Thoughts and opinions of a horse-deprived equestrian

Biking in the big city

2011-10-31T03:13:00.001-07:00

I've brought my trusty Diamant Vital of Christiania with me. It was a hassle to bring on the back of the car, but it's already been well worth it. The first hiccup came when I realised I would have to bike in the road. I'm quite convinced biking on the pavements is legal here, but it's completely and utterly inconvenient to the point of being impossible. Pedestrians don't give you any kind of space, and it's narrow and with lots of kerbs.

It's funny thinking back to those first days, because I was so scared of biking in the road. Now it's become second-nature though. I wouldn't think of it at home, but then again, we have bicycle paths there. Here I bike in the bus lane, and the biggest challenge is the huge amounts of buses and traffic lights and bus stops up around Nicholson Street. It's chaos there and it's impossible to judge whether or not to pull past a stopped bus or not, because suddenly it'll pull out of the bus stop and I'll be in between a gigantic double-decker on one side and a truck on the other side. The roads are WIDE, with double lanes in each direction, and it's easy not to be seen. There are LOADS of buses, and loads of bicyclists. Many people use helmets, and this is the point where I'm being really careless. I really ought to use a helmet, and I think my biggest beef is my hair - I want to have nice hair for class, but I can't. I also don't like my helmet. I think if this is the problem I should probably invest in a nicer bike helmet. I don't want to bash my head open on asphalt.

I use reflectors and lights (because I'm careful!) I normally wouldn't in Norway, but the traffic load here is just staggering.

I was told by a friend that I should invest in a D-lock, as this was the only near-foolproof way of preventing theft. I had a bit of a heavy heart, as my mother had just bought me a nice four-wheel combination lock before I left Norway, but better safe than sorry, even with the great weight of the D-lock. I went into a lovely little shop where a D-lock cost a staggering £30. The next day I went into another, nicer, larger and lighter shop where the same lock (supposedly on offer) cost £50. Needless to say I went into the other shop. It's a nice lock, but my wallet cried a little!

There's sufficient amounts of broken glass on pavements and roads that I'd better just get used to having my tyres punctured. It miraculously hasn't happened yet, but it's only been about two months. I'll have to see at the end of the year. My kind mother packed with me a puncture fixing set, and I'm grateful to her for that! There are so many other things I'm grateful to have, too. A raintight backpack cover, for instance. Brand new rainpants (and that lovely new Bergans jacket!). Gloves - because biking really does get quite cold - and a hat. I'm happy I came prepared.

So far I'm really loving life here. The studies are awfully difficult but I hope I'll manage. I really will be genuinely heartbroken if I fail my exams, because I'm really liking it here (and I'm really liking my boyfriend, too!) Another entry on that soon.

Some principal points on boyfriend treatment.

2011-10-04T02:08:00.001-07:00

I'm just writing down a couple things to myself. I'm making silly beginner mistakes with my boyfriend and I should know better than that. So here they are. If I forget them then God help me. If he's a better person than I am then perhaps he'll save me.

- Punishing is never going to be a good idea. Du gjør deg selv en bjørnetjeneste! Twist it, turn it around, put it upside down, but however way you look at it it's not a nice thing to do and it won't teach him anything but that you're not a nice person.

- When he apologises, accept it. Don't be too aloof to sit down and see that he's being humble.

- When he shows qualities like that, be damned grateful he's even doing that.

- You're not perfect. You're going to make just as many mistakes as he will, but willingness to meet each other in the middle and work through things like that is what makes or breaks the relationship.

- People skills.

- He's immature, but that's not his fault. You can't force him to grow up and if you try, you'll just damage his self-confidence. You've been at the wrong end of that treatment yourself and you should know how it feels.

- Be courteous, be nice, be accommodating and don't, for God's sake, TELL him when he's doing things that annoy you, especially if they're part of his personality. Even if he goes and pretends to be made of steel, things like that are going to give a knock to his self-confidence. That's not what a relationship is for.

A short note

2011-09-17T07:55:00.000-07:00

I've unwittingly allowed a guy to fall in love with me. And now I don't know what to do about it. What I have to do is to man the fuck up and tell him that "Listen (...) I hope you understand that my interest in you is purely platonic" - but it's SO difficult to make a fool of a man in that way! I know he's going to make even bigger a fool of himself if I don't take him down, but I'd hate to hurt his feelings. Damn, and I didn't even know it was happening.
I'm in Edinburgh finally (so many thoughts I want to write down about that) and my life is a bit of a jumbled mess at the moment. Classes start in three days and I'm REALLY worried about the missing maths and all. I'm of course hoping it'll all go well, but God knows!
I like my room (I'll hopefully have time to write more about that later) and pretty much all of my housemates. It's good so far!

Tonight there's a ball. I've got to go out there and perform, even though I'm not really in the mood. Now I must smile and be pretty and gallant and witty for an entire evening, in paaaainful shoes. But I'm very much looking forward to wearing my ballgown for the first time. Fingers crossed!

Post-op

2011-08-04T00:30:00.001-07:00

It's been ALMOST two weeks since my operation now. In two days I get to pull my stitches - I can't wait. But I have FOUR more weeks to go in which the doctor has prohibited me from lifting my elbow above shoulder height, crossing my elbow past my sternum, doing heavy lifting, or leaning on my arm or elbow.
I have led a guilty life being told how inactive I am and how I should exercise more. But it isn't until now that I realise how active a life I actually lead. Not just EXERCISE in its own right, but heavy lifting, housework, gardening, work with the horses and so forth.
And needless to say ... with these prohibitions on me, I AM GOING CRAZY!!!!
I am SO frustrated with being handicapped. I'm just waiting for the time to pass until I can use this damn arm again. The worst part is that I'm moving to Edinburgh in three weeks and my mother is going to have to do all my packing and lifting and carrying! She's more than happy to do it, but I want my freedom. I was also looking forward to five weeks (including the past two ones) of fun-filled riding adventures and exercise.
I am so darn frustrated I can't even describe it in words. Only now do I realise how many things I want to do in my life and how independent I am. Having to stay at my father's for those two weeks was impractical in its own right, even though I managed to stop in at home and water some plants and take care of the fridge. I can only imagine the pain sports people like Lars Veen experience after losing their legs.

Aftermath of my fall

2011-07-26T02:49:00.000-07:00

I fell off on Tuesday. On Wednesday I went to the hospital in Akershus to operate. They rigged me up in the hospital bed, put a drip in me, changed me into hospital clothes, x-rayed me, and then proceeded to tell me that they could not operate on me until Friday. OK.... I went home. On Friday I went to the hospital at 0630, arriving there at 0800 on the dot. Just like they told me to. I sat, miserable, in a chair in a corridor, waiting for an entire hour until someone finally gave me a bed. Then I was changed into hospital clothes again. A big white apron with arms, a wholly rectangular piece of cloth that was supposed to be underwear, and some outrageous "socks" that looked in shape and wearability more like one of those plastic christmas stockings from the grocery store. Then, I waited. Slept, waited, and slept. And waited. And waited. And waited and waited and waited. At 2 PM, I was told I was still "fairly far back in the queue". If I was fairly far back, why the FUCK was I asked to come at 8 AM?!!
Then, at 1630, the explosion happened. I was too woozy to really comprehend the horror of it at that point. But I was hastily removed from my bed, taken out of my hospital clothes, and bundled into a hotel room. 24 hours after I had had my last meal, I was FINALLY given food. But told, of course, that I couldn't eat anything after midnight, because I might just be operated tomorrow.
So I went to sleep, crying in my misery. The Oslo death toll I seem to remember being fourteen.
When I woke up, I was shocked to see the death toll of Utøya: eighty-five. I couldn't quite comprehend it. But I was enormously relieved to see that it was one Norwegian freak, and not Al Qaeda. I had had a stone in my chest after the police confirmed that it was a bomb that had exploded, and with all those people speculating into Islamism.

I was called at eight or nine and informed that I was number 4 in the queue for surgery. My heart leaped in joy. Once installed in my room again with my cannula, ringer-acetate and surgery clothes, I got bored again. At 1300 I asked someone where I was in the queue. I was informed that I was still #4. I started to doubt whether I would be operated that day. But then, at 1800, the amazing news came. I was wheeled down innumerable corridors, through doors, elevators, round corners - I could never have found my way back alone. I was introduced to several aenesthetic nurses and people like that. I was moved onto what seemed like a very narrow and unforgiving steel table. It wasn't so bad though. It was electric, and moved into a very interesting position with my knees and hips bent and everything. They put my left arm out on a metal support and wired it up. I got electrodes for EKG measurement, a blood-pressure meter which activated every two minutes, and a pulse-oxymeter. There were beeping machines everywhere. The room smelled very sterile and I felt a little scared and alone. but I was joking and kidding lots with the aenesthetist, who was a funny and friendly guy. He put me at ease. I suddenly remembered I would be intubated, and my heart sank. I know how to intubate, and it's a difficult and dangerous process, and I've also learned that the patient might have pains afterwards. But I knew they were experienced! Voicing my fears also helped. The aenesthist put in my weight, height and many other things into the machine, calculating how much medication I would get. I remember being very nervous that I wouldn't get enough medication and would wake up in the middle of the operation, or worse yet, be conscious enough to hear and feel what they were doing, but not being able to do anything about it. I was given an oxgen mask. Again, I felt a little nervous. They gave me some medication and told me if I felt dizzy I should just close my eyes. I nodded and thought I felt it. Then suddenly I was hit with a MASSIVE amount of dizziness. I didn't know it was possible to feel so dizzy while lying completely prone! Then I was hit by a wave of nausea. Thankfully, it quickly passed. They told me they had given me some very quickly-working morphine or something. I nodded and breathed.

The next thing I remember is a gentle voice very, very far away telling me "Ellen? Ellen. You're waking up now. We're done."
Images of rolling hills and horses and people in darkness and light flitted away. I heard my own voice asking "Already?" In total surprise. Everything was still black. I registered that I was moving. I started shaking violently. I'm not sure if they gave me something to stop the shaking, but I remember it stopping very abruptly. My bed came to a stop in a bay in the recovery area, where I was watched and given painkillers. A woman's face told me that if I wanted to, I'd have a rest. She asked me if I needed to go to the bathroom. Terrified that they would catheterise me, I said no.

The nurse who was in charge of me brought in my father. I was SO HAPPY to see him. He stayed with me for a while, talking and holding my hand, then went out to wait. After something like an hour I was brought up to my room. I wanted to go home right away, but was told I needed to do x-rays tomorrow. I'm glad I decided to stay, because all through that night nurses kept coming in and injecting me with blissful painkillers. I don't know how I would have made it through the night without them. I was in such terrible pain.

The following morning I woke up and my father came in to sit and read to me. He had slept in the nearby hotel. We waited for the doctor. And waited. And waited and waited and waited. I felt so horribly bad for my father who had taken the day off to be there with me - although in retrospect, I think he didn't mind at all, just wasn't so good at telling me he didn't mind. He read to me from Collapse. I remember something about Montana, and the Easter Island. It was terribly interesting, but I kept falling asleep. My father's voice was blissfully soothing and calming. When I woke up and apologised for falling asleep, he told me it was perfectly all right, but I found it was difficult to fall asleep again without his voice.

I had been told I would be out of the hospital at noon at the latest. But the doctor FINALLY came in to release me at 1830. I was melting with anger and frustration. I was given a prescription for Paralgin Forte (thank God), and a declaration that I couldn't work. I drove home in my father's convertible, to an existence with eternal pampering, sympathy, chicken soup, sleeping as much as I'd like, and people helping me with whatever I needed. Family is such an amazing thing to have in such a situation. I'm eternally happy that I have the help of my father and stepmother. With large amounts of painkillers my existence is somewhat tolerable at the moment. But I've been told my post-op pains should ease within four days. I'm just waiting for the time to pass......

Fjordingen Amalie

2011-07-21T00:47:00.000-07:00

Det går en fjording sammen med min egen hest. Jeg har funnet ut at Amalie brukes til sprang og dressur konkurransemessig, og hun elsker å hoppe. Det gjør jeg også!
Så tirsdag dro vi ut. Hun var sprek, og ble kjempeglad da jeg tok henne over den første stokken. Vi galopperte langs smale stier, mellom vann og tett kratt. Sommerluktene var overalt, forførerisk hegg og skogslukter, og småfugl kvitret. Kvister slo meg i ansiktet og lille Amalie galopperte på uten hensyn. En gang kom vi til en bitteliten strand. Det begynte å bli sent, og sola sto lavt over det blikkstille vannet. Landet på andre siden av sjøen sto svart mot himmelen. Jeg tok Amalie ned og fikk forhøvene hennes i vannet. Hun var skeptisk først, men så skulle hun uti helt! Med dyr sal og nye støvler fikk nok være nok, og vi gikk opp på land igjen. Vi skrittet rolig langs en kornåker der hveten sto gul og høsteferdig.

