Those easy, casual, difficult questions

A few weeks ago this guy came to me at work and started a small talk in the corridor. Suddenly he asks "and what do you like doing?" I got blank! empty! I hesitated and started feeling really stupid. "I don't know... there's a lot I like doing..." I mumbled, and felt my cheeks turn red as I started to picture myself from the outside like a very bad version of Bridget Jones.

I don't even want to think about how embarrassed and shy I appeared to be during those short seconds it took for someone else to call me. The thing is that I had forgotten... I really, truly and sincerely had NO IDEA what on earth I like doing!

I have been doing what I had to for so long, studying, working, cleaning, cooking, doing the washing up, doing what the girls wanted me to do, what they like doing, what others choose to do, that I truly hadn't even thought about what I like doing now, when I am an adult and not a teenager. It has been so obvious for me, so simple, so automatic. Denying my hobbies, my likes, my needs, my time, myself was just what I was supposed to do.

Since that day in the corridor of the ward 11 I have thought about a more specific answer to that question. Not to finally give this guy a not embarrassing answer (it's social rules, not that he was that interested in knowing) but to finally be able to answer that to myself.

So I started my list of things I like doing and things I truly enjoy in life:

I like being a mom.

I like being a nurse.

I like helping people and doing nice things for others.

I like taking long, long walks (specially if I walk in the company of someone who offers a nice and interesting, or at least amusing, conversation)

I like doing cards and scrapbooks.

I like reading (not best sellers) and writing.

I like going to the movies

I like dancing and parties

I like stupid movies and silly humor, I like sarcasm, too... sometimes.

I like riding my bicycle

I like taking pictures.

I like baking yummy pretty things

I like window shopping, and shopping (but cannot afford it), and smelling creams and perfumes and all those girly things.

I like painting walls and decorating rooms (although I lack the money)

I like knowing things, lots of things! I love knowing!

I like deep stimulating conversations

I like theme parks and carnivals and festivals and going to the zoo.

I like listening to music really loud while I clean and sing my lungs off and dance and jump around

I like things organized, tidy and clean, and smelling good!

I like being goofy and silly at times

I like hugs, bear hugs! and kisses and holding hands

I like music and chocolate and cakes.

I like the smell after it rained and the warm summer mornings.

I like to laugh until my stomach hurts

I like being with my family, all together!

I like those people who smile with their eyes and the whole face and just spread joy and I love those who can laugh so bad they make strange noises as they breath in.

G! I'm pretty normal after all...

This rainy summer night...

The shift was over, fifteen minutes too late as it usually is the case. I rushed thought the hallway and waved good night to the patients that were still awake. Some of them waiting for their sleeping pills, others waiting for the night medication because it's easier to stay awake than being disturbed in their sleep, others were just laying there, staring at the pale yellow walls, bored, alone, sick, full of uncertainty, in pain... The luckiest ones were already asleep despite the constant ringing of the alarms, the phones and the nurses running up and down the corridor.

I walked the silent solitary halls to the dressing room and rushed to take off my white scrubs so I could make that one phone call before it got too late. The phone call that lightens up my eyes and helps me sleep somehow. And so I stepped out of the hospital and felt the summer rain on my face.

Rain has a weird effect on me, it awakens thoughts and makes me look inside of me. It has been a long, long time since I last took the time to listen to my inner self. That made me wonder why. Why did I stop analyzing my thoughts and feelings? Why did I make such a big effort not to face my heart? Why was I afraid, terrified of finding out if I was sad? Or was I just afraid and terrified of finding out that I wasn't? What would that say about me?

One of the patients said today: "love is evil, it just sucks!" Maybe it is true, I had no time to sit and ask why he said so, I had no courage either because I agreed, in that moment I fully agreed. It wasn't until I walked out and took my phone that I realized that love has many sides. It can look evil when we think about ourselves, when we think about what love makes us leave behind, the sacrifices, the pain, the worries, the tears, the loneliness that eventually it makes us fell, the emptiness that kills us when a loved one is gone. Love can look evil sometimes but it is not! I thought that just as we do, love is both good and bad, happiness and sorrow.

I then thought about myself, my life, my present, my past.

I am now a registered nurse and have so much responsibility over my shoulders. I've fought and cried and made sacrifices and struggled and I made it! It makes me happy, but not all in life goes the way school does... That's the beauty of school, that's why I felt a certain peace and comfort while in school, school is easy, it's predictable. You study, you pass. You have boring, tedious and useless classes but you know when they will be over, you can write it down on your calendar, and when they are over, they are over for good! You give time and effort, you read, you write, you go to classes, you pay attention: you get a reward! You know what the reward will be! no surprises there, you pass! you get your degree, you finish...

Life is a whole other story... In life you have boring, tedious times, they will eventually be over, or so we hope, but we never know when, we never know how. In life you learn your lessons, you fight, you make sacrifices, you try, you try, you try... you make your best, you give your best, you get up when you feel like staying in bed, you sometimes smile when you feel like crying, you push your feelings aside to be able to cope with the practical stuff, you deny yourself at times, you work hard, you live and you never know what your reward will be.

