americantjej

Finally she is big enough for shoes!!!! She is a 2H (very high instep) :)

Got her a lovely pair of pink shoes. I found them on the Clarks website, but I can't post a link to them as their site isn't designed that way! You can find them if you go to Kids --> Girls --> First Shoes --> Pre-Walkers. They are the last pair and called Orchid Bloom.

She was walking with me round the shop and seemed a lot more keen to walk than she does when she is barefooted. Which was odd.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

He went with my dad to visit an archaeological dig that my dad volunteers at. He made it onto their blog

http://www.whitehallvilla.co.uk/htmlfiles/blog08/blog08wk4.html (last photo for 8th July)

Well, she is like a different person today. Still not her normal giggly self, and a lot more shaking of the head and looking pitiful if you ask her if she wants to do something (SO cute when she does that BTW) but a lot better.

The scabs are falling off left right and centre and so she is generally LOOKING a lot better. Forgot to take a pic today, but will try and remember to take one tomorrow.

Edited to add: she has anti-biotics which she has to take 3 times a day for 5 days and cream to put in her eyes twice a day for 10 days.

After 2 extensions (first was granted on Thursday and was till Sun pm, and second was granted when I ended up in hospital) my latest TMA is finally completed and has been submitted.

Onwards and ever upwards.

As I've mentioned before, we speak very little Swedish here at home. It always surprises me, then, to hear Petra speaking Swedish to herself when she plays. She can only have picked up the habit from Tage, who started using Swedish as his "play language" a couple of months after he started going to pre-school.

It's pretty interesting, actually, to listen to the two of them. Interaction with us parents, and also with Lydia, is in English. Normal conversation between the two of them is in English. Talk to and about the Nintendo games is in English. Fighting is absolutely in English (and, increasingly, in blows). Play, however, is conducted in Swedish, almost without fail.

It will be fascinating, I think, to discuss all of this with them when they're older and more aware of switching between the languages. I wonder if the same or similar patterns will hold.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of Petra, I've done some work on her picture pages and added the following -- take a look!

January/February 2008


March 2008


April/May 2008


June 2008

Head-scratching moment of the day: someone who I never thought could get laid is going on paternity leave. I guess there is a pot for every lid.

Cringeworthy moment of the day: having to phone IT support and hearing my own voice telling me that I'm next in the queue.

genx_xslacker
For everyone born between 1965 and 1976, your commnunity is here.

localgrr
The home of Local Girl's Day in Pictures.

oh_my_tatt
A place for showing off and discussing tattoos.

I've had a really nice day. For starters, Ray and I went to the tax office and I applied for my irish version of a social security number, or the equivalent of Sweden's personnummer, so in a little more than a week, I'll be able to start applying for jobs. I'm scared to death! I'm not so sure I'm ready. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm not, but I need the money, and getting a job will do me a world of good, so I'm actually looking forward to it, as much as I fear it. It'll be good for an insane number of reasons, which sort of outweigh all my fears of getting a job. When I start feeling anxiety creeping in, I just remind myself of all the awesome things one can do with money, such as buying stuff and things. Stuff and things don't solve all problems, but they sure can make life simpler. So far the list of items I'm planning on buying include clothes, because I really fucking need nice clothes, a new laptop eventually, but most of all, I have to say I'm excited at the prospect of being able to buy Ray an awesome birthday present, although his birthday isn't until November. The most exciting thing about having money is the capability of doing nice things for him, including helping to pay my share of the bills! And getting new clothes. Did I mention that already?

I also managed to make an amazing spread for bagels which was very much like tuna sallad but included salmon, cream cheese, red peppers and herbs and spices. I really can't stand fish but I'll take salmon any day.

Now I'm just hanging out, waiting for Ray to get home from work, and I'm a bit bummed because I'm getting a pretty annoying cold and I'm feeling a little under the weather. Nothing an iced coffee can't cure though!

I am shattered.

I got home at 7pm this evening after being in hospital with Beth since 10am Friday morning.

As I posted before, she came down with chickenpox on Monday and by Thursday her eyes were looking pretty bad, with spots on the bottom of her eyelids. By Friday she REALLY didn't look well, so I went to see the GP. He said it was the worst case of chickenpox that he had ever seen and sent us straight into A&E to see the paediatric doctor who said that she needed anti-biotics through an IV and needed to be admitted for a couple of days.

