The autumn has finally arrived. It smells like falling leaves and melancholy outside. The days are getting shorter and darker by the minute and I'm having to burn more candles in the evening. I listen to songs like Eva Cassidy's Autumn Leaves and Adele's Hiding My Heart. It's the autumn blues.

I'm missing my mom a lot these days. It's not the terrible kind of missing any longer but I just could use some good life advice and I don't know whom to turn to. Years ago there was no question about it - she was always there, always listening and encouraging. But now I'm having to navigate without her advice and it makes me feel lost at moments. The main thing is that my studies, bloody thing, seem to be dying an agonising death. Full time work plus part time study doesn't look like a formula that could work for me. Hence so many questions and hesitation. Should I push for full time studies again? Where? Where would the money come from? Would it make any real difference if I just quit and never went for a doctorate? Would I be willing to leave my job even if the opportunity arose? Pick up the phone, mom.

And relationship advice. I seem to be needing some of that too.

No, actually, things aren't bad at all, just a little blue. There are a lot of good things happening. I have stuff to look forward to and friends who take good care of me. Interesting projects at work. And if I look around me and forget my own little worries for a moment, I see people who are dealing with much harder stuff than I am. A friend is going through a difficult break-up. Another friend is having to deal with a severe case of depression in her family that is destroying relationships in that family and wearing everyone out. (I spent almost an hour on the phone with her last night, listening to her story about how depression is doing so much harm. Scary stuff.) I attended a seminar on Monday evening about the current refugee crisis and people who were presenting there and who dropped lines like 'I was in Calais last week' and 'I've just returned from Turkey' somehow brought home the fact that I am a very very lucky girl compared to millions of homeless and war haunted people who don't have anything left and who, on top of everything else, have to face idiots who tell them to go back home. No, all is well, all is well.

Here are some nice pictures from our church's one day tour to the Eastern part of Estonia last Sunday.

In the gardens of the former presidential palace (the palace itself was blown up by the Soviets during the WWII). Such a beautiful place! 

With A. (I.'s wife) Acting mature.

Visiting an Orthodox convent. The headscarf  business always makes girls giggly.

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Oh, one more thing. It's autumn, so it's the Great British Bake Off season again! I love that series. :)