Greetings from the sickbed/deathbed/sickbed/heatwave!

I had a sore throat and then I began coughing and then I got the flu and it was a full week and my sickbed became my deathbed and then my sickbed again. I have taken a gazillion naps. I had brain fog for the entire week. I am not sure what I look like anymore if not 1) sickly 2) person who has been napping all afternoon 3) sickly. A sign of how out of it I’ve been is that I’ve been trying to write two blogposts for nearly two weeks now.

Somewhere in the midst of not-dying I woke up one morning to discover 1) we were in the midst of a heatwave, a great surprise to me since I’d been under the winter duvet for three days 2) that I had survived one more night and 3) I turned 41. I summoned all my energy to brush and dry my hair, and to go out that night for my birthday dinner at Zaferuw, the excellent Iranian restaurant in Delft. At that point the prospect of dinner was my one reason for living. I ate more food than I had all week and my stomach ached from the effort, but it was worth it for 1) fesenjoon 2) an incredible lamb dish in apricots (I don’t even eat lamb!!!) I also replied to most birthday texts with a rundown of how sick I’d been, but in my defence I was dying and am very dramatic. The thing I like, surprisingly after many years of not enjoying this day, is that I get to hear from friends I don’t speak to very often. A friend texted with his nickname for me when I was in my 20s, which I’d completely forgotten. A whole other life, a whole other life!

Some good, great, okay things:

Olivia Dean! In the Before Flu times, I went to see Olivia Dean perform in Amsterdam. A gorgeous voice, a great, tight set, but also, what a surreal experience to hear the voice that has been your work and writing playlist come to life. I sang, and I danced, and shivered on the last platform home, and then I came home and basically ended up in bed for most of the week.

Knitting! I finished the Cumulus tee by Petite Knit, in Knitting for Olive pure silk that I frogged from a project that didn’t fit me and I’d also made too many mistakes. Funnily enough this was among the first few patterns I’d bought when I first started knitting. But I bought a couple of similar t-shirts this summer, and I thought, well, I can make this. (I can!) I also completed the Aurora camisole from Sari Nordlund’s Summer Knits book, and then wore it immediately and started planning an entire wardrobe around it.

Films:

A Sad and Beautiful World -- set in Beirut, this is a really beautiful love story, and the hard [or simple] choices one makes when the city begins to fall apart around you, all over again.

TV:

• I rewatched Off Campus, considered spending 300 euros to see The Beaches perform at a festival (decided against it, look at me, fiscally responsible person), and thank goodness to past Saba for a smart decision, I’d have been outdoors with the flu and during a heatwave.

• Four Seasons: Colman Domingo and Tina Fey are incredible together. There’s great dialogue, of course, but it’s the haunted flashes of Fey’s backstory that make this show so compelling. And the he’s talking about Smurfs is a line so good and delivered so well I could rewatch it a dozen more times.

• 30 Rock: I am currently watching 30 Rock from start to finish, which, I am ashamed to report, I have never done. I have cackled more times per episode than I ever have watching anything else.

• Every Year After: I had to give up three episodes in. The book is good, One Golden Summer is great, but this adaptation isn’t it. How do you take everything that was good about a book out of the adaptation? I really, really want One Golden Summer to exist and to be good, but how is that going to happen now?!

What I am looking forward to now that death has been deferred:

• The Love Hypothesis adaptation: I have seen the trailer for The Love Hypothesis one trillion times. I want to go to sleep and wake up in September. I will talk about it with anyone who asks me how I’m doing.

• I have half a dozen knitting projects queued up but it is too warm to knit with wool, and one of the linen yarns in my stash that I’d bought for a specific project isn’t right for it, so now I have to pivot. I am also on a self-imposed yarn buying ban (with exceptions for yarn for baby gifts) but I’ve barely made a dent in my stash. This ban could carry on for another year.

• Writing? And on day trillion of the heatwave, I began to write again! Actually, this is what happened: the Oude Kerk in Delft opened its doors for anyone who wanted to work, write, study, or just needed a cool space during the heatwave. It was a very library-like atmosphere, with orchestral music playing on the speakers, and I sat down and wrote, properly, for the first time in days/weeks. (At a later point I must examine how I am always able to break out of a creative logjam in a church, but that’s for later.) Yesterday I wrote a thousand good words (not that that’s the point, but it’s always good when it doesn’t make you cringe.) Finally.

• Trying the lamb apricot dish again this weekend.

• Not dying.