Easter dinner with the parents was a nice little thing, only the three of us as my brother realised ten minutes before the food was done that he had to be somewhere drinking beer RIGHT NOW. And because it’s been at least a week since the last time I did this, some pics of it all…

Instead of taking sprigs of birch inside and dress them up, as we do (forgot that in yesterday’s Easter post), Mum brought the feathers outside. So cute.

Sign of spring #1: one lonely green bud surrounded by dead flowers from last year.

Sign of spring #2: Crocuses, the first flower to bloom here. And yes, they really are THAT blue and yellow.

Sign of spring #3: Kaia wearing a dress. Sadly the best pic I got of it, and yes, then I cardigan-ed it up, cos it wasn’t THAT warm.

Sign of spring #4: Barbecue! Okay, so, we never do this before the end of April, normally, but I convinced them that it was more fun than Easter food, and they agreed. Score.

While they cooked and marinated and barbecued and all I watched this. 1-0 in the 95th fucking minute. No wonder I’ve got grey hairs coming in. And yes, I’m a spoiled brat. At age twenty-nine plus eleven months and a few days.

New knitting project makes for a very happy Kaia. This is Gaenor by Picnic Knits in a far too heavy yarn, but I don’t care. Probably should’ve gone up more than two needle sizes too…

Hunting for shoes (and coming out with a table, two lamps and said shoes) I made Mum pose with the remaining snow. Hard to believe it was as much as it was, really.

My Dad is a nerd for all things from the 60s (and can you blame him, women back then were HOT), so my sister gave him this calendar. Lovely, lovely black-and-white photos all through it.

And finally, a classic. We call this Try To Get Five Kids To Pose Prettily At Once, Anno 1984. That would be me in the middle, glaring at my boy cousin (same age as me, a head shorter until we turned 16) for making little A. cry. Our older cousin in the back is seemingly unaware of the drama…

This week my kitten has learned that she can indeed jump up on the kitchen counter, crawl down into the sink, examine dirty dishes, walk across the stove whether or not things are cooking on it and – the best part! – jump up on the thingy I only know as “fläkten”, where I used to keep things she wasn’t allowed to eat, such as pins, safety pins and other sharp things which she loves to play with. Oh, and knock my jars of tea off their shelf.

My reflex to this is OH MY GOD I NEED ANOTHER CAT.

Makes sense? No, not particularly. Though I think she’ll be less bored if she has a brother (two female cats seems like trouble), and maybe there will be less escapades of the not so amusing variety. Though, I of course have to have her fixed first, cos I do not want kittens, however cute they may be.

In other news I am seriously thinking about going back to university. Sounds crazy, but… yeah. I have 3/4 of a B-kurs, 1/2 of a C-kurs and I think if I finish the two and possibly another course or two I will have enough for a B.A., which is a fil.kand. in Swede-speak. A year or even six months ago this was out of the question. I couldn’t concentrate, I didn’t have the energy to even think about it, and so on. Now? It will still be a challenge and a big one at that, but I do feel ready to try. Maybe I’ll take those two classes from beginning to end, despite having done half or more of them, just to get back into the swing of things. I’m not eligible for any kind of financial aid (CSN) anyway, so it hardly matters in that aspect.

Deadline for applications is April 15th. Got some time to make up my mind.

Am still contemplating what to do about the Knitting Olympics. Making socks seems like cheating, but I have small amounts of yarn that I don’t know what else to do with and Knitty had some gorgeous sock patterns this time around. Maybe I’ll need to set a goal of more than one pair, just because. I mean, other people are attempting whole jumpers.

Of course, I can’t do it if I don’t have a TV. And if I make my parents come by with one (they have like five) I might as well pay a couple of hundred (kronor, not dollars, thank you) a month to get my football games on it… Right?

Possibly not.

Yesterday Tansy and I had a conversation (well, she held a monologue and I said “ooooh” a lot) in which she compared Doctor Who to Arsenal, and a certain episode I didn’t like to Denilson having a bad day. I told her to BLOG IT, but it’s possible nobody but me and her would ever find it amusing or relevant.

