My Dad

My Dad is a pretty amazing person and he has a wicked sense of humor. He also seems to lack even the most basic understanding of the concept of "shame", which has provided me with hours of entertainment.

Example 1:
January a few years ago. The car was covered in about four inches of snow and ice, and still it got ticketed somehow. The ticket had been jammed in under the frozen windshield wiper through a small hole someone had made in the snow.
I asked my dad to come and help me move the car and he said that I could park it on their driveway to avoid more tickets. So I sat out on the quest to free the car from the white menace, which resulted in a de-iced car and a busted shoulder. All in all, a really sucky experience.

We got the car to my parents' house and then we drove to the grocery store, because I needed to buy food for Boy and me.

This is where Dad's "Best Dad Ever" award comes in.

Not only did he offer to pay for my groceries, because my budget was fried due to the parking ticket, he did the Raptor/Dracula (thank you, Dante Shepherd of Surviving The World, for the visual aid) walk through the bread section of the store. A little girl, maybe four or five years old, was blocking his path and try as he might, he couldn't get past her. In his frustration, he then decided that stalking her Raptor-style was a great idea. If looks could kill, my Dad would have turned into a Roman Candle by the look the girl's mother gave him. Me, I was busy laughing into a pyramid of cookie boxes.

Example 2:
Dad and I were at this seminar thing during a time when we were both unemployed. The woman droning on about the company she represented was not only boring, she was boastful and egocentric as well.
Suddenly, something sharp is nudging my arm and I turn to see my Dad poking me with a notebook, in which he had written a comment about the whole seminar thing.
We then spent roughly an hour passing notes back and forth.

Example 3:
Boy and Dad imitating the Ministry of Silly Walks (thank you, Monty Python) all the way from my parents' house to the pizza place. I am sure that they would have continued on the way back if balance hadn't been an issue. I really wish I had been there to see this.

Example 4:
My Dad could probably write a book named "100 Kitchen Puns". Boy and him most likely came up with that many, and more, when the two of them were remodeling my parents' kitchen.

In short, my Dad is a loon, and an amazing Dad.

Moving

Today I was helping a friend move and it hit me that even with a one-room apartment, you can collect a ton of stuff. It's as if the stuff reproduce as soon as they get close to the boxes. Thankfully we didn't have to pack the stuff, just move the boxes and the furniture.

Moving holds a special place in my heart. A place of equal amounts of loathing and excitement. I hate the packing a shuffling of things from one place to another, but when I'm at the new place and I have the unpacking to look forward to, this weird kind of anticipation settles in my chest. Really, I know what's in the boxes and I've lived with the furniture before, but it's still something of a thrill to unpack things and put them in their proper place.

I can easily live without the packing and cleaning part of moving, though. It's just so dreadfully boring to shuffle things around, wrap things in paper and try to fit things into boxes.

Next time I'm moving, I'm selling everything I have no emotional attachment to and buy new things at the new place.

Friendship

Friendship is something very dear to me and I treasure my friends more than is probably healthy. My closest friends are like family to me. Like the stereotype of a weird, but oddly well functioning family.

I was very lonely as a child and even more so in my adolescence. It wasn't until my late teens that I started finding friends I felt that I could share everything with, and once that clicked, things felt so much brighter and more fun.

Sure, some of these people don't live close to me. In fact, most of them live on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. That doesn't make them less dear to me.

Friendship is a connection of minds and hearts. Something you can share with others who think in ways similar to your thinking, who believe in roughly the same things as you, and who value you for your sake, without prejudice or judgement. My closest friends are just this.

I love my friends absolutely unconditionally. This connection has nothing to do with the exterior and nothing to do with political or religious beliefs.

I love to have discussions with my friends. So many new things have opened up to me thanks to this and I am not ashamed to say that I'll gladly change opinion of someone can give me an educated reason as to why I should. Not being judged on this is another thing I treasure with my friends.

