An exciting Tuesday for two Swedish cats

Yesterday was eventful. At least for our cats.

In the morning I found Skorpan, as usual in the mornings, sitting on the window-sill in our home office. He was all worked up. His ears were moving frantically from side to side, as was his tail. Most mornings, he'll turn his head to look at me when I come in to say goodbye to him before I leave for work. Yesterday? Not a chance.

He was watching a rabbit on the lawn out front.

Morning entertainment

When I came home after work I was met by boyfriend in the hallway, mumbling and swearing. Apparently Skorpan and JumJum had had lots of fun in the kitchen during the day... Boyfriend had come home to find the fridge door wide open and the kitchen floor full of nibbled brussels sprouts...

The door to our fridge is a bit fussy and if you don't give it an extra push to make sure it closes properly, it might just not close. And I hadn't pushed in the morning after making myself breakfast. (To my defense I'd like to add that I had one of the worst mornings in a long time as I hadn't slept more than three hours during the night.)

We had no choice but to clean out the fridge of anything sensitive to room temperature and then go re-stocking.

Busy couple of weeks

So I wrote and posted every day for a month. And then I became all quiet for a week. I honestly didn't mean to.

Work is kicking my butt. I'm tired when I come home in the evenings. And my mind is either wandering or asleep. We're at a mile stone in one of the big projects I'm managing. For the last two years, we've been aiming to get to where we are now. It's exciting! But also nerve-wrecking. I'm the contact person for this project and I'm expecting a lot of calls and emails from people. Upset ones.

To be frank, I wish it was early December. That we could skip, or at least fast forward, these next three weeks. Apart from getting anxious every time my phone rings, I also have a packed schedule. I'm going to work some evenings and on a Saturday, which hasn't happened before. I have 15 hours booked outside the office to be the representative of our company. And I also have other work projects and the "usual deadlines" to deal with.

In the next three weeks I also have plans for fun things with my boyfriend, friends or family. I have a camera workshop to attend to. I have knit night. I have an appointment to get my back and hip adjusted. I have bowling planned for Friday night. And three dinners with friends. I'm meeting my mum for a fika one evening and my sister two days later. I have a book club meeting where we're supposed to discuss a book I haven't read yet.

Whenever I think about my calendar for the next couple of weeks and feel my heart starting to race, I try to think about needing the fun activities to balance the hours of heavy duty work. That doing things, and not just spending time on the couch, makes me more energetic and alert and therefor leaves me in better shape to fight the darkness here. But I also tell myself that all these fun things are voluntary and that I have the power to cancel them if I just can't stand seeing another person or even saying another word to someone... Not counting my cats.

Chatty for a month

Have you noticed how chatty I've been lately?

Well, coming home from my vacation in Tuscany, Italy, I decided to give my 101st challenge in my 101-things-in-1001-days-project a go; Post in my "proper" blog every day for a month.

And now I've done it! I've posted once every day for 31 days in a row...

I didn't exactly start out with a plan on what to fill the posts with, but I came up with some ideas that I put on a list. The posts on songs that make me cry and smile or laugh came from that list. So did the one on the yellow house and the 7 weird facts about me. The work-in-progress-posts of my crocheted shawl and my German Stocking were there as well as my final post on Sylvi.

Some posts "just happened", such as Philosophical Monday, Morning in October, Exciting Tuesday and From one thing to another.

Doing this was fun but hard work. I had a couple of nights where I felt I was scrambling for ideas to make a post. I did end up with some "emergency posts" but I tried my hardest not to get too many of those.

Hope you had fun these last 31 days!

Simpler knit project

The two knitting projects I've been working on this last week (my first Anemoi Mitten for my sister and my second German Stocking for myself) both require me to be very focused and follow charts. Sometimes I just want to work on something that doesn't make me think too much. I've tried to come up with something for myself but today my boyfriend asked me if I could knit him some fingerless mittens as he gets cold in his office.

Two hours later we were in my favourite yarn store (Fröken Garn) buying him some yarn. We came home with two skeins of the same kind of alpaca yarn I'm using for my sister's Anemoi Mittens. They're even the same grey colour. I'm mixing it with a merino lace weight yarn I got ages ago in a yarn swap. It's hand dyed in an olive green. (Hi Katie!)

Four fingers have just been joined...

