Am I scary?

On my bicycle tour the other day there had been an accident and a police car was holding partly on the bicycle lane. It had one of the doors open so I had to yell at the police officer: “Shut the fucking door!” He hurried to shut the door, and I got by without taking the car door with me. Do I look or sound really so scary that even a police officer wets his pants when I yell at him?

Once a hundred years ago a guy told me that he had broken up with his girlfriend a year earlier because he was in love with me. It took him one year and a bottle of vodka to tell me. Nom de Dieu. I must be scary.

My husband is still gathering courage, he hasn’t said he loves me since we got married. I better give him some whiskey and then force the words out of him. Then I can say that it only took him 10 years and a bottle of whiskey to tell me “Je t’aime”.

Cat on a hot tin roof

Maggie: You know what I feel like? I feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof.

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Brick: Then jump off the roof, Maggie. Jump off it. Cats jump off roofs and land uninjured. Do it. Jump.

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Maggie: Jump where? Into what?

Things we regret

I don’t believe a word when people say they don’t regret anything they have done. This is so bullshit, everybody would change something, some people would change about everything. Many songs lyrics are also full of this crap, like the beautiful Julie’s wonderful song, Completely fallen; “Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't go and change a thing”.

I would change thousands of things. Not even thinking about the more philosophical choices in my life, there are a lot of banal things that I wouldn’t have done:

- I wouldn’t have parked the car illegally twice in one week resulting two bloody parking tickets.

- I wouldn’t have put the car in reverse instead of first gear and making a huge whole in electric hence and causing a getaway for 2000 cows.

- I wouldn’t have been drinking too much peppermint snaps when skiing with friends, and hitting a tree afterwards.

- I wouldn’t have surprised a boyfriend one morning entering his apartment with the key he had given me. It is funny how it only takes one second for a boyfriend to become an ex-boyfriend when you find him in bed with another girl. I certainly wouldn’t have kicked him in the balls causing him lifelong impotence, now I must fear he one day sues me for this.

- I wouldn’t have provoked a Cuban police officer to confiscate my passport. I did get it back and didn’t have to arrive in Denmark in a container ship, but I had some quite awful flash backs about the prison in “Midnight Express”.

- I wouldn’t have ignored my physics teacher’s whispering when he always a few days before an exam told me what I should particularly study.

- I wouldn’t have broken Tomeo’s heart so brutally, his revenge was gruesome (but sophisticated).

- I wouldn’t have gone to toilet just in the beginning of Palme d’Or Award Show in Cannes; they didn’t let me in again before the evening was over. I got to see Gregory Peck though.

- I wouldn’t have believed the midwife when she said I can do it without epidural when giving birth first time.

- I wouldn’t have started this list; I can go on for years. I can see that the only solution for settling with my past (which apparently is one long embarrassment) is to become a newborn Christian.

Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath

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"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

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The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan's men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,

But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

(Sylvia & Ted, so much love, so much pain...)

At the beach

This afternoon the sun was shining wonderfully so I had two options:
- Polish the windows
- Take the kids to the beach

It took me two seconds to make up my mind, instead of the usual one second hard thinking. The windows were so full of kids hand prints that I really should clean them, but remembering that it will rain again tomorrow, who cares. You can’t see a thing any way.

We have a beautiful nature reservation with a loooong beach near by so off we went collecting mussel shells. One hour and 2000 mussel shells later my Houellebecq depression was gone, la vie est belle, and I am sure if Houellebecq had been with us, he would have agreed.

Now we have a collection of about 2 million mussel shells at home. On Monday I will order 5000 cubic meters sand and fill the garden with sand and mussel shells. We will have a private beach and there will be no need to moan the lawn ever again.

At the hairdresser

Every second month I drag myself to the hairdresser who makes me look like a natural blond (then I don’t have to explain why I am so stupid, I can just refer to my hair colour). Today my hairdresser was an incredibly slow and irritatingly insecure girl; I don’t feel that comfortable letting an insecure person to fix my hair. It is like having a by pass operation by a med student who only has read about it in the books. In an attempt not to become rude, I had to ignore her totally, there was no small talk of what so ever from my part.

