A rare breed indeed

Despite many an attempt to suppress the fact that I will sometime very very soon need to begin planning a wedding, this insight keeps making itself known.

Much, I have to say, to my dismay.
Because, ugh.
I don't wanna.

Don't get me wrong, I really really want to get married.
The marriage part isn't what's making my neck twitch nervously. It certainly isn't the reason I feel like taking a nap anytime anyone has questions/opinions about it.
And although I can't definetly rule out that that isn't what's causing me to break out in some rather stubborn hives, I'm almost a hundred percent sure that it's not.
It's something else.

It's the wedding.
Or, in my case; the W-E-D-D-I-N-G.

I know that being a female, living in a first world country and having obsessively watched Disney's "Cinderella" growing up, I should (in theory) be able to perfectly execute this whole bridezilla routine that's become so popular with the kids. You know, the crazy-eyed obsessive compulsive bride-to-be reducing waitstaff to tears and throwing temper tantrums over the fact that "these napkins are ivory! I said egg shell! EGG SHELL!!!!" .

I'm supposed to be overjoyed by the thought of picking out colour schemes and centre pieces and wedding cakes and thank you cards, and apparently I should be keeping some kind of scrap book containing an over all "theme" for the wedding.
(What?
What do you mean "a theme"? How bout "we're getting married"?
Is that theme enough for ya?
No? That's not what it means?
Oh, ok. Right.
Sorry.)

But, as you might have gathered, something has gone horribly wrong somewhere, and all these things added up make me feel the opposite of excited.
So, "not excited" I guess.
I mean, all I want is to wear a pretty dress and marry the loveliness that is fiancé.

In Vegas.

With Elvis (or someone vaguely resembling him) conducting the ceremony.

Is that so much to ask?

Desperate houswife and why I shouldn't have children

The past few days I have been channeling the life of a house wife.
Or, according to a few people that shall remain nameless, "doing stuff kind of expected of you since, you know, you're unemployed".

Huh. What a curious thing to say.

Anyway.
For example, I cooked a nice mushroom risotto for dinner last night and had it ready, with the table set and drinks poured, when fiancé came home from work.
However, I was not cooking and serving said risotto dinner dressed in a full skirt and pearls but hey, if there's one thing reading Cosmopolitan has taught me it's that as a woman there are always things about yourself you can change and improve. Yay!
How wonderful it is to be told I will never be good enough!

Also I've spent a whole day doing laundry, hand washing things (note to self: start looking at the laundry tags of garments before buying them. If laundry tag says "cold hand wash only", gently place garment back on hanger and move away from the cash register. I repeat, MOVE AWAY FROM THE CASH REGISTER!), hanging and folding and what not.

Realizing that I have agreed to let fiancé's two little nephews stay over night with us on Friday night I have promptly broken in to a nervous sweat and, going about it like I have a severe case of OCD, tried to come up with activities and meals and treats that will translate to nephews telling their parents about what a great time they had staying at our house.

Because yes. I, a 26 year old woman, am scared of the potentially disapproving judgement of two small children who's collective age is less than mine divided in half (and apparently reminicent of a fourth grade math problem).
Why is this? And also, if it comes to the end of Friday night and it's apparent that nephews have had a less than incredible time, will slipping half a roofie in their warm milk help with wiping those memories out of their pliable little minds?
And more importantly, is this something that will go on my permanent police record if discovered?
Cause I really can't have that.

My brain needs a defrag

I woke up to find that this lovely lady will let me have one of her precious books after I enquired whether it is read worthy or not. I guess this means it is. Or, she's just pawning some of her unwanted stuff off on me. But I'm ok with that.

Something I'm not ok with is knowing that when Alanis Morrisette sang this little gem of a line:
"...is she perverted like me, would she go down on you in a theatre"
she sang it to and about Dave Coulier.
Yes, that is "Uncle Joey" from "Full house" which I watched religiously everyday after school when I was nine.

This information is really causing me some anxiety here, and there is no apparent reason for my brain to, completely out of nowhere bring this very disturbing information to my attention, especially since I've gone to extensive lengths trying to forget.

Ok, maybe not really "extensive lengths"...
Actually probably no real conscious effort on my behalf has been made to forget said information but that doesn't change the fact that I was still pretty happy having it stowed away somewhere in the murkier depths of my subconscious, leaving it to cob webby canoodling with grade nine maths and an incident in a tent when I was 15.

