So, I bought books. Again. I had some crazy idea of not buying any until the sequel to The Demon’s Lexicon comes out, but then I realised that’s not until late MAY, and I, um, promptly went and bought these books. Plus a sixth that I couldn’t find a pic of that was bigger than 200 pixels tall, and that is just not on.

Four in English, two in Swedish, three fiction, two non-fiction, one biography.

Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore. Whose name is not on the cover, it looks like. How weird is that? (Wait. I accidentally cropped it out. Sorry Jaclyn who is not reading this anyway, but I can’t be arsed going back and re-do it.) This is a book I normally wouldn’t have bought, but after the white-washing drama I felt the need to support the author. Even though I ended up buying the UK edition, which wasn’t involved in that particular shit storm at all.

Ash by Malinda Lo. A lesbian retelling of Cinderella. Say no more. And also? This cover is STUNNING. I could stare at it all day. I actually entered a contest to win this book, but I never win contests so I bought it anyway. I guess if I should for some reason win this one I’ll have a book give away or something. Don’t hold your breath, though, my shitty luck is legendary!

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. I am kind of sad I didn’t get the pretty American cover for this one, but it was oh so much cheaper. I also thought the title was spelled “Levithian” until I went to google for pics. And I’m vainly hoping that the illustrations are the same on the inside as in the American edition because they are absolutely gorgeous.

I Don’t Want to Be Crazy by Samantha Schutz. I’m not entirely sure why I bought this book, because it’s written on verse. I just hope it won’t rhyme. It does seem interesting, though, because it’s about a girl who was physically incapicated by anxiety attacks, which I recognise myself in. We shall see what I think of this one.

Fettpaniken by Marie Carlsson. This one is in Swedish. I got it from the library, and am about halfway through it now. I looked back at all the page numbers I’ve written down to take notes from, and um, I realised that I’ve pretty much written down every second or third page. So I bought it. Plus it was only 44 SEK. Only book of this batch that was actually on sale. (We have huge book sales specials all through February and March in Sweden, people buy books like mad.)

And the sixth, not pictured, is kind of boring. It’s a lexicon of ingredients with gluten in them, because I feel reactions from things I shouldn’t, like for example coconut milk. There’s an E-number-whatsitcalled in it, and I’m curious if there’s gluten in that, or if I’m just imagining things. This one is constantly checked out from the library so I just went and bought it instead.

In all, I’m not happy with my library’s selection of gluten allergy books, cookbooks and just random non-fiction in all, because the former is either in English and using flours I can’t find here or in Swedish and exclusively for meat eaters, and the latter is hidden in a sea of dieting books that I can’t stomach digging through. So, boo.

I’m really tired. That’s why I’m rambling. Tomorrow I will translate the International Women’s Day post I wrote for my Swedish blog and post it here, even though it’s no longer the 8th…

First of all, go read TansyRR’s blog post Ruining young men’s lives, and then Dara O’Briain’s Guardian-article Spare us the sanctimony about Ryan Shawcross being a nice lad. The two very nicely sums up the whole Ramsey-Shawcross-tale in a way I couldn’t. Although the guest at this week’s ArseCast said it rather well too…

In all, it’s very strange to be a woman and a feminist and an avid fan of men’s football, because it’s a sport so full of testosterone and manly manly MANLY antics. There are slurs we would not accept in the real world. There are a lot of… yeah, not so shiny stuff going on, but at the same time the game is so brilliant when it’s being played, so you forget all about it.

But personally I think that I love Up For Grabs (another “I told you so” moment for my friends there) so much is because they don’t do the swearing. Well, they do a bit, but they do stay clear of the c-word for the most part. Instead they dub the players lesbians (we have three of them, Arshavin, Rosicky and Nasri), Tinkerbell, Unlucky and… huh. I can’t remember.

As I said, brain is sleepy. Actually, I didn’t say it before. I thought it though!

Tomorrow morning I’m going to the gym again. It’s not as bad as I feared, really, but I suspect that is because of good music and people leaving me the hell alone, though we’re going earlier tomorrow to beat the weekend crowd.

