Huge update!
It took me a while to find the energy and time to update here, but I’m planning on keeping up better with this journal. Actually, I miss so many things in my life. I miss writing letters and writing in my paper journal, I miss doing art. I miss drawing and painting. But more on that later. First about the trip.
Let me just say this : it was a horrible trip! I swear this was very dissapointing after the 2 previous years where we had really nice holidays abroad. Anyway, we left early Saturday 23rd (well, in the middle of the night actually) and took a good drive. After some mistakes we got to our destination at around 5pm. As soon as we saw the little town we were already dissapointed, and the dissapointment - and anger - even grew when we got to our “bungalow”. The house was extremely small - about 5x10 meters - which wouldn’t be bad if it was nice. But it was really dirty, the bathroom was a true disaster (we had a lousy shower and soon it turned out the water didn’t run true properly so we had to stand in a little bucket (I don’t know the proper word in English) while showering) and the outdoors was far from nice as there was no proper pathway towards the cabin. We had lousy neighboors as well, people who kept staring at us. Not that I cared much. The nights were very hot as we had only one fan to use for 2 bedrooms and we could hardly ventilate the place. Plus there were annoying musketoes and especially my boyfriend and my sister had an extremely allergic reaction to the bites. The first night we went out to the local supermarket - very small - to get some stuff. The lady there was very unfriendly! She didn’t speak any language but Italian. I’m aware of the limited knowledge of other languages of Italians. It wouldn’t annoy me if those people were friendly! I tried really hard to explain everything and in the end she just was really rude and almost threw the food in front of us. I was so angry. And it wasn’t the last experience that week. We also had a huge argument about renting chairs at the beach, and we were very angry as we ended up paying for an extra chair while no-one else did that. I have to say it wasn’t all bad. We had a lovely time with my sisters, had a great laugh really. We also had a great trip to Veneci where I managed to find the only yarn store in town I think! J I also bought some nice glass beads and we saw a nice part of the town. We were exhausted in the evening, but it was worth it.
I was so happy when we finally could return home! We left early Saturday morning to avoid to much trafic and the extreme heat in Italy. So we got up at 4:30 am and left around 5:15. The driving went ok though we still had more trafic then we had hoped for. Around 11 we finally drove out of Italy, into Austria and I was relieved and happy. At that point I was driving, and all of a sudden we heard a bang. I didn’t think much of it, till there was a second bigger bang and I felt the car struggle. I immidiately drove onto the parking lot of the nearby gas station. We checked out the car and saw there was a rather big problem we couldn’t solve. So we started calling our insurance. About an hour later we were taking away to a nearby garage. But that’s were the good things ended. We didn’t hear back from our insurance and the man from the garage couldn’t fix our car. We waited for 2 hours, but then I was so upset I started calling around. It took us 2 more hours to figure everything out, and then we ended up paying way to much money to rent a car to drive home. By then it was 6pm and we were all exhausted. We drove for 2 more hours and then looked for a place to sleep. The room we slept in then was just beautifull and so luxurious compared to our stay in Italy. The next day we got up very early and drove home in record time. I was so happy to be back home! I had missed my dog and horse so much. And my computer, my knitting room. My house really.
Now of course we still don’t have our car back and I don’t know when we’ll get it back. Turns out they aren’t able to fix the car in Austria so they have to tow it back here and hopefully they can fix it over here. Well, if not we’ll have to buy a new car, but honestly, we don’t have the money for that right now. Oh well, we’ll see what happens.
Of course I was home a day later then I thought I would be. I spent Sunday afternoon unpacking, cleaning out the stable and getting Blue home. After that I was exhausted, and I had a good nights sleep. Unfortunately I had to go back to work on Monday. Not my most preferred thing. My job is still as boring as hell and it’s gotten even worse as there are almost no students right now. On Tuesday I got the dissapointing news that I wasn’t chosen for that other job. I had really figured out I wanted that job, I no longer want to work here. I’m so sick of everything. I’ll have to keep looking. Oh well, I’m not without work so that’s ok.
I’m pretty much sick and tired of the Summer now. For all I care Fall can start, and soon Winter. I’ve never been a big Summer fan. And I find my house nicer and more cosy during Winter. I love long evenings/night, curling up on the sofa in front of the fire. I miss those nights.
During my holiday I realized how much I missed drawing and painting, and how much an artist I really am. Well, not really an artist, I would never consider myself that, but at least creative. We were visiting a small town in Italy in the evening and were walking through some small streets in the old part of the town. While I was looking up at the buildings I couldn’t help but thinking how it would be nice to draw those buildings, as they were so nice. I was amazed that my thoughts were like that, and it wasn’t the first time. Before that on the beach I really wanted to draw a little kid playing under one of the umbrella’s. The colours were so nice and the water and sky were so perfect. But of course I didn’t draw a thing. It has been ages since I did some form of art, and even longer since I drawed/painted. I miss it, a lot. But I can’t get my self motivated it seems. Well, I did decide on taking a look around for art classes in my town. I’m sure there will be some kind of art class for adults. I’m hoping I’ll be able to take it, due to my busy shedule of horse riding. I know I don’t really need to learn something, the last time I took a class - drawing nudes - the man teaching it told me he had little to learn me. Well, don’t get me wrong, I have plenty to learn! But these classes are often organized for people that have hardly any experience in drawing/painting. Mostly elderly who want to try something. I should take more professional classes, but I can’t afford going back to school and I can’t really get myself to drive to Gent every time to take a class. But I do need something to really motivate me. Another thing I’m going to do is participate more in the groups I’m a member off.