I remember that Russel T Davies was Arsene and Moffat (one of the writers) AND David Tennant are both Cesc. Apparently. And the new doctor is Aaron Ramsey, has been signed but nobody knows who the hell he is and if he’s any good.

With that said, I heart Aaron Ramsey, and think he’s pretty good, although he’s only played a handful games this season and scored like twice. But I still love him.

As for Doctor Who itself I’m about halfway through the first Tennant season, and I’m actually starting to like Rose. Which I did not, in the beginning. Eh, you know what? Why watch the Olympics? I can do Doctor Who marathons instead! A Knitting/Olympics/Doctor Who mash-up. With much tea and rice cakes.

(And frequent breaks to OMG-WHAT-THE-HELL-THIS-IS-AWESOME-ping Jenn and Tansy. Naturally.)

Um. I think my nerd-o-meter hit max so hard that it shattered into a million pieces. May have to upgrade to the deluxe version or something…

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…

This post was written a week ago, though apparently I did not hit publish…

====

Cups of tea drunk today: 3.
Times I used the kettle rather than the microwave to heat said water: 3.
Likelihood this makes me British: 0.

I enjoy structured blogging, so here we go.

====

Procraftination.
As most of you probably know I run a low-key, DIY, stay-at-home-without-children type business. I sell cloth pads and accessories (okay, mostly cloth pads, but um, more is coming). My webpage can be found here, and my craft blog here. It has various crafty pursuits in it, because I hate when people try to sell things in every single post they make, so I’m trying to mix it up.

I do some knitting patterns too, all free for you to use, should you want to do so. I am not the most accomplished pattern writer, and am in awe of those that are. My dear friend Corrina, on the other hand, is. She is getting a pattern published any day now! So happy for her.

Anyway, the reason I’m bringing this up – would there be any interest of a Twitter account especially for crafty/business type tweeting? I feel like if I did it on my current account it would drown in all the random observations and football mania, but as I already mentioned, people that tweet/blog/etc just to sell things? Booooring.

Maybe I just need a hash-tag of my own…

To-Do-List.
I try to put five things on my to-do-list a week. It’s what I call “trying to live a normal life and make myself not collapse in a heap”. I hope that if I keep this up, it will help me get well sooner. Well, one can hope, right?

So, this week I had 1) clean bathroom and kitchen, 2) cut out fabric, finish pinning it together (this was also on last week’s to-do-list, ie big fail on that, 3) put away laundry, 4) write some, 5) read at least one book.

I managed 1, 4 and 5. Granted “write some” isn’t exactly specific, but I did re-write a very difficult chapter, so I’ll give myself a pass on that one. Books read: Stardust by Neil Gaiman and Tightrope by Gillian Cross.

As for 2 and 3 I have some hope of accomplishing at least one of them before tomorrow night. Go me.

Gluten free stuff.
This one must be FASCINATING to read. But okay. Must buy new pasta strainer, I think that is what’s making me sick.

Ate yummy things this week: Tofu alla Cacciatore (butchered spelling, I know, I know), random stew of awesomeness, more tofu, with glass noodles, which is my new favourite dish. Yesterday mum made vegetarian gluten free lasagna, which was very yummy.

I tried to make vegan gluten free brownies. They BOILED THEMSELVES INTO CONCRETE. It took me two days of soaking before I could shoe horn it out of the cake tin I put it in. I have not yet dared to look at the cookie sheet I protected the oven with.

I can make gluten free cookies and muffins just fine, but brownies? Um, no.

Socialising.
Making myself do this too, just to get out of the house. I managed three times this week; Monday I had tea with Viola, Thursday I went to weaving and chatted with little old ladies, and Friday I went over to my parents house to watch the handball game and have dinner.

I met Viola’s boyfriend for the first time, admired their flat that has an OFFICE (colour me jealous) and talked about… stuff. I also knitted some, but that’s no surprise.

