I have been writing a long, large volume of work for some time. Actually as far back as I can remember I have had some work in progress. And now it feels like it's time to do something about it.

It will probably be in the nick of time, since more redundancies have been announced at the company I work for. Telecom is a tough place to be working these days. If you are still even lucky enough to have a job (many aren't), then those that are left have what we call here as "Survivor Syndrome"-I made the cuts, but watched 50% of my co-workers go, and the guilt at still being here while they are in the torment of job-hunting is awful.

I bought a book of literary agents, and I found one in the UK that has a street address of a city I lived in for a long while, and in which I went to university. Now, I tend to not be overwhelmingly superstitious, but I feel like it's a sign. A positive one. One I will take a chance at. I have to prepare a section of my latest work (which is not yet ready for anyone's viewing, let alone the hope of being published), so I will be spending time this summer cleaning up a section to send for review. This is extremely hard on me-I am not good at rejection and am easily wounded, so I can see some wound-licking in my future. All this, since the agent has a coincidental street address.

People often ask me where I'm from. Apparently, my American accent is not so thick-I get asked a lot if I am Irish or British. Then, when people find out I am from the U.S., I get asked a lot of questions. The first one obviously is: Where in the U.S. are you from? That's a good question, and one not so easily answered. I grew up all over the U.S., moving a lot, since my dad was in the Air Force. So it's not such a simple question. Where am I from? All over. Where do I feel like I am from? No where. Where do I call home? Whatever square of space I happen to be standing on when someone asks me the question.

It's hard not coming from anywhere. I have no sense of local patriotism. Petty regionalism jokes pass me by. I have no friends from my childhood (they all moved around a lot, too). My oldest friends date back to university, less than 8 years ago. I don't get to nurse a beer at a party with someone that I grew up with running in and out of the sprinklers. I don't have a sense of "Town X is my hometown."

So it's ironic that I am going for a literary agent based on my non-existent hometown. Then again, I guess we all need to drop anchor sometime, and let the ship rest at port.

-H

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 511 words, total size 3 kb.

So this weekend has been a bit rough, emotionally.

Then again, when isn't the weekend tough, emotionally?

As I said in a previous post, the person in my life who is closest to me in every respect (he even knows my thoughts, from two countries away, before I have even told him my thoughts), is moving. OK, he is already technically living in another country, but this is the real deal, the signature on the dotted line (this, since certain people in his environ do not like me. Hate could even be bandied about as a term here. And hopefully this means that he will not have anything to do with me any longer. Absence...does it make the heart grow fonder or forgetful?).

Since I am sick of referring to personal pronouns, let's just call him D, yes?

So D may be packing up and moving completely to another country. Yes, it's within the EU, and yes, it's only a two hour flight away. But psychologically, it could be on another planet. And physically, it feels as though a part of my insides are being ripped out (she doesn't need TWO kidneys, does she? And this liver...geez, it has definitely seen a lot of action, so let's just take that too. Oh, and the heart? Well, seeing as she won't be needing it, that goes with D, as well.)

Now, D has the chance to take a post here in Sweden and move back. But for a few reasons, he is leaning to opting out of it. This is very, very hard on me, since:

1) I am here in Sweden-am I not worth enough to move to be near to?
2) A year ago when I was job hunting and told D that I felt I didn't fit in here, he told me I was full of shit
3) I truly don't feel I fit in here, but then I didn't fit in the U.S. either. I just don't seem to fit anywhere. But the one reason that made me feel like I could give Sweden a go and just accept that I am not integrated is packing his bags and skedaddling.

Imagine how worthless and miserable I feel. The tranquilizers don't work, the Sleeping Tabs are not enough, the wine does not truly numb it all.

D tells me we can still be as close as we are today, still have as much as contact (perhaps more?), and that I am still the closest person to him. But if you pack up and go off to a new country, new jobs, new home, how easy is it to just walk away from others (again....absence? Are you listening? How are you going to affect me, Man?)? Especially when you get in a fight, and are not there to sit in front of each other and talk it out, to see apologies and friendship on the face?

Well, plenty easy. I know, I've done it. Twice. I packed up and just moved away. But since I have done it, maybe I know more now how important some people are, how some relationships we have in life are the stuff of gold, the reason we breathe, the light on the horizon, the decent beer in the tap.

