Expectation Management

Last Saturday I saw Coldplay at the stadium in Vienna where Taylor Swift was supposed to play 3 weeks earlier when all her shows got cancelled due to an attempted, but thankfully foiled, terrorist attack. I felt for all those people (in particular those who travelled from other countries or who returned from their summer vacation abroad earlier just for the concert) who had tickets and were disappointed despite the fact that saved lives are the most important thing, obviously. It made me realise once more that ever since the Pandemic when so many events got cancelled at short notice I always have the possibility at the back of my mind that what I am looking for might not take place in the end. I still consider myself a very optimistic "glass half full" type of person and don't see this as something negative at all. It has just made me more resilient to disappointment, I would say and this, for me, is definitely something positive.

 

Unlocking New Memories

I spent the greater part of last week at the house that my grandparents lived in when they retired and where I spent many summer and winter holidays and most Sundays as long as I lived with my parents. When my grandparents bought the half finished two-family house it became our holiday and weekend home and my parents finished and furnished the top floor. I have fond memories of quality time with my grandparents and other relatives and of summers cycling to nearby lake Ossiach with my mum and winters with cross-country slopes right in front of the house. These days are long gone and the house has been empty ever since my grandparents died. My mother inherited the house and tries to visit at least once a week, but she stopped staying overnight since my father's health deteriorated considerably this February. Since 2020, I have spent part of my summer vacation with Highflyer and his teenage sons there and we started new routines, such as eating our meals on the large terrace that we hardly ever used when I was a child. We even got new lounge furniture for it and it has become quite cosy. Overall, there is a bit of a "camping vibe" as the stove is old and there is no dishwasher in the house anymore ever since mum got rid of granny's old one. My parents didn't cook much in our apartment's kitchen back in the days as granny insisted on cooking for us and we enjoyed spending time with my grandparents. It was quite a novel sensation for me to be the "woman of the house" there and to see the village and its surrounding tourist attractions with the eyes of, well, tourists. In the past 4 years I visited places I had never been to before and developed new routines. Part of me misses spending my summer break exclusively in Klagenfurt as I used to as an adult, but at the same time I enjoy this new family life at the old - happy- place of my youth.

 

The Comfort of Familiarity

So after extensive research and comparison I ended up booking the same hotel as last year for my seaside vacation with Highflyer and sons. It turned out to be a good idea that everyone approved of. We already know that we like it here, have tested most of the local restaurants and know where the best pizza (what the men eat most of the time) can be found and where the local supermarket is. You can step right into vacation-mode, no time lost. I call it the "Nice effect" since I have been to Nice more than ten times and love the familiarity of it. I haven't been there two summers now and would not mind a little Cote d'Azur refresher, but until then, I am thoroughly enjoying our "copy/paste" approach in Croatia.

 

Situationship

 

The first time I heard this term, I instantly knew it was the perfect label for the non-relationship I was in on and off for about a decade (!). The other "party" called me out of the blue last week as I was eating lunch with a colleague and when I called him back we had a nice enough chat. It's funny how I can have a civil and entirely non-emotional conversation now with somebody who used to cause so much agitation that I would have spontaneous nose-bleeds and be close to nervous breakdowns several times. I guess I just grew up eventually and it is definitely among my proudest achievements not to obsess over lost causes. As I was clearing up my e-mail inbox (see previous post) I also went through my "Drafts" folder and found one draft from 2018 when I had written a long e-mail to said person explaining how much he had upset me by sulking on MY birthday because I had the audacity to answer congratulatory messages right away and spend too much time on my phone for his taste. He had  ruined the evening for me and I was as livid as I was disappointed. Well, I never pressed "send" on that novella of an e-mail and it is now deleted forever. Well done, me! Learning that you don't always need to have the last word, get what you think is closure and sneak your foot into a door that is best closed and kept locked definitely took years, but I did learn it eventually and it feels really good, let me tell you that!