On the runway

So I’ve mentioned the spring/summer 2012 lines before and here they come again. I just can’t help myself – it’s just to pretty not to care. I love the length of the dresses, around the knee is a very ladylike length. What one can see from the pictures below is that even though white is a huge color for spring (when isn’t white big!?) there are also designers going for the more soft peach, dusty pink color and there is even a bit of black mixed in, cause have you ever heard of a season where black was out? I think the most unexpected color is green – I see big things happening for green this season.

From the top left we have; Carolina Herrera, Alberta Ferretti, Christian Dior x2 and Burberry Prorsum. In the bottom line from the left we have; Chanel, Burberry Prorsum, Christian Dior and Carolina Herrera.

Personally I love the dusty pink Chanel – ahh to have an unlimited dress fund.

Ok, so now I have to continue with my own fashion show here in my humble runway also known as the stretch between my wardrobe and the big mirror in the hallway. I need to decide what to wear tomorrow for a very special girls baptism – nice but appropriate for church and a lunchtime event, which means (in my opinion) no black… no matter how much I wish I could just throw on my new LBD. Actually I wish I could throw on the Chanel little dusty pink dress – but sometimes you kind of have to stick to reality…      

Acting like a kid

Do you remember the days when you did things in secret? The butterflies in your stomach just thinking someone could catch you? Giggling alone and running around with a suspicious smile on your face that practically broadcasted that you had a secret?

These days I don’t often have secrets, it’s called a personal life now, private matters, things I prefer keeping to myself or whatever. It’s kind of boring actually, but I think people would laugh at me if I didn’t want to tell because it was a secret. Today I don’t feel like being a boring adult. Today I’m a kid and I have a suspicious smile on because nobody knows what I’m doing – It’s so totally a secret!

Ok, so apart from acting like a child I’ve been listening to a really great song today. I heard it on a TV-show and it’s been stuck in my head ever since. It’s got a little bit to do with remembering (does the names Danny and Sandy say anything to you?) and a lot to do with the fact that this cover has a sound that makes me think of late night clandestine meetings and butterfly secrets. Enjoy!

Two steps from hibernation

Today was the first day back after 9 days off, one would think I would be thrilled after having been so bored last week – but oh no! I’m tired and achy. Maybe it’s the weather? I mean, I know my knees hurt from standing without really moving for about four and a half hours during surgery, but the mood – the hiding under a blanket, closing my eyes so I don’t see the mess in the kitchen cause I can’t muster up the energy to deal with it mood, or the don’t you dare drive to close to me on the street or cut me in line ‘cause I’m not responsible for what I’ll do mood. That can’t be just because of my job (Oh and I do love it – just some other parts of it that’s all).

The weather usually gets the blame in these parts of the world, either it’s to cold or to windy or – like today – to wet. It’s this nasty little drizzle that leaks in around your collar and gets the seat of your bike cold and moist. Besides, my boots have a hole in them so I get wet feet – and I hate wet feet (almost as much as I hate socks in bed – but that’s a whole other story…)!

The thought of going in for a 25 hour shift tomorrow is just so depressing I can’t even think about it right now or I’ll seriously go into hibernation and come out again around my birthday, and I just don’t think the hospital is going to accept that and keep sending me paychecks…

Who ever invented misty rainy Mondays must have been out of his mind (in spite of the pretty pictures)! 

Fairytales

Once up on a time there was a little mermaid who lived under the sea and whose biggest dream was to experience life on land. Know the story? Thought so…

  

I absolutely loved Ariel as a kid (of course I still do – but let’s pretend like I’ve actually grown up just a little bit!), maybe it was just something about us having a bit similar names? Or maybe I actually identified with her story – no, I didn’t really live at the bottom of the sea – but I had (well, have actually) a mom who was very overprotective and ever since I was a little girl I’ve had the feeling that “there must be something more than this” just like she had. Oh, it all sounds so silly when I write it down – but non the less, this particular fairytale has had a bit of an impact on my life. Just being named Eric could probably score you a date with me… And one of the comments that I’ve obsessed most about in my life is a guy telling me I remind him of Ariel. Why? I have no idea. He had no idea of my little (big, unhealthy, weird – you choose the adjective…) hang up with The Little Mermaid, he just said it out of the blue. I don’t even know if he actually meant it as a compliment, he might just have been trying to say I look like a fish or act like a naïve little girl – but seeing as I’ve loved her since I was a little girl I couldn’t take it as anything other than a compliment.

