My favorite places, my favorite pictures, from Iceland.

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The restaurant we went to for dinner on my birthday:

On a glacier:

Anja’s gift to me one morning:

Just a pretty place:

The Glacial Lagoon:

Amma preparing dinner:

A dead whale - but a cool picture nonetheless:

And…the waterfalls. Oh, the waterfalls.

Gullfoss (Gold Falls)

Skogarfoss (Skogar Falls)

Svartifoss (Black Falls)

I would like to start this post by saying I really wish I could be in two places at once, neither of which is here. Half of me wants to be back in Iceland, where my family is and where I love, well, pretty much everything about it. The other half of me wants to be in Wisconsin, for obvious reasons.

I talked to my dad last night and he sounds great and should be discharged tomorrow, hopefully. He still has chest tubes that are draining fluid and they have to be removed 24 hours prior to discharge, and they still were in yesterday so today’s discharge wasn’t going to happen. Because of concerns for his blood pressure immediately after the surgery, my family decided to wait to tell him about my aunt’s passing, and I felt really bad for my mom that she had to hold that in and not be able to talk to my dad about it. It’s just been a really hard week. The funeral was yesterday and I really wish I could have been able to be there. I feel so bad for my uncle and cousins.

So yeah, I’ve just been feeling very blah. Don’t really feel like doing much of anything. The good news is that today I watered the lawn, before I killed it (our friends very nicely kept the backyard watered while we were gone). Now I have to mow it at some time. I haven’t mowed a lawn in about 12 years. I still have to clean out the car, I still have to unpack! I still have to make dinner (we have a reservist coming to our office this week and I invited her over for dinner tonight - what was I thinking?) which means I still have to go shopping. And I’m just feeling so blah.

I’m feeling lazy.

I couldn’t get to sleep last night until 2:30 - when we were in Iceland, it wasn’t uncommon to get to bed at 2am there (4am here).  I woke up at noon.  I’ve felt very lazy since then.  My house feels very dark to me, despite opening every curtain and every window in every room.  The un-brightness of my house makes me feel even lazier.

I don’t want to clean. I don’t want to go anywhere.  I’m, just, blah.

It’s 33°C/91°F outside. I sat outside on the porch swing for a while with the kitties.  It’s hot enough that Yota doesn’t mind being doused with water - he just sat there while I poured cold water on him.  Must suck to be a black cat in the Andalucian sun.

Trying to motivate myself…

Trying…

Trying…

Failed.

Today was my first day back at work.  I’m glad I didn’t have off today.  I got home yesterday morning at 8:00am.

I went straight into work.  Then I went to the ATM and got money.  Then I went to the  bank and re-activated my credit card - I’m glad they’re proactive in fraud protection, but not when it’s 2am and I need to take a nap before I fall asleep at the wheel, except I can’t go to a hotel because my credit card is blocked.  After the bank I hit the gas station.  Next was the phone office, where I gave them all the money I’d just taken out minus the gas money, and still could only pay about 2/3 of my phone bill.  Fortunately, the clerk was sympathetic when I told her I had a family emergency and really needed to get my phone turned back on, because the way the Andalucians do business around here, my dad would be out of the hospital before I could talk to him.

Yes, I’m running through the moments of my day.  That’s because there is NOTHING ELSE TO DO.

After going back to work, taking a nap, waking up, going back to work again,  going grocery shopping, making dinner, eating dinner, working on some photos, and staring blankly at the carpeting, I officially ran out of Things to Do.

I stayed at work today until 7pm.  I think I should have stayed til 9.  Because by 9, I was counting the threads in the carpeting again.

At 10, I sat outside for a while and filed my nails.   And then I watched my nails grow.

One big difference I’m noticing between here and Iceland, particularly our many days spent in Stokkseyri: In Iceland, it’s Quiet.  And by quiet, I mean no sound.  No wind.  No cars.  No air conditioning.  No chirping crickets.  No buzzing bugs.  Here, even the wind is noisy.  I didn’t experience the levante last year since I was gone, but now I know what they talk about…though it is wonderfully refreshing, a brisk breeze to stir up the warm air instead of letting things get stagnant.
A wonderfully refreshing, brisk, noisy breeze.

So now it’s 10:16, and it’s very noisy and very quiet all at the same time.  No kids running around.  No one to talk with about the news, or about my day, or about the kids, or about the weather, or about whatever.  One quiet benefit is no TV - I don’t watch much of it and prefer to have it off most of the time unless I know something is going to be on (and it’s amazing how few things you know are going to be on when you never turn the TV on to find out!) , but for the most part, it’s too quiet.  I can’t wait for noise again.

I finally made it back home this morning. What a long drive - 8 hours by myself in the middle of the night. I stopped for a nap for a couple of hours in the parking lot of a hotel - my credit card had a watch put on it as an identity theft precaution because it was being used in different countries so I didn’t have money to stay IN the hotel, but hey, it was a nice parking lot. Top notch.

I made it in at 8:00am with the “Check Engine” light on and nothing left but fumes - but I made it. A few hours for a nap and things have settled down. The kitties were so happy to see me!

I finally got to talk to my dad today, he’s doing okay and progressing well so I am very happy about that. I still wish I could be home now, but unfortunately that’s not going to happen. He sounded better than I expected, and I’m thinking maybe he did all this so he could get constant foot rubs from my mom. One will never know for sure.

I am just now sitting down at the computer to work on some pictures, and wow! What a difference a good monitor makes. The pictures are so much prettier on my computer at home than they were before! I’m excited to get working on them. Everyone should get their monitors calibrated, it really makes such a big difference.

Keep coming back in the next few days as I post pictures, and be sure to check my Flickr page often as well.

It´s never good to get an email from home saying to call immediately, there´s been an emergency.

My dad was in the middle of his radio show yesterday and put the microphone down and asked my mom to take him to the hospital, where they did some tests and found that he has heart disease and had a tear in his aorta and he needed emergency open heart surgery.

And then the call at 4am that started with “Which do you want first, the good news or the bad news,” it just doesn´t get better.  Very gladly, my dad made it through surgery and the surgery was successful.  I was so relieved and glad to hear the good news that I didn´t even think there could be any bad news. 

But then I found out my aunt died.  Right at the same time my dad was going in to the hospital.  A heart attack.

Please keep my family in your thoughts - many of you may have seen by now that my dad is a frequent commentor on here and reads regularly.  Please also think of my mom and brothers and the rest of my family who are dealing with my dad being in major surgery and at the same time mourning the loss of my aunt, a very wonderful woman who I am regretting not talking to more often.  She leaves behind my uncle and their two children who are just 16 and 19. 

I wish I could be there with everyone so badly right now.