I hope it doesn't take for him to lose me to realize that. I'm the kind of person, that once you lose me, you never really get me back. I'm the stereotypically jaded, guarded, untrusting....

The panic I feel is real, and growing. My fingers itch to take my passport, search the web, and move out-just start all over again in a new place, a new life, a new person. I won't make it through this, otherwise. There are some people you don't survive losing. I already lost one person that I loved more deeply than I ever knew I could. To lose another person that I love even more will be the end of me, as I know me.

Already, I don't recognize the face in the mirror.

-H

PS to D, whom I know is out there-you're the one thing I've tried to hold on to. Maybe it is not enough.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 08:44 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 709 words, total size 4 kb.

It's hot here, nearly unbearably so. The sun rises about three am, and then sets about midnight. The morning hours start off warm, and throughout the day you have to open with windows to let some air pass through. My dog, Ed, (the perfect collie), is a bit pissed off at his substantial coat, wandering around, looking for places in the shade.

I have a big garden, which I had never been keen on before. The Swedes are extremely big on nature, the environment, gardens, and conservation/preservation. It was with trepidation that I planted a garden-and extremely haphazard, I must say. I just whacked bulbs in pots in various places, scattered seeds throughout areas, and I honestly don't remember everything I planted. But it all seems to be coming up nicely, anyway. Let's see what my random gardening efforts bring to fruition.

I have also started hanging clothes outside on the line to dry. It takes almost no time to dry, and they smell like heaven. I change the sheets every Sunday, without fail (unless something comes in and makes changing the sheets more urgent, like a surprise visit from the Period Fairy). And when I take the sheets down, I invariably put the same ones back on the bed, since they smell so heavenly.

I like to sit outside on the grass and drink a beer, my MD player tucked into my ears, shades over my eyes, the Swedish sun on my back, and just enjoy. I have taken to wearing a bikini top around the garden, which is something new for me-I am extremely modest about my appearance, although getting better. I even got a navel ring recently, and since my fanaticism for running is showing up on leaner muscles and a trimmer waist, perhaps I have finally got reason to boast.

It's in moments where I am in the sun, or walking Ed, or gardening, that I realize how much I enjoy being alone. Very alone. I don't want to talk, I don't want contact, I just want to be alone. This is not so pleasant for my Significant Other, who often wants to reach out and share his day and his thoughts. And I wish I could be there to listen and interact, but everything, all the time, feels like I am treading in mud, trapped by my desire to have quiet around me and in me.

So if you're wondering, tonight I will again be drinking a nice English ale, sitting in the grass, in the sun, with the sound of clothes flapping on the line. Just enjoying the silence.

- H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 447 words, total size 2 kb.

I'm an Insomniac. With a capital "I". I have been throughout periods of my life, but this has been the longest-it's been ongoing since about November 2002. I just can't sleep. When I lay down, I spin around in bed, and all the problems and shit and hassle and stress in my life just builds and builds, and then I know it's pointless to lay there and keep trying to sleep-it ain't going to happen. If I don't even bother going to bed (no one likes to spin around in bed. And no one likes to lay next to someone who spins, so it's a lose-lose deal, really), then I just stay up. Sometimes I don't sleep at all, sometimes I can get two or three hours. I watch TV, I read. I don't write, since I can't write with anyone around me. I have to be alone, or else I feel like they will come up behind me and read over my shoulder, and I'm afraid I'm just too fucking fragile to handle someone editing me.

So I have been prescribed Sleeping Pills. Again with the caps, since these are the real deal-they knock you flat out and make it so that, just before you go to bed, you lost whole portions of your life. I'll wake up in the morning and not remember going to bed at all, nor the events immediately leading up to it. I hate losing parts of me like that. It's so disorganized. I almost never lose things, so losing parts of my consciousness really pisses me off. This is not the Ny-Quil of my teenage years, in Sweden, these pills are the real deal. I often worry I will develop too much of a penchance for them. The Swedish doctors seem less concerned about that than I would have guessed. You can buy natural sleeping tablets here in the Swedish pharmacies (called apotekets), which are made of Valerian. I have tried these, but it's really like eating Skittles, they have that much of an effect (minus the fun fruit flavors, no less).

