Goodbye March

March has been…uneventful. When I scrolled the photo gallery on my phone, I realized exactly how little has happened in my life last month. No wild and crazy dinner parties like February; instead, it was mostly pictures of my crochet projects. That’s okay, too, because who needs excitement in their lives all the time, amirite?

But luckily, I have photographed other stuff too, or this would be ten pictures of crochet projects which would be boring (for you, at least). Shall we take a look?

March started out foggily; you can barely see the outline of my office building beyond the bridge, and I almost expected to be eaten by a Stephen King-esque monster on my way to work. Fortunately, that didn’t happen and I made it safely to work.

As I’ve waited for the train to take me to work, I’ve been fascinated by the long shadows cast by small pebbles when the sun hangs low above the horizon, and I’ve been wondering why the birds seem to favor this particular tree for nesting. There are other equally tall trees around the station, but this is the only one the crows like. There are lots of crow couples fighting over it, and I’m glaring at them, thinking stop squabbling and pick another tree, when they caw and screech at each other, but no. They want this one. I’ve started thinking about it as The Love Hotel (yes, I’m currently beta reading one of Amy Tasukada‘s yakuza thrillers, why do you ask? 😁)

I’ve been writing in March. I almost wrote that I’ve been writing “a lot” but that’s an exaggeration, unless you compare with the barren winter months with a word count of ZERO, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a lot. It’s enough to make me happy, though, and my goal for my writing this year is to accept that I don’t have time to write enough for 6-10 releases a year, so I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished. I do love my writing time in the morning office with Hollyfelia, though, and I’m glad I’m back on a semi-regular basis. And Meeting Lucky is going well. I’m in love with the story and I look forward to finishing it.

Like I wrote in the beginning of this post: I have one gazillion pictures in my phone of my crochet projects, and here are a few. On the left, I’ve croched a garland for this year’s Christmas tree. Yes, I realize it’s a bit early to think about Christmas trees in March, but I’m a newbie, and if I want crocheted Christmas decorations, I need to give myself time. 😁 In the middle picture, I’m making a bunting for the grandbaby’s new bed. And to the right, a super-cute bookmark, because one can never have too many bookmarks, amirite?

This month’s book haul. From the top, two Agatha Christie novels translated to Swedish that I bought cheap on sale. Dead and Gondola (a cozy mystery about two sisters named Christie who has a cat named Agatha that takes place in a bookstore, so I couldn’t resist it even if I usually don’t like series or punny titles 🙈), Dangerous Liaisons, (one of my all time favorite movies), an annotated version of Persuasion (because one can never have too many editions of Jane Austen books) a special edition of If We Were Villains (a book that absolutely slayed me when I read it recently so obviously I needed a second, super-pretty edition) and finally I Have Some Questions For You (a mystery thriller that intrigued me when I downloaded a sample).

I was home alone for almost a week, because the hubby needed to go take care of a family emergency. So I ate all the things he doesn’t like (fish! he doesn’t like fish!), treated myself to a lazy breakfast and a pot of tea, wrote by the kitchen fire, and tried not to miss him too much.

March 25 is Waffle Day in Sweden, and the hubby and I celebrated accordingly. The waffles was delightfully crispy on the outside and tasted divine with whipped cream and fresh raspberries that I’d mixed with a tiny bit of sugar. My mouth waters just looking at the picture.

And then daylight savings came…and we’re back to darkness when my alarm goes off att 5am and watching sunrises while waiting for my 7am train. I hate the stupid time changes with the strength of a thousand suns and I wish we could just pick a time and STICK WITH IT. A plague o’ both time changes, to paraphrase Mercutio (this clip from the fabulous 1996 Romeo+Juliet shows exactly how I feel about time changes!)

And if that wasn’t enough, we got more snow. Let me tell you, that even a little snow that only stays on the ground for a few hours is very depressing in the last week of March.

But the snow disappeared and I celebrated with a cappuccino because we’ve bought a new milk frother. But Nell, you say, I thought you didn’t drink coffee? I don’t. At least not regular coffee, only decaf because I’m super sensitive to caffeine, but I can’t resist a good milky coffee drink on occasion. So that’s my decaf oat milk cappuccino with cinnamon. Is that a hipster-y coffee order, or isn’t it complicated enough? 🙂

I’ve also been immersed in Dangerous Liaisons every free moment. I’ve read it once before, when I was in my late teens, after I’d seen the movie the first time. At that time, I didn’t like it. I found it incredibly boring and wondered how they could make such an excellent movie of such a snooze fest. But it’s been 30+ years and I figured I’d give it another chance. I really love epistolary stories, and the copy I read was an old Swedish translation (that was kept in storage in my local library, so the librarian had to go down in the basement and search for it when I requested it, and she handed it over to me with a thick layer of dust, that’s how old it was) and thought that maybe there’s a newer, better English translation I could try and there was. So I started reading it in the Storytel app first, but I got hooked immediately and decided to order a physical copy since it felt wrong to read it digitally. And it’s a great book, I’m at the edge of my seat reading it even though I know what’s going to happen. I wonder what other books I rejected at 18-19 that I would love today.

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And that’s all. Like I said, an uneventful month. April will be different, we have lots of stuff planned, so stay tuned.

Tell me something you did in March.

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