Women and driving

Men always have plenty of prejudicial comments about women and driving. Even that the statistics show that men are involved considerably more in car accidents than women, they somehow manage to ignore this fact. For me, my husband is the second best driver in the world, just after Kimi Räikkönen, the Finnish Formel 1 driver. Räikkönen being Finnish has nothing to do with patriotism, he just is very good (everyone knowing me can assure that I would never miss an opportunity to backstab my fellow citizens). But for my big fortune, my husband made a major fuck-up with our rental car this summer in France. This was so bad that he will never, I repeat never, comment my driving again. The Portuguese maid from next door run out and in one minute she managed to mention at least 120 catholic saints while turning hysterically around and making an impressing amount of signs of the cross. Well, she is a woman and therefore can multitask. No men, you cannot multitask, sitting at the toilet and reading a newspaper at the same time is not multitasking.

Thanks to the camera in my mobile phone, I now have plenty of evidence of my husband’s misfortune, and even a short video showing how my usually always calm husband in frustration tries to strangle the Portuguese maid. I don't think I'll ever need to use this evidence, it has been enough just mentioning, "Do you remember...."

I am myself a fairly good driver, never had any accidents involving human beings. I have though some problems when I have to back the car from our garage, as the garage is on top of a big mountain (as Denmark is a flat country everything rising more than 5 degrees is a mountain) and the drive-way is very narrow. I have a mail box on the left side and a trash bin on the right side and somehow these attract with magnetic force our car. I have hit both objects several times (but only one at time), but sometimes I also manage to reverse whole way down and not touching either one. Now my husband has attached thick rubber tires on both side of the car, this he says is to protect me if I hit the mailbox too hard. Is he stupid or something? Our car is quite new and has side airbags to protect me. But not wanting to embarrass him because of his poor knowledge of our car, I say nothing.

Unfortunately my bad luck with the reverse gear also invites our male neighbors out of their couches as soon as they hear I open the garage door. They entertain themselves watching how I do my best avoiding as usual the mailbox and the trash bin. The other day I experienced an unpleasant change in these gentlemen's normally just silly staring. I could see on the rear mirror that there was money being exchanged between them, and lively pointing left and right. My god, they are betting which one I will hit this time ! I got so mad, I decided to show them. When I backed the car out, I deliberately first hit the trash bin on the right side, then made a skilful zig zag maneuver to the left and hit the mailbox. I bet they didn’t see that coming!

Huis Clos

After once reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Huis clos” I have often wondered what hell would be for me. In “Huis clos” four persons rightfully end up in hell, and soon one can understand what hell really is; “l'enfer, c'est les autres” (“hell is other people”).

Do I end up in hell ? Probably. Already before reaching the age of 7, I had committed two major sins, killing and betraying a friend. I was playing with matches with a friend of mine behind my grandpa’s chicken house, and somehow we came to put the fire to it. All 150 chicken died. As it wasn’t bad enough, there was another minor detail. Some weeks earlier my grandpa had tried to get a loan from the bank to build a new chicken house, but his loan application was refused. So indeed it seemed very suspicious for the insurance company. I still remember very clearly the day the police came to interrogate my grandpa, and my grandpa crying and insisting his innocence. It was a scene worth of an Academy Award for “Performance by an actor in a leading role”. The Oscar that year went to Marlon Brando for his role in Godfather. Did Brando deserve it ? Yes, if the criteria was stuffing the maximum amount of cotton pads in one’s mouth, and then trying to speak as un-understandable English as possible. So my grandpa didn’t win the Oscar but he was declared innocent and got money from the insurance company to build a new chicken house. As I am a modest person there was no need to tell him that all this was thanks to me.

The second sin, betraying a friend, was my accomplish from the earlier episode. Once getting very mad at her, I peed in my grandpa’s boots (he was not wearing them at that moment), and then told my grandpa that my friend had done it.

In my later years I can add a considerable amount of sins. And if it wasn’t enough that I have sinned, I even plan future sins. Next week my boss will be on vacation, so I will add some more cheating and lying to my already impressing list. I have decided to misuse her computer log-in and fire a couple of unpleasant colleagues. I will send a mail to these colleagues sacking them and end the mail with, “You might think I am a coward firing you during my holiday but I simply cannot stand seeing your lazy face any more. Don’t even for one second think about disturbing my holiday by phoning me or I push the company lawyer on you (this is a terrifying threat, he is so ugly that even dogs avoid him). Before I return from holiday, I expect that you have packed your belongings and disappeared.”