Keeping sickness and illness from one's family

I met my mother yesterday for a fika before my knitting group met up. She told me about seeing one of her friends/former colleagues, who were diagnosed with chronic cancer a couple of years ago. (To my understanding it means that her cancer is always present, but that it sometimes goes from taking a nap to being wide awake.) She's in treatment at the moment as her cancer decided to move into her liver and kick around in there.

At her latest doctor's appointment she was given good news about the treatment. The tumour had shrunk by one third. Hearing this my mother had asked how her friend's husband had reacted to the good news. She was told that the husband only heared it after the appointment was over "as he was waiting outside". This surprised my mother and she asked why he wasn't in there with her seeing the doctor. The response she got was "well, he prefers not seeing the doctors with me as he's not good with handling bad news and is really struggling with me being sick again".

They've been married for 30 years. And he's not in there to see the doctors. 'Cause "he's struggling".

This got me and my mother wondering how my mother's friend behaves when she's given bad news from her doctors. Is she sparing him the details? Does she deal with the pain, the anxiety and the worrying on her own?

I had a colleague who lost her father a couple of years ago. He had found out that he had some kind of kidney problem but he chose not to tell a soul. He got sicker and sicker but pretended everything was fine. And then he ended up in hospital and died two days later. Leaving his whole family in shock as they didn't have much or any time at all to prepare for what would come.

A woman I met while studying in Canada kept her disease a secret from her family while she was fighting it. Her family was on a different continent, several time zones away. She didn't want to worry them and she didn't want them to persuade her to come home. She wasn't done with Canada. And she knew she'd probably get better treatment there as well. But without her family close by.

I know of several people who've kept depressions from their families and friends. Who've struggled on their own. Sometimes letting it go so far that they end up in hospital before saying something.

What makes people do this? Why do they think they're sparing others when they keep sickness and illness to themselves? When they decide to go in battle on their own? Or when they decide to give up without support?

Do family, relatives and friends deserve to know when one gets sick? Do they have a right?

I don't know.

But I know I'd get mad as hell if any of my family members kept a serious disease or condition from me and I found out. I might thank them for wanting to keep me from woryring but then I'd smack them. 'Cause I'd be angry. And probably feel a bit offended. I wouldn't be comfortable knowing that I was considered "too weak" to be counted on as support.

'Cause that would be my role. I'd be the support. And I'd feel robbed if I wasn't given the chance.

And wouldn't most? Or is that just me being naïve and blue-eyed?

When I struggled with my depression some years ago (almost 7 years now; time flies) friends found out before my parents got the whole picture. But I did tell my parents about it. Several weeks before I hit bottom and had to call them to come and get me from my office floor. And knowing that I had already told them about my tears, my doubts, my anxiety and my fears, made it so much easier calling them for help. And they did help. I got picked up from work and driven straight to the psychiatric emergency. I moved back into my old room and lived with my parents and sister for two months. And during those months, they all took turns babysitting me. I wasn't left alone more than an hour at a time, and never in the evenings or at night. Not because we feared I might do something terrible (I wasn't ever suicidal) but becuase I was too scared to be on my own as I couldn't handle my anxieties and my tears when I was on my own. I was terrified of ending up hyperventilating on the floor again.

These months were tough on all of us. It wrecked my mother to see me sit hollow-eyed or teary. But mostly, it was hard for her that I doubted the person I was. That I didn't particularly like the person she had been a part of creating and loved. I don't think I've ever seen my father with such a deep wrinkle in his forehead. And my sister, taking on such a responsibility while still a teen... But... There's also something very real about crying in someone's arms. It creates bonds. Strong ones.

If I hadn't let my family help me through that year, I don't know if I'd feel as close to them as I do now. I don't know if I'd trust them as I do now. I sure hope I would, but I don't know.

I'm sure glad I let them be my support. And I know they appreciate it as well.

But did they have a right to know? Was I obliged to let them in? You tell me!

From one thing to another

When biking home from my knit group's gathering tonight I got an awesome idea for a blog post. If I may say it myself... I worked on it the whole way home. Transforming some loose thoughts into something logical; with a start, a middle and an end. A conclusion. All in good language. But then as I got closer to home, I also got more and more insecure.

Was it clear enough? Was it interesting enough? Did I actually have a point? Did it make sense?

(And, would I have the energy to type it all out as Sleepy Anna needs her sleep and isn't at her best at 21.30/9.30pm?...)

Was it too personal? Too private? How would others react to me using them as examples?

