it's complicated.

so here is something that i learned: people are extremely nice to you if you are about to leave the country for good. in my case all these nice people are usually already quite nice to me, so nice, that i am sometimes not sure how i deserve it. but right now the niceness has gotten to a whole new level.

hi, world!

today is my second last day of work and i thought i should check in because tomorrow i will probably be too busy with all the crying and all the champagne drinking. right now i am equally excited and terrified. fact is i really, really like my job and the people that i work with and the house i work in. the house actually smells like my grandmother’s house, which is really odd considering that the houses are on other ends of the world and not in the same climate zone. but my cousin, who once visited me here and who also knows how our grandmother’s house smells like, concurs. i love this smell, it makes me feel home, which i guess is why i always really liked my office. this morning the smell made me a bit teary.

but back to the nice people. people want to see me, take me out, and they send me more giraffe pictures than usual.

this was a pin i got this morning from claire which of course had me squeal in excitement. anybody flying from california to cape town within the next week and can bring me one please?

besides feeling very grateful for all this love and attention, i feel … odd, for a lack of better word. i am still here, my mind is elsewhere, then i get mad at my mind for not being here, then i’m here, the sun is not, i get sad, i get anxious, yesterday i felt like i just wanted to run away from it all…south africa, germany, my decision, i feel ridiculously happy, i have been sleeping badly with horrible dreams though sometimes a good one sneaks in that makes me optimistic again. argh. if my mind was to be described in a relationship status, it would definitely be it’s complicated.

as i will not be having my awesome desk calendar from the weekend onwards i started to make my own for next week. and it scares me not because of the things i have written down, but because of all the things i probably forgot to write down.

 

i guess i should add write goodbye cape town post, but realistically my next post will my typical airport, drinking too many G&Ts before boarding post. i hope you will bear with me, i will make up for it with an overload of thailand beach pictures. as i said i’m complicated right now.

life erratic.

so on tuesday i started the morning with the usual...not wanting to get up, finally getting up, showering, and only after walking through my apartment several times – barefoot – and putting my contact lenses in did i realize that there were maggots on the floor. yes, i know what you will think of me now. in my defense i will say that while i struggle daily to get out of bed at a reasonable hour the maggot thing, while it has happened before, doesn't happen daily, thank god. though if you saw me how calmly i destroyed every single one of them without doom and without any vomiting, you’d think it is a regular occurrence. i promise you it isn’t. while my flat is never that spick and span that i would offer you my floors to eat from, it isn’t thaaat bad either.

i did work up quite a sweat though which didn't help the make-up on my face situation so i ended up at work late, hair uncombed, and face bare. oh well. how was your morning?

i spent the next few hours pondering what the maggot situation meant – was it hotter outside than i realized? did i throw out meat and just forgot about it? did the maggots come from space? was i just a slop? should i be able with 35 to offer my guests floors so clean they could eat off them if they wanted to?

obviously i am now convinced that maggots are just another form of evil aliens.

last week i was talking to a client of ours about my pending move and was proudly telling him how good it felt to get rid of so much stuff and the realization that i really don't need lots. that same evening i received the first quote from a removal company and it brought tears to my eyes. i looked at my, what i already thought tiny pile of things i wanted to ship, and had to reevaluate here and now just how little i was really attached and weed through this tiny pile again to make it even tinier.

how am i supposed to live without my two white plastic animals?

or without my three champagne glasses, sole survivors of many beautiful dinner parties?
or my falling bird picture that julia and nele gave me a few years ago for my birthday and that i once dripped body lotion on which didn’t matter because it looks like a bird feather?

some stuff just is important...

luckily natalie gave me another shipping company's name and they are much much cheaper, but cannot ship furniture. alas, my beautiful chair needs to stay. at this point i had already said my goodbyes and didn't care all that much anymore.

so when i got to the office on tuesday and after deciding that maggots are evil aliens, i called the shipping company, ordered boxes, and paid a deposit. only to get a better quote from another company literally 5 minutes later which could ship everything including my chair, because who are we kidding – i love that chair! i immediately cancelled the first order of boxes only to change it all back after some more 'careful' consideration another 10 minutes later. maybe i didn't need to bring my chair after all. or maybe the chair could travel on its own with the one company while the boxes went with someone else?
when i got home i first made sure that the floor was now maggot free and decided to put things in piles. then i took my pictures down, only to put them up again a minute later, because really the boxes would only arrive on thursday and why live with bare walls any longer than strictly necessary?

see where i'm going with this? my life is a bit erratic right now and while i apparently have no problem making decisions, i can’t stick to any it seems.

the boxes arrived including bubble wrap, marker, tape, and packing list. you can imagine how excited an organized control freak like me gets if a company not only delivers boxes to you, but gives you all the other stuff you need to pack them too?! and before you ask, no, this is not a sponsored post…

so i started to pack while watching old bachelor reruns and drinking wine. pictures were taken off the wall, my pizza spade taken apart to fit into my suitcase, and glasses bubble wrapped and taped so well, i threw them around the room a bit and they wouldn’t break.  all in all a normal evening. till i ran out of wine and decided to move on to drinking malibu on ice. which in my defense i would have never thought of if it wasn’t for natalie who deemed it a good enough pre-dinner cocktail a few nights prior when i had nothing else to offer.
so while i think i cannot be blamed for all weird things i do, i took this as a sure sign that it is time for me to move and to finally get my life back on track. just remember that next time you find yourself alone, drinking malibu on ice – as sweet as it tastes, it ain’t a good thing.

