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In New York

Zofnass park

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

August 17, 2020 

I did not want to get out of bed this morning🥴 Thor was all snuggled up against my body, hubby sleeping next to me and I could barely open my eyes. I could easily have slept for another hour, but I knew if I just got up without thinking about it I would feel so much better. I put on sweatpants and a sweater and walked out to the living room. I did a guided 20 minute kundalini yoga practice and then directly took a shower. By this time the boys had gone out of bed and the day had officially started. I was still a bit tired but way more awake than if I had skipped my practice. 

On Saturday we had a bit of colder temperatures outside in the morning, so we decided to bring Thor to a park that we haven’t been to before, Zofnass Family Preserve, Westchester, NY. We were the only ones in the entire forest which was kinda nice (and quiet). Thor took charge and was leading the way hahah. For being such a small little guy he can really walk far and he seems to love hiking as much as we do. We have to carry him at some places of course, like up bigger rocks, but then when the ground looks better he immediately wants to go down and walk by himself, it’s like he knows, so cute. We ended up walking back after about half of the trail cause the sun was coming up and Thor started to look tired, but it was still about 3 miles which was a perfect start of the weekend. We bought coffees on our way home.
In the afternoon, we were on the terrace, J was working out with the weights we have and I did yoga. It got pretty windy up there after awhile so I ended up moving my practice inside.
Yesterday, after morning coffee, I ran around cleaning and organizing the apartment (as always hahah) even though I said to J that I didn’t want to clean, but I had so much energy and I was motivated to declutter our home. When there’s stuff everywhere it is hard to feel at peace so I constantly move things around or walk around trying to find stuff to get rid of. I can’t wait to move so I can get furniture that makes sense and closed cabinets instead of open shelves. But for now, it is what it is:) 

We could’t spray Thor with mosquito spray of course (deet is toxic to dogs),
but we used spray on ourselves and also put on these mosquito-repellent wristbands
I wish I had this on our adventurous vacations, like on Kauai, so handy
It’s a waterproof reflective Fanny pack, fits my phone and keys,
perfect for hikes or just to take Thor out for a walk

In Connecticut

stormy season has begun

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

August 4, 2020

Thor keeps finding new hiding spots:)
For more cute pics of Thor, follow his instagram: @athorablenyc

We just had the tropical storm Isaias passing by. Blue sky now. Giant trees across from our apartment came down and the roof of the apt building across started to come off a couple of hours ago. We lost power at one point to. Storms here always sounds and looks worse from the inside our apartment than they usually are, and I always freak out a little bit. It was very windy and the streets are green from leaves now, but not too bad.  When we were in Florida in July there was apparently a tropical storm hitting CT then as well, and these two are just the beginning of this hurricane season. I read that because of the warmer temperatures this year storms might not be more than usual but stronger. We’ll see. 

This weekend we drove to costco, our first outing in three weeks and first visit in a store together since early March. To our surprise there weren’t many people, quite pleasant shopping actually. Of course there’s always idiots who doesn’t understand what social distancing means, but at least everyone had their face covered. They didn’t have as much food and stuff as usual and the humidity these days makes veggies and fruit kinda bad, but Jim still got some meat and I got lots of berries. I also, as always, found some cozy clothes:) Pjs, leggings and a pair of sweatpants. Back home J watched the first hockey game of the year (so weird to see hockey in August), I washed the new clothes and wiped off all the food we bought and ran around organizing like always. Gaah, daily life is just about constantly cleaning and organizing, hahah. 

On Sunday we worked out together in the living room which was nice but very sweaty. I wonder if there’s something wrong with our air conditioner, sometimes it’s on all day long and other days it can be a couple of hours in between, and it can say 78 degrees inside and we feel cold or it says it’s 71 and sweat is dripping down our bodies, weird. And speaking of air conditioner, I think that’s the one to blame for why I’m now not feeling too awesome. I have been congested, tired and had a headache for almost a week now and this morning I woke up with a swollen throat. And no, it does not seem like covid symptoms (although you never know), it’s probably just a cold and body reacting to the air conditioner, the hot temperatures outside and the fact that we have spent the past month mostly inside among dust and stuffy air.
In the afternoon on Sunday we drove over to Daniela and Gareth. Little George turned 1 last week and we had a fun gift for him (so fun that I had to put it away before Sunday so I wouldn’t play with it myself hahah). I don’t know who thought this toy was more fun, baby G or us grownups 😀 It was a veggie garden teaching thing that I ordered online. Aah, it was so nice to see the three of them! I saw D and baby G before my birthday but this was the first time since February we actually spent time with others at their house. We stayed for two hours, Thor isn’t used to be alone anymore so we didn’t want to be away from him for too long. 