Vi dro hjemover. På veien dro vi bort til en viltbro som går over E6. Amalie elsker å galoppere opp den i full fart, og opplevelsen var fantastisk, med meterhøyt gress i en blomstereng som delte seg for oss. Vi gikk ned på den andre siden. Tilbake visste jeg at Amalie gjerne ville sette full fart. Da jeg lot henne gå over i galopp var hun helt sin egen hest. Omtrent halvveis opp skjedde det. Hun snublet. I løpet av et brøkdels sekund registrerte jeg at hesten hadde forsvunnet under meg. Det eneste jeg tenkte i det jeg tok salto over henne var at jeg måtte ikke slippe tøylene, for det var en kilometer hjem og jeg ville ikke miste henne.
Jeg landet HARDT med høyre lår og høyre skulder, og smalt hodet hardt nok til å gjøre meg ør. I neste øyeblikk prøde jeg frenetisk å reise meg. Jeg lå heldigvis på oversiden av hesten, men hun bakset og var i full gang med å reise seg. Jeg visste at hun kunne få panikk, og jeg ville ikke ligge nede når det skjedde. Men av en eller annen grunn greide jeg ikke å komme opp. Heldigvis sto Amalie rolig mens jeg langsomt karret meg opp fra bakken. Jeg merket at jeg ikke helt kunne puste. "Det er greit", tenkte jeg. "Jeg har fått pusten slått ut av meg, det er ikke så farlig - jeg venter litt, får tilbake pusten, og så går vi hjem. Dette var irriterende, men nå tar du deg sammen!" Men på toppen av broen stoppet jeg. Det var ikke bare det. Jeg kunne ikke bevege høyrearmen. Jeg begynte å gråte av sjokk. Heldigvis kom det en dame gående på stien. Da hun spurte meg om det gikk bra, merket jeg at jeg ikke kunne høre et ord hun sa, fordi ringingen i ørene mine overdøvet alt. Etter et par sekunder ble alt hvitt og jeg mistet synet. Jeg satte meg ned på bakken i sjokk.
Synet og hørselen min kom tilbake. Fuglekvitteret lå som en overtone til brølet fra motorveien. Damen spurte om hun skulle ringe noen, men i sjokktilstanden min svarte jeg nei fordi jeg ikke visste nummeret til hestens eier.

Damen hjalp meg opp på Amalie. Da jeg skulle bruke høyrearmen for å dra meg over og opp, skar smerten hjennom meg som en hvitglødende kniv. "Jeg kan ikke bevege armen!" skrek jeg. Jeg tenkte:
a) jeg har fått skulderen ut av ledd (nei og nei, dette blir vondt å rette opp);
b) jeg har fått kragebenet ut av ledd (skitt, dette går ikke an å fikse medisinsk);
c) jeg har knukket kragebenet (det er ikke så farlig, det gror!)

Så dro jeg den hanskede hånden min over kragebenet. Da jeg oppdaget at det sto en gigantisk kul ut, var reaksjonen min en helt annen enn jeg hadde forventet. Ansiktet mitt forvred seg i en grimase av smerte og redsel. Jeg hadde aldri før knukket noe i mitt liv.

Jeg red hjemover. Halvveis gikk jeg av ponnien fordi hun humpet, og snublet en del. Jeg hektet hånda i en av beltehempene. Vi tok snarveien over en åker, men da hun begynte å spise gress begynte jeg å gråte i desperasjon - rotasjonen i skulderpartiet for å dra i tøylene var for mye for meg.
Da jeg kom til veien så jeg to gutter med en hund. Etter å ha kastet meg et par blikk, ignorerte meg selv om jeg tydelig var skadet. Midt i smerten ble jeg sint. Jeg hadde trodd de ville glemme sjenansen og spørre om de kunne hjelpe.

I skrivende stund sitter jeg i en seng full av puter og skriver med én hånd. Kragebenet mitt stikker fortsatt 45 grader fra sin riktige posisjon, og de to delene overlapper hverandre med 2-3 centimeter. Det er gått to dager siden jeg falt, men jeg får ikke operert før i morgen. Så nå sitter jeg her. Jeg har to viktige ting jeg vil si:

- Ta MED telefonen når du rir! Har du en smarttelefon som er for stor for lomma di, må du låne en mindre en. Jeg hadde vært på legevakten en time tidligere om jeg hadde kunnet ringe noen.
- RI MED HJELM. Jeg kan ikke si det mange nok ganger. Ingen omstendigheter gjør bakken myk nok i et slikt fall. Jeg falt på GRESS, allikevel er min nesten splitter nye 1700-kronershjelm knust. Hjelmer er billig livsforsikring, og hvis jeg ikke hadde hatt den hadde jeg ikke kunnet skrive dette.

Dette er bare én ny opplevelse i det som blir et langt liv med hester! "Du er ikke en erfaren rytter før du har falt av hundre ganger"; nå har jeg vært på sykehuset også.....

P.S.: Det er gått en hel uke siden jeg falt, og jeg har endelig fått operert. Jeg måtte ligge to ekstra dager på sykehuset på grunn av de fryktelige hendelsene i Oslo på fredag.
Her er et bilde av meg og fjordingen jeg falt med. Det ble tatt bare en uke før fallet. Sånne risikoer kommer jeg nok aldri til å ta igjen. Nå har jeg fått oppleve min rettferdige andel ulykker!

Out on exercise again

2011-06-16T11:44:00.000-07:00

It's two weeks left until discharge (jesus fuck, we're all looking forward to it so much). The last week is "discharge week", full of waiting, bullshit, more waiting, handing in our kit, hearing tests, waiting and more bullshit. The week before that is exercise YMER, a large exercise with the entire Royal Guard. The week that just passed was "prep YMER", a preparatory exercise. Why we always have an exercise to prepare for exercise is beyond me, but it gives us extra field days on our records. So the week started out rainy, but the rain cleared up after lunch on Tuesday and left us to a world of sun. The days were spent sunbathing when not on 5-minute trauma alert. We had the most wonderful alert times too, eight to eleven twice a day. Last exercise we were two until five, so we got no quality sleep at all. So there was sun (only sporadic rain), heat, and plenty of sleep. It was SO WONDERFUL! To top it all off, all our cases were completed with little or no hitches, and we got more than our share of praise. The days and evenings were busy, filled with case training and other driving. At around eleven thirty tuesday evening we were called to give some patients "further transport" (in effect, drive them back to their own tent camp). The drive out to Venneråsen was about 15km long, and so lovely on the country roads. Despite being midnight, you could have read a book in the light. Funnily enough, we passed a moose calf standing RIGHT by the side of the road. 200 metres down the road, there was a sign warning that there was danger of moose. I called up our companion car, Echo 2, on the radio, saying that we had just observed a moose and warning them to keep their eyes open. The unit commander of that car, the lovely Mahle, later told me he and the driver had at that moment been discussing what would happen if they met a moose, going all "oh, we'd probably die", and his blood had run cold when I called him up. Funnily enough they hadn't seen the moose on the side of the road. Scary!
Being far away from 5 Mike, our commander, we sped along the darkish trails, climbing hills and taking in the view. All in all it was a lovely drive. On the way back we decided to go on a BMP, "Bamsemumspatrulje". The word would translate to something like "gummy bear patrol". Sadly however, all the petrol stations were closed at 1:AM and we had to go back empty-handed. The BMP led to one of this exercise's ROFL moments, when Echo 2 stepped on the gas without checking that they had Olsen, their medic, in the back. He performed a spectacular save, jumping up into the ambulance backwards. (For the record, that treatment compartment is high, high up from the ground) Selvåg, my driver, told me inbetween laughs that Olsen was getting good at these things - Echo 2 would so often forget him.

We were woken at 3:40AM Wednesday to go out case solving. We had a reported two casualties, and an out-of-bounds road because of high danger of mines. All four ambulances were sent out. Once there, of course we went into contact and immediately took two more casualties. We had only two stretchers and needed to get the hell out, so it was field casevac time. The case went more or less to hell. Our drills were lacking. Of course four casualties meant that our original number of ten (two drivers left in the vehicles to man the radio) reduced us to two able fighters. When one "able" fighter was smart enough to venture out onto the road and was immediately told he had lost both his legs, I'm not entirely sure it was right to give us stick about our road drill being lacking. It's not easy to perform a good retreat when you're alone! On a positive note, we were praised highly for all having been out of our sleeping bags and ready to depart camp in eight minutes flat. That is NOT bad at four in the morning.

One back in our tent camp again, we were tired and angry about having been woken up for a case that went batshit. But with the sun up and shining, and field rations eaten, the mood quickly lightened. I spent the day on creative writing in my notebook while listening to the radio on my cell phone. Lovely!

Here's something that struck me that I wrote down:
In our situation, equipped with cars, when we need something we've always got SOMETHING with us, though it may be intended for something else. Q-tips, for instance. I have them in my backpack, in my weapons cleaning set. They're meant to clean the trickier parts of my HK. But if I ever need to clean my ears, they'll serve that purpose.

During our "time inside", I've established a routine for things I bring out into my field that aren't on the packing list. The thing I obviously can't do without is a good supply of ibuprofen and paracetamol. Then there's intimservietter. I don't know what they're called in English, but they make a world of difference to a girl. I usually don't go on exercise without Leo, my little stuffed lizard, though this week he had to stay behind because of all the rain. He'll come with me next week. I like to have my little pen-format spray bottle of Antibac for cleaning. I also bring with me a good hand lotion because when handling the multifuel tent oven for extended periods of time, the F-34 dries out your hands and gives you what we call "field fingers". Your hands go black in all the nooks and crannies, underneath your nails, your cuticles become a complete bleeding mess, and your hands crack. So hand cream, though it can't solve the problem entirely, helps.

On the subject of F-34, the smell of that fuel will forever stick with me. It is so ingrained in me now that I don't ever think I'll be able to forget it. I came home from exercise once this winter, tired, dirty, wearing my field uniform and smelling, as I called it, "of field and exercise". My mum, who has spent many hours in F-16s which run on the same fuel, immediately commented that I stank of F-34. I didn't until then make the connection that F-34 is the smell that I associate with field. That and the smell of the rotting textiles the Army has issued us with. That smell comes out when things get wet and dank, and the moment I sense that smell (especially when combined with the smell of forest floor) I am immediately transported back to our training school days at Terningmoen - or Gærningmoen as we like to call it.

On Wednesday we arrived back in camp after a case to see Sergeant Scholz of KDO in our camp. The Command Post platoon had set up camp right beside us - we go hand in hand - so it was no surprise to see him there. But Selvåg and I were commenting on how much of a machine he looked. Scholz is very, very tall, and quite good-looking. Standing beside one of the drivers of the Evac team, he looked like a train. I was laughing, commenting on how small our driver looked, though in reality he's quite tall. He came up to us and asked if we had any FR's to trade or sell. He wanted pasta bolognaise and had chicken curry to bargain with. Selvåg happened to have pasta bolognaise and loves chicken curry, so we had a deal set immediately. While Selvåg went off to find the popular FR, I couldn't help but laugh as I reflected on how the scenario looked. It was all such an old-fashioned "I come to your trading post looking for good wares", and I loved that the sergeant had struck a deal with a private, on the same level of worth.

I really felt like this was one of the nicest exercises ever. Then, in the evening, as I was writing in Echo 3, I noticed some friends from command post walking along the road looking in the least bit conspicuous. Sure enough, they started shooting at us. I was immediately out in my position. Close-quarters defence positions are always taken when we establish camp, and I knew they would test our level of readiness. I had a very good position, but my lieutenant came over and told me I was, paradoxically enough, shot in the right foot. How she got that into her head I have no idea. The way I was lying, the only place I could have been shot was the head. But the message line went on and the team was informed. I put my tourniquet on. Despite this, corporal-you-know-who came FLYING in, screaming at me in his usual there-are-officers-present-so-I-have-to-kiss-ass tone to get my tourniquet on. I barked back that "for fuck's sake, I put my tourniquet on ages ago". He ordered me to get to safety, and I sarcastically asked him how I was supposed to do that, seeing as I couldn't walk. "Crawl!" he barked. I laughed, called him a twat, and was off, through a 20-cm deep ditch of water, crawling through the wet and rotten forest floor, and back towards camp. I was moving quickly, but slowed down for a moment as I suddenly realised I was surrounded by the deep, all-consuming and RANK smell of piss. I was ticked off. I had to get through it, so off I went, finally rolling over and ending up in a dug-out square about 20 cm deep, giving me some cover. It didn't take long to surface that I was lying in a spider nest. Lovely. I was lying at the feet of two sergeants, my second-lieutenant and the lieutenant who had "shot" me, and they were laughing and joking while watching the firefight. I was so pissed off. My lieutenant informed me that it was only about a hundred metres to the aid post. I was so pissed off at her ridiculous suggestion that all I could do was laugh. Thankfully, someone ordered someone to help me, and I limped off to the aid post.

I was pissed off that the lieutenant picked me to be shot, as I had one of the best positions with the least chance of that happening. All in all though, it was a very nice exercise, and this post is far too long already, so I think I'll end it off there.

Arrrgh

2011-06-11T00:17:00.000-07:00

This very sweet guy who I took to the guardsmen's ball gave me flowers in a nice little glass vase, along with a note thnking me for taking him with me.

Earlier this morning I spilled a box of 300 artificial sugar units over my countertop. About half an hour later I flipped over that glass vase on the same countertop without intending to, and just guess if it cracked or not.