 

Weird, how stuff gets programmed in our heads from a very young age and then suddenly comes out and surprises us when we least expect it.

Of course the music is the best of any Disney movie – this beautiful melody is completely underrated – Alan Menken really is a genius.    

Old Hollywood

Ah to live in the world of black and white – everyone is more beautiful, more elegant and more glamorous when depictured without colors. Strange but true.

Hmm… maybe I should print the collage on photo-paper and put it up as art in my bedroom wall – not because the collage is all that good, or because I particularly like having photos of beautiful women in my bedroom, but I do love looking at inspiring things, and this totally get’s me in a nostalgic old Hollywood mood. It makes me want to put on one of my little black dresses, my pearl earrings and big black sunglasses – maybe even try brushing my hair! (trust me, that’s a big deal seeing as it doesn’t happen very often…). Oh, well – maybe one of these days I’ll actually have somewhere to go when dressing up like that…

Losing brain cells by the minute

Supposedly only stupid people get bored – at least that’s what I’ve heard. Honestly I tend to think that only stupid people say stuff like that. I don’t think I’m bored because I’m stupid, but right now one might argue that I am actually getting more stupid as the boredom endures. Either way, today has been a complete waste of a day. I’m bored out of my mind. The rain has been pouring down and the wind blowing a storm, so even though I had big plans about getting out for some air, and some well needed grocery-shopping I just couldn’t muster up the energy to. The high point has been a new episode of How I Met Your Mother – seriously, there is something wrong with my life when that’s a high point!

I knew I should have just ignored my common sense and bought a trip to the south. I’ve never had common sense when it comes to economy, that’s why I’ve had the mature and sensible goal of becoming more responsible with my money for a couple of years now. It’s been a slow process and I’m still far from a responsible adult in that particular part of my life, but as I can see now, I’ve actually made some progress. It’s just a shame that it strikes at this extraordinarily boring time when a bit of spontaneity and sun would be an absolute lifesaver!

So, what can you do instead of taking a sunny holiday? Read good books? Take down Christmas decoration? Visit a friend? Take long walks in the rain? Organize your closet? Go shopping for spring clothes? Go for a spa-treatment?

I’ve considered them all, and some of them might just fill the rest of the week – but for now, I have no idea what to fill the hours left of this day with.

The Italians have a saying, “Dolce far niente”, which means something like the pleasantness of doing nothing – I totally get it, in Italy I’d love to do nothing, sit in a café just looking at the people over a cup of strong coffee or stroll down an old alley licking on a gelato. But here, in this joke of a city with this nightmare of a weather it’s just damn well near impossible!

 

Pictures with crappy weather from tv2.dk and the lovely Italy pictures from Pinterest.com (click on the pictures to get to the source)

First day of business

The first of January is almost always the most calm and relaxed day of the year (except last year when I was up studying at the crack of dawn!). I know myself good enough to know, that even though I wasn’t hung over, I was going to be out ‘till 3 in the morning so most likely I would spend the morning in bed. Knowing that, I decided to prepare beforehand and brought flowers in to stand next to my bed – a lovely way to wake up the first day of 2012.

  Oh, and hiding outside the picture is of course a bottle of Pepsi Max…

The second of January is a huge contrast to the first. This is the day when you get started, all the hopes and ambitions you have for the year need to get going this day to have any chance to keep. Seeing as I don’t have any real new years resolutions and I don’t have work this week, I spent the morning watching the last couple of episodes of “Life Unexpected” – an ok show with a rushed and weird finale.