Instead I was deeply buried in a Michel Houellebecq book. Houellebecq’s cynicism and his apparent unsolved women issues were like a hard punch on my face. I am romantic; I believe in love, I believe in beautiful erotic relations, I believe in Tolstoy, Pushkin, Jane Austen and Emily Brontë. I choose to believe in the beautiful in life, and I am sure that the day Houellebecq really falls in love (or gets over losing the love of his life?), he will write differently.

Three hours later, totally depressed after reading my book (even there were also quite a few laughs), I looked at the hairdresser’s result in the mirror. Why on earth do they always insist flattening my naturally flat hair even more? If I looked good with totally flat hair, had God given me curls. That's the way He works.

Life at the office

I can’t really live up to my pseudonym, Anna Karenina, as she committed a tragic suicide by throwing herself under a train. I instead am killing myself in a quite different way; I am boring myself to death at the office and drinking an excess of poisonous coffee. This is indeed a very slow and painful death; I don’t recommend it to anybody.

Small Talk

I can be the queen of small talk, if I am in the mood for that. I have this ability to remember the most irrelevant things I hear, so I can always ask people if their cat has still constipation, if the schizophrenic grandma finally rests in piece, or if the brother-in-law has gotten out of jail.

But as I have to small talk time to time too much with my clients, I am not always in the mood for it. Small talk can be necessary, my salary and the yearly bonus are very depended on how much bull shit I can listen during a dinner with a clown of a client. The worst part is the clown getting drunk and frisky, then my diplomatic skills are really on trial. I may need to slap the client, but not too hard, not so hard I lose the business. Just hard enough that he gets the message and then I pray to God he is not a sadomasochist.

Parental Small Talk is a part of being a parent. There are all too many school, club and class parties the parents have to attend and this requires small talk with people you have nothing in common with. Like one mom in my daughters’ class was telling once that the most fantastic thing in Paris was Euro Disney. AND THIS WAS BEFORE SHE HAD CHILDREN. Heavens, this is the most horrible insult towards the most fantastic city in the world, a f… plastic park. But I didn’t say this; I can be diplomatic, I just rolled my eyes. If I have money, shopping is of course the most fantastic thing in Paris, if I don’t have money, window shopping is the most fantastic thing in Paris.

Usually I get through these annoying class parties quite decently. But if I have just had two days inspection with an exhausting client, I might not be so diplomatic. I might ask one of the fathers who is a big game hunter: “So tell me Søren, how badly did the elephant howl when you shot it? Was is like your wife giving birth to the twins or was it more like a man who just got his legs driven over by a train?” Then my husband drags me away explaining everybody it is time for us to go home; it is time for my medication.

Being an adult

I don’t know what definition for being an adult is, but to judge on peoples’ comments when I am behaving (according to them) childishly, it is boring.

During my vacation last week we played a lot of Monopoly, and when my son landed on one of my streets with 4 houses on it, I was celebrating his economic ruin with wild dancing. My 8 year old son started crying and refused to continue the game. “For heaven’s sake wife, can’t you act in an adult way?” my husband complained. Is celebrating a financial success, even with just paper money, forbidden after turning 18?

The other day I was in my village pharmacy, and just before entering I was thinking about something funny and couldn’t stop laughing, not even when it was my turn at the counter. The pharmacist said to me: “It is not fair to laugh if you don’t tell what you are laughing at.” And I am childish, how old is she, 4??? And is spontaneous laughing forbidden after turning 18?

Is scaring the hell out of the kids (turning all the lights off and take a sheet on my head), being the (unofficial) village champion on building sand castles or breaking the kids bones on the trampoline childish? If it is, I prefer that than being a boring adult.

Metrosexual men

Again inspired of JB, I have to say a word or two about metrosexual men. This phenomenon is just so against God’s will. If God wanted guys to be metrosexual, he would not have created men and women to be attracted to each other and eventually moving together. Women would be hermaphrodites instead.

What kind of a woman would voluntarily give any shell space to a man in the bathroom? A man who would fill the shells and drawers with his beauty products, this is a nightmare every woman must fear.

