Category: Blogging

Back To Analogue

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Picture: Claudia Braun 07/2025

Look at what I found at the second hand shop today: this analogue kitchen scale!
I’m so over the everything-digital-hype. And since I’ve had nothing but trouble with my digital kitchen scale, it will be sent into early retirement, now that I found this beauty today. Back to analogue, back to simple things. That’s me, and that works for me. Besides, I no longer have to worry about finding those gosh darn batteries, that the store is usually out of whenever I happen to need one. I’m glad to have found this little treasure today 😊🍀

Small, Positive Changes

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Since June 12th, when Lilly moved into my heart and home, my schedule changed slightly. Instead of crawling out of bed around 8:15 AM, the day gets going a bit early at the moment. Due to the toasty summer temperatures currently, I get up around 6:15 AM so we can enjoy our morning walk before it gets too warm for her paws (on the pavement ) and her overall comfort.
Instead of being parked in front of the TV a good part of the evening, we have our late night walkies around 9:30 PM. When we return, I may end up checking out if there’s anything of interest on TV. Most often I doze off anyway. Around 11 PM Lilly wants to turn in for the night and I follow her lead. If I’m not quite tired enough, I read a few pages to help me get sleepy.
These small changes truly have a positive effect. Since beginning the day with fresh air and movement, I feel better and more productive. Also my sleep has improved. All thanks to a little cutie, who won’t accept any excuse to skip one of our excursions ❤🐾

What’s One More?

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Several days ago I wrote about an intrusive neighbor lady, who really pushed me a bit too far with regard to Lilly. I don’t know, if other dog parents ever ‘put her in her place’, but I did and it appears to me, that she did not like that. Sorry, but if you so eagerly give your unsolicited opinion, you always run the risk of meeting someone like me. Tough sh!t for you. The world is harsh, deal with it any way you need to. Two evenings ago this woman came walking towards us yet again [ugh] and I prepared myself for drama. Instead, she walked in the street while passing us by, to put a ridiculous amount of distance between herself and us. There was no greeting, not a smile or even a look of acknowledgement. Very mature, but okay, suit yourself.
I shared this encounter with my mom. She said [as always] that I should be ‘the grown-up’ and apologize to her. What? Why? Just because I don’t let some self proclaimed wanna-be-dog-whisperer tell me how to interact with my dog? What the fudge? But of course, straight away my mom fires the standard statements at me, when she runs out of arguments that make any type of sense including, but certainly not limited to…

“Well you probably misunderstood what she meant”
“You take everything so seriously”
“That was your autism kicking into high gear”
“You always overreact like this”
“You need to control yourself”
“You have no idea how to deal with other people”

I should just know it by now. In my mom’s opinion I’m always the problem. It’s never the other person. Gosh, I’m just tired of it, honestly. Only because I told a random woman to mind her own business, basically. Well, another person added to my list of enemies. What’s one more, right?

Me, Me, Me

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Daily writing prompt
What could you let go of, for the sake of harmony?
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I would have to go with egoism, on an individual level as well as universally. As a whole we’ve grown to be quite self-centered. Take the climate change for instance. We are concerned about the future of young people, yet we are not willing to give up the SUV in the garage, and flying to foreign places for a vacation. Now, speaking for myself, I’ve enjoyed the experience of a cruise, twice! Sometimes it seems, that we ‘preach’ one thing and do the opposite. The greater good is most important, but working towards this common goal only values high, so long as it does not interfer with our personal needs and wishes. I think you get the idea. And back to the personal level, I could do a whole lot better on that front as well. Less ‘me-me-me’ and more focus on the needs and challenges of people in my community. What could I do to help make a difference? Well, I could go to the senior citizen residence and spend time with the elderly, who feel forgotten about and unimportant. I could go to the daycare centers and help out the exhausted and overworked teachers. The list of things to be done is long, but then again, I’d rather spend time with my dog, do craft projects, play Sims 4, etc… Do you see the pattern?

Pessimistic Outlook

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Daily writing prompt
What are you most excited about for the future?
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To be perfectly blunt, I would have to dig deep to find any excitement for the future. With the climate change, that ridiculous political circus, wars and other conflicts around the globe, as well as the social and economical challenges we face, having a positive outlook takes way more optimism than I can come up with at present.

Tell Me Why

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Daily writing prompt
If you could host a dinner and anyone you invite was sure to come, who would you invite?
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Knowing full well, that this idea would probably backfire on me, I would invite my “enemies” from the past. This includes people from childhood who only pretended to be friends, a couple of teachers who embarrassed me in front of the entire class every chance they had, two guys who claimed to love me but had manipulative, controlling and emotionally abusive ways of “showing their love”. And finally, I would invite a few former co-workers from my last two places of employment, who jointly bullied me, including my immediate supervisors.
Sometimes, distance and time can change your perspective on a situation or problematic encounter. My objective with this dinner invitation would be, to have a conversation with these mentioned people. I would (hopefully) calmy and politely ask them, why they did what they did to me at the time. Or what made them hate me so much? What did I do to them, to deserve such treatment? Especially from teachers and supervisors.
Not certain, that my guests would give me the time of day with regard to the uncomfortable topic of conversation, it would be most important for me to share with them how absolutely horrible they made me feel. I long to tell them how much of an impact these moments/situations/behaviors had on me, some of them still do to this present day. They really should know, and I deserve the chance to tell them. In theory this seems to be a good idea to find closure and make peace with the past. Reality would be quite a different story, especially if it doesn’t work out as imagined. Luckily I will never know.