The weaving was more mentally trying than I’d like; they’ve changed it so that it’s a full class on Thursdays too, and there were people everywhere. I am very sensitive to noise, and these people talk OMG SO LOUDLY. I suppose that is par for the course when you hit 75, but come on!

Handball, then. It’s the sport of our little town. Sure, there’s a hockey and several football teams as well, but generally people don’t care so much about them. I tried to explain this sport to a friend, vaguely successfully, as I mostly listed sports it’s not like (football, volley ball, basketball), so here is a link to Wikipedia, in case somebody is interested. Our boys lost, sadly, 30-29 (yes, it’s normal with that many goals), but it’s always exciting to see people you know of in the national team. We had two from the tiny place I’m from (population 1000+) this time, though one is a goalie and barely got any play time. But in the end Sweden was knocked out of the European Championships before the semi finals, and it’s the first time in 36 years we don’t move on to the next stage… Disappointment!

Twitter party.
I love these. I never go out, because of the noise factor, among other things, but today the Aurealis Award happened, and people were live tweeting. Scott Westerfeld, author of the Uglies series and all that (which I need to read, have a copy!) tweeted, on the insistance of the twitt-o-sphere (so hard to type that word with a straight face, but what am I supposed to call it?), what all the winners were wearing.

Twelfth Planet Press was shortlisted for seven awards, but sadly did not win any. I wish that Tansy’s Siren Beat (yay gratuitous linkage!) would have won, because I love that book so and if I ever get to go to Tasmania I will demand sightseeing of all the places mentioned in the book. (Possibly I’m a tad biased. Just a tad.)

Political stuff.
So many things to mention here!

a) Alisa aka Girlie Jones has an amazing post on Joanna Russ and women in speculative fiction up here. It (as of this very moment) has 71 comments to it, most of them awesome. For example somebody is using the metaphor of somebody standing on your foot and asking them to stop, and possibly being less polite the hundredth time it happens, to describe sexism and why feminists get tired of repeating Feminism 101 over and over and over again.

Very interesting read.

b) Amanda Palmer, Margaret Cho and the fake Katy Perry video. I could say many things here, but I can’t really articulate myself in less than thousands of words, and I don’t have time for that. Watch the clip, form your own opinion.

c) Here in Sweden two female politicians are talked about for two different reasons. Note that I don’t support the political party that either of these women belong to, but that’s besides the point.

1) Mona Sahlin is posing on a pic with seven other politicians, five male, three female, with a Louis Vuitton bag at her feet. She’s criticised for having a 6000 SEK (roughly 800 USD) purse when that is about half of what people earn in a month. And sure, I can see many things more important to purchase than a freaking purse (I so don’t get the purse thing), but I do wonder how much the suits of the male politicians on the same picture cost. And as an aside, it’s said that the purse was a gift and that it was given to her seven freaking years ago. How much are all the purses you’ve used in the last seven years worth? Just a question.

2) Birgitta Ohlsson of another party altogether is pregnant. She’s due in July, and the election is in late September, and people are horrified that she’s not counting it out. Now, I know several people with small children, and I know how stressful the first few months can be, but I assume that a politician have the means to pay for daycare and such, and not to mention that her husband is (according to her blog) going to take the first few months of paternity leave. We can share here, you see, which is amazing, and I think this is the exact reason for it.

I rather enjoyed the blog post she wrote about it, saying things along the line of “I’m married to a modern man, not a dinosaur”, and “if I’m going to lose a post it’s going to be because I’m not the right person or competent enough”, asking what decade media thinks it is anyway.

d) New shiny blog in my blogroll – Trollhare. He writes about fat acceptance (though I’m not sure if he calls it that), queer and/or gender stuff, politics, veganism and mental health. I enjoy his posts a whole lot, and comment possibly a bit too much. But it’s that awesome.

And really, a blog with the subtitle “welcome to the freakshow”? Love at first sight.

====

I totally meant to do some sewing after writing this, before making dinner, but it took longer than I’d expected, so now I have to go glare at my fridge and see what it produces… I think tofu loaf. If I can find my favourite recipe.

