They are feeling good

Dear future hubster,
you know you're doing something right with your housewarming/dinner/movie night parties if at some point you realize that you and the other hosts are in the kitchen/on the balcony, and your guests don't even notice your absence. 

The fist and the stove part II

Dear future hubster,
sometimes I try to meet all stereotypical expectations. Meaning I work the pizza dough dressed up to the nines, wearing heels and make up. Then the next day I wonder why my eeeeverything is so sore. It's hard work, pretending to be a wonderwoman.

The fist and the stove

Dear future hubster,
another stating the obvious moment: cooking is a beautiful allegory to life. Nothing good will ever happen if you are not willing to get yourself dirty. Cooking, just as life, is a messy business. But if you decide to put up with the mess, the outcome is so worth it. You may be covered in what looks like baby food spat out, but you still feel quite like a princess.

Do they know?

Dear future hubster,

Christmas feelings don't always come to me easily. Sometimes they don't come at all. 

It's not easy, when you haven't been through the usual indian summer-chilly fall-early winter stages, when it rains but doesn't snow, when you get a sunburn in early December, when all the Christmas decorations look just out of place and fake.

There are moments, however, when you can't help it. On a gray Monday morning, when all of Belgium is on strike, and there is not a single bus or tram to be seen on the streets, and people move around on foot or by car, quickly, hands in their pockets, or carrying boxes and gift-wrapped packages - it's all there, The air is cold and fresh, the city feels unusually quiet, you can almost smell the glühwein in the air... you can't deny that the jingle bells have started sneaking in.

And then, get to any given airport on any given morning after 15 December. No matter your destination, you will always see Erasmus students and eurocrats travelling home with suitcases filled with local cheese/beer/chocolate, hoping there will be no snow or strike or freezing rain to stop them from arriving, because they have so little time and so many places to visit, and you know exactly how they feel. Been there, done that. And yes, you have done that in all seasons, but still, when you see them dozing off at 5 am, children on their laps and winter coats on their seats, you know it's different this time of the year.

They are going home for Christmas.

It's all in my head

Dear future hubster,
it's probably no big news to anybody who's ever had one, but the human brain is a powerful tool. Mechanism. Organ. Thing?
It can present you with endless and rather unsettling versions and scenarios of should be-s and what if-s and how-s, keeps you awake at night, carefully planning your reactions to those pre-planned events you can actually have no control over.
Then, when you're thrown into the deep waters of conditions you couldn't have planned for, the very same brain just accepts them as reality and goes with them, refusing to even help you feel odd or out of place.
(Yes, speaking from own experience, thanks for asking.)

Is that asking too much?

Dear future hubster,
I'm not quite sure where this myth about me being a demanding princess is coming from... really. Just give me tap water that's safe to drink, and a hot bath, and I'm rather content. Ok, fine, you may bring the coffee to bed and watch tragically WTF music videos with me, but that's really the cherry on the cake.

Baby it's cold outside

Dear future hubster,
the thing with eternal summer is, that you easily and happily forget how winter feels. Not on your skin; they have invented clothes for that. But how the cold feels inside, when the air smells of chimney smoke, your nose gets red and your eyes start watering. And all you want to do is cuddle under a blanket with some glühwein, watch the Chirstmas lights from the window and think everything is going to be alright.

Walking on broken glass

Dear future hubster,
in case you were worried, I can confirm, my subconscious "emergency wineglass release" function still works quite well.