yoga class with johnny cash.

when you feel a bit stuck and uninspired for a long time it is a good idea to try something new to shake things up. like, i don't know…move to another country. if like me you have already set the wheels in motion for such a move but still feel a bit meh, i recommend yoga. for as long as it takes. once it took a month. a month during which i didn't do anything but sat on my couch and watched tv and only left said couch once a day for a bikram class. in this case i made the decision to move after this month was over and that's when i came to cape town, but somehow the yoga and the shaking things up and the move all seem connected to me in one way or another. you will understand my frustration that right now i am not only feeling stuck and uninspired and ungrateful - because really what a moron am i not to enjoy my last summer weeks in cape town? - but on top of it yoga is not helping. i don't like the classes here, there is not enough bikram classes, and whenever i go and try to let go, i get annoyed anyhow. i know those nobody’s issues but my own to sort out, but still…

a plan formed when i realized that lent has started. i am not catholic and while i know plenty of non-catholics that just use it as a time to kick a bad habit at least temporary, i have always been a bit at loss as to what that could be for me. i don’t really eat much chocolate so 40 days without would be no challenge whatsoever. no wine for 40 days i simply wouldn’t make and why should i set myself out to fail?

so i found this post on berry diaries yesterday and was immediately intrigued. what a genius idea instead of eliminating something negative from your life (and that would be the second issue with not drinking wine – wine is of course never negative, so it doesn’t count) add something positive each day like spending at least 10 minutes on your yogamat.

maybe i need 40 days and a few different time zones of yoga this time to shake things up. we will see. but i am excited. i will even attempt to post a toe selfie of my toes on mat every day on instagram and i while i made a hashtag #40daysonmymat don’t hold me to it, i am even worse at instagramming than i am at not drinking wine.

however here is day 1:

 

10 minutes of sun salutations to johnny cash. i don’t like yogi music and he did bring a good rhythm to my breathing.

please do excuse the state of my toes and my mat.

for the love of words.

today i helped my friend’s 11 year old daughter with her homework. she was asked to write a descriptive paragraph on the subject “arrival at midnight”.  while her spelling, just like mine, isn’t the greatest she uses the best words and descriptions. she wrote her paragraph about a girl who comes home to find the house in the dark and a banging sound that scares her. she realizes that it is only a tree branch against the window, but still cannot turn on the lights and gets scared.  i added my two cents and so the girl ends up running out of her house to find her electrician and fire him, because how useless is he?

yes, i know, it doesn’t make much sense and i blame the heat, but we had such a laugh and were quite chuffed with our “clever” ending to the story.

it reminded me of how much i actually love words. lately i have had little joy with them. i haven’t read much and didn’t finish the books i started, which always makes a bit sad. i have written even less and it feels like a constant looming task. i even thought of giving my little blog a break for a while. i just feel lazy and so disconnected to words lately – surely it shouldn’t be that much work to write?

but doing this homework with her, searching for round descriptions and pretty words, coming up with a storyline even just for a paragraph, and then ending it with absurdity and giggles – it felt amazing. it reminded me why i love words and why i love writing and that it is nothing to be scared of, not something i have to do, but something to be enjoyed and savoured.
i was asked last week for my recipe against writer’s block and i really couldn’t think of anything smart to add to the discussion except to say: just write. sounds simple enough and like a paradox at the same time. but really to write anything helps me – a grocery list, a to-do list, a sentence with words that all start with A, a paragraph of a little girl who fires her electrician…
when i can get myself to write anything at all, it usually starts to flow and i get reminded that words are my most beloved friends.

butterflies.

ko phi phi or ko tao?

for those of you who know thailand, you will know that it is really a choice between paradise or paradise. and i'm omitting any pictures to not make it worse. i also admit it is a complete first world problem, but also the most urgent question on my mind these days. don't hate me.

and not to make anybody green with envy but i just booked a flight to bangkok and from bangkok to hamburg with a month holiday inbetween. and yeah…i am sort of very excited about it.
that wasn't the case last weekend. last weekend i was a nut job not being able to decide where and how i wanted to spend my holiday, driving myself a little bit crazy. as i do from time to time. yes, again first world problem ... having options. and then luckily i had a very productive sunday and it all fell into place.

yesterday i booked my flight, my tour, and part of my accommodation - here, because how can i not? - and all of a sudden i felt excited. i haven't felt excited in a good way in a really long time. butterflies. i had them, but the negative butterflies, the anxiety butterflies. if you ever had proper anxiety attacks you will know how great if feels to just not have them, to just be okay. to say goodbye to the butterflies.

but quite frankly i have also been just okay for a long time, i haven't been really happy or curious or excited in a positive way for a while. that sucks too. and i feel bad for it, which i guess makes matters worse, especially when i'm around friends. i feel like this non-person, the odd one out. and i don't want to be, i don't mean to offend anyone, but i guess it's part of a natural process when you plan a big move. you start detaching yourself so it will hurt less when the time comes. which is all well and good, but in reality it sucks because i end up spending too much time watching grey's anatomy re-runs by myself and i think i may regret it.
that was till i booked my holiday. for the first time in a long time felt butterflies, that weren't anxiety butterflies, but the kind that you want. the kind that spell falling in love, adventure, and great wonderful excitement.

so with that - please someone share my butterflies and help me decide between paradises.