PS. Is a post with so many different subjects that it requires ten separate tags fail or win? I can’t decide.

Urghhh. I got glutened again. Or rather, I glutened myself. Probably. I can’t figure out how or why, because I’ve eaten exactly the same kind of food today as I did yesterday, and I wasn’t sick then. Maybe it’s a delayed reaction, but as I’ve learned it usually hits me right away, and I’ve checked every single ingredient of everything I ate yesterday and today, and they are all okay.

Yesterday I had to tell my mother about my bathroom habits, because she finds it impossible that I actually have Celiac, or that I’ve had it for so long without knowing. Over the last week or two, though, I’ve learned that it’s not normal for food to pass right through you. I remember a few years back when I wondered if it was, but I was in the U.S., and had no health insurance. The procedure used to diagnose me, that I paid 100 kr for here in Sweden, costs something like 1500 dollars, that is 10,000 kr, over there.

I decided that it was all the beans and lentils I ate doing it.

In an hour and a half I need to leave to go see Viola and I’m feeling shaky and blah and it’s snowing. Feeling better though, as I’m eating plain, ridiculously bland rice cakes and fruit, and I’ve looked forward to seeing her. I will take my tiny sock and my ipod and wear my new shiny scarf and mittens.

This is the yarn I bought in Edinburgh. It cost something like £11.99 for 300 yards and Jenn almost died when I purchased it. What can I say? Crack is cheaper. But it’s Manos Silk Blend, and it’s so soft that it feels like being wrapped in cotton and put on a shelf, waiting for better times.

And I used the mittens before these (knitted out of Malabrigo Worsted, also ridiculously expensive) for three years, never growing tired of them and being obsessive about checking my pockets so I wouldn’t lose them, so I reckon they’re worth it.

The scarf is nearly a full hundred inches long or 240 cm. I can wrap it twice around my neck and still have some left.

And now I need to a) iron my shirt, b) locate my bus pass, c) locate the right bus, d) load my ipod with battery, pack my knitting, and e) stop talking in list form.

PS. So didn’t iron my shirt. Checked Twitter instead.

(Took a walk. Faced some demons. Was surprised how small they were.)

And now:

WISHES FOR 2010
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but here are a few goals/wishes for the coming year. No promises, just guidelines.

- I want to finish editing Eld and Blueberry.
- I want to work on developing my writing further.
- I want to cook new and exciting things.
- I want to start exercising and spend more time with friends, new and old.
- I want to become less dependant on caffeine.
- I want to get my anxiety under control, or at least MORE under control.
- I want to let go of past badness.
- I want to get laid. Seriously. It’s been years.
- I want to work towards being able to hold down a job again, even if it’s just part time.
- I want to visit Edinburgh again, and be able to enjoy it fully, without constant anxiety.
- I want…

You know what? I’ll let you know when I figure it out.

And now, a very condensed version of my decade, of the sort I don’t mind if the whole world reads. I really need to work on sharing less. Seriously. So here is an attempt.

2000-2009
In an extremely un-chronological order:

Lost some friends (who shall not be named). Made friends (who shall be named: Linn, Viola, Corrina, Tansy, Millie, Jenn, and others I haven’t forgotten, even if they’re not in this list).

Left my family. Missed my family. Returned to my family. Was amazed by their a) big hearts, b) unconditional love, c) dramatic flair, c) awesome story telling skills (and knack for exaggerating, e) AWESOMENESS.

Went to the U.S. Stayed too long. Learned to drink Pepsi for breakfast.

Went back to Sweden. Felt out of the loop. Un-learned to drink Pepsi for breakfast.

Started smoking. Stopped smoking.

Said good things. Said bad things. Thought “What THE HELL was I thinking?” rather a lot.

Wrote an extremely bad book (shut up, I was twenty, it’s allowed). Stopped writing. Started writing. Wrote some more books. Possibly still not good. Did not get any of them published.

Had a knitting pattern published. Had three other knitting patterns rejected.