And the thing I meant to post when I started writing this…

YUMMY YUMMY GRAVY RECIPE (possibly I’m a tad biased cos I usually make it from a mix and it tastes like nothing):

Sautee half an onion in olive oil. When translucent, add in chopped mushrooms. Add 2 dl (200 ml) of milk, a buillion cube, some salt, pepper, sage and thyme, simmer until the spices are blended in. Oh, and soy sauce or tamari, just enough to colour it darker. Possibly cut out the salt and add more soy sauce instead.

Then, if you’re Swedish, add some of the very magical Maizena redning för ljusa såser, and simmer until it thickens. I suppose if you don’t have something like it (do you?) mixing a tablespoon or two of corn starch with equal amount of water and pouring it into the gravy works as well. Might even work better, though too much and it goes gluey. Trust me on this.

I ate it Swedish style, with lentil loaf, potatoes and lingon. And yes, vegetables, but they were not graced with the presence of the gravy, so they barely count…

Ah yes. I think this is as coherent as I will be today. Sorry about that.

Today one of my baby cousins turned 25. Well, she did yesterday and today she had her family-party-type-thing. I remember when we called her and the other two her age “the little ones” and wouldn’t let them play with us. Now they’re all freakishly grown-up and drink wine at dinner.

(I still drink coke. The smell of wine makes me dry heave at best, and I can’t have beer anymore.)

I actually had a good time. Sat at the very end of the table with my cousin Charlotte and another relative and chatted. She’s forty-something odd years and retired early (like, really early) because of her artrithis, and we bonded over getting tired really quickly when there’s lots of people around. I only lasted three hours, but it’s more than I have in the past.

I find myself wanting to blog more in Swedish, but I’m not sure ANOTHER blog is really necessary. It’s getting unmanageable as it is, and God, I can’t even remember the last time I updated my craft blog. I meant to, when I had a lot of pads for sale, but they sold out really quickly, so the pics is kind of outdated by now. Maybe I should just make the content for my FA-blog a bit… broader.

Now I’m back home, with a cat on my belly, a cup of tea next to me and my feet up. I am really loving reading through our Blueberry book, though I should probably keep going on the other one, as I actually passed the halfway mark. My arm is ouchy and I worry about RSI, because I read this really amazing post on being a writer who can’t write.

Then again, I’ve always worried too much.

I really don’t feel good today. I’ve been to the gym something like four times and already feel some of my eating disordered thinking coming back, mostly because there’s no way of disabling the “calories burned” function on the threadmill. Which means I do more than I should, and then crash when I get home. Only, today I couldn’t because it’s laundry day.

I was also reminded about my bad periosteum, which I had totally forgotten about. It’s the membrane covering most bones in the body, and is full with nerve endings. The one on my left shin is ridiculously ouchy, and of course, it being a membrane and not a muscle or whatever you can’t bandage it up and go on your way. It’s just THERE. So annoying.

(And don’t tell me how stupid it was to keep exercising once it started squeaking. I know it is. Really.)

Anyway, writing about something else entirely…

The title of this post can be translated to “I’m ridiculously scatter-brained”, but I love the word “vimsig” so much that I used Swedish instead. Just because. But yes, I am. Especially lately.

A month ago (I think) I walked into the wrong building, up two flights of stairs and put my key in the lock, wondering why it didn’t turn. My first thought wasn’t “huh, I must’ve messed up”, but rather “OMG who has changed my lock and WHY?” Eventually I realised what was going on and walked away without the person living in said coming to beat me for trying to break into their place. Later I was told by my sister that the only time she (who is otherwises the only person as vimsig as me) had managed that was while falling-down-drunk and in the middle of the night. Not at three o’clock in the afternoon.

A fortnight ago I went to put laundry in, promptly forgot about it for three hours and remembered only minutes before the doors locked for the night and had to haul dripping wet laundry back to my flat and try to find places to hang it all.

A fortnight ago I also managed to lose an appointment and not realise it for like… two weeks. It was FUN to call back and explain that one!