Now I’ve finally gotten my butt out of bed, taken an hour long walk to find the perfect swings (I loooove swing sets - FYI…) and called the trash people. No, that’s not an insulting term for the insurance people (whom I also need to call today) but actually the guys that come and pick up the trash. Apparently I can’t get rid of my Christmas tree until the 17th of January! What am I supposed to do with a dead tree in my apartment for three weeks!? I hate not having a car – or a license for that matter!

The rest of the day is going to go with calling the insurance people – I need a new one and it’s probably going to cost me a bunch of money I don’t have, so I’m not really looking forward to calling them. Then I need to call the tax people, I doubt that’s going to be any more pleasant than talking insurance or paying bills which is what I have to look forwards to after making all my calls. Oh, how I love the first day of business…    

Happy New Year!!

Remembering old times and old friends with a smile and a lot of love

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes

So I just realized this blog is going to be my ticket to not falling into dementia as a 27 year old! I need it just like Alzheimer patients need their yellow post-it’s. I was trying to think the year through – you know, it being the last day of the year and all – but I can hardly remember what month I moved to this city, much less what I did a random day in Marts, or April, or October for that matter.

I guess the bigger things stand out – graduating from med.school, starting my first job as a “real” doctor, doing my first surgical procedure, one of my closest friends having a baby, having the family over for Christmas, going to London with sister dearest and the first vacation with just my mom and I. Although, one would think that moving to a new city would kind of qualify as a “big thing”…

Yesterday at work while we were waiting for the OR to be ready for us the surgeon asked me if I had always been this dutiful and committed person – a “daddies girl” or “mommas girl”. I was a bit surprised and maybe just a little bit annoyed with the daddies/mommas girl comment, but said that yes, I guess I had. He then said that when you’re like that, you tend to put a lot of pressure on yourself and always focus on things you could and should do better and that you had to remember to take time to think about how good you are doing and that I was doing really good. He said that I was one of the best interns they’d had in years, and even though my mind immediately goes to “yeah right” – today I’ll try to block that out, and really try to just take it in.

The biggest thing for me this year was finishing med.school – I’ve had this goal of becoming a doctor since I was about three years old, and even though I somehow knew this was what I was meant to do – I’ve spent the last seven years feeling like I’ll never be good enough. But I am, and my New Years resolution will be to try to remember it, cause when I finally start feeling it, I think that’s going to be when I really reach the goal set out so long ago.

The Hunting

Yes, that’s what I’ve been up to today. I’ve been searching, looking, tracking down and trying to find the perfect – well the good enough anyway – dress and last minute flight. So, do the two things have anything in common other than obviously being very hard to come by? Not really, but yeah, kind of a little bit too.

Today was my last day of work until the 9th. of January. That’s a whole lot of spare time! And unfortunately it’s a whole lot of unplanned time. I should have thought about it months ago, although granted my last week off (about 7 weeks ago) was strangely filled with mandatory communication classes and funnily enough – work, so I didn’t really dare to plan anything, in case “week off” actually meant working regular hours. So my thought was that maybe I could take a last minute trip somewhere? I mostly want to go to Paris but maybe that’s better as a springtime trip? So instead I was looking at cheap flights to Tenerife – you know, sleeping on a sun chair is almost the same as sleeping on the couch (which of course is what I will be doing if I stay at home) only I get filled up with Vitamin-D without having to take one lousy pill! Problem is, I had the impression last minute trips were cheap and they’re not really, except if you want to sleep in a crummy old hotel with cockroaches as roomies. Maybe it’s better to go to Paris for just like three days for the same cost it would be to go to Tenerife for a week? See, this is the problem with unspontaneous people like me – I can’t make a quick decision to save my life (or my vacation!)

So, the other quest – the good enough dress. Well, the reason why I need to go away (apart from having the time and feeling obliged to use it to travel) is that I don’t really like New Years Eve, and I feel like the only way I can stand to really celebrate it is if I have something really great to look forwards to after (and I mean like the day after!). So the dress is for tomorrow. New Years Eve – it doesn’t seem like it’s going to slip quietly by this year either. Each year I think, it can’t really get any worse, and each year keeps kicking the previous years butt. Now, I have had some pretty good New Years, and I don’t even know how tomorrow is going to be – so why am I being such a negative Nancy? The problem is – and I’m being strangely honest now, I’m not really sure why – I feel lonely at New Years Eve. Each year I keep hoping the feeling might have gone away, but each year it comes back worse than last, so therefor – not really a fan of the last night of the year.