I try to avoid taking Sleeping Pills. But I really miss sleep, and all that sleep entails. They say you never appreciate what you have until it's gone, and it's so true-I would give anything to just walk upstairs, throw off my clothes, curl up into bed and fall asleep. Naturally and at once. I miss it.

Dreams are not so relaxing-I have (for most of my life) suffered some pretty screwed up nightmares. The kind that wake you up screaming (again, not so pleasant to sleep next to me. More than once I have thought the various guys next to me would have a heart attack, throttle me, or both). Recently, to add to the potluck of fun of being my bedmate, I have taken up sleepwalking. Not the weird, arms in front of you kind. I do strange things-one night I (apparently) went into the kitchen, grabbed canned goods, and stacked them in the windows. Apparently I even managed to stack them in some sort of pattern, in the dark. I don't remember doing these things, but they are faithfully recounted to me the next morning by my Significant Other.

I wish I could dial down the crazy sometimes. Anyday now, Alice will be looking for me, wanting her Looking Glass back. And when she shows up, I'm going to give that bitch a piece of my mind...

And then I'm going to sleep.

-H

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 596 words, total size 3 kb.

If I'm in the middle of the forest, and my heart breaks...can anyone hear it?

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 02:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 25 words, total size 1 kb.

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a writer as well, on the side, but have always lacked the confidence (or connections) to try to publish. But I always knew I wanted to be a doctor. When I was in school, I got the chance to work in a neonatal intensive care unit, which is the unit where the newborns are treated-they're premature, born to mothers addicted to drugs or alcohol, or just very, very ill. And it was working there that I knew I found what I wanted to do. To work with the infants, so tiny, a perfect incarnation of a naked, beating heart. Sometimes, they couldn't even bear a human touch, their systems were too reactive.

I know the feeling.

But when I got ot university, I hit the biochemistry classes designed to weed out the worthy from the chemistry-worthless. The kind of class where you wake up with your face in the crease of the book and realize, with a horrifying sense of hopelessness and futility, that you didn't understand, the upcoming test will be failed, and that you will not be a doctor. The dream is over. I was weeded out. Now I would not be a doctor, I would not be there to cry tears of joy when an infant got to go home or to cry tears of sorrow when they didn't.

Now I work in telecom, and more and more, I wonder why. I am not going to change anyone's life by being here. Once my job was my very definition. I lived for it, I wouldn't accept anything as a limitation to my career. But when I look at the tattered signs of my life, I realize something very big and scarily overwhelming...I'm not very happy.

Sometimes I think about going back to school and becoming a nurse, joining the Peace Corp. Or to go back and take those biochem classes again, and this time not give up until I succeed. Because I have seen the life that awaits if I fail-I am living it.
In the end, I am not sure I will do anything, except wonder when the moment will come when my life can change. And if that moment comes, if I can seize it with both hands and not let life let me go again.

-H

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:12 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 408 words, total size 2 kb.

I am an American, born on April 1, 1974 to a very unique family-my father is Japanese, my mother is French-Irish-Dutch.

With the exception of my father and my grandmother, we are currently all estranged.

And they are not welcome on my blog.

My cast of characters (all names on this blog are changed to protect the innocent...and to keep me from being googled).

Angus-previously called Mr. Y, the name of my boyfriend, a lovely Englishman 12 years older than me.

Gorbachev-our rescue dog.

Mumin and Maggie-our two cats

X Partner Unit-My Swedish ex-husband.

Melissa and Jeff-Angus's 13 year old daughter and 8 year old son.

Company X-the hated and despised company that let me go November 2003 in Sweden.

Dream Job-the job I have now, in central London. I blog about it but remove the posts after 24 hours because the greatest thing I have learnt is that it's ok to vent, but evidence is scary.

Kim-one of the great loves of my life, a man who died in 2000 and whose real name is the only one that I have put on the blog. You can read our love letters to each other here.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 11:45 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 196 words, total size 1 kb.

Life is a series of stops and starts.

