bye july, welcome august 2024

 

About high time for a blog post, new month and all, wouldn’t you agree?

It has been another summer with commuter train chaos and replacement buses - 

this has been an recurrent nightmare for +15 years now, and the only way to stay reasonably sane is to just stay at home and don’t even think about enjoying your summer Stockholm city. It’s just too much of a time consuming, stressful hassle -

so I’ve mostly spent my summer days reading and watching TV-series and movies -

Netflix stopped working on my old Apple TV on July 30, so I’ve cancelled the subscription. Watching on the computer or phone is just worthless compared to a decent flatscreen TV. And spending money on a new Apple TV is currently not a high priority. 

It was great while it lasted, now it’s time to prioritize other things. -

Haven’t been sleeping very well at night lately, naps have been my solution to that. I’m quite tired now, so an early night it is for me on the first night of August. And I’ll finish writing this tomorrow instead. At least I got some photos from the month that was uploaded. They will get their explanations tomorrow!

~

The perky necklace that obviously screamed my name (in top photo) is from Australian company Ruby Olive. It’s an extremely rare thing for me nowadays, to order things from overseas, even if it’s actually not the transport has a huge environmental impact, the VAT most always gets a bit steep.

But I made an exception for this beautiful coconut shell necklace. And yeah, the VAT process was ridiculous. And I still haven’t made time to make the complaint to our Swedish postal ”service”, but I really should.

Below is a plate of vegan blueberry buns from bakery Bröd & Salt. No way near as fanastic as the vegan cinnamon buns they used to make alas. But sometimes it’s amazing enough to find a bakery that actually sell buns I can enjoy. That treat alone is a rare rare thing.

And the thought of baking yourself isn’t always enticing.

Picked these buns up when I accompanied little mum to an eye doctor’s appointment in the city. 

In Sweden senior or special needs citizens have the opportunity to get a so call ’health transport’ (sjukresa) for hospital, doctor, dentist and alike appointments. Which means getting a taxi at a very reduced price. 

Sometimes you get to share taxi with others, which is a bit of a hassle, but mostly we’ve had the smooth transport for ourselves.  It’s very convenient. And when she’s talking to the doctor I can run some city errands and possibly have a coffee all by my glorious self for a change. The simple joy of that.

It’s difficult to grasp they’re getting old now, the kitties, Ågot turned 12 in April. And mostly spend her days sleeping, eating, cuddling. Haven’t dared to let her out in the garden again, after they moved back home again (after the 2021 ordeal), since she had a propensity to climb up in the ornament tree and walk over to the neighbour’s garden shed. 

She never went any further, she just laid there enjoying a different view. But given the hell I went through wandered off from the garden and got sick, and all the nastiness that followed, I don’t want anything like that to ever happen again. 

She enjoyed her garden time back when life was simpler, but she doesn’t seem to miss it.

As I wrote, spent a lot of time with books in July. Managed to finish 9,5 of them. Which is a pretty great score for 31 days of reading I think. I usually read 2-4/month.

The quality of the books varied A LOT though. After having enjoyed Bridgerton season 1-3 on Netflix very much, I thought I’d give the books a go. Surely an adaption that colourful, entertaining and enthralling must be based on pretty awesome books, right?

I was wrong.

It was a painful read. I got a distinct impression of a badly written tale by a randy teenager having read too many harlequin novels and wanting to make a go at it her/himself. That it is written my a grown up woman is astonishing (and not in a good way). That Shonda & co. could turn it into such a delightful TV-series, well that is even more astonishing.

Since it’ll be a long time before Bridgerton season 4 will get on Netflix, I thought the novels would be entertaining enough in the meantime. They will not be. And after finishing the awful book 1 I will definitely stay away from the rest. 

It’s really difficult to understand how so many people can enjoy reading them. But clearly tastes differ. A lot.

