OCTOBER; 33, THE EIGHT YEAR AND THE SECOND ONE

Arrived home after a fabulous and work-filled weekend in Turku (of which you can see an ultra quick  fun time-lapse vide of on vimeo, by Tuomas) just in time to catch all the lovely colours of autumn - last year I missed it, as the leaves fell of quickly, and I was in Stockholm performing during those short days of excessive colour.

Dag and I had to go out on a mission immediately as some of the lams had decided the grass was greener on the other side of the fence rather literally, and for some reason also on the road. So we chased them back much to Dag's excitement. 

He is wearing a Mickey Mouse-coat that both me and my sisters have worn when we were kids, that we got from our cousins who were a few years older than us. There was one in about every size and this is the first one. Dag finds it very fancy.

Lambs trying to camouflage themselves.

Last weekend, on Saturday, it was also my 33th birthday. I rarely celebrate mine; last time was when K and I threw our very fabulous True Blood feast when we turned 30. Usually I have been at work on my birthdays as a grown up, first in the harbour (where one tended to spend the whole day as shifts are long), now on stage. This year was no different!

As those of you who have hanged around here for a longer time know, my blog also gets a year older along with me - so we are entering our eight year here now. That is a long time I tell you!
If someone ever wondered about the rather imbecile but catchy name of my blog it has been explained here on a few occasions back in the days but we can do it one more time; the idea of a blog was born way before it actuallystarted, when blogging looked a bit different that now. I had just found fashion blogs that consisted of outfits and outfits only, and I found them both inspiring and a bit silly at the same time. So The Freelancer's Fashion Blog was an ironic idea -  I have always had a big wardrobe, but from time to time (a lot like now) I haven't really been able to use it properly. Back then in 2006 and -07, when thinking about blogging, I had finished my studies and worked with freelance graphic design as well as in the harbour. So I was basically working most of the time (like now, but in a different matter) and felt that I mainly was wearing black tights or leggings (or underwear) and a black t-shirt or a top, when in front of my computer or under my workwear. What people who work from home often look like... And I thought about how that would make it in a fashion blog, different versions of something that looks just the same. Well, that blog never happened. When my blog then started it was all about drawithe outfits though and staying incognito -it took until March the next year until I posted a photo of myself - and as with most blogs this one slowly developed into something more personal.

This was that very first photo, from many years back.

Speaking of outfits, there is of course a reason why I have been walking around mainly in stretchy wear and sneaky yoga pants, other than the one that I am always running from workouts to rehearsals and classes nowadays- I got pregnant again! And unlike the pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage this summer, when I had felt strangely well when I thought back on it, I this time felt bad and swollen,  just like I had with Dag, feeling like I was hungover for two months. Until week seven was over I was a bit scared every time I went to the toilet that I would see blood, and was reliefed when I passed the weeks of the previous miscarriage. I had my first prenatal appointment and had all future ultras and appointments set now, as is the custom. But, even though I am lucky enough to get pregnant easily - so far always on the first try, I am apparently not as lucky after that. Last Friday, the day before my 33rd birthday, I had an ultra sound and found out I had had a so called missed abortion; the foetus had died a few weeks earlier. Well, I could almost see it right away - the baby in the monitor looked too small for it's weeks, although I kept thinking that perhaps they always grow miraculously just the week after this. But I moved my face from the screen to the doctor's face and saw he looked serious and then he told me he could not see a heart beat. As the first miscarriage came rather slowly I had time to let it sink in and it was an event that made me disappointed and frustrated, but this was totally different. I couldn't imagine it could go wrong a second time because everything had felt so normal!  Not now, not this one! I was rather shocked. Not just because of the loss of the  baby-to-be, but because of how much we already had planned with everything else around the fact we would have a baby in April; jobs, life, arrangements. It's because I was looking at maternity dresses onine already. I shouldn't have! Everything had been just right, damnit! But it wasn't.

I had a lot of things to take care of during that day, which was awful to go trough, and I skipped out on some because I was so tired and just wanted to lie in bed. My body still felt pregnant, swollen and nauseous, and I was distressed over the fact that it was not over totally yet, but I would still have to abort it during the week to come. The thought of the pain that might bring, and all the arrangements around that felt the worst for the moment. I would have to call lots of places and re-arrange meetings and cancel classes and tell them I had the flue or something because you don't tell people you lost a pregnancy. You could, but you don't, because they will get uncomfortable. Too much info, stick to the flue.

