Tit for Tat

This summer, like every summer, I have spent quite a lot of time at beaches or lakeside/poolside. Unlike previous years, the ratio of tattooed people versus those with "virgin skin" seems to have increased to 70:30 with an upward trend. And I'm not talking about one or two tattoos per person, but there seems to be a trend that makes me think of tattoo parlours either offering a flatrate along the lines of "get every square centimetre of your body covered for price X instead of Y per hour" or that some people must have lost a bet when they were drunk and woke up with the "art" of an amateur on their calves and chest. Some of these tattoo combinations seem rather random medleys of of e.g. a significant date, a portrait of a celebrity or some relative, a landmark, angel wings, native American headgear, some tribal ornaments, etc. Often with varying artistic merit ranging from some drawings that seem like the idle doodling of a child to some actually well-done designs on one and the same person. Speaking of doodling, some of the people I've seen walking around really remind me of a sheet of paper torn out from the notepad next to a landline phone on which you would scribble distractedly with a biro. A weird trend and I'm curious whether some of these monstrosities will be "overwritten" with another design in years to come or just fade a little (or be covered by sagging skin). Either way, not exactly a bandwagon I am ready to jump on anytime soon...

 

Time. Flies.

I am sure that you have never heard the saying that time flies. Joking. It is definitely true though that the older you get, the faster time seems to just whoosh by. Case in point: yesterday was our first wedding anniversary. Say whaaat?! It really seems like only yesterday that the one and only question that concerned us most was "Will the weather behave on W-Day?" I mean, don't get me wrong, I've been to rainy weddings and all of the couples are still married, happily as far as I can tell. The point of a wedding BY THE LAKE is nice summer weather, though and we were blessed by that in the end. I often joke with Highflyer that we should get divorced so I can plan our wedding all over again and I'd really be up to it. I loved my monster spreadsheet and browsing wedding content online. It really is a parallel universe and you don't have to be bridezilla in order to go all in. In my case, it appealed to my DIY Queen side and, of course, to the shopaholic with credit card at the ready. Well, be that as it may I really have been married for a whole year. Still very much in love with this man who took first my heart, then my surname.

Force of Nature

When I was young, people of my grandparents' generation would be reluctant to go away on summer vacation because of potential thunderstorms that could wreak havok on their garden or cause a power outage that would ruin the contents of their freezer. I always found those concerns a bit exaggerated and somewhat ridiculous. Old people problems, basically. Well, what with the weather getting crazier every year minute due to climate change, I have come not only to understand these concerns, but to catch myself painting similar, if not worse scenarios in my head. What if we get stuck on the motorway on the way to the seaside? What if we are literally swept off the road? While we were enjoying carefree days by the sea, my poor mum had to fight with water in the basement of my parents' house every day and even invested in a wet vacuum cleaner. The photo is from a thunderstorm in July, when Highflyer was about to leave for Vienna, and my parents' garden was covered in hailstones within minutes. We managed to cover the windscreen of his car with blankets, but the side doors have looked better. Nothing that can't be repaired or replaced, but scary shit, nature.

Family Holiday

So, hopefully by the time this goes live I am at the seaside with the Mr. and his teenage sons. Not something I would have imagined 4 years ago, days before I met Highflyer (virtually at first). Back in the summer of 2019 I had half-heartedly given online-dating a chance after previous attempts that were mainly a waste of time and money. The last time I had been "in the market" online I had specifically specified in my profile that kids were a knock-out criteria. Well, that didn't work out too well, because apart from the fact that I might have missed many opportunities some men saw it as a challenge and wrote to me to find out why I "hated" children, which I never did. I just didn't feel like a) having to share my potential hot catch with anyone and b) didn't feel like being involved of complicated issues with the children's mothers. Over time I realised that the market share of eligible single men without children in my desired age range was pretty small. That I would end up with somebody who has three (3!) children from two (2!) different women was not really something I ever envisaged for myself and ten years ago or so I never would have crossed paths with Highflyer on the interweb. I get on really well with the kids who all seem to like me and it helps that I don't see myself as "stepmum", given the fact that they already have mothers and don't live with us, either. It's a great balance of (mostly) well-behaved kids and getting to experience Highflyer in Dad-mode (he's great at it) and having my husband for myself in our suburban bubble most of the time.