Yesterday late Jakobína and Guðmar came in for a coffe on their way back home after cinema. Today, work from 8 to 4, unexciting and an evening with Monika watching america’s next topp model. We both like it and have our views on who should win. Anyhow, there seems to be quite a lot more to become some top but looking beautiful. I even think they are rather normal looking without make up. I am sure I would make a great model if I were younger, slimmer, bigger, with longer, straighter legs and bigger eyes. Maybe I would have to learn how to walk, too. When I was a teenager I tried to walk like a model, with the toes to the outside and got the effect of a unsecure duck. But that is a long time ago.

Outside it is summer, today at least and it is amazing how quickly you forget the bundled up freezing days. So today we sat in our break on warm stones in delicious sunshine. I got these great new summersocks, knee high, pink with black stripes and showed them to everybody who didn’t want to see them. Relaxed breakfast with my friend who stayed overnight, after an evening of chatting, work til four, shopping, a very nice visit and dinner right now.
Yesterday I got this really bad allergic reaction to something after I was some time in my garden, running nose and a bad headache. Who says that being outdoors is healthy? So, I was quick to go in again. Outside Jón Valur is whashing a car and I told him to take mine too, which he is doing. So, a bright clean new day tommorrow.
Just as I was writing I heard this noise outside and saw parts of treetrunks falling down: Valur has bought a chain saw and Jón Valur was sitting up in a tree, cutting branches. So, the big boys are playing outside.

Back from Portugal we could hug Jón Valur and Eyrún who had arrived meanwhile from half a year of austria where they seemed to have had a good time. As Monika left the flat downstairs they moved in and everybody is very happy. Jón Valur started to work again with his father, to his great relief (the father’s) and Eyrún got a job at a computer and things wholesale, to my and Jón Valur’s great enjoyment.
We got past the “first summer day” on the 21th of april and for a change it did not snow but the sun was shining. So now here in Iceland we say it is summer with 8 DC outside and start cleaning our garden from the heaviness of winter. Everything is coming nicely, krokusses are in flower and the narcisses are ready to bloom. The tulips still need some time and other plants are as yet just a promise for later times. There was, still is, a lot to cut back or cut down, a gardener we wanted to get for this job came once, walked through the garden with us and never returned. I have’t yet got the meaning of this: is our garden hopeless, too big, too small, fine as it is or did he just loose our adress? Be that as it might be, it leaves us, me, with gardenclippers and a saw…
The next day Marinó was 17 years old – so old, rather a shock for his aging mother – and we had a small birthday party with family, hamburger and sweets and he was very happy. He loves it to have his birthdaysong song for him.
So, life goes on at it’s usual pace. As the sun is shining once again into our windows I am cleaning, once again, throwing things away – yes, where DO they come from? Yes, I know, things do get lost, break, dissappear .. but here, at my house, they seem to multiply, get kids, grow and be happy. Not to talk about the flood of papers coming through our doorslit each and every day. The paper we pay for with full of extrapapers nobody asked for, a paper we don´t need and dón’t pay for either, pamphlets, advertisements, more advertisements … one big black plastic bag once a week and meanwhile the woods are cut down and pulped. Next door there is an empty flat and all these not asked for papers are put in front of the door and the next wind blows all this into our garden.

my mother's garden 

back again and pictures from our time in portugal

Me back in cyberspace...
Yes, I have been gone for a long time, I know. Mostly the fault of my not there and not working connection. Now I've got a little black antenna (wireless LAN PCI adapter) that is connecting me and Jon Valur with the big world outside.
Yes, I flew to Lisboa, a long time ago! It was a very relaxing and quiet holiday, going for walks, sitting and talking, making visits: things you do in holidays. I even got a little tan. On the way out, between Faroer and Frankfurt, Valur got a bleeding nose and blood was over all in this tiny space you got in aircraft seats. So we sat there with tissues, ice cubes, plastic bags and pesonal hoovering over us. In Frankfurt there was a rushing to change planes, but we got it all and arrived one hour late to 29 degrees and sunshine and parents fetching us from the airport. The house was full with pleasant guests and in the evening we played scrabble, while others watches TV or sat together playing cards in front of the blasting fireplace. Yes, the weather didn't keep what it promised the first two days, it started to rain and everybody but the tourists were so happy theat it finally rained that we could not do anything else but be glad too.
The flight back was without bleeding or rushing, but still, Valurs golfbag was left behind in Amsterdam and there was a confusion about arrival time so our children came much too late to fetch us, but we got home in the end and was I not happy to meet my bed again!