All of last week I tried to take it a bit easier since I didn’t feel good and I was ready for a busy week this week, but well, I feel worse. Gentle yoga poses, breathing exercises and some pilates is just perfect for me now until I feel well again. Jim found out today that he won’t go back to the office until earliest January 2021, so not much is going to happen anytime soon anyway hahah, I can take my time to feel better:)

On Monday at 6:20 am I took Thor for an hour long walk.
It’s good to take him for walks that early before the sun comes up and the wind turns into a warm blanket
Little cutie really loved that onion (part of the toy we gave)
One giant tree blocking the entrance and there were more trees that had fallen
and landed on the parking lot (we think it may have been on top of someones car).
Hard to see on this picture but some pieces of that roof is gone
When it was calmer outside and blue sky we took Thor for a walk.
This is how it looked outside the church by us

In Stamford

Day 9

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

July 20, 2020

Helluuu! We still don’t know anything about the whole house thing, so I have nothing to tell you about that hahah. We are still keeping an eye or two open for other homes all over America (and the world…) while we are waiting, cause you never know. Of course it is a bit difficult when we can’t go visit places and see for ourselves in person. In the beginning of this year we made a few decisions; I would go back to dance – meaning, take the train into Manhattan more often and focus on really go back to be a part of the dance world again, possibly perform – and then our main focus for us as a married couple we would take all the time we could to look for homes and research areas. But corona destroyed those plans. This virus has been shattering a lot of people’s plans, and frankly, it sucks. But, it is what it is, we can’t do anything about it. Noone planned for a pandemic. So we are doing the best we can. There is no dance world to go back to in person, everything is online for now until at least January 2021 (at least around here) and traveling isn’t exactly recommended. But we do eventually want to move. We are staying here probably until august next year (that’s when our current lease is up) so we have a little bit of time, but also not really. We’ll see. 

And what have we been doing during our quarantine? Today is day 9. We haven’t noticed any symptoms so far, but we know that we could still be carriers. It would be nice to go get a test after these two weeks, just to see if we have developed any antibodies or not. For now, we are fine staying at home. It is very hot and humid outside these days. I went for a morning walk by myself this morning before other people were out and it was already 27 degrees and 80% humid. I don’t mind it though:) This past week we haven’t done much, I don’t even remember what we have been doing really. I have facetimed with my sister and niece and we have enjoyed our terrace. On Saturday, after a curbside pickup we decided to take Thor for a little walk along the water before driving back. Felt good to leave the apartment and our neighborhood for a second. It wasn’t hard to keep our distance, and people we met also had masks, unlike in the south. That was probably the most exciting thing we did last week haha. Life is quite simple:) 

All of last week, campers filled up Latham Park in downtown as a demonstration for BLM.
They are now gone since they didn’t have any permits.
Yesterday they apparently painted all of the downtown streets

In Florida, Travel

Let the quarantine begin

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

July 13, 2020

We are back from Florida. Quarantine Day 2 today. 

Our trip was nice, a mix of research and vacation. We got to enjoy the beach and then we drove around to check different areas. The city hasn’t recovered from the class 5 hurricane that hit two years ago, so it is a bit hard to get an idea of if we would like to live there or not. The house is great, the neighborhood is so cute and we found some nice beach areas so I think I can picture us living there, but then, the downtown or whatever we wanna call it is still somewhat under construction, lots of buildings and houses looks like crap and we would have to drive for twenty minutes to grocery stores and stuff. But, on the other hand, this would be the case in most American cities I’d say, at least that’s how I’ve found it to be here in this country = nothing is close by, drive everywhere, strip mall here and strip mall there and in between there’s nothing going on. 

I originally said no to Florida because of a few things; hurricanes, alligators plus it’s really hot and humid during summer. BUT, this house was built right before the hurricane 2018 and nothing happened to it (the fence was broken a little but the house was fine) and the neighborhood is not in a flood zone. It is possible to meet an alligator but you probably won’t, plus if it’s not an alligator it can be a bear (like here in CT) or dangerous snakes or coyotes or whatever other animals that lives in this country hahah, you can’t escape nature and wild life.
And about the heat… I have only been to Florida during colder months (except when we went to Disney World in September which was hot but that’s not by the ocean), so all I knew about the humidity and hot weather is from what others have told me,..and people hate it, even up here, people in New York complain about the humidity all the time (heck, even the Swedish people complain about warm weather and they have it for like ten days a year hahah). I happen to be ok with it and if it gets too hot, I’ll just go inside to enjoy the air conditioner. But, I didn’t know what to expect, how bad could it be? Well, it was not that bad. Yes, in the middle of the day when it was 33°c and very humid, I felt a little dizzy…because I was dehydrated, other than that, I loved it. Thor might have to be inside a lot during the summer months, but we did see plenty of dogs, even fluffy ones, and they seemed fine. 

