No desire to blog this week, but just wanted to write for posterity: started driving lessons last week! Drove all over town and on the highway too! Anxious and insomniac AF over this, but also having fun.
No desire to blog this week, but just wanted to write for posterity: started driving lessons last week! Drove all over town and on the highway too! Anxious and insomniac AF over this, but also having fun.
Week 16: Home alone
😍 My mom flew back to Brazil – his mom had gone back to Sweden a couple weeks ago. We are finally alone at home in Valencia, for the first time in three months, just the two of us and our dogs, and it feels good! 🎨 I’m really excited about my illustrated journal. I’m using a super cheap notebook with 90gsm paper, a waterproof pen (uniball ub150) and coloring pencils.
My sourdough starter died! 🥖 With the travel to Italy and our mothers here trying to take over my kitchen, I ended up not baking for 3 weeks, and now Ryan is gone. Completely moldy, smelly and beyond salvation. RIP. 🪦
DIY Baileys
I’ve been perfecting this recipe for over a year now, and I think this version is really good. It’s so good we need to purposefully NOT make it, otherwise J. and I drink it all at once. Be warned, ABV is about 15% and calories are through the roof. Ingredients 1 can of sweetened condensed milk 3/4 of the can above filled with cheap whisky1 30 ml shot of weak coffee 3 tsp of 100% cocoa powder2 1 tsp vanilla extract Instructions Prepare your weak coffee and while it’s still hot, add the cocoa/chocolate powder and mix well to dissolve.
“Drawing… it is the best thing that I ever do. First of all because it gets me to be so silent. To not be blurting out what I think about this or feel about that. Second, I become an open observer, jotting down visual notes about something I see. And third, it puts me in the world of praise. To be looking upon an object and taking the time to sketch it is an innocent, unaggressive, and grounding act. It is where bliss resides. It is pure being…” — D. Price, The Moonlight Chronicles.
Watched yet another inspiring video on illustrated journals by Danny Gregory and signup up for his course! 🎨 Between this and the 2 books I read this past week, my drawings have improved a lot already. I went from stick figure to cute colored doodles in a week!
Watched: Murder Mindfully Season 1 📺
Loved it! I’m fully convinced about the power of mindfulness and will get back to my daily practice, as I have many great things to accomplish! 😂 Looking forward to season 2.
Finished reading: How to Make a Journal of Your Life by Dan Price 📚
Inspiring. He can definitely draw, though his style looks deceptively simple. Loved the mix of text, sketches, photos, plants… I feel like being even more fun and free in my own journal, and less worried about how it looks.
Week 15: Illustrated Journal
📺 Finished season 5 of Only Murders in the Building. 🎨 Watched an inspiring video on illustrated journals by Danny Gregory (from Sketchbook Skool) and decided to give it a try. I’ve been very inconsistently doing bullet journals, morning pages and braindumps, a 5-year journal and a sketchbook. After watching his video, I realized an illustrated journal is probably going to serve me well in terms of fulfilling that creative itch, expressing my feelings better, and even helping me remember my days… 📚 Read Draw your Day by Samantha Dion Baker, super inspiring!
Finished reading: Draw Your Day by Samantha Dion Baker 📚
I saw this video by Danny Gregory on illustrated journals and now I’m on a quest to learn to draw and sketch so I can have an illustrated journal. This book was inspiring (even though I’m at stick figure level atm).
Week 14: Wild pomegranates
✈️ MIL flew back to Sweden. It was great having her here for five weeks, but also somewhat stressful for me, as my daily routine and food habits change a lot when she’s around. I was honestly dying to go back to my Mediterranean diet. 🌎 A hit wave hit again for a few days, with temperatures of 29°C. The day after it ended, we were hit by a cold wave with temperatures as low as 5°C.
“There is a time to go long, a time to go short, and a time to go fishing.” — Jesse Livermore
Week 13: Astro is getting old
I didn’t write my weeknote last week as I was in Italy with my family, but I’m here now, two weeks later and two kilos heavier happier. Rome was amazing! It was our mothers' first time in Italy and expectations were incredibly high. Of the big tourist spots, we visited only Colosseo, Foro Romano and Pantheon, choosing to spend most of our time eating delicious pasta, pizza, supplì, and drinking lots of wonderful Italian wine.
Rödvinsås
Aaah, Swedish red wine sauce… Poured over oxfilé, potato gratin, or just eaten by the spoonful… So delicious. Original recipe by Karl, I made tiny changes to use ingredients easily available to me in Spain. Ingredients Enough for 4 generous servings. 1 shallot onion 1 tbsp butter 1 tsp sugar 1 tbsp tomato purée (also works with crushed tomatoes) 1 pinch of dry thyme 250ml red wine 250ml water 1 knorr cube 1 tsp maizena a few cracks of black pepper Instructions Finely chop the shallot.
Back from Rome with my mom and mother-in-law! Their first time in Italy, rightfully enjoyed with a little sightseeing, a good amount of pasta, some aperol, a ton of pizza, and a lot of wine. Didn’t write any weeknotes this week, will get back on track next Monday :)
My climate changed hometown
This morning I read on Miraz' blog that 91% of New Zealand’s birds and 35% of its marine mammals are endangered due to climate change. Those statistics are frightening. I wanted to leave a comment on her post, but felt I had way more than 300 characters to say. I could write pages criticizing people, politicians, religious institutions and the meat industry… I could write an essay on my frustration at the generalized inaction.
Week 12: Autumn Vibes
This week’s notes are coming in two days late, on Wednesday instead of Monday. I’ve just had too much on my plate, too little sleep and didn’t feel like writing. We are traveling to Rome in a few days and I am super anxious and insomniac. Autumn officially started on the Equinox (Sep. 21st) and I swear on that very same day the weather changed drastically from bikini and cold beer by the pool, to raincoats and watching netflix while drinking hot tea.
Just finished my 47th Agatha Christie book and I’m so tired of her formula, I really need a break from this project. Decided to pivot to 20th century dystopias, starting with “We”, followed by “Brave New World”, finishing with “1984”. 📚
Week 11: Driving Theory
We started the week by taking our mothers to Aras de los Olmos, to drink coffee and snack on sandwiches and cookies under the core of our beautiful galaxy, Via Lactea. 🌌 I took a day off from work to go to Valencia with my mom and mother-in-law. We visited Mercado Central, snacked on jamón, olives and vermut, then stopped by Café Lisboa for a cold beer, and wrapped up at Café de las Horas, sipping on the best água de Valencia.