Candy for grown-ups!

Yum yum!

Some times done deeds don't go unpaid.

Recently I helped Lene from Liber Vin write some texts she needed to advertise her wines.

So yesterday she gave me this bottle:



...oh golly! It's a Valpolicella, partly made after the Amarone method. Meaning that 30% of the grapes have been dried partially in wooden boxes before the wine is made. And it is so delicious! The scent just rolls out of the glass - full of dark tones and forest floor and vanilla ... and in the mouth it has so much presence, fruity and full without being heavy and sweet.

It is from the year 2000 so it is completely ready to drink! It can lie for another 2-3 years, but I don't think that will happen now!

THANKS LENE - ME LIKES...

Champagne bubbles

Yesterday I stopped in the middle of a sentence, in the middle of my day - and felt bubbles in the pit of my stomach.

Bona fide champagne bubbles, because life right now is good. Flow ... I sense flow in what I do.

My worklife runs smoothly - I've just been given a new field of responsibility and a title I fought for, but couldn't have, a few years ago. I juggle a lot of different tasks easily (to the worry of my project manager), but I can easily fit in a few more.

August has been full of nice experiences. Having my young son home from vacation at his fathers - happy and content. A lovely girls trip to Rome. A pleasant evening in the company of my female co-workers. Re-uniting with my stampclubfriend (who recognized myself on my blog :-) and all the other people from my school years.

And then just ... flow ... on the private front as well. Amourous looks from the lovely man I share last name and double duvet with. A happy and relatively manageable teenage daughter, that is thriving with what she does. An oldes son, in love in a harmonic relationship, knowing what he wants to do with his future. My youngest son happy as usual - loving and good. My bonus children well on their way - also happy and busy, with their under as much control as you can hope. My own heart full of joy over all this.

Champagne bubbles - light and pearly in amber fluid - in my stomach.

And I haven't drunk a drop.
Then why does it tingle so on my tongue?

Longing

I've really gotten used to having my lovely man at home.
Last year he was off here and there, for several weeks at a time - but for the past 6 months he's only taken off for Kolding every day :-)
And then what happens??

2 days in Sweden this week. 2 days in Germany next week.
And then it's the season for exhibitions - mostly in Germany.

He left early monday morning (kissing me right in the middle of my sleepy face before he left) - and fortunately he will be back home tonight. I look forward to sleeping next to him again - the bed was too big, and my feet were cold last night!

But somehow it is really nice to miss - when it's just for a couple of days.

Bodil takes off from the nest...

Well - not right now, that is.

But when next school year starts - for a long time now, she's talked about a year away on a boarding school, and we have researched the possibilities. Today we visited what we believe is THE school - namely Højer Designefterskole.

The school aims at different types of design, and Bodil - creativ as she is, she has long wanted to learn the craft of cutting and sewing. That I cannot help her with, as my sewing skills are really only up to sewing fruit bags and curtains...

The school has a textile design line that appealed to us - plus the fact that the school is directed at design in general.
This is quite opposite many other schools, where textile design is only mentioned in the passing.

Our impression of the people, the school, the rooms, the surroundings - everything was positive, and Bodil was exited! She is ready to start tomorrow...

It is also good, that you can drive there in just 1½ hour.
All we lack now is filling in the application form. We soon will.

And then Bodil will leave the nest for a while - in a year.
How peaceful this house will be :-) good to know she will come home on the weekends with her big gestrues, warm hugs and loud outbursts!

Revisiting the past

Most of them were actually there.

I still recall the goosebumpy feeling. I knew and recognized where ever I turned.

Many of them I haven't seen in 10 years. That is how long it has been, since my class were together. Others I believe not to have seen in the 25 years its been since we parted - they were the ones in the other 9th grade class.

We'd all gotten older - but as we looked in each others eyes and heard each other voices, things happened. We weren't strangers - not really.

My first boyfriend ... how amazing to see him again! Looking just like himself - a bit taller than back then, a bit heavier and a little older - but still just like I remember him, down to the luminant smile and the overactive eyebrows. Still sweet and easygoing.