Friendship is a connection between individuals who share the same level of crazy. Who can appreciate sliding down a bannister when you're 25 or play Tag across downtown when you're 19. Age has nothing to do with friendship. If you can share your thoughts, your hopes and your ideas, it's a good thing.

Identity

This post will be long. You have been warned.

Someone's identity can be said to be a collaboration between memories, experiences, and decisions. There are several components to create an identity and most of them are taught to us as we grow up. Other parts are purely genetic, making the Nature vs Nurture both valid and invalid at the same time. Identity is created by both our upbringing and genetics.

I have been told that I was wild and fearless as a child, and that I grew up to be a good and kind girl; as if a woman can't be good and fearless, wild and kind.
I was the girl with the beautiful eyes. The independent girl, who sailed through school subjects and who could adapt to any social situation. I was the quiet one, the generous one, the girl you could depend on. People praised these traits, never once thinking that maybe they were nothing but ways to cope with abandonment issues and broken self-esteem.

From first grade well into fifth grade, I was subjected to verbal, and sometimes physical, bullying. I have taken heavy psychological damage from this. Even after the harassment stopped, people avoided me. Sixth grade was almost as lonely as the previous years. The thing that made my mind break this past spring was not the prolonged harassment, though. It was the acceptance.
After years of being shunned and avoided, I transferred to another school when I started junior high school, and suddenly everyone wanted to be my friend. I couldn't understand why. Not knowing why people liked me paired with a deep rooted fear of being abandoned again, I worked really hard to become irreplaceable. For 14 years, I worked myself to the bone in order for people to not cast me out. I wanted to be accepted; not only for my accomplishments, but for who I am. In the beginning of March 2013, my mind couldn't handle the stress anymore and I collapsed.

After I was able to think further than wakeupcoffeebathroomcouch, which took about a week and a half, I decided to stop living in the shadow of people's idea of me and to start showing people the real me.

The first thing I addressed was my sexuality, since that part is by far the easiest for me. I have never been concerned about my own sexuality. I have always known what I find attractive, I just didn't have a name for it until last year. People always assume that I am straight, though, because I am in a relationship with a man.

After I came to the conclusion about what and who I like, I moved on to other issues I felt I had to tackle. My role in my family was and is one of those issues.

I am the older of two sisters and I have carried a burden of perceived responsibilities all my life. I have been given heirlooms "to give to my oldest child", and relatives have repeatedly praised the idea of getting married. Relatives and people I meet also keep asking about work and my education.

Thing is, though, I have never wanted children or marriage or a higher education.

I started planning a wedding years ago. Not because I wanted to, but because I thought that it was expected of me.
I started at a university, not because I wanted a higher education, but because I felt that it was something other people wanted for me.

My biggest peeve, however, is not thousands of dollars in student loan debts or starry eyed relatives reminiscing about my parents' wedding. It's the matter of children. Or, more accurately, people's complete dismissal of my ability to make informed decisions in the matter of procreation. Coming to terms with this issue took time and my blood burns when I think about my wishes being ignored and dismissed. I talk about this issue a lot, because it pisses me off so much.

I have never wanted children, but every time I tell people this, they dismiss it. At first, I shrugged it off, but after a while, I started to become more and more frustrated and irritated. Every time someone says "You're young, you'll change your mind" or "It's different when they're your own" I feel a fragment of my identity fracture as that piece is being ignored.
The same happens when people try to tell me who I should be attracted to, how I should see the world or think about it, or whether or not I should ink my skin.

 I am a woman living with a man who I love more than anything and anyone in the world. This does not make me heterosexual. I am pansexual (a person who can feel attraction to another person regardless of gender expression) and no one but me can tell me who or what I find attractive.

I am very good at playing the roles I have been assigned, but lately I have started to rebel against some of them.

I am the Sister, the Daughter, and the Confidant.
I am a Geek, a Nerd, a History Buff.
I am a Blogger, a Writer, and a Gamer.
I am a Female Identifying Pansexual.
I am a Feminist.
I am the Girlfriend, the Care Giver, and a Goof.

I will never be the Mother or the Wife.
I will never be Straight.

