Ear Fat
Last night I dreamed that my ears were so full of wax that it was dripping out everywhere. When I woke up I decided that’d be a great way to lose weight. If they could increase ear wax production that would use up some fat, right? Isn’t ear wax mainly fat? It’d be pretty gross, but I guess you could go into seclusion for a while or maybe you could stimulate production at night and then just wash your pillow case in the morning. Mike and my mother both gave me strange looks when I explained my new weight loss scheme to them.
Today I’ve been counting all the reasons that I’m glad I’m no longer in Sweden. I enjoyed my time in Sweden and wouldn’t trade it for the world, but I really never fit into the society. There are some things I really miss, but overall I am just grateful to be back in a place where I understand the language and the social conventions.
Here’s my list of reasons I’m glad to be home.
1) I don’t feel like a giant Amazon woman every time I go shopping. I can buy decent clothes in my size. I am never faced with a rack of black and white horizontal stripes because we all know black and white horizontal stripes look great on fat women.
2) I am a human again! Seriously, not having the language skills to communicate is a completely dehumanizing experience. It’s wonderful to be able to converse and really let my personality and intelligence show. No more grasping for the simplest terms for normal things.
3) There are no rowdy children at the pool during my water aerobics. When I stick around for open swim the children are not allowed to be hooligans. Hooligans are kicked out immediately.
4) No more coffee nazis. In Sweden everyone is always trying to pour coffee down your throat whether you want it or not. Declining it is viewed as completely alien, even if you’ve refused it every day for a year. Here, the breaks are pressure free. You can eat what you want, drink what you want and do what you want. If you don’t feel like socializing you don’t have to. If you want to socialize you can. You can be yourself here! I think that’s my number one happy thing about being back in America. Freedom to be myself, think for myself, express myself. . . Ah, sweet freedom.
5) People are much friendlier. The people of Kiruna are generally pretty icy, even to other Swedes. This isn’t just my perception — native Kirunabor also expressed this same thought to me on several occasions. People talk to me all the time here. I don’t feel like I’m invisible.
Of course, there are problems here as well. No place is a paradise. I don’t think it would be possible for imperfect humans to create a perfect paradise because there’s always got to be someone who spoils the mix. I am a little lonely at times since we really don’t have a social life as of yet and have no desire to create one. There’s a couple of teachers that I would invite over for dinner or something if we had an appropriate place to entertain, but there’s no way in hell I would ever bring anyone to my dad’s place. It’s too smelly in his section and just too . . . ugly and strange. It’s ok as a temporary living place, but guests wouldn’t understand I don’t think. Also, the one teacher I really, really like and think I could be friends with is married to a guy I would never, ever want to hang out with. I haven’t seen him in ten years, but he was the biggest bully in school for my 12 years of public education so I can’t imagine hanging out with them would be much fun. She told me we went to junior high together but I totally can’t place her. I can place another of the teachers from junior high and she was a complete bitch. I’m glad she works upstairs and I never have to talk to her or see her.
But now it’s time for bed. Maybe I’ll go shed a pound of ear wax tonight. I better do a google and see if there’s any herbs I can take or something. Google has the answer to all questions. Google is my master (or maybe I’m its master).