Today I have, in addition to the crafty things, done the following:

- Got a hair cut. It’s shorter than ever! If “ever” is code for “eleven years”. This marks my first use of Photobooth on my shiny Macbook, and I’m not even going to tell you how many attempts it took to make me look almost presentable. When my sister saw this pic she said “but don’t you know that you need to take the pic from above and give the camera the emo look?” Sadly I can’t bring myself to flirt with the camera. I tried. I only end up looking like I’m possessed. I’m not even kidding.

- Watched two football games, none which involved RVP, pictured above. He’s just my favourite boy crush. And no, I’m not ashamed. What I did watch was Mexico-South Africa and France-Uruguay. In the former Vela did three ALMOST assists and was pulled off the pitch in the eighty-something-th minute without ever finishing anything up. Game ended 1-1, and I missed Mexico’s goal because I strangely enough got sucked into a hiphop playlist I’m composing… France game ended 0-0 and was immensely boring, but both Gallas and Sagna got hacked down. I think we can safely say that Gallas is just old and squeaky and would snap in half if anyone looked at him for too long, and that Sagna was lucky that he didn’t break his leg. They’re all gonna come back broken. Damn World Cup.

- Been told to hashtag all my football tweets so people can filter them out.

-Did I mention the hiphop playlist? I know. It’s so not my kind of music, but I got this idea that working out will be awesome with music with a nice beat to it. First thing I did was fall in love with Janelle Monáe, who is, um, not hiphop. But she’s brilliant, and I’ve been listening to this song ALL DAY. In short, she’s beautiful, an amazing dancer, her hair defies gravity and in this video everyone – and I mean EVERYONE – wears suits with bowties and cute little black-and-white shoes. It’s quite refreshing, and I can’t watch her dance enough. And I never care about those things. (I found some proper hiphop too, don’t worry.)

- Realised that, yes, my cats sneaks out the window and sits all rolled up on the window sill OUTSIDE my third story window, all calm. The day she sees a bird, however, we’re in trouble. Must be better about closing it all the way.

- Finished reading Valiant, from Holly Black’s Modern Faerie Tale trilogy. I thought it was the second book, but now I’m not so sure, because the first and second had totally different POVs and the main character in the first was only in one scene of the second. I might’ve read the third, or she neatly brings the two of them together in the third book, tying all loose ends up.

There was more, but now I can’t remember. Am so very tired.

Birthday shenanigans with the family. It was a lot of fun, and all chocolate. We made two kinds of chocolate chip cookies with this flour I found that had xanthan gum added, which was fortunate as I can’t find xanthan gum itself to save my life. We also made chocolate mousse, which was raw and vegan, with avocados instead of fat. Sounds crazy, but it was so good nobody even asked what was in it. The recipe is here, but we used baking syrup instead of agave as I had no idea where to find it, and actually more than halved the amount of cacao.

The final measurements were something like:

8 tiny avocados (so small that you could fit two of them in the palm of your hand)
1 dl or 100 ml cacao
2-2.5 or 200-250 ml baking syrup
1-2 tablespoons vanilla (which comes in powder here, not sure of amount if liquid)

You put it all in a food processor and puree it until smooth, refrigerate it over night and that’s it. Ridiculously easy.

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Making Pavlova instead of cupcakes after Tansy told me there is such a thing as chocolate meringue. Recipe here, from Nigella’s website. Man, I love her cooking.

This is the cake, and why is it that 75% of my pics are of food? The raspberries were actually frozen, which is why we threw insane amounts of powdered sugar on top to make them look pretty and fresh picked. They’re also from our garden, picked last summer. We bought some too, but they weren’t very nice, so Mum dug these out of our bottomless pit of a freezer.

Most of the attending realised there was a game on, and threw themselves into my parents bed and turned on the TV. There were about four more people in the room. And that is both my siblings, three of my cousins and my Mum. All handball enthusiasts.

I was however unimpressed by the exchange:

A: “Wow, she has one hell of a shot.”
B: *scoffs* “It’s women’s handball.”

Shut your mouth, mmkay?