I am ME.

I am random, I am weird, and an incurable optimist. I trust people, because I would rather be heart broken than jaded. I will never betray a confidence and I will not hide who I am to fit into someone's comfort zone.

Even if you don't agree with my choices, don't you dare tell me that I don't know what I want or that I will change my mind. That my choices are part of a phase or a delusion.

My identity is a collaboration between my memories, my choices, and my experiences.

Our identity is who we are. Looks and heritage are a small part of it, and the mind is the rest. If you can smile at differences and laugh with me, I will gladly call you "friend".

The Museum

This is the third summer I have been lucky enough to get a short-term job at the museum. I like this job because it's relaxed, I have an electric fan, and it's indoors. I also get to see a number of really interesting and unique individuals each year.

The museum in itself is a very beautiful building, built in the late 1800's, and contains loads of interesting things, like birds and a lion and china from China.

It takes about an hour to get there by bus, because of the people making the bus schedules are morons. If I had a car, I could get there in 20-30 minutes, depending on traffic.

Usually, I bring a book or a sketch pad to the museum. This place doesn't get many visitors and if I didn't bring some form of entertainment I would be bored stiff. There are only so many things I can do to entertain myself (that wouldn't land me in jail or get me fired) with what is available at the museum and I exhausted that list two years ago.

On the list of interesting individuals I have met are

- The Close Talking Trubadour Nerd
- The Boy Who Was Glad We Don't Have Camels
- The Man Who Doesn't Like The Exhibits (but shows up anyway)
- The Couple That Finds Stuffed Birds Disgusting (yet visits the museum anyway)
- The Walking Dead Man
- The Professors (three of them, at different times, lecturing me on the history of the museum)
- The Little Lady Who Only Uses The Restroom (then leaves)

All of these have different habits and ticks that I have icked up, yet most people follow two very specific types - those who always go to the restroom first and those who always go upstairs first.

I love my job at the museum and I'm looking forward to what people can come up with next year.

PS. People need to learn how to read. And stop moving the merchandise around. You are in a gift shop, not The Sims or Tetris.

Swedish Seasons and Moderation

Swedes are known to talk a lot about the weather. If you have ever lived in Sweden for an extended period of time, you understand why. Our seasons just do not understand the concept of moderation. Or predictability.

During the school year 2003/04 I lived in Las Vegas, Nevada. Las Vegas is dry and hot. The days in Las Vegas follow a very nice pattern of 6-8 hour nights and 16-18 hour days.

Las Vegas has two seasons - "Hell" and "Spring". From May to September, the thermometer just does not even try. It's too hot. It will just pick a temperature in the Way Too Hot spectrum, then hang out there. From October to April, it's really nice.

In Sweden, the seasons are clearly marked. In fact, you could probably put a flag down on the exact time when the seasons change and you could see one seasons give way to the next as if you were looking at photos.

I live in the Southern 1/3 of Sweden, so I actually get to see the sun during Winter and I get to have darkness during the night in Summer. Further North, they don't have these luxuries. The Midnight Sun is just really the Sun being petulant and refusing to go to bed, instead opting for not getting up at all during Winter. "30 days of night" is not just for Alaska and the Northern Territories (though, I'm not sure about the vampires).

After getting 4-5 hours of sleep per night during Summer, I really start to miss the regularity of the Las Vegas days.

Where I live, we get four seasons - Rain, Sludge/Snow, More Rain, and Thunder. In school, they call the seasons Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer. This is where the concept of moderation would have been applicable, IF the Seasons had even a smidgeon of a way to understand this nifty idea. But they don't. It's like the weather is an old black-and-white TV set with broken knobs, or an old shower.

In Summer, there are three settings - Hot, Thunder, and Rain.

Fall has two settings - Rain and Overcast (with a chance of Sun)

Winter has two settings and two versions of these settings - Freezing and Chilly. These two settings have the options of Sludge (with chance of Sun) or Snow.