My husband is after years of struggle allowed to have his aftershave in our bathroom. Before it was only his toothbrush; even I think keeping the toothbrush together with his socks and underwear is disgusting. Well, my husband has one more private cosmetic product, the shampoo. He doesn’t care if his hair smells like honey or spring flowers so why waste expensive shampoos on him. He can perfectly settle with the five liter bottle from discount super market, for the fantastic price of one euro.

Reasons to have or to have not sex

JB is an endless inspiration for my blog. He made a list “Reasons why you didn’t have sex”, and came up with over 60 different ones (this list is so funny that reading it should be obligatory treatment for any depression at psychiatric institutions). Quite impressing. I can only think of 4 on my own behalf:

1. The guy was not interested.
2. The guy was too thick-headed to understand I was interested.
3. After closer encounter the guy turned out be extremely stupid (no, we women don’t go after looks but after wit, George Clooney just happens to have both).
4. I was too married.

His blog was inspired of an article “Reasons why people had sex”, and here I can come up with some quite idiotic ones. The most embarrassing is probably “Because the guy was driving a Porche”. This was in my young and stupid days, before I became woman. Girls might turn on Porches and gorgeous guys but women turn on funny and intelligent men.

Well, the Porche guy adventure was a one night fun turned into long time collegial misery. I knew very well that one of my colleagues was very interested in the Porche guy, this might even have increased my eager to sleep with him (yes, girls can have that kind of sick tendencies). I didn’t want to tell her though; it was just the thought knowing that, hey, I have slept with the guy you like. But another colleague living just next door to mine couldn’t avoid seeing the Porche parked outside my apartment in the morning and three minutes later everybody at the office knew. The colleague in love with the Porche guy didn’t speak to me ever again.

Years have teached me many things and one experience wiser from the above story I can give this advice to every girl; If you are tired of your colleague’s endless yakety yak, have sex with her boyfriend / husband, and she will never bother talking to you again.

Like mother, like daughter

My daughter is only 6 years old but totally in love with Christophe Maé. She doesn't listen anything else at the moment, sings along on her non sense French. Oh, Christophe, on t'adore, la maman et la fille...

Picasso, moi et Juliette

("Moi et Juliette", Huile sur toile 50 x 70)

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I have had holidays this week as the kids have autumn holiday from school. My 2 meter long “To do” list from August had grown to a 5 meter long list, but again I managed to ignore it totally. Boy I am good! I should add this to my qualifications on my CV, in fact so far I have only one qualification. Finally I can make qualification to a pluralis, qualifications. Just after “Keeping perfect balance on high heels after 10 mojitos” I can now write “Capability to ignore any workload endlessly”.

Instead I took the kids to one of my favourite museums, Arken, which had a Picasso workshop for children in connection of their exhibition “Picasso and women”. Kids made beautiful litographies and I got so inspired that I picked up an old hobby, painting. I haven’t painted for at least 15 years, so my husband had to open the oil colour tubes with tongs, but they were still useable.

I have been painting for hours and the result is “Moi et Juliette”. Juliette Binoche is my lesbian fantasy, but the only one I have ever had (hmm, I maybe was also quite in love with Emmanuelle Beart once). I am the one longing for her but she is so out of reach.

My husband thinks this is too pornographic and won’t let me hang it in the living room. “Put in the garage”, he said, “it looks just like the pictures that our car mechanic has in his garage”. I have seen these pictures from men's magazines, my God, my piece of art has nothing to do with that porn. But if I can’t hang it at home, I will give it to Juliette. No, even better, I will sell it to Juliette. She has a lot of money and my love is for sale.

Old lovers, old friends…

Last week I called an old lover, way back old, as I needed his help business wise. I haven’t seen or talked with him for over 20 years; first there were some letters, letters became postcards, postcards became silence, then a few years ago silence became a couple of e-mails.

That this old lover, Mr P, deserves a couple of lines is because he is one of the very few men who never have made me miserable. I know I made his girlfriend miserable but by then I already knew I would rot in hell, so I didn’t really care. When we talked at phone, I was wondering when we had seen each other last time, I had no clue. But Mr P could remember very clearly the last time he saw me, he remembered me standing at his door, and even how my hair looked like. Gosh, he really deserved my love!