Why do we always look like this? And why didn’t I realise how low-cut that dress is? I love polkadots, so I had to buy it. Let’s just hope I’ll use it at least once more this summer… I’m usually pretty bad with dresses, but over the last year I’ve started using more girly clothes, and it’s actually kind of fun even though I’m self conscious wearing them still.

My Brother Is Tall, birthday edition. And Jenn, my Mum is about 2-3 inches taller than you. For reference!

Found this one! It’s me, age twelve, and all about soccer. I was a right winger, by then, which was a relief as it turned out that I was crap at all other positions. Too slow for striker, not tough enough for defence, to afraid of being hurt to for goalie and not multi-tasking enough for holding midfielder. So, winger it was, and that was the point where football went from being a chore to being fun. This pic reminds me of that.

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And now I think I’m going back to bed. Two more days of sister-back-home, but I’m so beat after the last few days. I actually only managed two and a half hours of socialising before I walked upstairs and passed out on my brother’s couch. I didn’t even make it downstairs to say goodbye to everyone.

Presents were awesome, family was better and I so wish that we could spend more time together. We’re spread out across the country, though, but at least at the same train line. Now if it only cost less than half a fortune to visit each other…

Also, yesterday at the gym I ran for all of six minutes on the threadmill. It’s the most I’ve run since I was seventeen and quit football. I’ve been building up slowly, from all walking to a quarter of running and three quarters of walking, and now I’m at one third running and two thirds walking. Maybe one day I’ll be able to run the whole twenty minutes, and then I plan on upping the amount of time on there…

I also got to put more weight onto my machines when I did my weight lifting! Very exciting to see progress, I have to say.

And now back to bed. Napping. So glorious.

I think today’s game (1-1, stupid stupid STUPID Birmingham equalised in the 90th minute, final score 1-1) can be best summed up this way:

Millie (17.39)
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Kaia (17.40)
omg. really?
YAAAAY
do they HAVE to wait to the last ten?

Millie (17.45)
obviously they want to make a point against people leaving early.

Millie (17.48)
damn, arshavin.

Kaia (17.49)
gah
OH MY GOD

Millie (17.50)
oh god.

Kaia (17.51)
oh my fucking god

Millie (17.53)
sigh.

And yes, that was the part of the game when everything remotely interesting happened. We really needed a win as Chelsea beat useless Villa 5-1 and are flyyyyying ahead of us, but… yeah. Theo was the luckiest member of the squad. That says kind of a lot.

But once the game was over I went and made my cheapest trick for dinner, vegan style Pasta Alfredo, which always cheers me up. I have no idea how Alfredo is normally made, but I suspect it’s about 100% more cream and/or eggs, but this one’s just brilliant and easy.

You put some sneaky amount of oil (say two tablespoons) in a pan, sautee a few cloves of garlic and a handful chopped walnuts in it. When fragrant, add the same amount of flour as oil, in this example two tablespoons. Stir and let sautee brieeeeeefly. Then add some milk and spices (I use salt, pepper, chili powder and basil, fresh is better but dried is okay). A cup or so of milk, I guess? I never measure. And then, let it cook on low heat until it thickens.

That is all. So easy yet has a fancy French name (roux).

I’m eating it with pasta and steamed vegetables. I usually make some kind of breaded tofu on the side, but I couldn’t be bothered today (see stupid draw).

I blame Arsenal’s bad luck on me, by the way. In the last two days I’ve run out of yarn fifty separate times, broken a grocery bag as I lifted it out of the trolley, two minutes later flipped said trolley over, nearly emptied a full plate of (very hot) food in my lap, accidentally locked the cat onto the balcony (twice), missed a bus by two seconds and burned a piece of fabric so badly while ironing it that I had to start my project over.

So, yeah. All my fault. Sorry boys.

I have however written a lovely blog post in Swedish about Gabourey Sidibe (and learned how to spell her name!) that I may translate some time, written an OMG REVELATION moment for my forever-in-editing-process-project, beaten my personal best at the gym (yay!), submitted two semi-clothed pics (that sounds a lot more exciting than it really is) to this Swedish BMI project that a lovely blogger has started, and re-learned how to crochet.

Also, I’ve learned about oxford commas, which I use all the time, only I had no idea that it had a term until somebody tweeted it. I thought I was just a punctuation junkie.