Became a vegetarian. Stayed a vegetarian (for four years). Became a vegan. Stayed a vegan (for three years). Became a vegetarian again. Stayed a vegetarian (for three years). Became an omnivore. Did not stay an omnivore (for more than two weeks). Became a vegetarian again. I believe I’m a bit over six months into that last one.

Started school. Studied social work, psychology, sociology, English, computer science, art history, arts and crafts. Did not walk away with a degree.

Am still contemplating what to become when I grow up.

Broke somebody’s heart. Had my heart broken (by somebody else altogether).

Came out as bisexual. Came out as a lesbian. Came out as “straight”. Came out as a lesbian. Again.

Tried Cipramil. Tried Efexor. Tried Mirtazapin. Tried Cymbalta. Tried two other kinds I don’t remember. Got a diagnosis (after ten years). Tried another kind of medication altogether. Hoping that it will work better than the others.

Was anxiety ridden. Was house bound. Am still anxiety ridden, but less so. Am still house bound, but working on it.

Went through three laptops. Started dreaming of a MacBook.

Went through two sewing machines. Started dreaming of a serger.

Learned how to knit, crochet (somewhat), sew, weave and talk to little old ladies. Started dreaming of a job in a yarn shop.

Did NaNoWriMo three times. 2006, 2008, 2009. Won all three years.

====

I could keep going, but I think I’d rather not.

PS. I forgot: a) Started a business, b) hoarded yarn, c) sold my TV (did not miss it), d) said goodbye to far too many cats, mourned this for a long time, then acquired another one, f) learned nifty words such as “knackered” and “peckish”.

In the last week I have finished two of the three books that has been half-read and ignored since my move in SEPTEMBER. The two I’m done with are Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters (and now I must see the movie) and Lady Knight in the series about the Protector of the Small aka Keladry of Mindelan by Tamora Pierce. That is quite a mouthful isn’t it? Not to worry, she goes by “Kel”, for the most part, and I suspect that if I’d understood why people would become knights (or detectives, or police officers, or any other high risk profession) I might’ve liked this quartet of books even more.

My favourite character from the Pierce set will always be the cynical, often exasperated and extremely green-eyed apparently (as it’s mention at least twenty times per book) friend of Kel’s, Nealan. He’s awesome.

Only book left to read on that particular pile is Deerskin by Robin McKinley, and then I get to start fresh! Four more books before January first and I will make my goal of reading 50 books in six months. Which wasn’t a goal until I a few weeks ago went “whoa, I’ve read 42 books in the last five months”, and decided to bring it up to an even number.

In other news I today (literally) had a camera shoved down my throat and while uncomfortable, it was far from the least pleasant medical procedure I’ve undergone. It does however look like I don’t have Celiac (hooray!), though won’t know for sure until the biopsy comes back. I did get stern lecture about eating too much Ibuprofen. It apparently has left pretty polkadots on the lining of my stomach. NOT GOOD.

I do feel a bit strange when I eat too much bread, but as I mostly eat bread with cheese it might just be the lactose playing up again. I have no idea, and need to call my doctor’s office and get a print out of what the blood work said, because he wouldn’t have referred me for this procedure (which cost 100 SEK, less than 20 USD, sometimes I do love Swedish health care) if there was nothing steering him in that direction…

In all, it seems like I’m getting to keep my medical mystery badge, which I was so ready to give up.

On Thursday I have my long-awaited psychiatrists appointment, which is good, because I can feel the effect of the antidepressants starting to taper of fucking already. I feel physically stronger, but mentally? Not so much.

I’m buying my Christmas stuff this weekend despite the pleas from my sister to wait until she comes home on the 19th, and I’m sure that the cat will climb it and knock it over every single time I sleep. And sometimes while I’m fully awake and yelling at her for doing it. Kittens are very… kitten-y.

Other than that I’m mostly knitting, writing, cuddling said menace, reading many books and being upset that I am missing Regina Spektor’s show in Stockholm tonight. I do need to save my spoons – Christmas and New Year’s will be hard enough as it is – but I so wish that I could’ve gone.

Maybe next time.

