Last month sucked but like everything in life that too shall pass... I didn't feel like writing for a while but I'm back. Let's unpack:

I was hit by a court notification a while back that I am one of the inheritors after my late family member. Too bad it was only the debt and lot of it. The immediate family decided they don't want to deal with it and denied the inheritance, throwing the problem down the drain, I mean rest of the family. 

So I had to figure out what to do, then schedule a meeting with the Polish consul, pay like 30€ for the dubious pleasure of having my signature confirmed. Of course the template on the Polish Foreign Ministry was not very clear and I had to make adnotations. Because it's vitally important that I declare I am not aware of any potential victims of the inheritance system.

For my trouble I ended up with a very expensive sticker at the back of the document and a stern warning that I need to hurry my shit up because it needs to arrive in some random court before December. My parents gratiously offered to send this for me from Poland because it needs one of those "return labels" and it's kind of weird in Germany. Oh well, at least one thing is done. 

My landlord is pushing hard to increase my rent about by about 50% — the depths of hell shat him out with a very mocking letter alongside the lines of "you haven't had, luckily, a rent increase in a while so it's going to change, har har har". The asshole tried to make it into a joke later but the aftertaste stayed. 

It turns out German housing regulations are pretty nice and tight. There's Mietverein (tenant association?) and a lot of very precisely defined legislation in the BGB. I am intimately familiar with many of them and became somebody of a person of interest in the building. 

Cautionary take: never, NEVER, sign a "deal" with your landlord agreeing to costs etc. because most likely they try to swindle you. The fight continues later this month with some Widerspruch actions etc. 

My dog Jorge died at the end of July. She was 16 and while the last 1-2 years were progressively becoming hard and unbearable, heavily grinding my mental health into a pulp and giving me bouts of depression and anxiety, she was a good girl. The best girl. 

I wished for her life to end in a less dramatic fashion though. She started having violent seizures and attacks of barking and wailing at random times, accompanied with soiling herself and hours of confusion and walking in circles. After a few attacks it was clear this need to end and it did end, painless and calm at our vet's office.

In the middle of the day she was and then she wasn't anymore. My mind rebelled and refused to remember her as a frail, confused, and demented little wreck and flooded me right away with the happy memories of her running around and doing the typical terrier things. Memories I long forgotten came back and soothed me.

I feel happy now that she was with us 16 years and most of them were good. I also feel like a big stone was lifted off my shoulders because last few months especially were extremely hard. 

I am so hard into board games these days. The video games spike my adrenaline and cortisol and I feel like they are padded with nonsense to stretch a 15 minute gameplay into 2 hours of playing. I don't like that, considering how prohibitive the prices have become. 

So I got some board games, and by some I mean a lot of board games. And I love them, every single one. Small and large, short and long, easy and complicated, I have something for every mood and situation. Amazing.

I also started designing my own board game, can you imagine? Its work title is "Neighbourhood" and it's as you can guess a game about moving in and exploring a small neighborhood, finding your place, becoming part of the community.