Done Since 2025-03-02

Pretty good week, actually. No disasters on this side of the pond, I had a urology consultation at the International Health Clinic and signed up with a GP practice, and a lot of boxes got moved. N's old friend J', and N's son j, were over last week and put up the big circular painting on the wall by my desk; J' also moved most of the art work into the closet under the stairs, moving the fabric that had been stashed there up to the sewing room. N and I put together a bookcase, and I recognized the large moving box sitting in N's bedroom as the one that I'd packed in the Lair in Seattle. (I didn't realize what it was until I recognized some of the things that started appearing out of it.)

I was especially glad to find, in what I've been calling "the mystery box", the bamboo "Squatty Potty" toilet stool, my old plywood lap desk, my sport coat, my white terrycloth bathrobe (the one N left on Whidbey; not the old one that Colleen's mom gave me, which I abandoned because it was falling apart), quite a lot of clothing (some of it Colleen's -- we took the same size), and the little bag of random pens from my desk (including Colleen's purple fountain pen and a couple of antique pens she'd inherited). A few things are still missing; they may still be in storage.

Nevertheless, I don't know what "okay" feels like anymore, if I ever did, and I'm still scared as heck for my kids and grieving for my native country, so I'm just setting today's mood to "not bad". Now that I think about it, the fact that Colleen's birthday is a week from today may also have something to do with it.

The week's earworm, which I never did make into an s4s post (maybe next week, but I'm adding the tag just in case because Songs for Sunday is also a thing) was Jackson Browne's “Before the Deluge”, which I first heard sung by Joan Baez on her album "Honest Lullabye".

( Notes & links, as usual )