Which, actually, I kind of am.

PS. I can no longer defend anything Amanda Palmer says or does. This makes me very, very sad.

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.

Not really in the mood for writing tonight, but I do want to save these three YouTube-clips somewhere, so I suppose blogging them is as good of a way as any.

…

“Hir” by Alysia Harris och Aysha El Shamayleh
This one is old, I know, but I don’t care. It’s an amazing poem, all poetry slam style, about being transgendered. I can’t say that I know what it’s like but this piece gives me chills every single time I read it. I think my favourite bit is the ending:

James falls back into Melissa’s skin,
And the two comfort each other in a syncapated heartbeats,
Waiting for the day when Melissa can finally scrub off this made up genetic make up,
When the teacher asks for James and he can say “I’m here.”

…

A Night at the Emirates
Excuse my geeky football fan girling for a moment. If you’re not an Arsenal fan, this one is likely to make you roll your eyes, but if you are? Goddamn, it’s amazing, and it makes me want to actually see a game in person some time. Preferably before Barca steals Cesc from us. He’s got Barcelona-DNA, you know!

…

“9 Crimes” by Damien Rice
A song I am absolutely obsessed by right now. It’s about cheating. Being the one that does it, not the one that is being lied to. It’s painful, probably because I can fucking finally understand why somebody would do something like that. And let me tell you, that one wasn’t easy to admit. I suppose three years of swearing at a certain someone for doing exactly that finally paid off.

…

Oh, and do read this post by Kate Harding about travelling while fat. It’s amazing, and so very painful to read. And true. Really fucking true. I may not be too fat to fit in an airplane seat (yet), but I do have severe anxiety, which makes flying torture – no matter who sits next to me.

And I believe that’s all for today.

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…

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

Everyone in the world are apparently doing “best of 00-talet” lists (er, do not know how to translate that, “the 00s”?), which is just too big for me. So I’m just doing the last year in a number of tens in alphabetic order. No ranking within each list, because that would be mean. And yes, I did this not too long ago, in the Lists of 30 sequence I did, but this is, um, different. Really.

Note: All pics are shamelessly stolen from my dear friend Google, except for a few that I took myself and the This is Arsenal one which comes from the LJ comunity GoonerGraphics and is actually my desktop picture…

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10 HIGHS
Because you should remember the good and pretend the bad never happened! Okay, maybe not, but I have no desire to list the lowest of the low of this year, so I’m just doing the awesome. (One year I re-capped what had happened each month and somebody said “whoa, you’ve got really shitty luck”, and she was right. So no re-capping. Just the best.)