Ok, so, after all the serious stuff – did I find a dress? ‘Course I did! I found two! One green and one black – the green was sold out everywhere and the black was only left in mini-sizes. Fortunately though I had spotted a white dress a couple of weeks ago that was still hanging there all by it’s lonesome, so I thought, why not be lonely together? And – even better, it’s THE color of next season and one of my favorite colors for spring, so I’ll take a bit of a leap in to the new year, skip the dreary months of slush and go straight to crispy white world of sandals and sunbeams.          

From the top left we have; Christian Dior, Carolina Herrera, Elie Saab, Valentino and Cholé. The bottom dresses are all from – the one and only – Chanel.

Spring Fling

Winter has apparently decided it was time for a well needed vacation after a couple of years of working overtime, and honestly I couldn’t agree more. I know though, that Nordic winters aren’t usually very good at holding a whole lot of vacations, so I’m sure it’ll be back just when I start dreaming of summer, which usually is around April…

But, until that day comes when snow leaks inside my short boots and my fingers turn blue after a bike ride, I’ll flirt just a tiny little bit with the thought of spring and summer!

Have you seen the beautiful SS 2012 collections? Above is Valentino in the middle and Louis Vuitton on both sides. Lace, flowery, a bit see-through, pastel and length around the knee. Light and lovely.

The Christmas aftermath

Ten days since my last post, one week since my family flew in, two days since they left and almost 30 hours since I went back to work – and only about four since I got back from the hospital.

The post-Christmas blues – I guess it’s inevitable for someone like me. You build it up, always knowing it’ll never quite live up to it but still hoping it will, get disappointed when it doesn’t and then realize that you actually had a pretty good time and probably would have had a better time if the expectations weren’t so high. Before you know it you’re back at work, doing your regular mundane stuff and already ruining the next Holliday just a few days away buy building expectations – one never learns!

My Christmas vacation was spent decorating the tree, cooking for a whole family, rearranging sleeping quarters every morning and every evening, building my nightstand, pulling a cable so my TV could be moved from the bedroom to the living room and of course talking, drinking thousands cups of coffee and playing board games. Oh, and not to be forgotten – giving and receiving gifts!

Christmas Eve day is almost always a kind of hectic day. The food needs to be prepared, the last cards written and the last minute gifts wrapped. Christmas Day however is almost always really where you enjoy yourself. At one point there was this stillness in the apartment when mom had gone to take a nap in the bedroom, my sister was half asleep on the couch listening to some podcast on my IPhone, dad was surfing on the computer and I was half watching Peter Pan on TV and half napping. I think I love those moments most. Stillness, quiet, everybody is doing their own thing but nobody is alone.

Another highlight of the Christmas week was definitely the Downton Abbey Christmas Special. I absolutely loved it! It’s funny, sad, dramatic and romantic – what’s not to like!?

All the lights are coming on now…

Christmas is almost upon us – in case you hadn’t noticed. I’ve gathered inspiration from all over the net and started a board on Pinterest of all the pictures that just make me go aaaawwww! Problem is I’m so insanely tired (I slept until two o'clock in the afternoon this Saturday!) that even though I brought home my very first Christmas tree yesterday I haven’t even had the energy to decorate it yet. Hopefully I’ll manage it tomorrow after shopping from Christmas dinner, because Wednesday I have another 25-hour shift (though I can’t imagine how I’ll ever get through that!) and Thursday I have to pick up the family at the airport. Christ – I can’t even think of everything I have to get done without feeling a tiny twitch of panic in the pit of my stomach. So I won’t think about it, I’ll just take one last look at these pretty pictures and then really try to sleep (as I was supposed to be about an hour and a half ago…)     

Great idea, I wish I had done this, or that I hade the place to do it in the kitchen. It kind of looses it’s point if you have a real tree I think.

