Happy Hour

Yeah. Uhu. Is that right? Aha. Ummm. Yeah. Ok. Oh really? Ummm. Right. Aha.

I look at her as she over-eagerly nods her head and takes notes from all that I’m saying. Then she stops and looks at me with her penetrative stare. I feel as if I should have something to say but I know I can’t say the things she wants to hear. Avoiding her eyes I stare out the window and play with my headphones like there is no tomorrow.

Tell me something about you. Aha. Umm. Ok. Uhu. Right. Yeah. And how does that make you feel?

I carefully dodge her questions even though I know she needs to know the answers to be able to help me. I don't know how any of it makes me feel. I don't know what to tell her. I sink lower and lower on her couch and while she waits for me to open my mouth I wander off on to the other side. To the other side where everything is good and you don't have to tell middle-aged head-bangers how various situations make you feel. To my kingdom, my own little haven, where I decide who I let in and who not. I sometimes wish I could spend all my time there but at the same time I know the day that happens is the day they have to lock me up at some mental institution. Because as much as I like the other side, life is happening on this side. Right here, right now. So I better start coughing up the answers.

Aha. Uhhh. Ok. Right. Aha. Wait. Why? When in doubt, buy a sweater? Uhu. Road Trip? What?. Foreign Mafia? Yeah, we need another session. Next week? Good.

Posted 20 Years Ago on FITK by Little Miss Loopy, re-posted with image

A Day in My Life

I was taken upstairs as it was finally time for my operation.

An hour before I had been given two Parkodin Forte to prevent me from feeling pain and a tranquilizer to prepare me for the anesthesia. The nurse drove me to the surgery ward and left me there next to the supply cabinets as it was a hectic day and the room was not ready yet. I was pushed back and forward as the nurses had to get to their supplies and my bed caused a traffic jam when a young doctor was trying to get some poor woman back to recovery. I can’t say it was a pleasant experience. Finally a smiling young man came to me and introduced himself. I’m Dr Skurgiburg and I will be in charge of your anesthesia today. Moments later another smiling young man who looked like the identical twin of Dr. Skurgiburg in his green overalls introduced himself as a nurse. Lucky me, I thought, being half-naked and exposed in front of these charming twins.

Being petrified of needles I tried not to faint when the male nurse put in my needle. The room was filled with green overalls attending to their pre-op things and I stared at the ceiling trying to imagine that I was somewhere else. Soon I found myself at an exotic location and I could feel the warm breeze from the ocean on my face. This was my first clue that the heavy medication was working. All of a sudden the face of one of the twins popped into my vision and he told me that they were now giving me pain medication through my needle so I wouldn't feel a thing. Then came the anesthesia itself and Dr. Skurgiburg put on my oxygen mask and told me to breath as normal. I felt panic and thought I was suffocating and falling through the table. One deep breath for me now, honey was the last thing I heard and I was out.

I first came around on my way to recovery. The smiling twins were there with me and I asked them if it was over. Yes sweetheart, it's over. Wow, I said, that was quick. I was dreaming in Spanish you know I told them and then mumbled something probably highly inappropriate in Spanish. Then everything went black again.

I woke up in tears and tried to sit up but I couldn’t. I was in a room filled with sleeping beauties and on my finger I had some thing attached to a monitor. Twice did my monitor make a noise and after carefully studying the other monitors around me I decided it was because my heart rate was way too slow. The noise didn’t seem to bother the nurses though and they hardly looked my way. Lying dizzy in recovery after watching one too many ER shows I really would have loved for someone to tell me not to worry but the nurses seemed to have mentally clocked out already and were talking about deserts and confirmation parties. At least I was paying attention to details, that must be a good sign that I was not dying. They finally noticed that I had woken up and one of them brought over a tiny glass of water. Drink this she said and I did as I was ordered. By this time the room was spinning and the nurse who had brought me up there was back and getting ready to take me down again. I wondered about whether I should mention to her that maybe moving me in this state was not a good idea but judging by her face I thought my suggestions would not be welcome. Once back in my room, like a cow to its stall, a much friendlier nurse gave me medication through the damn needle that was still there to help with the nausea. It worked and I was knocked out again.

Header Image: Auður Ösp Ólafsdóttir

Posted 20 Years Ago on FITK by Little Miss Loopy, re-posted

Absurdity

Some people would maybe find it strange to find a shopping cart in their backyard. The same people would probably remove it and try to find out what the hell it is doing there.