There were numerous problems with the IV (and getting it in) and as a result she has 17 needle prick marks in her feet and they gave up in the end and gave her injections of anti-biotics.

This morning we had to go to the eye clinic for them to have a look because if you get the spots around your eyes you can get complications and risk loosing them. We were told that we got her in just in time, which is a relief!

Her temperature took a long time to come down, but it finally did so today we were allowed to come home. We were told this at about 11.30 this morning and it took till 6.30 for them to get the oral meds and discharge papers ready :(

So it has been 4 days in isolation for her. Poor thing. Especially when her cubicle was opposite the play room and she was looking longingly out of the window at all the children playing there :( Her only trips out were to the treatment room for the IV and injections, and down to the eye clinic this morning. The only good thing about isolation is that I had an actual bed to sleep in rather than just a reclining chair which you get on the main ward. But I felt so cooped up and I'm sure she did too :(

This pic is her just after we arrived on the children's ward. There are some more pics on flickr of how she was on other days, from Thursday through to yesterday.

Last Monday evening I was sitting here in the office, doing one thing or another on the computer and listening with half an ear to Paul Jones's weekly rhythm and blues program on BBC Radio 2. I turned my full attention to the radio when I heard the name of jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and when the coming track was introduced as a duet between Marsalis and Willie Nelson, I could hardly believe my ears. Wynton Marsalis and Willie Nelson?? Hot damn.

I'm a longtime fan of Wynton Marsalis, from way back in his wunderkind days. I saw him in concert once, when I was fifteen, at the University of Idaho's Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival, and that show is one of my very best memories from high school. I may even have developed a bit of a crush on him -- all through my teenage years, his was the only picture that ever graced the inside of my locker door.

And Willie Nelson ... well, he's Willie Nelson. Legendary.

Turns out, in what must be one of the most incredibly fantastic collaborations ever, the two of them have released an album of highlights from a two-night gig they played in New York in January of last year. As soon as I heard that, I wasted no time getting to eBay and ordering myself a copy. It arrived in the mail today, and all I have to say is, wow. It's everything I could have hoped for and more. It'll be a long time before I take that CD out of my player.

I received a message from a Swedish friend recently, and it pretty much sums up how many people in Scandinavia and maybe even Europe look upon the US election race later this year. They *wish* for Obama to win, but they think his chances are really really slim.

The reasons for this pessimism are closely connected to Bush's "winning" of his first and second electoral terms. You see..very many in Europe really couldn't understand how he could win, what exactly motivates the American reality paradigm, even the American Liberal paradigm, which seemed to differ from their own.

It is hard for people over seas to see how the Bush Administration has changed America, how the middle class is struggling to keep their head above the water, how the care for the sick and the elderly has dropped even lower than before, how even consumer confidence is down, thus even making certain industries to be critical, because fewer people buy their products. The Republican party has conned people into voting against their economical interests for decades..and economy is what counts primarily here. Economical shortcomings become visible in the US first among the lower classes, among the disabled and sick...it's been showing for decades here, but people shut their eyes to it. Now however, those who have a swimming pool and 2 cars + a house start to feel the sting. They can still stay in the house with the cars..but maybe their elderly mother is costing them a fortune to be taken care of, and they *know* she'd be out on the streets if it wasn't for their solid earnings in the 90's. They can see themselves turn old in a few decades and they are realizing what a burden *they* might become to someone, if indeed they have someone to bother about them at all.

I can read this mentality as clearly as if it was written on the walls. And the gas crisis and food crisis of the world. It is horrible to see and predict things coming years and years ahead, and being able to do nothing. To talk to people in America and Europe who still just don't get it, who think it's a myth until it's right upon them.

These same people who think that the gas crisis right now is just temporary. Who don't understand that the higher prices are here to stay...and to rise.

You know guys...I never used to be a ranty, self important sounding person, but that's exactly where I've landed over the last 4 years and into today. I can even see many ways in which Sweden is fucked, if it continues to see the US as the main and only economical inspiration of the world.

The things that foreigners living in Sweden, and Swedes alike, complain about in Sweden, those very things, are often dynamics that these people should be thankful for, because those dynamics are often there for a reason. Those dynamics that may seem lacking are often in fact there so that someone else (more needing) may get something instead, and that something is more important than 20 different kinds of stomach medications, or the latest fastest whatever.