Men who haven’t made me miserable are very few and I should add my best friend from lycée, Kimmo, to this list. He had always a shoulder to cry on and a car to get away from boring history lectures. Once I lost his 2 billion $ gold watch (hmm, quite drunk I think), and he didn’t get mad at me at all. Not even his disapproving looks at my stupid behaviour when we went out could make me miserable as I knew that no matter what, he was a true friend and loved me.

But now, after all these years, Kimmo makes me miserable. I have developed conscience in my later years, and I think I owe him some money, a lot of money in fact. The last year at lycée I moved away from home, away from my best friend, my mom (can you hear the irony!!!!!). I didn’t have any money but I remember very clearly wasting time at cafés and bars, thanks to Kimmo. And thanks to Vips. But Vips was a communist, I don’t really have bad conscious concerning her. And as she isn’t a Marxist any more, I don’t have to fear that she now 20 years after requires me to support her (or is this why she keeps believing in my talent, she just wants her share of my non existing success).

Kimmo is a perfect gentleman, thank God for that. I don’t think he one day will tell me how much money I owe him, he would never be so tactless. But he might send an anonymous letter.

Theatre

A miracle happened and my mother-in-law asked if the kids can come over for a couple of nights. We have two evenings free, wow, what to do? I asked my husband if he wants to go to theatre to see “Ansigtet mod væggen” (The face against the wall); he wondered what it was about. “It is about my life, a girl getting married with the wrong guy”, I said (the faithful readers know by now that I should have married the count from the champagne chateau, Oncle Bob or a rich American producer). My husband didn’t have anything better to do, and agreed to see my life on scene.

So we went to this small, intimate theatre, Cafeteater, where you sit very close to the scene. You can touch the actors in fact. It was a quite weird piece and in the middle of the play (this was part of the script I guess) one of the actors suddenly looked very intensively at one of the ladies at the first row and screamed at her: “What the hell are you staring at? Turn around, can you hear me, turn around, you cunt!” The lady looked totally shocked and terrified, and seeing her profile from my seat, I couldn’t help laughing. I had to bite my arm not to laugh too loudly, as this obviously wasn’t a part the audience was supposed to laugh.

My husband fell asleep in the end of the play, I in the contrary was very entertained. But my arm still hurts and has enormous bite marks on it.

Perfumes

I think everybody should read the first five pages of Patrick Süskind’s novel “Perfume:The Story of a Murderer ”; it has a phenomenal description of the smell of the streets in 19th century Paris. This description puts Baudelaire’s “La mort des amants” in totally new light, now I can really understand how precious this sentence is;
Nous aurons des lits pleins d'odeurs légères.

Odeurs légères was something one could just dream of. The rest of the Süskind's book is not worth reading, unless you are a serial killer; then you should read it for professional interest.

Perfumes are my fetish. If a spirit of the lamp gave me three wishes, I would wish to have a natural scent of Cerrutti 1881. Just like to Michel Jonasz, I am faithful to this perfume until the end of my days. No matter how many new ones I try and fall in love with, I will be buried in Cerrutti 1881.

I didn’t marry a rich guy, so I try to limit my collection to a maximum of 15 different perfumes at time. Tax free shops are a big challenge for me; in fact I cannot go in to a tax free shop without buying a perfume. This is just as impossible as saying “No thanks” for a glass of champagne. Copenhagen’s airport makes my life hell as now after the security you enter directly to the tax free area. No matter how fast I try to walk through it, I cannot make the exit without a perfume in my hand, it is just not possible.

I went to Paris last week, and I ended up with two new perfumes. The one bought in Copenhagen was not to avoid, but I really hadn’t planned entering the tax free in Paris. But my husband called me when I just had arrived at Charles de Gaulle on the way home.