Goddamn it. This is not my day. If I was in another situation, I'd read all sorts of things into it, but it's not symbolic. It's just goddamn annoying and sad. The fact remains that that's basically the only physical thing I have from him. The note means more of course and I still have that, but it was a nice vase and I was looking forward to using it.

Damn, that's just my luck.

And I'm single (thankfully)

2011-06-05T09:15:00.000-07:00

All right, I know I'm supposed to be all brokenhearted and all, but right now I am SOO glad I don't have a boyfriend. I went bareback riding with Excie on Saturday, and I had a great time. However - towards the end of the ride I started noticing that my butt really hurt. I know, the alternate meanings are all over the place here. Anyway, I got back to the stables, gave Excie a bath and put him back in the pasture. Then I drove home and had a shower. That was the point when I realised I had a serious bit of grazing on my butt. Each buttcheek has a fairly big graze on it, each shaped like a drop so that when seen together, they form a perfect circle. This is some of the most embarrassing stuff I've experienced for a very long time. And so I can happily announce that actually, I'm happy I'm single. It all comes as part of letting go of the raging love of my .... um, not love of my life, but love of my .... year? Month? Everything is waning now and, though boring, it feels incredibly good. The real love of my life however, my darling Nokia N97 Mini, has decided to give up hope. The screen has died after I, in an amazing feat of stupidity, managed to put it in the washing machine along with my bedsheets. I knew it. It was too good to be true. Never in my life have I had so singularly a positive relationship to a phone. I love it with all my heart. And so it is probably no more than a cruel twist of fate that we can no longer be together. I will get a new phone. But the N97 has gone out of production and so, never before or since, have I had or will I have such a nice little thing. Sucks for me.

P.S. It's worth mentioning that my hair is now officially so long that it gets trapped between said buttcheeks when I shower, is in the way when I powerhoop, tickles my hands during morning parade if I'm in gymwear (= have my hair down), gets trapped inbetween for instance my back and the car seat and is a nuisance to free, and I frequently sit down on it without intending to.

That's not embarrassing. It's just outrageous.

A short note

2011-06-01T23:59:00.000-07:00

I was re-reading my earlier post about allowing myself to fall in love, and it's impossible not to look back at that and know, that allowing myself to do that of course gave me a month or so of absolutely lovely feelings and being in love, but it also made the "breakup", when it did happen, so much worse. Allowing myself to just get lost in my feelings made the end really crappy. I needed an afternoon of lying flat on the couch bawling, and then one week of constantly thinking about him every day while trying to figure out a way to contact him inconspicuously, then another week of thinking about him about once every day .... now I'm in the stage that I think about him every day, but my feelings have managed to wane somewhat and I'm not constantly picking up a pen. It's nice to have reached that stage. My very wise sister told me that "about as long as you've been in love with him, it'll take for you to get over him", and it sounds true. I guess I'll be fine in a month or so. He's still the nicest guy I've ever met, and in four years I'll still look back at him with fondness and wonder where in life he is, but I won't be fucked up. The time frame theory does sound like a plausible explanation as to why I'm still somewhat fucked up over my asshole ex-boyfriend. When you've been together for two years....

Anyway, letting yourself go and just enjoying it is part of the key to getting to be happy. But when you resign yourself to something like that, you have to know that the break is going to be a hundred times more painful. I probably won't meet someone as great as Einar again, but then again that's probably just as well, because bawling on the couch for an entire afternoon kind of sucks.

I don't know what I should do to become happy. I know it in my brain, but not my heart! Damn.

Discharge soon

2011-05-31T07:17:00.000-07:00

Today it's thirty days until we decommission. That fact dominates us all. This morning I was putting up my hair in front of the mirror and I thought: "this year has gone by so fast". Then I took a step back and wondered - has it really? Is that actually true?

What I realised was that time hasn't passed quickly this year. In all likelihood it's been the slowest year of my life. It's just that time has passed so slowly that we've gotten used to the feeling of it standing still. Now that the date is finally arriving, we're surprised.

(Goddamn I'm looking forward to civilian life.)

Shoulder again

2011-05-05T11:48:00.000-07:00

My shoulder started hurting again today, right around lunchtime. Ironic, isn't it, since I sat earlier today thinking "I haven't had pains for almost two weeks now, it's amazing, maybe they won't come back".

They're not as bad as usual, right now they're only when I breathe all in and all out, so they're not a constant presence if I just breathe shallow. But still. I can't help but wonder what on earth set it off this time. Was it that I've been playing the violin several hours a day? Was it the weight lifting I did before lunch? I find this difficult to believe, as it's not normal for the pains to hit that early after trauma. But was it perhaps that I've been carrying a small backpack around on my back for three days? It's light, and I've been using the hip belt, but could it do it? I refuse to believe the pain is the result of a combination of factors, as for instance I've found bench presses don't set it off. But FUCK IT. I'm so fucking fed up with this injury. How is it that I've been in the Army for over TEN MONTHS, and still not one doctor can figure out what the hell is wrong with it? How is it that when they can't figure out what's wrong with me, they send me to specialists which I have to pay for, even though I'm not supposed to pay a red penny for medical treatment while I'm in the forces? How can the world GET THAT UNFAIR? I'm NOT supposed to pay for medical treatment this year, goddammit. And already the bills have racked up to almost 3,500 crowns. How can those stupid fucks have the conscience for that when it's their own incompetence that means I have to go there? Don't they have any shame in their lives?

Hmm, let's have a look at the diagnoses I've had over the past year, shall we? First off the civilian emergency room decided I had tendonitis. Fine, pain medication and rest. Then the flight surgeon said I had bursite. Cool, let's inject cortizone mixed with paracetamol and continue rest. Then the disgustingly unco-operative Navy doctor who just insisted I had costochondritis. God knows why. By that time the pains were so disruptive I was using 600 mg Ibuprofen and 2x500 mg Paracetamol, three to four times a day. I didn't tell anyone about that of course, as the doctor wouldn't have liked to know I was self-medicating. But sure, I had costochondritis and nobody was disputing that or they'd have him to pay. I had gotten an appointment at the Norwegian Institute for Sports Medicine, but he didn't see any point in allowing me to go because it was clear as day what my diagnosis was. So I was pulled out of work and made to walk alongside everybody else without a backpack and without a weapon while everybody hated me because I was the weakest link. That's just great, guys. Until my sergeant had enough and threatened to give me a medical discharge. So I lied until it came running out of my ears and said oh of course, I was getting better. I just increased my medication and hated my life for another month until I got out of that hellhole and into the guardsmen's camp in Oslo. So enter guardsmen's initial period, six weeks of hell as an Aspiring Guardsman. I lied through my teeth and didn't tell anyone about my injury. Until one day I'd had enough and went to the base doctor. What did he say? Hmm, pleuritis. What do we do? Thorax X-ray. Came back with no results whatsoever. So, we finally go to NIMI. What do they say? "negative x-ray? Hmm, I say MR arthrography!" So off I went, to do an MR. Turned out they ordered the wrong kind of test for me, so I had to wait another two months for an arthrography. Then I went for the arthrography and the doctor said - guess what - he'd just do a normal MR instead! So the MR came back absolutely spotless negative and he said he didn't see the need for an arthrography. So where does that leave me? It leaves me on the wrong side of two months with results I could already have had. When I came back to NIMI with the results he said he wanted the arthrography nonetheless and didn't understand why the doctor couldn't just have given it to me. Goddamn.
So where do we stand? Possible labrum injury? A torn ligament? Nobody quite knows. And no amount of rest will fix the problem. The only official diagnosis I have is scapular dyskinesis. Isn't that great? It means I have no control of my shoulder blades. Much good that does me. Most likely I'm stuck with this goddamn injury for life, and I guess I can say goodbye to any kind of damages from the state because whose fault is it? Just some bloodthirsty sergeant one July morning who decided collective punishment was in order.

Meanwhile, I can't do pushups, pullups, play the violin, go skiing, lift heavy things or carry a backpack for hiking in the mountains, without getting searing pains in my shoulder with every single breath I take.

Fuck that.

How come I've NEVER IN MY LIFE had problems with that shoulder, yet this happens the moment I'm subjected to that kind of treatment in the Army? Physical group punishment, I tell you. Why is it that ten months later, I have a shoulder injury because some lazy idiots couldn't manage the very simple task of shaving in the morning? Why is it that that piece of shit goddamn sergeant can't understand the fuck that collective punishment is ILLEGAL IN THIS COUNTRY?

Fuck you, leader of team Alpha, 3rd platoon. FUCK YOU.

9-liner

2011-05-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

P.S. - the front of the 9-liner says this - translated into English:

0 DTG and Location A 151818 B Inside a CS gas tablet
1 (patient number) 5ME3001 No-play (my call sign and "not an exercise")
2 Blood Type 0+
3 (nationality) Woodland
4 - type of incident A (high-energy trauma) D (IED/Blast)
5 type of injury A (head) B (neck/spine) C (Thorax) F (other) Is sad.
6 Overall Status A (critical) D (specify) Should be prescribed Prozac
7 Airways A (clear)
8 Breathing A (normal) C Rate 35 (which is NOT normal but rather indicative of rapidly deteriorating pneumothorax)
9 Circulation B (femoral) D (blood pressure) 73 E (pulse rate) 146
10 GCS 12
11 Remarks / Treatment Hi this is Echo 3. Do you want us to transport this patient to the Aid Post or should we dump him in the forest? I am on radio alert at eleven thirty at night and am BORED!!!
12 Timeline A (injury) 151440 B (on scene) 151855 (that's about four hours later) C (delivery) 160316 (that's eight hours later again)
13 (Type of Medevac) HELIX B (callsign) LOL
15 Remarks D (other remarks) I think it's awesome with 2,5 hrs radio shift. (Æ SYNS D E JÆVLI FETT)

.....

I had a fun few hours, it seems.

Human Factors in Accident Management (and the Role of the Fish)

2011-05-04T11:18:00.001-07:00

A while ago, I was stuck on sambandsvakt - listening to the ambulance's radio in case any patients should need picking up. I sat there for two and a half hours straight - whereas the normal shift is one - and worse yet, the shift started at about 2300 hours. So while I was sitting there, trying extremely hard not to fall asleep, with an iPod with an empty battery, I followed my lieutenant's previous advice, and picked up a pen. The post's heading is what it says on the top of the sheet, and it's written on the back of a 9-liner (medical tasking information) form I'd written nonsense on.

Some it was written in very bad handwriting, and in some places I can see the pen having veered off its track, where I had a "microsleep" while writing.

It reads:

15/3/11 23:18
I suppose we can say we speak from experience when we say that a cat, in and of itself, once given life as a cat, is not likely to turn into anything else than a cat - particularly not a dog. The question of whether or not it may consider turning into a dog, for instance, is an interesting and wholly askable one but, once we have established the supposable truth that a cat (as a sentient being) is indeed a cat, it might not be the most relevant one. If, for a moment, we presume, perhaps, that the cat is NOT a sentient being, but rather an insentinent part of a whole (like, and comparable to, mayhap, mitochondria) we may have to reconsider our earlier question. Is a cat sentient or not? If it were one of the two, might it be wishing, and / or striving for, an existence as the other alternative? Is a cat a mitochondrion? Or is it not? And are we speaking from experience in our firs supposition, or merely from wishful thinking making a supposition into an entirely believable presumption? If a presumption is nothing more than a presumption, we clearly have no way of establishing anything to the contrary.

So we have established (or have we not?) that it may or may not be an unfortunate and entirely coincidental presumption to suppose a cat is a cat. If we supposed, for a moment (or perhaps, eight!) that the cat was indeed not a cat, but a flake of snow, the world might be irreparably altered for a day or two before normality would immediately be restored. This is a fact. But like all facts in life (and in science, for that sake, where mitochondria play a remarkably important role) there is one thing that remains unquestionably questionable. It is the role of the fish in forest-making. Forests have been dependent on fish for centuries if not millennia. A supply of good blue fish is, was and remains one of the fundaments of this top secret industry. Were it not for the fish, the dolphins would not be in any position to co-operate whatsoever, and the entire line of work may have to be halted until the successful hire of mercenaries made partly of uranium and partly of strontium. The strontium again is of high importance, but that story is extremely long and boring and would be so dangerous to tell that the uranium-strontium mercenaries may arrive before I was finished telling it. In any case, none of this forestry stuff is very important anhow and it all pales into insignificance in comparison to Nietzsche's mitochondria.

Please don't eat the moon. It is highly toxic. INNIT!!

----

(written about an hour later)
So back to the fish. If we suppose that nobody was lying where we left off in the last chapter, then somebody somewhere thinks fish are terribly important for something or summat. But what if they were lying? What if nobody gives a damn about the fish and they're all really dumb? I suppose you'll have to ask the Knights of Ni. At one point they obviously found herrings to be of significant importance. Are herrings the question to the Answer of Live, the Universe and Everything? If the answer weren't 42, it might be a lot easier to find the question. But it all dates back to summink or summat in a flat in Islington or somewhere. That's where some guy made some ring and a video and perhaps that needen't be so important, but it is. Just ask the forests. If they weren't so fond of herrings, the world might be a very different place. Same applies to cats, for that sake. Or snowflakes, as they might be known from now on. So we've established that this writearound is all about the role of accidents in fish management. Or something along those lines. Well, what if the importance is really all about the plastic bags surrounding the fish? And why do the fish refuse to talk? They remain as stubbornly silent as a certain war hero I know about, and whereas his acts were brave and heroic, this just lags human (or fish-)kind. This is very unkind of them. Perhaps we can get the plastic bags to talk. And if we can't get them to talk, well....