I took a photo:



Somebody told me I use and abuse men. I toy with their emotions and make them cry. I resent that. Someone also told me that I’m amazingly beautiful and that I’m the only one that doesn'’t see it. He told me in order to gain the self-confidence that I lack I just have to believe it. Walk with your head up high he said and then he tried to kiss me. I almost believed him.

You have to enjoy the irony of it all.

Posted 20 Years Ago on FITK by Little Miss Loopy, re-posted

The Bigger Picture

She sat on the bench and thought about what to do.

It was not exactly what she would have called a nice garden. Traffic sounds from a busy street nearby surpassed the tiny birds’ melodies. She wondered if they were aware of the fact that they were not all singing the same song and thought about whether she should tell them. She noticed a plastic bag that looked oddly out of place full of clothes and personal belongings. How odd, she thought and looked around watching out for a likely owner. She was alone in this peculiar place and it was like time stood still on the inside while life passed by on high speed on the outside. She was very curious about the bag and slowly moved towards it, making sure no one was around to see her snooping. The bag smelled of sweat and tobacco and the clothes looked old and used. She was so wrapped up in her finding that she almost forgot her problems which had brought her there. The tears on her cheeks had dried but the nauseating feeling inside of her was still there. She deliberated taking the bag and give it to the local authorities in case someone had lost it. Still, it didn’t look like the sort of things one would miss and in the end she decided to leave it. Against her curious nature she accepted the fact she would never know who's it was and what it was doing there. She sat back at her place and concentrated on the off key birds.

She had been sitting there only for a couple of minutes when an old lady came and sat on the bench next to the bag. She smelled of sweat and tobacco. The old lady had a sandwich in her hand which she ate like a hungry animal. She finished everything but a little piece which she cut down to even smaller pieces and threw at the birds. She smiled at the girl and took the bag into her arms. At that moment the girl realized she was sat in the middle of the old lady's home. The old rags were all her earthly possessions, the birds her friends and the bench her bed. It put things into perspective. She departed the garden free. Free and thankful for how unimportant her problems were.

Image: Statue of Tómas Guðmundsson overlooking Tjórnín in downtown Reykjavik

Posted 20 Years Ago on FITK by Little Miss Loopy, re-posted with image

(N)iceland

It’s -11°C out there and everything is white. The low winter sun shines bright and gives the mountains surrounding the city a magical golden glow. Mittens, hats, scarfs and other woolen accessories are no longer optional. It’s now a question of survival.

The snow is powdery which makes it impossible to make snowmen and other winter creatures out of it. Instead the young at hearts run to every insignificant little hill with snow sledges and black garbage bags and get ready for an awesome ride. When the snow comes even the most mature of men turn into five year-olds again and throw snowballs at passing colleagues and friends. Girls all ages make snow angels and then run to the nearest café for a hot chocolate.

On days like these my little city really shows why it is loved by so many. We may only have daylight for a few hours but oh my does the sun use those few hours. Before long the bright blue skies will turn pink and then the pitch dark takes over. The nature’s beautiful display of color is not over though because it’s almost certain after a day like this that the dancing green northern lights will make an appearance.

Finally my island is living up to its name.

Posted 20 Years Ago on FITK by Little Miss Loopy, re-posted with image

The Grandmama Who Sees Everything

Now then Loopy, draw three cards and place them upside down on the table. Clear your mind. Don't think at all. Concentrate.

Grandma, you know I don’t believe in this nonsense...

Nevermind believe, just do it. And I never want to see you wearing make-up, you don’t need it, you hear. Now, oh my, you fancy a boy.

Really now? I fancy a boy huh?

Yes, you like him a lot but you don’t want us to know about it. You are very secretive when it comes to the matters of the heart.

Right.

Hmm... I see a lot of fun and adventure coming soon.

What are you talking about? You know we are going to London for New Years, of course we will have fun and adventures.

Yes but it’s going to be a lot of fun but a little bit difficult. The two of you are going to be a little bit sick. Maybe the flu, maybe stomach problems but sick you will be.

Fantastic.

And you are going to brawl.

Well it’s going to be me and mother alone together for a week, of course we are going to fight. Are you not my grandma and her mother? Don’t you know us at all?

