ME & SISYPHUS

Big Mama in the oven

Oh, the irony of it all. Sometimes a feeling of irony - or even futility - takes me over completely. My life is suddenly ruled and overpowered by a certain Sisyphus, the mythological king who was doomed to roll a rock up a hill only to watch it roll down again. And so on - forever. For eternity.

As I have now said about a hundred times - we are moving to a flat in one and a half years and consequently downsizing. I have been twice already to meet representatives of the constructors - once to choose the bathroom interiors and once to choose the kitchen. I think this is the colour I want it to be - "dark clay," but there were hundreds of other little details as well, of course. Everything from cupboard interiors and handles to sinks and not least the placing of the fridge, cooker, oven, microwave etc. But this is fun!

However - the key word here is DOWNSIZING. This means having to get rid of A LOT of things. What we definitely don't need now is having things BACK into our house. When I went to meet the tenant in Julie's flat earlier this week he made it clear to me that he didn't want any of the stuff there - his wife is moving from northern Norway with a truckload of her own things - so this afternoon I went there to remove it all. With removing follows cleaning. He also pointed out that neither the oven nor the shower were properly cleaned by the previous tenants, so I came armed with detergents. I felt like one of those "Clean up your house" TV-ladies. They'd have been proud of me! What a comfort on a sunny and warm spring Sunday afternoon!

Before

After

But what to do with all the things he doesn't need? Advertise the furniture - which I took pictures of today - but the rest came to our house. As has Sophie's stuff.

Sisyphus - I'm sure you cried a few times as you pushed that stone up the hill. Can I cry too? Can I scream and shout in frustration when every time one item leaves this house ten more come in?

I have a huge and invaluable gift though. It's humour. It's positivity. It's my skewed and crazy way of looking at life. And I'm good at pushing through and finding time-outs. As I was fighting my way through one of my spare bedrooms last night to arrange a little space on the bed where my granddaughters could sleep - a room where things are such a complete mess that I'd scare people if I photographed it - I felt absolutely exhausted. Totally pooped. A wreck. And the sweet little girls caught the signals. "Good night, Mimmi! We'll go to sleep straight away!" (Which they don't always do...)

I kissed them goodnight and came downstairs to listen to music. (Husband away this weekend, so I could play really LOUD). I laughed - kind of hysterically I must admit - and shook my head at the irony of it all.

Time-out with Grete Saturday afternoon - walking & talking - therapy.

Self-composed scampi dish this weekend