I haven’t written one of these posts in a while and I’m not feeling particularly inspired lately, so here you go.
Dear neighbour. I have no idea who you are, but I would be very grateful if you could not steal my washing appointments in future. I wrote my name on the reservation list… you did not. Yet it’s my laundry that remains unwashed. Not cool!
Dear organic waste bin. Why can’t you sort yourself out? You’re so smelly and horrible and I just don’t wanna!
Dear sleep. I don’t know what you’ve had against me this week, but I would really appreciate if you could not wait until I’ve been in bed for two hours before showing up in future.
Dear magpies. If you’re going to insist on hanging out beside our building could you please refrain from doing so singly? I really don’t want any sorrow thanks very much!
This particular magpie was not outside my house (but still hanging out alone… single magpies seem to be following me)
Dear work. Thank you for letting me translate a fun text this week. Wine is so much nicer than technical manuals or lists of dental equipment!
Dear self. Remember, patience is a virtue. And don’t forget to enjoy life while you’re waiting.
Dear boyfriend. Whichever way the decision you are awaiting goes I am proud of you. ❤
Dear real-life friends (some of whom may even see this). Sorry I am so useless at keeping in touch. I need at least another 8 hours in my days!
Wow… is it really Friday again? This week seems to have gone incredibly fast – although, bizarrely, March seems to be taking longer than January and February did. Not sure what that’s all about… I have also been a bit absent from the blogosphere this week because work has been CRAZY, so apologies for only getting round to responding to your comments today! Anyway… let’s do some letters…
Dear mam. In case you’re reading… Happy Mother’s Day for Sunday!
Dear spell checker. Mam is a word, you silly thing!
Dear sleep. I haven’t had much of you this week and I miss you! I hope I can catch up with you next week (the weekend is going to be busy. *Sigh*).
Dear London. Such awful news coming from my home country this week. You are in my thoughts – we will never let terrorism win!
Dear daffodils. I’m so happy to see you all whenever I leave the house. You’re such happy looking flowers!
Dear office. I promise one day it will be your turn to get new furniture so I don’t have to close your door to hide the mess every time visitors come!
Dear boxes. How is it I have so many of you yet when it comes to sending something none of you are the right size?!
Right, that’s it for today. Happy weekend everyone!
Oh, hey! So apparently it’s Friday already? This week has gone far too fast!
Let’s have some letters:
Dear trees. You’re so pretty right now! I love walking into my living room and seeing yellow beside the balcony, or looking out of my office window to see orange and red. Do you think you could maybe stay like that for while instead of rapidly going from colourful to naked? Thank you!
Dear birds. Now it’s getting colder, you can have some seeds again. Enjoy!
Dear Christmas. I see you lurking, but this year I shall be prepared! No stitching cards until midnight the night before we’re due to go away for a few days!
Dear November. You seem to be filling up rapidly. Visitors, Christmas markets, birthday celebrations. I feel tired already and you’re not even here yet! (It’s all fun stuff though, so no real complaints).
Dear bed. Let’s spend some quality time together this weekend, okay? (Despite going by in a flash, this week has also managed to seem like a lot of very long days and short nights. Time is a funny thing).
That’s all I’ve got today and I need to get back to work if I actually want to finish at my normal time tonight.
Hi everyone! I’m very glad today is Friday… this week has been exhausting! So much going on at work, and I haven’t been getting a tonne of sleep either (thanks, boyfriend who grinds his teeth in his sleep!). I won’t have much of a chance to relax over the weekend either… tomorrow we have three flat viewings in Basel, the first of which is at 11 a.m., meaning we’ll be setting off at 8 a.m.. *Yawn*. Anyway… I’ll try and think of some letters for you, even though I haven’t been doing much of interest this week. Most of my free time has been spent scrolling through flat websites trying to figure out whether we’ve already replied to that particular ad (and getting accused of being a robot for my pains!).
Dear tomorrow’s flats. I hope either one of you or last week’s works out because I really don’t feel like spending another Saturday running round Basel (or another week desperately trying to find new adverts to respond to that aren’t only available from 1st May, i.e too late).
Dear boyfriend. Please go to the dentist and get a new bite guard or I may have to murder you in your sleep!
