What determines your mood? Is it already preset when you wake up? Does the sunshine factor in? Is it based on how many things you have to do during the day or worries you have about the week ahead?
Despite the cloud cover, we have had intermittent sunshine all day. Right now it is beaming through the house like a great big global smile. It’s lighting up everything—the floor, the fish tank, the dirty windows. I still have to get out and go for a walk, but am guessing I will end up going after dinner which I need to get started soon: chicken and potatoes. We always seem to have pasta or rice because, for some reason, they seem to be faster and simpler, but really, potatoes take the same amount of time. I think the real reason is because I forget we have them and then they go bad, whereas pasta and rice stays packaged until ready in the pantry.
I got so much done today! If striking things off a to-do list doesn’t put you in a good mood, I don’t know what will. The house is sparkling clean (except for the aforementioned windows) and it smells good to boot. The last load of weekend laundry is rotating in the dryer right now and the groceries we bought are all put away, except for a freshly washed row of ruffly green lettuce leaves air-drying by the sink. The house plants have been watered, bills have been paid and taxes filed, and the magazine basket emptied and tidied. And having a nice long catch-up talk with my mom this afternoon made up a bit for the fact that Anders left this morning for a 2-week business trip.
Yesterday we took the kids to Malmö to what turned out to be a very lame science fiction convention. It wasn’t really a convention. It was more of an excuse to sell small plastic action figure characters and for a handful of diehards to dress up in stormtrooper uniforms and jedi robes. The main attractions were “stars” from The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, but obviously, someone was scraping the bottom of the celebrity barrel as they turned out to be Brad Dourif, who played Grima Wormtongue in LOTR and the guy who voiced Watto in The Phantom Menace. “Who?” I hear you saying. Yes, exactly. Lorenzo Lamas was there, too, looking jaded and tired. I don’t blame him, considering the surroundings. But how he qualified as an attraction at a sci fi event was a little murky for me.
I had been really hoping that the Science Fiction bookstore from Gothenburg or Stockholm would be there and they were, but alas, with no books (!!), only manga comics and Michael Moorcock t-shirts and 3-months-past-2008 calendars. Hrm.
We browsed around the booths for awhile—geez louise…how many Star Wars action figures ARE there in this world?? The amount must be staggering, honestly. Martin and Karin both spent their money on PC games and I found some used DVDs for 25 kronor each and came away with an old favorite (The Fabulous Baker Boys), a decent date night movie (Notting Hill) and a film I’ve been wanting to see for some time (Finding Neverland). Anders and I watched the latter last night after the kids crashed and I really enjoyed it. Johnny Depp with a Scottish accent was positively edible and Kate Winslet was at her very best, which is to say, not at all annoying.
The week ahead is a relatively busy one, but not too stressful, and there’s book group in the middle of it, which I am hosting. And in the midst of talking to my mom, while we were checking out something online, I discovered that my favorite clothing store now has online shopping! So, all in all, I’m in a pretty good mood and feeling pretty good about life in general. I hope you are, too.