So I will definitely rot in hell.

But what will the hell then be for me? My biggest fears are sharing a room with:

- The 150 chicken I killed in the fire.

- My boss, and as a revenge for the sexual harassment law suit, she will not only finish all her sentences with “I hvert fald” but also start them with it.

- Tom Cruise and Tina Arena. I can take one at time, but both would definitely be hell.

- And the most terrifying thought. Ending up in a room with my father-in-law and a television, my father-in-law possessing the remote control. This thought makes me so sick that I am in fact willing to become a better person. I will start seeking forgiveness for my sins at any possible God right now.

Blogging

Blogging is so much fun that I am thinking about quitting my job. While writing my blog at work I am all the time interrupted by too social colleagues or irritating clients. Give me some peace, please! But then, being a person loving material stuff like shoes and bags, I cannot live without my salary. Maybe I could just shorten even more the hours I spend at the office ? I have already with great success managed to fade away such conventional terms as “working hours” on my behalf. Nobody knows what time I am supposed to come to the office, leave home again, and which days I am working. In fact, I don’t know it myself either anymore. In the morning when I wake up, not for ringing of the alarm clock but for the wonderful silence when the rest of the family for hours ago has left the house, I used to be a little bit troubled until I found a perfect solution. I simply take a coin, if “head or tales” can be used at Championships League final to decide which one of teams gets to kick the ball first, it definitely can be used for this daily banality. So “heads” means it is my day off, “tales” that it is a day I am supposed to work at home, and if for some particular reason the coin will be standing up, I have to go to the office.

So from now on I will just quite briefly pop in the office. I go to my desk so that my nearest colleagues see that I am there. Then I laugh a couple of times very loudly so my colleagues in the other departments also know me being there (they always say that they can hear I am back from holiday). And just before leaving the office, I will irritate my boss by going over her desk and making fun of her exaggerated use of “I hvert fald” (‘at least’). Stupid of me? Not at all, just my long term plan for getting rich. As I don’t at my age have much chance finding a rich man I must find other ways for getting rich. So I hope that one fine day my boss will be so irritated at me that she will kick me in the ass. Then I will sue her and the company for sexual harassment. As I am a hetero woman, I expect this lesbian act to provoke a many doubled compensation (nobody knows about my crush on Juliette Binoche).

My boss is though demonstrating an annoying patience with me. This can go on for years! So I haven’t totally given up the rich men. I have just ordered from Amazon.com “Yearbook 2008 – available rich, blind men”.

I thank my friends, my family….

I guess one needs to thank people whatever writing process they are involved in, if it is a book, a blog or just a graffiti at the bus station. If I ever write a book I will thank a lot of people, but I won’t write it in the beginning or in the end of the book, this would be too easy and not good for the book sales. The purpose of thanking people is getting them to buy your book as people being vain creatures simply hunger after seeing their own name on writing. If you put the “thank you” in the traditional place in the start or in the end of the book, they quickly can find their name in the bookstore without buying the book. If you put it in unpredictable place, they have to buy the book to find out where they are mentioned. And the more people you thank, the more copies you sell, so I will remember to thank everybody I have ever met in my current and recent lives. I am guaranteed a booksale of over 20 copies.

So I want to thank my friends, my family, my colleagues and many strangers in my current writing process. Your weird manners, peculiar looks and ridicule thoughts have been an enormous inspiration.

I do though want to mention specially three persons. Thank you for JB’s funny blog getting me started. I was stalking his blog with irrelevant comments until he either left for holiday or simply went under cover. And not being able to disturb him any more, I started my own blog.

I want to thank my oldest friend Saga for sharing your absurd humor, thousands of hours of laughter and due to that the constant threats from teachers to be kicked out of the class.

And Vips, Taivaan lahja, thank you for always believing in my talent. You even found a publisher for my great idea for the series of children’s travel books. The fact that this publisher now has retired, tired of waiting for any concrete action from my side, has taken a heavy pressure off my shoulders.

Shopping late Saturday afternoon

I keep making this mistake week after week. As I don’t really like doing grocery shopping I try to postpone it all Saturday. Then I finally pull myself together ½ hour before the shops close. At this time, our local Netto looks like a Russian supermarket. Or I should say Soviet one, as today in Russia you can buy everything, people just don’t have money. In Soviet time people didn’t have money, and there was nothing to buy, this was without doubt more logic.

