Okay, so. I feel like I write very little by way of journals lately, but I think it's mostly because I manage to get most of my odd thoughts out by way of Twitter and AIM. Anyway.

The past couple of days have been kind of horrible, but now I'm finally on the move. I ordered tickets yesterday, so I'll spend 16 hours on a train back home -- relatedly, fuck, dudes, I need to move north, the train ride alone is KILLING me -- and tomorrow my daddy will pick me up from the train station. I got ahold of Sandman for the journey (I was considering saving up the Buffy season 8 comics I got as well, but uh, not so much luck. Now I remember why I loved this show so much), and I've been running errands like crazy today.

It's much to warm for an unfit fatty like yours truly, kids. Slowly melting away. Did however get sushi for lunch, even though I overdid it with the wasabi. On the upside, my head is now remarkably clean.

I also managed to actually print my ticket, glory, glory, hallelujah. I managed to buy a printable ticket rather than one you collect at the train station, because I'm a moron, and I don't have a printer. Karin down at the train station was a darling and a half, though, and she let me print it from my email on her computer. Lovely girl.

I feel like I've been running around doing a million things for a month, but truth is, I was probably only out there for two hours. Still, though. Am dead.

Since I won't be around much for the next day or so (oh ho, like anyone would notice at this point), have meme:

1. Think of the first word that comes to mind when you think of me.
2. Go to Google Images and search for that word.
3. Reply to this post with one of the pictures on the first page of results.
4. Put this in your own journal so that I can do the same.

So, yesterday, while I was in the middle of writing and talking to Steph and being bored, my sister unexpectedly calls and tells me she's in town, and she's dropping by with both her kids (Joel and Carl, 2 and 5 years old). I went \o/ OMG I NEED TO CLEAN MY APT, so I rushed around doing what I could for fifteen minutes, which means clearing the table and taking out the trash.

And it was lovely. I love my sister and I adore her kids, and Carl and Joel loves my big echoey apartment. They ran from room to room going AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAHHHHHHH and Joel tried to drink out of the ashtray I still keep on the balcony. My grossed out face, let me show you it.

We went grocery shopping and my sister paid for the lot, so while I was waffling around making noises at flour bags and cans of beans and fruit my sister was all, "Jesus Christ, I'm paying, take the lot!" Four bags of groceries, if I'd had a roomie, I'd have been in BIG trouble, because the shared pantry is completely filled. I bought a 5kg sack of flour, it was GLORIOUS. And yet, I still forgot to buy tomatoes. Balls.

Anyway, I got a hamburger out of the deal as well, and Joel had much fun with the couches at McD's. "Couch! Jumpin' onna couch! *face plastered against the window* Caaaaaaaaaar!!" God, I'm so CHARMED by these kids. ♥____________♥

Anyway, while I'm trying to write on the Dreaded Sequel -- I have figured out the plot for the first half or so! I'm so HAPPY -- y'all can distract me with this meme:

Comment with a request to see absolutely anything on my computer. My desktop, my documents, my bookmarks, my inbox, secret stash of pornography, latest works in progress... whatever you're curious about, and I will respond with a screenshot.

Annnnnnd GO.

I'm kind of bored now, and hungry, and have paint all over, but I'm painting shit! With oils even, which just makes the whole thing interesting. I love working with oils, you know? The colors and the textures and the blend of it, and the way you can get a different texture with a different brush or just shorter or longer strokes. Also, something about the fact that you can work on an oil painting for forever and a day is kind of soothing. I can go back to that thing and add even more lemon yellow and white and dabs of vermilion to the sky to get that pearly hue of right before sunset. This is why I love painting ocean views. I can spend forever on trying to get the color of the ocean right, blues, greens, yellow, a dash of red, a little white, some yellow ochre... a dab of charcoal to mix with the blues to get that blurry line of the horizon.

God, I love art sometimes.

