YAY for happy presents!!

Christmas has come, and with it, FINALLY! the third MIMRA – for Meg! – I’m so happy that all the packages are now with the winners. It was real fun and exciting to make it and make them happy and I’ll be extremely to make the second edition of MIMRA next year.

I’m back! Merry Christmas! 😄

Hiya people, and pets, and everyone in between! 🙂

Just a short note to let you know that my new computer has arrived on Friday and since then I was very busy setting it up (with tremendous help from Olek without which I’d be completely lost), and I’m still very slowly catching up on everything and even slower getting used to all the novelty and change, which is not always only positive, although it’s definitely much better to have a new computer than not to have any. It’s been causing me a lot of distress and anxiety, resulting in excessive nail biting thanks to which I’ve apparently got something called paronychia – an annoingly sore, swollen and throbbing finger – but it’s slowly and gradually getting better, I mean the anxiety. It will probably take some time before I’ll write some more concrete posts.

But most of all, me and Misha would like to wish all of you a very happy happy Christmas. I hope it will be a very wonderful and joyful time for you during which you can do lots of cool things, spend quality time with your family, or perhaps recharge and have time just for yourselves. I hope Christmas will fill your hearts with joy and hope and make you feel that your life is meaningful. 🙂 Misha says he wishes you lots of delicious food and relaxation time and hopes it will be the cosiest Christmas ever for you. 🙂

I also want to thank all those of you who read my blog and who were emailing me when I was away from the blogosphere, I appreciate it so very much and it’s been a huge help for me to get through that, you’re all really great friends! 🙂 If I didn’t get back to someone it’s either because my Braille-Sense was freezing or didn’t display it.

Enya – “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”.

Hi people! 🙂

Perhaps you remember that I was sharing a lot of Enya’s music last year around Christmas with you. I was sure I must have shared this song, but looks like I haven’t, so I think it’s the right time to do it now, since this is primarily an Advent hymn! And I think in Enya’s version it sounds so extremely beautiful. Both full of some silent, secret euphoria, as well as nostalgia. I hope you like it too. 🙂

Kate Rusby – “Little Jack Frost”.

Hi guys! 🙂

So it’s Advent, and Christmas is coming, so we can listen to our favourite Christmas music again! This is one of my personal absolute winter classics. And Jack Frost is one of my favourite characters in European folklore. He has arrived here for good as it seems, so I am welcoming his with this lovely little song, hoping you will like it too. Kate Rusby is also one of my most favourite English folk singers, she’s really amazing! I love her voice and her accent, most people who know her seem to love her accent haha, and she does this song so very well. It just makes my brain melt. 🙂

 

Christmas is coming! With My Inner MishMash Readership Award!

Hi people! 🙂

I’m so excited to let you all know that My Inner Mishmash Readership Awards have already arrived to two of the winners – Carol Anne and her system of

Therapy Bits

and Ashley Leia of

Mental Health @ Home,

yay!!! 😃 😊

I’m really glad with how well this went, and so very happy that I could show them my appreciation as a blogger for how insightful readers they are, and that they both are enjoying their MIMRAs. 😀    They have both kindly shared their impressions (thanks so much for that 🙂 ), so I’m sharing them so that all of you can know what was in the packages. 🙂

Here is

Ashley’s post, with her and her guinea pig Casper opening their package

and Carol Anne and Taylor’s video is below. 🙂

just so that everyone knows, the candles are with shea butter, which can be poured into a bath or used for a massage. I used to have one like those years ago and loved it. And it is cool as even when you use up the shea butter it’s still practical and you can use it for something else.

Question of the day.

Hi people. 🙂

When do you start Christmas shopping?

My answer:

Not very early, usually. We’re generally quite late with all the Christmas stuff, and hardly do anything before Advent, which usually means we start everything off around mid December haha. When I do Christmas shopping, it’s just presents and I prefer to have that done earlier so I don’t have to stress what I should get for everyone and whether I’ll be able to. So last year I think I was done with my shopping a week into December. This year everything seems to be happening much faster, we are already listening to Christmas music, Mum has made most of the pierogi which makes me and my siblings feel like all that waiting is completely unnecessary and we could have the Christmas Eve supper already. 😀 And there has been My Inner Mishmash Readership Award which is sort of linked with Christmas so I feel more Christmassy than I usually do around this time of year. Apart from the award stuff though, I haven’t done any shopping and I don’t have any present ideas for people, I guess I’m a bit burnt out from thinking about MIMRA and what to do for it for almost 3 months. 😀

How about your Christmas shopping? 🙂

Question of the day.

What is the oddest thing you’ve heard of someone eating for Christmas?

