ahhhhh

How could I forget? It has now come back to little bad me that the subject of my entry was to be:

"How to influence changes through internet".

Wow, you might be saying now. This should be really useful information. And yes it is.... for me. In short, following on my list of things that made me sad a few days ago, I have now an (even more) wonderful man who cooks for me and takes care of me and made me feel like a princess yesterday!!

You might remember my complains about being sooooo so tired, possibly due to too much time spent breathing in hair colours when I should have been working. So went home earlier than planned, skipped the gym, and just sat down in the sofa which has now found its preferred placement in the kitchen (I promise it loves it there!! giving colour to the whole room. Poor living-room though, ever since the red sofa moved into the kitchen, we have mostly abandoned the living-room - should perhaps think about renting it out...). With a book and a blanket as best company, I then spent most of the evening in my little hide-away. Watching, once N. arrived a few hours later, him cook and giving some probably very irritating tips from my princess seat, while partly reading but mostly enjoying N. cooking without any t-shirt and with a green beret as a chef's hat (some Portuguese tradition I would guess..., and yes, it is a good idea to put water to boil if you want the pasta cooked...). Paradise!

???

I was going to write a really cool and interesting blog entry, but the did something else in between and have now completely forgotten what it was all about. Miss scattermind!

tired hair?

New hairdo - skipped lunch and went for a late appointment. Then back to work. The idea was to work some more but feels like someone poured all energy out of me. Could it be the colours - breathing in toxics for 1h? Or could it possibly have something to do with the complete darkness outside? So cold, so dark and me, so tired... will go home now and hope for more energy tomorrow. At least my hair turned out nicely :)

Wonderful winter day

Walking into work this morning made the often asked question; "do you actually like living in Geneva", even more futile than usual. Check this out:

That's when I decided to walk in rather than taking the bus! Look at all that snow!!! Zermatt here I come (well, on Friday)

A bit windy and quite cold, but the sun is shining and everything so beautiful :)

Christmas decoration on a tree, singing a quiet song in the wind.

today's recipe for feeling sad and tired

• To never get any spontaneous gifts - not even small tiny ones. Only gifts so far have been for christmas and my birthday, plus a candle found on the street once.
• To never get flowers, not even one, and knowing that you will probably never get any as someone doesn't like 'dead flowers'. But 1) I do, and/or 2) he could buy me a plant.
• To be the one cooking 95% of the time.
• To be the one cleaning 100% of the time.
• To do dishes approx. 40-50% of the time.
• To be the one that buys groceries approx. 80% of the time.
• To be the one always washing the sheets although he has a washing machine at home.

I get compliments. And that is nice. But they are for free and don't require a lot of effort - hence easy to give away.

An unhappy sad green fairy today, who's also irritated with:

• my colleague's constant talking and highly irritating voice and laughter.
• the fact that the same colleague - although only here since 1 month and only planned to be here for 6 months in total - has managed to get a new big screen for her computer and a new better chair! reason - her back problems. My shoulder problem due to repetitive strain injury however went by without any improvement although I mentioned that the reason was my position in front of the computer.
• the fact that some people here manages to get high salary raises while others get the answer that their bosses tried but only managed to negotiate an extra tiny sum per year for you, but will try to get you a nice end of year bonus - ooups, no bonuses this year...

Anyway, i'll stop this ranting now as it makes me even sadder.

A good weekend to you all.

any stalkers out there?

well now is the time to show your faces, or not, as i have added the 'followers' gadget to my blog. my hope - to see if anyone actually reads my scattered thoughts since my supposed readers are a bit scarce with the commenting ;)

so who will be my first proclaimed stalker?

tired...

So tired today. A bit better now, but after lunch it felt like i was going to topple over and wake up with the different letters of my keyboard glaring back to me from my face.