Now I'm going to check if I can wake up any of my mates and perhaps get a little bit of kip myself. If I get stuck on 3hrs radio shift tomorrow (today, for it is well past midnight) too, there'll be hell to pay. Esp. with a dead iPod.

16/3/11 P.S. I had a thought on my earlier thesis about experience. Now I can't remember it though, so I can't write it down.

Stairs

2011-05-04T11:01:00.000-07:00

I remembered something while queuing in the mess hall today. I remembered that when I started kindergarten, I was terribly annoyed with some of the kids because they just couldn't walk stairs. They'd bring their left foot down a step, bring their right foot down to join it, left foot down, right foot joins, left foot down and so on - while I went left foot down one step, right down the next, left down the next. And so on.

I never mused much about my annoyance for these kids. But what came to me in a flash while I was there was that I was simply further along the line of learning than they were. I'd learned to take stairs already, by looking at how the grownups did it. While the other kids were still babies, tottering down the steps in the way they deemed the safest. Not daring to take the next step in the fastest and most efficient way. But I looked at them and couldn't understand why they were doing things in that stupid, slow manner.

Now look at us all - does anybody take the stairs like that or have they all proceeded to follow what was, at that time, MY method?

Then again, many of those dumb little kids proceeded to become my bullies in the next couple of years and never let up. I suppose precociousness isn't always the way to succeed socially!

Names

2011-05-04T10:56:00.000-07:00

I've gone around for several years telling myself "oh, that person looks like this person who I used to know and ..." and when telling this to someone else, being told that they didn't look like them at all and why was I saying that?
I've done this many times, and especially after joining the Army I've had that moment a lot. But it came to me today, as I was sitting across the table from a person, that I was telling myself he reminded me of a person to whom he bore absolutely no physical resemblance.

That was the point I realised that I give people in my life roles. The role that Haugseth has is the role that Tom Hvistendahl used to have in my old class. And whereas they bear no resemblance to each other, they have the same personality - at least to a certain extent. Røsand reminds me of Peter. That's a little because of the height, but also because of the mildness of his character. The girls are a different story because there's so few of them and so I attribute several character traits to one person. But I find it intersting. Is it normal to put people in roles? Or is it just because I've moved around so much and perhaps need to create some stability in my circle by telling myself I still have the same people around me?
Now whereas sometime in my first year of high school I was in love with the dashing Tom Hvistendahl, I absolutely do not feel the same for Haugseth... I suppose that says something. Not everyone is a carbon copy substitute : )

Oiiii

2011-05-01T08:51:00.000-07:00

The impossibly cute, impossibly nice medic from FSAN replied in the end. With a strong yes. And there I am, head over heels.

So I'm trying very hard not to do the "oh dear, I'm in love, that really sucks" routine which I usually do, and instead just enjoy it to the full. It's not easy though, is it? When in love I get so obsessive and want to talk to him all the time and end up feeling like I've made a fool of myself whatever I do.

But for the first time in so long (maybe in my entire life?) I feel that the feeling is mutual. He really likes me. Maybe I'm just kidding myself, but he's sending some pretty strong signals. What a nice guy. I know anything at all I start with this guy will have an expiration date, but ....

Now let's go ahead and just try to enjoy it. Note to self.

P.S. relationships take take a lot of money. Of course that I'm thinking about that is horribly sad - perhaps it's testament to the fact that I'm too cynical for my own good. Once you enter a relationship it kind of eats away at your salary and suddenly you're broker than you ever were. I remember it well from the last time I was in love, which is probably .... two years ago. Planning, and so many train tickets suddenly. I don't mind any of the other hitches. Good things have to come with hitches, don't they?

Shaving Cream

2011-04-24T01:26:00.000-07:00

I'll tell you how much shaving cream is in a First Price shaving cream bottle.

An entire sinkful.
A sinkful of hard yet soft luscious cream which yields to the touch and is so much FUN!

Seriously though, it's interesting how when the price of a product goes down, the way you value it goes down, too. This one cost me 0,- (a friend was going to throw it away) and I stuck this waste-of-resources on the mental justification shelf of needing to clear out my cupboards before moving out. It was really bad shaving cream, anyway. But fun to play with!

What am I doing and why?

2011-04-15T10:52:00.001-07:00

I'm falling in love a lot these days. Maybe it has something to do with the higher occurrence of cute guys as I've spent time in other military camps. Or maybe I'm tired of being single. I've been single for half a year, after all. It's not easy to keep a boyfriend in the army. It's also not easy to catch one when you're going abroad. It makes me a "no-no" as far as guys are concerned. By going to Scotland I've condemned myself to six-to-nine months of lonely misery, because guys don't think I'm anything to pin their hopes on. I mean, that's smart and all, but why do they always have to think a year into the future? =( I think it means that the guys I like in general are too smart. Or smart enough. Who knows. I'm sick of it, anyway.

It sucks not being able to find a date for the Guardsmen's ball anyway. It pisses me off having one, and then two, guys bail on me. I can understand Jake's stay in Afghan being postponed, but the second I attribute purely to douchebaggery. Then again, if you put your neck on the line and ask a complete stranger something like that, I guess you have to get your head chopped off from time to time. And if you don't put yourself out there, you'll never learn either.

So I'm falling in love a lot. And it feels very strong. But then somehow I find it easy to back off when I realise the guy is out of reach. And I can let my feelings subside and concentrate on something else. I don't understand this newfound wisdom of feelings. How does that happen? I quite quickly got over Stephan. Then Sondre from the Navy (who of course I still covet but understand I can't have). But this new, impossibly cute, impossibly nice medic from FSAN I can't get over. It sucks. I mean, he was so NICE when we met. And I probably ruined it all by being too bubbly and talkative or something like I always do, but God was he sweet. Now let's hope he accepts my invitation (although he hasn't responded and it's been three days). If he doesn't then what the heck. I'll have to try and find someone else to fall in love with.

Handicaps and exercises

2011-04-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

As previously mentioned I was at the Ridderweek last week. We came home on Sunday, and on Monday we went off on a medical exercise with Telemark Batallion, whose medics are leaving with PRT 17 in May. It's valuable work setting up the exercises for them. This time round we have a group of amputees with us. The organisation they work for is called Amputees in Action, and they have about 80 members. They travel round, training everything from special forces to firemen and paramedics, and make the training more realistic.

At the Ridderweek I met a lot of "galgenhumor" (translate it to hangman's humour if you will). People have a lot of insight and positivity about their situation. Thus I was kind of blasé about meeting a guy missing one leg and using that for a living, but I note some people had a bit of a moral problem with it. "Using their injury for money" and so forth, "isn't it a bit cruel?". But I realise that in some way it is a way to come to terms with what you are and what you've become. Using something like that for something good (not an easy task, I tell you) can be a way of facing it and making it less of a curse.

It struck me that there is a parallel here, no matter how silly it'll sound when I'm finished writing it. Gay people through the latest years have had a tendency to flaunt their sexuality and become horrifyingly camp. I love my gay friends and the things they stand for, but when they start coming to school dressed in all pink, it starts to annoy me a little. They really don't need to shout it out that loud. What they've done though, is take the thing that people don't want to see, and make it into such a big part of who they are that people HAVE to face it. And in that way I guess it's easier for them to accept themselves too. When it comes to amputees, I guess that using your curse (don't misunderstand me, I'm not calling homosexuality a curse here) for your own good can be therapeutical. The guy we had with us today had been doing this for a living for twenty years. Some people do it for a much shorter period of time. I don't know what my standpoint on it all really is, but I'm fascinated.

That said, I had a great time with the case today. We did the case four times over, one for each SISU team, and we're doing it once again tomorrow for the fifth, and that gets really tedious. But this one was fun. The SISU team comes to visit a local Afghan hospital, and the doctor takes them inside, offers them tea, makes them at ease and complains about his lack of gear. Then when they're all good and cozy, the guides fire off a flash-bang outside, dump the amputee, screaming and spurting fake blood everywhere, out, and we start firing. We used 90 blanks (three full magazines) per team, so that's a lot of firing. Really great fun, especially since the guys we're up against are so professional! They react immediately and had this been a real situation, I'd be dead by now. Great stuff. Now I've got to go clean my weapon, which is not going to be as fun....

P.S. They took down a B412 for the casualty today. I filmed it. Awesome!!

Water

2011-04-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

So much of my service has involved eating crappy food and drinking crappy water. The mess halls i can do little about. But the water bottles annoy me. Why is it that the army has to create water bottles of such awful material that, even when we get these bottles used, the water continues to taste rotten plastic for the duration of the year? Why can't they spend a LITTLE more money on just that? It's pretty easy to get dehydrated when all you've got to drink is plastic water. Through training school i managed to worm out of using it and drank from a civilian bottle. Then came my guardsman's period and nobody could get out of that one. So here i sit, filling my bottle with water, always at each point washing it out twice and rinsing the cap, just out of habit, but knowing in my heart that in reality it is no use. The water will forever be awful. Hmm. I wonder how it'll be when i'm rid of this stuff and can drink whatever i like.

Roadkill

2011-04-11T07:36:00.000-07:00

I had my first roadkill this sunday. No i didn't eat roadkill for dinner, but i did kill a bird. I was driving a winding, difficult mountain road with steep cliffs on one side, and fro that cliff face suddenly a black bird roughly the size of a thrush came sailing and hit the pole between the windshield and the driver's side window with a loud noise. I was round a bend before i could really comprehend what had happened, and i couldn't see the bird, but i new what i had done and i felt so BAD. The adrenaline was hammering through me for a while afterward (i was making 90 when it happened and at that speed you're on your toes) and i just felt really really awful. It's the first time i've done something like that and i've never even experienced it with somebody else driving. I keep wondering if, if i'd been driving 10 km slower, which was what the speed limit was, i wouldn't have hit it. Obviously i would have been in a different place when that bird came down, but i couldn't have done any less damage than i did if i hit it at 80 rather than 90. At least i think... Afterward i found a large shell gone off the varnish where i'm guessing the beak hit. In any case, i feel bad. And i wish i hadn't been in that place at that time. But i guess everyone probably has to experience that at some time in their lives. I just hope it'll be a long time until it happens to me again.

Ridderuka

2011-04-08T05:55:00.000-07:00

I'm at the Ridderrennet this week with my unit, taking part in the arrangements for the week. I'm chaffeuring hundreds of handicapped people every day, and it really gievs insight into different people's lives.
Blind people fascinate me. It's amazing how they sometimes just notice that you're there. Watching a blind person walk through a hall, suddenly turning right or left without any indication save perhaps for a counting of steps, just knowing where they are. Using their stick to count each step of the stairs as they go down. It's quite interesting. Being here makes me feel bad about being normal. So many of these people have never seen daylight. So many of them have never been able to run. Worse yet, many of them have, and have lost their abilities over the course of their lives. I talked to a blind boy today, however, and he was overwhelmingly positive about his situation. He was born sighted, but, as he phrased it, "I was lucky enough to become blind". I doubt all the positive things he said were the whole truth, but he was rambling about all the things he gets for free, and all the advantages he gets. It was nice to see someone in a situation like that who wasn't sad at all!

The people in sit-skis are bloody great. They cruise down the slopes seemingly with no effort. I came down the slope once and saw two people in sit-skis; one had fallen. I kind of panicked, thinking there were two lame people and one had fallen and there was nobody to help them. Turns out the person who had fallen was the guide, who had absolutely no skills at sit-skiing. He got so fed-up with trying to get up that he at one point went "no, seriously, I'm going to get out of this thing now". The irony of it rammed home the message to me that not all people can just do that, they have to face the struggle and do it the hard way. He got up in the end, but later on he was slipping and sliding, falling over every other yard while the girl he was supposed to guide was sailing down effortlessly. Great stuff.

To me, losing the ability to talk, see, hear or walk is a terrifying prospect. It would ruin so many aspects of my life and I don't see how I could get past it. I think most people probably feel this fear as well, and in that way being here is a graet way of meeting your fear, seeing how the unfortunate ones cope with it.

Dreaming

2011-03-29T22:21:00.000-07:00

I had a nightmare last night. First off, I went home on "generell nattperm" and went to Carina's to ride her wonderful horse. I asked if I could borrow her horse home with me and she said yes. In the evening it was rainy and stormy and there was lots of thunder with gunshots everywhere. The horse got out of the pasture and was galloping around alll black and wet. I forgot about it. Then in the morning I was sorting my pearl necklaces, putting them all into one box and trying to figure out where to hide them in case of a burglary. And all the people in the hospital had to pull their blankets tightly around them because it was FREEZING cold. And then I woke up and it was half past five and I was too late for the train back to camp. But then I ralised it was only half past four. Phew. But I had a horse in the garden and the drive to deliver him to his owner was an hour. I panicked and tried to call IB KP5 but he didn't pick up. Then I called Carina for help, and she wrote me a note explaining that she was giving me the horse because she wasn't getting enjoyment out of him any more. I was crying because I couldn't accept the horse but if I didn't accept him she would give him to another stable hand who wasn't very good with horses. The situation seemed to be that I couldn't tell my mother, but if I could keep the horse a secret from her it would be OK. Then I realised it was half past five again and panicked even more. and it was freezing cold again because my platoonmate Johannessen had prevented me from closing the window last night before I went to sleep and it was cold outside. Carina had put the horse in a boarding stable way outside of town and I didn't have a car any more. I was crying loads. Then I woke up because Gundersen got out of bed at 5:49 and realised I was in camp and in time. Thank God!

