My Christmas wish

 

I have the same Christmas wish as the last five years.
I would love to get an email from you.
To learn who you are. 
Where you come from.
Why you read my blog.
What my blog means to you.  
Did it help in any way?

I promise I will not publish your emails, nor misuse them in any way.
And I promise I will write back :)

My email: klara.soncek (at) gmail.com


I am looking forward to Christmas :)
I loved receiving emails first four Decembers from literally all around the world!  But I didn't get even one e-mail last December.


PS: I took this photo in the city center of our capital - Ljubljana - few years ago.

Unbroken happiness is a bore

 It is snowing, it is late morning and I am still in my pyamas in our warm home, reading a good novel. I found a beautiful quote there:

“Unbroken happiness is a bore: it should have ups and downs.”

― Molière 

 

 

 

It made me smile. My infertility was my down. The years accepting our childless life were very hard. But the wounds are healed and I feel at peace with our cozy, quiet and peaceful life.

I love snow :)

The saddest & shortest story I've ever read

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

by Ernest Hemingway 

Please, wear a mask, always when outside your homes

 

Pandemic times made me realize what are the things that count the most.   Health and loved ones.

And also travelling & being with kind souls are also just priceless <3 

A photo above: was taken exactly 6 years ago, in Yosemite. Lovely memories! I wish we will be able to travel someday again...

Covid19 numbers of newly infected people are horribly high in my country as also everywhere else in Europe (and in most of the world). 

A person very close to me got covid19, since we were together on a long walk just few days before she got ill and since I had a cold, I was tested. Luckily I am negative.

My decision: I will wear a  mask, whenever I will be outside my home (this is obligatory in my country and in many other European countries). I will visit only my parents, but also there I will wear a mask. 

Please, do the same... only together we can stop the pandemic.  

Servus, Mädchen! / 269 km cycled in 3 days

 

I love cycling with my husband - but he never has time since he works so hard. And I love cycling with my best girl-friend, but she doesn't have time for cycling with me since she has young children. 

10 days ago I was watching weather forecast and I realized that the last three sunny & warm days in a row are predicted for this year so I decided in a moment - that this is time to pack my bike bag and hit the road. Alone. 

I chose this path: https://www.alpe-adria-radweg.com/  

The part that takes you from Slovenian mountains to Italian seaside. Total distance cycled: 269 km (after Italian sea I needed few additional km to reach the train that took me back home). 

I loved the cycling trip! I loved being so focused in the moment that nothing else really mattered.  

Once a group of Austrian cyclists (all men, a bit older then me) overpassed me and they kindly greeted: "Servus, Mädchen!"   (Hello, girl!). They made my day :)

When I got back to work I boasted to my coworkers. And my boss asked me: "But is it normal to go cycling such a long distance alone?". He instantly realized that the question wasn't politically correct so he corrected himself: "Is it usual to go cycling alone?"

I smiled inside - I am very used to not being normal and not being usual. In the best wild sense of the word. It felt good :) 

PS: in case you wondered. Yes, of course I went swimming into the Adriatic sea. It felt wonderful - the sea took away all the sweat. And prior to that the sweat took away the last piece of sadness over my infertility.... Life is what you make out of it.

My grandchildren?

I took my nieces and nephews the other day to the swimming pool. The youngest is 7 and the oldest will be 13 years next month. A guy (few years older then me) that I know from work (but he is not a coworker) met me when I was with the kids. Few days later we met again. 

He asked - out of blue - we never really chat (I am not a chatty person): "So, did your grandchildren like the swimming pool?"

So  - there it was - the very first question that I got regarding MY grandchildren. Aged 47. 

I just replied: "No one has ever offended me the way you just did." And I walked away.  

(obviously I know that some women my age have grandchildren - but they are babies, not teenagers!!)

The vultures are already flying above us

Life has been busy lately. Not many things reminded me of my childlessness, so I felt I didn't have much to write about. But I do miss my blog (and having time for reading others), so now that autumn rain has come I will have more time. 

Covid19 has made travelling almost impossible so this is opportunity to visit (and take photos) some of the most beautiful tourist sights of my country. I took this photo of a beautiful alpine lake in the middle of lockdown in May and I thought you would love to see it.  

The longtime readers of my blog know that there are many children that I love. But the ones you love can hurt you the most. 

A girl - almost a teenager now - was on a short holidays in our place with other kids. We had a lovely time together, full of activities (highlight: swimming in a big outdoor swimming pool in a neighbouring town). In the evening the girl asked me: "When you are very old and in a nursing home - since you won't be able to look after yourselves - the employees in a nursing home would ask you - You don't have any relatives, so who will inherit your house?"

The girl used the sentence - you don't have any relatives ( she didn't use - you don't have any children). 

And yes, this girl is my relative. 