	1 – All things Arsenal. It’s silly to put football down here, isn’t it? I don’t care. Since I was pulled into the Arsenal madness and started following every single game (as those of you following me on Twitter probably are painfully aware of) I’ve learned that sports are… um, brain washing. They make you insane and single-minded and you start saying stuff like “we have too many groin injuries” and “our boys are FRAGILE” and see nothing strange about it. (Other people, however, do.) So there. I’m sticking to this one, even though it’s kind of crazy and certainly nothing I would’ve thought a year or two ago…
	2 – Becoming with kitten. Once a cat owner always a cat owner. Or something. I love having her around, even if she demands constant attention, climbs the Christmas tree and follows me into the bath room, prompting me to say “oh my God, shut your mouth and act like a normal human being!”. And I guess she’s not a kitten anymore,and nearly a teenager, but let’s not talk about that. I can’t afford to have her fixed for another few months, so let’s hope she stays this age for a good long time.
	3 – Blogging and Twitter as a substitute for TV. I wrote the first entry of this blog on October 29th, 2008. Since then it’s become something I write in, if not every day so at least every week. It helps me a lot, even though I sometimes wonder if I share too much. As for Twitter, it has been a great help in finding new blogs and news and current events and such. I follow something like 80 people, which is a lot less than most, but just what I can keep up with. This is also where I get nearly all my news. I don’t watch TV, save a few select shows, and rarely bother with the news. Because my blogroll and my Twitter-people are plenty smart and keep me updated. They’re awesome like that.
	4 – Finding fat acceptance. Everyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows my stance on health and weight, so I’m not going to say it all over again, but a year ago exactly I felt repulsed by myself and my body, put myself in a strict regimen of 1500 calories per da (which yes, included weighing my carrots and quit eating corn because they are more “fatty” than say cucumber), took long walks in sleet and rain and everything inbetween, telling myself IT’S SUPPOSED TO HURT YOU DISGUSTING FATTY KEEP WALKING, and forced myself to wear too small, unflattering clothing to punish myself. It was pretty awful, and when I, a few months later, came across Kate Harding’s blog Shapely Prose it was all turned on its head. It was quite revolutionary, and while I can’t say that I never wish that my body would be smaller, I most of the time is fine with it. And that’s an amazing feeling. I do want to start exercising again, but not to lose weight, just to get fit(ter), and that is something I never thought I’d say… I don’t know what yet, my mind goes back and forth between yoga, horse back riding, a traditional and super scary gym membership and running/walking. Suggestions for alternatives are welcome.
	5 – Getting a diagnosis, and starting to take the oh so elusive B12. My quality of life has doubled since my medications were changed and I started taking B12. Being able to be awake for more than four hours at a time is AWESOME. Here’s to hoping the last addition of pills will make my lows less frequent! Under this one goes also “getting out of my depression enough to care about other human beings”, and “actually remembering people’s birthdays and favourite what-have-you, because my brain isn’t stuck in survival mode”. Big stuff! (Note: These are not my pills. They are all boring and white and not all that exciting.)
	6 – Moving. I was hesitant, because my old city was, well, a city, while this is pretty much just a, um, little town with nothing exciting going for it, but I think we can all agree that it was the best thing I could possibly do. I’m still not well, but feel at least a bit grounded, for what is possibly the first time in my life, and it’s amazing to be able to ask my family for help with shopping and stuff when I have bad days.
