Ok, it´s christmas, I think...?

I haven´t been writing in this blog so often lately, since I know that my only reader, R., is away on one of her crazy lifethreatening trips, so instead I have just been drinking wine and beer and having fun.
But, considering the main topic(s) of this blog, I suppose I should report that I have had quite a few unwanted encounters with different body fluids (and solid stuff...) expulsed from differen orifices of my cats recently.
First, one day when I came home I found a lot of cat blood on the upper floor - Liffi and Otto had been fighting again (I´d blog the blood pictuer if it didn´t just look like ketchup... but it was scary, I thought I´d find a dead cat somewhere - but Otto was just really tired for a day and a half, and now he´s back to normal...)
The day after, I finally found what it was that had been entering Majvors´s nostrils while we were emptying a bottle of wine (and falling asleep listening to the Stockholm Gay Choir...)... They (the cats... in case anybody thought something else) had been shitting in the same damned place in the backroom of my living room again! And it has been there for the last two weeks... But since I´ve had a stuffy nose, so I hadn´t found the shit - even if the smell had reached me every now and then, but I really thought it came from the litterbox... (which I hadn´t cleaned out, evidently)
Anyway, they (or he, if it has been only one...) must have been shitting in the wrong place for all of my 13 days away, since there were at least 13 loads of shit (yes, I do have a picture, but it´s just too gros to blog...)
What else could I write about... Loneliness? I´ve been a bit lonely at times this fall, because of my husband´s recent change in living arrangements, but right now I´m definitely not alone, since I have no less than half a dozen cats and two humans to keep me company. [Not all of them live permanently in the house, but they are all very nice... ]

Tonight it´s night of the second "before-christmas" party... We (that is, the usual suspects...) ate ham (or, pig´s ass...), drank beer - and when all the others left, the rest of us (Kjell, Guillaume and I) watched "Babe" on DVD. First we ate the pig, then we watced a cute pig movie... Hm? Are we a bit disturbed or not?)
Right now Kjell is force-feeding Guillaume Bruce Springsteen on DVD... Personally, I have nothing against listening to Bruce, but looking at all those sweaty middleaged men, making stupid faces while doing masturbatory things with their guitars... well, it´s just not my thing.
But what the hell... it´s christmas, and people do weird things.
And now - finally - we get to listen to Kjell´s all time favourite "Born to run" - but I still prefer not too watch close up images of Bruce and his pals...
The music is good, though.
I need a cigarrette.

Frissi 

Svarti 

Liffi 

Back to 1984

Yesterday we were invited to dinner at Niki´s place. She´s been in my life since 1980 - which is a really long time, when you think of it...
She knew me when I wasn´t yet with the one who was to become my husband. Hell, she even knew me when I had the boyfriend before the boyfriend I had before him... Not many of the people I hang out with nowadays have that kind of perspective - some because they weren´t even born by then, others because I have only known them for the last decade or so.
And very few of my friends can actually remember the last day of April 1984 (or the whole damned weekend of "Vappen 84") and laugh about it and compare notes and try to put together a picture of what actually happened. Niki´s husband had heard about that ill-fated party weekend - but she had not yet met him by then. My future husband was enjoying his last weeks of freedom during that weekend, because it was only a question of 19 days before we would hook up, but he was there anyway, and he even happened to get his expensive bottle of gin (bought in the liquor store - not a tax-free bottle, he pointed out yesterday... ) smashed by two very drunk friends (Niki and me...) as we accidentally dropped his bag to the ground.
I think he has forgiven us by now - but he will probably never forget...

Now you might think we spent the whole evening talking abuot things that happened in the early '80, but it wasn´t like that - we got back to the present quite soon.

Now I´m being driven away from the computer by that same husband... I´ll smash another bottle, dammit!
[I want to have my own laptop!]

One week in Stockholm + litterbox update

It suddenly struck me that I´ve been i Stockholm for a whole week now, and I´m beginning to see a pattern in my way of handling my time here... The first few days I´m just happy to be here, planning all the fun things I´m going to do, all the beer I´m going to drink with all my nice friends - and even hoping to get some time with my husband, who might or might not be working like crazy. Then on the third or fourth day I get restless, not knowing exactly why, but feeling slightly guilty for not doing anything 'usefull' - like working, that is. Then suddenly it´s just a question of days before I´ll go away again, and at that point I begin to fret about all the things I haven´t done - all the movies I didn´t see, all the people I didn´t call etc. etc. I see the pattern, and at the same time I hate to be so predictable!