Most days i'm ok, but then some, like today, it feels like the digestion of lunch takes away all my energy. I know a lot of people get a bit tiredish after a heavy lunch, but I cannot keep from wondering on days like today, if my slowed down metabolism due to my thyroiditis problems - meaning that my body has to work twice as much just to withdraw energy from food - is not causing this great tiredness. My body goes half limp, my eyes fall down to an extent that my colleagues make fun of me, and i can hardly keep my head up - my only want: to lie down! This happens sometimes after lunch, often after breakfast in the weekends, and more rarely after dinner. My lazy body (as a doctor nicely called it, although what's lazy about it working 100% at all times in order to just about manage i'm not so sure) would very much enjoy siestas, actually, on days like today, it's basically screaming for a break. But no place to lie down in the office, not even for 5 minutes.

hmmmm would this go away if i decided to start taking the pills? falling in a grey zone and having to make that decision myself is hell.

Bombing with books....

Impressing this young Iranian girl, Hana Makhmalbaf, from a film-making family, who made her first film at the age of 8 (one which is still forbidden in Iran), and just filmed a movie about children in Afghanistan in the wake of the destruction of the Buddha statues.

At one moment she quotes her father, Mohsen Makhmalbaf ("Kandahar"): "If you had bombed Afghanistan with books instead of bombs, the country would not have had to suffer so much".

Hence through education you get a lot further with less sacrifice than through war. Quite self-evident I would say, but regretfully not everyone agrees.

i choose freedom

Read this morning about the increase in people wanting to build walls, the higher the better, around their houses or wanting to live in so-called 'gated communities'. And I can't get my mind around why people want this? Especially not in Sweden!

I mean, I also want a big nice secure lock on my door (although I lived a couple of years in an apartment with a door that hardly closed and felt more secure than in my current one with bolts - which I did not chose to install). But that's it! I don't want to live behind a wall - hidden from other people but also closed away from any view and feeling of the neighbourhood. Choosing in fact to live in a luxury prison.

In addition, neither the gated communities, nor especially the individual walls actually provides more security according to research, since burglars easily make it over the wall and well inside can work on unnoticed. I couldn't imagine choosing to live in a neighbourhood like that, where when walking down the street you walk between walls, hence with none of the normal feeling of security by the light tickling out of windows, by the presence of other human beings, with no view of the gardens, but only sterile high walls, and with no view out once inside. Regretfully approx. 1/3 of Swedes disagree with me and although the regulation in most places makes it difficult to get the right to construct walls around your house - it is probably only a matter of time before it changes.

But why? Why do people want to put themselves in prisons? Me, I choose freedom any day!

pills or no pills, that is the question

so, went to see this new doc last week - a specialist in endocrinology, basically meaning a specialist in the different hormones of your body - and he called yesterday with the results leaving a message on my phone.

i have this thyroditis problem, nothing very bad or dangerous, but just something that makes me more tired, scattered minded, more easily cold etc. and which is probably also working a bit like a second contraceptive as it diminishes my possibility of getting pregnant ;)

anyway, i'm in somewhat of a grey zone. outside of the normal levels, but not far enough to be in the 'here are your pills, take them and shut up' levels. so basically, the decision is to either start taking a daily pill to boost my hormones levels (T4) since my body has decided to develop lots and lots of antibodies against my thyroditis gland - in short to attack itself (according to my ex-doc, it is as if my body was driving with the gas pedal pushed all the way down to do...50). or not start taking a daily pill.

there would be a trial period for 3-6 months, at the end of which we would check the outcome to see if it has improved my life and then either stop or continue the treatment. and the pill normally does not have any secondary effects since the body is fooled to think it produced these extra hormones itself (wow, today i'm very productive indeed...). and the day i want to try to get pregnant i will have to start taking the pill anyways to 1) boost my hormones to actually be able to get pregnant, and 2) when you're pregnant supposedly the thyroditis has to work 30-50% more than it normally does - hence not possible for my poor gland.

or i could chose to do nothing, get regular check-ups every 6 months, and wait until the day i want to have kids.... not taking any pills is part of the philosophy i was brought up in - a headache? drink more water, have some sleep, try to relax, get some fresh air... but not: take a pill.

anyway, what would you chose?

the joy of the first step towards my own baby

Had a meeting with my boss today about lots and lots of different things and in the middle I sneaked in an idea for a new project that I've been thinking a bit about lately, ever since I became the 'Civil society empowerment' responsible at my organisation.