You find someone to love, and it starts. All of the sappy love songs are sung for you. Parts of your body, the bits of canvas skin that you always thought were innert, suddenly come to life. And your chest gets an ache when you think of the sweet consideration of the other person, that gentle tidal giving that you feel from the sweet essence of just being around them.

Life stops when love stops. The sad love songs, the ones that have you wrapped up in fetal position on the floor, the kind of music you never thought you would listen to, spells out the story of your loss in ways you could never articulate in your own words. A small routine, a small detail-going to the shops, walking past that tree, seeing a special on TV that would have interested your lost love-they all hurt with the poisoned feeling that comes with grief. And your heart climbs up into your ribcage, as far as it can go, in order to just find a cave in which to recover and feel protected.

But life doesn't stop, really. You've just hit the pause button. The tape is still playing. The sun still rises, the dishes still need doing, and the newspaper still gets delivered. Even though your heart has hit a wall at 60 kmh, the rest of you still has to move with the inertia of the living.

There are some people who make us stop inside, and never really start back up the right way again. It's as though, upon hitting the wall, the fender got bent and impedes the future progress of the tires. The car veers to the left a bit. The headlight on the front is permanently cracked. If you look around you, you can see these half-jalopies walking around, and in truth, it takes one to know one. They walk around with visible bandages on their pride, and a scent of lost wafting around the hollow of their throats.

I am one of the army, yet another imposter of the living. I had my heart broken into such tiny pieces that they all jingled together, making chiming sounds as I walked. I used a lot of tape and glue, but I was able to pass myself off as an acceptable decoy. I even fell in love again, and I found-as one does-that finding a new love healed a lot of the cracks of the old love. But, unfortunately, not all of them. And as I look forward and wonder if I am headed for another wall impact at 60 kmh, if I can get put back together again. Or even to wonder if I want to survive this car wreck, maybe being in shards will be safer.

Whoever said "'Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all" should be strapped to the front of a car and forced to feel the impact of how it feels to have lost.

Or, at the very least, to see how it feels inside of someone whose life is on pause.

-H
everydaystranger@hotmail.com

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 11:01 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 539 words, total size 3 kb.

And so it is Monday.

Again.

I looked at my calendar a lot this weekend, which hangs in my kitchen. On Saturday the 21st, in big letters, it said "Grandpa-4 years."

This doesn't mean, of course, that it is my Grandpa's 4 year birthday. It means that it is the anniversary of his death. My Grandpa (my mother's father) has been gone for four years now. Seems like so much longer.

The Buddhists have a tradition where, on the anniversary of a death, they invite the departed for a meal, generally their favorite foods. I have thought about doing this but am worried I will feel a bit silly. Also, I've only become a good cook in the past five years or so, so perhaps my Grandpa would be offended that I never made the effort to cook while he was alive. That, and his favorite dessert was a cookie called Pecan Sandies, which is impossible to get here (and for good reason-they seem to suck all of the saliva out of your mouth and turn it all to cement mix type of concoction).

My Grandpa was perhaps the most significant male relationship in my life, for most of my life (until I found a few golden apples out of the parade of total losers that became the list of men I dated). He was Dutch, and perhaps because of that, quite stoic. (I am good friends with a Dutch couple. I asked them recently if they thought the Dutch were not as openly affectionate as other ethnicities. They thought about this for a while and agreed, this was likely. I asked him when the last time he told his wife he loved her. He replied "On our wedding day, eleven years ago. But since I haven't said anything to negate this, it thus still holds true." She agreed. Stoic it is!) My Grandpa was not an emotional man, not given over to sentiment. But still waters and all that...

I never doubted that he loved me dearly. He was such a strict disciplinarian, and I often felt like such a disappointment to him, but he never for a minute made me feel that way. I remember he always had room on his lap for me. Watched my favorite show with me (it was a show called "Floppy Dog". Now that I recollect, I fail to see what in that show so transfixed me.) Let me tag along when I was such an irritating, questioning child.

My Grandpa had nothing for himself, really. When I think of him, I think of the most selfless person I knew. He served his country his whole life. He was a dedicated family man. His one vice was cigars, and even those tapered away later in life as cancer developed. He got his one shot at pursuing his childhood dream when he and my Grandma bought a farm and tried to make a go of it as farmers. It failed, but at least my Grandpa got to try out his dream. How many of us can even say we tried to pursue our dreams? How many of us just sit in the ruts that we have created for ourselves, too afraid to break out? It's just so much easier that way, isn't it?

