kareina

I reached out to a friend far away a week or so ago, and got a reply today. Since my reply to him includes a good summary of my last decade, I thought I would share it here, too:

How wonderful to hear from you.  I bet that you are truly beautiful with white whiskers to compliment your eyes!  How have the years been treating you otherwise? What are you up to? How has your life changed, and how is the the same, since last we spoke?

Have you spoken with any physical therapists about the knees? Perhaps there is something you could be doing to make them complain less?  I had a problem with my hips some years back--when I flew to Australia to apply for my permanent resident visa for living in Sweden all those hours of sitting without the option to get up and move meant that my hips (specifically where the leg tendons attach at the front of the hips) started aching, and continued to bother me for weeks afterwards, hurting especially after sleeping a couple of hours (probably due to my life-long habit of curling to sleep, so same deep bend there as when sitting).  So I spoke to a physical therapist and he explained that the problem wasn't with the front of my hips (where the pain was), but with a small muscle in my rump that was under-developed with respect to all of is neighbours. He gave me some exercises to strengthen that muscle (which, at first were pure torture, even though I needed to only hold the pose for 10 seconds), and, sure enough, the pain in the front of my hips went away.  Since then I occasionally go through periods where I am not doing those exercises for a while, and then I start waking up with sore hips again, but when I do them even semi-regularly (they haven't been torture in ages) there is no discomfort at all.  I have no idea if knee complaints can also be helped so simply, but if you haven't looked into it, it might be worth the time to do so. :-)

As it turned out, that session with the physical therapist was the trigger for a pretty serious change in my lifestyle. I have been doing daily yoga since 2003, and got in plenty of walking and dancing, so my physical fitness was really quite reasonable. But when I understood that all of my movement had done nothing all all to exercise that small muscle, I started wondering what other muscles I had which were likewise neglected, and I decided to hire a personal trainer for a year to improve my overall strength and fitness, especially my upper body.  These days I have no problems at all standing on my hands against a wall, and doing partial hand-stand push-ups (while my feet are against the wall), and can even hold the handstand for a second or two in the middle of the room (and practice doing so daily, so that time is likely to keep improving).  Around the same time that I started working out I also became active in one of the on campus student clubs, Phire, a "jester group" (gycklargrupp), which does all sorts of "circus arts" including juggling, staff spinning, fire shows, and, my personal favourite, acroyoga.  You might recall that I never outgrew the "pick me up, carry me" stage of childhood, and now I have friends (half my age, or younger), who not only pick me up, but spin me around on their upraised feet!  Life is wonderful. (If you want to see a few videos of my acroyoga sessions with friends, they are available on line here.

In addition to the acroyoga I keep busy through the SCA (where I try, and sometimes succeed, to convince friends to join me in acroyoga), both at the local level (this is the Shire of Frostheim), and, when the travel budget permits, at the Principality and Kingdom level, and Swedish Folk dance. I really love living in Luleå, and encourage you and your sweetie to come visit me sometime.  Luleå lacks mountains, but it has pretty much everything else I would want for a happy life, and it doesn't take that long to get to Norway from here, which has plenty of mountain.  We are far enough north to have as good of winter as is possible these days (while it does, sadly, warm up above zero multiple times each winter, causing the footpaths and roads to get slippery and the snow pack to shrink and get crusty, the snow doesn't go completely away, and we stil have more than half a meter's worth in our yard as I type) and good northern light viewing opportunities. The city is reasonably small, with lots of forest and lakes within the borders, and the university is located in a suburb at the edge of town, and my house is four km further out from there, just on the other side of a Nature Reserve, giving me a nice walk or bike ride (depending on the season and if it is likely to snow before time to go home--they plow the bike path pretty promptly, but my recumbent trike sits pretty low to the ground, so if there have been more than 10-15 cm I don't want to pedal till I am certain they have gotten to that path).

Our property is 2.5 hectares, and came with lots of wild strawberries and many, many black currant bushes (a former owner put them in during the 1970's as a cash crop, but by the time we bought the house the patch had been neglected for at least a decade. We have tried, but even with the help of friends we have never managed to harvest all of the black currants, but we keep lots of berries in the freezer, dry lots to add to my muesli, and make jam, jelly, and some years "saft" (I don't know a good English translation--it is what you get when you run steam through the berries (+/- sugar) and collect the concentrated juice thus formed, to later mix with water or sparkling water to drink), and more nettles than I can eat (I dry lots of them, so I can keep adding them to things I cook all winter long).  I have also learned to do a bit of gardening in addition to harvesting what grows here on its own, and am enjoying it.