As Scandinavia is ruled by the Jante -law (the 'don't think you're any special'-one, which in cases like this translates to: don't think your pain is any worse than anyone else's), and as I've grown up in a society that looks down on self-pity (well, don't they all?) and go by the mentality that one should shut the fuck up and quit whining, I thought it was best to do so. And as everyone keeps telling you: it is very common and it happens a lot. So it is. I had a lot to do during the weekend too; had to perform and hold a workshop and first the thought of all that felt rather horrifying. But it actually helped to be busy and around people and kept my mind off the fact there was a little dead beginning of a human lying inside of me. On Monday I went to the hospital and got the pills to empty the womb and so today this second one was over with less physical pain than I had expected. (For the record, for those who might read this in a similar situation: they gave me Cytotec, which is what they use over here pretty much as the only option, a drug I have had once before -I presume- many years ago for a similar reason and that was a very painful experience. Well at least I was prepared for what the beginning of labour would feel like when the day that came. The almighty internet is also full of mainly horror stories on said drug, as you see I of course googled a lot waiting in horror for it to kick in, but let it be said here for those who have an interest in this: This time I was stocked up with strong painkillers and it was not all that bad, by evening the medicine had done it's job. So it worked for me.)

As I wrote about the first miscarriage I thought it would be strange not to mention this second one. And, as I said the last time, when you have some sort of situation going on, you google all you can find about it, and then you google some more. (I always search in three languages to get as much out of it as possible). You want to and need to read about it. There is always someone out there who feels better reading about things like this, because of how one can relate, even though this story here is not one of those miracle stories where there was still a living twin inside!  (which will only give you false hope, because you know, there seldom is).

But it is still a bit odd, how we are not really supposed to mention miscarriage, and are not supposed to feel bad about it either. It is something of a taboo. With a friend who was, and luckily still is, as many weeks pregnant as I was, we talked about how you usually feel your worst and weirdest in the beginning of pregnancy but you are not supposed to talk about it because things can go wrong , and then if they do go wrong and you feel terrible you can't talk about it either because no one knew about it and you know, it does happen all the time.

So, no use of dwelling on things one can not change! I have a lot of work and projects that I will concentrate on the rest of this year, and also on the wonderful little fella in the Mickey Mouse coat that I shall snuggle up!
And come the weekend, I will drink some wine, oh yes.

RED CROSS DONATION / THS FIRST WORL BAD CONCIOUSNESS

I deliberately choose to leave out discussions and any stronger opinions in here - I have enough of them in real life - and focus on blogging about the lighter, nicer and more inspirational things. Plus I really try to avoid too long texts too, for many reasons. However, blogging about a dress after a set of bad news  might work like neutralisation, calming it down, but mainly it makes me leave it be for another time.

My mind is often filled with so called first world guilt  - I get a bad consciousness for a lot of things, big and small: I feel I don't read as much as I would want to but then again spend too much on the internet, I'm probably not as ecologic in many everyday choices as I could be if I really tried, I don't have the time to visit my grandparents enough, to name a few, and even the thing in where I contribute to make at least a little difference (and that should also allow me to feel a bit better about myself - because in the end there are very few good deeds we do that in some ways are not also selfish); sponsoring the boy in India, is giving me a bad consciousness: I never have the time to write him any letters. Argh.  And then I, as many others, have issues with closets overflowing but still being in need of that one pair of perfect black heels... a fact that I remind myself of with a grin of emotional stress. (That being what the "first world club" is about, a sarcastic finger pointing at myself /ourselves I sometimes joke about- it's for heaven's sake not about "being smug about living in the first world," as one reader chose to see it. Well, the way a person reads certain things may say more about the person than the text itself...) Not saying that all of our issues and problems are totally unjustified; not all things in this world can be compared. Just because we don't have to walk ten kilometres to get water everyday or have to leave our families to work in another country to support them or beg on the streets doesn't mean we can't complain when the city decides to put down a bus line and our trip to work doubles in time. For example. But it's good to reflect about this every now and then, different lives, different situations, how most of us reading this blog have it good in many ways and on many levels. One would think everybody reflects on this, but I have met a lot of people in my life, and not everybody do, or, some see things very differently.