Hmm... interesting. You are going to fight over a man. Either you don’t want her to talk to someone or she doesn't want you to talk to someone. There is going to be some kind of brawl between you, mark my words, but luckily it will all work out in the end.

Uhu, any more great news you want to tell me about? Maybe I’ll brake my arm while I'm at it, since I'm already sick and fighting with my mother?

Nono, I don’t want to tell you more... no.. don’t want to tell you more about this trip. Except watch your money, I have a feeling you will spend way too much money. Both of you.

Well it doesn’t take a crystal ball to figure that one out.

Loopy, I see two men here. One of them lives abroad. He is a good friend of yours. He is a very nice man. The other one is dark and I think he's foreign. Who's that man?

Uhhh, beats me.

Yes, foreign man.

Anything else?

There is the spending card again. Watch your money, you hear. And your mother is going to meet someone with a lot of money. Or maybe it’s you but I think it’s your mother.

Oil tycoon from the Middle-East?

Don’t be silly. No, I don’t want to tell you anything more.

Well thank you grandma, this has been very informative. I’ll mind my money and make sure mum doesn’t take off to Iran with some dark and handsome stranger. We’ll send you a postcard.

Posted 20 Years Ago on FITK by Little Miss Loopy, re-posted

Lesbians Taking Over the World?

I was sitting at work last night, enjoying a slice of pizza, with a co-worker who can easily be labeled as very odd.

He was reading an article in the trashiest of the Icelandic newspapers about this girl who hooked up with a boy with a very small penis. Evidently the girl felt as she had suffered from this experience and decided to write about every little detail in her encounter with the ill-equipped man. My weird co-worker found it hilarious and wanted to share his joy with me and read some of it out loud to me. I didn't find it quite as funny and told him: I will deny it to my death that I ever said this as I am the official spokeswoman of the inner pig-ness of men but I swear to god that sometimes I think women are worse.

He looked at me in disbelief as if he was wondering if those words had really come from my mouth. Then he said he had actually learned about these things in psychology and asked me if I wanted to hear the theory he had studied. I was all up for it since I am sincerely interested in everything regarding the interaction between the two sexes. In so many words, this was his theory:

Well, uhhh, when girls hit puberty they don't realize that they have to start to behave differently with their male friends than they used to. So they still behave the same around them and confide in them with the same issues as before. Except the boys don't just want to be friends with them anymore and use every opportunity to score. The girls then become very bitter when they find out about the situation and start focusing on their relationships with their girlfriends. And that is why the number of women turning to other women is increasing incredibly fast. In a few years all women will become lesbians.

The first thing that came into mind was what bullshit school did he go to? The second thing was hmmm... actually, I do that. I don’t realize that my male friends are male and in the end they can’t have friends that are girls without at least thinking about sleeping with them There may be some truth to this weird theory of his but I refuse to believe that the next stage for me, after the Men are Pigs one, will be lesbianity. As I said before, it’s not just men that act like idiots, people in general act like idiots.

In conclusion I have to say that sitting down to eat that slice of pizza sure did bring up a lot of interesting questions. Why are men the way they are? Why are women the way they are? Why do I have emotional maturity of a adolescent girl when it comes to men? And maybe the most important question of all, where the hell can I sign up for that psychology class? Looks like a pretty wacky place.

Note: This was the most consistently searched for post in the history of FITK. It got numerous ‘hits’ per week, every week, for nearly nine years, then somehow faded in the Google search algorithms… perhaps it was because lesbians didn’t actually take over the world?

Posted 20 Years Ago on FITK by Little Miss Loopy, re-posted

Metaphorically Speaking

There is a thin line, it seems, from being painfully single to not quite as single.

It sort of sneaks up on you and you don't have enough time to fully respond to the situation. You are not exactly un-single, or in a relationship as you would call it, but still you are totally wrapped up in getting to know someone you didn't even know existed a short while ago.

For a control freak like me, not knowing where something is headed is the worst thing that can happen. Going with the flow, taking it easy and seeing where things will take me is just not something I do. Except when I’m traveling, which really is the only time I truly should know where the hell I’m going but that's a different story. I need to know where I’m going, how I'm going to get there and preferably whether or not there are going to be any stops along the way. I need to know how, when, why and what for. Everything less than that is unacceptable, which when I think about it is probably a contributing factor to the painfully single state I had gotten myself into.

