Unvoluntary spring clean.

This afternoon when I came home from the university I was med with the rank smell of cat urine, so i got into my comfy cleaning clothes at had at it.

A litle warning: I have been in bed with the flu for a week and the house looks like a tornado ran through it (most of it are all the clothes that my kind husband washed that I never got out of bed to fold.

The first thing I did was to run the "I'm looking innocent so you won't think it was me" cats out of the living room, grab all the pillows from the couch they urinated in and tossed them into the bathroom. Next it was the cover - straight into the washer with that one, and out with the potato flour (?) to take the moist out of the spots (they were still wet... ) and vacuumed it off after it had done it's job. Next I mixed up a cleaning solution from JIF, lemon juice (to battle the smell), a bit vinegar (also to battle the smell and to help clean the fabrics), hot water and sprayed it all on the couch. A new round with potato flour wich is drying as I write. Looking around then I figgured "oh what the heck" and decided on an early spring clean this year.

So i grabbed the dishes and started cleaning but had to stop after half and hour on account of lack of detergents. So this gave me a short welcome break since I was already short of breath and coughing like I'd been smoking for 100 years (no I don't smoke... anymore).

The plan for the night is to fold all the clothes, finish up the couch and wash all the pillows, sort all my lecture notes and place them in the correct binder... Then I'm going to bed for tomorrow is another day and it is full of cleaning to-do's.


Toodle-pip for now

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10 things my husband love about me

Lately I have been thinking a bit about what makes my husband happy and what makes him love me, so I decided to write down 10 things that I know he loves about me so I can always remember. So straight from the husbands mouth: here goes.

1. My husband loves my eyes, although he couldn't answer what colour they are last time I asked.

2. My husband loves when my skin is soft and smooth.

3. My husband loves my curls. I have natural curls but I used to straighten my hair a lot. Recently though, I got a "middy" hair cut and now I curl my hair regurarly with pin curl sets. But I also just let my hair dry into my natural curls, and my husband always dotes over them.

4. My husband love it when I make an effort to look good. When ever I dress up and do my hair in new ways he always dotes on me. You got to love that.

5. My husband loves when I do arts and crafts (true! he just told me). He love how focused I get.

6. He loves it when I'm happy. As he just said "when your happy it's real. And it shows, and I love it".

7. My husband loves how he can be super nerdy with me one moment and the next moment i'll be super girlish.

8. He loves that I like Guinnies. (according to him that makes me a reall woman :p ).

9. He loves that I, according to him, defines myself by how I am, not how I look.

10. He loves my smile and most of all he love the smile I give him when I look at him with love in my eyes (his words, not mine)


If you have someone important in your life ask him/her what makes him/her love you and please share. :)

A new year - A new me.

It's 2011 and I have finally settled in to a new routine with all my new classes and such. With the new year comes new hopes and expectations, and this year is no different. Last year I had no resolutions, this year I do. They are not many, but they are significant. Here are my resolutions for2011:

1: Lose weight! (I will be starting a new post chapter on that one ^^)
2: Eat healthier. Both me and my husband has to have good wholesome food every day. This is a tough one since healthy food, unfortunatly ican be quite expencive. My husband has to eat properly so his stomac won't act up... plus he is allergic to a lot of different foods, while I have to eat healthy food to loose weight.
3: Get better at doing my hair and make up every day. No more "jump out of bed and get dressed"-days! If I'm going to embrace this new lifestyle, I have to do it fully and whole heatedly!
4: Get my old coppery red hair colour back. This is going to take a litle while since my hair is currently blue, but I have already talked to my hair dresser about it and she says it will be possible.
5: Do the dishes every night before bed.
6: Finish all my little projects. I have a ton of little projects that I have begun, but never got around to finish. Now I am going to!
7: Exercise at least 2 times a week.
8: Make every meal, every day. That is:  no more skipping meals!
9: Spend more time with friends.
10: Go out more.

And there you have it.

Looking back

Today, when I was doing research for my term paper, I found an old note I had written a couple of years ago.
I thought id post it before I threw out the note, so here it is.

So small
so fragile
Will you be dead tomorrow
Are you in pain my dear
is that why you are sleeping
are you walking tomorrow
are you hungry today
why are you so silent


It's a bad and silly poem, but i wrote what was running through my head.
If I remember correctly I was sitting in bed in the middle of the night watching my husband sleep. The same day I had been at the hospital visiting my friends newborn baby. He had nearly died, and the image of him laying there was somewhat haunting me. It was also during one of the more difficult periods of my husbands depression and I was always wondering if he would come home to me.
Thankfully those days are behind us now, and we are again happy and smiling.

