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Glamping in a Bubble
I’m a really big fan of camping – in theory. I love the idea of going to sleep listening to the cicadas, waking up with the sun, and cooking meals over a fire. But in reality, camping and I have a difficult relationship. I get claustrophobic in tents, especially smaller ones that you can’t stand up in. Bugs love me. And I get totally freaked out at not being able to pee without going outside where I could get eaten by a bear. So yeah, we’re not a fit. Which is how I wound up in a bubble last weekend. There’s a bubble hotel just outside our town, about 10…
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Child-caused music funks and frozen Andalucia
I’ve been in a random music funk the past few months because my child has completely destroyed my Spotify algorithm. Every time I log on I’m bombarded with JoJo Siwa and music from the Descendants (which is surprisingly good, it has to be said). And this wouldn’t be a problem except I use Spotify to discover new music, and that has gone all haywire now. I finally got around to signing her up for a Spotify Kids account linked to mine (not an easy task because we live abroad, and because with a family plan you all have to be in the same household, when I try to do it…
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Expat Life: The Confusing Search for Tarjetes de Animales…
There’s a lot I expected about life as an expat in a country where I didn’t speak the language. Moving to Spain, I knew I would have to adjust to new foods, new cultures, new words, all of that. But there’s one thing that I wasn’t expecting, and that’s just how out of sorts I always feel because nothing is exactly where I think it should be. Everyday things suddenly become huge challenges. Case In Point: The Search for Animales Cards. Last January, my kiddo started bringing home these animal stickers from school. She called them tarjetas de animales – animal cards. They had little facts about them, and each…
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Living a life worthy of the $75 journal
Yesterday my kiddo and I were talking about taking the easy route. She is a bright little girl, for whom most things come easy. Consequently, she can get by with little effort, and those activities that do require effort get put aside. I was sharing with her how I used to be much more like that – I still am, to a certain extent – but that with age I learned how good it feels to stretch yourself, and have a feeling of pride in learning something new, or accomplishing something that seemed impossible. Around 2009 I bought a gorgeous leather journal with beautiful narrow-ruled paper and a leather tie.…
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Spanish Quarantine Day 3: We make Inspirational Signs
We’re still on quarantine here in Andalucia, and they’re taking it pretty seriously. People at the beach on the coast are being given tickets for being out and sunbathing. A woman was fined for being in the park with her daughter. A friend posted on Facebook yesterday that he thought the restrictions weren’t going into affect until Monday, and tried to go for a bike ride, and got yelled at by three people including a police officer. He quickly rode home, shamefaced. We live out in the countryside, so it’s not as hard, but it’s still weird not having any structure to our days from external sources. There’s no school…
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The Quarantine Begins…
This past week everything took a back seat to the pandemic. That’s a weird sentence to write. I remember hearing about the 1918 Spanish Flu, and watching that Downton Abbey season where Matthew’s fiance died tragically. And as someone who is passionately into history, of course I’ve studied all the various plagues like the sweating sickness, which came on and killed in a matter of hours sometimes. But watching all of this happen in real time is so surreal. Last week the newspaper reported that there was a case of coronavirus in our town. Our daughter has always had respiratory issues since she was small, and got croup all the…