Dear tea. You have been my saviour again this week. Without you, I would either have frozen to death or fallen asleep at my desk ❤
Dear weather. I know February is statistically the coldest month, but could we at least have some sun? I’m so sick of clouds!
Dear self. Here’s a reminder: buy stamps! Also, find your customer number and write a termination letter to your Internet provider.
Dear friends/family with birthdays coming up. All of your cards and gifts will be late. I apologise.
Dear fellow bloggers. Once again, I apologise if I haven’t been by to say hello recently, but if you read the introductory paragraph you have your explanation.
That’s your lot for today. It’s supposed to be my lunch break, but I need to cut it short so I can get a translation finished by the end of the day. Have a great weekend, everyone!
Can you believe it’s Friday again? It seems like only yesterday that I was writing my last Friday letters post. I’m very pleased it’s the weekend though. This week has consisted of a tonne of train delays and more work than I would have ever expected to be able to handle. It was actually a struggle not to groan out loud every time I saw something new in my tray! Only two more weeks to go though, then I’m on HOLIDAY for a week!
Dear work. Please stop with the craziness. I need to breathe occasionally!
Dear birthday. You’ve crept up on my this year so I’ve planned absolutely nothing for you. Also, I’m working. never mind… I’m probably a little old to be making a big deal out of my birthday anyway.
Dear sleep. Sorry I’ve been neglecting you lately. Let’s catch up soon!
Dear weather. I’m invited to a graden party tomorrow, so please stop your nonsense and settle on one thing for a change (preferably sun).
Dear weekend. Please don’t go too fast. I really need a break!
Okay, a bit pathetic on the letters front this week. I can’t think of anything! Never mind, here are some links:
The Great British Bake Off has started again and it’s all over my Facebook feed. In honour of that and the fact that I need to find a cake to bake for the office for my birthday, here’s a list of summer cake recipes from BBC Good Food. Don’t blame me if it makes you hungry!
Between Monday being a holiday last week, the seminar in Mainz that caused my weekend to be only one day long and another yesterday I’ve spent most of the week being completely confused as to what day it was. But now it is definitely Friday and next week I’m on holiday!
Dear 30 day Squat Challenge. I am now on day 12. Yesterday I did 110 squats. That is a lot of squats! When do I get to start noticing a difference?
Dear Vienna. Can’t wait to see you on Sunday!
Dear scales. You and I are going to fall out if the number on you doesn’t start going down soon!
Dear sleep. I hope being on holiday will give us an opportunity to spend some more time together.
Dear throat. I fully intend to ignore your scratchiness until you go away. Don’t even think about turning into a full-blown cold right before I go on holiday!
Happy Friday everyone. Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!
Forgive me if most of today’s letters refer to the evil that is wisdom teeth. It’s kind of difficult to think of anything else when the pain is all you feel…
This may actually be my wisdom tooth! (Photo: tarale)
Dear wisdom teeth. According to every single source on the planet, you are supposed to come in between the ages of 14 and 24. This fact led me to believe I had escaped the horror… so why are you coming in now that I am thirty?!
Dear soup. Please forgive me if I go off you completely once this whole wisdom tooth saga is over. I imagine there’s going to be a lot of you in my future! (And my present come to think of it. It’s difficult to chew when your mouth won’t open fully!)
Dear sleep. I hope we get to meet again for more than two hours at a time soon!
Dear wine festival. I am still coming to visit you tomorrow! I don’t want to be stuck at home continuously until evil tooth is gone, and besides, if I can go to work I’m sure I can go to a wine festival!
I can’t think of any more (I told you I basically have a one-track mind right now!), so I’m going to stop now before I bore you all to tears 😉 Have a good weekend everyone!
Just because we’re back from Ireland now doesn’t mean Charlie the Horse is allowed to go into retirement! Last night, he made an appearance at the pub quiz. Here he is just chilling at the pub:
A horse walks into a bar…
I must say, he doesn’t make much of a good luck charm! We only came 5th.
