Cosy

On Saturday, I started decorating the "country house" for Christmas. I just love fairy-lights, scented candles (both of the subtle and tasteful variety) and the warmth from our wood stove. Cosiness to the max!

Now that I am the self-appointed interior designer of Highflyer's semi-detached house and have creative reign, I am in overdrive of course, but it has nothing to do with space as such. Even in my first student flat that I shared with a roommate and other - sometimes tiny - places where I only stayed temporarily and the design scheme, if you could call it such, did not really represent my personal taste, I managed to leave some kind of imprint and create an atmosphere that meant I felt at home. I have mentioned before that when I first set foot in his house I could not imagine spending a lot of time at Highflyer's until the Pandemic made me change my mind and I gradually began re-decorating. I have always liked the outline of the house with its high ceilings in particular, but the main reason why I could not see myself here was because of the previous owner's...interesting...taste and choice of colours. In a nutshell, it was an eclectic mix of heavy "colonial style" furniture, late 1990s birchwood and granny-smith-green accessories (curtains, cushion covers, carpets, placemats). I still have a pile of lurid green napkins in a drawer from that era. Personally, I would have immediately "de-greened" the space, but Highflyer could not be bothered when he moved in and was grateful he did not have to buy everything immediately. Well. Sometimes I need to remind myself how much the place has changed and how cosy and ME it looks and feels now. In case you were wondering, it's not that I imposed myself on Highflyer, he (convincingly says he) likes it way better now as well.

Denial...ish

I spent the greater part of last week working from my parents' house in Klagenfurt. The reason was that I wanted to enable my Mum, who definitely needed a vacation, a carefree few days abroad and keep my Dad company. He has a chronic illness and she does not like to leave him on his own for longer than two days max, ideally. Thankfully my job allows me the flexibility to work from elsewhere for a few days and my manager, who coincidentally also lives in Klagenfurt and commutes to Vienna for a few days most weeks, is chill in this regard as well. So far, my Mum has been a duracell bunny with remarkable energy and mostly stoicism towards my Dad's overall grumpiness and lack of gratitude for all her sacrifices and extra work. I do know that both of them are not getting any younger (and neiteher am I) and that I live 300+ kilometres away and am an only child. Sometimes I get a sudden rush of "What will be?" but so far I am still pretty good at pushing those thoughts away. My parents are not the type to openly discuss concrete next steps in worst case scenarios and I don't want to upset them by doing so either, so my approach is "We'll climb that mountain when we get there". This may be stupid and naive, but that's the way it is.

Commitment

When I suddently low-key moved in at Highflyer's back in March 2020 due to this little insignificant Pandemic thing, his kitchen resembled that of a poor student with an IKEA starter set, things left behind by the previous owners and some "donations" by his sisters. It was definitely not up to my standards and I had to be inventive and use an empty wine bottle as a rolling pin for example. Well, that soon changed and now every square centimetre is stuffed with equipment and dishes. Ooops. He has always had a "serious" coffee maker as he consumes large quantities of coffee in the morning and since he really liked my smoothies, I transferred the Vitamix blender I had in my flat in Vienna to his house soon (only to order one for Vienna a few months afterwards). Since baking is one of my passions, I bought a rip-off KitchenAid stand mixer at my favourite discounter (Hofer) and it has been holding up really well. Recently, though I looked at my OG KitchenAid in Vienna and realised I wood probably not use it very often there. Well, I enlisted Highflyer's help (it's VERY heavy) and swapped the two appliances, along with my nice retro toaster that also moved in at the country house, while his generic white toaster moved to the big city. Looking at my trinity of kitchen gadgets on the countertop feels like real commitment to considering the country house as the "mothership" where I spent most of my spare time now.

Privilege

I am back to my "news avoidance" mode, or rather very selective news consumption like back in the heydays of Covid alarmism. This time, it's the Middle East escalation or whatever euphemistic label you want to give the horrible situation that seems to get only worse every day. I'm not proud of this approach and it's not that I don't keep up to date with the headlines at least, but it's simply too exasperating and multi-faceted a conflict for me to feel I can really understand it and form an opinion that is morally 100% fair and RIGHT. I have unfollowed several social media accounts that have shocked me with their extremist and black and white view, but am I any better by sort of giving up and not taking sides? In a nutshell, I feel almost disgustingly privileged in my little bubble that allows me to switch off if the pictures get too graphic and unlike other humanitarian crises when my "coping mechanism" and means to alleviate my guilt for exactly this privilege would be to donate money to a trustworthy NGO, there's not even this option right now and so privilege is sprinkled with a generous dose of shame this time.