Today, the first snow fell. It wasn't much, and it didn't settle because it's still a little too warm out. Tiny flakes, floating slowly but determinedly down towards the unfriendly ground. Like leftover confetti from a party in the clouds, bearing a festive promise it was not able to keep. I'm starting to get used to that sort of thing now.

I have been idling my way to stardom today. I slept until noon, which almost never happens, and haven't left my pyjama bottoms since. I put off showering until just now, so my hair is still a bit damp, undecided as to whether or not it feels like behaving. It's just one of those days. Again.

I feel like Heather Armstrong's sub-heading, "All about my stupid, boring life", would be very appropriate for my journal nowadays, and whose fault is that? Entirely my own. I admit it: I'm not even making the slightest effort to have a life at the moment. This is mostly because of my being afraid my social life will start overwhelming me again (being one of those people who is physically unable to utter the word 'no', this can happen quite suddenly). Does the 'My flat is my world' philosophy help, even the slightest bit? Probably not. Am I happier this way? I doubt it. Do I acknowledge the possibility of a logical connection here in any way? Certainly not! Where's the fun in that? I like learning things the hard way. Gives me stories to tell my future grandchildren (of whom there will be how many if I keep up this routine?).

 

So that went well... I completely forgot about the alcohol factor of Saturday nights, and being the perfectionist that I am, I need a sober proof-reading of everything that gets posted (or indeed written) here. Said proof-reading? More than revealed my somewhat amputated intellectual state of last night, which basically means that I end up having to combine the two topics du jour into:

Wittertainment Weekend! Now doesn't that just sound good enough to eat?

I'll be with you shortly.

Listen up, people! I am officially making you a promise.

My promise is this: Until New Year's, I will blog every day. Every single day I will post something, big or small, for you to read, chuckle at, cry about, roll your eyes over or just have show up in your feed burners. I swear on my red KMB peep-toes - and you know I would never joke about them.

For this resolution to work, though, I will need guidelines. I mostly sit down to write after a long day at school, and nine out of ten times my experience is much like this:

Brain: 'Ooh, I feel like writing! Writing lots! I want to write about the heavy, important things in life, or about how difficult relationships can be, or maybe even something witty yet insightful about popular culture!'
*turn on Macbeth*
*open Scrivener*
Brain: '...'
Fingers: *typing* www.facebook.com *press enter*

Yeah, I know, excuses excuses, but this time I really mean it! Like, really-really!
Or, you know, I'll give it a shot.

So I'm thinking a sort of Theme of the Day thing might help me along.

Munchies Monday - Mondays I'm usually tired, but if there's one thing I'm never too tired for, it's food.
Troubled Tuesday - This topic is a bottomless pit. I know how to cry on command.
Wicked Wednesday - I feel like the bitch in me needs to be aired out more often.
Things I Love Thursday - A lazy post-choir-rehearsal entry about mainly girly stuff and the joys of it.
Friends and Family Friday - Just because they deserve more entry space.
Soul Food Saturday - Books, music, films and all the other cultural stuff that makes life a little better.
Substantial Sunday - Because Sunday is when I have time for that sort of thing.

So the question is, should I ride with this, or do any of you have suggestions for improvements?

So I'm not really in the mood writing, but having my last post as my most recent was a little too emo pathetic, even for me. Also, it seems there is a thing or two that needs clearing up:

This is a blog. More specifically, a Livejournal. A journal is a dynamic piece of writing that records moments in life, and as life changes, so will the content of the entries. This means, for example, that just because I write something that is not light and chirpy, this does not mean that you have to worry about me for days. I am not suicidal; I am female. I am also fine now - if I needed to talk, I would have phoned you by now. You should know that by now.

Secondly, just because I mention The F Word in a post, it does not mean I am going to develop an eating disorder. Also, if you had actually read the rest of the entry, you would have noticed that the point of that particular post really was something entirely different. I am rendered speechless by reactions like this, especially seeing as Julie is a close friend of mine and, again, should know me better than that.

Finally, I hate that I have to make excuses for myself because of this. I am a person. This is my blog. Just deal.

So I'm setting up some rules:

- No complaining that I don't write often enough. Really. The nagging does not work, and you know as well as I do that my moments of bloggy greatness are always spontaneous, and also unstoppable. You are not missing out on anything.