This week? This week I have managed the following…

Lost my bus pass.

Lost three sets of gym membership paperwork.

Signed a fourth copy, turned it in, been issued a card that I lost two days later.

Almost left my wallet at the counter when I explained this to them and had to pay for a new card.

Left my water bottle… SOMEWHERE. I have no idea where.

Burnt food three times over because I forgot I was actually cooking.

Forgot about previously mentioned injury, and thus aggrivated it more.

Forgotten to answer crucial business e-mails for days on end. Sorry about that.

Forgotten to blog about my new stock until it had all been purchased already.

Forgotten that it was my name day. (We have a name assigned to each day of the year, and on your days – mine are August 2nd and February 28th unless it’s a leap year, and then it’s the 29th – and we always get CAKE.) I only remembered when my mum asked me to come over for lemon meringue pie. She sent leftovers with me when I went home, and I…

Forgot that I had my favourite dessert in the fridge for TWO DAYS. And when I ate it I had a severe gluten reaction, which makes me think that my mum doesn’t get how specific you have to be to not cross-contaminate.

In all it’s not my day, and I think I shall spend the rest of it in bed, so I don’t sprain my ankle, burn down the flat or accidentally flood my bathroom. Come to think about it, I should probably not step close to my sewing machine either. It’s almost Copperbadge-esque, my luck as of late. He is, by the way, an amazing blogger who is normally the only person in this world with worse luck than me. He has a tag called “ways I’ve injured myself”, which pretty much says it all.

Everyone who knows me is all “Sports? Really?”, but oh my God. Yesterday during the game one of our baby players, Aaron Ramsey, got on the end of a bad tackle and ended up fracturing both his fibia and tibia. The images of it, all over the place, are quite sickening because it was – such a bad break. Not that there are ever GOOD broken legs, but you know… He’ll be out a year, best case scenario, possibly more.

Not going to say much of it, because others have done it already, but I thought I’d post some pics to remind us (and um, that means Arsenal fans, not those of you scratching your heads and going “don’t include ME in this!”) what football is really all about. Which is the game, the players, the rush and happiness as goals are scored… All that stuff non-football-fans can’t understand.

And yeah, this makes it three of our babies out this year; Ramsey, Gibbs, who broke a bone in his foot, and Wilshere, who is out on loan. Well, at least we still have Cesc, who admittedly barely counts as a baby, being the captain and all, but he’s actually only 22. I think.

Oh my God, people. I spent the last two days watching the Nightline Debate “Is it okay to be fat?”, taking notes and transcribing and I think my brain melted clear out of my head from the sheer stupidity. Granted, there were some awesome things said as well, because two of the guests were brilliant, but for the most part? OH MY GOD. That’s all I’m going to say.

Okay, that is not all I’m going to say, because I transcribed for my Swedish HAES blog and I thought I should put something here to, as the notes are all in English and I might as well do that before I translate and all that, but be warned. Very stupid stupidity coming, although I will try to mix it up with awesome.

The guests were (from left to right, with the moderator in orange in the middle):

Marianne Kirby, co-author of Lessons From the Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce On Your Body, which I spoke briefly about here. The other author of that one is my hero Kate Harding, btw. Marianne also runs the blog The Rotund, which I love, and seems like an awesome person all around.

Crystal Renn, currently the highest paid plus size model in the world, although she started out as a “normal” model, and developed anorexia because of trying to maintain that size. She’s amazing, and you can read more about her here, or see pics of her rocking the same clothes as a mainstream thin model here.

Kim Bensen, author of Finally Thin!, a memoir about her road from fat-fat-fattie to thin-thin-thinnie. Apparently she once weighed 350 lbs and has dieted her way down to a size whatever, something tiny anyway, and because of that she thinks everyone can do it, and runs a website selling all kinds of weightloss related stuff, from low-calorie sugar, by way of bags with the word BELIEVE to fridge magnets where you can put a picture of your fat self to remind yourself of why you shouldn’t open that door. Yes, seriously.

