Reclaiming the ice

A school teacher pushed me up a against a wall a month ago and let me know that my kid was the only one who didn't bring skates to school.

"Well, we don't skate much" was my lame defense.

The teacher looked so appalled at this statement, the only thing my central nervous system could do was to make it worse.

"Actually, I hate skating."

The teacher gasped for air in horror. "You can't say that in front of your child! She'll learn to hate it too and never skate well! This will follow her all the way to ... to.. sixth grade!!"

Like anyone could imagine, I couldn't bare having this major parental failure on my conscience. Me and daughter dug out her cousins' hand-me-down skates from our basement and she began practising with me beside the ice. We went out night after night to an ice rink close to our house, straight after dinner. After four sessions she was doing a lot better and we decided it was time she taugth me.

Said and done. I bought skates and today we went out again for my third or fourth time since I was an adult. I'm doing OK, but I don't have to fake not being able to catch the other kids when we play catch and I'm it.

In case you wonder, I am the only adult on the ice playing catch. And yes, I am the only adult wearing a helmet like the kids. But I 'm too busy learning to be embarrassed or self-conscious. And I love the way the kids behave when they get to teach and help a grown-up. Brings out the best in them and me looking ridiculous is a small price to pay to experience it.

Please, daughter and all your six-year-old friends, can we skate some more tomorrow? Please?

It's not a career, it's a cinnamon roll

It was eating me that some people seemed to feel sorry for me, as I'm not pursuing my career as it once started. "I'm fine" I heard myself reply, knowing fully well it sounded like something you say instead of starting to wheep.

I didn't know how to express that I'm actually quite content with the way things are going, although according to all career measurements it's downhill. I couldn't express it because I couldn't explain it. Why? Why am I content when I have no goals and achieve nothing in any field?

I was thinking about all this when I came across a piece in a magazine, a debate about how to achieve the best of careers. Careful plans were described one after the other, but then there was this one woman who retorted something like:
"..a career is not necessarily about reaching goals, getting to the top of a hill. Many will testify about how sudden opportunities and strange turns made them end up in other professions that they once started in. It's a development, a life-long journey and doesn't stop by achieving a title."

That's it! I was never happy when I played the role of a teaching expert, I always wanted myself to learn and develop. And that's exactly what's happening to me at this stage in life. To start from scratch, to be the newcomer, the underdog, to learn by asking all the stupid questions (my speciality!) and then to rise from the ashes and amaze my peers by being excellent in performance. It's true, my career will never be a pyramid or a ladder, striving for the heights. I take another turn and grow as I go along, like adding another layer around a cinnamon roll.

Thereby my contentment. Now explained in the form of pastry.

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Paris was great by the way. My friends were even more amazing and fun than I had imagined. I was totally the grey mouse of the crowd, following the fab three around with round eyes and mouth half-open!
But the travelling itself really put me off and made me think. I have a piece about Marcus Aurelius coming up on that subject. But I think Schopenhauer has something to do with it too, only I don't know how and I would rather he didn't. Got to think about that..
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Playing right now: José González "Killing for love" (2007).

Tomorrow: Paris

I haven't started packing yet, even though I leave in the morning. Husband is off to borrow a better bag for me. Apparently, he received word that he might actually score some long longed-for whisky out of this chick trip. He couldn't bare the thought of sending his precious bottle from Paris with me in what I planned to pack in!

I haven't been outside of Scandinavia in quite some time. Ten years or so. I feel a little scared to tell you the truth. Last time I travelled alone I ended up in an African nation where there had just been a coup d'état and I walked off the plane right into fully armed military forces.
Let's hope the Parisians are a little more relaxed.

Now, time for my check list:
1. Passport
2. Euro
3. Insurance card
4. Mobile phone
5. Camera
6. Clothes
7. Sensible shoes
8. Printout of apartment voucher
9. Printout of fellow traveller's passport copy
10. Printout of tips on what to see in Paris from my brother-in-law (thank you!)
11. A page from a magazine about Paris, sent in the mail from my mom (thank you!)

And in case you didn't know, here are the fabulous women I get to meet and discover Paris with during the weekend to come:

Taiko Tari
Sister Mary Lisa
Montchan

Please stalk them if I am never heard from again. By bye!

Cemetry gates

We ended a calm and restful weekend with a visit to the graveyard. All souls' day is of course the grande finale after All hallows' day, although the protestant reformation aimed to rid us from all catholic horrors like celebrations of saints. With a varying degree of success. (Me, I love love love the 13 December Santa Lucia processions! I cry even if they are all strangers in the procession, they don't have to be my kids for me to make a spectacle of myself. But it does help!)

Never mind the catholics and saints, we felt the need to honor our old dead and gones and went to the cemetery. We bought a candle and placed it on husband's paternal grandparents' final resting place. Husband was very careful to tell the rest of us not to step on any of the other graves, but we wouldn't have managed that even if we had held each other's hands and walked sideways with our feet in a ballet first position. These places are crowded!


