I love it

Let's see this pretty great sunday through my iPhone. 

 

The day started out sunny and with the promise of spring. I took my spring jacket on and headed out for a walk - and it wasn't even very cold! Though we do still have snow some places, but that's just part of a Scandinavian spring after all. 

 

When I got home I had all this energy so I started redoing the living room (as always!). I removed the carpet and moved the couch around a bit and finally took the TV down to the basement, it's been standing unused in a corner for a year now so it's actually time to get rid of it for good, but I'll get to that eventually. For dinner I had sushi and enjoyed eating it in my new favorite place on the couch! (I'm not even sure why I have a dinner table, I never ever use it for dinner...).

It's been a pretty efficient day, I've done things I've been meaning to do for months and months and it's all because of the sun and the up-beat tunes I've been blasting all day - one of them is Icona Pops "I love it" it totally makes me want to go out dancing, it's been way too long!

The L word

So how many hours are you allowed to spend learning to do the "cup-song" before you're officially a Loser (yes, capital L, preferably marked with a finger and a thumb on my forehead)? I've gotten the moves down pretty good and I know the lyrics, but my voice is so horrible I can't even stand to hear it, and also the combination of the two things (sing and beat) is so difficult that I keep accidentally sending my cup flying every which way. I seriously don't understand how I (on occasion) manage to walk and talk at the same time. Actually I don't manage that very well either - I think I've mentioned my ability to trip over nothing at all on a daily basis before, and right now I have a lovely scrape on my right knee as proof. 

Apart form adding sick cup-skills to my resumé I've been reading a pretty interesting book today (yes, I have actually done something a bit more intellectual than cupping this fine day, hmm... that sounds wrong... but anyways...) it's called "Thinking, fast and slow" and it's by Daniel Kahneman. So far it's really good. Apart from that one I have three other books on my nightstand that I'm reading right now - hopefully I'll get it together and finish one of them soon so I can start on yet another book that I bought in Sweden this week. I think I might need a pool, a sun-chair and some sun to finish all of them though. 

Source; 1

Taking a break

I'm really sucking at keeping this blog updated. There are just so many things on my mind that getting them down to words and sentences is just really hard right now. For example I've been staring at the screen for ages with thoughts just randomly dropping by and being pushed away by bigger and bedder ideas. I keep trying to focus on one thing at the time but everything gets jumbled up. 

Somehow I keep coming back to vacation, spring, light clothes and beautiful bags, yes it's superficial and irrelevant, but I suppose it's my minds way of taking a break. So here are the latest pause images in my head;

Everything is from stories.com

An extremely cruel unfunny joke

For as long as I can remember I’ve discussed aging and death with my father. We have very different views on it; something he thinks is explained by my young age and inexperience. He’s one of those who think that at some point we’ll find a cure for death (or aging) – and it can’t come fast enough! I’m one of those who can’t understand why we’d want to. Obviously I don’t “like” death, as you know I’m in the "cheating-death" kind of business. I do everything I can to prevent it, when that’s the reasonable thing to do, knowing that in the long run death always wins. In my way of thinking death is part of the deal, it’s natural and mostly not at all that dramatic. When you work with old and sick people death isn’t a far-fetched outcome, and as a professional you need to accept that.

The thing is I don’t work with old sick people. I work with young healthy people; kids and babies who aren’t even people yet – teeny humans who haven’t even gotten the chance to start. Here death as an outcome feels highly unacceptable, it feels unfair and like an extremely cruel unfunny joke – “here’s a new life, oops no, fooled you, I’ll keep this one!” Devastating and heartbreaking.

So having experienced that, can I still argue that death is part of the deal; that it’s ok and an outcome that you have to be prepared to handle? Of course I can, because that’s just the way it is, no matter how horrible and tragic it is when it happens, especially in a way that we normally would call prematurely and unexpectedly.

Ever since the first day I got called in to a complicated labour and felt the gut wrenching horror when a birth is accompanied by complete silence (and luckily quickly followed by a huge adrenalin kick on my part) I’ve felt an immense calmness when hearing a babies cry, a huge relief. It’s the babies way of saying I’m here and I’m fighting. That's the norm, that's the most likely outcome and it’s what everyone expects – but for me it’s a wonder, every single time.

People wonder how you can work in paediatrics having to accept that some children die. I always think that children die whether you work with it or not and not seeing it doesn’t make it go away. For me, the fact that some births are followed by silence actually makes the cries better, when one dies all the others that live feel like a huge gift. As long as that feeling can crawl it’s way through the “punch in the gut” feeling of loosing one I think I might be able to keep doing this job, that despite everything still is the most amazing, worthwhile job in the world. But damn, some days are hard.

Photos from here

In the mood

Can you feel your feet begging to move and your hands starting to tremble like the (in)famous jazz hands when you see these photos and hear the groovy melody of "In the mood" in your head? I know my hands and feet - not to mention hips and shoulders can't be still when I hear the music at least, so today everything I've done has had a kind of swing to it. 

 

We're in march people! It's official - spring will come this year too! I know I dance around most of the year, but it's like I truly can't help it when the sun starts showing it's face after three o'clock in the afternoon. Yesterday was all about the salsa and merengue (which is like once in a blue moon) that was the raging fashion in this apartment, but today I happened to come across a youtube clip of some gal's swing dancing in the 1940's and I thought to myself - imagine living thru WWII and still looking so ecstatic while swinging, it must be the happiest dance ever, and I should learn it! 

 

I know there're a lot of reasons why we live in the best of times - blogging and Instagram to mention two perhaps less important ones - genus classes at universities in Sweden and survival rates of premature babies at an all time low to mention two in my opinion hugely important ones. But I can't help sometimes daydreaming of living in an era of black and white, I know it sounds stupid, but I love the elegance, the smoldering looks and obviously the music and the movies. We should totally bring that era back, I mean without the war and the lousy conditions for everyone who isn't a white male, maybe just like a costume party... yeah, that would probably be enough for me.

For now I think I'll make myself a cup of tea and cuddle up with some dancing clips of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, maybe I'll pick it up just by watching and re-watching for a couple of hours.

Sources here