i don't even know

i got very very very sick last week and am still recovering. it's easy to put it down to season changing, the time when weather is at its most capricious. there was a sunny end of february, promising, hopeful: i went out in spring pants and a spring coat and i only expected the best.

it's so easy to be angry with yourself for being duped for the nth time. i say this with regard to everything EVERYTHING. but i get up again and am trying to breathe and see the flowers.

so i'm guessing this is a feel-good-but-with-caveats post. not much to share about my life otherwise. but my friend sonia came back from her 6-week stint in dublin, and this is what i got from her:

this is peat/turf-y soil (wrapped up in map of dublin! good job!). i've had a strong affinity with all things ireland for a big bunch of years now, probably induced to me while in university. at one point i should maybe pay a visit though, i think...? til then i'm just hanging on to this.

also, on my visit to my parents', we opened this wine: i took a picture just for the ridiculous name - "the monk's whisper"....and because it's become a pattern, since we started winning trivia wines, to get a funnily-named wine from time to time.

i went to an oscar-watching party at casa tiff and took no pictures, because why? anyway, we stayed up all night and i've been questioning whether that was a good decision ever since. sleep patterns shot to hell again, vulnerable to viruses, blah/blah.

but here's a gratuitous picture i took on feb 28th in the street, just because i was happy and there was a busker there playing "i follow rivers"

this is the street downtown where they sell the "things"....aaaargh, can you notice how i hate to reexplain? why in the name of....is this tradition so specifically romanian? can't it be better popularized somehow so i don't feel like i'm starting from scratch every single year? 

ok! the things are called "mărţişoare" (in plural). you wear them to celebarate mostly the coming of spring. they can be any small-type object that one may easily pin on a sweater/coat, but there are some symbolic ones that are predilect: a ladybird, shamrock, flower, blah (any nature thing), or a chimney-sweep, horseshoe etc (anything for luck). also the most important really is the white-and-red thread. you give these to people ...on march 1st or thereabouts, definitely before march 8th, because by then you have the Women's Day to deal with.

 

of course i have a strong preference for anything i can repurpose as jewelry, so i'm head over heels right now with this tiny mushroom:

also: the weather during the first days of march:

because it's traditionally  reputed to be fast-changing, superstition deems that beginning-of-march weather predicts how your year will go. like this:

1. pick a random day between 1st and 10th of march. (alternately, go by your birthday - i was born on a 7th, so my automatic pick is march 7)

2. the weather on that day is your yearly forecast.

of course i don't believe this, but i never fail to be happy when march 7th is sunny.