“Wife, can you buy me an Irish whiskey at the tax free”
“I really shouldn’t go in the tax free shop…”
“Can’t you even buy me a bottle of whiskey? It isn’t a lot to ask. I have taken care of the kids, cleaned the house, come on!”
“It is so difficult to go to the taxfree because…”
“God wife, you are so egoistic! Please, just go to the taxfree and buy me the whiskey.”

I couldn’t argue any more, my husband begun to sound quite irritated. So I went to the taxfree, didn’t buy the whiskey but I bought Calvin Klein’s new perfume. A totally divine one.

My husband doesn’t notice if I buy new things before he checks my account every month. So I certainly didn’t show him any of the things I had bought to myself, I just showed the beautiful dress and hot pants I got for my daughter and the 2 euro Tour Eiffel to my son (this is the reason why we mothers have a very special love for our sons; they don’t cost a lot of money).

One morning my daughter, the real true copy of me, was spraying around one of my new perfumes in our bathroom. My husband was wondering what she was doing;
“It is mummy’s new perfume!”.
“Wife, did you buy a perfume again?”
“No, mummy has bought two new perfumes!”
“WIFE, WHAT ? TWO NEW PERFUMES FOR 300 KR EACH!”

300 kr each ? When did he buy perfume last time, in the ninety’s? But I hurried to agree, yes, 300 kr each. A little white lie until my husband checks my account. When he sees how much they really cost, he will kill me, again. But I am a cat, a cat with quite a few more lives than eight!

Michel et moi

Last year I had 20 years anniversary with Michel Jonasz, my longest lasting love, but no blog to make an ode to him. My kosher lover might have dropped me in an embarrassing scene of jealousy, but he couldn’t take Michel with him. I should actually thank him giving me Jonasz, but I am still pissed at him for destroying a Chanel lipstick in his theatrical exit of my life. He wrote “Merci pour tout” at my entrance mirror with this very expensive lipstick, and was gone for good. What a girlish thing to do. This is something I would do, in fact something I have done. I wrote once with my lipstick on my Spanish, guitar playing and hash smoking lover’s toilet mirror “Te quiero”, which I definitely meant that particular morning. This love lasted about as long time as smoking a joint; quite soon I went back wanting to become a Jewish bride.

I didn’t become “Kallah” but instead I have had 21 totally happy years with Michel. Thank you, Frank, sincerely. I start my morning with “Dites-moi” on my MP3, this is just as essential as waking up. I might let Michel also sing “Super Nana”, Super Nana, c’est moi, at least for Michel. First then I get on with my other loves; Florent, Bruel, Fiori, Garou, JJG, Bublé, Eros, Christophe… And even I can be passionately in love with Garou or Bublé at the moment, these guys might lose their place in my heart just as easily as my hash smoking Spanish lover. But Michel will definately be there for always!

Dans mon cœur vaudou

Il y a quatre épingles

Qu'elle a pris soin d'abandonner

Pour que je pleure

J'ai cloué ma porte

Qu'est ce qui m'a pris

J'ai brisé le miroir où elle faisait ses tresses

Mis du papier journal sous les fenêtres
J'entendais de l'école trop de cris

Il n'est rien né de notre lit

I am in love...

Yes, I am in love with Michael Bublé, again. Yesterday I was so taken that I made three times my normal 11 km “Tour de trois villages” on my bicycle, just to be alone with him a little bit more. He is just so seducing, I can hear “Lost” over and over again, and love him a little bit more every time.

But then…I saw once a documentary about Michael Bublé, and he turned out to be a poker playing male bimbo, he has probably never even read a book. What would I talk with a guy like this about? I know nothing about poker, the only poker I can refer to is strip poker which I played with the neighbour’s boys during my summer vacation at my grandma's.

This is a little bit of a problem when we are talking about men. No matter how cute the guy is, how long time can I listen to the stupid football talk? Not too long; as soon as we leave Casillas, I am not interested at all. But if I meet a guy like Sartre, what can I talk about with him then? Nothing, I would just look very stupid compared to him. Seduced but stupid.