As you can see, we have snow now although I doubt that it will stay. Or rather, I have decided that it can't stay since I didn't bother to shovel it off our driveway when it fell. It's frozen solid now, I can't get it off! So I need a second chance to do good, shovel-wise.

So I did my presentation on Thursday for my colleagues. It went as well as it could I guess. I mean, nobody can expect people to start chanting hallelujas after only a 30 minute-session. (OK, so I expected something like that, I'll admit!)

Seriously, the guys were interested and asked that we follow-up with some testing. There were two final comments that summed it up pretty well: one guy commended the example from a pedagogic viewpoint (thankyouverymuch), and another one said he felt like entering the matrix: he saw numbers and signs flicker on a screen and I insisted there was information to be spotted in all that. Ha ha ha. Mind you, the same guy came back the next morning asking me for some other examples to check out on the Internet..

But I didn't celebrate long, there were other things to be annoyed about. I got more than one complaint this past week from other departments, about how I had handled things. To maintain my peace of mind, I have decided to lay it all to my boss. I'm not afraid to be in the wrong, just tell me straight out and I'll correct everything. But if the other bastards are wrong, I want them to hear it too!

Five days to go. Five days..

Here goes nothing

I got tired of waiting for something to happen, so took matters into my own hands. Instead of quietly waiting for someone to hand me a project involving the processes I am really good at, I started one by myself. And I've invited some guys over to my office tomorrow, for a presentation.

The guys are my co-workers, kind of, I invited three and two have accepted so far. I want to show them what I'm good at to make sure I get involved whenever there are interesting projects around. I figured it's the only way to go, since no one has involved me so far.

Last time I tried to board a project, I made the mistake to try to prove my competence by providing a link to a paper I once wrote and published in a scientific journal. The paper was probably my most complex project ever and I must assume that the title alone scared the project leader off. I never heard a word of the project again, and if I'm not wrong the guy is avoiding me..

That's why I have to get the word out some other way. For tomorrow, I need to have my examples and applications in good and neat order, for the guys to see the use immediately. Otherwise they'll write me off as some boring math teacher wannabe. I know for sure I can make complex stuff seem intuitive and easy, but I usually get to keep my students for at least three days. This time I have 30 minutes. And usually the students are paying customers and WANT to be at the training course.

(When I explained the theory to Montchan once, she got it in less than five minutes. But for god's sake, the woman is brilliant and has a degree in physics! I bet that super-mega-brain would have to go fika like five times if she was sitting in while I teach these guys, out of pure frustration.)

OK, so here I go, jumping off the cliff: ..........aaaaaaaaah!

We're starting a brass band

My husband informed me today that he has a plan that will be made reality around year 2015. To get back at the Young Ones who wake us up at 06:30 on Saturday mornings for no reason, we will start a brass band by the time they are teenagers and want to sleep in.

Band practice will take place, my husband informs me, on Saturday mornings at 06:00 sharp. Place: our house, in the hallway outside the bedrooms. We won't be held down by any type of written music, this will be very "new wave". Play from the heart, without any previous knowledge of music instruments.

I think I would like to try the saxophone for these sessions. Husband with his flair for grandness has his mind set on a an electric tuba!

I wonder how long our teenagers-to-be will continue to live at home after this scheme kicks in? Or maybe I should worry about how long they will let us live? We won't be spring chicken by then, mind you, it would be easy to explain to the police how the house brass band slipped and fell down the stairs with instruments and all. What a sad ending, not the way I had planned to go..

(Correct me or is this the second time I write about my death?! Morbid horrible woman.)

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Thank you, sweetie, for coming by and being a friend. And for bringing alcohol! It should have been the other way around, you know. I need to take better care of you.

No highs

There was absolutely nothing on TV this past weekend. I longed to see "House M.D." so badly, I resorted to DVDs with "Jeeves and Wooster" (1990). Even though it was hardly the same to see Hugh Laurie being all silly in the roaring 20s, it was still just enough to ease the desperation somewhat.

At least I had the means to ease some of my desperation. Other parts of gloomy me will only be quieted with massive amounts of food, which is rapidly turning my ass into a Kasemattpanzer. It wouldn't surprise me if SAS charges me for two seats on the plane to Paris in a few weeks from now.
Usually my lows are part of a cycle and rarely last for very long. But this time it seems the operators of my rollercoaster have gone for a very long fika break. I'm sitting there in my seat at the very bottom of the ride, waiting for the damned machinery to get me back to the higher places. And even if I could see the wrench or push button from where I am sitting, I still don't have the serotonin levels to crank impulses strong enough for me to take control of the blasted thing.

So I'll keep eating, watching "Jeeves and Wooster" and try to be nicer to my family. But without smiling just yet.
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*This post is in need of serious editing, but I can't be bothered. Better just leave it as it is.