Far away from here, in my little house in Finland, there has been a lot of activities in the Kitty Litterbox - at least if I´m to believe my mother. She even feels compelled to tell me what kind of turds she has found there (very long and thin... supposedly one of the cat has eaten something he shouldn´t - or maybe just eaten too much!). And I let her tell me, since I´m not there to do the cleaning myself...
This time around, though, I have to say my cats are being taken care of better than ever.
My mother didn´t want to give up her status as "primary cat caretaker" while I´m away, but G. also spends many evenings in my house, listening to music, feeding the cats and keeping them company and trying to keep them from killing each other. And me, I´m really happy for the cats, now they don´t have to be alone all the time, and that makes me feel less guilty for leaving them.

I should have known better

After 2 hours in rush-hour traffic, in the drizzling rain, I noticed that being out of the house wasn´t going to make me feel any better - on the contrary, I began to notice in myself all kinds of murderous feelings towards my fellow citizens; I felt like slapping all those stupid idiots talking about silly things on their mobile phones in the crowded bus, and I just didn´t want all those stinking humans so close to me... Because for some reason I just can´t understand, the city-buses, both here and in Helsinki, always smell of wet dogs (and I never liked any kind of dog smell - and I especially hate the smell of wet dogs!) when it´s raining outside.
Of course, I´d never actually go berserk and start hitting those smelling, babbling, irritating-looking commuters, but why on earth did I have to go out in the first place? [Probably because I´m an idiot]
I did buy some wine, though, and I did go to the grocery store. And yes, I even bought a book...
I try to stop buying so many things (- and "things" for me are mainly books and CD:s - I very seldom buy anything else, but that doesn´t help much since I buy an absolutely absurd amount of books and CD:s - every year...), but then I forget - or if I don´t forget, I just have a very short debate within my own head, and there´s always the argument "But what do I need that money for anyway? I might get killed by a bus - or stabbed by a crazy person [there are lots of them in the streets here in Sweden - and I suppose they have grown in numbers since they decided to close almost all the old mental hospitals, the ones where me and my student friends spent our summers working, in the early '80... but since then they have let the lunatics run free - because it´s cheaper... ] today or tomorrow, so why not allow myself to by that book/CD right now?" So I usually end up buying whichever book or CD I happen to be interested in. One good thing about being "child free" is that I can permit myself this little perversion, since I don´t need to think about leaving any inheritance to the next generation...

Around 17.20 I was at T-centralen, smack in the center of Stockholm, trying to get on a metro train, as was every other damned person in the whole city as well, it seemed...
I got off rhw at "Universitetet", with my heavy load of wine and groceries and books, and was happy to see that there was a bus supposed to come within 2 minutes, a bus that would take me almost to my (that is, Kjell´s) front door. But of course, this bus for some reason decided not to come - so instead I ended waiting 13 minutes in the rain - then taking another bus that left me a bit further from from home, and dragging all my stuff - uphill - for the last half kilometer or so.
When I got back I was angry, hungry, wet and tired.
And who can I blame? Who sent me out in that damned weather? Nobody! I thought I wanted to go.
Sometimes I´m just such an idiot.
[I should have known better...]
After dinner, a movie on DVD and half a bottle of wine I´m not angry or hungry or wet anymore - just tired...
Tomorrow just has to be a better day.

Restless

Four degrees outside and continuous rain - another day without day-light - and a public holiday in Finland (and Spain, too... not that I think anybody reading this blog actually needs that information right now, but I felt like writing it anyway) which means that nobody in this house had any plans to work today. It seemed like the perfect setting for a "do-nothing"-day. And that was what I had sort-of planned. But now, a bit past 3 p.m, still in my night gown, and the rain still falling, I just have to admit that I can´t stand it any longer - I have to get out of the house, no matter what! I should know by now that I always get restless and irritated if I try to spend an entire day inside - even if it´s a day spent watching movies, listening to music, reading books or doing other fun things. Usually the restlessness sets in around 1.30 - 2 p.m., so today I have actually endured this "do-nothing"-state longer than normal. But now I really have to get myself going!
Got to find a bus that takes me into to the rainy city - I need to go and by milk, bread, wine - and maybe some books. And I want to sit down in a café or a bar - just to see people around me.
If I´d wanted to spend the whole day inside I might as well have stayed in Nykarleby.