In Spring we have three options - Rain, Hail, or Overcast (with a chance of Sun)

Summer is the only season when I-am-cold doesn't come as a standard feature. I like being warm, so most of the time I am all for Swedish summers. I like being outside on warm days. It's when Warm turns into I-can-fry-eggs-on-the-sidewalk that I start to get cranky. Especially when Sweltering hot turns into Surprise Ice Shower within an hour.
Or a week of 30F winter days, with complimentary Road Slushies*, that turn into a month of -13F and Free For All Icecapades.

But usually, I like having seasons. It's easy to mark the passing of the year, and the unpredictability prevents me from being bored.




*Come to think of it, Cola slushies kind of look like that snow-gravel-asphalt-salt sludge the snow plows pretend to scrape off the roads during winter.

Water Festival

The third weekend of July every year, this little town explodes in a pandemonium of market stalls, carnival rides, and drunk people. The entirety of downtown is covered in music, the different genres and styles competing for attention. The opening of the festival is on Thursday evening and the festival ends with a ginormous fireworks display on midnight Sunday.

This town is usually a pretty quiet town. Nothing too exciting happens ever, the monthly fair and flea markets included. We have maybe three major happenings per year, market only by the arrival of carnival rides - The Troll Days, The Fall Fair, and the Water Festival. The last one is in a league of its own.

Boy and I avoid this spectacle with the stubborn tenacity of a bumblebee head-butting a window.

I used to enjoy the festival when I was younger. When the whole family would walk around the stalls, watch the runners in the foot races, and eat ice cream and cotton candy in one of the parks. As I grew older, though, I became more and more intimidated by crowds and the leering and harsh words of drunk strangers.

One year I went with some friends from school, but after losing money to a thief and being left alone to wait by an unnesserily loud and spinny carnival ride my friends found especially enticing, I decided to not go again. The magic of the festival was lost, hidden among the clinkity-clang of machines, the stench of vomit, and the grabby hands of strangers. It took years before I even sat foot near the festival area again.

Last year had a good chance of redeeming the festival for me.
Boy and I met up with his mother and her SO, and we sat on a couch outside a cafe by the pier and watched the sun set over the river and behind the hills. It was a warm evning and the beer tent a little bit down the pie was playing rock music. People were passing back and forth in front of the cafe and everyone was smiling or laughing. I felt the magic slowly crawl out from under that huge pile of disappointment and broken dreams.

The next day I went to get some langos and I was forced to hold tightly on to the illusion. The line was ridiculously long, the baker was rude, and the prices would have made Alexander Lucas flinch. I got back home with two sad looking former langos with sourcream and vowed to avoid anything that has anything to do with the Water Festival.

Except blue cotton candy, because blue cotton candy is magical.

Safe Play

A while back I was having coffee with a friend of over 20 years. We were sitting out on her patio and her three kids were running around on the lawn, closely supervised by the neighbor's dog (I think it was an Australian shepherd). Suddenly the boy walks over to us and asks for his PSP.

Friend: Why do you want it?
Boy: I'm bored.
Friend: Well, you have to get it yourself.
Boy: Fine.

And he runs inside.

I was just stunned. It was a warm and sunny day. The boy was seven years old. Somehow, a seven years old child managed to get bored while being outside on a sunny day. I was blown away.
Later that evening I saw the oldest daughter sitting in a pile of long-forgotten Legos and cars and doll clothes, and she was playing a bubble shooter game on an iPad. Once again I was stunned. I couldn't, and still can't, understand how you would pick a game with pre-set rules and conditions over the infinite possibilities of your own imagination. Even I could come up with a dozen things to do with the toys, but she preferred the iPad.

Lately, I have realized that this is how the world works now.

When I was growing up, my parents had to drag me in and forbid me to leave the table, under pain of death, when it was time to eat. Being grounded was a very real and very distressing punishment. They just had to threaten with confinement to the home for us to behave (well, to not act as hyperglycemic raptors, at least). Now parents have to kick the spawn out for said offspring to go outside and play.

I can't remember being bored often as a child. Sure, long hours in a car when going to either of my grandmothers' houses were boring, but when playing, there was always some form of entertainment.