Present were also old girlfriends, that I drank buckets of tea with, giggled over boys with and grew up with. Seeing them was just pleasant. One is now a daycare mother, and a bit more voluminous than back then - but she was lovely and warm, and we talked so well. Another friend I remained in touch with up until about 10 years ago. Then she and her family moved out of the country and things slipped. Fun to meet her again - she lives in Ringsted now.

And my stampclub-friend .. as expected our tone was just as comforting and warm and easy as it was 10 years ago, the last time we met. It is special to meet a person, that you built clubhouses and played soccer and kick-the-can with, someone you've know through your childhood and teen years and always trusted. He is so like himself - a really pleasant boy!

Before my mentioned first-boyfriend, I had the hugest crush on a sweet, brownhaired, quiet sort of guy in the other 7th grade class. He was just cute - and probably scared witless by the fastmouth blonde, who was really only covering up her insecurety and shyness with her sharp tongue and her reading-acquired knowledge.

He was there as well yesterday, and besides the fact that he is now taller than me, quite gray haired and perhaps a bit heavier than then, he looked just like I remember him! ;-)
Now I finally had the guts to tell him how deeply I sighed for him in the 7th grade - he looked slightly scared (still being that sweet, quiet sort of bloke - just 42 instead of 14) - and then he said that he DEFINATELY never suspected that!

He compensated for the wasted years by dancing with me (several times - and completely voluntarily), and we also talked more last night than we did in the 9 years we went to school together. It was nice to discover, that he was actually as sweet, nice and smart beneath that shy and quiet surface, as I always suspected - maybe my life would have been less complicated, if I'd dared approach him - back then ?? :-)

I could keep going on about one person or another, that I was immensely pleased and touched to meet again. It was nearly unreal, but also undiscribably precious to be handed a piece of my childhood on a silver platter like that. Meeting all these people, that in some way or another had played a role in a long and treasured part of my life - the grade school years.

After the grade school years came high school - and I never felt comfortable there. Too young, too unsophisticated for my surroundings, I bruised myself on them so much, that in the hindsight that comes with age, I probably nursed a minor depression in those years. I wouldn't go through high school again for anything - even though I also met lovely people there.

Grade school was the best part of my childhood. And yesterday, I got a bit of it back.

Friiiiiday!

I enter the weekend with a head that is quite less long haired than it was at the start of the week - it's NICE! This weekend will contain:

Girls gathering tonight with the women from my department - there aren't many of us, so we have had to form a club...

Reunion with my old grade school class - in whose numbers you find THE girlfriend through my school years, the guy I was buddies with and had countless stamp collecting clubs etc with, and last but not least - my very first boyfriend!

It is quite a separate story. He came to our school in 8th grade, with an exotic Zealand dialect. He came from Albertslund near Copenhagen, and that was damn exotic in those days in the north of Jutland. He had bright superblue eyes, broad shoulders and a smile that lit up the room. And it was me he found attractive ... quite a chock to me at the time, as it had never happened before!

He was my boyfriend for a little less than a year - a long time at that age. When we weren't off shooting airguns, playing table tennis or racing on his model racetrack, we'd be in his room performing red-cheeked kissing and fondling. Very telling of the borderland between child and adult, that we were in.

At some point he broke up, and it was my first heartbreak. I was crushed! Until one day I looked up, and into another set of beautiful blue eyes ... that was how it was back then.

I look forward to meeting him again - and fear it a bit. What if he's gotten bald and fat? Or even worse - if he's superfit and much younger looking than me??

Good to know I have my stamp-club-friend to fall back on - we were always able to find our way back to fun and easy conversation ... :-)

Desperate desire

OH ... I need it so much!!

It is SO long overdue. I really need it. I should have happened a week ago at least, if life was fair.

I believe it shows from the pictures of me in Rome - yes, look for yourself! I look NEEDY!

But release is on the way. Tomorrow I will walk lightly on the earth. Breathe easier.

Because fortunately I have a hairdressers appointment tomorrow afternoon.