His death shook me to the core, and I was even the impromptu eulogy speaker when the minister failed to show up at the military funeral. It still guts me when I think of it. And I miss him all the time, even though I often think that I never really knew him.

Grandpa, wherever you are, I hope you're watching over me, and if you are, try not to be too shocked at some of the escapades I get up to. And I can accept the fact that you are gone, since I know that the last words we ever said to each other were "Love you." Not many people get to say that, either.

I miss you, and always will.

-H
everydaystranger@hotmail.com

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 683 words, total size 4 kb.

I found something that helps with the pain. Something that I am not new to, but that I had sworn to give up. Something that weaves its way around the heads of so many people, people that are just seeking relief from the relay race of thoughts and anger and pain.

And the answer to the pain is...pain.

I was sitting on the couch last night, feeling particularly low. For reasons that I won't go into (now or ever, really) I am having a hard time dealing with some things in my life. The anixety and, I have recently found, depression are really weighing on me, a weight that no cocktail of precription meds seems to ease.

I looked at my hands, thinking about them. I like hands, I think they are not only useful but attractive accessories. And in looking at them, I saw on the back of my left hand, a healing scar. A burn. A legitimate one-I was taking a quiche out of the oven and stupidly over-estimated by maneuverability space. A fresh, light pink welt runs across the back of my hand now (this was quite a bad burn, after all), a scar to remind me of my stupidity.

And then my mind got it. Zzzzzziiiiiiipppppp. That's an answer.

I stood and walked into the kitchen, to remove the mac and cheese I had made (see the previous entry). It was bubbling and brown on the top, and I knew that it was going to be a meal I was going to really enjoy, although one I would punish myself for (the fat content of that must be sky-high! Extra exercising tomorrow....) And as I took the dish out of the oven, I pressed the padded flesh of my left hand against the grill in the oven. I did it fast, just a few seconds, and when I pulled back (for I could not take more), a gratifying angry red weal stood in its place.

I did not let myself put cold water on it. In fact, when I started to think about the other issues in my life that make me ache and are making me smell rabbit, I would look at the burn. "Focus," I told myself. "Focus on the physical pain. It's the only thing you can do anything about. The emotional stuff in your life that you have no control over is only going to break you, the physical you have control over. You decide. You watch it heal. You decide if you need more. The whole process is for you."

The burn is angry and blistered today. But I am grateful for it. If necessary, I will do it again. I am no stranger to "self-mutliation" as the books call it. But I prefer to call it hands-on treatment. I know this is not the answer. I know this is just an extension of things being amiss. But until something gets through and rescues me, I have to find ways to get by. It's wrong to do this...but I don't see any other way to get through right now.

Now I have to go running. Again.

I wonder when I will be well again.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 12:38 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 544 words, total size 3 kb.

Today is a holiday in Sweden and, indeed, in much of Europe. It is officially the first day of Summer, which in and of itself is something nice. But in Sweden, it is also called 'Midsommar'. Today is the day in which there is the most light-the sun will only barely set, and in general, everyone is in a good mood, hugging, drinking, and singing songs about nature and jumping frogs and whatnot. I find it a bit ironic that the celebrations are to note that the day is mostly light-mostly because it is downhill from here on, this is when we start heading into darker days in a few months.

The day is celebrated with lots of specific foods-you eat something called 'sill', which is raw herring, with small cooked potatoes that are no bigger than radishes. This you eat with a side of sour cream and chives. You wash it down (continuously) with something that they called 'Schnapps' , 'nubbe', or 'Aquavit' (literally, water of life. Which, to me, basically sums up the point of all alcoholic beverages). Now don't for one second be fooled into thinking that the Swedish version of schnapps is like a fruity, peachy liqueur. Oh, no. This stuff can strip paint off of houses it is so strong. If you put it in the freezer, it turns into a clear sludgy drink. To be honest, I am not so crazy about the drink, but then again, after four or five shots of it, anyone can be relaxed enough to enjoy schnapps.