- I have to be allowed to not be happy all the time. I cannot edit away all the bad bits just because they make you uncomfortable. And, you know? That goes in real life as well.

- I am a woman of few, but precious opinions. Just as you have to be allowed to disagree with me, I have to be allowed to disagree with you.

- My life does not consist solely of handbags, shoes, makeup and bras. I know a few of you like when I focus on those kinds of topics, and by all means, I love my bras, but I don't really have much to say about them. They are pretty. They are expensive. They fit me. But if you want to know what will look good on you, just step away from the computer and ask someone who is paid to know that kind of stuff. I am not a trained professional, I just buy bras that fit. And you know how I learned what fit me? I went shopping. And besides, the exact contents of my entire lingerie collection is not going to appear here. A girl needs to have her secrets.

I think that's it. This is my journal. You choose yourself whether or not you want to read it, but if you do, you need to keep in mind the operative words, my and journal.

You like it when I'm strict, don't you?

My fingers have been itching to blog ever since I left for Italy. Ideas have been popping into my head at the most unexpected times (resulting in a couple of inappropriate laughing fits), and I have been yearning for my darling Macbeth like a  scantily clad Hollywood starlet for boob tape. 

I had forgotten that being reunited with my beloved would also mean a return to The Rest: assignments, deadlines, stress, washing up, Visa card troubles, an annoyingly lovely ex, laundry, parents, guilt and to top it all off, a drinking water bacteria which causes me not only to dehydrate, but also to be deprived of my double americanoes, the stuff that was born into this world to get me through times like these. Stupid.

So here I am, sipping my almost-cold Friele Breakfast Coffee (made from pre-boiled water), in my underwear and red felt slippers, feeling semi-creative, semi-awake and beyond pressured because of a certain morphology assignment due tomorrow. I'm telling you now: It is very, very unlikely that you'll find anything more entertaining here than a meme or two for the next week. I know there have several times before been more than a month between posts, but as you may or may not have noticed, I'm trying to pull myself together in the blogging department and actually give you all a reason to stick with me, if not through Hell and high waters, then at least through a silly little bacteria epidemic.

I suppose a quick retelling of the Rimini story is in order (Giss was right when he pointed out that it sounds more like a supermarket chain than a town!). Well, it was good, it was very good. Exhausting, though. We came second among the ensembles (less than 16 singers), and it felt great to have done so well, and also to have beat a couple of extremely good choirs. The winners were entirely deserving of their medal, and for a brief moment the world made complete sense.

Yesterday, when I was surfing about, trying to regain my pre-weekend energy level (and, it has to be said, failing miserably, thus resorting to watching downloaded episodes of Six Feet Under instead), I found an entry concept on Alyndabear's blog that I thought would be perfect for less-than-creative moments like these: The love/hate list. It's like the perfect mix between a meme (fill in the blanks...) and an plain old update (... with whatever you like), and is manageable even for me, even today. So here it is, my very first love/hate list, and possibly the last you'll hear from me for a week or so. Of course, knowing how I react to stress I'll probably end up blogging loads when I should instead be explaining the different aspects of locution, illocution and perlocution and providing my own examples, but at least now I'm making sure that won't be out of guilt.

It is becoming blatantly obvious to me how only posting ’pieces of substance’ totally kills my funny (and my will to write at all). Instead of succumbing to the evil perfectionist in me, I’m bringing out the fairy floss.

Ask me on Monday what I’ve been doing this weekend, and I’ll probably say ”oh, you know, nothing much”. I’m telling you now: I’ll be lying. This weekend I have turned to the dark side.

Well actually, I’d rather say I’ve turned to the bright side, but anyway, you know ’the other one’. This weekend I have spent about eighty percent of my waking hours - the eighty percent not being spent rummaging through the fridge, watching Six Feet Under, shopping or pampering - becoming acquainted with a particular breed of blogs, namely, beauty blogs.

I am known to many as ’that girl with all the shoes’, ’the girly one’ or more disconcertingly, ’the one with all the expensive lingerie’, and it is true, I am a very girly girl. What can I say? It’s fun. And although it can be time-consuming to a degree that no outsider will ever comprehend, it is also rewarding in ways that only the true GG (Girly Girl - I felt an abbreviation was in order) is able to appreciate. Of course it’s a waste of time; we know that two coats of mascara and religious moisturising will never help cure cancer, but in our defense: neither will football.