"Sleeping in"

2011-03-27T01:42:00.000-07:00

First off, let me protest the use of the phrase "sleeping in". What the hell is it supposed to mean? I mean, you always sleep in something, and it's usually a bed. So what difference does the time make to it?

So. I've always been a morning person. Ever since I was little and would wake my parents far too early by coming in their bed to cuddle, and couldn't read the time on my watch but they made stickers of "angry face" and "happy face" in red and green to make me realise what was late enough; until I lived in England and had to get up at 6:am to catch my train to school. I've never made much difference in the weekends. I don't see the point. My mother has taught me well the ways of sleep patterns and rhythms, and the importance or not disturbing it (unless you want a crappy time getting up).

These days I also get up at six. The reveille doesn't go until 6:15, but if I get up those ten-to fifteen minutes earlier I can be at the mess hall before the rest of the 1400-man camp whilst also getting time to do my weight exercises. So I get up early voluntarily.

Now, I have gotten several comments from friends on that I never stay in camp during the weekend. One of the reasons for this is that my friends (or platoonmates, if you will) sleep agonisingly late in the weekends. There is no reveille, so they will happily sleep until ten, eleven or even noon. I can't do it. I just can't. And I don't see the point of losing half your day by getting up at noon. So much could be done in those hours wasted!

Most people go to bed late on Friday, get up late on Saturday and on Sunday. Then they have a shitty time getting up on Monday, but they don't understand why. They just think that's what happens when you have to get up early, right? That's in the young, partying generation. At the very least, a middle-aged couple might get up early on a Saturday and mow the lawn, but the Sunday is holy (in more than one way) and you can't do anything in the neighbourhood because people are sleeping.

Seriously. What is the POINT in getting up late on a Sunday? You're only creating hell for yourself the next day. Only the fiercely christian people who can't lift a finger for work on a Sunday have an excuse, but the truly christian will go to mass on a Sunday, so that excuse is no longer valid.

I don't understand these people. I get up late on Saturday (that means eight or nine) if I need the sleep, and early on Sunday. That way, waking up in camp at 6:AM sharp on Monday isn't hard at all.

Anything else seems to me ... nothing but stupidity. That and quite a bit of laziness.

...

2011-03-27T01:35:00.001-07:00

Yesterday's blunder gave me a revelation. It made me realise that you can make porridge out of nearly any kind of cereal, and it'll usually turn out good.
Hmmm =)

Porridge?

2011-03-27T01:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's blunder gave me a revelation. It made me realise that you can make porridge out of nearly any kind of cereal, and it'll usually turn out good.
That says something about making the best of many things in this world....
Hmmm =)

Breakfast mix recipe

2011-03-25T22:41:00.000-07:00

Here's a lovely breakfast mix that's become my favourite after I initially encountered it in a breakfast Field Ration. It's absolutely lovely.
Rolled oats, linseeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, raspberries (preferably freeze-dried but you can take frozen ones and thaw them for each portion) and a little bit of sugar.

Great stuff!

......

So, you have a ready-made bowl of this breakfast mix in front of you on the table, and beside that, a nice big cup with a teabag in it. Beside your bowl, there's a carton of milk, and behind you the kettle is boiling hot water. You get up, take the kettle of hot water, and WHERE EXACTLY do you think you meticulously pour the boiling water?!?!

In all honesty, it didn't turn out that bad. The original directions on the FR package do call for water, and you can use boiling or cold water as you wish, but I'd still have liked to have it ... cold, with milk, as I usually have my cereal. What I essentially made was a bowl of breakfast porridge with raspberries. Could have been worse.

Even though I'm getting fucking fed up with my head being turned off now while I'm in the Army. Can't it start working again soon?

Relationships

2011-03-25T04:33:00.000-07:00

I long to be in a relationship again. To have those things and intimacies you can share with a boyfriend. But then I've realised that every time the prospect arises for me, I'm scared. There are so many things you have to put up with when you're with someone, so many things and bad habits and nuisances you just have to bite and accept. so in some way. And amazingly, I've found that being in a relationship has for the most part been detrimental to my self-confidence and feeling of self-worth rather than the opposite. Some things are just so demeaning, and I don't want to feel disgusted remembering things. So in many ways, you can say that to me being in a relationship just isn't worth it. And I'm too scared to consider embarking on something new when I might come out of it battered and lonely. Is this when the classic quote of "nothing played, nothing gained" comes in?

Then I realised most of the things that have bothered me might be due to having spent most of my love life chasing the boyfriends I was with. Making calls that went unappreciated. Sending messages that went unanswered. Making plans that someone was annoyed with. Have I just not found the right personality type? Or might there be hope if I just find a guy who is a little less insecure with me, who doesn't feel I'll stay no matter how badly he treats me? I suppose finding the right man to love isn't something that comes very easily, and might have to come with time as I settle into life with people I really feel I have something in common with. I want a man who of course isn't all clingy and extremely "mine", but is a little into me. If you know what I mean. Perhaps these things don't come without considerable sacrifice . But let's do hope they will come eventually!
P.S: I finally manned myself up and asked a cute stranger to the ball. He said yes. This is why all these feelings are coming up and demanding to be pondered.

Poison

2011-03-18T22:57:00.000-07:00

I'm so tired of people who act like pigs.

I know this is hard to get your head around, but I grew up in a place where people acted like humans. Took care of each other, acted nicely, tidied up their mess and didn't intentionally make work hellish for others.

So how is it that nobody I work with apparently grew up in the same type of home? How is it that nobody I'm around has the simple decency to show consideration for each other? Is it really that difficult to behave in a proper way?

Does nobody I work with fucking understand that everything they do has consequences for others? The real question in that one is - do they really not understand? Or do they understand and not give a fuck? Or do they understand, and do it just for the hell of it? I'm not sure I know which one is worst. I certainly don't want to be working with morons. But having them be somewhat intelligent and still be bastards might be even worse. This is supposed to be the cream of Norwegian youth. Why is it that this "cream" is so closely semblant to mud?

Is my life, my workload, intentions, opinions and feelings not worth as much as my other coworkers? Why is it that everybody else seems to behave properly around each other, all except for me? Am I not the same net worth?

Surely not everybody acts like pigs around each other and they all shut up. Nobody just swallows down that amount of bullshit without choking.

"Just do your job, Klaveness". What the fuck IS MY JOB? Is it to swallow down crap, put my head down and take it? Is it my job to tidy up every fucking body's crap after they've slung it in after my ass? FUCK YOU.

And what I said last yesterday must be the first fucking thing I've EVER said in your presence that ANY of you has EVER taken seriously. I'm not a fucking psycopath. And I'm not a raging bitch. I just don't understand why people can't behave like humans around others.

Memories from ski-vm

2011-03-07T09:41:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday we were told by one of our lieutenants to cancel all plans for the weekend, as we'd be supporting the Skiing World Championships for four days. Some of us were psyched, others were pretty pissed. I was one of those, because I had plans for that weekend.
Anyway, here are some memories jumbled down before I forget them all.

On Thursday, we were shipped up to Holmenkollen at 8 am. We chilled around until noon, when we were put in the "skåla", the grandstands at the bottom. Our job was to check tickets for the people going into zone "D", checking that nobody with cheaper tickets got into the nice seats. We had a beautiful view, but the jump was partially obscured by recurring fog for the entire day. Nevertheless, the mood was great among the spectators. Lots of alcohol, which I for the most part couldn't be bothered to do much about, except for a rowdy bunch of 50-year-olds drinking a dark murky something in shotglasses out of a coca-cola bottle. Apart from those, the main irritation of the day was the 55,000 people annoyed that I was "checking their tickets again and asking if I remembered them. In the noise, the chaos and the incredible amout of traffic through the gates, it's difficult to remember that many faces! Many were trying to sneak through with cheap tickets too, which made the job all that much more difficult. Eventually it calmed down, though, and the fog was getting more infrequent. Wind meant the fog would disappear and then suddenly be back again. So we got to see jumpers and then nothing. The screen on the other side of the grandstands was completely obscured by the fog, so we couldn't see what scores were going out. But at the end the fog completely cleared and we got to see the last five-six jumpers coming down. It was awesome! After we were finished and were heading down to the bus, we saw Schlierenzauer coming down the ski lift, which was really great.
We got stuck in traffic once on the bus, and ended up going down to Huseby on foot. We ran most of the way! It was fun, but led to the most agonizing muscle pains the next day.

Friday we were sent up to Frognerseteren. All that was going on there this day was athletes training for the races tomorrow, which meant that none of the spectators up there had any respect for the track. They were crossing it constantly and walking all over it, ruining it. Every now and then an athlete would come speeding down the track, and an accident might have put him out of the rest of the competitions. So it was our job to keep the civilians off the track, which was a boring and ungrateful job. The only fun times were when some famous athlete came past! I saw many of the guys set for the 50-km race on Sunday, but also people like Oddvar Brå and Vegard Ullvang. Things lightened up when the 4x10 km men's relay started, and we watched it on the big screen. Everybody went to watch the screen, which meant that traffic slowed to zero across the tracks. We watched as Eldar Rønning closed the 22-second gap and how Petter Northug stayed an agonising 5th place before speeding past the Swede in the last couple of metres before stepping over the line sideways. It was fantastic to watch live! I realised that the excitement I felt at that point is what everybody feels any time they watch the finish to an important race, and suddenly I was afforded a little insight into why everyone cares so much about Ski-VM!
When we were exiting past the ski lift this time, we saw Anders Jacobsen.

On Saturday we got up at 5:30 and were shipped up to Frognerseteren agonisingly early. The race on Saturday was the 30 km women's race. I quickly learned that the post I was standing in was the Feed Zone, where team members would give drinks as the skiers came past. People were behaving nicely this day, and finally seemed to understand that the fences were there for a reason. After a while the "feeders" started showing up, and it was fun talking to them. I was standing right by the feeders for the American team, and learned a lot of interesting stuff from them. I loved the communication between the feeders and the skiers, especially the Americans, who had an intricate system worked out.
After the race we went down to the city centre, where we were supposed to be Crowd Control at the medal ceremony. However, we got stuck in the pedestrian traffic heading down to the city - turnout that day was around 100,000 - and by the time we got down the show had all but started and the city centre was packed. We got the ungrateful job of throwing people out of the garden in which they had installed themselves. People were very angry and it took quite a lot of power to get some of them out of there. Eventually we mostly gave up, and concentrated on preventing more people from getting inside rather than throwing out the people already there. There were many small children there, and I felt so sorry for them that I allowed them to go in and stand on a ledge from which they could see a little of the show. Two women standing there, in an unexpected show of kindness, took two small girls on their shoulders, giving them a great view!

On Sunday we were put in the same posts at Frognerseteren. I was happy to see the American coach again, and this time he had with him three of the girls who participated in the 30 km race on Saturday, Liz Stephen, Kikkan Randall and Holly Brooks. They were really really nice, and I loved that they were turning up for the guys.
The race in itself was really exciting. In the very first round past the Feed Zone, Alex Harvey was tripped and went flat on his face right in front of me. I very nearly got hit in the face by one of his ski poles. The feeders commented among each other on how ridiculously narrow the feed zone was. The Canadians exchanged worried glances and spoke gratefully to the representatives from another nation, who had loaned them a pole. I gather Harvey broke a pole in his fall. Three other poles were broken in that very first round through the Feed Zone, but thankfully in the next five rounds the pack was somewhat more separated and no accidents happened.
The extreme climb up to Frognerseteren really separated the experienced from the inexperienced. All in all sixteen out of the eighty-five starting were disqualified due to being lapped. I saw a team of three functionaries go out in a line to take out the Brazilian, who argued with them before dejectedly walking past us with his skis in his hand. We all gave him a loud cheer.
I talked to the British feeder, who was even more inexperienced than the Danish feeders yesterday - who had really messed it up badly. Her name was Rosamund Musgrave, and like the American girls there, she had run the 30k on Saturday. However, one of the two starters from her country was her brother, and it was his 21st birthday that day. She told the spectators behind her, and when he came past they all cheered and yelled "happy birthday!". She was not very experienced, and had not labelled her bottles well. As a consequence she kept losing her bottles - when the athletes threw them away after drinking, it was difficult for her to retain them; whereas many other nations had labelled their bottles with flags or abbreviations.
The Brits didn't do very well, and one of them ended up disqualified, as did both the Australians, who didn't separate, but in all five rounds came past together. Rosamund's brother ended up 59th, and she said his goal that day had been to finish, so he must have been satisfied.
American Noah Hoffman, who had been doing quite well at one point and had been lying second, slid down and ended up 30th. The American girls were happy, though. I was happy to know that Northug had pulled through for us - it wasn't difficult to guess, when the finish line was coming up and I could hear the ROAR of the crowd from Holmenkollen. But it was nice to know it was double Norwegian in the end. Thankfully, we didn't have to work Crowd Control after the race, and were down in camp at around six. This was DEFINITELY the best weekend leave I never had!