Not only did he listen to what I was proposing, but he was very encouraging and thought this idea was a lot more interesting than this other one we've been working on for some time now.

So everything cleared with my boss, now I only need to sell the project to possible donors - perhaps not as easy a task. But it felt very good to have my idea encouraged - perhaps it will even grow into a baby with time :)

my silhouette...

having become a bit tired with my silhouette lately, and even more so with the floppy fat that likes to create a sort of truck tyre on top of my trousers, i have decided to try to go to Silhouette a bit more often. Kind of a cheesy but rather good name I guess, I have been getting lazy going there the past few months due to various vacations and the fact that A has left Geneva and hence our once-per week rdv have been cancelled.

What I most often do: prepare my bag in the morning and bring it into work just to let it sit there for one day after another as kind of a bad conscious, but not bad enough to actually make me do something about it.

What I did today: took my a*** out of the chair and went to work on my new and improved silhouette, at Silhouette ;) 30 min of cardio plus about 20 min of weights, not too bad especially since i'm going tomorrow evening as well (the instructor being a friend it's difficult to get out of it, especially now that my boyfriend has started going as well, he just received a free trial month so he will hopefully be a good motivator). Result: feeling tired in many parts of the body and worse so, in my head. This is always the problem when I go during lunch and the reason why I mostly go after work.

Exercise is supposed to give energy, and probably does in the long run, but in the very short run it snatches it all away. Hence me being tired, and my silhouette soon that of a very sleepy, possibly sleeping person.

in the footsteps of a 3-year old

I had promised to baby sit my god-daughter’s brother, or rather, my cousin’s first child this weekend and was pleased to leave work on Friday, but also a little bit worried - how would this quality time with my favourite 3-year old go?

Well, good. It all went good. Except for a short moment of tears on Friday evening after 'mamma' when falling asleep, he was as close to an angel any mischievous 3-year old with a sparkle in his eye could be. And it was all very lovely, and exhausting. At the end of it all, N and I quickly fell asleep in a sofa each - how do parents do it? Do they eat special super vitamins? And we only took care of one, easygoing, albeit full of energy, kid. How about if you have 2? Or 3? or..... And if the kid won't stop crying/screaming/make tantrums? hmmmm perhaps I need a few more years of me-time before engaging in anything so tiresome, albeit lovely and fantastic ;)

So in short what did we do?

Friday night (only a few hours of disposal):

• play doh ice-cream making with a new machine - resulting in concentration, happy smiles, and small pieces of play-doh all over the (newly vacuumed) floor


• 30-40 minutes of monster chasing - A's and mine all time favourite, albeit not the neighbour's - hence the reason we ended it all
  
• a bit of movie in bed (yes, my brain had a close-down and i suggested this stupid idea, making me have to then ask A. 4 times to stop watching the movie....)

Saturday (a full full day):

• 9.00 I wake up, thinking to myself that we were very lucky that A didn't wake up earlier. 2 second later i heard his voice asking for 'mamma' - luckily though I was accepted as a substitute since mummy was 'working' ;)


• breakfast - 3 petit suisses (on the shopping list directly), some juice and a little bit of bread - although mostly the buttery part


• drawing with the new colour pencils and the winnie the pooh book (the favourite of the moment, almost completely replacing McQueen)


• A and I leave for a walk, N takes off to get a haircut (good excuse for getting away from us for a while - understandable though ;)


• Swans (mums and dads) and other birds (small/kids) are swarming around some kids giving them old bread - luckily for us, some nice parents gave A some bread to through to the birds - happiness!
  