Relationship wise I still own a house with David (Kjartan is his SCA name), who was the reason I moved here in the first place, back in January of 2011.  However, these days his primary romantic relationship is with Caroline, a delightful lady who lives in an apartment very near the university, where David works, for the IT department. He lives primarily at her apartment, in part because it is easier to walk to work from there, but mostly because that is where she is sleeping and he prefers to sleep by her side, but he spends time at the house to work on projects here, sometimes with me, and sometimes on his own.  They first met many years ago, when she rented our guest room for a month. She had posted to the Frostheim FB group that she had a short term job in Luleå, but wasn't having any luck finding an apartment for rent, and did anyone have a room she could rent for one month.  We had only that week finished fixing up the basement guest room (it had some serious issues when we moved in, including a raised floor with mould under it, which we took away), so we said she could stay with us, and that worked out very well. By the end of that month she and he had gotten together. Then she returned to Göteborg to finish up her degree (biology), and they did the long-distance thing for a few years. 

Eventually she graduated and moved in with us, but after a year or so she realised that she would rather have her own space. She prefers to go out for her social activity, and have home be a quiet refuge, or, perhaps, occasionally, invite a couple close friends over now and then, with the menu planned out for the occasion well in advance. I, on the other hand, prefer to have people drop by randomly and uninvited, any time of the day or night. This contrast might have been easier to balance, but this is a small house built in 1966, and there is no where in the house where she can be where she can't clearly hear what is happening in all other parts of the house.  So now they mostly live at the apartment, and when she feels for entertaining, sometimes she invites people to the house, and I am happy because the house is full, and she is happy because afterwards she can go back to her nice, quiet apartment.  

I have had an occasional few other lovers myself in the years I have been in Sweden, but none that have blossomed into a more serious long term connection.  In fact, the friends I have fallen for most seriously have been ones who care for me deeply as friends, but are not at all romantically interested in me, causing me to refer to them as "my unrequited loves", a connection that is delightful, but I do confess that it would be nice if one of them (or someone else I could fall for) were interested in an even closer connection. 

The other physical change in my life that I am both most happy with, and which is so natural/normal that I often forget it was ever different than it is now, is that a year ago I finally got my breasts removed. I have only wanted them gone since they first started growing, when I was around 13 or so, but in the US I couldn't afford it.  I did ask google when I first moved to Sweden about breast removal, but the only web page I found at that time was for a private medical practice here in Luleå that offered "breast reduction" surgery for 50,000 SEK (just over $5,000 at today's exchange rate), and didn't have the cash at that time, so continued to think of it as a "would be nice, but still isn't possible" thing for a number of years. Then one year one of my SCA friends in Germany was posting about her struggles to get puberty blockers for her daughter so that when the daughter grew up the surgery needed to finish her transition to have her body's gender match her actual gender would be easier, and I couldn't help but wish that I had known about puberty blockers when I was little--how much better life would have been if I had never grown the breasts (or had to deal with menstruation) in the first place.  But in my case, I wouldn't have wanted them to make it easier to become a man, but only because I didn't wish to be a woman--I am totally ok with being a little girl.  
Around the same time one of my SCA friends in California posted photos to FB about his mastectomy, and how happy he was to have them gone so that he looks more like the man he is.  So I emailed him and asked how he was able to afford that surgery, given that he is a student?  He replied that his dad's insurance covered it, as part of changing his gender.  This conversation inspired me to call the Swedish National Health line phone number and ask "I understand that Sweden's medical care will help one change gender. What about those of us who never wanted a gender in the first place?"  They replied that I would need to call my local health clinic and do an initial screening interview, and if they thought it was appropriate they would refer me to a psychologist, who could then refer me to a surgeon.  So I hung up the phone, and promptly called the local health clinic. I started by telling them only that the national number told me to call them, they opened my file on the computer, read what had already been entered in there from the national number, and replied "We have an appointment available next Tuesday, is that ok".  