	7 – Re-learning how to cook. I stopped eating eggs when I was eight because I found them “gross”. I could only keep eating meat for as long as I did (until I was twenty) by sternly telling myself that it wasn’t really meat and meat didn’t come from animals and there was certainly no blood involved… Then I moved away from home and had to start cooking my own food (yes, our Mum spoils us), and within a year I was a vegetarian. I find fish and seafood equally gross and once started crying because we had to cut into a fish in biology and it had small fishies in its stomach. So, um, that is a prime playground for all kinds of food related quirks. For the longest time I didn’t let myself eat or I ate too much and felt crap about it. It’s only in the last year that I’ve started cooking because it’s FUN. I used to like cooking, when I was a vegan, but the step from being all obsessive-compulsive about foods and eating to actually enjoying it again… was a big one. This year I also did a brief stint as an omnivore, which lasted about two weeks. Then I returned to vegetarianism because, um, meat is still “gross”. Sorry. That hang up I can’t lose, even if I could put the animal welfare thing aside (which I can’t). In all it taught me why I’m a vegetarian all over again. All good things.
	8 – Starting to read again. When I was younger I was the sort of kid that snuck extra books from the library when we were only allowed to check out a certain number, which was supposed to be “just what we had time to read in a week”. I was found in hedges reading, I could be seen walking and reading at the same time and so on. When we did a reading challenge in fifth grade where we were supposed to read for twenty minutes every day I had to ask for an extra form cos I ran out of space after a week. And then another one. And another one. Somewhere down the line something (depression, I think) happened and I just STOPPED. In late June of this year I started reading again, mostly YA, and I’m happy to say that I’ve read 52 books since then. Yes, I counted. I keep track of them with my Book List, because I’m neardy like that. Reading gives me a million ideas, I learn neat turns of phrases, I learn what NOT to do and so on. During my non-reading phase I thought that reading was a waste of time, cutting into my writing time, but actually it works the other way around – it’s reading that gives me my best ideas!
	9 – Visiting Edinburgh. Going to visit Scotland and get to meet a dear, dear friend. I was gone four days, popped anti-anxiety meds like they were crack (they kind of were) and it took me two months to recover, but it was so worth it. I want to go back already, because I loved the city and Scots are, although difficult to understand at times, the loveliest people ever. I love their accents, I love the mountains sneaking up on me, I love the tiny, tiny gardens in the middle of the city and I looooved the roof terrace of the museum of something-or-other, all the book shops, the vegetarian baked potato shop, the insane hills and curvy roads and of course, the tiny taxis that drove like mad. Aside from seeing Jenn for the first time I think that going to see Amanda Palmer in concert was the highlight of the trip; she’s just amazing and I will mention her again in a bit…
	10 – Writing. As for writing this was a big year. I finished my first big novel manuscript (Eld) in April or so, I wrote a number of short stories, one non-fiction piece, in November I wrote a lovely YA novel that needs about fourteen more rounds of edits (Mundane Secrets), and I also started another project (The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere) that I’m dying to get back to. In all, I did a lot of original writing and almost completely stopped doing narrative RP-ing, and it feels great to move on from that. I try to write a little every day, but obviously some days are better than others. I’m hoping that next year, when I do this (if I remember), I will have something more substantial to add to this one… (Note: This is what I’ve told myself every year since I was 15, and also, I don’t write on a typewriter, but I love this pic so much so I’m using it anyway.)