So those were some jumbled memories, not meant to be read by anyone, but I didn't want to forget it all!

Where does the line go?

2011-02-27T02:49:00.000-08:00

Recently (read: two years ago) I rediscovered embroidery and spent a few months having great fun with random things and silk thread. One of those random things was a pair of trousers whose leg I embroidered all the way up to the knee. I chose that specific pair of trousers because I didn't much care for them (the fit wasn't ideal), so that if the embroidery turned out really bad it wouldn't be that much of a big deal. However, the embroidery was very nice indeed and I got a whole lot of compliments, meaning that the pair quickly climbed higher on the list of esteemed dailywear.
So the situation I had was a pair of very nicely embroidered, eye-catching trousers that didn't actually fit me very well. Obviously since I liked them and wanted to wear them a lot, it would have been much nicer if they were a better fit! In any case, the situation took a new twist when I was in the stables in extremely ill-chosen ridingwear, took a huge step to get up to the stirrups (the horse stands 16.3HH) and an ENORMOUS tear opened in the butt region of the trousers. So in normal cases I wouldn't be too fussed, but I happened to like that pair of pants and of course now I wasn't too happy. I've tried to sew them up, but of course the result can't be too pretty or hardy.

So we have a little paradox here. I would like to perhaps embroider something nice on my car seats - ideally I would have liked to re-upholster them in leather, but the car is far too old to deserve this. So, embroidery, right? To avoid making the car all hippie-style with embroidered flowers and circles I would have just liked to perhaps embroider white seams along the seats or something like that. The question is, are the seats ugly enough and the car old enough for me not to care if the embroidery turns out bad, and, at worst, I've damaged the seats when I try to take the embroidery out again? OR - if the embroidery is good, how heartbroken will I actually be when, in the foreseeable future, my car will give up and have to be scrapped?

So you have the option of, when taking risky steps, using something which is reasonably disliked enough not to care if it turns out bad. But if, at that point, it turns out good, of course you should have chosen something nicer as a base.

So what to choose? Where does the line go? How much do you risk for a nice result that you'll be happy with?

Perhaps, the bottom line is "you don't get anything if you don't risk anything". Or?

Fiskeslukens ulykke

2011-02-14T03:04:00.001-08:00

Jeg ble født som fiskesluk. En flott sølvgrønn firogtyvegrams Stingsilda med røde øyne. Med sylhvass trebladet krok i halen.
Jeg har vært dypere i havet enn mange fisk, og sett mer enn de fleste. Helt nede på havets bunn har jeg vært, og sett ting de færreste mennesker kan dikte opp. Tussmørket der nede er altomsluttende og kaldt, og av og til kommer det en stor skygge farende mot meg. Men så er det bare en helt vanlig makrell som biter meg i halen. Og så kommer jeg opp i lufta til de hoiende menneskene, en liten stund før jeg får hoppe nedi igjen.

Men det var før. Nå ligger jeg her på havets bunn. Den sinkgalvaniserte kroken min begynte for lenge siden å ruste, og ringen som holdt kroken til halen min ble svakere og svakere. En gang kom det en kjempefisk og hogg tak i meg. Du skulle sett for et napp den ga! Den istykkerrustede stålringen knirket, knaket og ga uvegelig opp ånden. Fritt og lett fløy jeg opp til overflaten. Da menneskene oppdaget at jeg hverken hadde fisk eller krok, fant jeg igjen veien ned til havets bunn. Men snøret mitt var klippet over, og jeg kunne ikke komme opp igjen. Jeg syntes jeg hadde vært en ganske bra fisk i livet mitt, men det hjalp vel ikke. Jeg sank til bunns, og her ligger jeg. Strøm tar av og til forsiktig tak i meg og trekker meg langsomt noen centimeter hit eller dit. Av og til rekker noen av solens stråler ned til meg, og jeg blinker så godt jeg kan i det svake lyset. Fiskeskjellene mine er begynt å forsvinne. Jeg kommer nok ikke opp herfra med det første, så jeg slår meg til ro med omgivelsene mens jeg venter. Engang snart er jeg vel helt oppløst, og da går jeg inn i kretsløpet igjen.
Kanskje blir jeg spiker i mitt neste liv?

On Exercise

2011-02-06T00:14:00.000-08:00

My platoon has transferred from crappy 1960's button-up-tents with a Primus Optimus stove as a heat source, to a heavier, larger and indisputably better so-called section tent. The heat source in this octagonal tent is a large and wonderful tent heater which, because it is a hungry beast which will devour kerosene, F-34, diesel or firewood, we colloquially call a "multifuel". It is a fantastic piece of innovation, able to make the tent so hot that we're sweating in our underwear, whereas with the Primus we would be shaking in our sleeping bags, but the dear Multifuel has given me a revelation. I'm not sure whether the revelation is about myself, about the military, or of my own perception of hell. But here it is.

If I were to go to hell for my sins, the punishment would be in the form of being fyringsvakt (one-hour shifts of guarding the heater while the others sleep) at the worst time of the night - the "dogs' hours" between two and four - and, slowly but surely, realising that the clock has stopped ticking. I will sit there, the warm orange, flickering glow from the multifuel dancing calmly around the tent walls, the hypnotising whirring of the multifuel consuming me, falling slowly but surely asleep, with no means of activating myself and my mind. I will know that I MUSTN'T fall asleep, because by doing that I will put the lives of eleven men in danger, and (a likelier possibility, it seems,) my section leader will have my guts for garters, but I have no way of stopping it, and so I will sit there, struggling in agony, while the clock sits prettily and unmovably at 03:36.

I think I'm going to try and behave nicely from now on. Hell isn't a very attractive option.

Rejection

2011-01-09T11:43:00.000-08:00

How are you supposed to get through rejection?
It's just a little question I'm posting out there. I just got my rejection letter from the University of Cambridge, and I got it served to me in the worst possible setting. Whether or not the setting has anything to do with it, it's having a profound effect on my self-confidence.
Am I supposed to muse about it, knowing that I'm probably not contributing to my own well-being, or am I "supposed" to put it down and forget all about dreams and aspirations and applying to a prestigious university once upon a time?
It's a bit of a difficult question, and I honestly can't find the answer I'm the most happy about.
: (

The hierarchy of Camp

2011-01-07T12:08:00.000-08:00

New "aspiring guards", (not-so)-affectionately called "recruits" by us, have arrived at Huseby camp. They stumble around with panic in their eyes because they're late, they sit in our places in the mess hall, and they wear their berets because the forage cap is still forbidden.

When it comes down to that guardsman's cap:
I remember this well from my own days as an aspiring guardsman, and I have a new perspective to it now because I am now on the other side of it -

The Guardsman's Cap is a status symbol. When you are outside and wearing it, it's blatantly obvious, so much so that some confused recruit may salute you because he can't see whether you're "angled" or not. (I've done that myself, in the dark!)

But when you're indoors, the hierarchy is more subtle. A rectangular end of black and white peeks out of your trouser pocket because it won't fully fit in there. An Inspecting Officer in the Mess hall may check if you've got one before deciding whether or not to be strict and give you a hard time about your attire. When you, however, talk to the beret-wearers, the effect is different: suddenly you have authority. Telling an aspiring guardman ("aspirant") that he's sitting at the wrong table is quite interesting, because if you're awake you can catch their little glance down at your right trouser pocket. If they see the cap sticking up, they're polite and careful. If they don't, the situation's different. And I know, because I've made those glances many times in my day as a recruit!

When you're past the Aspiring stage and have your Guardsman status, it's difficult to distinguish the subtleties of rank between "old-cont" and "new-cont". But that's a different story altogether.

Funny dreams

2010-12-06T00:08:00.000-08:00

Hm.
Last night I dreamed that every day, the guardsmen in Third Company, the famed Drill, Signals & Music company in the Royal Guards, must sacrifice three soldiers in some kind of ritual fire while lobbing off their limbs. The three men to be sacrificed were taken from the mass of people who had failed the selection process into 3rd Co. and they all seemed to go happily.

I must admit, I'm sick and I'm running quite a fever, but still - this just goes to show what we outsiders sub-consciously think of those strange and set-apart creatures from 3rd. Co!!

Some jumbled memories from my Guardsman's Cap Exercise

2010-11-11T08:41:00.001-08:00

The Guardsman's Cap Exercise, or Lueløp, is the ordeal we all have to go through before we're allowed to wear the famed Guardsman's cap, a forage cap unique to the Norwegian Royal Guards. Officially, nobody's supposed to know about the Lueløp before it happens, but we were lucky enough to be given notice of it by some kind souls a few weeks in advance. And we knew the date, so when we went to bed the night before, we were well prepared, well rested and had eaten lots. I personally got up in the middle of the night to eat a banana and go to the bathroom.

At exactly four a:m we were woken by knocking and shouts of "ALARM!". We went down to our parade ground, wearig only shoes and duvets. Thankfully I, being somewhat prepared, had gone to bed partly clothed. Once everyone was downstairs, each room was given an A4 sheet of instructions on what the backpack must contain. Then we were told to get the hell upstairs and get KTS ("combat ready") fast as fuck. In between the sickly feeling in my stomach, I was overcome with a feeling of relief that the Lueløp was going to be now, and not in six months.

Chaos ensued. We sprinted up the stairs to our rooms, and started throwing things out of our backpacks and into our backpacks, getting rid of unnecessary things and putting in the things on the list. Every now and then an officer would stick his head into the room and yell that we had to hurry the fuck up.

Once dressed and packed, we went downstairs again, and were subsequently subjected to an extensive "hold up this and that" of all the contents in our backpacks, to ensure we had everything. Every time someone was missing something, we had to get down and do pushups while they ran up to get it. The only thing I was missing was a bandage packet, which was lucky because I only had to get one from the medical depot, and the others didn't have to do pushups! I assume he thought I'd used mine and hadn't had time to replenish, while in reality I'd seen the packet in my locker a few minutes earlier and had assumed it was an extra!

Once finished, we donned our combat vests, backpacks, helmets and weapons, as well as, with sinking stomachs, a stretcher and two extremely heavy twenty-litre water canteens. Then we ran, out to X-plass, the large parade ground in the centre of the camp. Having been divided into teams of eight, each of which had a stretcher and a jerrycan, we ran off, up the slopes and onto a bus. The time was five-thirty when the bus moved off, carrying us up to the starting point of the exercise.

We got off the bus, and were immediately ordered to put one man on the stretcher. We were a team of nine, which meant that we had the mandatory four per stretcher, as well as two for a jerry-can, and some extras for switching inbetween. Being light, I was initially put on the stretcher. It was pitch black outside, but thankfully we were on a gravel road, climbing upwards and upwards and upwards. After a while, the stretcher was put down and we had a race, without our backpacks. After that we had a quiz with the winner team promised they wouldn't have to carry as much for the following time, but as we ended up tied, nobody got that - however, each pair of two received one small bar of chocolate which would last us the rest of the day!

The stretcher was loaded up with a new person and off we went, upwards and upwards and upwards. Once past Holmenkollen and approaching Tryvann, the view was magnificent. The horizon was turning a gorgeous pink-and-orange colour with bright stars littering the sky, and we were far above the clouds hanging low over the Capital. We had another race. This time, however, the race was in pairs of two, each person carrying their partner a distance and back. This was when disaster struck for me. I went first, carrying my partner. Having set off a few metres at a high pace with her on my back, my left foot suddenly locked solid, I could feel it crackle and complain, and then it was twisted sharply to the side, and I went FLAT on my face. In severe pain, I was carried the rest of the distance by my partner, and then I sat down and tried not to cry. Both knees and one elbow was severely bruised and grazed, as well as the obvious issue of my ankle being badly twisted. The lieutenant in charge immediately ordered me to be put on the stretcher for the next ... stretch (no pun intended!). We went farther and farther uphill, and it was hard to lie there, passive, while my mates were struggling. The worst part was the biting cold, which had me shaking uncontrollably, and fairly soon I could not feel my fingers or toes. However, as I was lying on the stretcher and not contributing with anything, I felt I had no right to complain, and shut my mouth until a teammate noticed my plight and ordered me to put on woolen mittens and a sweater, and promptly lent me his balaclava, which I wore for the remainder of the day. He also lent me a beautiful little bag of chemicals which heated up in my hand. What a fantastic guy! In retrospect I realise I had descended into mild hypothermia, judging by the level of fogginess I was in mentally. Thank god for Huse. The sun had risen and was a beautiful sight over the blanket of clouds.

Having ascended a further distance, we had another quiz at the bottom of a very steep hill. Our lieutenant said that if we had no wrong answers, we did not have to carry the stretcher up the hill but everyone could walk. However, we had three wrong answers and off we went! Once at what we later realised was to be our area of destination, we put the stretcher down in a parking lot and went down to the two parked Mercedes-Benz 240 cars parked there. We warmed up with a game of tug-of-war, and as we were the losing team, we started out as the first team to pull the MB around the parking lot. Excruciating work! The first time round, we had not yet developed the correct technique, and struggled fearsomely to get the MB up the hill, which seemed like it was extremely steep although it barely sloped upwards. The second round went smashing! However, we were interrupted in the middle of the hill, by the clear shout of "GAS GAS GAS!" This only meant one thing: letting go of the car, and stooping down with our eyes closed while putting on our CBRN-masks. (A thanks to the sergeant behind the wheel for stepping on the brakes so the car didn't roll all the way down again!) Then we had to pull the MB the rest of the way with our gas masks on! However, there was one sweet point of light - we won this round by well over a minute less than the other team.

