Celebration Week...

As my 50th (!) birthday is slooowly (as in: two more years to go) creeping closer, I am still nowhere near a crisis triggered by my now official middle age status even though I still don't identify with that label at all and am still waiting for the time when I consider myself a fully grown adult, capable of all the skills that "adulting" entails. I'll let you know when, or rather if, that ever is the case.

Until then, I am enjoying celebrating over the course of a few days including the now traditional birthday dinner with friends and going to KLU the weekend after to celebrate with my parents. After a long time, both the friends and family edition will include my boyfriend, whom I will also celebrate with a deux on the eve of my b-day as is our family tradition. May the festivities begin!

Wishless Happy

...would be the very unidiomatic literal translation of a phrase we use in German when we want to express that we are so content we can't think of anything to wish for. You can also reply with this expression when the hosts asks you if you would like a second helping or if there is anything else they can do for you.

Myself, I've always found it a super lame reply when I was young and this was the standard response of my grandmothers or other elder relatives to the question what they would like for their respective birthdays. As a child, I had countless wishes, of course and I could not believe why in the world anyone would reply that and deprive themselves of cool gifts form their wishlists. Everybody had wishlists, was my firm belief.

Now it is the very answer I give myself to everyone who asks me what I would like for my upcoming birthday. I can't think of anything I want or need that I can't buy for myself and I really have everything right now. Frustrating reply for anyone in need of a gift idea, I know, but that's how it is. There's only one even more annoying level: replying that all you want is "good health and world peace". Well, I value both, but for now I won't verbalise this and just assume that this is implied in my reply.

Part of me is scared I'll get five handheld mixers or electric blankets now...

Ooops, I Did it Again

Buy another (third!) set of ski gear to store at another place in order to have the utmost flexibility for spontaneous ski trips. #sorrynotsorry

I have to admit that a dream of mine came true. Ever since I became pretty enthusiastic about skiing in my twenties, I secretly wished I had a boyfriend who shared my passion. You might think that this is not a difficult thing in Austria. Well, it is when you are together with someone who is not in fact Austrian as was the case with my first long relationship. After that, I did manage to go skiing with men who I wished were my official partners, but they weren't. Definitely better than nothing and I did have a good time, but it was not the same.

Now I have found someone who describes himself as a skiing fanatic and for whom snow-capped mountains in the sunshine are among the most beautiful things to see, just like they are for me. Getting to spend the day indulging in my favourite sport together with my favourite person makes me incredibly happy. If you see someone on the slopes with a wide grin on her face, that will be me!

A New Decade...

2020. New decade. Leap year, too. For some reason, I did not even have this on my radar until New Year's wishes started coming in with a focus on the new decade. While I like the look and sound of this new date, it does not really make a difference to me that it's a new decade and I don't have any special resolutions for it. It's shocking, though, how quickly the past two decades have rushed by, I can still vividly remember everyone's apprehension on the New Year's Eve of 1999 when we were not sure whether the ominous Y2K would defeat us all and render electronic devices useless. It was almost disappointing when nothing happened. 20 years ago I was still in my first job and in my first long-term relationship. At the time, I probably thought that 20 years onwards, I would still be with both. Well, I left first the relationship and then that job and so much has changed in my life since. Both work-wise and relationship-wise, I think I have grown up and developed a lot in the past decade. In a nutshell, I learned how to draw boundaries and to listen to my gut feeling, leaving situations that don't feel right, much sooner. When I say "learned", it does not mean that I did not have the necessary information before. I was just not confident enough to apply that information and act on it. Now I am and I am very happy about that. I am not sure what I will say in retrospect about the 2020s and what small or large epiphanies I will have had in that decade. I shall report!