Then you progress to traditional fare like meatballs (yes, the Swedes really are big on meatballs) and a dish called 'Jansson's Temptation', which is basically sliced potatoes, anchovies, and cream. Dessert is more alcohol and strawberries (it amuses me-the Swedish name for strawberries literally translates to 'Earth Men'. Fitting name, and makes more sense than strawberries.)

But before this monster feast, you're supposed to dance around a maypole, singing songs that involve various movements, actions, and words. The women wears wreaths of flowers on their heads. And in general, you just drink. The day after Midsummer is a day of quiet and rest-namely because everyone is hung over.

Just before you go to bed, you're supposed to pick seven wildflowers, put them under the pillow, and the person you dream about is supposed to be the person that you should be with. It;s all terribly pagan and romantic. That, and the number of births peaks wildly nine months after Midsommar here, so you know that most people are getting some the night of the celebrations.

I just can't get behind the holiday. Not only is it a tough holiday for vegetarians (which I am), but also I think it's a bit difficult to celebrate holidays that you haven't grown up with. Ask a Finn to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day, for example. Or an Australian to celebrate Thanksgiving. I think that holidays are something that you just have to be exposed to as a child in order to enjoy.

I thought I would be alone the past two nights, as my Swedish partner was due to be on a business trip. But the trip has been cancelled, and I find myself faced with having to endure the holiday. Which I was all prepared in my mind to not have to face. But he is being a good sport about it and accepts that I am not myself lately, and so the celebrations are suspended.

So if anyone wants to know, tonight I will be making macaroni and cheese. The homemade kind, not the box kind. And I will be serving him a side of sill and potatoes.

I like to think it buys me time out of purgatory to do so.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 02:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 638 words, total size 4 kb.

My friend Tom has an interesting term for "going crazy". He think the term crazy is overused, and I tend to agree. I looked up crazy, and according to Microsoft Word, it's 'mad', 'wild', 'passionate', 'extreme', and 'fanatical'. The antonyms are 'normal', 'sensible', and 'indifferent'. If that's the case, shouldn't we all aspire to be crazy? At least we would be ALIVE. The antithesis of crazy sounds like the most boring existence in the world. Yeah, maybe I am a bit crazy then. And I think that could be a good thing. But Tom prefers to call crazy "smelling rabbit". He is convinced that, once you are standing over that deep cavern of sanity, tempting the ledge with your weight and teasing the other side, he will smell rabbit.

Why have I brought this up? Because, not for the first time recently, I am exhibiting a change in behavior that could be associated with the aroma of fluffy burrowing mammal. I have taken up running.

This, for me, is in itself an extraordinary feat. It is extraordinary since I have always firmly maintained that I do not see the point in running, unless being chased. I hate running. I thought it was pointless.

Yet, one day, almost a month ago, I had returned home from a two week business trip to the US. I was stading in the veranda, looking at the sun rising outside. It was pretty early morning, as my dog Ed (the ideal, dream-collie dog) had woken me up for a walk. Once the walk was done, I stood there assessing my choices. I could make that perfect cup of espresso-two parts espresso, one part steaming milk. I could plonk myself down in front of the TV with a good DVD. I could attempt to go back to bed.

But, somehow, I reached for a pair of gym shorts, a sports bra, and went to the cellar to dust off my running shoes. I strapped them on, wrapped my hair in a long ponytail, and stuck my MD played in my pocket. I walked out the door, out the gate in the front of the yard, and just took a step in a run.

It was that simple. Suddenly, I was running.

And the run was both fabulous and horrible. Early on, I felt my ribcage banging soundly with firey little hands on the outside of my lungs. "Hello!" they screamed. "Remember us? We're not used to this nonsense! Slow down, or we swear to God the lungs are going to get a puncture. Don't make me tell you again!"

But the rest of me felt great. Music throbbing in my ears (choice of the day-Evanescence). My arms moving, exposed, to the air. My face feeling warm, and my legs continuing to surge forward. "Bah!" they said. "The rib cage not handling things ok? Those pussies! We can keep on going!"

And I have ever since. In fact, I think it's becoming a bit of an obssession. Something upsetting happen (as it does with alarming frequency lately)? Strap the shoes on, go for a run. Life getting you down, are you starting to go a bit crazy? Clear the head out with a run. Entertaining thoughts of grabbing the passport and catching the first flight to...oh...anywhere? A run'll sort you out.