In other news, I have some weird looking discoloration of the skin on my thigh. It looks like bruises, but it isn't, and I have no idea what to make of it. On advice from Steph and my mother, I have called the clinic and have an appointment for Thursday to check it out. Better be safe than sorry, I suppose.

Therapy went well today, and despite a slow start, I still felt like I got somewhere. I actually think that the marathon poetry writing sessions I've been doing have helped. I get to put all my fears and insecurities and dreams and hopes onto paper and can ramble until I've sorted them out in my head. That's the way I do things, mostly, I talk until I have a solution. It's kind of zen, in a way, to actually SAY all those things, the things I've been too afraid to say out loud for fear of disappointing people. So, yes. I feel pretty good. And we talked a lot about the issues I have with relating to people my own age and my sneaky social phobias, which I felt I needed.

I've spoken to my sister and my mother lately, which is nice, because I finally feel like I'm being honest with them. It feels a lot like I've gotten past a hurdle, especially with Mom. I think she finally sees that a lot of my reactions are the same as hers, I just relate to them in a different way, and I'm finally getting that Mom might be sad, but I can tell her these things. It's still difficult to talk about, but. I actually think my breakdown the weekend before last and the resulting poetry binge has been good for me. I feel like my head is clearer, which works for me.

I'm feeling kind of creative again, finally, but I'm still avoiding The Sequel like the plague. I keep blaming Sirius, but I'm fucking stuck, and just looking at the thing makes me a little cranky. Which is a shame, because my head is full of Jesters right now, and I want to write about them. Writing about Shea kind of makes me happy, because despite everything he's such a positive person, and he may be a douchebag, but there is this sort of childish glee in everything that he does that is just so wonderful to write. All the Jesters are like that, kind of, they're like kittens, curious and wide-eyed and full of mischief. Even exploring the angstiest of emotions becomes interesting, because they're just as into it as I am.

Anyway, I'm going to get me something to eat now. How are you all doing?

I haven't done a random update in a while that wasn't me bitching and moaning about the state of my mind, so.

Looking forward to BBB, but I've gotten stuck on my mix for the moment -- I stress myself out, overthink shit, and now I can't look at the damn thing for a while. Will get it done by the end of the month at least. Steph is very useful for this purpose, because she doesn't mind petting my (metaphorical) hair while I vibrate and babble gibberish.

I'm working on being able to lean on people as well. To trust that they'll be able to hold me up when I'm feeling shitty, and are strong enough to not get pulled down with me. And believe me when I say that this is something I need to learn, because if there is anything my mother managed to bang into my thick skull it's that a woman needs to be self-sufficient. My mother doesn't like trusting people either, and neither does my sister or any other female on my mother's side of the family. Stand tall, etc. Sometimes that is admittedly not a fantastic way of living, but it works.

Anyway! Talked to my cousin Rebecca yesterday, and she sounded really happy to be talking to me, which I thought was endearing and a little surprising. Knowing full well that there is a chance she might read this, I might as well say that Becks has a really bad self-esteem and she spent a lot of her teenage years going, "Everybody hates me, nobody understands me, I hate everybody else, I hate the world, fuck you, world," on an endless loop. I am glad to see that she's growing out of it and that she has realized she does have some talents.

She had issues with her old classes way up until high school before she got real friends, and I honestly don't think it was so much that people actively disliked her, they just didn't GET her. Which I can relate to, because I got the same kind of crap when I was a kid, and when they didn't do that, I was relatively ignored, but I'm really too much of a ditz to even notice, and therein lies the difference. I'm pretty sure I was bullied in junior high, only I never really noticed until ninth grade when I was getting out anyway. Becca is a bit more sensitive in this respect. Junior high kids are bitches, but she took it personal, which is sad.

But anyway, two paragraphs of that later, I can say that I talked to her yesterday and read her blog just now, and she just makes me so proud. She's kind of like the little sister I never had -- we treat each other like crap sometimes, and we hate each other's guts other times, and we can't get along for more than an hour at a time, just like me and my ACTUAL sister, only with less age difference -- and I'm very invested in her and her little sisters. It's a thing.