As soon as Charlie came out, so did the smartphones! People from another team were taking photos and one woman gave the horse head a stroke on her way to the loo. People obviously think he’s some kind of tourist attraction 😉
Jan had originally said he wanted to leave relatively early as he goes away today until Friday and still needed to pack. But then we got talking to the quizmaster and his son, and Jan ordered another drink… so once again we were there until closing time. It was 2 a.m. when I got to bed and I had to be up at 6! If you’d seen me this morning, you might have thought I was still drunk… which would be quite a feat seeing as I wasn’t particularly drunk last night. Actually, I just lack coordination at the best of times, and this morning I was too tired to concentrate – hence why I hurt my arm walking into the doorhandle. Because it’s not like I’ve lived in my flat for 3 years now or anything…
Out again tonight… the quizmaster (also a musician) and his son are playing at the pub. I feel another late night coming on…
Just two more working days to get through before we go to Ireland… we fly Friday night, so I’ll be heading to the airport straight from work. And let me tell you I cannot wait. I am sooo in need of a holiday!
So, last night was quiz night. We didn’t win anything… the questions were hard this time. At least we thought so. The winning team managed to get 82 points, out of a possible 100! We weren’t the only ones to do badly… none of the usual suspects got a prize, which was quite cool actually. It’s nice to hear some new names being announced. And I now know that Karlsruhe is the 21st largest city in Germany.
Despite not winning a prize, it took us ages to leave! At one point I told my boyfriend “It’s quarter to one”, whereupon he promptly downed his whiskey (not quite was I was asking for…) but still continued chatting! It’s bad enough getting up at 6 a.m. on normal days, but after 4 hours sleep it’s just that bit more difficult. And at work today we had two hours of Excel training… I’m still not sure how I managed to stay awake!
No early night for me tonight either. Jan’s choir is practicing at our place tomorrow, which means I need to get pretty much all the packing done today. I will also be cleaning the kitchen and finishing translating his sister’s CV. Oh, and I also have some birthday cards to write. And we need to eat as well, of course, so add cooking to the agenda. Busy!!
That’s all from me today. Kind of a boring post today, but I did get to use the word “whereupon”, so it’s practically literature!
Don’t worry, the boyfriend and I are fine. We haven’t even argued recently, and the move will only be temporary. But for the sake of my own sanity I need to sleep alone tonight! Why? Here’s a summary of last night…
Jan had choir practice after work, which meant less cooking, less cleaning up and a much lessbusy evening for me. I was in bed by 10:00 and asleep by 10:30 (yay!) I then managed a whole hour and a half of blissful, uninterrupted sleep before Jan came to bed at midnight, waking me up. He got into bed, we exchanged a few words, got ourselves comfortable and I drifted back off to sleep. So far, so good…
Awake is the New Sleep (2005) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
About half an hour later, I was woken by the sound of grinding teeth. For those of you who don’t know what tooth grinding sounds like, let me tell you it is awful! Imagine someone waking you up in the middle of the night by running their nails down a blackboard. Now imagine them doing it over and over at a constant rate. And Jan’s tooth grinding is loud! Sometimes, when he does it in the morning I can actually hear the grinding from the corridor… through two closed doors!
So what did I do? I prodded him in the arm and told him he was grinding his teeth. The response was a noise that may or may not have contained actual words. I heard nothing recognisable! But the tooth grinding stopped, which was the main thing. So I pulled the quilt back over my legs (somehow, it had escaped), snuggled back down among my pillows and closed my eyes… only for them to ping back open seconds later. The grinding had started again! This time I poked him harder, causing him to rub his arm (haha!) then – miracle of all miracles – I managed to get back to sleep. For a while anyway…
(Photo: Wikipedia)
Six times he woke me up between midnight and 4:45 a.m. Six!! And yes, I was counting – by which I mean thinking to myself “This is the fourth time tonight – if I don’t get some decent sleep soon I swear to God he’s getting pushed out of this bed!” (I never did push him out of the bed, but I was so close!) The final time, I got the added bonus of snoring. Hurray! Then, once I’d got him to stop, I was so convinced my alarm was about to go off that I couldn’t sleep until I’d checked the time – 4:45 a.m.
After that, I didn’t wake again until my alarm went off at 6 a.m. – when I promptly hit snooze and went back to sleep until 6 past (my phone snoozes for 6 minutes at a time… I’ve no idea why!). When I did get up, I was exhausted, and upon returning from my shower I informed Jan that I would be sleeping in the spare room from now on… until he gets himself a dentist’s appointment and has his tooth guard replaced (he ground right through the last one – true story!!).
It has to be done – for the sake of my sanity! (And to save Jan from being murdered in his sleep…)
Confuzzledom 