I'll Be Here

This week I am off work and for the first time (not counting my sabbatical in 2015) I am on leave and not going anywhere, but spending time here at Highflyer's in Lower Austria and in Vienna where I need to get some long overdue household chores done.

My company prompted employees to take as much leave as possible in order to help the company financially and while at first I found it rather annoying to have to use up days of my precious annual leave in times when I can't go anywhere, I now think differently. Not only do we now know that vacations abroad are off the agenda probably for the greater part of this year, but I also really needed this break. Last week, I spent hours on end in Skype calls and my back was killing me. It's different if you rush from one meeting to the next when you are in a huge office building where you have to walk from meeting room A to meeting room B and might have the chance to grab a coffee or chat to a colleague on the way. Now everyone knows you're stuck at home anyway and BAM slams another 30-minute meeting in the only slot you would have had for lunch or a quick walk round the block. Not funny when this is the case several days in a row and you wish you at least had had a morning commute to be able to stretch your legs. 

I am really looking forward to a few days of just laying in the sun, reading, sewing, cooking, baking, cycling on top of the cleaning and decluttering I need to do in my flat back home. Not going anywhere, but not minding that one bit right now.

Summer Plans

Now that Austrians are slowly beginning to ease into the oft-cited "new normal" (with a mask) phase of life in the  current Covid-19 crisis many people are beginning to think of their summer plans. Whereas I have long resigned myself to the fact that the motto for summer 2020 will be "holiday in Austria" and don't have a problem with that, it's the fact that public pools won't open that makes me very sad. I understand the motivation and support the decision, but summer without swimming in any body of water is a bleak prospect for me. Never has a swimming pool in the garden been a more coveted asset, I guess.

An Exercise in Minimalism

Now that I've spent more than 4 weeks in my suburban isolation retreat, I've noticed an interesting phenomenon. Just like back in 2011 when I lived in Sydney for 3 months, I am really enjoying making do with less. Less clothes (although I replace them occasionally when I visit my flat once a week), less kitchen utensils, less "anything" mostly than in my own place. If you know me, you know that I have a lot of anything I own. Numerous handbags, clothes, shoes, nail polish, make up...you name it. While I am still a shopaholic who has found excuses to place quite a few orders in the past weeks (all of them essential, of course...ahem), I have realised that I really don't need much here and it feels strangely freeing. My favourite place is the garden and the fashion police rarely patrol there.

Domestic Goddess on Speed

With social distancing/home office week number 3 completed, I have indeed fully morphed into a 1950s housewife (who actually has another job as well, but we'll gloss over that little detail). My cooking and baking drive (see previous post) has increased and Highflyer commented that he has long "surrendered the kitchen" to me without a fight. On our most recent weekly trip to check on my flat in Vienna I packed my sewing machine with fabric and other utensils to join the "war effort" by producing face masks. On Sunday I sowed rocket salad in a little spot in the garden I claimed for my horticultural experiments. What will come next? Knitting socks? Weaving the fabric for the things I sew? Stay tuned.