Merry Mondays

Mondays are usually days of woe, where instead of appreciating a bright new day most people (me included) moan and groan about a number of things. We moan about having to wake up early to go back to work after the weekend. We groan about having to head back to our usual daily routine. We grumble about the morning traffic. We mumble about all the irritating, yet needful things we need to do, not to mention all those little tasks we still have pending from last week.

In other words, EVERYONE hates Mondays.

So, instead of moaning and groaning as usual, today I have decided to focus on the GOOD things I have to look forward to this week. This does not mean that there aren’t going to be tough days and things which I am NOT looking forward to at all… but I’d rather look on the bright side this morning, so, here are some things which I AM happily thinking about and looking forward to today, yes even though it is MONDAY lol:

• The weather – today is dark, cloudy and rainy. My favorite weather. And yes it is cold and slows things down, but I love it. So there!

• Mushroom soup – I cooked a big pot of my favorite soup yesterday, and it will be just perfect for this weather too!
• Resolutions – As of today I will start going for a 30 – 40 minute walk everyday. In the rain you say? Well, YES! Believe it or not I enjoy it… I even sing ‘Singing in the Rain’ under my breath sometimes hehe

• Pampering – My hairdressing salon has relocated to a 5-star hotel (with the same prices). I always love going there because I feel really pampered and I can’t wait to take a look at their new place
• Chef’s life – Looking forward to baking a couple of new ‘experimental’ recipes this week. Love baking. It relaxes me for some reason.
• Friendship – Will be celebrating a good friend’s birthday in a few days and can’t wait to meet up and share gossip with some of my oldest buddies. We always have such a laugh because unlike many others, they totally get my twisted sense of humor hehe
• Love – Have also decided to take my other half to a trendy men’s store and buy him a serious tailored suit as a treat… which will be lots of fun because I have this soft spot for men in double breasted suits, not to mention three-piece suits, pinstriped get-ups etc, so I will be tickled pink while I get him to try all the suits I want, before choosing one to my liking… mmmm TASTY lol

In the end, there are no ‘little things’ and ‘big things’, there are things which make you happy, and things you have to go through even if they don’t. So, make every happy and special moment count… even if it’s a Monday! 🙂

Post-Valentine – What is Love?

Having just come back home after a week in Tuscany celebrating Valentine’s with my one and only – I admit to be having some internal thoughts about love at the moment. I don’t usually rant on about relationships online since for me this is a personal subject, and I’m not going to go into details in this post either… however…

Having the time to spend one whole week isolated from the world apart from ‘me and him’, had its advantages. Might I add that we knew no one in Tuscany and had almost no contact at all with ‘the great net’ since we were in a small house in the Tuscan countryside where internet connection was crap lol. To be honest, I found this very restful and very conductive to spending more quality time together.

Coming back home to ‘civilization’ was like taking a sudden shower of cold water. Backtracking through all the social media tags and chat attempts was tiring, as was the realization that for most people, Valentine’s seems to be either a way of ‘showing off’ in a kind a ‘mine is better than yours attitude’, or else a way of taking a dig at some ex in a ‘look now I have a new partner and he’s much better than you’ yada yada yada… status…

Here we go again…

Seriously, first of all, how can you compare one relationship to another? Yes of course you can compare the difference between the way one partner treated you or communicated with you vs your new partner, BUT the dynamics in each and every relationship is different, as are the targets and needs of each person. Also, if you are still going on obsessively about your ex… are you really in love with your new bf/gf? Hmm…

And trying to pit your relationship against someone else’s to see whose is ‘best’? Purleaseeee how damn childish. If all you think about is whether you are ‘ahead’ in some game between you and others, than you are not really focusing on your own relationship which should be your priority right? Relationships are not a competition, plus different couples want different things. In this case, you’d better do some introspection and see whether you are REALLY in love with your partner, or whether s/he’s just someone you are with in order to not be single.

After more than five years meeting almost every day with the same person, comprising almost three years of living together, I can say I am pretty qualified at this point to realize what both me and my bae want from this relationship and what makes us happy. Doing so before the first couple of years is usually impossible, since most couples during that time are still in their ‘honey-moon period’ where they show the best aspect of their characters to each other, and not their WHOLE self, and where lust often blinds them to hard truths. This is why it is so important not to rush into things. Then again, I’ve known couples who were together for ten years, then as soon as they purchased a home and started to live together, broke up within one month (true story). Living day after day together is, I think, an essential part of a relationship, not to mention being a ‘growing up’ period. 

