It's going to be the year 1943 in my historical experiment next week, but so far my research has been light. I'm still going to observe a Modern Times Appreciation Day instead.
In honour of technical advances I did mop the kitchen floor instead of kneeling and using my hands, last week, and it also brought squeaky results with marginally less effort. (I was also unexpectedly domestic during the lunch hour today. It is apparently possible to unclog the bathtub drain with baking soda, citric acid crystals stirred into water, regular warm water, and a plunger. The fizzing of the base with the acid was undoubtedly the best part.)
I still have an unholy hankering after cooking rationing meals, like the Lord Woolton Pie or the National Loaf. But after the combined despair of parent and siblings about my 'Calvinist' tendencies — and due to a fear of being what one would call 'pietätslos' in German by imitating scarcity where no scarcity truly exists — the hankering has been suppressed.
On Saturday, Mama and I went to a bookshop. The line of shoppers waiting for the cash registers was so dense that I'm keeping an eye on my smartphone's corona warning app, but so far there has been no alert. That said, we were all checked for vaccination passes, tests, or proof of convalescence on the way in. Also, I kept moving while browsing the shelves themselves. I've begun reading both the Swedish learning calendar, augmenting past studies in Duolingo, and the memoirs of former German chancellor Willy Brandt, purchased there in preference to the English-language fiction or non-fiction that feels more convenient to read online at present.
Regarding work, I'm anxious and am having trouble sleeping: reading or watching YouTube videos well past 2 a.m., still staying awake after that and thinking of work even when sleeping, and waking up later on weekends. That said, maybe I will eventually adopt the zen attitude of letting go of wishes and wants, and accepting the world as it is. My former direct manager, maybe in a similar boat, has recommended reading the Stoic philosophers.
It was a windy day, intensely so in the late morning, with unpleasant-looking rain and a constant draughty whistling and roaring even last night, which certainly didn't help my sleep.
This evening the TV city news reported that, while pressures on Intensive Care Units in Berlin's hospitals have lessened due to the more benign symptoms of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, hospital waiting rooms are on the contrary seeing a rise in activity. Happily? oblivious as ever, a long quiet queue of anti-Covid-safety-measure protesters illegally walked down the street on which I live, an hour or two before the show.
Anyway, my two youngest brothers ordered Chinese food for dinner, so I am well fed, and I had my daily exercise. Tomorrow we'll be getting Covid-tested and going to a concert with Mama, in honour of Papa's birthday. Papa would have been 69 this year.
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