We would paint apples with watercolors and try to sell them.
We would climb trees and rocks.
We had two club houses, one in a tree and one between two cliffs.
We rode bikes all day (there are some memories of thorny bushes and a lamppost when coordination and survival instincts failed me).
We would go sleighing and have snow ball fights and build snow men in winter.

We were scraped and bruised and wet and dirty. And it was fine! No one cared about the state of our clothes.
We had twigs in our hair and grassy feet. There was sand under our fingernails and sludge in our boots. I sprained a finger when rollerskating down a cobblestone road. I hit a park bench when sleighing down a hill in wint. I hurt my back after falling out of a tree and I've stepped on more seashells than I can remember.

And you know what? I would gladly do all of that again (maybe not the lamppost or the park bench, though. Or falling out of a tree.)

Tooth ache

I really don't like going to the dentist. I am even afraid to go to the dentist, because I always walk away in pain. This tends to lead to a really bad pain spiral, because I avoid going to the dentist for as long as I can and then I end up going in because of a painful cavity or a broken tooth. Which means more pain and me avoiding going to that House of Horrors for even longer. And repeat. Things are not made easier by the fact that my body burn through lidocain like water evaporating on a hot street in summer.

This last time, I had to get a root canal in my front tooth, because the old cavity I had in the tooth had become infected under the filling, because the nerve had died in the tooth. The dentist in the emergency rotation was really cute and really kind, and apologized a lot when she hurt my mouth, and it was only towards the end of the sitting that shit started being stupid. She became really frustrated when I experienced pain in a tooth that was/is deader than a decapitated vampire and refused to believe me when I said it hurt. Still, she was far better than the condecending ass of a dentist who did the actual root canal.
I told her that I process lidocain fast and she was all "Yeah, yeah, we'll get to that". Then she pushed the syringe's pointy ow end into my gums without warning!!! Needle in skin hurts. Needle in gums makes my brain fritz.
After poking around in my tooth, she then wanted to take some x-rays, which meant me sitting up in a dentist chair, looking like a steampunk Chtulu with metal bits and a plastic sheet sticking out of my mouth and drool running down my chin. I was absolutely adorable, I'm sure.
Everything went well until she started filling up the cavity and the root (in Sweden, they try to leave the tooth intact if at all possible). The lidocain was starting to wear off and my gums hurt and I had cold currents running through my teeth everytime she poked the inside of my tooth. Did she believe that it hurt? Yes. Did she give me more lidocain? Nope!

Me: Mruphing OW! (Fucking ow)
Dentist: I have to fill it up or you'll get infected again.
Me: Ahgtha (I get that)
Dentist: It will just hurt for a second.
Me: *crying from pain* fruhu (fuck you)
Dentis: There. Done.
Me: *glare*

I discovered that one of the best things to do when Orin Scrivello's evil sister is digging through your mouth is to breath calmly, close your eyes, and imagine shoving the drill into her eye repeatedly. It can be very relaxing.

Next time, I'm taking a friend's advice. An air horn should make them more interested in keeping me in a state of undiluted bliss.

Boy and the avocado

About three years ago, I tried to pot an avocado stone to see if it would grow into an avocado tree. I was somewhat successful, and for about two years I had the thinnest, most limp-yet-alive sad excuse of an avocado tree standing in my livingroom window, next to something that might have been, and probably should have been, a pine tree, but mostly looked like a two pronged branch with a ornament hanging from it.

Then Boy and I made the mistake of going to the beach house for Easter and forgot to remind his uncle that plants need water too. When we got back both the avocado and the pine were dead and the other plants clung to their pots, glaring at us with angry faces.