In lack of any other food I go to the shell with dog and cat food (there is always plenty of that as I live in the country side where people keep cows and pigs, not cats and dogs), and then fill the rest of the cart with unnecessary “Spot of the week” offers. When I finally make it to the cashier, I try to be funny and ask if I can pay with "rubles". The cashier doesn’t understand my question and says “What” (Danes are as impolite as Finns and the use of “Excuse-me” is quite seldom). I repeat my question, and the cashier is now thinking about calling the security. Then she remembers that the security goes home at 11.00 am when they run out of items to sell (and therefore there is nothing left to steal, ergo no need for security).

.

At home my husband wonders about the guidebook to Milano I have bought in lack of food. Well, I am in fact planning a trip to Milano with a friend of mine, as an incentive when we both have lost weight and are back to our 50 something kilos. My husband comments that the Duomo will probably not stand as long as the pyramids.

Hamster

I cannot use the hamster as a weapon anymore as the kids have found out that I am terrified to touch it. So now they are using it against me ! How did this happen ? In one short week I am reduced from a despotic house tyrant to a nervous wreck. Whenever the kids want candy and ice-cream, see Disney channel until midnight, or play Playstation until 02.00 am, they just take the hamster out of the cage and start walking towards me. There is a lot of running in the house at the moment. But being Pangloss again, this might be good for my diet.

Night traffic

At most homes the nights are peaceful time. But not at our house, and there are two reasons. My husband’s snoring and the changing preferences for beds. Last night was quite a typical night for us.

20.00 hrs My daughter goes to bed in her room.

20.30 hrs My son goes to bed in his room.

21.30 hrs My son moves to his little sister’s room seeking comfort as he has quite a vivid fantasy at the moment. I am not aware of the empty bed in his room.

23.30 hrs I go to bed in our bedroom.
00.30 hrs My husband joins me.

00.31 hrs I make an sleepy inquiry if we could have sex. My husband refers to the headache that started for 10 years ago. People knowing about my husband’s constant headache (only a very few of my closest friends, quite a few of not so close friends, all my colleagues and ex-colleagues and a huge number of strangers I meet every day while waiting for bus, train or metro) wonder how on earth we have two kids and the answer is in now an almost 32 years old embarrassment. As a 10-year old on my weekly trip to the library, I had to ask for Märta Tikkanen’s book my mom had ordered, “A man cannot be raped”. It was extremely traumatic and embarrassing for a 10-year old girl having a mom reading a book with that kind of title. I whispered the name to the lady at the library desk, she said irritated “Speak louder” , I wrote the name down on a paper, and then she screamed from the bottom of her lungs to her half deaf colleague in the next room “Mari, has 'A man cannot be raped' arrived ?”. Well, the point is that I have proved this statement wrong. Twice.

00.32 hrs My husband starts snoring.

01.00 hrs I am desperate, I try to suffocate my husband with a pillow. For a second I think I have succeeded as the snoring sound seems to disappear. Then I hear a weird echo of the snoring and see a snorkel pop up on left side of the pillow.

01.30 hrs I am even more desperate. I try to strangle my husband but either my hands have gotten smaller or my husband’s neck thicker. No success.

01.45 hrs This is enough. I go to the hall, find our neighbor’s key in the drawer, and leave the house. I tiptoe to the neighbors, open the door, but somebody is snoring quite heavily there, too. So no chance of sleeping on their couch (our couch is too close to the bedroom). Instead I go to their study and take Mr B’s shotgun from the closet.

02.00 hrs I am back in our bedroom. I aim carefully and shoot my husband on the breast. The hamster wakes up, but my husband keeps on snoring. He is wearing a bulletproof vest under his pyjamas.

02.05 hrs I give up and decide to find out if there would be a bed available somewhere else in the house. In the living room I am about to collide with my daughter who is on her way to our bed. In the last second I make a quick maneuver to the left and avoid the collision.

02.07 hrs I have a look in my son’s room. Bingo ! An empty bed.
03.00 hrs My son leaves our daughter’s room and goes to our bedroom.

04.00 hrs My husband finds our double bed crowded with both kids in it now and goes to my daughter’s room.

So in the morning I wake up in my son’s bed, my husband in our daughter’s bed and the kids in our double bed. Somebody might be wondering about the truthfulness of this story. But as I have told, every word in this blog is true, just as I remember it. Sleeping very poorly for the past ten years might though have affected my brain so much that I sometimes mix fantasy and reality.