PS. If I could marry a fibre it would be Malabrigo Silk Blend in various greens. You’ll see when I post pictures.

In the Swedish blogosphere there there are a ton of lists gong around right now. It started with somebody saying that we as women need more bad role models. You know, the ones that aren’t doctors or lawyers or politicians before the age of thirty, those that aren’t bosses or supervisors or super mothers managing to be shiny all the while. Role models that dare to admit that they get too drunk, laugh at their own jokes and are bad at stuff. And good at stuff. All that.

And as an answer to the original post on this there has been a veritable mountain of lists posted, where women admit what they are really bad at, and what they are awesome at. And since I have been pondering what my next List of 30 should be about… here goes. Fifteen things I’m bad atand another fifteen pretty damn awesome. Likely with lengthy explanations, beause that’s just the way I am.

This is, by the way, by no means a comprehensive list. Just off the top of my head.

====

NOT SO GOOD THINGS ABOUT ME:

1. I can’t accessorise, coordinate my clothing or even match the items to each other. I never notice stains and/or wrinkles until it’s too late. In short, I always look like I just fell out of bed, and a lot of the time I actually did.

2. I’m really bad at wearing make-up. I’m decent at applying it, if I want to, because I had a phase of emo-ten-pounds-black-eye-shadow-a-day when I was in my late teens, but it doesn’t come naturally to me. And if I had my way I’d wear make-up maybe once or twice a year. At most.

3. I am really annoying when I’m drunk and start behaving like I’m sixteen all over again. I get drunk from four beers, six and I’m on the floor giggling at my own jokes. I don’t drink wine. I can’t even smell wine without wanting to throw up, hard liquour makes me want to die and the only beer I like is Heiniken.

4. I hate politics. Seriously. I find it excruciatingly boring, can’t get myself to read up on it because I’d rather feed my own limbs to a bear, and usually I vote on the party that sounded the smartest just as I headed out the door to go to the polling station. Sometimes I vote on the candidate my favourite bloggers recommend. Because I believe in the importance of voting, but have no idea what I’m doing.

5. I have the attention span of a toddler on a sugar high. This means that I can’t listen to the radio, watch TV or movies. Sometimes I inhale seasons of TV all at once, because I have an interesting knitting project to keep me occupied, but I can’t follow a show for an entire season, week to week. This means that I have never seen Buffy, Veronica Mars, 30 Rock, Merlin, Fringe (two episodes, before I spaced out), Glee or any of the other shows you people are always talking about. In short, I live in a bubble. It’s probably really annoying.

6. Like most people with depression and anxiety issues I can be REALLY selfish. Half the time I live inside my own head, and if I have a bad day I will most likely cancel any plans we may have, no matter how much you may look forward to them.

7. I can’t speak on the phone. Seriously. I don’t know what people like me did before e-mail and text messages.

8. I tend to lose people I actually care about. I have very little contact with my friends from high school, I fall out of touch with anyone I’m not related to, and it’s not because I don’t care, it’s just because I at times feel so shitty that I can’t think about anyone but myself.

9. Being pregnant, giving birth and raising kids really freak me out. Actually, children in general makes me nervous, because they ask questions grown ups know not to, they look at you and they always just know.

10. I am painfully shy, stare at people rather than talk to them, couldn’t flirt if my life depended on it and have never had a one-night-stand. People usually think I hate them because I act like I’m So Much Better than them. In reality I am absolutely terrified.

11. I won’t ask for directions.

12. I’m a really bad vegetarian. I was a vegan for three years, an vegetarian for seven and now I eat meat 2-3 times a month. I have no good reason for it, either. I won’t cook with meat, fish or eggs, and use vegan eggreplacer whenever I can, but if somebody else cooks I’ll eat it, occasionally. I haven’t eaten a whole egg since I was eight years old and learned that eggs are unfertilised chickens.

13. I have been on sick leave four times in the last ten years. I haven’t held down a job since I was twenty-one. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to.