About a year later, I tried to pot another avocado stone and this time, it actually turned into a quite beautiful avocado sapling. It can even stand on its own (I had to build a support out of chop sticks and yarn for the other avocado sapling). It has a twig sticking straight out about halfay to the top, making it look like it's trying to dance like those dancers at the end of Blazing Saddles. Boy calls it the Campocado. He's also the one who usually gives it water (because I tend to forget. I'm busy keeping my pointsettas alive, tyvm) and so everytime he goes to water it, he has conspiratory conversations with the Campocado about how much he loves it and how evil I am for not watering it. Some day I need to take pictures of the faces he makes when talking to it. Think 1950's spy movies and you're pretty close.

Now the avocado looks like some strange mushroom, large base, thinning towards the top, and then HAT!

One of those days

Yesterday was just one of those really odd days when at least I started to ponder the possibility of me existing in something not too different from Wonderland. Then I realized that the flowers aren't talking and I still don't own a purple striped cat that grins and therefore I couldn't possibly be in Wonderland. But the question still remains.

It started off great, if by great you mean waking up at 7.30 on a Saturday morning to the melodic sound of seagulls fighting and the knowledge that if the seagulls had not been territorial you could have been sleeping for another hour and a half before having to get up for work. (Most of this paragraph was inspired by this post by Hyperbole and A Half)

The coffee maker apparently wanted to add to the new and decided that there were way too few coffee grains in the pot. I don't even know how it managed to get the grains out of the filter but the last mouthful in the mug was slightly chewy and very bitter.

I have to change busses when I go to work, and when I hopped on the first bus, the driver apparently had been drinking something I'm not sure was coffee (or even legal) because he could easily have been the Cheshire Cat stand-in. Said bus driver also decided that flirting with someone who can't really hear you is a good move. Bus driver number two was the really strange one. I asked if the bus had the right number and destination on the sign (trust me, around here, that's a valid question) and the driver just said, over his newspaper, "It's better if you take the other bus going to that station. If you're in a hurry." I'm not sure if this is weird to anyone else, but it was the first time I've ever heard a bus driver recommend someone to take another bus. A bit stunned, I just said "I'm not in a hurry", swiped my pass, and took a seat.

I usually listen to music when riding the bus and, to prevent boredom, I use the shuffle setting on my phone. My phone hasn't really grasped the concept of shuffling, especially when it feels that I'm not paying attention to the songs. It decided that I needed to listen to the amazing tracklist of "My Child" by Disturbed, "Zetsuai Paranoia" by FER*MEN, and "Return of the King" by Bruce Dickinson. Over and over and over. In different variations of the order of the three. Even if I changed the song, it jumped back to one of those three when the selected song was over.

After getting off the bus, I went to the grocery store to get lunch. I found ice cream. It only costed 6 SEK (little less than a dollar) which made me very happy.

Working at the museum can be very tedious and boring, so I was very happy when I found Hyperbole and a Half, which has provided me with enough entertainment to pass the time. What I didn't expect was the tiny boy who lurked in the museum for about half an hour. I say lurk, because he made no sounds when he was walking around. I could only tell where he was by his mother's voice. To be completely silent when walking around in that museum is accomplishment. I can normally tell where visitors are due to the creaking of floor boards, the tapping of shoes on marble or the squeking of doors. This boy made me jump about four times before finally, just before he and his mother left, dropping a Confusion Bomb on my head.

Little Boy: *walking aimlessly in the gift shop*

Me: *half watching the boy, half reading blog*

Little Boy: Hi
Me: *jumps* Hi
Little Boy: You don't have camels here.
Me: Huh?
Little Boy: You don't have any camels here.
Me: No...?
Little Boy: It's good that you don't have any camels *walks off and leaves the museum*

Me:  ....The hell just happened? *O.o*

After the small boy, the next adventure was the talkative lady who got very sad and slightly offended that we didn't serve coffee and cake in the museum.

After I got off work, my sister picked me up and drove me to my friend's dad's place. I have the most amazing and weird friends, so any day they're being weird is a normal day. Boy and the friends had been pushing rocks all day, and as things tend to happen when three goofs move heavy objects injuries had occured. Boy also forgot my camera at home, so there is sadly no photographic evidence.

In conclusion, on multiple occassions during the day, this strip from Questionable Content seemed extremely appropriate.