This happens to me quite often. I have a blog post (or an email, or another text of some sort) all figured out in my head but when I get closer to the keyboard, I start to doubt it. Or I make changes and the text turns into something different from what I thought it would. I end up with a different point. If any at all. Often a different story is told.

Sometimes I return to these "texts that didn't happen as intended" and they turn into good pieces. Sometimes they don't.

We'll see what happens with the post I worked on while biking.

Sleepy me

I'm one of those who needs a lot of sleep. To function properly I should get at least 7-8 hours. During the work week, I go to bed at around 22/10pm and get up at 6am. On weekends I often sleep in 'til 9 or 9.30 even if I go to bed before midnight... If I get less than 6 hours of good sleep two nights in a row I become a wreck; I get physically sick.

(Me needing all that sleep is one (of many) reasons to why I'm not interested in having kids of my own...)

I've never been a true evening or night person, but when I was a teenager I could spend hours reading in bed. And when I was in Canada as an exchange student I stayed up longer as well. I had classes later than I had back home in Sweden, and I also had room mates who were more evening/night people than I was.

Not being an evening or night person doesn't automatically make me a morning person though. I get up when I have to and I don't have terrible manners before 7am, but if I have a choice; I stay in bed.

My boyfriend has been a bad influence on me in the mornings as he's a snoozer. I never owned an alarm with a snooze button on it before meeting him, and therefor I hadn't learnt how to snooze. I'd just get up when the alarm went off. Or I'd set the alarm half an hour earlier than I'd actually have to get up and when it went off, I'd reset it for 30 minutes at once.

Now, I often get tempted to stay in bed for another 10 minutes. And maybe another 10. On a rare occasion, I'll stay for three snoozes. And when I do, I get angry with myself as I don't seem to ever wake up those days.

The other day was one of those days. And to prove my point I can tell you that I, in the park on my way home from work, mistook a bench for a cow...

Exciting Tuesday :yawn:

With the time change a week ago (yes, Europe changed a week ahead of North America) the mornings are really dark around here. This morning I found it particularly dark when eating my breakfast and it took me some time to realize that our lamps on the bookshelves weren't lit even though the timer was set for them to be on...

I was late coming home from work today and opening the front door I, again, noticed that it was dark in our living room/dining area. I asked my boyfriend, who was sitting at the table eating sandwiches, if he had done something to the lamps. Turns out he noticed yesterday that they were dark, but had figured I'd been tampering with the timer or something.

Trying to sort out what had happened to the lamps, we ended up with a corner of our living room looking like this:

Bookshelves that are partly emptied and moved out of position

What a mess we had to make to get one of the cables out from behind the bookcases! It took us almost an hour to figure out how things were connected, get some books out, to move the three larger bookshelves and two smaller ones, get the cable and put the shelves back in position along the wall. It was heavy work!


(And looking at this picture I'm really motivated to get everything out of the bookshelves, sort through things, and put it all back in order. There are too many shelves taken by stuff that doesn't have to be, or even should be, out in the livingroom. And we've bought too many books lately that we have to pile them on top of the others...

I'm motivated! And will take care of it this coming weekend. I think... :) )

Highlights (4)

Today's Highlights (November 2nd, 2009)

* One of the phone calls I made at work today. I was a bit nervous making the call but ended up feeling good about the conversation. Instead of a lot of why?s, I got a thank you.

* The left over pasta I had for lunch. We made it yesterday when my cousin with family came over for lunch. The sauce was creamy and filled with small pieces of asparagus, onions, carrot, zucchini, tomatoes, smoked ham and salami.

* Sticking to my decision this afternoon to bike home in rain instead of taking a bus or asking my boyfriend to give me a ride. (I was 13kilometers/8miles away from home...)

* Entering the house after just-mentioned-bike-ride...

* Sitting all relaxed at the dinner table, playing with our new MacBook while at the same time being able to look at the pretty flowers my cousin's 4-year-old daughter picked out for us yesterday.

* Having made plans to see my mother for a sandwich and some coffee/tea on Thursday before knitting group gathers.

WIP - Crocheted shawl

My first crocheted shawl gets an edge

I've tried a lot of different edges on my crocheted shawl. I think I settled on the 8th I tried... Not being experienced in crochet made for some interesting attempts. :)

I quite like this look though and have been working on the edge today while watching LA Ink. I've done half so far and will probably get the rest done before going to bed tonight.