The thing that really gets me is that because of this Dave Coulier bullshit I'll probably forget something else, something way more important.
Like turning the stove off or taking the bullets out of the gun before fiancé and I joke-play Russian roulette.
And seriously, I'm not super excited by that idea.

My brain has turned to mush

This morning I was rudely awoken by the sound of what I’ve now managed to identify as a Kookaburra.
Which, as some of you might know, is a bird.
I, on the other hand didn’t, and in my hazy and very annoyed state of mind thought the sound molesting my ears to be that of an equally annoyed, and perhaps lethally so, monkey.

What a business an angry monkey would have to go about in a tree outside my bedroom window I’m not completely sure, but then again I’m told Kookaburra’s don’t usually hang out in the city either. So yeah.
That’s the very exciting story of how I was woken up by a bird, though at the time thought to be a monkey.

Whoever said I don’t lead an exciting life just got proven wrong, right? Right? AM I RIGHT???
Oh lord, mommy’s on the drink again…

Going to the movies just got a whole lot more appealing

It seems Melbourne is caught in some sort of mini hurricane (for about three minutes there, I couldn't remember the word "hurricane" but instead my brain kept suggesting the word "trombone" as the proper term for what dictionary.com defines as "a violent, tropical, cyclonic storm of the western North Atlantic, having wind speeds of or in excess of 72 mph". Yeah, not sure what's going on there).

And for a good part of the day I just saw that as a convenient excuse not to have a shower, get dressed and go see "the September issue" like I'd planned to do. But then, after realizing that I was in fact watching an episode of "Days of our lives" (and not the first one this week I might add...) and having the words "crazy cat lady" flashing before my eyes (why does it keep doing that?) I decided that having a shower might not be such a bad idea after all.

So now I'm back home after an hour and a half of watching Anna Wintour & co and stuffing my face with hand made chocolates (it's a documentary about Vogue, I couldn't very well eat buttered popcorn now could I?) and wine.
Yaha, wine!
Cause apparently cinemas can serve alcohol in Australia.
How, I ask you, is it possible that I did not know this? I did after all receive a "Welcome to Australia"-pamflet when my visa came through, one would think that this information would have been in there somewhere between the national statistics and the helpful tips on how to maintain an acceptable level of personal hygiene, no?

Well, no.

Obviously someone, somewhere, in a governmental writing-of-pamflet type job has a somewhat askew list of priorities.

Does Ruddy know about this?

Sweet dreams are made of cheese?

Arrgh, my subconsious is driving me insane lately!
This past week I've been waking up several times per night from either laughing like some kind of crazy person or being on the verge of tears, whimpering.

The dreams causing this very unwanted behaviour have been various and has included some real gems, such as:

The one where I hang out on a meadow by myself, and after getting a surprise visit from the Jonas brothers I and one of the lads belt out a beautiful duet while standing under a cherry blossom that showers us with pink flower petals.
Yeah...
Yeah.

In another one (and I'm pretty sure that even just admitting to having a dream of this rather violent nature will put me on a watch list somewhere), I run around a house, sweaty and panic stricken, tracking down and shooting people (not the Jonas brothers though. I think.) Every once in a while this switches and all of a sudden I'm one of the people being shot at. It's all very confusing and it's all taking place in a vacation home in Palo Alto.
Just how exactly my subconsious knows about Palo Alto I'm not completely sure, especially since my consious self doesn't. Or at least I didn't until a quick Wikipedia search informed me that Palo Alto is indeed an actual town, located in northern Silicon Valley, California.

Which sort of makes me wonder:

Is this the point where, through a series of seizure inducing flash backs and strangely familiar dreams, my past as a murdeous CIA agent unravels? Will I discover, as someone tries to steal my purse, that I have the reflexes of a feline and a level of martial arts skills even Bruce Lee couldn't keep up with?
Is that what's gonna happen? Will I discover that all my memories are not mine at all (and if so, can I just say "Good riddance, memories of puberty and general teen awkwardness!") but inplanted in my brain to... uh... protect the... uh... secrets of the CIA..?