The ’Ursäkta mig!’ (Excuse me!) I got for the university course in rhetoric & climate transition I was going to take this summer. I later changed my mind for various reasons, one of them being that I find it just incredible that anyone claiming to be a climate activist or just actively working on lessing their own climate foot print and not being vegan is just ridiculous. 

And I wasn’t interested hanging with that kind of stupidity for the summer.

This little book is co-written by the professor teaching the course. In a light hearted popular science easy read kind of way. Even if it wasn’t obligatory course literature I wanted to read it anyway. 

It was certainly written for people who still haven’t fully grasped the climate emergency or taken proper steps to change their personal climate foot prints, so it didn’t give me the new insights I had hoped for. But there was a decent literature list at the end of the book that I’ll look further into.

The John Ajvide Lindqvist (you know ’the Swedish Stephen King’ that wrote ’Let the right one in’?) ’Sommaren 1985’ (Summer of 1985) was a very good read. One of my favourite writers, he never disappoints!

And the fresh bed sheets of July was of course the wonderful Marimekko strawberry one. 

The garden hasn’t disappoint this summer either. 2024 has turned out to be hottest year so far. And most certainly the coolest compared to what will come.

So even if everything went in to bloom much sooner than it normally should’ve (but the new normal is here ie nothing is normal nor predictable anymore), I’m trying to enjoy the beauty the short and fleeting time it graces us with its precence.

Currently the clematis in glorious bloom is almost over. It used to last well into October. Now it’s over in the beginning of August. That’s sad.

2024 has also been the year of A LOT of clover everywhere. Not sure what that means, weatherwise, but it has been pretty.

The temperatures have been too high to be enjoyable though. And it’s difficult to grasp how uncomfortable +25-28C can be percieved these days. I guess it’s an age thing perhaps.

There have also been a lot of rain falling, often quite suddenly and harshly. Heavy rains with thunder and lightning, which have been rather scary in their relentlessness.

The very last book in July was very much enjoyed, ”The last devil to due” in the Thursday murder club-series. I’m very much looking forward to the movie adaption, such great casting.

And talking about getting older. 

I have been lucky to not having experienced any dreaded menopausal symptoms. No hot flashes and such things. Sure some weird weight gains, but that I blamed the pandemic change of life style for. As well as the constant tiredness, depression light and brain fog, that appeared after my bad flu/possibly covid in April 2020. 

Every blame was put on these circumstances.

The way I felt was also any eery reminder of how I felt in 2012-13, that constant exhaustion (which later turned out to be vitamin deficiency. Not discovered by me seeing doctors and having a gazillion tests back then with zero answers, but me reading up on what could be wrong and how may my food choices help…)

The doctor I saw in early spring 2021 did nothing to help. The blood samples I took showed nothing wrong. So I just basically tried to treat myself kindly, be patient, make better choices and wait it out.

After the horrendeous flu/possible covid last October, followed by the urinary tract infection (which I’ve only have had once in my life prior to this, in my 20ies) in December, I’ve been feeling both low and more brain foggy than before. Not to mention the sleeplessness.

And when I recently started to see more information about brain fog and sleep depravation (and weight gain) actually being menopausal symptoms I started to think that the way I felt was possibly caused by that. Or at least partly. All the other possible causes and life circumstances didn’t help of course.

As I have always strived to not add more medicine and antibiotics to my body than necessary I was intrigued when I found these vegan, with mostly organic ingredients, capsules that naturally rebalance hormones and reduce peri-menipausal symtoms. First saw them on Instagram of all places. Overall great reviews. Worth trying, even if I remained my usual sceptical.

Started taking them on July 4 and only a few days later my brain begun feeling slightly less foggy. It has improved even more since. A weird side effect is that I have lost any cravings for sweets. Not that I had massive ones prior, but I could definitely enjoy some plantbased candy regularly before. 

It feels quite strange not to, but there you are. 

I’m still waiting for my sleep patterns to improve, but just the brain fog being lifted has improved my life immensely. So after the result from less than 30 days usage of the capsules I’ve decided to continue with a subscription for them. And hope for more improvements to show up.