I am very proud of the way me and my soul mate have grown up and evolved together as a couple. My feelings for my partner have matured and grown with time, as we have faced various adversities and problems together, from the every day stuff like fixing leaky plumbing or facing financial challenges, to the serious issues such as loosing loved ones and health problems. Three years ago, I believed we already knew what we were getting into and that we each knew each other as well as could be, however now, today, I know that wasn’t true, and that a couple cannot be really said to be one unit, until some time has passed and they have truly learnt what it means to share one world together.

Phew that was some rant! This is what comes out of having no internet for seven days! Lol, jokes apart – during this week, I fully realized that I am really happy to be at this point in my life, and that I want nothing more from my love-life, except for it to remain exactly as it is.

Just perfect.

Between Happiness and Doom

I’m not going to write paragraphs and paragraphs about how sorry I am that I haven’t written in ages. To be honest, I am not sorry. This is because, literally, I was too busy living to write during the last couple of months. To sum it all up:

1. Me and my bf bought a new house.
2. We re-painted said house, re-arranged the electricity and plumbing. Fought with said plumbers and electricians over issues, problems, mismanagement and parts to be bought and exchanged.
3. We bought furniture, fought with furniture stores when the orders did not turn up, ran after stores when furniture turned up with missing parts, arranged the furniture to our liking.
4. We spent money and wailed about it.
5. Finally we packed all our stuff and moved in, discovering more problems as we went along.
6. After all this, breathless and wrung-out, we went on a ten-day holiday trip to Wales (which was splendid btw) BUT
7. Left us completely tired-out again. After which we
8. Re-started chasing more stores about more furniture… realizing that for the next year or so, this would be an ongoing thing… *sigh*

And more or less, that’s it.

Much more ‘more’ than ‘less’ really lol.

Anyways, totally went off writing for a bit. Strange as that may sound. I was to tired. Too colourless. Too weak. Etc.

So here we are. I promised not to write paragraphs about why I haven’t written lately, and yet I did. Kind of. Hehe.

BUT when I find myself cozily sipping some tea on my new L-shaped sofa in front of our new 55″ screen TV, watching ‘Downton Abbey’ while my one and only hugs and tugs at me playfully (and no I’m not talking about my dog here lol), seriously, I ask myself, ‘Could it get any better?’ And the answer is totally NO, it can’t.

I just hope nothing happens to spoil this. I’m finally happy, blissfully and exceptionally so. And in that moment of realization, a tiny kernel of terror always spirals in my stomach, telling me that once everything is perfect, the only direction one can go is down, and that it won’t last.

Is it my emotional scars tugging at me once more? Or just, a feeling propheticizing some immentionable doom? Thing is, if I continue to be afraid that I will loose this, I will never really enjoy it. Never savour the moment. Never fully taste my dreams coming true. I try to let it go.

And yet, I can’t.

Three Years – Changes in my Life and the House of Parliament… lol

Three years ago, the Maltese government started building a new House of Parliament in Valletta, our capital city. At the time, I used to work near this new construction and would walk past it twice almost every day. Three years seemed so far away during March 2012, and I used to wonder where I would be when the new House of Parliament was finished in 2015, and what would have changed in my life. It seemed a lifetime away.

Well, here we are. The new Parliament building is finally ready and it will start being used later on this month. So much has changed in my life since the moment it started to be built! I am not even the same person any more! I look back and marvel at the fact that this has been the most productive, important and evolutionary part of my life, and it happened at the same time as this building was being constructed. I wonder if before I die, I will see its destruction as well.

Morbid thoughts aside, in March 2012 I was still a child. Now, I am an adult I guess, but still with a faerie look about me, if you know what I mean 🙂

1. I fought my way to freedom and became independent – in other words, I left the parental jail (or ‘that hellhole’, if you prefer even more honesty), and finally started to live on my own.

2. – I went up the career-ladder – I’ve earned two promotions during the past 3 years. Needless to say, my position at the moment is much better than it was, not to mention my salary.

3. – I found my soul-mate – In March 2012 I was dating someone else, a person who definitely was not my match in many things, and being also aware that we did not actually have a future togather, the relationship was quite pointless. Later on that year however, I met someone whom I was to really click with, and after two years and a half now, we are in the process of buying a place together too. THAT’s a nice jump right!?

4. I got published! – Although I have not totally abandoned the mentality and fear that once a story/poem is out, your heart has lost it forever, at least now I am writing freelance for a local magazine, as well as for a Polish tourist website. So, no I have not published any books yet, but am slowly getting there… I hope!

5. Self-esteem – All these experiences have led me to become a stronger and more determined person. While before I was more conscious of what other people thought of me, and how society viewed me, I am very happy to say that today I literally could not give a damn. Of course, I appreciate the companionship, advice and thoughts of loved ones, but I am not so gullible, naive, and pliant as I once was. I carry myself proudly and am happy of who I am. And whoever does not like it, can bite me 😀