I’m in the process of going down a deep and mysterious river and I don’t know my destination yet. I don’t have a life jacket or anything and hardly even have a raft to hang on to. All I know is that something is pushing me away from the banks and that force is stronger than the fear I have inside of me. All I can hope for is a smooth journey and that I will somehow manage to cope with the stress that comes with not knowing.

This is not fair, I should at least get a helmet or a life vest.

Posted 20 Years Ago on FITK by Little Miss Loopy, re-posted with image

Mama Maria

In Croatia, old ladies make a living by offering tourists a room in their home for a reasonable price.

For many of them that is the only income they get all year so they try to cram as many people as they possibly can in as little space as they possible can and they try to get them to stay for as long as they possibly can. Most of their guests are backpackers who they pick up at the bus and rail stations. Getting out of a bus in a place like Dubrovnik can be a nightmare because these old ladies jump at you before you even get out and try their best to sell you the idea of spending the night in their home. The facilities they offer are as different as the ladies are many and in this as in other business deals, jumping at the first offer is not always the best thing.

When arriving in Dubrovnik, on my way through Croatia, I had planned to stay at a youth hostel. When I got there it was filled with very loud English people so I decided to give it a miss. Instead I ended up at Mama Maria’s. Mama Maria was a lady of about 80 years. Her house was next to the pathway leading up to the youth hostel and she lured people into her garden by whispering to them as they were walking by. Her English consisted only of the simplest words but somehow she managed to bargain about the price and convince people her house was the best anyway.

Mama Maria had a son who was about fifty or sixty. I suspect that she saw a wife in me for him because she was from the first moment extremely nice to me. I later found out that I was the only one of her guests who got a formal introduction to the son. She even gave me dinner one night and let me sit in her kitchen and watch American television with hvratski, Croatian, subtitles. Sitting in her kitchen, eating the oily sausages and sauerkraut, is one of my favorite memories I have from traveling.

Mama Maria had a big temper and she was not everyone's favorite. There was another woman who had rooms to rent living on the bottom floor of the house and at least once I heard them screaming at each other in Croatian. I guess they had both been living there forever and this was probably not the start of the argument. They accused each other of stealing customers from the other and that is exactly what they did. When Mama Maria first got me into her garden and I told her I had to think about whether I should take the room or not the other old lady tried to steal me on the way out. “Maria no good” she said with a stealthy voice and shook her head.

She was good though. Her guests who came from places as far from each other as Iceland and South-Africa loved her and her strange behaviour. She was growing turtles in her backyard, she had a bunch of cats and a couple of hamsters in the bathroom. She wore the same blue dress the whole time I was there and she used the hands of her male guests to wipe the sweat of her forehead when demonstrating how hot she was. She washed the clothes from those she liked and it was Christmas for her when all her rooms were filled with young people who spent the evenings at her terrace getting to know each other over a glass of wine. What is there not to love? She has probably had about a million people sleeping in her home, favoring those who stay for long and giving those suitable as her daughter-in-law the royal treatment. Sure her furniture was odd, the beds not all very comfortable and taking a shower with the hamsters was not that pleasant but it was all a part of the experience (not to mention all the cool people I met at her terrace.)

All that and so much more for lousy 100 kunas a night.

Posted 20 Years Ago on FITK by Little Miss Loopy, re-posted

Monday

It’s Monday.

The weekend with it's cocktail umbrellas is over and I find myself back in my old weekday routine. A lot happened this weekend, nothing that matters in the long run though because the weekends come and go and leave little behind. During the week I am a sane responsible individual with a vision and plans to conquer the world. The weekends on the other hand are all like a big bad acid trip where I float on a bright coloured cloud, sprinkling purple fairy dust and giving people the finger. Time and space don’t exist during the weekends. Neither does the act of thinking. I open my mouth and the words run from it like a colossal waterfall and the brain never catches up with them. Not until Sunday that is, when the moral hangovers make themselves a cozy little home in my mind. Like an ostrich the only thing I can do to escape them is to stick my head in the sand and hope they go away. Which they do, most of the time.

It’s Monday.

I sit in my dead end job and watch life pass me by. One hundred million questions run through the thought highway in my head and I have answers to none of them. I pinch myself to see whether this is really it or if I’m stuck in a recurring nightmare. There is a scratch in my life's vinyl and I'm in a loop.

It’s Monday.

Again.

Posted 20 Years Ago on FITK by Little Miss Loopy, re-posted with image and video