14. I am extremely clumsy. In the last two days I have fallen down the stairs twice. Once my laptop got the worst of it, and I’m not sure it is going to survive that fall. *crosses fingers that it will stay alive*

15. I am seriously addicted to Diet Coke.

====

AWESOME THINGS ABOUT ME:

1. I care. About everyone. Even if I can’t always articulate it.

2. If I could I would adopt every stray kitten that came along, and cuddle them to death. I am aspiring to become a crazy cat lady, and I’m well on my way! (On the other hand I hate dogs. And small children are, as we’ve established, pretty freaky.)

3. I’m awesome at vegan cooking. It was being a vegan that taught me how to cook in the first place, and I can make a killer roux, amazing cupcakes, tofu stuffed manicotti and a chocolate cake that nobody can tell is vegan. My favourite thing to bake is lemon chocolate chip cookies.

4. I am creative. I know how to sew, knit, crochet, spin and weave, and do so often and happily. I’m really good at following knitting patterns, but less so at writing them myself. I’m a newbie at crocheting, spinning and weaving, but love doing all of them. They make me calm.

5. I think in colour, and when I weave a rug I don’t just weave a rug. I make art. Some people find this odd, but I love expressing myself in these ways.

6. I am a decent writer. I used to beat myself up for not being able to write in Swedish, anymore, but once I embraced writing in English and started using it to my advantage I think I became a better writer.

7. I’m loyal. I mean, REALLY loyal. This is a good thing for the most part, but sometimes I hurt people because I in the attempt of being loyal to one person somehow manage to make another person sad. I try to get better at this, and I think I am somewhat successful.

8. I am a Nice Person. Sometimes too nice, but in all it’s a good thing, because I always have time to talk and try to share what I have with those that I like.

9. Like everyone in my family I have quite the dramatic thing going for me. It means that I over react, am convinced I am doomed, which I never am, and can tell a good story.

10. My imagination is a force of nature.

11. I have experienced enough drama to be able to write a BOOK about it. Maybe one day I will.

12. I am sentimental and save little silly things, and when I find them again years later they make me very happy. Sometimes I upload them to Facebook and make other people happy as well.

13. I have no problem travelling alone. When I was twenty-two I travelled across the world just to see if I liked a person. I did.

14. I’m bilingual.

15. I refuse to define my self worth by a number on a scale, and I’m learning (it’s a work in progress!) to find my body-as-a-woman way hotter than my body-as-a-girl. It goes up and down, but at the end of the day I am grateful for each one of my curves and that I can eat whatever I want because I say so.

====

There you go. What are your things? Tell tell tell!

I’m moved out of my flat in Linköping, and currently staying with my family out in the country. Their garden is filled with trees, and we have apples and pears and yellow leaves but sadly the plum tree did not want to play this year.

Yesteday I went to my first weaving class, and had so much fun. Sure, my head was full by the end of it all, because every single participant is apparently hard of hearing, and they talk… a lot. But I got my own key and once my grandmother (who is the one that hooked me up, she goes to it too) helps me fix up the loom with warp I can go there and weave any time I want!

Friday I get the keys to my new place, and Saturday I’m moving in.

Being home is nice, but having A. home is nicer. She talks to her friends on Skype and I every now and then have to jump in and wave to them, but mostly I’m cutting old clothes into 2 cm strips and re-packing stuff for an easy (ish) move on Saturday. I fill the fridge with vegetarian foods and am thinking of cutting my hair off. Again.

How much beer do you need to bribe every 20-year-old boy around here (my brother knows everyone, once I heard a 16-year-old boy refer to him as the “godfather of the village”) to carry my stuff? I guess time will tell.

Spending quality time with my sock that I’m knitting, for which the pattern is Minerva’s Tower (Ravelry link). I love it because it’s written with a large size, that is, it takes into account those of us who have fat ankles and can’t get “normal” sized socks over our gigantic heels.

Pictures will come to my craft blog some time soon. You can find it here, should you be so inclined. It will be dedicated to crafty things and also my business, which is currently on a hiatus until I have a place to live again. Which I will, in THREE DAYS.

Wheeee.