wsake

Picking up hundreds of fallen tiny fallen apples before mowing my lawn is my most despised activity in the garden these days.   -   Since the growing cycle is completely off this year, my mum got a bouquet made of dried stuff for her birthday, I even put lettuce seed pods in there.   -   After I gluten freed these already vegan CHOCOLATE WALNUT COOKIES by using buckwheat and oat flour, I have to bake them at least once a week.   -   I got W´s hot shirt at the first Mädchenflohmarkt here a few years ago, he looks so dapper in it - maybe I should become a stylist, just like everybody else. At flea markets I am always on the hunt for outrageously coloured Ralph Lauren sweaters several sizes to big for him. The only designer he knows by the way is Karl Lagerfeld, since he used to dress up like him for Fasching 30 years ago. All he ever wanted is a workshop the size of a huge hall and I tell him it looks exactly that way in those pictures. 

It seems unreal now, but exactly a year ago I had a crush on a quite young Dutch guy I met a few times. Once we went to an antique fair, where I showed him a DRIP BLOWL I really liked at the booth of an older couple, selling beautiful things acquired at auctions in England. He suggested this might be something grown up people would own, so instead of saying "But I AM grown up! I AM 34 YEAR OLD!", I bought it. We got some imported peppermint chocolates with it and when I was marvelling at this odd but somehow working combination, his remark was "Does it though?". And even though the painfulness stunned me at that moment, I am amazed by how fast a broken heart can heal - it puts the rest of my broken body to shame.

At first I turn up at my physiotheraphy session with bits of my blueberry smoothie stuck between my teeth and a few splatters on my upper arms. The next time I am covered in scratches made by my evil hop plant, looking like a flagellant. A week later I go all out and show up with arms red with sun allergy, photodermatitis caused by a touch of common rue down my neck and lips bruised painfully with oral herpes. Why can´t I ever be put together looking?

My sisters is currently renovating a little house far, far away from where I live, so sometimes I send her inspirational pictures of kitchens, gardens and kitchen gardens. She doesn´t use Pinterest (neither do I), or Instagram, or blogs, so they have a disturbing effect on her. She asks me in what kind of fairy tales these people are living, if places like that are actually existing. Sometimes I am afraid they do, making everyone without access feel miserable. She then ponders it might also just come down to the camera angle, when even I can make my place look much prettier than it is in reality. Still, lately I am considerably worried that I will never live in my fairy tale and I am pretty sure it is not because I don´t use Lightroom and can´t fix my camera´s lens distortion. I will never be hard at work creating beautiful things, capturing it all even more prettily. There are no impeccably ruffled grounds I might live on, no kitchen door opening to a shady walled garden. I will not appear dressed exquisitly in attire looking like it just sprang from the earth. At 7.50pm at my local supermarket I am just one of the sad creatures in the check out line, cradling three mangoes, a Lion bar and a bag of gummy bears, both of which I will regret a lot later on. I guess it is not only the pain, it is also being lonely. I am good at being lonely, I have worked on this for over 10 years now, so you could call me a professional loner. But sometimes I just want to hop on a bike in the evening light and watch someone eat ice cream or share some fries with. Or just walk by a river, without having to make a date out of it. Or someone to just sit with. Until then I do reverse RETAIL THERAPY, which works even better than the real deal - you can find my stuff HERE (if you are on Instagram) or HERE (if you are not on Instagram).

A thunder storm with heavy rain fall has damaged almost all my grapes, they look split up now, but they don´t seem to care and keep on growing plump and plumper. The next one a few days later kills my internet connection and I bite my nails for the first time in years. It is the only way I know how do deal with unsolvable technical problems. I also finally meet the mouse that has been dragging my cat´s kibble into my shoe rack and shoes for three weeks now, refusing to get trapped with cheese, chocolate or stock cubes. I can think of nothing else but mouse trapping and calling the technical phone support, so the next morning while I prepare breakfast in this preoccupied state, I forget to put the lid on my Vitamix. I shred the pestle into my smoothie and splatter myself and the ceiling with a mixture of fennel, bananas, blueberries and various supplements. I ponder for a minute if I should lie down and cry, but start cleaning frantically instead. The bucket of left over wall paint turns out to be dried up, but since I have to do something about something I get out a bottle of cheap acrylic paint from art school. It takes more than four coats until the blueberry splatters don´t look down at me that accusingly any more. I order the new pestle on my phone even before I throw the broken one in the recycling bin.

For a while now, I have been so impressed by anything I come across from BURROW bakery in NY - the label, the embroidered CURTAINS, all those COOKIE CUTTER SHAPES, the baked SHOP SIGN - I feel almost humiliated by that display of thoughtful genius. Their INSTAGRAM FEED makes me want to cry. I feel like I am just putting stuff out there, mindless and dumb - why can´t I be blessed with IDEAS LIKE THAT? There is a little story about them on BON APPETIT, too.