👟👠 Binge-worthy? (#10)

Hi !  Welcome back. I hope it’s warmer wherever you are than it is in my house! This week I am thinking (and writing) about days spent alone, power of words, daily rituals and the predictability of relationships. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you can join here or by clicking the button below. - Eve D.❣️

WEEK IN REVIEW

♟️ This was a gentle and quick week for me. Zac and I went to the chess tournament on Saturday - our first one - and it was great! I had been warned that it’s extremely boring - you basically sit around and wait for 10 hours because let’s be honest, chess isn’t exactly a thrilling spectator sport. But! What ended up happening was that I spent 10 hours all alone, in peace and quiet, with no obligations and a near dead phone so I couldn’t even lose myself in online interactions.

The result was that I rested, read a whole book (Slow Productivity, aptly 😄 ) snacked, and enjoyed the winter sun. I had my laptop with me, but didn’t even open it. Zac came and talked to me occasionally, when he wasn’t playing chess or with his friends, but otherwise it was just a full day of nothingness. There were lots of other parents there of course, but I purposefully didn’t engage with anyone (can you imagine the horror of 10 hours of small talk?? 😱 ). The whole thing made me realise that I do not get alone-days very often. Of course, I’d much rather have been lying on a beach or in a forest, instead of a school quad, but beggars can’t be choosers and I’m looking forward to the next tournament.

This weekend is also one of doing nothing. (Funny story…I hate putting petrol in my car (can’t explain why) and I have been driving on fumes this whole week. Now, the thought of having to go to a petrol station is enough to motivate me to be a homebody this weekend, and potter around the house. Weird, I know.) Winter is also kicking in, so we are going to cocoon ourselves. Micole starts writing exams on Monday so there is likely to be lots of trauma and drama here 😂, but next weekend is the start of the Eurocup (soccer) which is always a huge highlight for the kids and me.

FREE THERAPY

LANGUAGE QUIRKS

Untranslate-able Words

I am fluent in two languages (Polish and English) and can make-do in a third. Very very often when I am speaking one language to a person who does not speak both, I run into the frustration of wanting to use a word from the other language because it encapsulates what I want to say so perfectly. My sister and I have a list or words in Polish that just don’t have an English equivalent. So many more English words have to be used to explain something that only needs one in Polish!

Steph Smith has a list of 700+ such untranslate-able words, and it’s divine. She’s collected these from around the world, and the words give us an insight into the culture that came up with them. As Steph says, for a word to appear on her list, it must describe something that happens often in that word’s culture, but not often enough in ours for us to have a word for it ourselves. Some examples:

• Gökotta (Swedish): To rise at dawn in order to go out and listen to the birds sing

• Ellipsism (English): A sadness that you'll never be able to know how history will turn out

• Donaldkacsázás (Hungarian) - Translated as “Donald ducking” ( 🤣 ) or wandering around one’s house with a shirt but no trousers

• Tachiyomi (Japanese) - To stand in a bookstore and read a book without buying it

• Prozvonit (Czech) - To call a mobile phone and let it ring once so that the other person will call back, saving the first caller money.

• Seigneur-terrasse (French) - Someone who spends time, but not money, at a café

• Tima (Icelandic) - Not being ready to spend time or money on a specific thing, despite being able to afford it

• Ubuntu (Zulu) - Being kind to others on account of one’s common humanity.

• Age-otori (Japanese) - The bad feeling one gets after a terrible haircut

She named her word collection “Eunoia” which actually is an English word that means “beautiful mind”. Don’t ask me how it’s pronounced 🫠 (Fun fact: it’s also the shortest word in the English language that contains all the vowels).

RITUALS

Do you have family rituals? We have many, especially around special days like Christmas or birthdays. But we also have daily ones, and our most sacred is the 19:45 “game time”. That’s when the two kids and I meet in the kitchen, feed the dogs, take out the dessert (we would have eaten dinner about an hour ago) and play our New York Times games. These are mini online games, and we each play four: Wordle, Connections, Mini crossword and Strands. We play “together, but individually” and help each other out as necessary, usually while munching on cookies 😀 . I think we have a 900+ word streak for Wordle, and this is my record for the mini crossword:

Micole just beat it yesterday! She finished hers in 26 seconds! 🤯 The games are free to play, and they are super addictive!

BINGE WATCHING

I always feel very guilty when I binge watch a show, because there is a nagging feeling that I should do something more productive with my time. But that’s nonsense. Watching shows is being productive… it’s enjoyable, relaxing and I’m over feeling guilty about it. So I can confess that in the past month or so I have binge watched 3 series:

Clarkson’s Farm, season 3

I know this man is hugely problematic, but he does makes brilliant tv shows. I adore Clarkson’s farm. It is filled with humour, but also the reality of what it means to own a farm (especially in England). This season was funny, sad, poignant but above everything, it was hugely entertaining. Lots of pigs and piglets in this one!

