sleeping under the stars

sleeping under the stars

I have a lot of ideas. I have new ideas every minute. New plans of what to do, what to eat, where to go. Rasmus jokes that I only need to see or hear a place name and I’m all “oooh we should go to Egypt/Thailand/Norway”.

But, maybe like many of you, most of my ideas stay as ideas. I am full of good intentions but time is limited, money is limited, and sometimes it’s easier to make popcorn and watch another episode of How I met your Mother.

Then this weekend came, this weekend of temperatures hotter than this little green country is used to. This country where people don’t own fans, don’t have AC, because it never gets this hot. But suddenly it was this hot and even sitting still made me sweat.

Our bedroom, up in the eaves under the roof, swelled to an unbearable temperature.

“We should sleep on the balcony” I said. And my man, after giving me a strange look, came back to me later and said, “so we’re going to sleep on the balcony tonight?” And my thrill at the fact we were actually going to follow through on one of my crazy ideas, was more than that of a four year old on christmas eve.

We pulled the mattress off our cheap ikea sofa bed and miracle of miracles it *just* fit on the widest part of the balcony. Sheets, pillows and some candles later we were ready to settle in for the night with our gnome standing sentry on night-watch.

I’ve never slept under the stars before. As we lay out there and chatted under the stars before we fell asleep, I realised it was a first for me. I’ve been camping before, but always sleeping under tents, never with just a sheet between me and space.

Rasmus was a little shocked. He told me stories of sleeping on the beach as a teenager with friends, and walking bleary-eyed to the back door of the baker at dawn to buy just-out-of-the-oven bread, how nothing tastes quite so good as hot bread on the beach at 4am.

And I realised I want to be someone who implements more of her crazy ideas. Because two nights of sleeping out under the stars on our balcony, listening to the sounds of the planes coming in to land, the crickets in the gardens underneath us, and sharing stories from before we met – this is where memories are made.