In other news, I am, quite as usual, bored out of my skull, but I've been shopping (NEW SHOES) and reading (Mansfield Park, ugh) and playing Mahjong and since yesterday I've kept Dylan Moran's stand-up DVD's on a loop in the background. Speaking of, I need to download those, and then I need to force Bee to watch them, because her cultural education has been sorely lacking, through no fault of her own.

But! I have things to do, stuff to get bored with, I can't sit here and make chitchat all day, may be coming back with drabble meme news, we'll see, we'll see.

Yesterday I had a meeting with my contact person at the employment agency and he was kind of marvelous and lovely in every way, so I went away feeling pretty good about that and not anxious at all. Weather was wonderful -- not very sunny, mind, but about 20 or so degrees and I went out in a hoodie and no jacket -- and I read Crime and Punishment all the way down. No one told me that was actually a decent book.

( My day yesterday, plus a photograph. Birches are getting leafy, so you can imagine how I feel. )

Today, I was feeling lazy, contemplating to go to the social insurance office but being anxious and stupid about it and watching Hairspray videos of my favorite songs (Zac Efron, stop being charming right this minute!), and my doorbell rang. Bzuh? I thought and went to open the door. My mail man stands there, saying, "I have a letter for you, but it's huge, so I'll bring it up for you later."

( There is no amount of flail in the world to convey how much I love today as well. )

I posted Calle's (the nephew) Easter card earlier and I'm fiercely proud of him right now -- he's not even 5 years old and he can spell his own name, that's pretty cool, I think. I learned to read and write when I was 5-ish, and I'm very pleased that Calle seems to have an interest for it. Neither of my cousins did -- my youngest cousin still reads and writes pretty poorly, and she's 9 -- so it's reassuring that he's interested in it.

But I started thinking about it, and man, it's gotta be really fucking weird to learn to read. I don't know if what I'm remembering is the actual sequence of events -- I remember sitting on Dad's lap with a Pippi Longstocking book as he sounded out the words for me, and me getting incredibly frustrated and angry because all I saw was black scratches on a yellowed page, smelling that way old books smell, and I knew that there was a secret to it, a secret inside the book, because my sister and my mother used to read what I saw as virtual tomes and I wanted to know what was so special with it. I mean, I've loved stories since I was a kid, I've made up stories since before I can remember, so to have stories told to you without having to whine Mom and Dad into reading them for you was incredibly tempting. I got angry, I gave up, all the damn time, only to five minutes later come back and do it all again with a stone-faced expression and a glare that DARED Dad to say anything. Stubborn as anything, but of course. I'm my parents' child.

In my memory, it's spring, but I may be wrong. In my memory, the kitchen table is still standing in the middle of the kitchen, the way it used to before Mom decided she needed more room and bought a kitchen island. In my memory, Mom is sitting at the kitchen table, chin in her hand, watching us, Dad is sounding stuff out, I'm on his lap, holding the book, frowning and trying my damndest. In my memory, the page is nothing but a mass of sticks and halfmoons, until it isn't anymore.

I don't know if that was the way it really happened. Probably not. But the way I remember it was that it went from confusion to clarity in an instant. One second the letters made no sense, the next... "Hennes hår hade samma färg som en morot och var flätat i två hårda flätor som stod rätt ut. Hennes näsa hade samma fason som en mycket liten potatis, och den var alldeles prickig av fräknar. Under näsan satt en verkligen mycket bred mun med friska, vita tänder..."

Hey, Pippi Longstocking. She made sense.

I remember shouting, "Mom! I can READ!" and Mom laughing and Dad sighing in relief. And from there on out there was just no going back. By the time I was 11 or so I had -- and believe me, I counted, several times -- read 700+ books, counting the children's books with pictures. And then I didn't even BEGIN to count all the books I had ever borrowed from the library.