For the past two days I have got to know a woman who takes a picture of her outfit every day, because, and I quote, ’It takes so long to figure out what to wear most days, I might as well journal it!’ There’s Princess Poochie, who spends all her money on supporting a rather expensive shoe habit, stating her defense in her sub-heading: ’When you can't do something truly useful, you tend to redirect that pent up energy into something useless but available, like snappy dressing.’ I have got to know a girl from Bristol whose makeup blog has inspired me and made me laugh throughout most of the weekend (and, to be quite honest, it’s thanks to her that I’m brave enough to ’grow down’ a bit). There are hundreds of girls like these who keep journals about one of the most politically incorrect subjects known to (wo-)man, and you know what? I think it’s wonderful.

Because there is something thoroughly satisfying about a good makeup day. And what’s more, it’s nice to not feel guilty about that.


About three years ago, I had an experience of the kind I thought was reserved for those enigmatic creatures who make up ’the A crowd’: A friend of mine told me that, when she went shopping, she sometimes caught herself thinking ’What would Sjokoladepiken do?’ I was stunned. Shocked, in fact; she must have been drunk, or ironic, or confusing me with someone else. I was never one of 'the popular girls' (I was fresh out of high school at the time, so the I’d say the term was still applicable). On the contrary, I barely knew how to have a conversation before I was about seventeen; I was short, chubby, had flat hair and less-than-fashionable clothing, and then out of the blue, ’What would Sjokoladepiken do?’

Thing is, I was so caught up in the surprise that I never actually got around to answering it. Even now it feels so weirdly self-indulgent that I think I’ll have to do so in third person.

You see, Sjokoladepiken doesn’t do fashionista. She hardly ever goes shopping. She doesn’t care much about changing her hairstyle three times a year; she can’t even bring herself to dye it, for all the money and upkeep it would take. She doesn’t own clothes that scream ’sex kitten’ or ’job interview’, in fact none of her clothes scream anything at all. Sjokoladepiken nails one single look, known as ’pulled together’.
I'll tell you how.


To be continued.

There are very few things in my life that are the same as when I started writing this journal 18 months ago. I've changed my hair, I wear my make-up differently, I don't live in the same place, I don't have the same problems, I don't listen to the same music, I've stopped feeling quite so bad about myself, I even like different foods.

This, though, is something I think will always stay the same: When the rain is getting me down and I don't really have anything to look forward to in the near future, I will put on my one pair of jeans and a warm jumper, make myself an enormous pot of good tea, sit in the sofa with my back against the armrest and my laptop where it was designed to be, and try to write.

Even though the last few weeks have been crazy, I am left with the feeling that they have just disappeared without a trace and that nothing has happened at all. This is, of course, far from the truth. I've been on holiday, I've found a new flat, I've been adventurous (a bit naughty, even), I've drunk much more than usual, eaten far less (for no other reason than that I simply haven't had any appetite), partied, made new friends, splurged more than ever on lingerie and come to the conclusion that no, in fact things aren't bad at all.

But then there's this rain, which washes away all of that and leaves only a big empty space where the memories and blog posts should be. I'm working with crumbs here, and whoever said that 'crumbs are also food' obviously had a pretty advanced eating disorder. I want to write something proper, something of substance, something brilliant and insightful and witty and interesting. This isn't going to work today.

I mean, the world seems to be working against me in that respect: I haven't been dealing with any particularly interesting dilemmas lately, nor have I had any shocking experiences that would make for good stories. Even the ladies at work have gone and got decent haircuts and cute new shoes. Basically, I'm doomed: I'm simply too content to blog right now. So I guess I'll see you around.

Ok, so I caved. I sat up all last night trying to piece together a post of some substance, but after something like two hours faced the fact that I had failed miserably.

Two problems:
- My picture
- The language

First things first. Now that I have my own face up in the corner of the screen every time I write something down, I feel a certain pressure. Things I write can't just be random memes or meaningless rants about work; they now have to represent me as a person. Things I write have to reflect the inner workings of my mind, and God only knows where that would get us.