Runner-ups:
New Years with siblings and cousins in Gothenburg last year.
New Years with cousins and siblings in Stockholm this year. (Sadly kicked off the list as I am NOT GOING).
EVerything involving my siblings and cousins. Seriously. They’re that awesome.
Buying Christmas presents and doing random holiday things because I want to! (A year ago I wouldn’t have wanted to.)
Weaving. (This one was kicked off the list because of the little old ladies fat talk.)
All my crafting and of course my business doing fairly well.
All the new music. (It got its own list instead.)

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10 AUTHORS
I read 52 books this year, and hope to get another two in before the 31st. The ones below are the ones that stuck most with me this year. Eight of these are YA, one is non-fiction and one is adult fiction. Four are part of a series, so I think we can agree that series and YA are my personal crack.

	1 – Cabot, Meg: The Airhead series (Young Adult) These books look suspiciously fluffy from the outside (the paperback even more so, it’s pink and silver), but they are not. Trust me on that one. They tell the story of sixteen-year-old Em Watts who wakes up after an accident and finds her life tangled up with that of super teen model Nikki Howard – against her will. It’s really engaging, rather creepy, and full of drama. Airhead, the first book, is my favourite, mostly because Em acts kind of stupid in the second book, but I have yet to read #3, so I may change my mind.
	2 – Crowley, Cath: The Gracie Faltrain series (Young Adult) The story about Gracie Faltrain, who plays soccer with the boys, and has boy and friend and everything trouble. These books have a million different POVs, and I love them for it. Gracie is sometimes annoyingly dense, but the other POVs makes these books awesome nonetheless. My favourite character is Flemming, a totally minor character that I think you’re supposed to hate… Book #3, Gracie Faltrain Gets It Right (Finally!), is my favourite of these three.
	3 – Harding, Kate & Kirby, Marianne: Lessons From the Fat-O-Sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body (Non-Fiction) I’m not big on non-fiction, but this one is amazing. It talks about Health At Every Size, debunks myths about fat people and gently lets you know that being HEALTHY is a good idea, whether you’re skinny or not. I so wish this book was available in Swedish, because I want my parents (and really, everyone I know, regardless of size) to read it.
	4 – Lanagan, Margo: Tender Morsels (Young Adult) This one was probably the hardest read, but also one of the most amazing books I read this year. It’s about Liga, who bears two children after being raped (two occasions, about a year apart), and who ends up in a different world when she is so wounded from these two events that she wants to, you know, throw her baby and herself off a cliff. Margo has horrified people on several continents with the contents of this book, and continues winning prizes with it. She deserves every single one of them too.
	5 – Larbalestier, Justine: Liar (Young Adult) This book is about Micah, who lies about everything. It’s absolutely fascinating to read her story, because you have no idea what’s true and what’s not and then you think you know and just as you figure it out she tells you that you were wrong all along. It’s a great book, and the narration is amazing, but I really can’t say much more about it without going into spoiler territory, so let’s just leave it at that.
	6 – McCarthy, Maureen: Queen Kat, Carmel and St. Jude Get a Life (Young Adult) A book with three POVs, telling three very different stories. The first part is about Carmel who is overweight and lets it consume her life in the worst kind of way, and we also get to see her come out of her shell and come to terms with herself and her body, and that without losing weight. Part two is narrated by Jude, who is going to be a doctor just like her Argentinian father that she’s never met. She becomes horribly depressed and it’s fascinating (and painful) to see how it changes everything before she manages to turn things around. Katerina meanwhile is rich and beautiful but not nearly as happy as everyone thinks… I love Maureen McCarthy; her book Rose By Any Other Name is brilliant too.
	7 – McKinley, Robin: Deerskin (Young Adult) A painful story of a princess who is the daughter of the most beautiful queen in seven kingdoms. When her mother dies her father goes mad and forces her to run from his violence and delusions, and that’s when things get interesting… This book goes into the same category as Tender Morsels, painful yet beautiful and IMPORTANT to read. Especially if you are a teen, which I’m not, but I love this book anyway!
	8 – Murdock, Catherine Gilbert: The Dairy Queen series (Young Adult) These books are about D.J. Schwenk, whose parents own a dairy farm. She’s quite sporty, and in the first book she decides to try out for the boys football team. In the second book she concentrates more on basketball, and her family is a big part through it all. I love the narration more than anything, and can’t wait to read book #3. So far, though, I think the first one, Dairy Queen, is my favourite.
	9 – Rees Brennan, Sarah: The Demon’s Lexicon series (Young Adult) A book from the POV of the dark, broody bloke that is the love interest in most books out there. It’s fascinating to see the thought process of a guy whose main complaint is “why are you talking so much?”, and I can’t wait for book #2, due to come out in May. Even though Nick is no longer the POV. (Or maybe because of it.)
	10 – Waters, Sarah: Tipping the Velvet (Adult Fiction) I know. The rest of the world read this book ten years ago. I didn’t. It’s amazing, though, and I love how authentic it feels all through it, with the theatre terms and old fashioned language and everything that comes with it. Now I want to see the movie, and also, I am so not admitting how long it took me to figure out what “gay girl” meant, which is amusing considering that the direct translation for an old fashioned term for “whore” in Swedish is exactly that.

