Jumbled Words

Today, my friends, I am going to tell you about why you should just DO things that are scary, because putting them off just makes them more scary. I say this because my refusal to pull a wisdom tooth for a full year culminated in me having to go in emergency style when the pain could no longer be ignored, at which point I was told it had to be pulled and that soon. I was asked if I wanted a referral to a guy who is apparently a specialist on these things or have it done right away, and as I know myself and thus was pretty sure that getting myself to the dentist once was hard enough, I told them to go ahead.

Normally I need Valium to go to the dentist. It’s equal parts being afraid of being touched (a quirk of mine), of the pain and residual freak-outs from when I was a kid and had to have pretty much all my first teeth (whatever they may be called) pulled out because they wouldn’t go on their own, which for a while meant that I had DOUBLE sets of teeth. Once I actually tried to run away from the dentist. They caught up with me halfway through the waiting room. I was eight, I think. Nine, possibly.

So, no Valium. I figured that I could take my own anxiety meds that I have left. Forgot to do so. Figured I could have my ipod playing, which helps. Realised I had FORGOTTEN to bring it. So in the end it was just me, lots of needles putting yummy numbness in my cheek and a nice nurse (is it called that when it’s dentistry, not regular doctor’s office?) who let me squeeze the hell out of her hand. Even if it meant she had to do the assisting with her left hand.

In other news I’m reading two interesting books right now; interesting because of the technique used by the authors rather than the content. Well, the content is pretty good too, but it’s the way the stories are told that fascinates me the most. They are both in Swedish, and it’s always awkward to review Swedish books in English, but I will make an attempt of sorts…

The first one, Shoo len by Douglas Foley is about one of those parts of a city which I suppose can be compared to poor, black neighbourhoods abroad, though a big portion of these immigrants are actually Middle Eastern, even if there are some from various African countries as well. The story is sometimes a bit exaggerated, but I am fascinated by the language. Wiki speaks (in English) about it here, and it’s interesting how many different languages that have influenced the different words; it seems like Arabic, Turkish and English are the most common, with some other languages thrown in as well. The title of the book can be translated to “Hey, mate” or similar, it seems.

In short, I am not entirely convinced by the story, but the language is really fascinating for a word nerd like me.

The other one in called Dannyboy och kärleken, written by Daniel Åberg. I’m only a few chapters into it, so I don’t know how it will end or why the characters are doing what they’re doing, but I am rather enarmoured by the stream-of-consciousness writing. Often the author allows thoughts to go unfinished, as they often are in real life, when you are interrupted or your brain quickly changes direction.

The interesting part is really that there are no em dashes to mark the interruption of said thought, or another thought replacing the first. It just STOPS, in the middle of a row, no punctuation marking the end of it. At first it drove me mad, but now I’m rather liking the way it’s executed.

In other words I am doing quite a bit of sewing and knitting, finishing up a custom order and knitting some socks because I’ve become OBSESSED by knitting socks.

I also want to give a shout-out to my friend Corrina; she has been pledging 50% of her income on knitting patterns to Doctors Without Borders for Haiti relief, and in one month she has made 900-ish USD to give to them! She’s extending this another fortnight to get up to an even 1000, so go buy something! My personal favourite is the Minerva’s Tower socks, but there are quite a few other lovely patterns there as well…