I made a star like this, this weekend. It’s now hanging a bit crooked in my window, but it’s very pretty, if I may say so myself.

I took inspiration from these birds and made some myself a couple of days ago, they are going to go in the tree. I think they’re probably the cutest think I’ve ever done.

As always I love paper cranes. I’ve been doing them since 2nd or 3rd grade when we read about Sadako and The Thousand Paper Cranes. I never knew they made a wish tree every year – make a wish for the world and give it wings. How beautiful is that? In a couple of years I’ll probably have enough cranes to decorate a whole tree with them, I can’t wait!

Picture nr. 1 from Sweet Paul, nr. 2 from Life is Beautiful, nr. 3 from En mammas dag /Weronica and nr. 4 from Rainbow fund. 

Chopsticks for one?

I’ve had a great day, second in a row actually so I’m slowly recovering from a bit of a hellish 25 hour shift on Wednesday. I know I complain half the time, but I actually do have good days too.

After the shift on Wednesday I had tears streaming down my face on the bike ride home. I guess it was a combination of being seriously sleep deprived, having had a bad couple of days just before the nightshift and listening to a sad song while thinking of a patient I’d seen during the night. I don’t usually get emotional about my patients, I can count the patients I’ve been sad about on one hand. This wasn’t even one I had anything to do with, I just happened to witness a very emotional and private moment in a family’s life and for some idiotic reason I imagined my own family going through it even though we never have and probably never will.

Anyway, I was having a pretty bad morning and even though I had decided to go home and sleep away the day, I suddenly changed my mind and ended up hopping on a train and going to visit a friend. I love that I can do that, decide on a whim to do something completely different from what I had planned. I love that I don’t have to ask or explain to anyone. The visit turned out to be exactly what I needed to get through the day. I got to talk and drink tea and relax, then I got to cuddle the sweetest little girl and experience the thrill of calming her down and making her smile. It just gives you energy and a warmth that you can’t get anywhere else.

Today I got to continue to cuddle babies, only today they were a bit on the sick side. I had my second visit to the pediatric department and it was, of course, wonderful. I got to talk to pediatricians and general practitioners who work there, and though they had a bunch of interesting thing to say they were mostly preoccupied with getting home on time. They had kids, husbands, wives and responsibilities waiting for them after work, they practically missed the smiles and the jokes the kids made because they were so stressed! I was dead tired but I couldn’t help myself – I love it there, and stayed a couple of hours more than planned and again, nobody gets pissed at home and nobody get’s stressed because of my change of plans – my way, my life and nobodies goddam business but my own. I love it.

Though the day couldn’t get much better I stopped for sushi to just really put it over the top, and when the Asian guy asked me if I just wanted chopsticks for one person I gave him the biggest smile I have and said a very happy YES!

I’ve been working like a dog

Seven and a half hours in the operating room without lunch or a pee-break does not a happy Arlen make! My feet and back are killing me, my head feels empty and slow and all I want to do is sleep – well that and get at massage, but that’s a bit more tricky to get at hold of right now. I’m not a surgeon and I don’t want to be (as I’ve told every person who has asked, and some who haven’t), this day and a couple of the ones I had last week, prove why. It’s tiresome, it’s monotonous and I’m not very good at it. Every time one of the surgeons tell me I’m doing something good I practically roll my eyes thinking “what a load of bull”, I’m not killing the patient and I’m happy about that, but it’s hardly good, maybe, sometimes, on a good day it’s decent work, but most times it’s just barely acceptable.

So why do I care? I’m not going to use those skills ever again in my life. I’ve always said I’m not a competitive person, and I can still argue that fact – but I don’t like to loose and I don’t like to be bad at something, actually that’s kind of an understatement – I hate being bad at something! So after standing a whole day, smiling in spite of being stressed and reprimanded by the nurses, and trying my best not to be the stupid, un-surgical person that I am  – I think I now deserve a glass of champagne, a foot rub and some gourmet sushi.

