Sundays are never easy, and a heavy dosage of medication makes them even harder. Getting out of bed this morning was a challenge, but driving to work got a bit risky. I felt as if I was floating, just me and my Justy, without a care of other cars on the road or traffic signals. By the time I got to work I realized that this is just too dangerous. Maybe a bit of fun too, but my sensible side knows better.

So, as a result, I am banning myself from driving until the end of the week. This evening my brother will pick me and the car from work and will drive us home, and for the rest of the week I will get a ride from a colleague that lives in my neighbourhood. I may be a junky, but at least I have some responsibility!

Being sick is a bummer. Being sick with the kind of thing that even the doctor can’t pinpoint is very annoying. The blame for my recent ailments fell on a combination of lack of some important minerals, some leftovers of a minor accident last year and too much computer time, and it all broke out due to too much pressure.

Obviously, I will need to take things a bit slowly, but I was working on this one anyway. Meanwhile, my treatment relies on way too many pills. I have one before breakfast, and then one after breakfast and another between meals. Then there are more vitamins after lunch, and more in the afternoon, and for desert, I have another pill before supper and one more before I go to bed. Most of those are supplements of all sorts, but for ten days they also include some medication of the kind that comes with strict warnings about operating heavy machinery, driving or drinking. Unfortunately, I still have to drive to get myself from A to B on a daily basis and it is a bit dangerous. I do feel slightly high, especially in the mornings, so I try to be as careful as I can. Avoiding drinking was annoying especially on my birthday, but I can live with that. As long as I don’t have to avoid coffee, I’ll be fine.

The final day of our holiday left a bad taste, slightly spoiling the whole experience. Much of it had the feeling of just killing time, looking forward to going home.

We had to vacate our hotel room by 11 in the morning, and not come back until 10 in the evening for our transport to the airport, so there was plenty of time. We went to see the Sagrada Familia, and climbed up the bell tower. We took a bus to Park Guell and got a bit lost. We finally got there after a long uphill walk, which meant we were too exhausted. Unfortunately, this time, we could not go back to the hotel for a siesta, so we had to stay afloat in the sea of tourists and try a little harder.

This is an amazing thing about Barcelona. It is an unbelievable tourist trap. It is a beautiful city, and the tourists flock in, but let’s face it, Barcelona’s main attraction is still a building site!

We got tired of the herds of tourists by the afternoon. It was hot, we needed a rest, and there was still long to wait until our flight. We got back to the area of the hotel, where we found air-conditioned shelter in the same old Starbucks. At least it was enough to get us going for a quick dinner, a long wonder around a department store, and back at the hotel’s lobby with two more hours to go.

The bus ride to the airport was a quick snap into reality, where e were re-introduced to the Israeli lack of manners and the art of queue-crashing. Such a rude way to say Welcome Home.

Today I’m a year older. I’m also sick and have loads of pills to take, which makes me feel ancient. On the other hand, the doctor’s orders were to relax, but not sleep all day, do the best I can to be active, but not sit in front of the computer.

The result is a day off work, a few initial updates that do require the use of a computer (I even updated my about page already), and I will be out shopping for the rest of the day. I will take my notebook with me, so I will write a few things that might come up here later. E. is taking me out to dinner tonight, so there is plenty to look forward to.

Happy Birthday to Me!

We spent much of our visit to Barcelona in our hotel room, sleeping. It was good to rest. Being our old selves, we were in bed by 11 almost every night, despite the requisite siesta during the day. If this was my first time in Barcelona, I would have probably felt that I’m missing something, but as the main aim of my visit was just to spend some relaxing time with E., sleeping was good enough for me. On the other hand, I am not the kind of person who can enjoy a holiday of doing absolutely nothing. I just get bored, so it was lucky that I brought enough books with me, and that there were some highlights that made up for it all.

Here are a few:

• Xoccolata i Xurros at Valor
• Chocolate mousse at Valor (twice)
• Wondering around the Barri Gotic, and stopping to rest in Plaza Reial, to watch a beautiful model suffering in a heavy coat for a winter catalogue photoshoot. (Yes, there are pictures .
• The sangria in a tourist-trap restaurant on Plaza Reial
• A drink in the magical forest of Bosc de les Fades (I can think of a few people who would have loved that place)
• The visit to Sagrada Familia (where we took a lot of pictures, and climbed a lot of stairs)

I’ll start posting pictures in the photolog soon, and our final day in Barcelona deserves a post of its own.

Last Thursday was a day of excitement, as E. and I left work early to get ready for a holiday. There was packing, and last minute shopping, as well as a lovely meal in a café, and not much sleep.