I met with the nurse there, explained how I have always felt about it, and pointed out that since I didn't want to be a man either, and that time was already solving the problems associated with having a uterus, that it would be pretty easy--only the breasts would need to go.  At the end of that appointment she sent her recommendation off to the psychologist's office.  A week or three later I got a letter from them saying "you aren't depressed, you don't need our help, we will refer you directly to the surgeon".  Another few months later and I met with the surgeon, who asked important questions about exactly what I wanted, and confirming that I understood that this was a permanent change, and there is no going back.  Then my name was entered into the queue, behind everyone who needed a mastectomy for health reasons (e.g. cancer), and another year or so later it was my turn.  The surgery was done as an outpatient thing--check in at 06:30, and home and sleeping in my own bed by 10:00. I, of course, went to an indoor SCA event that weekend (surgery was on a Thursday). Some people there asked "shouldn't you be at home?", to which I replied "I am home, but here I have lots of friends to fetch and carry for me and make certain I don't over do it".  They did, too.  

So, there you have it, a (not so short) summary of my life in Sweden.  There are changes on the horizon, as my current job as a laboratory manage winds to a close as we outsource the lab (for budget reasons), but it is much too soon to say what will happen next. There have been job applications locally and abroad, but I have till December before this job ends, so I am not too stressed about it, something fun will come up, of that I am certain.

Do please write back and let me know how you are doing. I may be crap at keeping in touch, but I do think of you often, and fondly.

Yesterday was my birthday—I turned eight years old. For the fifth time. Therefore I am inspired to type up what I can remember of where and who I was for all of my other eighth birthdays.

The first time I turned eight it was 1974. I was a skinny little girl living with my mother and little sister ( in Texas )

The second time I turned eight it was 1984. I was taller and plumper than I had been a decade before, and I lived with my mother and little sister ( in Anchorage, Alaska )

The third time I turned eight it was 1994 and was living in ( Fairbanks, Alaska )

The fourth time I turned I turned eight was 2004, I was living in ( Canada )

Yesterday was the fifth time I have turned eight, and I am living with my boyfriend David ( in Sweden )

As I type this it is New Year's Eve—there are occasional sounds from outside of people's fireworks being shot off, and I am contentedly curled up at home with my sweetie, who is at the next computer, within easy reach.

One year ago today I was visiting a friend in Geneva, on my way to Sweden from Italy. One year ago tomorrow I landed in Stockholm, took a train to Tierp to the home of some friends I had first met in Alaska the winter before, and visited with them while lord_kjar drove south to meet me there for the start of our first "date"—a 10 day road-trip which included a trip to Gotland to introduce him to my Queen, visits to the homes of three out of four of his siblings (and the chance to meet his parents, too, when they also visited one on them whilst we were there), attendance at a play put on in southern Sweden by one of his friends who lives up here in the north, and attendance at the SCA 12th night event, where the above mentioned Queen stepped down and became a countess. Then we did the long drive north to Luleå, and I moved in with him. At that point I had only one suitcase full of stuff with me, and the rest was in storage with a friend in Scotland.

( The rest of January )

( February )

( March ).

Slight pause in typing, while we went to enjoy watching fireworks out our windows. The widow at the front of the apartment gives a good view of the big display being put on at the University, while the window at the back of the apartment gives a nice view of the (much further away) fireworks display happening somewhere over near the city center.

( April )


( May )

( June )

( July )

( August )

( September )

( October )

( November )

( December )

One year after moving to Sweden for love, and I am still head over heels in love. This is the most togetherness relationship I have ever had—we work together on so many projects, we enjoy so many of the same activities. We "click" in ways that make I, who have always been lucky in love and always led a charmed life, go "wow, this is wonderful". I have a good job, a happy relationship, enjoy good health, and have an active social life in addition to having a loving partner. Life is truly wonderful.

I wish all of my friends a Happy New Year, and hope that 2012 brings you all much joy.

Not only was it a temporal weekend, I also wound up acting like it was a weekend, in that I did no uni work whatsoever. (well, I did read my 1000 words a day, but that doesn't really count) On Friday clovis_t and I went into town, where we met up with mushroom_maiden. She and I abandoned him in town and came out here, where I introduced her to my hammer dulcimer and then she wrote down the two-note sequence of cords I could play while she played a song she knows on the guitar (she'd brought one with her). This is my first experiance at "making music" with someone, and I very much enjoyed it. It is so easy to do this sort of thing (but would sound silly, I think, without the other musician supplying more than what I was doing). She stayed the night, and we girls talked till late--it was fun, it has been ages since I've had a slumber party.

On Saturday morning I took her home and picked up clovis_t and we stopped by a store on our way home to obtain supplies. We then spent the rest of the day cleaning up the kitchen and making food for his party that night. The occasion is a good one--he picked up the final, bound, version of his Honour's Thesis _The Development of Military Technologies in World War Two Britain_. We had four car-fulls of people turn up for the party, including one friend of his from school who has been working in the US for a few years. Not a bad turn out, considering that the only form the invitations took was setting up an "event" on Facebook and having that notify some of his friends.