My answer:

I’m quite familiar with many things people eat for Christmas in different countries as well as different regions of Poland but many feel a bit odd to me. My most recent odd discovery was that people – my family to be exact! – eat fruit soup for Christmas! Or rather Christmas Eve since it’s on Christmas Eve that we have a big Christmas meal here in Poland. Fruit soup has never been a tradition in our family, the only few times I’ve had it was at other people’s, but it seems like my extended family have embraced it. I’ve never heard of it being a Christmas dish! Dried fruit kompot – yes – but fruit soup was absolutely a novelty to me, I’ve always associated it more with summer since it’s a cooler soup. My Mum actually hates fruit soup, I have nothing against it although I do think it is a bit weird.

What’s such oddest thing in your opinion? 🙂

Question of the day.

Hey people. 🙂

Let’s continue with some early Christmas questions, shall we? 🙂

What’s your favourite kind of Christmas decoration (tree, lights, garlands etc.)?

My answer:

I’m not sure I have a favourite. if anything, I often find Christmas decorations a little bit annoying especially if people put them so that they get in your way or something, sometimes getting around where there are many decorations can be a bit tricky. If I’d have to choose anything I’d go with Christmas tree, especially a natural one. I don’t have the best sense of smell at all but when I can feel the smell of Christmas tree I think it’s beautiful. I could also say baubles just because I like the feel of glass.

You? 🙂

Question of the day (22nd November).

What is your favourite Christmas song? Your least favourite?

My answer:

I have many favourites which make me await December every year so that I can listen to them, I don’t listen to them all year, only since the beginning of December to February 2nd when Christmas carols singing time ends over here, so I’m never bored with them. But I think my most favourite is “Christmas Secrets” by Enya, that I have previously shared. It’s really magical. Least favourite? I find most of the mainstream Christmas music that you hear in the shops, in the radio and such kind of infantile, annoying, superficial, boring and just meh. But… wait a minute… there was such a classic that I hate but I don’t remember/know the title, let me look it up… uhhh, yeah, “Merry Christmas Everybody” by Slade. The harmony of this song, something in its melody makes my brain feel uneasy, there just are such songs, sounds, sequences of sounds, melodies, and this song is one of them. It’s the chorus I have problems with the most when I happen to hear it. It’s such a strange feeling and even more strange to describe, it’s like what you’re hearing is one big dissonance in a way (not aesthetic usually or not necessarily, it’s a different kind of a dissonance) plus your mind vs that song/sound don’t get along. It can make me feel that some sounds and/or harmonies are aggressive, kind of evil in a way, and that it’s directed straight at me, directly, it just makes me feel uneasy emotionally and in a way physically and often anxious. I just wonder why the heck people don’t hear such things, I’m not even saying about that they don’t react like I do but they don’t even hear anything wrong, when I show people two songs that trigger sensory anxiety for me they don’t see anything in common in the sound or in their perception of the songs. It makes me feel crazy! It’s far from being among those the most triggering sounds I’ve come across in my life but it’s just unpleasant to hear. And “Gothic Christmas” by Within Temptation is horrible, but just because of what it’s like, not because of the harmonies and all those intricacies, I’m not sure which I hate more, I guess each deserves an award in its own category. 😀

Question of the day (21st November).

What is your favourite Christmas dish? Your least favourite?

My answer:

My most favourite are definitely pierogi with cabbage and mushrooms, especially the way my Mum makes them, with fresh cabbage. For me there’s no Christmas without pierogi, and the same for my siblings. Mum has actually already started making them today, very early as for her. My least favourite would be probably some fish. I find carp a very overrated Polish Christmas dish, but I guess herring (no matter how its served) is even worse.

What are yours? 🙂

Question of the day (19th November).

Say you suddenly have 1000 euro/dollars/pounds/zlotys/whatever the currency is in your country. What do you spend it on?

My answer:

Okay, so in Poland we have zlotys. 1000 zlotys is around 230 euro I suppose, not sure how much it is in dollars. I think I’d mostly use it for Christmas presents for my family, and some stuff for myself as well for that occasion. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to get my family for Christmas, so I don’t know how much of it I’d spend, but I need to buy myself new headphones and I’d like to get some really fancy ones, so I could use the rest to help me with that.

So, how about you? 🙂

My Inner MishMash Readership Award. And the winners are…

Hi people! 🙂

So, the time has come. The time to reveal the winners of my brand new conception which is My Inner MishMash Readership Award (or MIMRA).

My Inner MishMash is an award that is planned to be confered every year before Christmas, to the three most involved, insightful and engaged readers of My Inner MishMash as a way of expressing my gratitude and appreciation for their presence on My Inner MishMash, and also simply as a way to have some more fun on here.

I’m super excited to officially announce to all the people reading this blog that this year’s winners are… *fanfares and drumrolls*

Meg of Why Does Bad Advice Happen to Good People,

Ashley Leia of Mental Health @ Home,

and

Carol Anne and her system Many Of Us of Therapy Bits

(lots of applause for the winners, please!).