Thank God I have my husband. We might have nothing to talk about either, but if I have any urge for conversation, there is a cure right at the hand. I can always yell at him why he again has put the scissors in the wrong drawer, left the wine prop on the table, put my bra on the tumble dryer, not gone out with the garbage etc. My husband ignores totally my yelling (I insist calling my monologue for conversation) but I feel a certain satisfaction giving outlet for these daily matters of life and death. I wonder if I share any of my topics with Simone; did she discuss the same matters with Jean-Paul ? No, I don't think so. Being a smart guy, I bet Jean-Paul would have never put Simone's bra in the tumble dryer.


(Are Simone and Jean-Paul discussing who should take out the garbage ? )

Flirting

Mademoiselle A accused me of flirting with a cute Norwegian guy at the workshop. I have no problems admitting that I flirt if I do it, but this time I really did not. He was just a very nice guy to talk with, and even he probably was attracted to our stand because of the beautiful Mademoiselle A, he was hanging on me like a faithful puppy the rest of the evening. Very touching, but not flirting.

After passing 30 something years, the guys don’t flirt with me any more. Period. When I lived in Copenhagen for years ago, a sweet guy at the piscine municipale always used to let me in without paying, but this never happens any more. Never. Now I have to pay a double entrance and when I protest, the employee just tells me to look at the mirror and lose some weight. If a guy offers me a drink or pays my dinner, it is because of the business opportunity he is after. This is why a girl should get a considerable salary raise after passing the 35 years.

So if a miracle happens and a guy flirts with me, I am quite troubled. Like on the flight home from Paris. The flight attendant was flirting with me so obviously that even Mademoiselle A thought it was embarrassing. Every time he passed my seat, he just had to talk with me, touch my arm or my hand, study the book I was reading, give me complimentary coffees etc. Well, I don’t’ share men’s fantasies about the airplane crew, in fact, quite the contrary. I can’t help wondering what on earth is wrong with these people willing to work on conditions similar to concentration camp; the staff being the Jews needing to put up with the passenger Nazis. Now I suspect that SAS has a black list on the passengers, which had registered me being on this flight. And to pacify me, the modern version of Goebbels, they had asked one of the gay stewards to pretend to be a hetero guy and flirt with me. He did a good job, I am still speechless.

Paris

There were many advantages taking Mademoiselle A with me to the workshop in Paris this Thursday;

- Normally the actual working part in Paris is very boring, but now I had someone to be bored with and we turned the boredom to endless jokes.

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- The beautiful Mademoiselle A attracted all the cute guys to our stand. These were mostly our co-presentateurs as amongst the clients there were no cute guys to find (French clients, which I one day will get back to, are with few exceptions either bitchie middle aged ladies or gays).

- I had someone to bring me coffee all the time.

- When I got tired of explaining the same bullshit over and over again, Mademoiselle A took over, and I got to socialize with the cute guys instead.

- Later at the “Cocktail dinatoire” followed by the hotel bar I had someone to tell me that I had had enough CampariOranges, and I went to bed for once not too late.

On Friday morning I asked the concierge at the hotel for aspirin but he didn’t have any. I told him that then they should close the hotel bar earlier so the clients didn’t get headache. He could see my point and sent a colleague to pharmacy right away; 10 minutes later he had aspirin for me. THIS I CALL FOR SERVICE!

I & Mademoiselle A wouldn’t fly back before late Friday afternoon, so we had the whole Friday to visit clients. You really think so? Then you are a fool. We had had enough of clients so we had the whole day to visit museums. You really think so? Then you are even a bigger fool. We went of course SHOPPING. Which brings me to even one more advantage having Mademoiselle A with me; I had someone to carry my shopping bags.

Diet

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I have for some time been excusing my overweight by just having a little girl. This causes many of the following kind of conversations:

“Oh, you just had a baby, how old is she?”
“6”
“6 months, such a lovely age.”
“No, 6 years, but also, for most of the time, a lovely age.”

This summer, too late for the bikini season though, I finally decided that when my daughter in December turns 7, I cannot use this excuse any more. At the same time something wonderful happened and got me started on my diet; I got 12 for my French grammar exam, and lost my appetite for 2 weeks. I don’t know how it could have had such an effect on me, maybe because I was in deep shock. My sweet French grammar teacher sent me a mail (which I definitely would consider as a love letter if he wasn’t 10 years younger than me and probably gay; this I show to my husband every time he calls me hysterical, bitchie, mad woman) telling the good news, and not even my week in Italy could get me on a wrong track.