• Boats, boat accessories, boat equipment, jeeps (pulling out boats of the water) and anything else to do with boats, getting them out of the water and cool cars. The walk down by the lake takes very long when you stop every 5 meters to check something out for 5-10 minutes per item ;)
  
• Another boat - the 'mouette' this time (the kind of bus-boat that brings you over the lake) since it would have taken us hours to walk the whole way. Plus I figured that boat-loving A, who has already been on both motor and sailing boat, would love it... stupid little me... well, first he did - loved the idea of it, loved the yellow boat that was approaching. But then when we were to go on it, it was 'i don't want to go on the boat', 'i don't want the yellow boat', etc. And what did mean me do? Give in? I thought about it for a second, but figured it was probably something that would pass, so I carried a not-so-happy A onto the boat while talking reassuringly to him about the slowness and safety of the boat, about all the other kids on board, and about me holding him very tight in my arms. And it worked. He stopped making angry noises almost directly, and, half-way over, to comment on things we saw. And then we had to stay and watch all the yellow boats arrive and depart from the stop in Paquis for approx. 20 minutes until I said enough - might have been standing there still otherwise ;)
  
• Ahhhh - the joy of watching everything carefully - the next big thing was one of these hooks that pulls the boats out of water - or 'a broken bike' if A was to decide. We climbed up and had a close-up look. Wow!
  
  
• Bains-des-paquis - we saw the bridge/tunnel leading there from the hooky thingy so had to go there. Throwing rocks into the water is very amusing when you're 3, and not so bad when you're 10 times older either - hence we stayed a long time and got to see some 'mums and dads' and 'kids' again - up on land this time.


• Sushi for lunch - well for N and me, and pasta that A's mummy had prepared for A. He licked a bit on a cucumber sushi and said irk or rather the Swedish version: blä


• Gare de routière and a long pitch stop to look at the big buses. So cool ;)


• Manor 3rd floor - toy heaven, and at the moment, christmas decoration heaven. So cute with lots of moving animals, and all these fairies in the sky :) Spent quite some time in there, watching all moving animals, plus different stuffed ones (winnie the pooh and company was a favourite of course, although A wanted to know where Rabbit was), lego and other such toys, a huge red electrical car (still not sure how i managed to get A away from there in just 2 minutes, call me Marry Poppins ;) and then the aquariums with lots of colourful fish - great for any kid! And surprise - not one whine for gifts. A mentioned a few times that he wanted something, but when I said he should ask for it for Christmas, he accepted it without any fuss.


• Bus home since A was sooo tired I carried him from Manor to the bus stop. Strawberry ice-cream stop on the way (or red ice-cream stop) - it was Saturday after all. Movie for a bit of a rest and then...
  
• Pizza! Home-made one. A loves to bake, so this was perfect. I cut the ingredients (got the boring part) while A and N rolled out the dough and decorated the pizzas. Miam. Really nice and yummy, although A preferred to stuff himself with cherry tomatoes ;)
  
• A short story in a mixture of French and Swedish (the book was in French, but all comments made in Swedish since A refuses to speak French with me. Swedish is my language, just as it is his mum's language. French was N's language, just as it is his dad's language. These things are very important and he will often translate between mummy and daddy, but at least N and I escaped that), in bed and then sleep directly. Wow, we must have exhausted him :)

Sunday:

• Oh joy - another late morning. 9h30 this time before we heard any noise. Lucky us :)
  breakfast, followed by more ice-cream making (a tip, remember to put all the play doh back in the jars or it will dry!!!!, plus remember to clean out the entire play doh in the machine before it dries and sticks there!) and a bit of a run around the house while waiting for N in the shower
  
• back to the swans again - this time with our own old bread! these swans seemed very hungry as they came out of the water and tried to feed directly from our hands - a little bit to close up for my taste... but all went well.
  
• boats of course since down by the lake, but more fun (at least for N and I) - the cool swings made out of bike and car tires down at 'baby plage'. We all had our go and were all amused. Great fun!!!

• back home through a park full of red, yellow, orange, green, purple, pink, brown and any shade of these you could imagine. running through leaves, leaf rain, picking the most beautiful ones as a bouquet for mummy.....



