm pushing against that barrier as I learn more and more. Years ago, trying to understand github brought me to tears. Now, I kinda feel like a badass.
#mouser #killer #cat #caturday #december #day35 #100happydays Our cat made a HUGE ruckus at five in the morning - joyfully playing and scrambling around our bedroom. This is most unusual behavior for him - he usually doesn't get the "zoomies". I sleepily turned on the light to see what he was up to and he had a mouse! A tiny mouse with a very long tail. As I grew up on a farm in California, I was not freaked out and happy that he was getting the mouse. Just wondered if he had brought it in from outside or if it was inside when he found it. I haven't seen any indications that we have an infestation, and when I petted him, he was chilly, so I am just going with the assumption that he brought it inside and brought it upstairs because he was proud and wanted to show up what he had done and we are silly feeble humans who can't hunt on our own. He proceeded to chow down on the mouse and make quite a bit of crunching, but just glad he ate the whole mouse and didn't leave any bits for us to discover in the morning when we finally woke up for the day.
Sending out good thoughts as we have crossed the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere and even whilst the days are still short and dark, the light is increasing every day.