Thanks so very much to all three of you for sticking by, it’s hugely appreciated! 🙂 Also thanks to all the other involved readers of my blog, who I wasn’t able to award, as of course I can’t award everyone, but I hope you too do feel no less welcome at My Inner MishMash. 🙂

The awards have been sent out earlier today, and should actually be with you in 3 days (much earlier than I supposed, they’ll be travellin by plane, just like VIP’s should 😀 I just hope the packages didn’t get mixed up at the post office, haha). I really hope you’ll find your awards enjoyable.

Some people like surprises, some don’t, but I figured I’ll give you all a peep into what our winners are getting this year as part of their award, since my Mum took pics anyway.

Misha is not included in the award, 😀 he goes to me as My Inner MishMash Authorship Award. Mum wanted me to stress, to make sure that you won’t have to face too much of a disappointment, that the small carrier bags you’ll find at the top of the packages aren’t part of the award either, they’re just a filler, but I guess why not, it could be part of the award, especially that it contains some excerpts of a very weird Polish magazine, so, who knows, maybe you’ll find it interesting. 😛

As you can notice, the award is very much Mish-themed, and so are even the chocolates, in a way, although that was actually a pure coincidence. Their name is Michałki (Michałek is a diminutive of a Polish male name Michał, Michałki is the plural form, and Misha, well, after all Misha is a Russian nickname of Michael). 😀

Ashley, I’m sorry but your T-shirt is going to be white in the end, not black. I hope that is not a problem? Oh and I hope they will fit you guys well.

Also, last, but not least, HUUUGE thanks to my Mum for helping me materialise this crazy idea of mine, it couldn’t happen without her dedication, and she spent a lot of time running around getting things I needed for it.

I hope it will be at least as much fun for you, Meg, Ashley, and Carol Anne, as making those awards was for me, and thank you once again for being part of My Inner MishMash! ❤

 

Question of the day.

Are you excited about Christmas, or any other holidays you are going to celebrate soon? Any plans?

My answer:

Well, we don’t have the Christmas overwhelm here yet, waay too early, though I’ve heard from some other people that it’s more and more visible already in their countries. For us, the “xmassy” madness starts around the beginning of December. That could be because of the fact that we have two other holidays in the meantime, not as huge, especially not in the sense of marketing and all that, but still quite largely celebrated and present in people’s consciousness. One is Independence Day on November 11, and the other is St. Andrew’s Day on November 30, when people make dancing parties or balls or school proms or whatever, do a lot of dancing, plus single ladies looking for love traditionally foretell their future in lots of different ways, the most common being pouring hot wax from a candle through the ring of a key into cold water. Then when the wax becomes solid you hold it in front of a candle and interpret the shape of it as to what it could mean in regards to your future, especially your romantic life. I am celebrating Independence Day, as in, it’s a very important day for me, but I’m not planning to do anything super special for that. But it’s a holiday so I’ll spend it with my family. Am I excited? Guess not, but I’m definitely very happy that we can celebrate our Independence and very grateful for that, and for all the people in our history who made it happen. For St. ANdrew’s Day I’m not excited at all, I don’t really care about that. I’m single, but not looking for a romantic relationship, and hate dancing. Sofi is doing a little party for her friends, and my parents are going out for a party FOR SENIORS (no, they’re not seniors, but I guess they like it this way 😀 ). I guess it’s some sort of a national day for Scotland so I might binge on some good Scottish music that evening, or read something Scottish perhaps, we’ll see. 😀

I’m really hardly ever very much excited for Christmas, I mean I like the holiday in itself, but all the chaos that comes with it and is present everywhere, it is overwhelming and it annoys me a bit how superficial it looks and like people have no idea what’s it all about, but I remember I wrote on that last year. as well as the Christmas celebrations themselves usually take a toll on me because of all the socialising, sitting at the tables for hours and feeling bored, or lonely in the crowd or overloaded. It has its upsides but it is tiring. I used to be more fond of it when I was at school and Christmas meant to me that I could go home, but as soon as all the gatherings started, part of me really wanted it to be over. This year is a little bit different because of My Inner Mishmash Readership Award, I’m so excited with it!

As for Christmas plans, we know almost for sure that we’re going to celebrate Christmas Eve at my grandparents’. Christmas Eve is actually the most celebrated day of Christmas in Poland, people have a big, meatless supper, Christmas carols are already sung and people unbox their presents as well. So we’re most likely going to go to my Mum’s parents, and celebrate the Christmas Eve with them, all her siblings and their families.

So, how about your holidays and plans? 🙂

Enya – “The Magic Of The Night”.

