Our sheep Selma limped on and off this week Sunday, 04-Oct-26 23:39:18 CEST

Monday, 12-Oct-26 11:42:26 CEST

They eye-rhino

What is up with the yellow rhino with 15 eyes?

Monday 5 October

We worked from home today. During lunch, we went for a walk in the area. We could see three building projects in progress. A neighbor farther down the road has chickens. I don't think these chickens are walking freely, but the neighbor has a nice-looking warning sign. The two neighbors whose chickens really do walk freely don't have any warning signs. So far, cars haven't been the issue; foxes have caught the free-roaming chickens.

Tuesday 6 October

DW and I went to the office in the morning. I got to the office early, but not that early, because Rita and Ellie had already arrived. The office was chilly, but the AC wasn't on, so that wasn't the issue. Luckily, I had my thick socks and fingerless mittens in my bag, but it was still chilly. I wish I were less sensitive, and that temperature wouldn't matter so much to me.

At 2:00 p.m., I drove home to pick up Merida, our cat. I was taking her to the veterinary for her vaccination and blood control. They check how much medicine she has in her blood. She receives anti epilepsy medicine twice a day from me, and it needs to be at a good level in her blood. I hope she hasn't gained too much weight, but I'm not sure; I haven't tested her myself lately. We are actually all gaining weight.

I found that if I just put Merida in one swift motion, it is easier to get her in the carrier. We had drama at first because she was afraid of being put in the carrier. If the carrier is standing against a wall, you can't drag it on the floor, and the scraping sound makes her even more afraid.

I arrived at the vet too early. Merida and I were allowed in early, which was perfect. While Merida lay on the examination table, I got a phone call from the hay delivery company. It was an inconvenient moment for a call, but it was important, so I excused myself and took it. They will arrive with the hay tomorrow afternoon, and that will be perfect. Anyway, the examination continued. I didn't even try to take a photo because the vet wouldn't want a photo of them vaccinating my cat to go viral. Did you see the clever pun I incorporated here? I'm even impressed myself!

Since I got there early, I decided to blog in the waiting room, so I turned on my Bluetooth keyboard. Something at the back of my head said, be careful to turn that thing off. A few moments later, the Doctor emerged and called for Merida, and that thought was gone. When I drove home from the veterinary, I tried to blog about it, but my editor acted up again. I had this intense deja vu feeling, but I couldn't pinpoint what it was. I was halfway home when I realized, oh yeah, it's the Bluetooth keyboard interfering! Well, it took much less time this time; last time it took a week.

The doctor took a blood sample of Merida, and it went really smoothly. This was the first time the doctor actually read earlier veterinary notes and used the correct needle right away. It went fantastically. Blood on the first attempt.

In the evening, I worked on the puzzle DD bought. It is still lying on the mirror. That gave an interesting pattern on the ceiling.

Wednesday 7 October

In the morning, I worked from home. After work, I prepared for the hay bales. Our supplier from earlier winters couldn't get hay this year. We ordered 42 hay bales from a new supplier. I had an appointment at 3 PM, so I was a little stressed that the hay would not arrive on time.

I watched a video by Chris Goor titled "Why You Don't Like Yourself on Camera." That video resonated with me. I see similarities with my blogging journey. In my opinion, writing a text and putting it out there is about a hundred times easier than making a video. Nevertheless, Chris talks about what happens inside you when you film yourself. Things that hold you back: insecurities, self-consciousness, doubts. I feel the same way about writing a personal blog. It has taken me a long time to get used to it and learn how to put my writing out on the Internet. There is no enormous success story in this; I earn absolutely nothing from writing the blog. What I get out of it is that I am growing as a human. I may admit that sometimes I find triumph in being able to retrieve facts about how things were in the past.

I made a video about plastering, and I was not especially happy with how it turned out. Yes, it feels awkward to watch. It would have been nice to improve that video. I would have written a script for it and shot it with more confidence. Chris says that if you are not a natural talent in front of the camera, you can grind it into yourself. I am not sure I have that much patience and willpower, but it would be nice to make a better plaster video.

The hay arrived at quarter to three, and I was really happy because I would make it to my appointment at the food cooperative almost on time. They were actually a little late.

With the hay on the driveway, I biked to the food cooperative.

When I arrived at the food cooperative, we first put the crates on tables, and each crate already had a paper listing what someone had ordered. It was my first time helping distribute goods to members. When I arrived, a lot of work had already been done. People primarily buy vegetables at the food cooperative, but there are other more general groceries to be distributed as well.

