Getting a bit scared

This far into the crisis, and having listened to the grim news from Sweden, we’ve become more nervous and wary about being infected. My mom is quite old, even if she’s very healthy. And my sister and I are a bit overweight and used to have high blood pressure after our pregnancies. Not anymore though. The last time I had my blood pressure checked it was as low as ever, before getting pregnant (and suffering from pregnancy toxicosis). I think maybe I had a touch of white coat hypertension, since testing at home, lying comfortably on a sofa doesn’t show anything like as high results as they used to when I went to a clinic.

We try to keep our spirits up in different ways. My mom got a set of balls of yarn and a crochet needle, but she says she’d prefer to knit. I would too, but right now I’m doing other things. My sister and I have been exploring in Second Life and will now try to get our homepages/blogs up and running. Well, mostly we’ll start over but even that will take a bit of work. New themes or not, for instance. And since I finally have access to my new/ish computer, I have started downloading free e-books. Unfortunately, my children have massacred my old Bookeen Cybook Odyssey. :/Even if anyone could find spare parts, this time it’s beyond salvation. And we need to keep an eye on our expenses right now, so no Kobo (which is what I want this time) for me. My mom needs a new phone because – you guessed it – the children smashed her old one as well. Besides, it was a faulty phone to begin with.

At least ordering food online has worked out quite well. From one company. Another won’t deliver in this city. Very odd since it’s quite big. Another one just cancelled our order today, when they were due to deliver for the first time. Wrong address, they say. Ha. I wonder if it’s because this used to be an ancient storage building where no one has ever lived? My sister has been in a chat with them and we’ll see how that goes. We just found out that one of our favorite chocolates are sold by the company we get regular deliveries from. So naturally, we’ll need to get some of that as well. Unfortunately, Denmark doesn’t seem to have our very favorite brand available online. Typical. There’s always something. But in the grand scheme of things, I guess that’s nothing much to get worked up about. Just like our favorite beverage (if you can call flavored mineral water a beverage) is only sold in Sweden. It’s completely delicious. Mineral water with real fruit or berries added. Our favorite is strawberry, closely followed by raspberry. I wonder if we could import it. There are other things we’d like to get as well, but maybe the tea shop delivers to other countries. I have developed a craving for Ahmad’s strawberry and apple teas. And I found out that they have raspberry tea as well. At least Denmark sells my other favorite tea brand Pickwick. They have a delicious strawberry tea too. Can you tell that I love strawberries? 🙂 There’s also the kind of candy you take for a sore throat. We call them throat tablets. There are several different flavors but we prefer strawberry.

This must be getting boring so I guess I’ll stop now. How are you hanging in there, my friends and followers?

Long, boring post

Being stuck inside most of the time, I’ve grown increasingly bored. Normally, I’d at least help tidy up, do the dishes and best of all (no irony) do the laundry. However, since the house isn’t the least bit childproof, I have to stick to my son like a leech. Poor thing, he’s probably tired of me by now. All I can do is, once in a while, keep an eye on what’s going on online. The problem is, whatever is going on, it’s not going on in my feeds and on my dashboards… 🙂

Under other circumstances, we’d be exploring our new neighborhood, but as it is, we can just go to the shops a few times a week. We try to go outside as little as possible. There’s a patio outside but it’s not very nice. You get the impression every neighbor can see us there. It’s also a bit bare. Everything’s very monochrome. Mainly grey with a bit of black here and there. When were at Lidl we were eying an orange tree longingly, but it’s quite expensive and right now, we need to keep an eye on our expenses. There were also violets or pansies in a big lilac pot. They were very pretty and not as expensive. We might get those later, we’ll see. I also want more indoor plants. I have a few I had to leave behind but at the moment, with the borders closed, we can’t get to them. I’m keeping my fingers crossed they won’t die. My lovely Monstera Deliciosa that I got for my confirmation died a few years ago, but at least one of its ‘children’ was still alive when my sister was last back at the house. We might get something for the patio, to get more privacy and some chairs and a table so we sit outside some time in the evenings.

We absolutely need to get more toys for the children. They’re not even allowed to play in any playground so we haven’t even gone out looking for one.

No matter how inconvenient this is, I know there are others much worse off and we just need to think of them and be grateful we’re doing as well as we are.

I’ve already done a bit of exploring in Second Life, so now I’m probably going to look for a concert and try listening to some music.

We took the opportunity of reconnecting with a second cousin that I haven’t met since we were both six. I sincerely hope he doesn’t remember that occasion, because I wasn’t very nice to him then. LOL. It seems not. He seems nice, but we don’t have anything in common.

I also decided to try to log on to my email accounts. Sadly, it turns out I haven’t logged into one of my main accounts for more than six months and they are deleting it, if they haven’t already done so. Even if it isn’t completely gone, they can’t reverse the process or let me get the same address again. 😦 So I decided to get a similar one on my other account. No use crying over spilled milk, even though I almost did. Sigh.

I should try to save and then archive my old homepages/blogs and start new ones. No one will be interested in my ancient history. I’ll probably change the name too. I’ll see. We will probably keep our fan fiction up until further notice but it’s not that simple unfortunately. We’ll need to change things over quite a bit. Our personal blogs will be easier. I would love to have somewhere to just ‘chat’. I have a private blog where I gush over all the cute things my children and nieces have done, that I promised I wouldn’t spam my followers with. 🙂 It used to be where I was whining about my life but nowadays I find that I mainly post about the children. I was born to be a mother.