MeMe (Meredith) Roth, founder of National Action Against Obesity (not a big shiny foundation, but a one person organisation run from her living room) and um, well-known in the blogosphere as random fatphobic crazycakes lady. I could never adequately sum her up, but this post by The-F-Word.org does it quite nicely, and this article at the Guardian as well.

And I suppose I should say that YES, I was rather biased writing up these short bios. There’s no denying that. But still, I do believe their words speak volumes. Their opening statements, for example, as a response to the question “is it okay to be fat?” looks like this:

====

Moderator:
“Is it okay to be fat? Let’s start with you, MeMe.”

MeMe:
“It’s not okay to be fat when we realise that in almost every single case being over-fat is a result of habitual improper eating. Obesity ravages the body, there’s an untold cost of human suffering, and there’s a financial burden to all of us, not just the person that is eating themself into obesity.”

Moderator:
“But is there a way to be fat and healthy?”

MeMe:
“Not if you have feet, hips and knees, not if you have an endocrine system, and not if you have an arterial system.”

Moderator:
“Marianne, you would respectfully disagree?”

Marianne:
“Like, I HAVE feet and hips and knees, it’s very exciting. I –”

MeMe:
“I’m sure the orthopedist finds the effect of your weight on those feet and hips and knees very exciting too.”

Marianne:
“Actually, no. I’m actually a very healthy person. It’s kind of amazing, I’m far healthier now than I was when I started dieting, you know, at seven, and continued for a lifetime.”

Moderator:
“What do you make of the question, though? Is it okay to be fat?”

Marianne:
“I think it’s kind of an unfair question, because that’s like asking ‘is it okay to be anything other than white, middle class, heteronormative, mainstream body type?’. I mean, it’s my body. It’s totally okay. It’s noone else’s business.”

MeMe:
“I have a question for you. Would you be willing to forfeit any payout from an insurance company, Medicare or Medicaid for any medical costs associated with your obesity?

Marianne:
“I don’t understand why you think that’s even a good thing. It’s –”

MeMe:
“Well you said that it’s your body and that it’s nobody else’s business, I was just curious if you would be willing to forfeit any payout for any sickness associated with your obesity from Medicare or Medicaid which we all pay for, or insurance. I’m just curious!”‘

Moderator:
“I think MeMe’s getting a little bit ahead in the debate, which is the idea of the cost or burden to society of medical expenses. And we all know that something like 9% of all medical expenses are related to obesity. But we can get to that in a minute. Why don’t we continue with our opening statements? And I turn to Kim. Is it okay to be fat?”

Kim:
“Well, I think that first of all you have to define okay. What does okay mean? Is it a permission? Because once we start policing what goes in our mouths from a legislative point, that’s very scary. And what is fat? Are you talking about a term that the government set up? Is it a pound overweight? How long have you carried it? I mean, I think it’s very difficult to be overweight and healthy. I think there’s exceptions, especially when you’re young there can be exceptions, but it takes a toll on your body and I speak from experience. But my husband told me I was beautiful when I was 350 pounds. It’s not a beauty thing, it’s a health thing.”

Moderator:
“Crystal, for your industry, it’s very much a beauty thing. Is it okay to be fat?”

Crystal:
“I think that it’s okay to eat, well, a balanced diet. I also think that it’s good to exercise and wherever your body falls, whether that’s actually a four, or an eighteen, I think that it’s really about the actual healthy eating habits that you have and wherever your body falls. I believe, actually, because I have met people, in my side of things, you know, my division is the plus size industry, and I meet quite a few women who eat a very healthy, balanced diet, and they just happen to be a size eighteen.”

Moderator:
“But doesn’t the fact that you’re a plus size model speaks volumes about the fashion industry, because looking at you, you don’t look like a plus size person to me.”