I don't remember when I yelled as much as I yelled at the girl. I explained that this is OUR house and that NOBODY will inherit it. When the times comes, we will sell it and use the money to pay for the care needed for our old years. 

(a note: of course we both hope that we will be able to live in our beautiful new home for another fifty healthy years and that we don't have to sell it. But who knows what the future will bring.). 

My husband asked me later that evening why was I yelling and I told him the story. He just shrugged and said: "The vultures are already flying above us."  I have always loved his sense of humour.

*** 

It is not the girl's fault for asking. She has seen some cases around where an old childless person gives all property to a nephew / niece / neighbour  in exchange for taking care. I could write many things, but I won't. One terrible sentence  - that I heard more times that I wanted it - is something like - They had to work very hard to earn this house. Meaning: the childless aunt / uncle lived much longer as expected.

Summer photos

 

@Slovenian seaside

Bread by Klara

Since I got some emails / comments / compliments regarding my bread I decided to share my recipee with you. If you wish to see a video (in my language) from a lady who bakes her bread, just send me an email to: klara.soncek (at) gmail.com  ... and I will happily send you the link.

INGREDIENTS

·         500 g flour (usually I put 400 g white wheat flour and 100 g spelt flour, but you can put any flour you wish)
·         13 g fresh yeast
·         1/3 teaspoon sugar
·         2 teaspoons salt
·         about 0,33 l of lukewarm water
·         1 or 2 tablespoons olive oil

Grid the yeast into a cup, add a 1/3 of teaspoon of sugar and a little lukewarm water. Stir and allow the yeast to rise in a warm place.

Sift flour by dumping it into a strainer over the mixing bowl (this gets air bubbles into the flour). Make a little space in the middle of flour and put there risen yeast. Mix with electric mixer for 1 minute. Then add the water, salt, olive oil. The exact amount of water depends on the flour itself.

Using an electric mixer, knead the dough until you get an elastic dough that just deviates from the bowl.

Then knead it by hand into the desired shape and leave it to rise in the rising bowl until it almost doubles in volume (aprox 40-50 minutes).

When it has risen enough, shake it on a floured surface and knead it with your  hands again.

I love to decorate the bread with the help of flour, thread and Swiss knife***.

Leave the bread for another 20 minutes to rise on a tray covered with baking paper (cover the bread with cotton cloth). Place the model in a warm place so that the dough rises again. I leave the bread in the kitchen and I make sure that no window is open.

I  always use my steam fan oven: 180°C for 50 minutes. 

(other advice is: bake it for 15 minutes at 220°C and then another 20 minutes at 200°  in ordinary oven where you add a pot with water – this creates steam that makes bread crunchy and delicious).

Using the baking paper, take the baked bread out of the oven and place it on the wooden desk to cool, covered with cotton cloth.

Dober tek! Bon appetit!

***Swiss knife was a gift from my bloggie friend from Switzerland. So baking bread in a way always reminds me how beautifully I am connected with many kind souls around the world who – just like me – are trying to find their own version of happiness in a life after infertility.

Sunday greetings

There are so many topics I want to write about that it is difficult to know where to begin.

Perhaps with the most important news. I had a regular check-up after the cancer operation. Everything seems fine so my next control is next year.

I had my last period 14 months ago so I guess I am now officially menopausal. I am only 46 so I don't feel comfortable with that. Not that I miss having periods - I still (and always will) remember how heartbroken I was many times when getting it. But being without it for good opens a new chapter in my life and I am still getting used to it.

This week I spent one working day with an older coworker with whom I usually don't work closely. He spent whole day telling stories about his three grown up children and his ways of helping them. He went on and on that the children are his main meaning of life.  Later on in the day we briefly discussed something about cooking and leftovers and I said that since I cook only for two, I master the quantities necessary so we (almost) never have any leftovers. Only then he realized that he doesn't even know if I have any children or not so he asked whether I don't have children. And I said no. I could see that he felt sorrow and pity for me when he apologized.

It didn't hurt, I got used to awkward moments like that during the last 17 years of infertility. It was actually the moment that I realized how easy it is for people with kids know what is their meaning of life. And I still actively think about it and create my own meaning of life.

I would like to conclude this post with some photos of beautiful Venice. I spent a whole day there just few days before the coronavirus outbreak. I wish Italy (and also the rest of the world) a fast recovery from the caotic situation.

Madrid photos

Many readers commented over the years how much they like my travelling photos. So I am attaching few. I took them few weeks ago, on my business trip. I hope you like them.
I wish I could stay in Madrid longer, I loved it.

How fortunate I was that the trip was scheduled only few weeks before the Europe (almost) stopped due to coronavirus. There isn't any confirmed case in my country, but there were cases in all the countries around us, so it is only matter of days when the virus hits also us.