**Edit : I looked online and my town seems to have a proper acadamy for drawing and such, it’s only 10 hours a week and I’m not sure if I can make that L to bad **
So that brings me to art. I want to do more of my paper arts. I have to start with claening up my art desk as that’s a total mess again. I need to finish up a few projects urgently, and then I want to get started on a personal art journal. I bought the book “Artists journals and sketchbooks” and I love it! It’s so inspiring and nice. I really want to do more art soon. Luckily the groups I’m a member off seem to be low on swaps during the summer, as I would be to tempted to sign up and I have to little motivation to do these things. It would be silly to sign up for a swap and knowing up front I probably wouldn’t make the deadline.
Oh, and I also signed up for the Juxtaposed project of Melanie Sage! I'm excited about that one! I was first only going to sign up for the quarterly mailings, living oversea, but then I decided to pay the extra so I could have the monthly mailings as well. I'm sure it'll motivate me, and I'm really looking forward to it!
And of course I want to catch up on my letter writing. It’s silly to keep making excuses for my tardiness, I should be honest and say that I just don’t feel like writing. Well, it’s getting better, but still. I know for sure a few penpals have dropped me. I don’t blame them as I had promissed to be a good writer but I never was. I regret that now. I will miss those people so much, but what can I say? It’s all my own fault and I will try harder, but it’s silly to make promisses. Thing is I’m going to look through my penpals. I don’t think there’s anyone I really want to drop, I like all my penpals and they are all perfect for me, but I’m going to be honest here. I won’t look for new penpals any time soon either. About a year ago I started writing to a bunch of people and more then half of them never replied to my first letter. It hurt me deeply and I don’t really want to go through that any time soon. Plus I have enough on my plate as it is. First need to make it up with all my friends.
Of course I’m not going to give up on my current huge addiction, knitting and spinning. I’m loving it so much and it’s one of the only crafts that’s portable. Plus I can do it on the couch which my boyfriend appreciates as at least I spend a little time with him.
Another thing I realized over the holiday is that my relationship isn’t what I want it to be. A few people told me they tought my relationship wasn’t the best and at that time I blamed a lot of the problems at myself. My behaviour was far from acceptable at that time. But now, with the medicines and all, I’m doing much better. I’m way more easy going, don’t fight over everything and all. But my boyfriend is no longer the sweet and nice guy he used to be. I know he had a lot on his mind, me being so horrible and all the problems in his family and with the business. But I’m trying so hard now and he doesn’t seem to change at all. That hurts. It’s mostly he reactions sometimes. One of the nice examples is his behaviour towards me when others are around. He seems to like it to insult me when others are there. He did it over the holiday, luckily my sisters do know me better then his friends and don’t take his sayings to serious. I can stand some sarcasm and fun, but after 3 times the jokes about my small boobs are wearing thin. I mean, you can say something about it, I will do that myself, but after a few times it’s really hard on me and it hurts. Also we had this huge discussion one day because I was trying to figure out a parking ticket machine. He was talking to me all the time while I tried to figure out the machine - which was mostly in Italian - and at one point I got angry and asked him to shut up for a moment. He was angry at me because I always want to figure things out and never let him do something. It might be a male thing but he can’t stand it anymore that I try to do things. I like figuring out how machines work, I always liked that. I don’t see the problem. Instead of figuring out the machine he was talking to me all the time, so what was his problem? Then he got angry because I didn’t discuss with him how much money I put in the machine. He said we never discussed something together. I was like, is this really important enough to discuss together? My sister agreed with me that my boyfriend was being horrible. My sisters usually take my boyfriends side as they like him a lot, but apparently now they could see I had changed ‘cause they usually did see how horrible my boyfriend was to me. Well, horrible is a big word of course, it’s not that bad. We have good days as well. But I just don’t know why he keeps doing this. I think we really need to discuss this, ‘cause I can’t keep going this way I’m afraid.
Another thing that came to me is how little respect my family (not only my boyfriend but also all the other members of my family) have towards my hobbies/loves (ok, addictions …). The only thing they really respected was my drawing, but other then that they though all my hobbies were a waste of time and money. Well, reading was just a waste of time as I rented my books at the library. But writing letters, doing mailart and such was a waste of time. And of course my love for knitting, which they consider more then silly. It’s hard to really enjoy something if no-one around you respects it, let alone admire it. I miss that really.
Oh my, I have whined for long enough! Hopefully some more happy notes in the near future!