The drive to the airport was a scary ordeal. The taxi driver was either drunk of tired, or simply irresponsible, as she was driving on the highway, cutting through lanes and slowing or speeding without regard to the road condition or the law. We were happy to get out of the car alive, only to arrive at the terminal and find that the check-in desk was not yet opened and a load of pushy Israelis are already ignoring any chance of an orderly queue. I was amazed to find that queue-crashing has been turned into an art form. It was one person coming from the right, seemingly joining the queue parallel to ours, while the other was coming from the left, trying to chat with us, and shortly pushes himself to the front, while calling his wife to join him.

The flight itself was bearable (with the exception of the non-describable meal, which we both skipped). The bus ride to the hotel was just something that had to be done and rid of. It was arranged through the travel agency, by a company of locally-based Israelis who also provided day trips in the area and made sure we know that. The annoying loud woman sitting behind me, who kept pestering the guide for information about the silliest arrangements, was complementary.

By the time we got to the hotel we were tired enough to just crash for a few hours, at least to gain enough energy to go out in the evening and redeem the lost day. We woke up as the sun was just about to set, and got ready to go. We found a Starbucks café near the hotel, and sadly, we were glad to find a familiar menu (despite the usually vile Starbucks coffee). After the short shot of caffeine, we started walking towards the city centre, to Txapela, a tapas bar I remembered fondly from my last visit to Barcelona. It was a nice walk in the evening air, though the place was further than I remembered. By the time we got there, the queue was proving the place’s popularity. With the kind help of the bar’s employees we managed to find a spot on the bar pretty quickly. I was pleased to see that the menu has not changed at all, and the wines were as good as I remembered. I enjoyed it for the sake of good food and drink, as well as for the sake of nostalgia, though E. was not as excited.

Our first day in Barcelona was short, and the sleep that followed was essential.

We’re back. It has been a busy day. More about Barcelona soon.

We are admiring the rhythm of Barcelona, or rather the lack of it. Relaxing early in the day with a Xoccolata i Xurros is a wonderful experience. I know some people who could reach an amazing climax only by reading the menu in this place.

I don’t like hospitals. I don’t know them from the inside very well, and this is the way I would like it to stay. Unfortunately, I had to be in one yesterday, when I went to visit my grandmother. It was sad to see her so frail and weak, unable to move and hardly able to speak. We couldn’t understand most of what she was trying to say, and then she fell asleep, and my brother and I just stayed there for a little longer talking to my aunt.

My grandmother had a stroke last Wednesday. She went for a walk with my granddad, and when they came back home she felt weak and couldn’t speak much. My granddad helped her reach the sofa to rest, and on the way the only thing she could tell him, in her very Polish way, was that he shouldn’t call their daughters. My grandfather, having lived with my grandmother for over fifty years, should have know that when she says something like that she means that he should call my mum or my aunt, or at least an ambulance. But since he has become very fragile in the past couple of years too, all he did was to just let her rest for a few hours, until my mum called and panic started.

There is a lot to be said about my grandmother’s influence on my life. I must admit, not all of it is positive, which is probably the reason I have been avoiding her recently. It wasn’t as much avoiding her personally, but more the situations in which she was present. All those family occasions that are more annoying than anything else, and all those holiday dinners. This should probably be a subject for another post, as there are a lot of good things to be said about my grandmother too.

She will probably take a long time to recuperate. The doctors said it was a very severe stroke. My guess is that at the age of 80, recovery is unlikely to be complete, which means that the whole family’s help will be required, and I will have to do my part too. I don’t know how things will go from here, but I have a feeling that things are about to change.

It is not difficult to notice that I have not been blogging much recently. There actually have been quite a lot that I was thinking to write about, but by the time I get near a computer, the thoughts are out of my head and there are other things to do. I’ve also been very busy at work. It’s not an excuse not to blog, I know, but it does mean that I haven’t been able to take my blogging breaks between tasks.

Here’s a short catching up list on what has been going on. I will write more about it all in the near future (I hope):

• My grandmother is very poorly. I haven’t been to see her yet, and I hope to do that once she stabilizes enough to be able to see people.
• We have been invited to some weddings. I hate weddings. It did get me thinking about a few things, though.
• E. and I are off to Barcelona next weekend for a short break. There will probably be plenty of blogging and pictures afterwards.
• I have been getting more and more into the theoretical and historical side of studying about music. I feel it is making me a much more careful listener.
• I have been a good girl, going to the gym on a regular basis. I now have a nicely rounded back side, which I am very proud of. My arms seem to be growing thicker as well, which feels a bit odd.

More soon…