One of the most amusing bits of the party was deciding that mushroom_maiden, who had come back out for the party, and I really have so much in common that we must be reincarnations of one another. We aren't exactly the same--there are differences accountable by the fact that, this time, we've lived different lives and have been shaped by different experiences. Time, not being linear, it doesn't matter that we happen to be alive at the same time--indeed, we figure that we lived her life first, then sometime later lived mine, which makes her older, never mind that in this life she is less than half my age. ;-)

This morning I'd planned on heading in with him to fighter practice because one of the local knights had been going to do a training session for beginning level fighters, no armour required. My thought was do that class, then head to uni and do some work there while clovis_t enjoyed the rest of practice, then he could get a ride to uni and we could head home from there. However, A) the class didn't happen after all and B) one of our friends was stressed about uni work, so I hung out with her for a bit and stitched, and then he and I left earlier than he normally does, we stopped by uni so I could put some files on the department shared drive for my advisor--hey, wait--that counts as uni work. I did do something--took about two minutes, but it is something. Then we came home, where I twiddled my thumbs, checked e-mail and caught up on LJ (for the first time this weekend), played a game with clovis_t and then did some more e-mail.

It is now midnight, and my weekend off is over. Time to do yoga, get some sleep, and in the morning do some serious uni work. Now that all of the figures for chapter three are on the uni hard drive I need to double check to be certain I'm done with the text for that chapter, and get a copy of it to my advisor and point out where he will find the figures. Then I can go onto the next task towards finishing that thesis I've neglected all weekend.

I have said before, I don't need kids, I've got an apprentice. Today was a very good example. I had just sat down to the computer after a short break, when my tall apprentice, who had been in the yard doing some grinding with a belt-sander on a knife he's making came in holding his hand wrapped in a bit of bloody paper towel asking for help. Apparently the sander managed to hook on something on the knife and grabbed it, and wrenched it around till the point lodged in his finger tip. Of his left hand (he's *very* left handed). So I helped him get it cleaned up, taped the wound closed with steri-strips, and used regular bandaids to tape a bit of cotton wool (the Australian term for cotton balls) to the finger lest it start bleeding again, and advised him to take a break for a bit. He says he can't feel it at the moment, but as deep as that point must have gone in, given the width of the wound at the surface, it is going to hurt later! No one told me that first aid is part of the laurel-apprentice responsibilities!

In a comment to a recent post I was asked: "What will you ever do when you are finished? Start something new? Do some travelling? Tell us the stories of whatever it is, please."

So I thought I'd answer here, on the off chance that she's not the one one who'd like to know what I'm hoping to do "next".

I would very much like to do some travelling between finishing my degree here in Tassie and moving on to wherever we go next. There are ever so many old friends I'd like to visit, new friends I'd like to meet, and places of wonderful natural beauty on this planet I've not seen yet. Should the timing work out that way, I wouldn't mind taking a good six months off to just travel, but if only a week or two are available, that would be fun too (I'd just focus on the "seeing old friends" part rather than the "explore new places" part of the dream).

But at this point it is all very much in the "dream" category. I don't really want to start a serious search for a post-doc or teaching position until I've got a good, solid first draft of my thesis, because I want to have a good idea of when I can reasonably expect to be finished (and therefore available). This works out well in timing, the positions I've seen advertised over the past four months or so are for teaching positions are still mostly in the "start August 2008" category, which I am certain is too soon for my schedule. Hopefully this will mean that a bunch more will come available that start in August of 2009--that would give me the opportunity for travel between degrees!

Of course, that is assuming that I go for a teaching position--all of the web pages suggest that folk are more likely to be hired for teaching at Uni after they've held a post-doc research position, and those positions are less likely to be advertised, and are more likely to have random start times, based upon when funding is approved.

Where do I want to go? Ideally I want to live somewhere which has an active SCA community, with plenty of camping events and lots of good bardic circles to fill my evenings with song. I require topography, preferably actual mountains, though rugged hills can be acceptable for a short-term home. I do not wish to live in a major city, but do require a university or small US-style "teaching college". Not too hot would be nice, real winter would be a bonus. Ideally my home would be outside of town, on a largish property with no nearby neighbours, with plenty of trees and good views of those mountains, yet still be quick and easy to get to my Uni. Even better if my home were on the sunset side of the mountain, so that the sun was at my back when I went in in the mornings, and at my back when I went home in the evenings.