Crystal:
“Oh, absolutely. I do know that the society, when they hear plus size model, they have a picture in their mind, but in the industry, a plus size is anything above a thirty-four inch hip, thirty-five inch hip, and that goes all the way up to a twenty. What I’m fighting for is a variety on the runway. I want all different types of women in magazines, because I think that’s an accurate portrayal of what women are. And I think that they could look at those magazines and those ads and feel really positive from that. Because people ARE all different sizes, and no matter if you’re, if you’re starving yourself down to be healthy, I don’t agree with that. And an interesting point that was brought up earlier was about the hips and the knees and it causing problems when you’re ‘obese’. Well, I remember when I’d been exercising for eight hours a day, what that did to my hips. It was quite amazing, I found myself having trouble to walking down the street.”

Moderator:
“So you’re saying that the quest for being thin can be quite unhealthy as well?”

Crystal:
“Oh absolutely. I think it’s all about moderation, which is my stance.”

====

And that’s just the first five minutes.

As you can see MeMe is rather unpleasant, jumping to conclusions, interrupting, talking over the other participants and that’s just the beginning of her craziness. If you want to see the whole trainwreck, you can watch it in five minute segments with an annoying commercial before each one, at the link mentioned above.

And I suppose that I can mention that this estimation of 9%? Is based on the TOTAL cost of all diseases that may or may not be attributed to size, although it’s far from true that every single person who has problem with their heart, joints or blood sugar are overweight. Also, researching this I came across this interesting table, which maps out the total cost of various diseases in the U.S. Heart conditions are in the lead at 8.3%, BUT trauma and cancer are both close behind, at 6.9 and 6% respectively.

That is not accounting for the fact that fat people are more likely to survive cardiac events, that dieting will cause as much health problems as staying fat and that that a portion of all health costs are, in fact, lapband surgeries.

Add to that the fact that so many overweight people don’t get adequate health care is because they’re terrified of going to the doctor when they’re just going to be told to lose weight when they in fact have preemie lungs as a friend of mine, or blood clots in their lungs or, you know, a busted knee.

As the debate went on MeMe Roth kept quoting all kinds of obscure studies, as if rattling off numbers would be especially convincing. One of the studies claimed that the BRAINS of fat people were smaller than those of thin people. Looking for something to confirm or reject this study I found a blog that said it so beautifully:

There’s also the small matter in which Roth stated that overweight/obese people had brains “4% smaller” than “healthy weight” people. I understand the study’s from the University of Pittsburgh, as she noted, but I want to know what exactly the university said, since this sounds – as the audience for the debate attested – like total crap. Does the brain shrink as someone gains weight? What of the five percent of dieters who used to be obese and are now considered “normal” weight, such as Kim Benson? Do their brains enlarge as these people continue to keep the weight off?

The only way this makes sense is if evolution slowly progressed over centuries to the point that genetically larger people had 4% smaller brains, but then that’s admitting that weight and size has very much to do with genetics and very little to do with willpower or one’s moral worth, which Roth won’t concede to. Except when it comes to fat women giving birth to kids with spina bifida, at which point Roth says, “You’re fighting against Darwin here!”

Well, MeMe, you can’t have it both ways – either weight is caused by genetics or it’s caused by one being a self-indulgent slob, and it looks like you’ve undermined your lazy-slob position right there. Check… and… mate.

====

As the debate went on Crystal shared a bit of her obsessive eating habits while anorexic, which became rather telling once MeMe went on to talk about HER not-diet, which is based on the idea that if you want to weight 130, you should eat no more than 1300 calories per day (yes, seriously), and if you want more you can exercise, and then get up to 1800.

Which sounds very healthy, no?

At one point Kim actually said (in horror) to Marianne: “But you don’t know how much you’re eating, because YOU’RE NOT COUNTING YOUR CALORIES”, as if that was the end of the fucking world.

Then a male pediatrician came on and mansplained what the women on the panel had already discussed. Later on he spoke about babies, six months old who are being tragically over-fed, which ties in with MeMe’s closing statement, but we’ll get to that in a minute. The one thing I liked about him was when he asked her if she thinks stigmatising obese people is a good thing. To this she answered that she doesn’t think we should stigmatise PEOPLE because of her family (who are all overweight), but that we need to use stigmatisation to fight obesity.