Wouldn't they just kill me for that?
And where in all this does the third dream, the one where I binge eat wheels of cheddar cheese, fit in to all of this..?

For the love of sports (or fiancé)

As might have been hinted at in this blog before, I'm not overly excited about sports.
This lack of excitement also extends to sporting events, sports related tv shows or really anything with the word sports attached to it.
Physical exercise has always failed to appeal to me and much like me during gym class in the glory days of high school, it seems that in my genetic setup the gene that constitutes competitiveness has gone awol.

Which is fine with me. I don't pretend to be concerned with my lack of physical fitness and I figure that the amounts of money I'll need in order to unclog my arteries and replace this in red wine marinated liver of mine sometime in the perhaps not too distant future will balance out nicely with all the money I've saved on gym memberships, sports bras and protein shakes through the years.

So until recently, sports and I co-existed in a mutual understanding that we not bother each other. Sure, there were times when I felt sports overstepped the line, deleting episodes of Grey's anatomy from the tv-guide in favour of some ice hockey semi final (just how important can something with the word "semi" in it be anyway?), and sports in turn I'm sure wrinkled it's nose in disgust at my rare and flawed attempts at spin cycling or (worse), anything requiring hand/eye coordination.
But for the most part, we got on, leaving each other to do whatever it was we were doing.

I say until recently because it turns out that the man I'm marrying has a rather passionate and loving relationship with sports in general, and Australian football in particular.
At this very moment I'm sitting on the couch in the lounge room with head phones on and music turned up to a potentially lethal volume.
On the floor to the left of me is previously mentioned man banging his fist on the floor and shouting things like "Go Blues!!!", "Ball!!!" and "Bastard!!!". All of these with no less than three exclamation marks. Hence the ear phones.

Which I just now took off because I saw some rather wild hand gesturing going on out of the corner of my eye. Turns out, they came with a rather colourful audio commentary.

Again, that inside voice chanting:
"This is the man I choose, this is the man I choose..." and the realization that my relationship with sports has been altered against my will and now more resembles the one of a wife and her husbands mistress.
And knowing that this particular mistress is of the sticking-around variety I will turn a blind eye.

Cause that's just the kind of of wife I'm gonna be.
Apparently.

Soon to be a respectable part of society..?

Knowing myself and knowing that before 11 am, even at the best of times I move with the speed of a sloth, I decided to get up at 6.35 am this morning in order to be ready to catch my 8.32 am train and make it to my interview while not also resembling a sloth in matters of physical appearance.

As a result I have felt nauseous and had a blinding headache all day. I believe this to be my body's way of telling me "what the fehk you wanna job for when you can just laze around at home eating cheese all day? huh?" Which just goes to show exactly how well my rather eloquently gifted body knows me.

I hear you body.
Loud and clear.

Anyway.
Interview went well.

Or, at least I think it did though I really can't be too sure about the accurateness of this statement since the man interviewing me looked like he could be Simon Baker's long lost and even more handsome twin and for some reason the somewhat rose coloured memory of the interview is strangely distorted by a loud voice in my head chanting "must not forget I'm engaged, must not forget I'm engaged". For all I know this can also have been said out loud in which case I'm pretty sure I won't be getting the job.

Turns out, acting like a big pile of crazy isn't on most employer's list of desired qualities in job applicants. I'm saying most, because really, who knows? If I was a British production company specializing in making documentaries about sexually deviant behaviour that will then be shown on a weekly basis on basic cable in Sweden for example, a certain amount of crazy probably would be on the desired qualities list.
I'd say.
But hey, what do I know.

What's in a day

So, pretty happening day today.

Last night fiance's cousin called me up to tell me about a job opportunity that sounds really interesting and that's in a field that I've sort of been thinking about getting into for a while. I don't really have any experience relevant to this position but I thought, hey! what the hell.

Said and done; This morning I called the guy I needed to speak to and after leaving a message he called me back and now I have an interview Friday.

How's that?

I'm firmly holding all five of my galloping horses though, seeing that it is quite a desirable job and like I said, I have no experience. But, according to the news anchors at the 5 o'clock news that seem to be a regular feature on this tv right here, stranger things have happened and in fact continue to happen every day. And really, who am I to question those trustworthy perfectly made up faces with their prompters and checked facts..?
That's right. No one. That's who.