Here’s another Christmassy/wintry song by Enya. I really love it. 🙂

Enya – “White Is In The Winter Night”.

Hey people. 🙂

Here is another Christmassy/wintry, nice and very colourful song from Enya. Enjoy. 🙂

Song of the day (7th January) – Enya – “Adeste Fideles”.

I love this Christmas carol in Enya’s version. She makes it sound so brilliant and harmonic. 🙂

Song of the day (5th January) – Enya – “The Spirit Of Christmas Past”.

We still have the Christmas tree in our living room and will be taking it down on Friday, and as you already know Christmas season in Poland can theoretically last until the 2nd February. While such very long celebrations would certainly drive me crazy, I am really happy it’s so long because I can relish Enya’s Christmas music, which I only save it for this time of year to make it more pleasurable. So here’s another Enya’s Christmas themed song, and it is just so beautiful. I simply love it!

Song of the day (31st December) – Enya – “Oíche Chiúin” (Silent Night).

I have a niggling feeling that despite my love for Irish language there hasn’t been much Irish language music that I posted here actually. So here’s the Irish version of “Silent Night” in ENya’s exquisite performance. I just love it so, so much!

Song of the day (30th December – Enya – “Journey Of The Angels”.

OK, time to catch up on some music. 🙂 There is so much great Christmas music out there, and since it’s still Christmas season, and will be until 2nd February, I will throw in some Christmas songs/carols once in a while, and because I love Enya so much, and she has so much great Christmas or simply winter themed music, this winter I’m going to focus particularly on her music when it comes to my Christmas favourites. Hope you’ll find them enjoyable as well. Also I must say that at times like these, when I feel particularly anxious, and can’t do much about it, I find Enya’s music very helpful and soothing. So here’s the beautiful Christmas song, or maybe carol actually, called “Journey Of The Angels”. 🙂

I think I like Christmas.

Hhrrru? 😻

This is Misha. How was your Christmas pets and peeps? 💚

Mine was very, very good.

On Christmas Eve I was very excited, there was Christmas tree and lots of paper and cartboard boxes and stuff, I loved it all, and all the Christmas decorations. Before my peeps had dinner, they prayed and talked and stuff so I was just going round the Christmas tree putting down all the decorations that I could reach because I wanted to have a look at them and play with them, and throwing myself at all the mysterious packets and boxes under the tree. Then they started eating and I was sulking a bit because there was no food for me. No meat at all. They didn’t even think about preparing something that I could eat. But then it turned out there are very yummilicious fishies, and I ate some salmon. I sat next to Mila at the table and she fed me. And Dad was angry because he didn’t like it, that I was sitting at the table. But I liked it, and that’s what counts. And he didn’t say why I can’t. And Mila liked it too and we were both happy and Zofijka was laughing. So I stopped sulking and enjoyed my food and I tried to eat very nicely and Mila said I did. But my peeps ate loads and loads of food, it was weird! Mum wanted to give me some, that was not fish, but it smelled gross! So I returned to playing under the tree. And then Zofijka dressed up as Santa and I was a bit afraid of her because I didn’t recognise her at the beginning, and she looked so scary and was shouting so loudly, louder than usual I mean, and took out all that stuff from under the tree. I helped her with it. And it turned out they were presents! ANd there were presents for me too! Just for me! Special presents for Misha! I got a colourful ball that is full of glitter and I can play with it, and lots and lots of treats. There are ones that are very Christmassy and are in the shape of stars and I like them so much yum yum they smell like chicken! And I also got my favourite sauces! A LOT of sauces. I was so sooooo happy! Then I was playing with an empty bag where my presents were before, and Zofijka put me into it and gave me to Mila. I love sitting in bags, being wrapped up in paper, or closed in cartboard boxes. And Zofijka-Santa said this was another present for Mila and she forgot about it because it was hid so well under the tree and said that Mila probably won’t be happy with this present because it looks like it’s something boring and that she won’t like. And Mila saw that I am inside of the bag and she said this is the best present and she likes it the most and that it is such a beautiful present. I was so happy. I am already two years old but I am still the best present! I’m glad they aren’t sick of me yet. But then no one gave me anything to eat from my presents at all that day because the peeps went out somewhere and I was alone. Jocky was alone too and I could hear him crying outside that he wanted to go with them. He’s lucky, he can at least be outside, but what can I say? They don’t even let me out of the house. ☹

I slept through all Christmas day because I was so exhausted after all the playing and emotions I had in the evening.

But on the second day of Christmas I got a lot of treats, and two sauces! But peeps were eating a lot too so why can’t I? And I was playing with Zofika and putting down all the Christmassy decorations and playing with them again. Christmas is real fun! I can’t wait for it to come again. I don’t know why I was so afraid of it.

Mishpurrs. 💜

Misha 💙