Runner-ups:
Cross, Shauna: Derby Girl (aka Whip It)
Gaiman, Neil: The Graveyard Book
Johnson, Maureen: The Bermudez Triangle
McCafferty, Megan: The Jessica Darling series
Pierce, Tamora: Protector of the Small series
Roberts, Tansy Rayner/Shearman, Robert: Siren Beat/Roadkill

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10 MUSICIANS
Note that Ani DiFranco isn’t making the list. That is kind of a first, I think. Nice to be moving on to new stuff, though! And no, I am not picking songs. I can’t choose just one. I am choosing an album that meant a lot for me instead, because I’m special like that.

	1 – Amanda Palmer: Who Killed Amanda Palmer? It feels strange that I’ve only listened to her music for less than a year. It feels like forever. Before she went solo she was part of the group The Dresden Dolls and my favourite album of hers is actually the first Dresden Dolls album, but I would never have figured out how brilliant it is had a friend not zipped up and emailed me WKAP. So that’s the one that goes on my list. One of my favourites on this album is Strength Through Music which has the most chilling video ever.
	2 – The Bird and the Bee: The Bird and the Bee. Usually I like my music to be noisy in a very particular way. This album is everything but. It’s very smooth, and Wiki describes it as “a jazz-influenced electro pop project”. I guess that about sums it up. The first song I heard was Again and Again (video here), and I promptly fell in love with the simple and to the point lyrics: “You’re so stupid and perfect / And stupid and perfect / I hate you, I want you / I hate you, I hate you, oh / Again, again, again, again…”
	3 – An Horse: Rearrange Beds . This band I learned about from my Australian Music Fairy (yes, I just promoted her to that). We listened to it like crazy when it was just an EP, and then the whole album came out and there were YouTube videos and I started obsessing about Kate Cooper who is the singer and cute as a button. The song that first hit me like a ton of bricks was Company (video here), but I also really enjoy Camp Out (“This is a song for the one that I love / No, I haven’t met them yet / But I’m quietly confident”) and lately I’ve been all about Shoes Watch (“But I got so scared / That you might be a better me than me”).
	4 – The Indelicates: American Demo . This band was the opening act to Amanda Palmer when I saw her, and I fell madly in love in about two seconds flat. I love that the two front figures, Julia Indelicate and Simon Indelicate take turns singing, and that makes for very different listening experiences depending on the song. Two favourites, sadly not on YouTube, are Stars (“I’m in love with the boy next door / He treats me like a filthy whore”) and We Hate the Kids (“Absolutely anyone can play the fucking guitar”), but here is a link to America, which shows said vocal contrast between the two singers…
	5 – Jenny Owen Youngs: Batten the Hatches. Found this album by way of the excellent (and suitably depressing as all the songs I love) song Fuck Was I, which you can see here. I bought both her albums before going to Edinburgh, because I suddenly decided that I Had To Have Them for the flight. I hear Jenny is currently the opening act of Regina Spektor who is also the voice in the beginning of the song Voice on Tape (and don’t ask me how many months I listened to that song before figuring that out).
	6 – Kate Nash: Made of Bricks. I found out about Kate’s music through Female Appreciation Month, and it kind of hit me over the head like a well-placed brick (ha, ha, ha). She was this year’s Lily Allen, in a way, and the song Foundations inspired me to write a certain blog post, but I think my favourite song of hers is Mariella, which you should check out here, and not just because Kate has the most delicious British accent…
	7 – Lily Allen: It’s Not Me, It’s You. Lily’s first album was my post-break-up-fuck-you-I’m-doing-fine-really-I-am-music. I don’t think I listened to anything else for months. I didn’t get nearly as obsessed with this album, but it’s still a good one. I love The Fear (video here), Not Fair always makes me giggle and I Could Say is beautiful. Yes, really.
	8 – The Lucksmiths. I refuse to pick one for them, since they QUIT this year and anyway I love this graphic Google found me, which doesn’t belong to an album, I don’t think. This is a band I never thought that I would like. See above when I ask for noisy stuff. My Australian Music Fairy, however, disagreed and shared some music with me and got me hooked. She’s evil like that. I’ve got parts of four of their albums in my ipod and I so can’t choose one above the others. When I went to YouTube to see what there was of theirs on there I found this cover of The Smiths’ There’s a Light That Never Goes Out, which made me smile (disregard the video, okay?).
	9 – Pony Up!: Make Love to the Judges With Your Eyes. I extremely randomly tripped and fell over Pony Up! when a friend sent me their song Shut Up and Kiss Me (“If I left you wouldn’t miss me / I don’t care, shut up and kiss me”, and later bought some more of their stuff to see if I liked it as much. I kind of did. I don’t like everything they do, like most of this list, but they’re still pretty damn brilliant. From this album I especially like The Best Offence (”My self respect means more to me / Than you do / Or at least it used to“).
	10 – Regina Spektor: Far. I pretty much like everything Regina does, so I don’t think anyone was surprised when I started obsessing over this album. My favourite song from it is, by far, Folding Chair (video here), but Eet is brilliant too. My favourite Regina song right now, however? It’s a tie between Chelsea Hotel #2 (a Leonard Cohen cover, available here) and Mockingbird, apparently a play on a nursery rhyme or something, which you can see here. Neither are on this album. Sorry about that.

Runner-ups:
Anything and everything by Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday
Rilo Kiley: More Adventurous
Yeah Yeah Yeahs: iTunes Originals

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STUFF, STUFF AND MORE STUFF
Wow. Nearly 4000 words now. That is crazycakes. I am pretty much done, but will toss in a short list of “extras” that I can’t fit in anywhere but still want to mention…

How I Met Your Mother, especially the unreliable narration.
Glee, and pretty much everything involving Mercedes and/or Kurt.
Post Secret, which is an oldie but I still love it.
Questionable Content, my favourite web-cartoon of them all, especially when there is Marigold and/or Hannelore.
The Guild, the best five minute episodes of web-TV you will ever see. With Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton, people!
Ill Doctrine and his defense of the Being Grouchy About the HAPPY HOLIDAYS Thing.
Shapely Prose and all its four (I think?) writers.
Bokhora, the most brilliant book review site in Swedish I know (the fact that their name translates to “Book Whore” helps).
Baby Power Dyke, blog that preaches the goodness of Rachel Maddow and recently got suspended (and un-suspended, thank fuck).
Any and all blogs by authors, publishers and literary agents that I read, which I can share if somebody cares, but the list is kind of long.