Why is it that so many people can't see these dynamics and how they come together? It's not really rocket science.

I do think it may present some challenges to try to see everything that's happened in America from over seas, or even from just visiting the US shortly, so I'm not surprised at this friend's and many other friends' pessimistic view on Obama's chances of winning. They don't see just how bad McCain is either. On the other hand...at least they do realize how hard this race is going to be on many levels. And if Barak Obama wins, the next challenge will start, and that won't be the new President's challenge to pick up the economy and the rest of the Republican garbage cemetery of leftovers, no, I'm addressing the very real threat to Obama's life.

People will repeatedly try to kill him. Any normal threat to a president in this country, will be ten times worse for him. But I suppose both he and the people, should he come into a position like that, would think it worth it.

Of course it would be worse if he would be killed during the presidential race.

I wish I was just paranoid.

I've not written once about my thoughts on the Democratic nominees, so I'll just do it briefly here. Clinton's health Care and Social Security plan was better than Obama's. Obama's campaign was vastly better than Clinton's. Otherwise they were surprisingly alike considering all the hollering about their differences. In a presidential race however, Obama has always had a better chance of winning against McCain, but also at a larger risk of getting assassinated.

And McCain, no matter how bad he is, could still win. Through cheating, through a fake or real "foreign crisis" or simply through people's ignorance.

And from a left wing historian's perspective, if McCain wins, the battle is over. All choices taken thereafter in the US will be towards a certain type of goal and against another type of goal...and things will have deteriorated too far to turn them around in another 4 years.

I'm not saying it's the end of the world as we know it (because that might come anyway, and soon), I'm just saying it's the definitive beginning of the end.

And that's why I must convince my husband to move away with me, if it comes to that.

Sean is all well. It seems he threw up again last week from being overheated. I've started putting a soft ice-pack between him and the back of the carseat and it helps keep him cool while we're out and about.

I was sick yesterday. Sick, sick, sick! I must have eaten something bad somewhere along the way. I couldn't leave the toilet and I lost 3 kilos in one day! If it wasn't so painful I'd say that was the diet to be on! haha I'm tender today but feeling much better. I'm sure those 3 kilos will be back in no time.

I went to a psychologist this morning to talk about Sean's birth. It's been affecting me in ways I don't like so, even though I don't really want to, I figured it was time that I needed to talk about it with someone. It went okay. I don't feel like any steps were made toward healing or anything but maybe that comes with time. Robert and I are both meeting with her next week.

Per (outside on the balcony, repotting a plant): What were those things called from Naked Lunch? There's one out here.
Gale: What, mugwumps?
Per: No, the other things.
Gale: Centipedes.
Per: That's it.

Later, in bed:

Gale: There's something in your ear.
Per (turning ear to the pillow): No! You can't prove it.
Gale: Really, there was. Do you want me to get it out?
Per (ear remaining resolutely turned to the pillow): No.
Gale (having a hard time keeping a straight face): Don't you trust me? Let me see.
Per (turning ear away from pillow): Okay, what is it?
Gale: My TONGUE! (sticks tongue in ear)

3-day weekend: hot summer days and cool summer evenings, blazing sunshine and electric blue skies with fat, white puffclouds. A green grasshopper clinging to the side of the house. Wilting roses, sun-struck geraniums, though no one here calls them geraniums any longer. Giant slices of watermelon, potato salad, rice krispie treats with red, white & blue sprinkles, steak on the grill. Hours in the pool, towel-wrapped kids with blue lips and red shoulders. Clover in the grass, butterflies on the wing.




Photos by Anders Ek

Super Summer Belated Birthday Wishes to idahoswede!

justamy, this one's for you! :)

A couple months after I moved to Bureå, I pierced my nose. Literally, I did it myself. With a cube of ice or 4, and a needle. Somewhere around that time, things started going downhill for me, but I don't think the piercing should take credit for that. We all know that lately I've been going through all sorts of changes, hopefully for the better. I stood and stared at myself in the bathroom mirror tonight before I stepped into the shower. I removed my piercing, looked at myself again, and breathed a sigh of relief, then the corner of my mouth arched up into a small smile. Smiling back at me was a woman minus a metal ring through her nose, who somewhere in the last couple months managed to destroy another circle, a more destructive one, as well.

I love it when I go to the pharmacy to pick up my birth control medication and clinical strength deodarant and the pharmacist is a hot guy.