Yesterday, we celebrated Walpurgis Eve (Valborgsmässoafton). We’ve been celebrating it nearly all our years in Sweden at the home of Mats and Annelott about 45 minutes north of us. Mats builds a bonfire on the hill above their house in a stone-lined firepit, and we grill hotdogs and hamburgers and then sit around the fire and catch up and chat with a group of people that we mostly only ever see the evening of April 30, since they are more Mats & Annelott’s friends than ours. Last night, Mats’ brother Mikael and his wife Lene were also there, and they are ALSO friends of ours, who we also only see a couple of times a year, so it was extra fun.
We don’t really celebrate Walpurgis, per se. Named for Saint Walpurga, who was canonized in 870 AD, it’s also a night to pray to God via the saint to protect yourself from witchcraft, since she was renowned for battling that as well as pest, rabies and whooping cough. Of course, there are lots of celebrations and festivals tied to May Day, including Beltane, and I guess what we are all really celebrating, of course, is spring. Today is May 1st. I can hear a blackbird singing from the window next to me. Anders just mowed the lawn, and there are tiny lilacs coming on the bushes behind the garage.
May means lilacs and blooming rapeseed fields. It means planting our garden, and sitting on the deck, under the sun umbrella, watching the giant bumblebees and butterflies and listening to the chirps of baby birds in the nest under the eaves. It means it’s nearly summer. Today is overcast, though we’ve had a week of beautiful, sunny, if chilly, weather. I don’t mind the chilly part, as I open the window in the bedroom and sleep like a rock when it’s chilly, tucked up under my comforter.
Mats and Annelott have a lovely old dog named Tizzla, and Mikael and Lene brought their cocker spaniel Eddie, so the antics of the dogs amused us all during the evening. It’s fun and casual, and for once the weather was agreeable. You never know what you are going to get on Valborg. We’ve been grilling hotdogs in rain and snow, and freezing temps, so to have a windstill evening with sunshine, even if it was chilly, was lovely…until I tried to stand up and found out how stiff I was. Sitting on a hard bench didn’t help my tailbone either, though it was more uncomfortable than painful, thank goodness. Yesterday was officially the first day my tailbone downgraded from painful to uncomfortable since my fall just over a month ago. To which I say, HURRAH.
I slept in like a sleeping-in champion today, waking at around 8:30 and then falling back asleep for an hour. Then I wasted a couple of hours reading and checking social media before I got up and made up for my slug start by cleaning the hell out of the house. I dusted, windexed, vacuumed, watered plants, emptied garbages and cleaned the bathrooms and toilets. I took Martin to the bus stop and went grocery shopping for dinner, as Karin is coming over tonight with her new girlfriend and Anders is going to grill (not hotdogs or hamburgers). I’ve even called, talked to, and activated a new AIC member, so despite my slow start, I feel like I’ve had a very productive day. Technically, I’m on vacation, but now the house is clean and it will stay that way for awhile. 🙂
May also heralds the last month of my year of daily good things lists on FB, unless I decide to continue. I am of two minds about it. I appreciate what it does for me and my attitude every day. I like focusing on good things. Even on bad days, when things are going wrong, there’s always SOMETHING good for my list. I am of two minds about social media in general. I’m debating whether to unfollow a whole pile of Instagram accounts of friends who share the exact same things there and on FB, meaning I see all their posts twice. I’m debating whether to unfriend people on FB who I have no real connection with anymore, no matter that we went to school together once or worked together once or were in the AIC at the same time. I am feeling the need to pare things down a bit and even out my social media presence in general. People keep telling me how much they appreciate my good things posts, even though I think they are rather repetitive (sleeping in is always included when it happens, for example). If I get 20 or more likes or ANY comments on any of them, it’s a miracle, and even though I’m not doing them for other people but for myself, my hope was also that they would help spark other people to put more real content on their FBs as well, instead of only every sharing articles to other site’s content. I can’t tell if that has happened at all, to be honest, though I’m not doing any sort of actual measurement. 🙂 We’ll see.
Anyway, the sun is behind a cloud, and it’s quite dark at the moment. I’m going to go lay on the couch and read. Maybe I’ll take a nap! Happy May Day!