Bridgerton, Season 2

I loved season 1, and intentionally skipped Season 2 because I knew it wouldn’t match up with the glory of the Daphne/Duke romance. But now I’m told that Season 3 is fantastic (it focusses on Penelope, if you watched Season 1) so I decided to catch up. Turns out…I loved Season 2 as well, and watched the full one over a couple of days. The romance chemistry wasn’t great, but it worked well enough form me, and I just loved the way they portray the whole period drama, while also incorporating classic takes of old songs (they danced to Madonna’s Material Girl at one of the balls!).

I’m ready for Season 3 now, but I’m not starting until they release all the episodes. Sneaky bastards at Netflix released only 4 and are forcing people to wait a month for the final half. What is this? The 1990s???

Derry Girls

This was a recommendation from a friend because it also stars Nicola Coughlan who plays Penelope in Bridgerton. This show is hilarious. It follows the lives of 4 girls and one guy, as they try to navigate their teenage years while growing up in Ireland in the 1990s. Did I mention it was hilarious? Each character is superbly crafted, the accents are too much (subtitles all the way!), the story lines are mad and the laughs never stop coming. The best part is that these are short episodes (28 minutes or so), 7 episodes per season, 3 seasons. I watched them all in quick succession 😂. Netflix.

TIME FLIES

We renewed Zac’s passport this week. This kid is at the “always awkward for the camera” phase, but the passport photo turned out surprisingly well. I don’t have the original of the last passport photo taken 5 years ago, but the one on the left was taken at about the same time. It’s just a 5 year difference! Honestly, these kids grow up too fast. Zac’s favourite thing to do every day is to stand next to me and see if today is the day he is finally taller. He’s only like 3cm away! 🤯 

BOOKS

Attached

OK, buckle up for this one. This book came highly recommended and definitely lived up to the hype. It’s all about the dynamics of relationships, and is an essential read whether you are casually dating or in a long-term relationship.

There are 3 main attachment styles that determine and predict how we will act in a relationship. Figure out which style you are, and which style applies to your partner (or date, etc). That will give you good clarity on why your relationship is the way it is, whether it can be fixed (if a fix is needed), or whether you are best off just to walk away. So, yes. It’s a bit hectic, but so useful. I wish I knew this 20 years ago! The three styles are:

Secure attachment style: very comfortable with intimacy, relationships. Confident in self. Warm and loving.
Anxious attachment style: craves intimacy, worries about relationships, lives in fear that partner will stop loving them, need affirmation.
Avoidant attachment style: equates intimacy with a loss of control, fights to preserve autonomy, pushes partners away, minimizes closeness.

If you don’t immediately know which style is yours or your partners, the book has very helpful guidelines and quizzes to help you determine this.

Unsurprisingly, the secure attachment style is the one we should aspire to. You both want to partner with this style, and have this style as your own. Unfortunately, people with a secure attachment style are rarely “available”, since they tend to have stable, long term relationships and are not often in the dating pool.

If you have the anxious attachment style, partnering with a secure-style person is your best bet. If you apply yourself, you can actually change your style to secure too. But even if you don’t, your secure partner will support you through your anxiety and you have a good chance of a happy and successful partnership.
Partnerships between two anxious-style people can also work, although they will have obstacles that will need to be resolved.

If you’re anxious-style (or even secure-style), stay away from avoidant-styles at all costs. They will destroy you emotionally, and might even drag you down to their level. There is little chance to succeed in such a partnership, but if you are in one already the book does give some good guidelines on how to navigate your relationship.

If you are an avoidant, please try to change. Once again, the book offers good suggestions on how to do that, but it boils down to self-awareness, and therapy. Avoidant-style people almost never date each other because there isn’t enough “pull” to make a lasting relationship, so they most often end up with anxious people, which is a recipe for disaster.

When I apply this framework to my own experience or to my friends, I am amazed at how much sense it makes. I am an anxious-style, my previous partner was avoidant. Enough said! Everything is now explained and understood 🤣 🤣 Going into the future, I now know how to spot avoidant-style people, and I will remove myself from them asap. Nothing good can come of it. The book also makes a strong case that although “secure-style” people may at first seem boring (they don’t buy into the drama!) they can actually make very exciting and fun partners. ie…don’t be too dismissive too quickly!

DIGITAL DETOX

I loved this. 250 people in Amsterdam got together in a church for a technology-free meet up. No phones in sight! Instead, they read, talked, painted, listened to music and simply enjoyed the company.

Thanks for reading!

That’s it for this week. (Want more? You can find past editions here). I hope you have a great weekend and upcoming week. Please keep sharing /forwarding to your friends/groups 😄 and let me know any feedback (you can just hit reply to this email, if you’re reading it in your inbox).

PS