But I needed swiftly to bring out Josefine 2.0, as all the 1.0 version seemed to do was sport a look referred to as "homeless man" and look unemployable (this is part of said look, who ever said I did anything half arsed? Oh yeah, well I showed you, me didn't I?)
Anyway, after talking to this man that was so eagerly sprinkling interviews around I decided the least I could do to help things along was to get a haircut. It's been three months since the last one, to say one was do would be to gravely understate the state of this hay coloured mop growing out of my head. I called up the salon I frequent (term used extremely loosely)and got an appointment. Oh joy!

Except for one thing.

Just like Extranjera, I too experience a slight surge of panic when faced with hair appointments.

I don't enjoy them.

Not so much because of the stranger-touching-me-bit (although I will say there is a certain discomfort brought on by this, what with being Scandinavian and all) but because of the talking.
The chit chat.
The small talk.

It's not so much that I'm incapable of the physical act of small talk, nor is it that I lack the mind required to come up with subjects relevant enough to be interesting yet irrelevant enough to leave both of us with a feeling that no personal territory has been invaded.

I just don't like it.

I'm not interested. I know I might come off as a jerk but I go to the hairdresser to get my hair done, not to talk about what was on tv last night or whether Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt may be headed for splitsville or not. Which, I know, is strange since those are usually two of my favourite subjects.
What I want to do is go in, read magazines, have coffee and those mint chocolate things that come with and just relax. Quietly. In uninterrupted silence.
This also goes for when I get a massage, have my nails done, am on a plane, train, tram or bus, hang out at a café or bookstore or when I'm at the park. Pretty much most situations where I'm not actively seeking out some kind of social interaction (this is IRL we're talking I'm assuming you're assuming).
Exeptions include situations involving alcohol or backpacker-type travel.

And yes, I know.
Not doing much to help the "cold and reserved Scandinavian" stereotype, but being Swedish it's either that or milkmaid with braids and her juggs out.

Sick as a dog. Or a man.

I'm writing to you from the depts of my couch where I've spent the past couple of days in the form of a shivering sweaty pile, resembling not so much a person but some spineless jellybased creature most likely to be found in some b-grade horror movie.

Mmmm, yes.
I'm sick.

Sick to the point where I haven't even had the strength to surf the internets.
I know, crazy.

I've also been so sick that communication between me and fiance has consisted of me pointing to different things while emiting various sounds like "ugh" or "hahrr" and him then trying to desipher said sounds to try and figure out whether he should call the hospital or if it'd be enough to give me some toast.

I haven't however, been too sick to watch Oprah and be reduced to a crying blubbering wreck after seeing a small Philipino girl get to sing with her idol Celine Dion at Madison saquare garden. I tend to turn into a very emotionally unstable person when I'm sick. (Yeah right, when I'm sick...)

Today seems to be better though. But just to be safe, I might take another day on the couch.

Things to do at the airport

Aah, yes...

I'm back in Australia and with that back on the juice.

The sweet sweet juice squeezed from the millions of ones and zeroes growing off the binary tree of knowledge and also known as the internet that is.
Internetohol.

Well, the other juice too I suppose. Case in point: The lovely rum based cocktail I'm sipping (chugging) at this very moment. Mmmm, coconutty...

See one of the perks of international travel is the never to be missed tax free shopping.
Since I am not a comparer of prices when buying stuff (it's not that I have a lot of money but rather that I'm very lazy, much to the dismay of fiancé), I'm not really sure just how much of a percentage is taken off prices (although a somewhat hazy memory seems to be telling me that there are signs under the tax freed items informing you of that. Not sure. Hazy memories are not surprisingly often of the "do not trust" variety. This for various reasons that shall remain unnamed but that could have a thing or two to do with the chugging of alcoholic beverages.)and hence how much I save by shopping tax free.
However, this seems to be as irrelevant to other people as it is to me and the term "tax free" has instead become a perfectly good excuse for people to buy what would otherwise seem like an imorally large quantity of alcohol.

So fiancé and I thought: who are we to fight the system, really? and walked out Melbourne Airport with a number of bags making the clinky noises made when happiness in a bottle snuggles up against it's buddies, comfort and confidence, coincidentally also in bottles.