It's keeping the scent of rabbit at bay, anyhow.

-H
everydaystranger@hotmail.com

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 01:34 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 575 words, total size 3 kb.

Anniversary-the yearly return of the date of some event.

The definition of anniversary according to Websters. Not very imaginative or romantic, but then again, one can hardly expect the dictionary to conjure images of prancing ponies and hearts and flowers. Interestingly, if you do a thesaurus check on anniversary in Microsoft Word, you get the following: "birthday, centenary, bicentenary, centennial, bicentennial, wedding anniversary".

Ah, now we're getting somewhere. So if you have an anniversary, you are potentially either turning 50, 100 (or any other liniment-involved kind of age marker) or else you have a regular birthday or wedding-type remembrance. Those, and only those, I presume. No anniversaries listed for giving up chocolate. Or the day you realized that the 80's really were dead (despite the cause celeb given to them by numerous compilation albums), and May They Rest in Peace. Or mark remembrance of the death of someone special in your life. Or to commemorate the day you went from being friends with someone to a heavy snog/full-on bedroom fun.

I think all of those days count, perhaps much more than the mundane anniversaries that we usually celebrate. Well, OK-turning 50 or 100 is a big deal too (if one can believe all the hype, of course, that is associated with lawn signs, T-shirts, and the alcohol-based detritus of a birthday celebration of that magnitude). But if I could have my way, my choice, the celebrations that I personally would choose to observe on a yearly basis would be:

- My birthday (they can be quite fun, since I tend to disregard that whole getting older business)
- The first time I flew to a foreign destination
- The first time I fell in love (a toughie I know-in general, most of us can't pinpoint that exact moment when we realized that our heart was no longer our personal property)
- The first time I realized I was over that first love (again a tough one, but likely the first time that I wasn't curled up in the fetal position on the living room floor and listening to Peter Gabriel records, while clutching a bottle of vodka)
- A steamy night I had in Bangkok that changed my life in a million ways, nearly all of them good
- The first time I crossed the boundary from friend to lover with certain persons

I think that should just about wind up that list. One thing which may seem a glaring omission on my list is "wedding anniversary". Do I want to celebrate it?

I don't know. Considering that today is my wedding anniversary, and my goal is to simply get through this week in one piece, I would have to say that I am not in the champagne-guzzling, truffles-in-the-bubble-bath-fete type of mode. Did I have a nice wedding? Yup. Was it a fun party? Yes again. Would I marry him again if I had to do it all over again? Not sure, will have to sit on that one a while and get back to you. It would mean that the landscape of my life would not look like it does today. This is, perhaps, a pro and a con.

And why is it that everytime I look at his open and loving face, my heart sinks just a little bit more?

It leads me to the next defintions-

Confused - 1) To mix up; put into disorder. 2) To bewilder or embarrass. 3) To mistake the identity of.

Guilt - 1) The state of having done a wrong or committed an offense. 2) A feeling of self-reproach from believing that one has done a wrong.

Hope - 1) A feeling that what is wanted will happen; desire accompanied by expectation. 2) The object of this. 3) A person or thing on which one may base some hope.

Thanks Webster. Let's try to see if I can't start to clean up this mess...

-H

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:19 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 664 words, total size 4 kb.

So I start the day off on a new note...OK, there is no new note, really, it's simply Monday.

And Monday, like any other day, starts off with meetings. Meetings about endless, empty, wasteland type of things. I am sure many people have meetings like my meeting. Do the words "timeplan", "roles and responsibilities", and "roadmap" get thrown about a lot in your meetings? Then you have meetings like mine.

I am lucky, anyway-I genuinely like my colleagues and my manager. Since I work in telecom, which is a predominately male field, I am the only woman in my group. And the only non-Swede. Both attributes seem to happen to me a lot here.

