Cozy Chat – January

Hello my Lovelies 🙂

How has your first month of 2024 been so far? Let’s sit down with a cup of your favourite drink and have a chat. Nothing can help you better coping with all your stress, thoughts, and maybe problems than a chat with a good friend. Sometimes you don’t need to find solutions for your problems, sometimes it is healing when you can just talk about it. So here we are! What’s on your mind? I’m here and I will listen. 🙂
Ok, you seem to be a little bit quiet today, so I will start and you can join later.

Maya

As you know, I have a little pug girl called Maya. She is going to be 10 in May of this year. She is so adorable and has a really kind and good heart. We discovered two spots on her which were black, looked like blood blisters, and they got bigger and bigger, so we decided to go to her vet. Fortunately, it’s nothing bad, so we got some medical liquid which we need to put on these spots. And indeed the spots are getting smaller. That is really good because I had a panic attack that it could be something bad.
The second thing we discovered is that Maya seems to able to see better. She has an eye disease due to which she will be blind one day – by her eyes turning black, like a curtain in front of the pupil. But we are going to a special vet just for eye care where we get special eye drops for her. At the end of November we were there and we need to give her a third medicine. But since then I have the feeling that Maya can see better. You can see her lovely brown eyes better and she watches telly again – which we can tell because she likes to „talk“ about what she sees (like barking at horses on the screen). Even when we are out for a little walk I don’t need to move her around manhole covers because she is able to do this by her own. And because of the better sight, she has become quite cheeky again. It is so amazing.

Birthday Month

January is the month of the year with the most birthdays and other social duties in my family. It’s the birthday of both of my grandparents and they do also celebrate their wedding anniversary. Then a few of our friends have birthdays as well as my father in law.
I visited my grandpa at his birthday and there were just elderly people, nobody younger than 80. I felt too young for the group and their topics. So it was quite a quick visit because I knew that we would see us later this month.
So just nine days later, the whole family celebrated the wedding anniversary of my grandparents – the 65th anniversary. That is really a long time. We celebrated in a restaurant in a nearby village. It was really loud, which is typical for my family. After dinner, we talked a little bit and then everybody got up and the sister of my grandma said that it was time to go and everybody went outside. What was a little bizarre was that everybody was talking to each other and seemed to have a good time. That’s quite strange for my family. Well, we just said goodbye and went home.
One day after the big celebration we went to my grandma’s birthday. This time it was different because there were just my grandparents, my husband, and I. So we talked for two hours and had a lovely time. It wasn’t loud at all. I mean, I have trouble with my hearing and louder voices could be better to hear for me but no, I like a quiet place and voices which aren’t too loud. I could focus better in this quiet situation.
My father in law couldn’t celebrate because he had to work nightshifts, so we will visit him one week later.
With our friends we didn’t celebrate but we met later or are looking for a date to see each other again.

Trip to Japan

My husband has a friend from the Philippines who lives in Kumamoto, Japan, and now we have a date when we will meet each other. We will plan one day in Osaka and one day in Kyoto, so his friend can meet us in Osaka. Both have to decide if they just want to have a cup of coffee, do some sightseeing, or maybe spend some time at the Universal Studios together. I will just book the hotel and the day in Osaka I will not plan, so both have the time they need. 🙂 I haven’t got any ideas for Kyoto at the moment but I think that I will have a look at our travel guides in February when I have some vacation time. 🙂
Our days in Tokyo and Kamakura aren’t planned as well, so I will check the guides and in February I can tell you more. 😉 One thing I already know is that we will buy a Japan Rail Pass for the Shinkansen again. Although the price is gone up by about 60% last year, I still think it is worth its price.

Journaling + Reading

Well, I do some journaling; not every day but I journal and I have changed my system. My next post will be about this topic. So, wait for next week and there is one thing I can tell you in advance: I use two Hobonichis and it helps me a lot.

As I hoped I finished one book and listened to two audiobooks so far. I read „The Creak on the Stairs“ by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir, an Islandic author. I came across her name because of my favourite author, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. She mentioned Eva’s name in the „Thank you“-section of her novel Lok, lok og læs (in German „Nacht“, I could not find an English translation) because Yrsa used some characters in her book which are main characters in Eva’s books. I love the wildness and roughness of Iceland and the translation into German is really good to read, so I decided to go for Eva. And it was a great choice. I love her characters, they are not over the top and you can relate with the emotions of the people in the book. Because of all that, I do already have her second book at home. 🙂

My first audiobook was „Lucky Charm“ by Anabel Chase. I love a good cozy mystery. This is the fourth book of her „Spellbound“ series and it is really lovely. It is a mix of fantasy and mystery: You have vampires, werwolves, and fairies in this universe. It is different kind of murder mystery in comparison to the „hard murder mysteries“ which I also like to read. I like listening to such „lighter books“ when I do some cleaning, for example.

The second audiobook was „Monster Lawyer“ by Royce Buckingham. I have just two out of ten hours left to listen to and then will have finished it. It is more an urban fantasy book, I’d say. To be honest, I bought it just because of the title and I thought it could be funny. Well, it is a good audiobook. The German speaker has a pleasant voice, so it is easy to listen to.

If you would like to know more or details about the things I read, please let me know and I‘ would’ll blog about it for you to read.

Korean Drama

I tried something totally new for me: I started watching a Korean show.
Well, I have to say, that on Netflix are two Korean reality shows which were really interesting to watch. The first one was „Siren: Survive the Island“ where women in though jobs fight in groups on an island; and the second one was „Physical: 100“ where really, really fit people compete against each other.
A good friend of mine told my that she loves Korean drama shows and should give them a try. I mean, she loves movies like „The Avengers“ or „John Wick“ and she plays games like „Baldur’s Gate“, so why not trust her.

Oh boy, what have I done. I searched for Kdrama at Netflix and just clicked on a show called „King the Land“. Well, it absolutely is different. Normally, I’m not into romance but I will watch it to the end. There are several parts which I find interesting because it’s different from American, British, or German television series. First thing is the sounds; for example: Someone give a thumbs up and then there is a bling. These sounds are really cute. The second thing is the camera movement. Sometimes you can see every eye contact from nearly every angle or the faces of the characters are seen very closely so you get the feeling as if they are next to you. The third thing is food which plays a part in nearly every episode and it looks so yummy. I’m still not convinced that romance television series are my thing but I really could watch more shows from Korea.

So, if you have any favourite series from a different country and that’s worth a try, please do let me know. I like to explore new shows from all over the world. 🙂

I think that these were my main topics of the month so far. Well, we had board game night yesterday and it was a lot of fun. However, we played one game which was tough for me to play and I can’t talk about it at the moment but maybe a next time.

I wish you a lovely rest of the weekend and a wonderful start into the new week. 🙂

Love to you all,
Your EvilJournalista aka Chrissi