It took me another three years to puzzle out the mystery of that magical device, the clock, and that was only months after I had learned how to swim. I was 9 before I learned how to ride a bike. Everything else was kind of blah and whatever. But reading? That's possibly the only thing I've EVER been stubborn about learning, ever. It's the only thing I've been wanting to know how to do NOW, right fast and pronto.

So yeah. And here we are.

I just got this in the mail today:

( Picture! Possibly I'm the only one who cares, but. *hearteyes* )

I just about DIED. GOD, that's cute, like they didn't hold my heart in their sticky little fingers already, Christ. And as if that wasn't enough, my brother sent me pictures of his criminally gorgeous daughters yesterday (6 and 1 years old), and Yanin, the littlest, has learned to walk along things now, and ugh, I miss them SO MUCH, guys. :(

Also, interestingly, Firefox spellcheck doesn't recognize "Åsa" (or "Firefox" for that matter), but LJ's spellcheck doesn't seem to have that problem at all. Hm.

Remember how I talked about pictures before? Well, here they are.

( Getting the mail today was a little bit like Christmas Eve. Presents? FOR ME? )

I love how my days are constant roller coasters of feeling kinda perky and feeling like giving the world the finger for no specific reason other than bitchery. On the upside -- had tea and crumpets for breakfast, talked to my Bee for a little bit, and wore my spiffy Cobra Starship t-shirt. Also upside, did well in therapy (I think we're moving into phase 3 now? I feel like a puppy with a biscuit) and then I went shopping and called my mom.

On the downside, I shopped for 500kr ($50. Ish.) and called my mom. Also, roomie has bought a computer, which means she'll a) be home more and b) occupy the kitchen more than she already does. MY SANCTITY AND SHE HAS ALREADY DEFILED IT WITH HER ICKY FOOD HABITS. *cough* Joking aside, I've kind of gotten used to having the apartment to myself a lot lately, and having her around when I bake and clean is a little awkward.

I don't have much money, but for once I actually have SOME (social security, what a blessing you are), so I spent a little while browsing the kitchen ware section at Åhléns today, making eyes at the mugs and table cloths and chair covers. I bought kitchen towels. I'm thinking maybe table cloths or even CURTAINS for next month. Don't come here and tell me I don't know how to party. Maybe I'll go really crazy and buy me a book shelf!

Made chili con carne for dinner, which was actually not only edible but dare I say delicious. Making food is just getting easier and easier and takes less and less time. It's easier to just whip something up, and it's a lot easier to improvise all of a sudden. I'm baking tomorrow, though I may have to make a quick trip to the grocery store and pick up some stuff I forgot. I'm thinking carrot bread. I also have an eggless recipe on carrot scones that I plan on making later. If they're good, I may use them to woo my daddy, who CLAIMS he doesn't like sweets but shovels them down by the bucketload, the big faker. *g*

I'm a little grumpy I can't make most cookies actually -- egg allergy; can eat them when they're baked into stuff, can't crack them without getting sick -- but I've been looking through candy recipes for toffee and caramel and glazed berries and chocolate-y things that I might try out some day, just for fun.

Have been on an MCR kick today. Hi, GeeWay, I missed you.

Good day today. Look what I got!

( Pictures of... things. And bread! )

Holy crap, it's been a while since I posted. I took an impromptu kind of hiatus from LJ for a while there, but I might be on my way back. I think. The thought of going through my flist is a little scary though.

In other news, my roommate moved out this weekend -- no big deal, she found a single room apartment and decided she wanted to try not haring living space, and I totally get it, I do, it's just that she owned about 95% of all the furniture and trappings in this apartment. What I own amounts to a stepstool, an ironing board, a toaster and a water boiler. Seriously. She even took the shower curtain. My apartment is so empty, it seriously looks like nobody lives here. The only place that looks inhabited is my room. I'm floundering a little -- dude, I don't even have a fucking microwave! I don't have a table! Or chairs for that matter! -- but it'll work out. It'll have to. The most pressing matter right now is the light fixtures. The only places with adequate lighting right now is the kitchen and the bathrooms. So lucky I got over being afraid of the dark years ago.