Secondly, there's this: I SUCK at writing in Norwegian. Not always, mind you; it isn't as if every time I switch back to default mode my vocabulery starts seeping out of my ears, only to toughen like sap, creating a pair of original, though somewhat 'my kids made me these aren't they talented?'-looking, dangly earrings. It could just be lack of training; it's literally been years since the last time I wrote anything I personally think was worth reading in Norwegian, including my Ex.phil. paper, and most of what I read is in English, and has been so for a very long time. Yet, there is one issue that cannot be fixed with simple means like practice or ear plugs: It's Norwegian.

Norwegian is my mother tongue. It is the language in which I have spoken every day of my life, and my mind instinctively notifies me about misspellings, slang, punctuation errors and words that should be replaced by more semantically appropriate alternatives. The hairs on the back of my neck are programmed in Norwegian, to such a degree that they are still stiff from the indignation of having to see 'FRP's knuste hjerter' on the front page of one of the country's largest online newspapers this morning (I know they're having to cut down on staff these days, but did they HAVE to sack the proof-reader so early? I'm sure the sports og celebrities section has someone they can spare). When I encounter a 'school boy' where there should have been a 'schoolboy', the bodily reaction is much less unpleasant. In English, there is only one word for 'when', and the words 'to' and 'and' are so different that they are nowhere near representing the kind of threat to people's sense of grammaticality as the frequent abuse of 'å' and 'og'.

The pairing of awareness of my own mediocrity and my natural perfectionism (or 'eye for error', as a friend once called it) renders me powerless. Two hours of typing and back-spacing resulted in nothing but a two-paragraph moanfest that would barely have been worthy of said newspaper's political discussion forum. At the moment I do not have the ability to construe a text in Norwegian that a sane person would manage to read without either falling asleep or resorting to violence to make the pain and the boredom stop, dear Lord, make it stop! I am in the latter category. When posed the question 'Restore from saved draft?' I brutally ticked 'No'. People say you should kill your babies, but they say nothing about the ugly neighbour's kids that aren't even allowed to play with yours because they're rude and spoiled and not properly potty-trained. If I'm going to continue frequenting this place I'll have to do it my way, and for the time being, that seems to be the English way, which allows me to be spontaneous and funny, and not least to steal funny quotes from dozens of films. It allows me to think 'what the heck', and basically allows me to vent and relax a little without making the world my psychiatrist.

After all, that's why I started writing in the first place.

Se, så fin lj jeg har fått! Har brukt uforholdsmessig mye tid på å få den sånn, mer grunnet min inkompetanse enn vanskelighetsgraden på oppgaven.

Dagen i dag har gått med til å sitte i solen med mor og nyte fridagen. Jeg har fått fregner på nesen og nerdet en hel del, så i grunnen har jeg hatt det ganske perfekt. Nå sitter jeg i en blomstrete sofa med ryggen mot armlenet og min trofaste gamle Dell på fanget. Drikker rødvin, hører på Monika Zetterlund som synger om en stor elefant.

Jeg har ikke lyst til å legge meg og jeg har ikke lyst til å dra på jobb i morgen, og når jeg ikke har lyst til slikt føler jeg meg alltid litt bad-ass. Ikke sånn å forstå at jeg kommer til å legge meg sent eller skulke jobben, men jeg blir stadig mer begeistret for den siden av meg som forstår at å sitte i en luke livet ut ikke er noe jeg kunne klart over lengre tid uten å ha pådratt meg noen form for alvorlig hjernedeformasjon først. Hjernecellene mine går i demonstrasjonstog rundt og rundt med paroler som 'Gå din vei! Gå din vei! Dette æ'kke no' for deg!' (ja, hjernecellene mine snakker ønskantslang). Helst hadde jeg sluttet på dagen, men jeg har ikke råd til det og må jobbe i halvannen måned til og så sannsynligvis i hele juli. Jeg får vel holde ut med bråket i hodet mitt så lenge. Innerst inne er jeg jo litt stolt over at jeg makter å være såpass opprørsk som jeg er.

Nå skal det sies at man kommer langt med flinkhet. Men det er pokkers slitsomt hvis man vil snu.

And more in need of a good rant than ever!

So FINALLY, we have internet access and it feels nice. No more need to pay bills and check e-mail at work. No more lack of updatedness about the latest news. Blogging is possible again. Not today, so much, but in general. By God, it's about time.

See you soon!