But as we all know that ain’t gonna happen, so I guess a hot bath, nuked pasta leftovers and a good book in bed is going to have to do. That is if I don’t fall asleep on the couch in the next couple of minutes…

 

Tonight I’m in the wardrobe

I never read the Narnia chronicles as a kid which probably is a big shame, but I didn’t even know they existed. This means though that the movies are my first experience with the story and that means that I absolutely love the movies! A wonderful story full of the best kind of fantasy. So tonight I’m loosing myself in a world of talking lions and beautiful winter wonderlands.

Between the sheets

This day – just like the last five, has been spent in bed with a fever, headache, sore throat, terrible coughing and even tummy ache. I hate being sick. I know, everybody does – but it’s embarrassing how much I hate it, how pathetic I get, being all wimpy and feeling sorry for myself.

Some people can make being sick sound cozy and almost like a vacation. They describe it as cuddling up in the sofa with blankets, a cup of tea and a good book. I wish I could be sick like that, cute sick, a little bit like the girl in the picture. Instead I look like a freak with my hair all askew and ragged old clothes. I couldn’t even manage to get out to the living room this morning, so I’ve spent the day (the whole day!) in bed half sleeping half watching The Notebook.

Now of course I’m feeling a little bit better and I’m hungry as hell, and the only thing in the kitchen is tea and gingerbread cookies – where is magical fridge when you need it!?

Pictures from Ikea, Pinterest, Google and The Notebook.

The impossible question

The most dangerous game you can play is the, “what if” game, it leads your head to places it should never go. As I’ve written before I hate it when I go there. I get scared that I’ll get stuck in the past. Even so sometimes you can’t help yourself, it’s so tempting, imagining the life you might have led now, if…

Well actually there’s a problem right there, I don’t really know if what. Maybe if I’d been more honest? Maybe if I had taken a risk and not always played it so safe? If I at least had a moment I could look back on where I could have done it differently, made some sort of declaration or been asked a direct question that I could have answered honestly but didn’t – but I don’t have such a moment. There are just fragments of memories where a moment almost presented itself but then somehow disappeared again. Blink once and the moment has past, blink twice and years have.

Again, as I’ve written before the conundrum around people growing together and growing apart confounds me. The ups and downs of a relationship is probably one of the most mysterious things out there, maybe I should have studied anthropology instead of medicine… I just wish I had some explanation for it, for the downfall of a relationship, or the lasting for that matter – let’s not be so negative.

The best relationship I have in my life is definitely not the easiest one, it has taken years and tears to get here, it has been necessary to be together a lot and also to have a lot of mental and physical space between us. Somehow we’ve ended up becoming each others best friend, but I suppose it could have just as easily turned into a horrible relationship that you would have had to endure throughout your entire life. The point is, I have no idea when or where this relationship turned, suddenly it was just good, but I wish I did know, because if it hadn’t turned out good I would desperately have wanted to go back and change that exact moment.

Just as I want with a couple of other relationships that haven’t turned out as good as this one.

Obviously all this thinking came about after watching “One day” – if you haven’t read the book yet – shame on you! And don’t cheat yourself out of a good book by watching the movie first! 

Friday night in

Well first of all, Christmas is back on track! Very happy about that!

A couple of days ago I made some Christmas candy (it’s called “kola” in Swedish), I don’t remember ever eating it before, so I’m not sure if it tastes the way it’s supposed to – it’s very sweet, like call my dentist my teeth's are falling off sweet! So today I chose to bake some Christmas-cookies that are less sweet and more… hmm, I don’t even know the name for their taste, gingery I guess. Now I have enough gingerbread cookies to last me until may!

So this evening is one of those perfect ones, I’m curled up in bed with tea and newly baked cookies watching nothing important on TV (oh yeah, I have a TV connection now!) and when I fall asleep there will be no alarm, no wake-up call – just sleep, sleep, sleep! I’m just a sucker for the little things in life.

Bad quality iPhone photos, sorry about that…

Working while sleeping