Anyway! Have been watching fourth season SPN a lot lately. I can't take a lot of their angst for any extended periods of time (and a lot of it falls on the line of, "Christ, guys, get a grip and stop bawling," for me), but the fourth season is fascinating to me. I guess it's the concept of ( SPOILER )

In other news, I was going through my last.fm weekly stats (fun!) and I tried to figure out which weeks I listened to the least and the most music. The most is going to get tricky, but least seems to be in May last year, where the stats looked something like this:

( Last.FM babble and an aside on Tom Waits (<333333). )

Oh, yes, and I've made some headway on the gywo thingy (thank goodness for Aly and our constant mailficcing back and forth, otherwise I'd have never made word count), but as for PLM I'm stupidly stuck. Fucking Jesters. I really honestly have no idea what happens next. I've got the Beast, planted a bunch of foreshadowing, and now what? Ugh. >:| Stupid story. But at least I've got almost 25k, so I guess I should be thankful for small favors.

Anyway! Epically rambly post is hereby over. Let's see if I can amass the courage and strength to tackle my flist.

Merry Christmas everyone! Man, I miss you guys. I have to admit though, I'm a little daunted by the sheer amount of entries on my flist. What have I missed the past what, three or four days?

Got books for Christmas, books and CDs (Tom Waits! !! !!!! *flail*). Have been reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Secret Garden and now I'm in on Palahniuk's Diary, facepalming all the way through it every time I see a "Just for the record, the weather today..." On the upside, it's a great book. On the downside, nihilism is one serious mindfuck, as much as I love it. I got Diary and Rant for Christmas by my siblings, and the grin on my face when I tore off the paper was epic.

I'm writing again, in my own diary. I have ideas for stories too, but my NaNo is stuck where it is. I'm thinking of making it a New Years Resolution to finish it. Had a moment today, where I was convinced of my own creative uselessness. I'm not a very good artist in any way, though I certainly have enough shittiness to spare.

Anyway. Christmas with the family is not so conductive for keeping up with fandom and the flist. Hopefully I'll be back more after New Years, we'll see. I miss you all, anyway. ♥

Today has been a day of accomplishments. I baked! Well, mostly. Mom did the batter, but only because I can't crack eggs on my own -- and by can't I mean, literally, I get sick like a dog -- and I did muffins and coconut thingies with chocolate and all around it was pretty successful and nothing got burned. And I helped Mom make meatballs too. Fun! I took pictures, but I figure I should spare you. Oh, I also made an icon! Very advanced and complicated, I know, not at all just cutting out a 100x100 piece from one of my photos, oh no.

My babies are here too! Joel and Carl, and they're big and lovely, and hey, guess what, my darlings, it's Christmas!

Alsoalso, RAY TOOOOOOOOROOOOOOOOOOOOO. ♥ X INFINITY. Everything we can do they can do better, they can do everything better than us! Everything we can think of they can think faster, they can think everything faster than us! (So sorry, I promise I'll stop butchering random showtune lyrics any day now.)

Meme:
1. Open your Winamp/iTunes/WMP
2. Put the shuffle-mode on.
3. Find a picture of the first 20 artists. If the same artist comes again, skip.
4. Have your f-list guess who they are.

( I'm a dork. )

Christmas spirit in the Eriksson household, people! Or not. My sleeping schedule right now makes me want to punch people, but on the upside, I got things done today. Like say showering! And gift wrapping, and cleaning! Not flist though. Alas.

( Pictures of things I've made. Poorly. )

'Sup, guys. I'm back in the land where the snow lies deep and the sun never shines, fucking finally, and it only took me, oh, what, 20 hours or so. Yay. My shoulders are killing me, it's fucking freezing, I'm rank like a rank thing, and my throat is achey, but I'm home.