• lunch and McQueen for A and N, while I read my book. At the moment N touched something and made the dvd-player jump to another movie, the doorbell rang and our babysitting weekend was over! and so were we - over and out in fact ;)
  

i have a dream....

Goosebumps all over when I listen to the speech of the new president of the US, a bit in the same way when listening to the old but never outdated speech of Mr. King.

Who would have thought it, hoped yes, but really believed it - that the Americans would actually go out and vote for a partial black man answering to the name of Barack Hussein Obama. A country full of diversity has finally gotten a representative for that diversity! What a day.

Part I and part II of the speech given at 6 a.m. this morning.

Geneva doctors - expensive but good. Me - relieved.

Went to the doc's this morning for an annual check up (although last time was almost 2 years ago) of my more feminine parts, and after a more thorough check-up than I've ever had in my life including checking for cancer and stuff (something which I have asked to have done in Sweden but just got a 'you feel better yourself if something is wrong' stupid answer), I started to think about my doc experiences of lately. In fact, following on a problem with my right arm and shoulder due to an incorrect positioning at the computer - that doctor pushed me to do some tests and found a problem of thyroditis, which many doctors have asked about but no one has ever really checked out. A problem which, together with my severe iron deficiency and lack of B12 at the time, helped explain my continuous problems of being tired, of feeling easily stressed, of overeating in the afternoons to keep awake, of being a bit moody, and even partly the problems with my arm and shoulder as the tendons get more fragile supposedly when you have an hyperactive thyroditis, plus that when I'm tired, I tend to put extra tension in my neck and shoulders...

The thing is, this is not the first time I've been for check up with doctors - but this is my first really good experience with doctors. 2 in the same year, 2 in Geneva. I hope only that my doc's appointment on Friday to check the changes to my thyroditis problem will be as good. I regretfully have to go to a new doc, since the one that discovered the problem is not available anymore. Hopefully on Friday I get to experience another super expensive but skilled doctor and have this problem handled once and for all.

my boyfriend is a goldfish or was it gay.com

Saturday. On our way back from IKEA, we went a bit crazy in the car as one does, sitting in eternal lines of cars full of people trying to leave this Swedish heaven/hell. So we started to make up all these possible blog names - anything that we said became a .com, a .net, a .org and so on. Smoking Beijing.com; my boyfriend is a goldfish.com (he has a goldfish memory - asking if he locked the car 5 meters after we left it, every time); i'm hungry.org; sushi now.net etc etc

After 40 minutes of making up different blog names - and no, you would not have liked to be in the car with us, although we found ourselves very funny indeed - we finally arrived, had our Saturday sushi, stood in another line (the 20th this day) to enter a shop of disguise props and got what we needed (me: wings, feathers and green colour, him: green and white colour, green frog!! glasses), passed by another Swedish paradise and got a green t-shirt, and then spent approx. 1h going to every possible shop in Geneva to find t-shirt pens or paint - common, this is something that every shop should have no?? ;)

Exhausted. Tired. But luckily still in party mood - we came home, prepped frog/prince t-shirt, sprayed wings green, and got ready for Halloween (only one day late). Opened a bottle of Cava, V. came over with her fab red wig, attached the ears, wings, feathers and some sparkling stars and off we went. First stop: a friend's housewarming party. The 3 of us the only bizarrely dressed people there! N. going semi-crazy, scaring half the invitees, taking pictures and pushing random people together trying to play match-making, and talking to anyone who almost looked in his direction, in particular this guy who then started to look a bit freaked out so I just had to throw out a 'my boyfriend is gay.com' making V. and N. laugh there heads off while the guy in question and another person looked terrified. oooops

Some pictures later, N. realised that perhaps he hadn't been hired as the party photographer and that we should leave before everyone else were scared off. Second stop: ah that was more like it. Angels and Devils. Nurses and a gigantic sumo. A fly and vampires. Policewomen and monsters. Dreads and flight attendants. And then of course a frog, a green fairy and a red-haired devil in disguise. Great party and great pictures. And N. used his goldfish memory to forget how scary some people find a gayish frog ;)