I am very optimistic that I will get back to my 50 something kilos, one day. But if it has to be before my daughter’s birthday, I might have to amputate both legs and my left arm.

What is comedy ?

I saw a Woody Allen documentary the other day where Alan Alda explained what comedy is; comedy is tragedy plus time. Like the shooting of Lincoln, you couldn’t make fun of it at the time, but now you can make as many jokes as you want, and nobody gets offended.

A couple of weeks ago there was a very tragic school shooting in Finland, again. This is madness which I can’t handle so I try to make fun of it. Someone in my French class began talking about it, me being a Finn, and I said “Don’t worry, I would never do something like that, I am 100 % pacifist. If I wasn’t, I had shot my mother-in-law for a long time ago”.

Well, my study mates didn’t think this was funny. Apparently what Alan Alda meant was that there should go more than two days between the tragedy and the joke.

MP3

When I was putting some new (to be honest, very old) music to my MP3 today, I found out something funny. When EmoDio categories the music in the register, it says French pop, Pop, Quebecois, Rock etc. But Jean-Jacques Goldman is apparently JAPANESE FOLKLORE, did you know that? I am still laughing!

I also found out that I have 8 CDs with Patricia Kaas. She beats even Elvis Presley and Puccini, I guess I can be categorized as a fan. And to follow the logic from above, a Japanese fan.

Jobs

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Someone gave me a quite interesting job offer last week as she thinks I am a very PERFORMATIVE person. This I really didn’t know. Every time I open my mouth people either think I am a pain in the ass (my boss, my husband, one of my teachers; as I always have to discuss everything), or completely weird (my friends, my colleagues, the rest of my family, any stranger; as they don’t get my sense of humour). It was nice to get a third opinion!

I have found out that if I ever want a new job, I can only get one through my network. The almost 11 years I have been in Denmark, I have had 3 jobs and every single one because somebody called me and offered me a job. I am a person who always thinks that the grass is greener on the other side so I am constantly looking for a new job. This might also be because I can’t handle responsibility and it is hard to avoid, no matter how hard I try to resist. I have been sending applications once in a while but they give quite poor results. Last time I was on this kind of interview, the guy started with “Well, you are in fact overqualified for this job”. Me overqualified? I have no qualifications of what so ever (unless being able to keep balance on high heels after 10 mojitos is a qualification), so if they think I am overqualified, the place must be full of morons. And if I should work together with morons, I must get paid for it. I made a totally unreasonable salary demand, and got a polite letter explaining that they had found another one matching better the profile. Someone less expensive one.

So I have decided not to waste my time on these useless applications, I wait people to call me. I just love when some one starts the phone conversation with “Are you happy with your work?”, especially if it happens at the office. Then I make sure my boss hears me; “Well, Per, now that you ask, I am quite happy despite the lousy salary, but I am always interested in what you can offer…”. At this point my boss is getting nervous tics, and begins to wonder if I actually have some qualifications she is not aware of. It seems though to go longer and longer between these unexpected phone calls; I am simply too lazy and bored to go to the endless cocktail parties, receptions and dinners where I could meet boring people offering me boring jobs.

But now I am seriously thinking about the latest one, could there be a whole new future for me being performative? Oh, it sounds fun, but also a lot of work, I think I will stay where I am. Nicely, lazily, comfortably; even with a lousy salary.

Hay is for horses

My daughter has started horseback riding, or should I say me and my daughter. Every Saturday my 20 kilos daughter tries to get the 600 kilos lazy beast to walk, trot or gallop, and no matter how much she squeezes her legs, the horse would rather just stand on its four feet. This is where we mothers come in the picture; we are expected to run along (where are the fathers???) and keep the bloody beast in movement. For some unexplainable reason I took the first time my favourites sneakers on, and now they are ruined, totally covered by horse shit. Trying to get the horse to run, I tried to kick it on the side, but the result was it just tried to kick me back. I changed the strategy and begun kicking it in the ass instead; the revenge of a horse is shitting on your sneakers. I have learned a lot since August.