( Bigass picture diary-esque picspam of my journey into the great white north, also known as Ullatti. Features snow, more snow, Christmas lights and my unfortunate face. )

Okay, I finally figured out how to show you guys this pic -- S-M-R-T -- but I really need to brag about how incredibly pretty my family is.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... my cousin, Linnea. She's nominated to be St. Lucia of our entire area (county? State? WHAT IS THIS FUCKERY?) and I of course think she is the prettiest of them all.

( Look how pretty she is, omg! )

NaNo update: slooooooooooooooow. Slower than usual even.

When you see this, post ten things you love about your hometown, your homestate/province, home country, etc.

Uh. I suppose Ullatti, then.

1. Midnight sun
2. Few streetlights, so perfect view of the stars
3. Northern lights
4. Lots of greenery; it's beautiful.
5. Nearby water.
6. Pretty close to the best burger joint in a hundred mile radius.
7. Close to Pajala market in summer.
8. Our house, which is the best house.
9. Mountain just next door.
10. Fresh water.

( Some fandom ramblings, re: NCIS. )

( And here we go with the family angst again. It's working out better now, though, I think. )

Anyway, it worked out okay. I'm buying bananas today and making chicken-curry pizza with pineapple (can't make curry pizza without bananas, people, it would be blasphemy). And then I'm sleeping some, because Jesus. Snore.

I just had a three hour grammar midterm. Explaining prepositions is arguably one of the most annoying fucking things in the world. Gah. It probably went to hell, because I suck at explaining grammar.

On the upside, this particular midterm didn't require me to get out of bed at all today, so I basically woke up ten minutes before the start of the thing, ate my oatmeal and finished about three minutes ago. I love home exams.

I've been reading Pride and Prejudice again (although I should be reading Heart of Darkness. Damn you, Austen, damn you), and it is definitely one of my favorite books of all time. I can quote bits of it. That's just sad. I love it though, and I need to read the rest of Austen's book. Sad truth: I've never read more than P&P and Sense and Sensibility. I know, I know.

I talked to my sister yesterday and she was lovely and talkative and the best sister ever (which she usually is when we're a couple of miles apart). I love her stupid, responsible, mini-mom face.

My hibiscus bloomed yesterday! Of course I had to take some pictures of it, and then I found some pics from this summer that I was planning to put up and never got around to, so here, have another mini-picspam.

( It started with a flower, and then it just randomly turned into a summer spam. )

I can't believe the Matrix thingy is posted. It's kind of a big thing for me -- my first real fic with a beginning, a middle and an end -- so I'm still kind of ridiculously excited. It was fun to write too, although I still wish a little that I had written it more independently of the actual movie, but the Brothers Way bits makes up for it. Bee accused me of being a "broyay sap". *g*

I want to write some more -- I have ideas! Scenes! Things! -- but alas, I have theoretical linguistics to study for.

"For two phones to contrast meanings, there must be some phonetic difference between them. The minimal pairs seal [sil] and zeal [zil] show that [s] and [z] represent two contrasting phonemes in English. They cannot be allophones of one phoneme because one cannot replace the [s] with the [z] without changing the meaning of the word. Furthermore, they are not in complementary distribution; both occur word initially before the vowel [i]. They are therefore allophones of the two different phonemes /s/ and /z/."

Fun, huh? Yeah. *sigh* Only four billion pages to go. Is it weird that I actually look forward to the exercises? Bleh.

On the upside:

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Victorian poets? Can get it right sometimes. Damn, Hopkins. Also, another plus: turns out I may not hate The Great Gatsby as much as I thought I did. I sat down and read about 70 pages of it today in the library and I quite liked it, actually. Much more than I did in high school. Times do change.

I miss my sister. And my nephews. Isn't it Christmas yet?