Martha!

Tonight I went to listen to the artist that has been following me in my car stereo, at home, in my radio programs - everywhere - for the last month and a half... Martha Wainwright! It was great...
Both Martha and the opening act, Teddy Thompson, seemd like really nice people. I´m glad I went there, but I´m just too tired to write anything more right now. I bought Teddy Thompson´s new record, and that might become a new favourite.

Dreams and other strange things

I woke up a while ago, certain that I had heard a cat... But there are no cats in this house, so I must have been dreaming. I had a lot of strange dreams, now that I think of it, but they are quickly slipping away. Lately I´ve been thinking of starting a new "Dream Diary", like the one I had during my first year in Washington D.C. But I don´t know. It might get out of hand, because the more I pay attention to my dreams, the more dreams I usually remember, and the more dreams I remember, the more I have to write down, and if I get completely obsessed with my own dream world it will take so much of my time and energy that I won´t have time for a life... I might end up being this absolutely crazy old woman, living alone in her house, with her cats, never going out, since she´s constantly dreaming - or writing down her most recent dreams. In D.C., 1993-94, for a while I had a much more active "night life" than an actual "life". It´s scary reading, though, all those dreams are so filled with angst and fear and unhappiness. But I got over it, so it was probably good to write down all that shit to get it out of my system. Much later I decided to print out my "Dream World" - and it was hundreds of pages. I still have those pages in a box, somewhere.

I use my husband´s computer now, in his little 'home office'... a nice room, with a sea view. Everybody is still asleep, and the only reason I´m awake is that I had to get up to drink something hot, because for a week now I´ve had this stubborn cold that I don´t seem to get rid of. My punishment for smoking since summer, I suppose. It´s easy to stop now, though.

There are so many things to do in a big city so it´s hard to chose. Yesterday I didn´t chose - I just tagged along. We went to a German church in Gamla Stan to listen to 'Stockholms Gaykör'. It wasn´t too bad, but I had to struggle not to cough all the time - and the more I tried not to, the more I felt that tickling sensation in my throuth. My husband now says he wants to join the choir, but he´s afraid they wouldn´t let him, since he´s not gay. I said he should try anyway, I mean, at least he could become a honorary member, since in a way that choir is actually the reason why he is now living in Stockholm. I´m too tired to try to explain all the details, but it´s a case of one thing leading to another and somebody not wanting to go back to Finland just yet, and because of that I suddenly find myself living alone in my house with 4 cats, while my husband has settled down in a nice apartment in Stockholm - all because of the existence of 'Stockholms Gaykör'.
Sometimes life is just too weird.

Today I´m supposed to do some radio work. My 'partner in crime' when it comes to plane crashes is here, and we´ll try to record 3-4 more accident stories. Some people think this is absolutely crazy, to do radio pieces that tell about different accidents, how they happened, why they happened etc, but on the other hand, many people find it interesting too - even if they think it´s bizarre.

Coming out of the bubble

There have been some (1, in the Swedish section ...) complaints concerning the update-rate of this blog... Well, what can I say? My strong feeling is that the (not-too-) anonymous person who is complaining hasn´t even got her own blog yet, so I´m not going to let her comment - intended to create feelings of guilt - influence me in any way... I´m not even sure I want to write anything in English today, let´s see.
I´m in Stockholm again, after a 5-6 week long absence. It´s been a strange time, and I´m not really sure which 'reality' I´ve been living in - the so called "real world" or my own invented universe. I didn´t get very far in my NaNo-writing project, but in my mind I´ve been inventing possible plots for a possible novel, or a possible life, all this month, so maybe that´s just my way of doing NaNo... I´ve been living in a strange "bubble" containing lots and lots of movies, considerable amonts of wine and beer, music, late late nights and the company of my cats - and other hairy creatures. In a way I´ve felt like shit, but at the same time it´s been a lot of fun... I´ve had a chance to get used to the fact that I actually do live alone - and it´s not the end of the world. Maybe I´ll be able to handle two parallell 'realities' from now on - one in Nykarleby (even without all the wine and all the movies...), and another in Stockholm, with my husband, who by the way asked me to include in this post that Bruce Springsteen´s "Born to run", from 1975, is the best rock album, ever! (Ok, now I´ve said it. But it´s his opinion, though...)
Now I´m off, otherwise I´ll be late for the Stockholm Gay Choir Christmas Concert.
More later.
Maybe.