It is much easier to match the potatoes' size to the order. For leeks, it is more challenging, especially when all delivered leeks are similar in size. Most of the time, people get what they ordered. If not, they get a discount.

It is interesting to see how little packaging material is used in this transaction. The fruits and vegetables are put in a person's crate, and they put their things in their own bag.

Thursday 8 October

My blog voice went silent today. I was thinking but not writing. It was supposed to rain in the afternoon, so I drove to work. It was 13°C and cloudy. In the afternoon, when it was time to go home, it was not raining at all. It was sunny and beautiful.

When I came home, I harvested 5.3 kg of zucchini.

Friday 9 October

Today DW had a day off. I worked from home. It rained the whole day. It was not inspiring weather today. Usually we start traveling to Sweden on Friday afternoon, but today we didn't feel like we had the energy. It had been a hectic week. Our journey had to start tomorrow.

Selma is not limping anymore. That is such a relief.

We had Pizza for dinner, and DS came and tried his hand at laying puzzle pieces.

Saturday 10 October

This morning, Merida, our cat, came to sleep between us. She purred loudly, but I still managed to sleep. DW could not. In many ways, the art of sleeping isn't evenly split between DW and me. My regular sleep latency is around a minute. I see it as a strength that I can sleep when I want, but my smartwatch judges me and flags it as a concern. Once in a while, I have such a creative streak that I cannot sleep right away, and then my watch congratulates me on an excellent sleep latency of 5 minutes, even though I'm annoyed I couldn't fall asleep that easily. I know it is not fair, but nothing in life is fair.

This morning, the sunrise was beautiful. An airplane crossed the sky when I took my sunrise photo. On impulse, I decided to find out which flight it was, but checking historical flight data requires a paid FlightNav subscription, and I didn't feel like spending any money on that. It is possible, though, so that is good to know.

We had designated the morning to move the sheep to the southwest field. After the driveway construction, we had a lot of brown, bare soil here, but since the summer, we've been able to grow the sheep grass mix there. It has grown much faster than last year, which is wonderful. Today we let them graze the entire south-west field. Before that, I had to rebuild the fence. I used our new-but-old DIY fence sections, chopped in half. I remember the suffering the chopping activities meant for me and my eyes. I went to the hospital because I thought my eye complaints were from not wearing protective goggles while using an angle grinder. None of that was true; a 37-year-old leaking filling in a tooth caused migraines and eye complaints. Nothing is what it seems at first glance.

The sheep had been grazing in the areas between the properties. We committed to keeping two meters of our property open for people to walk around. It has a special Dutch name, like a wading area. It sounds like you need Wellington boots with high shafts to walk here, which is nonsense, obviously. The soil is clay, with grass growing on it. You can happily walk here with normal shoes. Perhaps not high-heeled shoes, and also not white sneakers. The clay is extremely sticky, so you need clay colored shoes. High-heeled shoes will obviously sink into the clay; there is nothing you can do about that. Just imagine how it would sound when the heels are dragged out of the clay. Plop plop plop!

This was the area where we had let the sheep graze. I moved them to the southwest field, and they were delighted. Then I took out the lawn mower and cut the grass, so all the less-delicious, from a sheep's perspective, sorts of vegetables were cut down. Then I had to clean the mower, obviously, with the high-pressure washer.

Then it was time to start packing for the holiday to Sweden. We left at 2 PM. I drove all the way to Flensburg Central Hotel. It rained a lot. At times, the heavy rain made driving unpleasant, but when it wasn't raining and the wind wasn't strong, I reached 190 km/h (118 miles per hour) on some stretches until DW complained. We were about to hit a downhill stretch of the autobahn with wind in our backs, and I could have pushed the car to 200 km/h, but it didn't feel right after DW had just complained about me driving too fast.

While I was driving, DW looked into hotel options. She mentioned a hotel we had been to before. She wondered how that experience had been. Well, go to my blog, search for that city, and find out. She searched for Handewitt and looked up the hotel visit on 14 September 2024. DW read aloud what I had written two years ago with my usual dry wit, and she thought it was really funny. Almost so funny that I got a little proud of my past self's writing skills. We decided on another hotel in Flensburg. Central Hotel, as it is called.