After ups and downs, good times, bad times, patience, fights... After having tried as much as I could and maybe even more, I lost the battle and got left on my own... I got left to begin a beginning I hadn't plan, I am on my own. I am not sad, and I am not mad. I don't feel defeated, I don't feel I've failed and for a moment I thought that I didn't feel at all.

We don't know what we will get in life, it is not always as easy as school is. We lose dear ones, we see people going away, we walk away from people, we get disappointed, we get hurt, we hurt and so on... And here I am this rainy summer night, alone in my home not being able to kiss my girls goodnight but over the phone. Here I am tonight writing in the loneliness of my new unfinished kitchen, unable to sleep and thinking how life is unpredictable. Life is a lot like love, I think... it can be evil at times, It can be evil when we think about ourselves, what we give, the sacrifices we make, what is left behind... but life is not evil, life it's just like us, it's good and bad, it's generous and stingy, is happy and sad, is worth it even when we don't know what we'll get.

What to say...?

I have been gone for a long long time... I had a lot to do for College the last semesters and I have been facing a lot of trials and tests. Life can get hard sometimes, I suppose it kind of keeps it interesting and challenging.

What can I say? My little girls are getting bigger and smarter, I can finally have time to spend with them with no exams or papers in the back of my head! I love the feeling! 

Me? After three long years I am ready with school! I am a NURSE! I am proud of what I have accomplished, it hasn't been always easy. It is a little scary at times, to think that soon I will have all the responsibility on my shoulders, no instructor to check up on me... At the same time it feels so great!

Now life is changing for me in all possible ways, today I feel like I am standing at the edge of a cleft and about to be pushed. I can see darkness, I can feel the uncertainty that awaits. I am rather scared I have to admit, but what is there to choose? It feels like someone has done it for me, but I probably, mostly certainly, gave them consent to do so... 

I am jumping, jumping to "come what may"... I hope I have grown wings of my own, wings strong enough as to carry my two little children in my arms as we fly and float, and float and fly and get blown by the wind at times... My arms are strong, that I know! My heart is brave and warm enough to protect them, comfort them and love them every minute of every day.

I am scared, but once you faced your fears, they're gone.

It Has to be Skyltmax!

I've order my new name tag today! I have been all over the net trying to find out the best alternative... Once again I have chosen Skyltmax! They have great prices, great colors and I am more than satisfied with the final product. You get it home quickly and just the way you want it.
Choosing a name tag as a registered nurse was a thrill!! I couldn't believe my eyes I was writing "legitimerad sjuksköterska" under my name... but it is true! the race is over and I can't wait until I get started... wearing my Skyltmax name tag, of course!
If you are in need of some to yourself, or any other kind of signs, just check out their website at http://skyltmax.se/  (I don't know if they deliver outside Sweden, though) Have fun making your own name tags and signs! They even have pink now!

I just have to post this

It's been so long! I have a lot I want to post about. The girls figure skating show, Emily's teeth, school!!! OMG school and the stupid paper..., Disney on Ice, and well... a lot really but I don't have time today. The last month writing anything that wasn't the paper for college seemed sacrilegious.

I just have to post this, you know, talking about this silly things we do makes me realize that life is so much more than obligations, chores, school, work...

The girls got the habit of calling people they like silly names, and I loved it! Olivia is now Oly-Bolly (and I laugh every time because it makes me think of olibollen, the dutch pastry... my sweet little girl looks like a very unfortunate one being so skinny) Emily is Emy-penny (it was hard to find a Swedish word that would rhyme with her name, and it suits her since she saves every crown she gets) and Nicklas is... tah-dah! Pappa-Natta (and YES! if you know Spanish you know why he got it! it's so funny!!! alternatively he is called Grumpy-bumpy)

And no, I didn't get my silly name yet! You might suggest one by leaving a comment. 

Now I gotta leave dinner ready and go to work!

Christmas Pics

Here are some pics from the Christmas week...
Not in the mood to write a long post, enough to say that we all got the flu but I am the only one with a remaining headache, eight days and counting now... I accept suggestions on witchcraft or shamans or whatever! I need it to be over soon or I will become a bitter, resented, sad, depressed, cynical freak. (And the reason why I am not in the mood for writing is because the process is speeding up like a maniac)
Chronic pain = bad mood. (period)   

Opening the tree

decorating the tree

decorating the tree with the flu

daddy had to help

my marzipan snowman

and my marzipan Santa's helper

and all the things the girls and I made with marzipan (and ate the rest, obviously)

the gingerbread house

and all of the above

the kitchen through the tree

the tree

Sankta Lucia celebration

We had the girls celebration of Sankta Lucia the 13th of December. Olivia wanted to be Lucia, Emily wasn't much for the hot spot and decided she would be a "tärna", and that would be one of the girls marching behind Lucia in the procession.  
No, the do not assist a religious kinder, it's just a national tradition and nowadays it's not only Lucia, tärnor and "stjärngosse" (those would be the guys in a white dress and the kinda KKK hat) but also Santa helpers and gingerbread cookies, but my girls where never interested in being anything but Lucia or the girl behind her.

Here are some pics.