What do I want to do? I'm torn--on one hand, teaching at a small, "teaching college" (US, not Australian style--I don't wish to teach teenagers!) sounds very appealing--a position wherin I do some research, but the primary focus is teaching classes. On the other hand, a strictly research position as a post-doc sounds like fun--the chance to just learn new stuff, work on projects, etc. I don't think I'd be interested (yet?) in teaching at a major university wherin I am expected to do huge amounts of research, publish my results in high-impact journals *and* teach undergraduate students as well. At least in the sort term I think I'd be happier focusing upon one or the other aspect.

And of course, all of this will be influenced by what clovis_t decides he wants to do. He's doing his honour's year for his Bachelor's in History at the moment, and hasn't yet decided if he wants to be done with Uni after that and head out into the work force, landing some sort of job that doesn't require "homework", or if he wants to plunge on ahead into academia and seek out a graduate school. If the latter, it could, in theory, be possible for us to be at the same uni, but that would require a bit of luck, in that we are in such different fields--some schools will have better geology departments, some better history departments.

It would be nice to wind up in Drachenwald (that is Europe for you non-SCA folk), since I've not lived over there since Kindergarten. clovis_t has a UK passport (his mum comes from Scotland), so if I landed a job, he'd be legally able to work in any EU country. But I'm willing to keep an open mind and look pretty much anywhere, so if any of you know of positions for which I should apply, given a background in geology/structure/mapping/metamorphic petrology/pressure-temperature-time paths/chemical U-Th-Pb monazite dating/garnet zoning, etc. let me know!

Sometimes all it takes to get one's enthusiasm back up where it should be for uni work is a bit of time spent in the lap of a loved one, not talking about uni work (or anything else earth shatteringly important).

(She said cheerily, after accomplishing more in the past hour or so than she had all weekend.)

The tree outside my window is lovely this time of year. While some of the leaves cling stubbornly to green, others are yellow, and still others a very pretty red. I rather like this tree, I've forgotten the name of the variety, but it is something related to a maple--the leaves are five-pointed, but much skinnier than the maple tree out in the back yard, whcih has already lost all of its leaves for the year. As I recall, this tree was the last of the imported trees in the area to lose its leaves last year, and it even managed to hold on to a few, lonely, leaves all winter. (Australian trees don't lose their leaves seasonally--they drop a few here and there all year, but don't ever go naked.)

This morning was spent on countless errands in town, and while we made it home a bit past mid-day, I've spent the time since catching up on mail, updating financial records in the computer (that many stops equals *how much* spent!?!), and reading LJ. Now it is suddenly 4pm, and I really ought to quit playing and pick up my uni work for the day (fortunately, the past several days have been quite productive in terms of both uni work, and getting out for reasonable-length walks).

I love days like today, when I wake up inspired! Since it is clovis_t's birthday and he wanted a D&D adventure run for him, I woke up thinking of a potential situation/adventure I can offer his character. We've been much too busy to do any gaming for ages and ages (possibly a few years since I've run one for him!), but now I've got some good ideas. I also wok up thinking of things to write-up for the results section of my thesis. Gotta love a brain that can simultaneously devise list of non-player-characters and their environment to encounter in a game *and* devise an organizational system for an entire thesis chapter--& hold it all long enough to get up and mix up and knead some bread dough *before* settling down to the computer to type up the details of both.

After typing that all up, I got a lovely nap (I woke up inspired the first time a good several hours earlier than I should have!) and then baked a birthday cake (German Sweet Chocolate). Even the fact that there were some ISSUES with baking (I *hate* Australian ovens in rental houses--they are *not* big enough! It should be possible to put three cake pans in the oven on the same shelf at once, and it isn't!) like the cake rising up and spilling over the sides of the pan to drip onto the oven floor and burn (this has *never* happened with this recipe before, and I've been making it (rarely--it is quite rich) for over 20 years hasn't managed to diminish my good mood. Since the cake rose so much there were also issues with the cake plate--the glass dome is usually *just* tall enough for three layers. This time, it is actually touching the frosting on top. Oh well, he tells me it still tastes good! (I don't actually like the taste of chocolate, so I don't like the cake myself, but the coconuts-cashew frosting is yummy, and it is *his* birthday!)

Now I've got about an hour to go for a walk before heading out to dinner with his dad (his mum got sent out of town for work this week, so she's already given him a birthday phone call.)