Author: ghetran

Saturday morning

Woke up way too early from a congested nose and a bad cough, read some papers online and indulged myself in drinking coffee in bed. 😉 I was planning to go to a flea market with Sammy, but I still don´t feel great, so I´ll leave it for the next weekend. Don´t think I´d be interested in any treasures with people all over me.

I could make some scones and style the house. Maybe later. Think I might just read a book and make myself some good old-fashioned cocoa for the moment. And then man up for a longer walk with Sammy boy, it´s such a nice way of bonding! Besides, the sun is shining and it´s one of those beautiful spring days. I should try to make something out of it. 😉 I think I might lay here and drink some more coffee for a while, though. This is my view.

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Delicate jewelry

I fell for the frail jewelry from HapaGirls on Etsy. I don´t own anything from them, yet, but I think their naive motifs are so beautiful that it´s just a matter of time. 😉 Especially now, that spring is slowly taking over, I find myself more prone to wear jewelry and I also feel more like going out. Hope you also find some seasonal inspiration here. 😉 Continue reading →

Spring

Spring is coming at last and it feels so good! I brought a couple of peach blossom branches home today and the white cuties bloomed, so the apartment looks festive and warm. Sammy boy is enjoying his walks, mostly with his pops, since I´ve had a major flu for some days now. He keeps finding gloves and stuff and is ever so happy to carry them around in his mouth.

Work is steadier now and I guess I´m relieved, although I´ve been enjoying my lazy couple of months, too. But now it´s a good time to be busy, the weather makes is easier to get out of the house and just savor a cup of coffee in the sun. Finding an outfit to wear is also more pleasing when you don´t have to think about being warm all the time. 😉 I´ll be sure to post a couple of pictures about that later on this week.

I hope you have a great week! I´m slowly recovering and looking forward to salmon sashimi with white rice and cucumber salad, although I have absolutely no taste or smell whatsoever. 😉

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Reading by Steve McCurry

Steve McCurry, an iconic contemporary photographer from Philadelphia interprets the subject of reading as a universal activity. The pictures are ever so beautiful in their everyday composition, they portray the joy of reading, be it a newspaper, a religious book, a novel or a magazine. Enjoy!

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Sad weekend

A friend of ours is drawing his last breath on a hospital bed, so the last couple of days have been nothing but sad. We´re still hoping for a miracle and he doesn´t want to let go, either, so the whole situation is so incredibly tragic, I don´t know what to do with myself. :-/ It´s scary how frail this life of ours is, one day we´re here and the next one it´s like we´ve never even existed. I know it sounds like a cliché, but I run out of words.

I have a terrible cold and I´ve been feeling sorry for myself all day. I haven´t done anything else but watch Netflix, take my paracetamols and blow my nose. And feel sad. Tomorrow I´ll be in court all day and I should have done so much this weekend, it´s crazy. I´m having trouble reconciling the everyday life with the bigger order of things, right now. Do you feel that, sometimes?

Anyways. V is cooking fish and I´m being such a lazy sick person. The type with needs and cravings and a short temper. Hoping that a new week will somehow make the sorrow smaller, although it´s hard to see how.

I did do a couple of nice things today, though: I called my mom and my grandma to congratulate them on Women´s Day. In Romania 8th of March is also Mothers´Day, so we usually make a big thing out of it. And they were pleased, especially when I told them V was making pancakes for breakfast. 😉 Wish I had more energy to mark the day somehow, in Norway people talk about equality and human rights whereas in Romania we usually throw ourselves a party. Haha! So different! Especially since sexism is on an all time high back home…

I did hear about this cute Portuguese pastry place though and invited a couple of girlfriends for a vanilla crust and a cup of coffee there on Tuesday afternoon. At least we have an excuse to see each other. Can´t wait! Does that make me shallow? :-/

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Food for crappy weather

Today I was supposed to attend a course, but I woke up with a horrible cold and decided to stay in bed for the rest of the day instead. Fantasizing about food and summer, I found these images on Pinterest that reflect the way I feel about yet another grey day. Let the summer come before I start binging on food for real! 😉 Continue reading →

Bohemian life

Spring is around the corner and it´s never felt better. Although it´s that day of the month and I´ve been in horrible pain since yesterday, I find some dozing off, the right amount of  chocolate and a good sparkling Jacob´s Creek make it all better. So after watching a couple of episodes of “Low Winter Sun”, and “passing out” into an hour´s coma, I felt rejuvenated and ready to take Sammy for his afternoon walk. 😉 We found some pussy willow branches and I came home to my new magazine. If it ain´t everyday bliss, I don´t know what is! 😉

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Decorate with plants

How are you today? Monday and Tuesday went by like a dream and I thought I should pop by for a couple of words. 😉 I´ve just come home from a walk with Sam and had dinner with V and a friend, my man´s famous homemade pizza- delicious. I need to post the recipe soon! 😉

I´m drinking some tea and have just started on a book in Norwegian- The Hopeful by Nicolai Houm, so funny! Otherwise life is pretty good, aside from the fact that my energy level is on an all time low, so I need to nap like babies. :-/ Thinking of waiting for spring for a couple more weeks and if it doesn´t improve, change my medication. 😉

Meanwhile, thought I should introduce you to some healing plant trends from Pinterest. Anytime I need a small change, I buy a plant. It works for me!  Continue reading →

Sunday thoughts

Finally Sunday! So good to be able to breathe and know you have no plans other than coffee with friends. I have an interpreting colleague visiting and after speaking my mother tongue for three days in a row, I´m starting to be fluent again! 😉 haha! Today I´ve been thinking a lot about identity and belonging. In fact, we discussed it at length over coffee and waffles at our friends´ place. Whether an immigrant feels most allegiance with the mother country or the country of residence has been a much disputed subject in the media, too. How the second generation immigrant defines herself is another interesting topic. For my part, I feel I belong nowhere in particular, but that I could live in pretty many places. I´ve lived 20 years in Romania and 15 in Norway. Romania is the country of my childhood and my adolescent dreams, while Norway is the place where I started reasoning, found love and matured. Whenever I travel back to Romania I say I´m going home and when I leave for Norway I say I´m going back home. Still I feel a bit out-of-place in both environments. And I get “Where are you from?” quite often. My line of work is a dog eats dog world. I´ve run my own race and worked myself nearly to death the first three years and now I´m exhausted and tired of fighting. It´s slowly getting better, partly because I´m one of 7 certified interpreters in the country (Romanian-Norwegian) and partly because I´ve chosen to surround myself with the few colleagues I like. Back in the day, when I used to work in a bank, I could count on one hand the people I had something in common with. Now I can count them on two. 😉 I think it must be me, I´ve always felt like an outsider. I guess on a certain level I couldn´t be bothered with “the little man´s stuff”, however harsh that sounds. Hoping for more sense of belonging in the coming days, now that the first sign of spring is here. 😉 Tell me about your experiences in connection with the subject, if you have any! 😉 Meanwhile, enjoy my pictures! 😉

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Braided loaf with pesto

Yesterday I started interpreting at a two days´trial just to be sent home after two hours with a promise that I´ll be called again as soon as the trial has been rescheduled. So I was kind of disappointed, but also relieved (since I´m pathologically lazy these days) and I went straight home and back to bed where I watched the Brittish series “Happy Valley” for hours on end. After an afternoon walk with Sammy I felt like doing something else than lying around, so I baked a braided loaf with pesto. Very easy, quite pretty and oh so yummy! 😉

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