Hapiness and Sorrow, a heavy couple of weeks.

Today we buried my grandmother, the last of my grand parents. She was supposed to celebrate her 88th birthday in a few days, but 2 weeks ago she had a stroke and ended up in the hospital. I flew down to visit her and when I got back up north, her health started deteriorating rapidly and this wednesday she died in her bed at the care center.

She was the last of the real, true housemothers of my family, and we will all miss her very much. She was always all about work, never letting her hands fall idle. She knitted, embroidered, wove, croched, cooked and cleaned, and she loved it. When we were children she would baby-sit us and she would keep us busy by teaching us how to bake, weave, knit or anything else productive. When we wanted to run around and just be noisy, she would either let us be noisy while doing something usefull like getting fire wood or she would send us outside to play.
One day I hope I can be as good a housewife as she... one day.

On a happier note: 5 weeks ago one of our cats disappeared. She had not been seen since, but wednesday noon I got a text-message from one of our neighboroughs saying that we should take a look in the paper. A cat had been found and the vet was looking for her owners.

My husband called them and described her to them , and they told him that he should come over and take a look. And lo and behold! It was our sweet cat! She had been trapped in the remote-heating machinery room at the hospital for 5 weeks, and when the people from the electric company whent to plug a leak (the same one that probably had been keeping her alive for 5 weeks) she came stumbling out, dehydrated and skinny as h***. They shipped her of to the vet immediatly and a news reporter picked up the story the same day, and the next day we found out.

She has been without food and proper drink for so long that her liver and intestines had all but shut completely down. We got her back yesturday and I was shocked to see the shape she was in.
She used to weigh about 4kg, now she is barely 1.8kg and nothing but skin and bones, but from todays blood tests and liver tests she is healing. The friend who is cat-sitting her sendt us a picture and a status report telling us that she's is doing better.

Here is a picture of our baby Aibast II taken today.

24 Long hours

I am utterly exhausted! I have been traveling for 24 hours, and it has certainly taken it's toll on me.

Last tuesday my grandmother collapsed and broke her pelvis 2 places and suffered a stroke. We don't really know came first: the fall or the stroke, but she was very ill. My mother called me and told me that I should consider going back south to see her... possible for the last time. She is 88 years old and has a bad heart, so the possibility that she won't recover is quite high, so I jumped on the internett and bought a plane ticket.

So since wednesday I have been on the west coast staying with my parents. I also got to go to the baptism of my newest niece. She is so cute! And she has the same hair as me - red! I also visited my best friends and my in-laws.

It was a great trip all in all... untill yesturday. I was flying down to Oslo to fly back to Tromsø around 4pm yesturday, but the weather here (in Tromsø) was extremely windy so they closed the airport. We waited for 2 hours on the plane before they told us we would not be able to leave for Tromsø that night. We got new tickets for 6:30 this morning and a hotel room for the night. The hotel room was nice, but I had big problems falling asleep, so I only got 2 hours of sleep before I had to get up and leave for the airport at 4 am.

I checked in, got to the gate and sat down with my computer to read a litle for my term paper due this week. After about 10 minutes a message came up on the screen that we would get more info at 7:15 - 45 minutes after original departure. And the message was that with the cross-winds at Tromsø Airport they would not be flying us there at that time. Yeay! I though... another long wait!! Really not what I wanted.
Around 7:30 we was told that we would be leaving a litle after 8. So we boarded and thought that now we would finally get to go to Tromsø... but alas. After 20 minutes the captain told us that he could not land in Tromsø, but we would be flying to Bardufoss (about 130 kilometers from Tromsø) and land there. From there we would go by buss. And so we did... And I arrived in Tromsø hungry as h***, thirsty and sleepy a litle over 24 hours after I left from my mothers.

So now that I'm finally fed and have slept am hour or so, I am finally in good spirit again ^^.

Have you ever been un-intentionally travelled for a whole day before?

Etiquette: What to do when invited to a party.

As I promised here is a litle post on What to do when invited to a party.

These days etiquette is not something you learn in school like one used to. Not here at least. I was so lucky that once a year my parents were invited to a national meeting of the machine entrepeneurs sosciety of Norway, and my father is a highly respected man in that circle and was chairman for many years. So me and my sisters were expected to behave properly and have good manners. I used to think manners and etiquette was boring, stiff and unneccesary, but I have come to appreciate and expect it. In my oppinion etiquette is something everyone should learn.