From the parking lot, our journey went on at a steep pace to the next post, where we had to hold a stretcher with the team's heaviest man, up on our shoulders and down to our hips and back, while one team of two was carrying the other around a strenuous, long trail in uneven terrain. When they finished, the next pair went off. And so it went. All along, a second-lieutenant was standing there, eating chocolate and grinning, shaking the stretcher, and trying to climb onto it. When we were finally done, our shoulders and arms were screaming, but we had to jog off again with our packs and our stretchers, to the next post, where we had to erect a tent in less than ten minutes. Ten minutes is normally more than enough, but without food and sleep, and having done that much physical exercise, the situation wasn't as easy. On the first try, we failed miserably due to a whole lot of arguing about the configuration of the seven-piece tent from people who didn't remember how it was supposed to look, so when ten minutes had passed we did a whole lot of pushups, and then ran full-pace up a hill and down again - which completely wore me out. We were given three minutes to pack the tent down again, and ten new minutes to assemble it. This time, though, my team had a strategy. They had appointed me Tent Master (I was the only one positively sure about the configuration of the tent) and I commanded the team around while showing them where to do what, and frantically buttoning the tent as well. The only problem was that it was cold enough that taking your mittens off to button made your hands freeze and become sluggish instantly. But it went well, and we had the tent up and standing when ten minutes had passed! However, the sergeant was not happy with the way the tent looked, and we had to do more pushups and run another lap. Of course. In between the pushups, of course, the sergeant yelled "TENTS ARE FUN!" and we had to scream "YES!". Then we tried again! This time we succeeded well before the other team, and well before the time was out. What an accomplishment! We packed our tents, donned our kit, and ran off to the next post.

This time it was a good dose of Combat Conditioning, sprinting as fast as it would go up an extremely (!!) steep hill, and down again. We then proceeded to race this hill in different ways, bunny jumps and dog crawling and running backwards. I was later applauded by a teammate who I like very much but who's rarely overwhelming about the praise - for apparently going up the hill like a rocket in the team race! Moments like these made the hellishness worth it.

After this PE, we went to the frozen lake Øversetertjern, which had a ominous, large hole knocked into it. We had to remove all our clothes, and had only a pair of thin overalls on as we were ordered to jump into the icy water and swim the sixteen metres.

The water, which held around minus four degrees celsius, only seemed cold at first. Then, as I started to swim, I noticed knives stabbing me all over my body, particularly my hands. As I got up, the water was in my shoes, so excruciatingly cold I didn't know what to do with myself, and although I had managed to keep my calm until then, at this point I screamed.
I got dried off and changed into dry, woolen clothes. When everyone had gone through, we jogged off to what we thought was the last post, where we had to drink large gulps of a disgusting mixture of cow's blood, blubber, liver and blueberries. It seemed all right at first, but then a few seconds later I was hit with a horrible nausea! Some of the horrid, grainy High-Energy chocolate ration helped somewhat, but the coppery taste of blood stayed in my gums for the rest of the exercise. After the drinking ordeal, the lieutenant told us a grenade had just chopped off our hand, and we had to apply a tourniquet in <15 seconds (easy!). Then he chose two people from each eight-man team, which had broken legs we needed to splint. Then we had to transport the wounded through extremely difficult terrain. Our eight-man team had two casualties and one stretcher, so we had to find alternative transport for one. However, our one stretcher quickly turned into zero as it came apart (with the casualty on it!) and we had to find an alternative way of transporting this casualty as well! Our last task at the post was picking up garbage, after which time we did five pushups for every piece he managed to find. He found a few!! Now we went back to the parking lot, where we were stuffed into buses which took us back to camp. They had set the clocks in the buses to four o'clock, which was the time we all expected to be finished - we would have been out for twelve hours at that point! Luckily though, I had kept track of the time by my compass and the sun all through the day and knew it couldn't be that much. This was later confirmed - the time was indeed 14:30. So of course, when we went down to our parade ground most people expected us to be finished for the day - but I was mentally prepared for something else. However, I didn't expect it to be another round of stretcher-bearing. It was an excruciating walk through rolling hills, culminating in some very steep slopes up to base. The stamina in the entire team had completely broken down and everyone was screaming at each other. Personally I was crying the entire way, limping on my painful foot and taking turns on the stretcher when asked, even though I knew I was setting myself up for bad pains afterwards. Which I did indeed get. When we finally arrived, what we expected and hoped for turned out to be correct: large barbecues were frying hamburgers for everyone. After a brief line-up while the commanding officer gave us a pep talk and congratulations, we were served hamburgers. I, however, was not interested. I limped back to my room, satisfied but utterly, utterly spent. I'm finally finished with Basic Training and my Guardsman's period, and God am I happy about that!

It may be worth mentioning that, as officially you must never be forced to "deserve" a part of your uniform, the Forage Cap Exercise is officially called an "Activity Day". Silly as it sounds, that's how it goes. And when we were finished, our captain stood in front of us and drily commented "well, it's been a lovely activity day, with barbecues and bathing". Exhausted as we all were, we laughed in spite of ourselves.

Life can be a shitty thing.

2010-03-05T01:16:00.000-08:00

So I'm finished with the biggest school project of my life, the famed "thesis project".

I've done this once before, so this is a try at getting a better mark (although for god's sake, it shouldn't be that difficult to get better than a C+ this time.)

And it's a very interesting feeling to be done. This time I'm genuinely happy about the writing that I've handed in, and I'm fairly confident I'll be able to get an A+. Let's just hope.

But now what? I've got a part-time job in a grocery store. And if anything scares the living daylights out of me, it's being happy with that job and staying in it. I'm too scared to apply to a university. Aberdeen - Bath - Bournemouth - Southampton, they all have architectural engineering and socioeconomics, or something like it that I could seriously consider pursuing.

So why haven't I considered doing all this in Halden or Trondheim?

Frankly, studying in Norway is somehow not very appealing to me. At least not in Trondheim, with coastal weather, horrible dialects and long nights in the winter.

I'm too scared to go to university, and have to do all this reading, and all these exams, and maybe not have enough self-discipline to go through with it all. Failing is one of my biggest fears, and I fear it's stopping me from even trying. What if I go to Trondheim, and the dark gets the better of me? I can say with certainty now, that the dark winters here in Norway make me depressed. And what about going through that alone, whilst having to support myself and do the reading and working and studying?

All these fears.

I've had them since junior year of high school, and I don't know how I'm supposed to get through this life -- without hating it. Getting through university is one thing, but what then? Work. Insurance. Medical bills. Kids who want expensive things. A husband who wants a divorce. Rent that has to be paid, or a mortgage. And of course having to do laundry all the time, and cleaning the house, and making my own dinner for the rest of bloody eternity. And then a car that gets stolen. How am I supposed to enjoy this "LIFE" that begins now? I've had a good taste of living alone by now, and I don't like it.

I'm dead tired of going to school, and I can truly say I'm glad I'll be finished in June. But quite honstly, what then? People talk about "freedom" and "now you can enjoy your life" and "endless possibilities". But this "freedom" doesn't come without an endless sea of responsibilites that want to drag me down. Honestly, making your own dinner every day is fun for the first year, but it's getting boring now. It really is.

I know all youth struggle with these thoughts and these problems, and aren't the "gifted ones" the ones that are accepted to be more troubled than other youth?
But I'm still having trouble believing that EVERYONE has thoughts this dark and depressing about the future. I simply can't believe this "sparkling and promising life" can be all fun and games - or fun and games at all, to be honest. Is it really true that everyone feels this way, and if so, how the hell do they deal with it?!

And are we supposed to accept that youth struggle, and are depressed, and try to kill themselves? The concept of teen suicide and self-harm is becoming quite normal and accepted, but for some reason, a part of me doesn't think it's right. What can be so "mundanely horrible" that it can make youth all over the Western World go through phases like this?

But that's an entirely different societal problem that I should come back to in a different post.

A letter to my boyfriend

2009-01-22T22:55:00.000-08:00

Dear Patrik,
I'll admit I'm quite pissed off about this. This is the last time I'll write it, but I hope to hell you take it in. I know you weren't very happy when I asked you to take that test, but there's no getting away from the fact that you promised to do it. You miraculously managed to get out of doing it, somehow neglecting to make another appointment. Did you hope that I would forget about it? "I know where my dick has been." For Christ's sake, it's about more than that! It's about honouring my wish that you do something for my sake. You broke a promise that you made. But it represents a lot more than that.
When I told you that I'd done it, there was no "shit, I forgot!"
There was no "oh my God, I'm so sorry."
There was an "oh, I was considering doing that."
CONSIDERING?
You fucking promised. And you KNOW that when you say something like that, it'll make me wonder how much your word is worth.

This was originally written in that pile of notes I was going to give you when we're back on talking terms. But I had the feeling it would do more harm than good. My utopic dream was that after reading it, you would come up to me and say "My God Ellen, I had no idea it meant that much to you." But you won't. So this is better. This way I get to rant about it somewhere, but you won't read it.

I haven't been sleeping lately...

2008-12-10T11:23:00.001-08:00

For about a week now, my nights have been troubled by nightmares. I find myself unable to sleep - waking up at 3 and then at 3:30 and then at 6, only to be desperately sleepy when 7 comes, and falling asleep during classes.
I had another nightmare last night. This one troubles me, because I've had dreams of its kind before, and the last time I had them was when I was in the process of ridding myself of Alexander.
It's all about catching a train. First I was at my father's, and I was going to drive to the train station. I was constantly remembering new things I had to cram into my suitcase, and desperately cramming them into my at first empty bag, which was filling up so fast that in the end I was stuffing items into plastic bags as well. Suddenly I was at my mother's, still stuffing things into bags. In the end I got the car out of the garage, and as I was speeding down the road, I ran over two of the neighbour's kids, Jørgen and Brage. They were standing there crying, with blood running down their faces, but I was in such a hurry that I decided to leave them there, because I was going to miss my train if I didn't. So I got to the train station, which somehow had turned into Bristol Airport, and ordered Minipris tickets for a journey to I can't remember where. But I had to wait for my mother to arrive so that we'd travel together, and she was taking her time. In the end I missed my train, voiding my Minipris tickets. So I was standing at the platform crying my eyes out, wondering if I could charm my way onto the next train with the old tickets if I cried convincingly enough. But my mother still wasn't arriving. And I kept missing my train. Again and again. What's particularly disturbing about the dream is I kept waking up, but going back to sleep and back to the same old nightmare.
Google says dreams about missing trains represents frustration at my failure in leading my life in the direction I want it to go. The things I'm trying to cram into my suitcase represent old habits or behaviors I want to rid myself of. But where am I failing? What habits are holding me back?
Okay, well, I'm going to bed. This time with a hefty dose of sleeping pills in my system, in the hope that they might keep me asleep.
Yet another night without having done homework. Yet another night feeling like a failure.
I need to rid myself of this fucking COMPUTER, that's what I need to do.

This is a blog for Agustín.

2008-12-10T06:59:00.000-08:00

Yes, Agus. You've been asking for a new blog, so here it is.
My blog is where I vent the feelings I don't like to share with people IRL. You want me to vent? Here it is.
About my boyfriend: I'm crazy about him. So crazy, in fact, that I never relax. I'm constantly worrying about anything I can. I tell myself constantly, we're on the same level, even though everything about him seems perfect I'm as good as him, but I don't like having to remind myself of it. I like him so much that I worry about losing him. On the other hand, I promised myself that I'd let myself fall in love, let myself worry when he disapproved, let myself grow bubbly with happiness when he didn't. I guess this is the bad side of that promise.
At the same time, I'm pissed off with him. He promised to do an STD test (a very sore toe between us as my last blog indicated, but he did promise). Then he went and couldn't go through with it, and then went and missed the second appointment he'd made. Now he hasn't made any mention of doing it again, so I'm starting to wonder whether he missed it on purpose. I suppose it's OKAY that he doesn't take it, but I don't want him to send that signal. A signal that he can get away with something like that - breaking a promise.
And I'm allowed to be pissed off, too! I don't want to be submissive in this relationship. I have my rights, I have demands that I'm in my right to make, and if he doesn't acknowledge that, I shouldn't be afraid to speak up.
When it comes to school, I have a constant cloud of worry hanging on me. I have a handin I haven't finished. I managed to slither out of it by some clever talk and the fact that my teacher remembered how depressed I was last autumn, and came with some soothing talk about not being supposed to push me. But I still promised to hand it in this week! And I don't know what to do.
Then there's a test I missed when I was sick. I haven't even gone through the stuff we were supposed to read, and it scares me that I've made arrangements to take the test this Friday.
And now I spilled fucking creamed, sugared COFFEE on my keyboard. It's the first time I've spilled anything of the kind on it, but fuck. My days with this laptop are numbered.
On the subject of my årsoppgave, don't even ask me... I'm bloody scared stiff. It has to be handed in in February and I haven't even started. A minimum of like fifty pages. Every day at school I think, I'll start when I get home. And when I get home, there are more fun things to do. So I end up thinking, I can do it tomorrow! This is the sort of behaviour that threw me into depression last year.
I'm so scared. And I'm so tired. I don't want to end up like last year, a crying sobbing mess shutting myself off from the outside world and setting myself up to drop out of school. The prospect of it scares me rigid.
I just want to go to sleep and escape from all this.