To this Marianne said:

“But what your message does is stigmatise fat people. You don’t run an organization that attacks school systems for not having recess. What your organization does is making people feel bad about themselves. There are no ‘powers of stigmatization’ that can do anything good for a person. You know, shame doesn’t work that way.”

And really? Her arguments sounds an awful lot like “oh, I don’t like gay people but YOU are okay, because you’re my friend”. And speaking about the size of our brains? Reminds me of when they used to measure people’s body parts to prove that they were inferior, and that is frankly, a thing of the past. At least I really fucking hope so.

====

Another quote of MeMe’s is the following:

“We’ve gotten ourselves to the point where we are behaviorally and neurochemically dependant on food.”

Yes, she really said that. She sat on national television and stated that our brains tell us we have to eat or we’ll die. Um, REALLY? That’s certainly not anything anyone else has ever thought of!

Kim, on the other hand, is nice in comparison. She uses this sugary sweet voice, talking as if she wants YOU, and just you, nobody else, to think about your health and your future and do something about yourself. She speaks like she is your well-meaning mother or aunt or whatever, and really, she wasn’t THAT bad until the very end when the following was said…

Kim:
“I just don’t understand. Are you saying that obese people are obese because of genetics, not because of behaviour?”

Marianne:
“I’m saying that there are a lot of things, and no one reason. And the argument –”

Kim:
“Can I just ask about you? Are you obese simply because you have an obese gene, and not because you overeat? Because you’re talking about eating healthy food, eating in moderation, exercising… (and here she LAUGHS) … I gotta ask about you. I’m just asking, not condemning or making any statements, I just want to know. Are you the size you are because you overeat, or because you’re just genetically pre-disposed?”

Marianne:
“I’m this size because I dieted for twenty years.”

Kim:
“Well, DIETING doesn’t get you to that size.”

Marianne:
“It DOES, actually. It gets you to the point where you lose a little bit of weight, and then you regain like 10% more than what you lost, I can’t remember the exact statistics on that. So when you go through the cycle of gain and loss, of gain and loss, of gain and loss, you do wind up at this size.”

Kim:
“I know! I did! I was bigger than you are!”

Um yes. See what she did there? First she stated that you can’t diet your way into 300+ pounds, just to, mere seconds later, say that she dieted her way to 350 pounds. Anyone see the contradictions here? Yeah. Me too.

====

And finally, here comes their closing statements:

Kim:
“I think that beauty comes from within, not from without. But I don’t want people to fall into the trap that if they want to lose weight, that they feel that they can’t do it. I don’t want them to think that just because they’ve been overweight for a million years, have tried every diet out there, um, have yo-yo-ed up and down a million times… If they truly want to get to a healthy weight it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been overweight or how much you weigh, the only way you’ll never lose weight is if you stop trying.”

Crystal:
“I think women have a problem with self-hatred and lack of confidence. I believe that there’s absolutely a prejudice in this country to anyone over the size of… probably a ten, and I think that’s very sad, and I think that, you know, if this country got over that and maybe started to accept, you know, different types of people, maybe women wouldn’t feel so pushed down and maybe they would even take it to the next step from where they are and they’ve already come so far. I would like to see that happen and I’m so proud of women and I really think that people need to be an individual to find success. Be happy with who you are, and then go out and live your life.”

MeMe:
If we’re going to do anything about reversing the obesity trends in the U.S., we’re going to have to take most of our resources and focus on the pre-pregnancy to age five bracket, before children have developed their body compositions and their eating and exercise habits. It may not be in the constitution, but it is in the Declaration of Independence that we have the right to pursue happiness and without your health you don’t have that. Every child born in this country should have a chance at being healthy and a chance at pursuing happiness. We owe that to them. So let’s focus on the pre-pregnancy to five-year-olds and foster Generation H for ‘healthy’.”

Marianne:
My body and my health doesn’t look like everybody else’s body and their health. Everybody is an individual, everyone has their own challenges when it comes to their health, however that’s defined. And I think that it’s incredibly damaging to judge someone and their health level solely on this one factor. It’s ridiculous. And it has reached a point in our society where it’s not just, you know, fatty-fatty-fat people like me, it’s trickling down to people of all sizes, and children and we’re actively damaging ourselves by being obsessed by this one number instead of doing things that are actually good for us.