It's threatening to rain outside again, which has definitely cast a shadow on my mood. That, and my best friend in the whole world moving to another country (but a country within the EU, so does that mean it's the US equivalent of moving to a different state? I don't know. I tried to get my mouth around it-"My best friend lives in another state." Hmm, moderately sad, and definitely means a long distance carrier takes advantage of the situation. Then tried "My best friend lives in another country." Smacks of funny-looking postage stamps and weird cartel desperation. Plus makes me look like a real loser for not only 1) not having local friendship pool and 2) my best friend didn't think I was enough of a reason to stick around. Definitely depressing. But hey, if I can't moan on this site, where can I? The pilot has turned off the no-venting sign. Feel free to vent about the cabin.)

When I was a child I saw a TV show about a little girl who had just moved to a new planet with her family. She had moved from Earth, and had a box of things she remembered, including her memories of sunshine, which was appreciated as the sun only came out on this new planet one day every, oh, I don't remember, 20 years or so. And one day her classmates locked her in a closet to be mean, and all of a sudden the sun came out. The kids ran outside and played all day, and when the sun set they trudged back into the classroom to discover that they had forgotten to let the girl out of the closet. She had missed the sun, and had only felt the warmth through the crack at the bottom of the door.

And in some way, I can relate. I think I am always the one laying down on the floor, trying to peer through the crack under the door. Enough of a view to know what I am missing, but not enough to make me try the doorknob again.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 01:34 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 475 words, total size 3 kb.

Howdy.

This spot is designed to be the locale for my thoughts. An online journal, if it remotely interests anyone. Who am I and why do I think I have anything interesting to say? Well, let's start with the simple introductions, since most people start off that way.

You can call me Helen, and I am an American living and working in Europe. Yes, I know-there are millions of us Yanks living and working abroad. This place is my journal, my way of finding out where home is, and what lies there once I get there.

I moved to Sweden nearly four years ago. I packed up my things (fitting in as many boxes of Cap'n Crunch as could be fit on the way) and moved my life to Stockholm, known as "Beauty on Water". Much like Missouri is called "The Show-Me State" and Australia is called "The Land Down Under". I do not name these things, nor do I know how they got said names. But the names thus far seem to fit (although I have to wonder-what are they going to show me in Missouri?) Let's move on, yes?

How on earth did I get here, you may wonder. And it's quite ok for you to wonder that, since I wonder about it too, everyday. And what am I still doing here? Well, I am still working for a nice Swedish company. I still live in my nice Swedish house, with my nice, er, German car, and will be here for a while. After all, jobs being what they are, it's rather hard to move around (and a tad ungrateful, I must say).

I find that I travel a lot. More than a lot, but yet not enough to my liking. In the past five years, I have bounced around all over the world. And the more I travel, the less American I feel. It's as though, for every mile I accrue with BA (you have to love British Airlines. At least the flight attendants on BA make it quite clear that they don't like you up front, instead of being like the other airlines and simply lying to your face) I grow one more inch away from feeling comfortable in the US. Which I still travel to a lot for business. And every time I go to the US-other than frequent Starbucks, Benny's Bagels, Nine West, the Gap, and stand in sobbing awe of the incredible and duly-missed cereal aisle of the grocery stores-I find that there are more steps that have made me less comfortable.

For instance-what happened to Must See TV? Now it's more like Eh, Just See It If Nothing Else Is On. The newspapers-why do they mention so little of other events, that take place outside the US? Who are all these women on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, saying they are also Slayers? And why is it I can't figure out where can I get a good curry?

I am not having a go at the US. Although I am a lost person, travelling the great big world, I am first and foremost an American. Even if saying it will get me beaten up in a pub. And it has done, as well.

A few comments about Sweden-yes, there are a lot of blond people here. No, they are not all named Sven and Inga. And I have yet to see a Swedish Bikini Team, unless you count the throngs of Swedes that bail and go to Greece during the summer. It is indeed VERY cold here in the winter, and the chocolate is good here (although many people get Sweden confused with Switzerland and ask about the chocolate. They make it in both places). Want to find Sweden on a map? Find England, and go to the right and up a bit. There you will find Scandanavia. We are situated in between Norway and Finland, and should you take away these two countries, you can see that Sweden looks uncomfortably like part of the male anatomy.

It is my intention to update this site as often as possible. Comments and suggestions are welcome, just mail to: EverydayStranger@btconnect.com.

-H

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 05:28 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 698 words, total size 4 kb.