STDs :S

2008-11-22T11:33:00.001-08:00

I got a new boyfriend.
I'm crazy about him.
I should have written a blog about this earlier, because I want to remember all the happy feelings. Blah blah :)
I wrote all this in ink on paper, though. And I'm not sure if I want to digitalise it or not.
However, now there's a problem.
I'm thinking of getting birth control pills and as a precautionary measure asked him if he could get checked for STD's. But he took it completely the wrong way, and doesn't want to. I completely understand his point of view - it's a declaration of mistrust and nobody wants to be subjected to that.
But I don't feel good. I'm completely backing down and not asking him to do it, although he's halfway offering to, now. Which is a nice gesture.
I suppose my solution is just to get tested myself. I feel completely sure that he's not cheating on me, so it wouldn't need to be a periodical test. Just once after the first time or something?
I don't mind going to get myself tested at all. So I suppose this is my solution.
But I feel bad about him taking it this way :(

I got my nipples pierced.

2008-11-04T09:07:00.000-08:00

FUCK, that shit HURTS!!
Oh, my God.
Now I'll just try to cling to what somebody told me -- "moment of pleasure, lifetime of pain - reversed."
I was hoping... well, I was stupidly hoping I might be one of those people for whom it didn't hurt so much. But... MOTHERFUCKER that was bad!
Oh, God.

...And suddenly things are going cold.

2008-10-17T03:17:00.000-07:00

Why?
I have no idea.
Suddenly it seems we're so different.
He keeps saying "I love you". I can't say it back yet. Somehow it would be nice if he could be a little less.... clingy. I talked to my father about it yesterday. Couldn't he show that he was something a little more? Make an effort? Socially he's a bit of a clutz, and has no friends left IRL after he left school. I'd like to be introduced to his friends, hear what they think of him. But there aren't any.
And we seem so different in politics, suddenly. He viciously attacks the Norwegian state on several things, like the fact that he has to do compulsory military service, and his outlook on it is absolutely black. In my eyes, this is a service you have to do for the Norwegian state, but in his eyes it's something stupid and useless, and when I try to discuss it with him, it's like meeting an ice front. A stupid ice front, which refuses to listen to the areas of light that I try to point out.
When we were discussing this a while ago on MSN, he was being all "I hate Norway", and suddenly he put up a display picture of some idiots burning a Norwegian flag. A picture like that is extremely offensive to me, but I doubt he'd listen if I told him. Even if he did listen, the deed is done. For God's sake. A person who burns a Norwegian flag is a brainless, uneducated idiot to me, and he appears to condone the whole thing.
Which is just seriously offensive.
And today, he called me on the phone. Somehow the discussion went on to Vinmonopolet, a thing he criticises because it doesn't allow for free pricing (perfect competition). I don't condone free pricing of alcohol, because of the direct link between cheap alcohol and alcohol-related deaths. But he seems to totally disregard this -- and all he's interested in is cheap alcohol. He's supposed to be voting for the same party as me -- Venstre -- but this thinking is something straight out of the Progress Party's agenda. And I don't want anything to do with people who'd vote for the progress party. All people are interested in is their own money! Can't they take a step back sometimes and see that they actually have to pay a little more for the good of society?!
My bottom line here is that I don't feel like I want anything to do with him. Which is an extremely scary thought! Because I really am beginning to care about him. Several times he's tried to get into my pants, and I've stopped him. Right now I feel very relieved that I have -- because if I'd given my virginity to him and then broken up with him a short time later, I would have regretted it so much. And at the moment, I have serious doubts about whether we fit together. I know I'm making a big deal out of some political discussions and maybe blowing the whole thing out of proportion, but it does stand for a lot of how he looks at life. He harshly criticises things without properly researching the arguments for and against. Things like Norwegian monarchy (which I'm neutral / for because I think removing it would be removing a vital part of Norwegian tradition and history) he criticises without taking heed to any of my arguments. All he says is that they spend a lot of money which we could use on other things.
As a politician (or maybe just as a person) I've really started looking at things from two sides. I think suicide bombers are complete idiots, but I can understand why they do it. I can understand why Osama Bin Laden does his thing up in the mountains.
But Alexander is absolutely impossible to discuss things like this with. And right now my feelings for him have pretty much disappeared. He tried to French kiss me last night and I felt... nothing.
Maybe I should get out of this before I get hurt?
At least, before I give him my virginity. I don't want to do anything I'll regret, and I'll seriously regret it if I have sex with him.
If I'm the one to bail out, I have the control. I won't be the one feeling like shit. Right now I feel too much about him, and it scares me. I'm so afraid of getting hurt again. I've been hurt too many times. And somehow I don't want to care about him.

About That boy....

2008-10-14T14:14:00.000-07:00

There was a Dutch boy I was taken with for quite a while. He turned out to be a bit of an arsehole, though, and ever since I got together with Alexander (before it was official) I've purposefully avoided his eyes anytime I've met him. It's been a sort of campaign to make him understand that I DO NOT LIKE HIM any more, and he can thank himself for that. He's been doing the same. No eye contact.
But I've had dreams about him, about him being nice and friendly. They've been nice dreams, but when I've woken up I've always been annoyed with myself for dreaming them.
On Sunday I changed my Facebook status to in a relationship. And Alexander accepted, so it says who I'm with. On Monday, I noticed Bastiaan looking at me. He didn't look happy. That made me happy! What if he was disappointed because he did want to get together with me and thought the no eye contact thing was a game?
Then, on Monday night, I had the strangest dream. I was sitting in my house, and Bastiaan was standing outside. He just stood there waiting, the entire day. It was a big change, because earlier when I've dreamed about him he's been on the same side of the wall as me, close to me. Now, however, he was standing outside, and the entire time I kept struggling with myself, wanting desperately to go outside and ask him what the hell he was doing there. Anything to be nasty to him.
I wonder what it means. Is he finally on the outside of my life? Have I finally thrown him out of my "house"? I have a feeling that this is it, because I no longer have to struggle to avoid eye contact with him. It's quite a hassle, that, because I don't know where I can't look. Childishness!
Now I can look him in the face, I can smile, and my eyes can say fuck you, didn't you know I didn't want you?
It was a very strange dream though!

"Taken" will be a big turnaround.

2008-09-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

Alright, so, I've pretty much only ever been single. There was Aleksander (not Alexander) in February 08 and at that point I sort of stopped looking. Until that fell apart. Then I started looking again, more than ever.
I don't keep my eyes to myself. On the streets of Oslo (or wherever, really) I obnoxiously keep my eyes on whatever cute boy I see. And why not? Looking isn't a sin. (Okay well, maybe it is, 'coveting your neighbour's blah blah blah' and all that, but we'll keep God out of this!)
I'm not going to say I have a boyfriend yet. I don't dare do that. I like Alexander though - he's so sweet! And he seems to really like me.
But I'd say I should start keeping my eyes to myself sometime around now. And that will - believe it or not - be a change of fair dimensions!
What will I do when I travel through Oslo :(
Snog? :D
That sounds like a good idea. I think that's what I'll do.
But I'm wondering what it'll be like. Will I forget myself and start obnoxiously coveting neighbours' boyfriends or will I mind my own business?
God only knows!

Why did I ever wait?

2008-09-11T07:17:00.000-07:00

Wow.
I went to the cinema with Alexander. Finally. I'd been postponing and postponing and postponing it. And I was so hesitant to actually arrange something!
But finally I jumped right into it and went to watch the Dark Knight with him.
1) He was WAY cuter than I thought he'd be
2) He was really nice
3) Two days later we were watching LOST on my couch at home, with my head in his lap.
4) Five days later (that is - tomorrow) we're going to a concert together.
And I was thinking about it the other day, and I realised: He likes me!
It's awesome.
I can't understand why I didn't do this a long time ago.
xD
I don't know what made me wait, but it finally appears I have someone who like me.

"It's not easy"

2008-08-15T00:08:00.001-07:00

That's something I lay in bed thinking last night.
It came as a revelation to me (or rather, as I and Skorp would say, in pure Sneligh: an Anypihpe!), and I realised that might have been the reasons for some of my embarrassments in the past year. I'm a person who attacks things with vigour; and sometimes I think I underestimate how difficult it might be.
In May I worked for two weeks at a home for disabled people. It was unpaid; all part of my school year, to get experience working within the social sector.
I was told to clean the floor of one of the occupants. So I did - and half an hour later one of the workers came up to me; half mystified, half wondering if I was trying to get off easy; asking if I "knew how to clean floors". I was certain I did, and I was very surprised at her question. When she showed me places I had overlooked, and I realised I didn't after all know how to properly clean a floor, I was hopelessly embarrassed and remorseful.
I'm not a social worker. Nobody ever taught me to clean floors, but I don't think I ever managed to convince her that I wasn't sloppy on purpose.
What if I'd gone in there more carefully? With the thought that maybe I didn't know how to do this? Maybe I wouldn't have done it any more carefully, but maybe I'd have been extremely thorough and the social worker would have been happy.
Who knows?
I'm going to keep this in mind the next time I attack something new. In about fifteen minutes when I've finished my breakfast, actually. I'm doing some painting on the guest house.
God only knows how I'll perform!

So why is it that when there actually IS male interest, I turn it away?

2008-08-12T13:07:00.001-07:00

It's rather strange.
A while back I would readily call myself "desperate". Single is one of the most annoying things there are.
But right before summer ended, I was all but stalked by a guy from the class above me. He got my MSN off facebook; my phone number from the school directory, and there was no end to his showing of interest. (In the words of Nikki Sixx: he was about as inconspicuous as a dog humping a doorknob.)
And somehow, I totally didn't want him. It was just not appealing to me. It might have been because he wasn't good-looking; or did it really have to do with the so-called catstring theory? I.e. dangle a string in front of a cat's face and it's going to want it; but give it to the cat without being elusive and the cat won't think it's fun.
My friend Patrik talks a lot about that theory. And he comes up with examples of it from time to time. If a girl is just a little bit elusive, it's fun as hell. But if she comes right up to him and tries something on with him, all the fun is gone. Is that why I didn't want to get together with that guy?
The same thing is happening to me right now. I've got some seriously good boyfriend material lined up for me. He's interested, I'm "interested", and we're planning to go drinking sometime soon.
So why aren't I exhilarated? Am I not "desperate"? I thought I was.
I'm confused.
If I keep turning away guys who try to get together with me, I'll be single forever.
And at the same time, I can't bring myself to go out with just about anyone.
I need a drink.

There are hedgehogs in my garden

2008-08-12T06:37:00.000-07:00

I don't really think they live in my garden. I think they spend a day or two around at each neighbour, on rotation.
But I love the little creatures. And knowing that they're an endangered species, I do everything I can to make them feel safe in my garden. Anywhere but the road where they can get driven over.

Today I was standing in my driveway, cutting up some planks to mend the wall of the guest house. And imagine my surprise when I saw one of these shy creatures marching towards me on the gravel! I quietly went inside and ran like hell to get my camera. When I came out again, my cat was calmly sitting there watching the hedgehog ascend the stairs to the garden. I've never seen a hedgehog so calm right in front of me - it seemed to be ignoring me completely.
A while ago I filmed a pair of young hedgehogs playing some strange game with rules beyond my comprehension. They were going around in a circle, trying to push each other's noses around with their own. It was unbearably sweet - but when I stepped on a branch and they noticed me, they curled into little balls. And when I came back a while later, they were gone. I haven't seen any hedgehogs since, until now.

So I stood there and thought oh no, now I can't continue my sawing. If it gets scared, it'll curl up into a ball and sit there for hours while I work, and then it'll never feel safe in my garden again. It won't come back!
And I suddenly realised I was going out of my way to keep this animal in my garden!
It made me think: why can't we act like this about the environment as well? If we keep trampling around here, minding our own affairs, while the planet withers around us, we're not going to get to keep it for much longer.

Do the people who believe in global warming always sound like followers of some cult that believes in a pending apocalypse? I hope not. But I think being a little more careful with how we treat this planet couldn't do any harm.

Just look at that little cutie! I want to keep him!

An aspiring atheist?

2008-08-12T06:19:00.001-07:00

Well, that's the only thing I could come up with that wasn't too long, and didn't sound ridiculous.
And I'm not dying, in any case.
This is a first post, so it's hopelessly random. But I've got to start somewhere.
It's not exactly going to be something people will read. I'm not going to advertise this thing anywhere. It's more going to be a diary, somewhere for me to write down thoughts I don't want to forget. I'm very happy that I've finally created this, because I've wanted to for a very long time. Since February actually, when I'd fooled around with a boy for the first time and was so extremely happy right in the midst of my depression, and didn't want to forget all those feelings and thoughts.
So I never did start writing back then. But the hedgehog thing made me do it. And I hope I'll find the time to continue!