Monday, December 02, 2024

Sneezing Dramaqueen

It is 1 am and I am sitting in my kid sister’s bed in the dark.

All I can hear is a passing car every now and again from outside and my sister’s snores coming from the next room. I think about how lovely she was as a baby and hope that she will grow up to be the strong individual I know she can be. The reason I am here in her bed, up to my ears in stuffed animals, and not my own is the flu. I’ve not gone to work for three days because of it and I was bored out of my mind alone at home. I sent my mother an emergency call and asked her to come pick me up. Being sick at my mother’s home is always better and especially now when the teachers are on a strike and I have my two little sisters to entertain me all day.

Although I enjoy my own company, solitude for too long can be a nuisance. Your mind is free to wander and sometimes it stumbles up on dangerous territories. Like the fact how it sucks to be sick and single. If it had not been for my own efforts I would not have heard from a single person those three days that I've been sick. Like Princess Fiona, kept from the world, I’ve been spending my days in my basement hole watching videos and sneezing. I'm not mad at my friends or family being too busy with their lives for little ol’ me because I've been there myself. What on the other hand makes me sad is that all of them have people who call and check up on them which I don’t have. I love my mother dearly and I know she cares for me but there is a distance between us and sometimes I don't see her for weeks. The same goes for my father but with him the time is closer to months than weeks. Without wanting to sound too dramatic I could have been dead for three days without anyone noticing except maybe the folks at work but they would probably just think I had fled the country or something. Actually I think I can pretty safely say that if I had in fact died three days ago nobody would have known about it until my toiletpaperthief of a neighbor would have smelled my rotten flesh and notified the landlady. When this is the case you sort of know that you are on your own in this world.

Now, I'm a relatively healthy individual despite my flu so people in my life probably don't automatically think sudden death when they have not seen me around for a while. Still this loneliness and need to belong haunts me and the thought of being a crippled old lady alone somewhere in my basement hole when it's my time to go scares me. I'm not saying it will be like that, I’ve not given up on finding the place where I belong yet, but I’m realistic at the same time and know it is a possibility. What if I become the girl the world forgot about? The friend you always meant to call but you never did? I can't make them remember. I can't make them care.

Like I said, dangerous territories. I also thought about the trip my mum and I are taking over the new years. Like two queens we are staying at a classy hotel and before I knew it we had met devilishly handsome and filthy rich businessmen and they were flying us over to Brazil in their private jet. Just because we are so marvelous. I wish sometimes that my brain had an off button.

That I could sometimes just be.


Posted 20 Years Ago on FITK by

Little Miss Loopy

Re-posted


By Professor Batty


Comments: 0 


Sunday, December 01, 2024

A Month of Auður

One of the prime inspirations for the FITK blog was a young Icelandic woman, Auður Ösp Ólafsdóttir.

In early 2004, while researching a trip to Iceland, I discovered her English-language blog A Woman Without A Man. It was written journal-style and full of the various minutiæ of her daily life in Reykjavík. What set it apart from the thousands of other newly-minted blogs of the day was her engaging and revelatory writing, the frankness of which got her into a bit of trouble with some of her Icelandic readers, so she killed her blog in September 2004. By that time we had already been in contact so I offered to let her use FITK as an outlet. She used that access to write a baker’s dozen of posts under the nom de plume of Little Miss Loopy. These will be featured here throughout December as part of my “20 Years Ago on FITK” series.

Auður’s internet adventures didn’t end there.

She went on to write several more blogs and in 2011 she started I Heart Reykjavík, a tourist site which was also a portal to her walking tours. Heart was a rousing success but it all ended in a single day when Covid restrictions were put into place in March of 2020.

Auður is currently self-employed and has a web site, posting primarily in Icelandic.
This month also marks my phasing out of Icelandic posts, there may be one here and there in following months/years, but that well is just about dry.

As always, you can access over 200 ‘best of’ Icelandic posts in the sidebar under ‘Iceland.’

By Professor Batty


Comments: 0 


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