Multitasking, lets beat it!

Happy Orange

If having breakfast, answering the call of nature, breastfeeding, washing the floor, taking a shower, baking bread, acting as diplomat and referee between siblings, planning and cooking dinner, counseling over the phone and jogging, all (well, not far from it) at the same time isn’t a dire case of multitasking, I don’t know what is.

That was years ago, it’s not at all like that now. For one thing I have stopped breastfeeding as the youngest one is now seventeen and hasn’t really been in to it for some time. As for the other stuff, some of it is still on the agenda, along with a lot of other things. However, due to the arrival of and increasing dependence on electronic work- and communication devices, I have taken the art of multitasking to a whole new level of exhausting, wuthering heights!

Happy Feet with Orange

For someone who practices yoga and meditation in a (so far futile) effort to obtain inner tranquility, it is amazing to what incredibly stupid lengths I can go in order to squeeze as many activities as possible into one day. Even though research shows that multitasking makes you more stressed and less efficient, l continue to preach water (mindful thinking and living) and drink wine (measure my own value as a human being in terms of my accomplishments).

The other day, though, I had a wakeup call.

It hadn’t exactly been a bad day. I mean I had not been run over by a car, I hadn’t fallen head first down any flight of stairs, I hadn’t been mugged, the house hadn’t burned down, none of the kids had been arrested...

Read more The Dying Art Of Multitasking

An All Time High

Sometimes        

The snow is deeper

The climb steeper

Than you ever foresaw

And making it

To the peak

Or anywhere near

Is no matter of course

And then

Out of the blue...

To read and see more...An All Time High

Of a Sound Mind

So, now it’s official: She is off her hinges, irrevocably deranged, mentally unsound. Bu that’s where you are so wrong. Crazy, yes, can’t run away from that one, but unsound, no. I am so full of sound, saturated with it so to speak, that I wouldn’t have believed it possible if I hadn’t actually been there...

...lying on a monochord, for about twenty minutes actually being an integrated part of an instrument with fifty strings attached lengthwise beneath a wooden resonance chamber. On the floor are metal bowls of different sizes, along with a couple of padded mallets. I close my eyes, and softly, ever so softly the Sound Therapist or, as he prefers to describe himself, the Listener, squatting on the floor, start plucking the strings, occasionally gently striking a singing bowl. The sensation is vaguely strange, unfamiliar, but pleasant.



The sounds come and go in waves, swelling, decreasing; one minute subtle, creating the most miniscule sensations within me, the next forceful, heavy tones reverberate through my body and the rest of the room.


The vibrations swirl through me, my cells now resonating with the instrument. I find myself relaxing, my mind drifting. It feels as if the composition of atoms that is me, disintegrates; every particle lifting off, like a flock of butterflies off a bush. They linger for a while, float in synchronized unison about the room, and then, as on a cue, sweep out through the open window...


Read more... Of a Sound Mind

Ups and Downs = Rock and Roll

Let’s get our act together

Break free from every tether

Be our own chief         

Life is so brief

Let’s take a bow

For here and now

And make the most

Of every toast

Ignore some rules

Behave like fools

Smile like a loon

Under the moon

Dare take a chance

Create our “dance”

Climb up a tree

feel we are free...

Read more...Ups and Downs=Rock and Roll

Go-Nuts Tart ...with berries

Here is, on request, a gluten-, sugar-, dairy-free tart. Like most recipes on this page it is only a suggestion, leaving room for your own creativity and preferences. The only problem with this cake is that, even though it is supposed to last for several days in the fridge, it very rarely makes it through more than an hour. It is very rich, but you still keep nibbling till you swear on your live mother’s grave that you will not eat anything for the next 24 hours. And then, five minutes later, you find yourself half through another piece.

Just like in life, you can’t stop nibbling. And just like in life, you may stick to the same ingredients, the same procedures, playing it safe, killing yourself softly with boredom.  Choosing alternative ingredients, stirring things (up) in a different way, makes for new flavors and exciting experiences, adding to your repertoire and your Joix de vivre.

See recipe Go-Nuts Tart ...with berries

You fill up my senses/Mainau

Mainau, the Island of Flowers, is like the most precious pearl in the beautiful necklace of towns, villages and pleasant havens surrounding the body of the ever charming Lake Constance. In a Germany I up till a few years ago associated with nothing but the industrial Ruhrgebiet, and excellent freeways with famed German efficiency carrying you through the country towards other and more alluring destinations.

Visits to different Bundeslände quickly upsided my and many other people’s misconceptions about a country which features so much more; Wonderful river valleys with vines clinging to steep, rocky sides, whose 

seemingly inhospitable surface provides the very minerals that distinguish and set apart the wines produced there. Quaint little villages with half- timbered houses, windowsills overflowing with pelargoniums. Rolling hills and mountains, and dark forests in which many fairytales were born. To travel over land and sea, everywhere being told and retold, often leading us to believe that they originated on our own door steps. Connecting us in a way we may not be aware of, as people’s emotions, fears and joys are basically the same, wherever we may come from.

And so we may  connect, in experiencing the beauty of Meinau...    
Read/see more....You fill up my senses/Mainau

Evening in Konstanz

As soon as I got off the train, it hit me. The sensation of being on a more southernly latitude. Even though I had left a warm, sunny, spring-rushing-into-summerTrondheim, this was a different thing alltogether. It was already evening, but it was still warm, and the town was teaming with people. Konstanz'  main communication artery, a wide pedestrian street, lined with outdoor restaurants, was full of people enjoying the evening, the pleasant atmosphere, a drink or several, each other or a comfortable solitude.

On my way to the hotel I passed a particularly inviting place situated, along with several others, on a small cobblestoned square featuring palms, several gas fuelled fireplaces, a fountain, and on this particular occasion; an adept Spanish guitarist. I promptly seized a waiter by his collar (well, almost, I would have if needed, I’m a sucker for such places) and asked him to reserve a table for me. He smilingly obliged me, and I quickly checked in to my room, freshened up in a jiffy and headed back, equipped with purse and my beloved travel computer.

The guitarist was still there... 

read more An evening in Konstanz