We arrived at the hotel at 8:30 PM, and you wouldn't think that was especially late, but it was, so all the neighborhood restaurants were closed. The hotel itself had no restaurant. The hotel staff didn't tell us that all the kitchens were already closed.

We headed out into the Flensburg evening rain, trying to find a restaurant with an open kitchen. The restaurant doors were open, and it smelled delicious, with guests sitting and sipping wine, but the kitchens had recently closed and were no longer accepting new guests. It rained as we walked around looking for an open restaurant, so we hunkered under one umbrella. We concluded that the inner town of Flensburg had some nice places to explore another time, when they were all open. It looked really nice. We will be back here some time to explore restaurants and art shops.

We went back to the hotel room with wet trousers. It didn't help that we had an umbrella. DW had one leftover sandwich for me, a handful of cherry tomatoes from our garden in the Netherlands, and a can of sour cream and onion chips we had bought at a gas station along the autobahn; that was our supper. I didn't feel like I gained much weight that evening.

After our snack dinner, DW knitted on her new shirt from the Island and the forest book while I was blogging. My earlier feeling that my blog voice was surprisingly quiet was no longer the case. I had a lot to write about.

Sunday 11 October

I slept really well at the Central Hotel. The windows opened onto Flensburg's busiest street, but I had earplugs. It was worse for DW; she cannot sleep with earplugs. We had our own pillows from home, and I removed the duvet because it was too thick. We are slowly learning how to get the most out of our hotel stays.

The shower didn't leak into the rest of the bathroom, which was amazing considering how many hotel rooms have that exact problem. A rain showerhead sat dead center; I did not think I could adjust it. I got soap in my eyes. DW adjusted it and got a more pleasant shower experience.

The breakfast wasn't overly luxurious, but it was good enough. The deep black-blue hard-boiled eggs were memorable.

I discovered our room had a view of a busy crossing and, in the distance, a building with a life-size bright yellow rhino statue covered in eyes and strapped to the canopy with blue ratchet straps.

We were busy leaving the room, so we didn't have much time to look at this rhino. I thought it could be gold, but it turned out to be just yellow. If you read the sign, it's pretty obvious this is the city hall.

Apparently, the rhino was created for the Flensburg Maritime Museum in 2000, and shortly after, it was installed above the canopy of the city hall. Then, in 2011, the city's lord mayor, Simon Faber, removed the eye rhino. A lord mayor is more than just a mayor; it is the mayor of the mayors, so to speak. Simon Faber disliked that yellow rhino and had it removed. In June this year, the rhino returned to the top of the canopy. I think that was a good decision; it matches the façade well, and it makes a difference you cannot make up for. I will never forget this city and the yellow, almost-gold rhino. I think we will be back here and spend more money here. The rhino's return is celebrated as local humor and civic lightheartedness, rather than political disputes. It sounds like a fun city to live in or visit.

We drove up along Highway Seven to Heaven. Obviously, in this respect, Heaven is Denmark. In Denmark, it is called E45, and I like that because I grew up along E45 in Strömsund. You can travel on E45, and that would be cool, but we don't have time for it right now. I'll leave that for the bucket list.

At 11:30 AM, we arrived at Knudshoved for a break. I continued driving to Malmö, and here we had a late lunch break at 13:30 at a Linnea and Basilika restaurant. It was okay-ish Asian food. The portions were big, so we figured this was also our supper.

DW drove while I had a nap. Did I say I can sleep anywhere, anytime? She drove for an hour and a half until we switched back. I drove to the grocery store at 6 PM. Sweden is a large country! An hour later, we arrived at the cottage. From the grocery store to the cottage, we drove with the sun setting. It was magical, with fall colors and the sun's golden hour. Magnificent. It was also a bit challenging, but I had sunglasses, the car's sun visors, and my cap. That said, the road was shiny from the recent rainfall, but I slowed down, and everything went fine. Animals are active at dusk, so you should be more vigilant when driving at this time of day.

DS kept working on the puzzle and finished it this evening. It was surprising to see that the puzzle was bought by DD, and we spent an evening on it while small-talking. It was a great way of spending an evening together. Then, throughout the week, I laid a piece from time to time, and now DS has finished the puzzle. Nice!

When we arrived at the cottage, we were tired and still well fed from the late lunch at the Linnea and Basilika restaurant in Malmö. I blogged as much as I could, but as I said, I was tired. I have to finish the blog tomorrow.

This week I wrote 2896 words. Welcome back next week!