It's said that people are alike, everywhere. And it's true. But our lives can be very different. Many years ago I was on a long trip in a country far away and we were eating by a street hut in a small town. There were lots of street kids begging next to us, dragging our sleeves, before being hushed away by the hut keeper.  The situation made me feel bad, uncomfortable,  in different ways. One person among us said it was rude of the kids not to wait with their begging until after we were finished with our meals. Manners, you know, eh? That made me crazy. "Come on, you can't feed the whole country" they said. No of course not. And I was not there to to saving anyone, trying to go all Jesus handing out dollars as a, although on a student budget,  like a rich wordsaving westerner hippie, I was "just travelling". But isn't even one meal for one person is better than no meal at all?  Yes. Mother Amma, for example,  has said - as part of a longer quote-  that every person should be able to have at least one day, when she does not go to sleep hungry. Not everyone will have that day. And I just didn't buy that plate. When we were leaving a young man around the same age as I came to our tables and pointed at our plates, scraping what was left of the rice into a plastic bag in his hand. He had another bag with glue. And that's when it struck me, we differ, our lives,  there is no way I could ever really understand what his life was like. Not that you have travel half around the globe to realise this either, as I've seen later on elsewhere as well.  (Why didn't I buy that cup with small shabby apples from that old lady by the side of the road in a country not that far away from here, aaaaah! Beause I did not want apples just then? Well, this is sliding off topic, but I've thought about these occasions a lot.)

I've always believed that if you can help others if only a little bit you should, another thing you'd think (or, hope) most other people believe too. And by this I don't mean sharing linked articles on Facebook and then feeling like you've done your part of good in the world. In the case of charity, it's either (or both, given the opportunity) time or money. If you don't have the chance to give your time and do actual, concrete work, you can always support  a  cause in a monetary way. (Yes, somebody going to say the money does not go where it should, or that it prevents countries from doing things themselves, perhaps, but not in all cases. You can check up on any legit charity, to see how they are organised and how funds are used. Plus, especially with catastrophe funds, like the Red Cross' , helps is offered when a community, nation itself cannot take care of a situation, for example.)

I've supported a handful of charities monthly for about a decade. After Dag was born and I changed my work pattern my income decreased with some 70%, and I thought about what to do with the monthly monetary aid I had going out from my bank account, to cut them off. I decided to keep them, even though they now made up quit a big part of my income. I'm not writing this to collect any good karma-points from the internet, but just to tell that in the end - so far at least- it did not take that much to leave some things out and be able to keep up my donations. Of course my lifestyle is a bit different now, more affordable, spending more time at home, no daily work lunches out and so on, but that combined wuth with a little more planning (and a little more work) I have been able to manage keeping my support.

So, I managed to write a little novel here anyway, even though I intended to keep it short and in my usual matter cut some text away... longer but still brief texts about serious matters on the internet can easily come off a bit melodramatic, one of the reasons I prefer to leave them to elsewhere. (And because this is the internet someone is going to give me shit for something said here anyway.)

But, today, after my daily news intake seeing pictures of dead Syrian toddlers and reading a very depressing article bout the situation in the Central African Republic plus also the updates from closeguantanamo.org I thought I'd skip the apple-pie blogging. And post about my Red Cross fundraising box instead! (See, we got to the point here in the end.)

I had a similar box last year; I collected fifteen euros.
From one donor (me, I thought the zero was so sad).

My intentions here are not to make anyone feel bad or obliged, and certainly not to raise discussion, just to raise money. Think about it; if everyone who comes upon this post would donate one euro we would raise quite much.

You can donate from anywhere. Or, check out and choose to donate to your local Red Cross. For example.

BEFORE THE APPLE TREES WEEP

 Few things are prettier than blossoming trees in late spring; the amazing seemingly never-ending amount of sheer white, pink, yellow, lilac fluff reaching up to the skies. And they only ever bloom for such a short time before continuing their year-long cycle of change.

I can't help it, but ever since I was a teenager I've been getting this short desperate feeling of dark haunting angst at this time of year, that it will all be over soon and autumn is just around the corner.

But in a couple of days it passes and I start enjoying summer again!

(Which is always over in no time and then it's back to dark nights, wet shoes cold wind and winter jackets and Aaaaaaa damn it!...)