The capsules/supplements are fairly big and I personally find them somewhat hard to swallow, easier if you stand up doing it and the glass of water has to be very large. Other than that, 3 capsules every morning is my new routine.

Hormones & Me (shouldn’t that be ’I’??) is made by Swedish company Källa, that offers other supplements too. And no I have most certainly not been sponsored saying this (alas), it’s only my personal experience and I’m happy everytime I find natural solutions to any health issue. 

Plus sharing is caring. Surely I’m not the only (obviously) fairly clueless woman of a certain age that don’t have any of the obvious menopausal symtoms but still feel quite undefinably blah?

I also did an DIY hair cut again in July. As nice as it was to see a hairdresser again last year, as nice it was to save money and still get a refreshing style change for summer.

When July turned to August I decided to add a Pink Pop colour refresher hair masque to that cut. So now I sport pink hair again for some weeks. Yay.

Contrary to her sister Ågot, Ztina stays on the ground in the garden. She wanders around a bit, eat grass and then spends time in this ol’ crate (looking grumpy as always). 

Unfortunately the climate change has also brought more ticks to these latitudes, and she gets them now and then. Even if we are fully vaccinated against TBE there’s still the danger of borrelia, so it’s I’m not super-comfortable letting her out in the garden, but at the same time I don’t want to deprive an old cat (13 in December) some of the summer joys in life.

A rare visit to Stockholm city always means buying decent sourdough bread. And here are my two favourites from bakery chain Fabrique. The sesame seeds toast is only sold on Fri-Sat.

A nice stroll with lovely Stockholm views is always a treat too. Especially when the streets are fairly void of people.

Also baked a vegan rhubarb pie, so far the only pie this summer, it was a lovely sweet-sour crunchy experience.

A few litres of strawberries have been consumed. I wish they were more, but the quality and increased price made them less appealing alas.

But I have fully enjoyed this years cherries, they have been brilliant, sweet and flavourful, plus much more affordable. The season is over now, I will miss them a lot. They have been addictive and such lovely treats.

I also think I have finally, after all these years, found my skincare match this summer. Swedish company Skinome makes fresh skincare products without preservatives.

The cleanser (vegan) I’ve used before, and enjoyed. The moisturiser I’ve been meaning to finally try for a long time (just waiting for my old bottles to be finished). Unfortunately the product that matches with my skin (sensitive, dry, rosacea) isn’t vegan (milk protein), but given how greatly it has improved my skin since I began using it in mid May I will continue with it. 

Maybe my skin will improve so much in time that I can change to one of their vegan moisturisers, or they will change their ingredients list for the better.

As I felt that my skin was still missing a piece of the skin health puzzle I added the vegan probiotic concentrate a few weeks back. And love it.

You only need a very little dollop of each product, so even if they’re on the expensive side of skincare products they last longer. And when you subscribe you get 20% off. 

A subscription is definitely next on my list.

And again, sharing is caring and not sponsored. Because I know there are many fellow dry skin sufferers of rosacea out there. (Incidently dry skin is apparently also a menopausal symptom…)

It’s summer holidays time, so I didn’t expect anything exciting happening regarding my quest for a purposeful dream job being fruitful at this time of the year.

So mind my surprise when I got a surprising email about a rather exciting job possibility a few weeks ago. I’m forever grateful I stay sceptical and vigilant though, because it turned out to be a very personalised and much elevated attempt of a recruitment fraud.

Have searched in vain for people having similar experiences, which makes it even more crazy. 

I will give the experience another blog post all of its own soon. And most likely a LinkedIn post too.

For now I will thank July for your assortment of experiences, high and low. I’m grateful for everything you taught me.

Hello August, can you please, pretty please be benevolent and generous, that purposeful dream job would be greatly appreciated but I would also be grateful for a decent new income source. It doesn’t have to be dreamy, decent would do too. 

Many giddy wishes and hopeful thanks in advance, dear August. ❤️