Picture from the last time Jim was in Sweden, Aug 2016
Happy Summer Solstice! In Sweden we celebrate this day for real on the Friday near the solstice every year. Midsummer, one of the biggest celebrations we have in Sweden except for Christmas. Around this time, especially on Summer Solstice, the sun doesn’t go down. All summer long, we have 20 or more hours of sunlight which is something I absolutely love and miss.
Every year I tell my husband “Lets celebrate Midsummer in Sweden next year”. Tomorrow it’s my 8th time to celebrate it in America. Midsummer away from Sweden is never the same. Sure, when I do go and celebrate it in Sweden in the future it will not be the same as before either. I’m not a teenager or young adult anymore, I wouldn’t celebrate in the same way. I’m now looking forward to spend this day with family instead of running around trying to figure out who’s having the most fun party lined up. I’ve done that, don’t need more of it.
When I was a kid it was special to stay up all night, go pick daisies or other flowers to make a crown out of, or to try to find 7 different flowers to put under the pillow, or to dance all the silly dances around the maypole or eat strawberry cream cake that my grandma made or just being silly with my sister.
I get emotional the days before and the day of midsummer when I can’t celebrate it in Sweden. This day is about a week before my birthday, the sun doesn’t go down, it’s 6 months away from Christmas. I love this time of the year, always have. The light has always meant a lot to me. It means a lot to all of us Swedish people, because in the winter we never see it, haha.
One day, I will show my husband how it is in Sweden on Midsummer:)
My morning yoga the same day as the photo on top was taken
Today is also International Yoga Day. To be honest, I haven’t done much yoga the past few months. I cancelled my membership at Stamford Yoga because I wasn’t taking enough classes. Just didn’t feel like it. But I have told myself that I will try to do some kind of yoga every day for a month starting Saturday. Doesn’t have to be a full advanced practice, just something that gets my body moving on the mat. We don’t even need to call it yoga for all I care.
But I miss my practice that I had at DNA. I took several Mind Body Dancer Yoga classes per week. A lot of students did this because they thought it would be easy classes to get away with and they didn’t care about the program they were in, they just wanted an US Visa. But, I cared, I put in lots of effort into my practice and I enjoyed it (most of the time) and also, I had spent all my money on these classes so I had to love it, haha. That yoga made sense to me. No other yoga practice has been quite the same. MBDYoga is taught by really professional people who knows what they are talking about, I trust that they won’t ever let their students do stuff they shouldn’t.
I didn’t do any yoga today. Instead I joined my husband at the gym when he came home from work. Not in the mood at all for that, but I ended up really happy that I went. 40 minutes of pilates with all sort of weights to make it harder.
Jim is watching Breaking Bad right now and I’m doing stuff in my office. I watched two season of that show and really didn’t like it. Shows about drugs and stuff isn’t really fun to me, it’s just stupid. Anyway. Going back to all my stuff I’m doing.
I hope you had a wonderful Summer day!