Stuck

Now that we’re basically stuck, I’ve been thinking about how most of my life has been spent wishing I was somewhere else. Then for a short while I really felt at home and loved my life. Then we had to move from our first and best apartment and since then nothing has been going right.

Now dreaming about going somewhere else suddenly doesn’t work. I can’t go anywhere. When all this is over, I’ll try to make sure I end up somewhere I’m really, really happy. If that’s even possible at this time in my life. At least I have the children. They help a lot.

Though I know I shouldn’t complain. Many people are a lot worse off. No one in my family belongs to a risk group. We’re in a safe and relatively comfortable place and getting enough to eat and drink. It’s just so dull. There’s nothing to do except pick up after the children. Which I have to do all the time, so I guess I can keep busy, even if I’m not exactly having fun doing that.

Maybe I can take this time to tell my friends that we’re moving into another quite cool place now. It’s a 17th century building that was used for storage in the past. Now it’s been transformed into our very own little town house. It’s got two floors and its own little backyard. All that’s missing is a pretty view. All we can see are some rather plain buildings and a parking lot. (At least so I’ve been told by my sister. I haven’t actually seen it myself yet, for obvious reasons). It’s a rental, but these things still cost a bundle, here in Denmark. We’ll see how long we can stick around. Once we’re free to travel we’ll have to settle things back in Sweden. Move our stuff, sell the house etc. For now we’ll just sit tight and thank the powers that be for IKEA. 🙂 And a store that seems to be almost next door. So no long walks to do the shopping. Though actually, we’re going to try to order food for the duration of this weird time of isolation.

OT: Spending time in 3D

So, like most other people, we’re basically in isolation. Since I have two very demanding kids and two equally demanding nieces, I pretty much stay busy all the time anyway. Still, when the kids are asleep or even when they’re busy with undisclosed mischief, I have started playing around with my Second Life avatars. Somehow, I always find visiting the 3D world very relaxing.

I’ve been shopping for new outfits and hair. Well, my main avatar got to keep her hair, but the other two were upgraded to a more modern and mature look. Incidentally, I think they’ve both become more like me which is fun. Like me but cooler, obviously.

There’s something about walking around all those fascinating regions that’s very relaxing too, just like shopping.

A few words about the shopping… Old accounts get a bit of pocket money. I’ve decided never to use real money. My sister has, on occasion, because she had an active social life and at least three close friends to spend time with. My only friend has disappeared. I’m not sure what happened. He’s very ambitious and hard working in real life so I imagine he decided that he couldn’t justify hanging around online just for fun.

I think I’ll start exploring again. Lately, I’ve found two Irish-themed regions and a couple of others that seem nice. Maybe I’ll also go to some concerts again. Sometimes there’s classical music. A few regions specialize in 80’s music. There should be something that I could enjoy.

Birthday

Today my twins turn four. These are some of their presents. They both like books and dinosaurs. 🙂

PRESSRELEASE: “We need an increase of adoption and foster placements before Monday to keep from euthanizing for space: Palm Valley Animal Society is over capacity

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via PRESSRELEASE: “We need an increase of adoption and foster placements before Monday to keep from euthanizing for space: Palm Valley Animal Society is over capacity

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The Dark Side of Rabbit Island — Rantings From a Virtual Soapbox

Firstly and most importantly please do not let the information below put you off visiting rabbit island and taking with you food for the estimated 1000 rabbits who live there. If Tourists stop coming, the rabbits will starve. Take as much green veggies as you can, even a bag or two of hay which is a vital part […]

via The Dark Side of Rabbit Island — Rantings From a Virtual Soapbox

Photos

We haven’t had time to do much sightseeing but these photos are from our little corner of the city.

Personal News

This might come as a surprise to my followers or maybe not, but we’ve moved. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned how unhappy my family and I have been where we’ve been living (existing) for about four years and even more where we lived before that. But that’s over and done with, hopefully.

We now live in Denmark. If you’re not Scandinavian you might think there’s not much difference between Sweden and Denmark visually and up to a point you’d be right.

We went on vacation and while we were vacationing, we looked for a place to live. It didn’t take us too long to find a really pretty apartment in a city with medieval roots.

This, apparently, is an old high school. Old, but not medieval. 🙂 There are churches though, that are. Tomorrow we’ll go exploring. More pics later.

During our vacation, which officially is over, we stayed in two hotels (one completely amazing) and two b & b:s, one nicer than the other but all quite good.

The first night we stayed in the last hotel, I woke up to find one of my nieces seemingly missing. I woke my sister and we began a frantic search. My kids had learned to open the door into the corridor and we had terryifying visions of a one-year-old alone in a strange hotel.

Finally, in desperation, my sister lay down on the floor and looked under the sofa. And there she was. Asleep with her little butt in the air. The favored frog position. LOL.

Today, my sister had a disagreement with our fancy new stove. She wanted it to heat our pizzas. It probably wanted to rest. The user manual didn’t help one bit. We were beginning to think we’d have to go to bed hungry. At least my sister and I. Mom doesn’t get hungry and the kids had already had some yoghurt and stuff. Then the man of the family – my three-year-old son – stepped up to the stove. Whatever he did worked immediately.  LOL.

So now we’ll have dinner. More about this new life later.