I am still Pangloss and grateful for getting the exercise every Saturday morning. The thought of this whole horseback riding costing a fortune (one month costs as much as a whole season of gymnastics or handball, not to mention the equipment!) is somehow easier to accept when I am also burning calories for an hour.

But I would in fact like to start riding myself. I have occasionally been riding, though never really learned any technique. For me riding is just fun at a beach in Greece, Moroccan woods, Cuban tobacco fields or Dominican horse farm. I am not interested riding in an inside arena, this looks so boring. I want to get out in the woods, and a friend of mine found a perfect place for this. Now I just must find time for it, it is gonna give a break in my boring life. Yes, I have read my share of Chekhov and know that the most amazing things happen when a lady is riding alone in the forest!

Screaming

According to my husband I scream too much. I definitely don’t scream too much but I admit screaming at the following situations:

When I see a mouse or anything hairy smaller than a cat. Of fear.

When I am walking in my parents’ forest in Finland and hear a tree branch breaking. I am scared to death of meeting a bear. The kids, whom I have left behind, later find me at home and tell me it only was a squirrel.

When I meet a big wave in the sea. Of extreme thrill.

When my husband leaves a wine prop on the table. Of irritation.

At my kids at any good excuse. Of pure pleasure.

When I wake up in the middle of the night covered by cold sweat after having a nightmare of a life more boring than the actual one. Of horror.

Voltaire for insomnia

I have had for a while difficulties to sleep. Maybe because I now have decided to accept that there is no soul mate for me, but I am still desperately seeking for ways to liberate myself from the obsession of finding one. A soul mate who would, if not agree, be ready to discuss, why or why not Grigori’s and Aksinia’s love story is the most beautiful one in the world. A soul mate who would, if not agree, be ready to discuss why or why not Chagall is the greatest artist of all times. A soul mate, a man, who would make me laugh.

And in the middle of my seeking, I just had to start reading this book about Camus. I still don’t get him but he did get me. Touchée ! I am not free in any ways; I am submitted to my daily routines, I am indeed a sleepwalker. Gosh how I hate men, Camus, and how I love men, Camus…

But I have found a cure for my insomnia. While checking out the program for “Histoire”, I accidentally fell on this link. After 5 minutes I was in deep sleep. You wouldn’t have thought so, Albert, but Voltaire really knocked you out of my head.

How to tell if you have been married too long.....

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It might sound too easy just to bring a joke, but hey, this really is my life (and if in doubt, I am the married one)!


Three women, an engaged, a married and a mistress, are chatting about their relationships and decided to amaze their men. That night they would wear black leather bras, stiletto heels and a mask over their eyes.

After a few days they meet up for lunch.The engaged woman: The other night when my boyfriend came over he found me with a black leather bodice, tall stilettos and a mask. He saw me and said, 'You are the woman of my life. I love you.' Then we made love all night long.

The mistress: Me too! The other night I met my lover at his office and I was wearing the leather bodice, heels, mask over my eyes and a raincoat. When I opened the raincoat he didn't say a word, but we had wild sex all night.

The married woman: When my husband came home I was wearing the leather bodice, black stockings, stilettos and a mask over my eyes. As soon as he saw me he asked, 'What's for dinner, Batman?'

Underground

Last time when I was on sales trip in Stockholm, I saw this text at one of the underground stations:

“Over 100.000 people take the underground every day, 25 % of them haven’t washed their hands since yesterday.”

I used this as an excuse for taking taxis until my boss bought me a pair of gloves to be used in Stockholm and Paris. The bicycle is for Copenhagen.

La vie est belle !

My beautiful French assistant Mademoiselle A is back ! Life is beautiful, La vie est belle, La vita e bella….

The first thing I asked her to do is to book terribly expensive rooms at Hilton in Paris for next week’s workshop for both of us. When my boss sees the bill for the 250 euro rooms (each !!), she will probably try to strangle me, but then I just say, I didn’t book the rooms, Mademoiselle A did !