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I believe that’s all. Oh thank fuck for that, it would be sad to still be working on this by midnight…

Spent most of it reading a friend’s book-to-be, which is AWESOME. Reading awesome books always make me want to burn all my writing and write more. Better. Faster. Yes, both at once.

(This might be the post-NaNo blues ten days early. Writing like a maniac has it’s drawbacks.)

Was invited to join a book club by a friend. I am so not a book club type person, but I was promised it would be non-pretentious and come with tea, baked goods and awesome people. Okay, so I wasn’t promised the last part, but I trust my dear friend in this aspect. And I shall read the books in English and thoroughly confuse everyone.

I feel like I’m the only person in this world without kids-house-job-partner. I don’t even know if I want any of the above, yet it brings me down. Possibly because of the light in my parents’ eyes when they see my pregnant cousin and her toddler.

On the upside, for the first time since I broke up with A. I feel the want and need for Christmas decorations. Our relationship dissolved around the holidays, and so I haven’t even bought a Christmas tree or any decorations whatsoever since I returned to Sweden. I should have some in storage, from before I moved abroad, but I have no idea where to look for them. I think I’m going to start over. I’m a big fan of starting over.

Broke another pair of head phones.

Dyed my hair. Cut my hair. (Well, not personally, it wouldn’t look this good if I’d hacked away at it.)

Game starting right now, and hopefully it will go well and give me my “I” and “my”, etc,’s back. Apparently I lose them when I don’t feel well. Possibly I’m the last one to notice.

No NaNo content today. None. That must make some of my readers happy, I’m sure.

So, I want to write about Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock, which is this amazing book that My Australian Book Fairy sent to me, and that I put in my shelf for weeks (or possibly months) before reading it, mostly because it’s about American football and that is the stupidest sport on earth, save baseball. Or so I thought.

I am Swedish, and here the big sports are football (European style), ice hockey and handball. There is softball, but it’s not common and members of the extremely few American football teams are basically scoffed at because, you know, this isn’t the United States. Possibly that’s just in the very small town I’m from, where the general sentiment is “tro inte att du är nåt”, which can be translated to “don’t think you’re something special”.

All small towns are the same.

Anyway. This book is about fifteen-year-old D.J. Schwenk, whose family runs a dairy farm, but they’re also really into football, except for D.J., who is a girl, so obviously she can’t play. So, when her dad hurts his hip she’s the only one who can take care of everything because all her brothers are busy playing, and there’s also a huge rift between her dad and two older brothers, so they’re not coming home anymore.

And then a guy from the next town over is sent to her by her fake-uncle who is a football coach, and they start playing together between the endless farm chores. And then D.J. gets the idea that she can do this too, except that there are numerous obstacles in the way.

In short, there is a lot of football talk, and halfway through the book I found myself going to Wikipedia to look it up, because I wanted to figure out what each of the positions do on the field. In Swedish the word for “defender” is “back”, so the terms “quarter back” and “line back” really confused me.

The best part about it, though, is not the football. It’s how distinct D.J.’s voice is. They’ve kept some of the things that redneck people (for lack of a better term) often say, while tossing some of the more annoying expressions of theirs, and it’s very much… teenage speak.

A small excerpt in case you’re still not convinced:

Now. Let me first of all say that I am not completely unfamiliar with trash talk. For one thing I play basketball with Amber Schneider, who can make a point when she wants to. And I know how rough it can get on the football field. From the stories Bill tells, I’m surprised fights don’t break out all the time. And I know all about getting patted on the butt. Heck, if Dad squeezed Mom like that she’d act like he’d given her flowers. You watch pro ball and those guys spend so much time with their hands on each other’s rear ends, you’d think they were feeling for diamonds or something.

THE WHOLE BOOK IS LIKE THAT.

Seriously, if you read one book this year, this should be it.