March 25, 2025

Hundred Days of Happiness - Week Nineteen

This past week, while getting loads of work done and being a short-term single parent, I tried to get in some self-care amidst global chaos. Not easy.

It has been a week. Wow. How is everyone else doing? I’m doing my best to keep calm, but there has been too much chocolate consumed this past week. Any one else stress eating? I am also trying other methods (see the end), but chocolate definitely helps. ;) Do you have any better solutions to keeping calm?

Mar 17 – Day 128

I bought three bunches of tulips on Sunday when we were in downtown Utrecht. It’s a tight fit, but they did make it into the tulip vase which is shaped differently than a rose vase. Not something I knew until I moved to the Netherlands.

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Mar 18 – Day 129

Brewster Kahle gave a lecture about Internet Archive Europe and the projects we have planned in 2025-26. It was really well received. I am truly glad that all the planning came off well. Jos Damen from the University brought it all together beautifully. At the afternoon event, Dutch Wikimedia awarded a ProjectUil to the Internet Archive and Brewster received it on its behalf. Wikipedian Vera de Kok took photographs and wrote up a nice piece about the award and its significance.

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Mar 19 – Day 130

Spent most of the day working from home, but woke up to this beautiful sight in our bedroom window. Beautiful morning light, blue skies and flowers in the Christmas Cactus and the Orchid we got back in 2018 when we moved to the Netherlands.

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Mar 20 – Day 131

Another full day of work at home - including late into the night which I normally don’t do, but there were a lot of details to follow up on and there just sometimes are not enough hours in the day. The tulips are opening up beautifully on the dining room table and they bring me joy. Spring is here and it’s glorious.

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Mar 21 – Day 132

Took this photo to send to a friend who was taking care of our son back in our neighborhood while I was working the last Friday event of the Internet Archive Europe while Brewster is here in the Netherlands. He goes back to the states next week. I am so very grateful for friends who have helped out with childcare and support.

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Mar 22 – Day 133

Saturday morning I took our son to his bouldering lesson and I went to the bar area to get myself a coffee and thought better of it. So I ended up ordering a mixture of fresh ginger and mint tea. I shared a table with and spoke with another mom about my anxiety of the dumpster fire that is the US right now. Talking about it helped me calm down somewhat. Her sister-in-law is also from the states and also has been out for 20 years (for me it’s been 18 years) and so this woman knew a bit of what was going on but for her sanity does not pay attention too much to what is happening.

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Mar 23 – Day 134

Sunday my DH came home and we got to hang out briefly before I took off for some self-care. I went for a walk around MaximaPark with a girlfriend and towards the end she asked me what I was planning on doing the rest of the day. I said I really needed to relax and was thinking of going to the spa. So we decided to go together and we spent a glorious two hours relaxing in the heat of the water and the saunas. I came out like jelly. Absolute perfection.

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I have been needing to calm down about the state of the world and the US. I could literally feel the anxiety gripping me as a tightness in my belly and in my back and it does not feel good at all. This past Saturday morning, as I was driving to pick up my son from a sleepover in a nearby town, I just focused on deep breathing over and over. Saturday evening, at the end of the day as I wrote a lot of this up, I listened to “Vagus Nerve Reset for Sleep”. I truly feel that the vagus nerve controls us in ways we haven’t even fully come to grasp. If you need some calming sounds - enjoy.