We have to take some time now to really think about it. Some things to think about; Is the house going to be too big for us, too much maintenance ? Do we like this city enough to see us live there? How could our lives look like if we live there? What is our priorities in life? etc etc… We will have to make a pros and cons list. We can’t buy the house this second anyway (it’s not for sale just yet, some this and that stuff which will take some time), so we have some time to think:)

And now, we are in quarantine for at least 14 days. Not that it will change much from before our trip, we have been isolating since March, but now we make sure to always wear our masks if we leave the apartment, and we only leave if Thor needs to potty. I would like to go for walks by myself sometimes to get some exercise but that has to be in the morning or maybe late at night then when there’s less/no people outside (plus it is very hot and humid here in Connecticut now in the middle of the day so it’s tough to walk anyway). But 14 days isn’t that long so I think we’ll be ok:) 

In Connecticut, Stamford

First summer days

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

June 1, 2020

Hi hello how are you? We are doing good over here. Thor still has stones in his bladder but doesn’t seem bothered by it, however he still has ear infections and it’s driving us all a bit nuts. Jim and I have had several sniffles since February which we are a bit tired of by now, but that’s how it is when you spend so much time with each other, you just pass it back and forth I guess and the immune system can’t keep up. But we feel good overall and that’s all that matters:)

What has happened since last I wrote.. hmm…it’s been a week. To be honest, not much until this weekend really. I have barely even been working out cause I could tell that if I would push through my latest cold it would get so much worse, so I have mostly just done restorative yoga. And the weather has been pretty boring.

But this weekend we had the first real summer day with 27°c degrees and sunny (!!) and I got a lot of my energy back. Basically all of Saturday I spent doing different things on our terrace. We started with breakfast inside but then I brought my coffee out and finished reading a book. After that I carried all my planties out to add some more potting soil to them. No replanting needed but for some reason all my plants like to eat their soil, the palm tree was basically just roots. I also planted some seeds but I don’t know if they will actually come up this year, I have been waiting for the potting mix to be delivered for weeks and I don’t know if it’s too late now…but, I planted some stuff anyway, we’ll see. 
We went for our weekend walk on the “cute street” but it was too hot for Thor so we didn’t walk the whole way. Still nice to be out, noone was outside on Saturday and it was very quiet all day.
And then I organized the terrace while the boys were taking naps, not much but it is really cute and cozy out there now. One string light died over the winter so I moved one that we had and put up a new fairy light that I ordered. When I was done I grabbed a new book to read and just sat there enjoying my new outdoor space:)
In the evening we first watched some MMA fights and then watched two hours of ballet. Lincoln Center has a “Dance Week” where you can go to their website and watch some old recordings of dance performances. On Saturday it was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” from 1986 with NYCBallet. On Sunday I watched a bit from an evening with several different ballets with ABT at Metropolitan Opera House 1978. There are three more shows I plan to watch this week.
When I sat on our terrace by myself on Saturday, my heart and mind felt so full of gratitude. I’m “happy” the pandemic and quarantine happened now and not when we lived on Manhattan, that would have been a very different experience for us. Now we have our own private terrace and streets to walk where you meet very few people. We have everything we need and most of all we have each other.

It’s so wonderfully green outside
Half of our terrace
Lady bugs visiting means good luck…but how did she fly all they way up to 7th floor..?
My hairy man in the reflection..he looks like a caveman now hahah

However, we do live right next door to a police station. On Sunday we started our morning with coffee in the sun, and then I cleaned the whole apartment and did some laundry (Sundays has become my tidy-up day). After all that we were both pretty hungry so we decided to walk over to the Mexican place downtown to order some take-outs. What we didn’t know was that every street around here was blocked off by the police and outside the police station was a large group of protesters. We managed to avoid it by walking around those crowded blocks and we got our mexican order. Aaah, guacamole! Jim got tacos and I got veggie quesadillas, it was amazing! And then we didn’t do much for the rest of that day. Sat outside for a little bit, we ordered some stuff we needed, I watched ballet and at night we drank tea and watched Scrubs.

A very healthy breakfast hahah
A young Baryshnikov:)

We had an absolute amazing weekend! Finally warm weather, I am so happy:) I hope you had a fantastic weekend as well.
Have an awesome week!

Edit: CT articles says that the protesting in Stamford had been very peaceful. The police department showed their support and together they all went down on their knees for 8 minutes of silence. I was very happy to read this, there are too much s*** going on in the rest of the country. Violence is never the answer.