And I think that about sums it up. I really haven’t turned the arguments around to make my favourite people sound smarter and the ones I don’t agree with stupid. They did that all by themselves, thank you. Though I have to agree with this one blog I found while researching today (a different one), which said:

I don’t believe fat-fighting generals like Roth and Bensen are truly evil – I don’t believe they wake up every morning and ask themselves, “Hmmm, now how can I torture a fat person today?” Rather, they just have their heads far up their own behinds. They’re more invested in their own PR than they are in creating real beneficial change for other people. It’s their way or the highway, simply because they say so. And their way – at least in their eyes – has taken on an almost holy shimmer. They couldn’t possibly be doing wrong by other human beings when they’re feeling so darn right.

And that, my friends, is going to have to conclude it all, because this post is now 3000 words long. Um, sorry about that.

APPARENTLY there is wheat in make-up. Like, all the make-up I own. I’ve had notoriously bad skin since I was about twelve years old. I suppose this could be a reason… Or maybe I just have bad genes. Whichever one it is, it’s annoying as hell. Will try to switch to better stuff and hope for the best.

In other not even vaguely interesting news I have been to weaving, it snowed another ten centimetres since this morning and I could be in a bad mood, but I am listening to podcast It’s Up For Grabs Now and they have a guest who won’t watch a game, record a game, listen to the radio or answer texts with game related news. Because he’s supersticious.

That’s worse than me, even.

Knitting Olympics. Not doing too well. Writing is too distracting. Possibly this is a good thing. And with that I shall return to Scrivener.

As I’ve professed not to over-share I will only say one thing:

MY FUCKING PSYCHIATRIST IS A FUCKING IDIOT.

Ahem. So, with that overwith, let’s ramble aimlessly for some time and hope that I come up with something at least somewhat interesting. First I can say that I actually set 38 whole entries to private, and the further back I got the more känsloporr it got. What hit me the most as I read those posts, however, was how bad off I was only a year ago. Things have gotten a lot better, so even when I’m frustrated with my limitations I need to remember that!

Also, you should go read the article Murder in the laundry room at The Local, and not just because there’s a link to my blog in it. It’s pretty awesome on its own, perfectly describing the passive-aggressive mentality that – for some reason – is associated with Swedes and their laundry rooms.

And because of the tweet with this awesome photo (all credit to Nestflow here!) together with Tansy’s helpful reminder that March is less than a week away I realised that… I am two months minus three days away from my 30th birthday.

(And one month minus two days to my dear sister’s 28th, happy birthday, you know I’ll forget!)

So, in the interest of holy-crap-how-did-this-happen I will provide you with a list I made ten years ago, labelled “things I should’ve accomplished before I’m 30″. I think I will have to amend this to be “before I’m 35″ instead, or this post is far too depressing.

1. Having lived abroad long enough to speak a second language fluently.
2. Be a published writer.
3. Have a degree.
4. Have a job.
5. Have a partner and possibly a child. Or two.
6. Have a driver’s license.

On #1 I yes, on #2-6 I say THIRTY-FIVE. Thirty-five. Yes. I’ll go with that.

On the upside, I have lived in more places than I ever thought I would, learned a lot, improved my writing, read a ton of books, learned a lot of useless trivia about Arsenal, become with mobile phone, computer and ipod – I still remember having a TYPE WRITER and… what’s it called, discman, or is that just the ones with CDs, because mine had TAPES – and started a business, although admittedly low-income, at least exists.

Also, am less than five chapter away from halfway mark of Eld.

YAY.

So, um, you know how I go on and on about the snow? It’s because I have literally never seen more snow in my life. Literally. I live in the south, and it’s really not normal to get this much snow down here. We’re lucky if we get two inches for Christmas that melts after two days. This year, though? We’ve got snow. We’ve got lots and lots of snow.

I’m not normally one to talk endlessly about the weather, but today I actually went outside to get some better snow pics. Enjoy. Or, you know, not.