And now here I am, home alone surfing the interweb and enjoying a few (hrrm) cocktails on an empty stomach while fiancé is at the football. Everything is back to normal.
Only with a slightly (...) more well stocked liquor cabinet.

Sappy and gushy, I blame the hormones. That's what they're there for, right?

I will take a moment or two to reveal something about myself that might be eh... a bit sad, in a pathetic sort of way, but if you can work past the pity, I'm sure there'll be something more positive at the end of it. Ok? Ok.

When I was of the tender age of 21 (oh, to be young again) I moved continent for the very first time, to North America in general and to Canada in particular. Eventually I was going to find myself loving and never wanting to leave Canada, but those first months were a bit rough.
I say rough, but really what I mean is that it was mildly trying.

Anyways, my first few months in Canada were spent in Windsor, Ontario, which failed to have me at hello. Coming from a small Swedish town where anywhere can be reached on foot and being so used to everywhere being pedestrian friendly that I hadn't even thought about ever getting my driver's license, it'd be fair to say that I was sort of ill equipped to deal with a city built for cars.

So, after a month or so of feeling a bit closed off from the world and not really meeting anyone to really hang out with, a shameful habit that would eventually become a fullblown addiction was starting to form.
Far from dark alley ways and seedy clubs I got my fix under the bright fluorescent lights at the 24 hour Sobey's, handing the clerk money while clenching my jaws and avoiding his gaze I would then hurry to stuff my purchase in my bag, out of sight from the prying and judging eyes of others.

And then, the giddy excitement, the feeling of euphoria and relief as I flipped open the cover of this weeks Us weekly, the anxiously awaited update on whether Mary-Kate Olsen had actually been hospitalized for a cocaine overdose rather than the stated anorexia...

I was a woman possessed.

There was no stopping me, soon I had to up my dosage, and from there it was all just a slippery slope really. I mean, where do you stop? Where do you draw the line? Star? OK? National Enquirer?.
Luckily, the story (sort of) ends there. Soon enough I traded the pollution and strip clubs of Windsor for the forest trails and beaches of Tofino, a small town on Vancouver Island. With this trade came a social life and it seemed that my need for the recognition of the famous faces displayed in Us Weekly diminished.

And... yeah. There was a point to this story, and it might be perceived as a sappy one, but really I'm just quite happy about it.
The point is, that this time around, feeling a little lost while trying to find my feet in Australia, you people here with your blogs and comments and being brilliant and having stories that sometimes resemble mine and sometimes are completely different make me feel... well, like I don't need to flip through gossip rags to find something recognizable. I don't know if it makes sense, but it's making me feel more positive about the world.
Who really knew there were so many cool people out there?
I guess they're just all in front of their computers.

I'll be passed out by 2 pm

Ah yes, it is indeed 8.06 am and I am not in bed but actually fully dressed and my face fixed on and for some reason sitting in front of a computer seemingly all the way from 1986 in front of me.
The mouse doesn't even have a scroll button.
I know, hard to grasp.

The reason for this strange and uncharachteristic getting-up-in-the-morning behaviour is that fiance decided to do an adapted sort of "bring your kid to work" thing today. Except, you know, with me instead of a kid.
Turns out though, fiance works with things that are kind of secret and stuff so I'm not actually allowed in the "office" (I don't know if office is really the correct term, but it is some kind of facility residing at the top of a mountain. Yeah...), so what I'm doing is hanging out at the lodge next to it. There is coffee and internet access here, plus a really brilliant view of the mountains so I can't really complain. Except for the fact that on the computers, everything is in French. And I don't know how to change it, cause, uhm, it's in French.
It'd be kind of neat if what I wrote all came out in French as well. I'd seem all sophisticated and shit and I bet even though you might not understand what I was writing you could totally picture me smoking a cigarette in one of those fabulous cigarette holders. I think you might picture me sitting here with like a brunette 20's bob haircut as well. Or maybe that's just me.

Anyway, I've stocked up with plenty of magazines, a book, a deck of cards and plenty of internet credit. Schweet.

Oh, and I have a question: How do you post a link but make the link appear as like a word or a name instead of the actual url?
Yes, I'm sort of slow when it comes to stuff like this. And since I'm gen Y I prefer to have people tell me how to do things rather than you know, actually have a go and try and find out for myself.
Sorry. Blame the parents.