the flu

my best feel-sorry-for-me face














❉ bah humbug, boo hoo, vaffanculo a tutti. i hate being sick!.... i'm sure everyone does, it just feels like i hate it more than anyone else ;o)
...partly because of the unfairness of it. i eat a healthy vegetarian diet, exercise daily, pop vitamins, am a non-smoker, only a binge drinker (;o)) and get enough sleep. i should be immune to these cursed viruses!
in fact i've just been lecturing jerry (combined with looking after him) when he had the flu, that he wouldn't get sick if he took his vitamins and ate healthily like me.....then bang. serves me right for getting so high and mighty. perhaps i need to do as julius caesar did and employ a slave to follow me around reminding me in whispers that i'm only human.

so i'm lying in bed feeling sorry for myself, whilst having a coughing competition with daffy, who's also sick in his bed. jerry's such a sweetheart that he not only took my shift at work, but popped home for an hour to bring me lunch, give me cuddles and tell me i'm beautiful even when i know that right now i look like the ugliest pig-dog. sickness is made so much more bearable when accompanied with love!

operation dream dress

✥ i had my second deep tissue massage yesterday from the sports masseuse at the gym, 'maxim kalma'.... the name seems way too good to be real doesn't it?! he's an awesome masseuse and has nearly dug out the mass of knots that have taken over my entire back, a side-effect of waitressing and sitting in aeroplanes for long periods.
jerry's obsessively jealous of maxim and brings him up in every random situation along with some derogatory jibe. i made the mistake of recommending maxim to a colleague in front of jerry and copped the dirtiest accusatory sidewards glare.
i actually thinks its really cute that he's so jealous.

we're going to thailand in exactly one month and im SO excited! i've been considering getting my wedding dress made while we're there, so ive re-opened the 'wedding dress inspiration' folder on my desktop and gone back to gathering ideas from thousands of bridal websites. the problem is, the more dresses i see, the more unsure i become of what is my 'Dream Dress'... short or long, straight or puffy, stiff or flowy, white or coloured, strappy or strapless?? jerry says im obsessive and that it doesn't matter that much, its 'only a dress'. he reassures me that he hasn't even started thinking about his suit yet. come on!! that's not the same thing! the dress is probably the most important thing in the whole wedding! does anyone disagree? ..of course it has to be perfect!

you're not from australia

✶ a customer in the restaurant last night accused me, in front of his whole family and the tables around his, of lying about being from australia. ' i can hear from your accent that you're not from australia' he said to me.... what does he think, that i'm walking around speaking english for fun when my job would be 100 times easier if i was swedish and didn't have to deal with language barriers and the exact same boring questions one thousand times a day: 'where are you from?' and 'what are you doing here in åre?'. i was so annoyed that i made jerry take over serving his table and jerry was begging me to give him my drivers licence to shove in the guy's face but i didn't feel like making a scene.

instead i let my hair down for coyote ugly! it was great fun last night, even though it was quieter than usual, with two other big parties in town stealing our customers.
our two favourite regulars came in, martin and jack, and when jack went out to have a cigarette, martin asked me to make the worst shot i could possibly think of for jack. i mixed together tequila, sambuca, blue curacao, lemon juice, milk and tabasco sauce, but snazzed up the glass with a cocktail umbrella and a lemon wedge so it looked deceivingly fresh and fruity. jack was so happy that id made him such a special looking surprise shot that he downed it with a big smile on his face. pia and i watched him in excited anticipation. his smile quickly turned to a frightened grimace and he sat in startled silence, i think waiting to see if he would vomit it straight back up again. although i had tears of laughter pouring down my face, i started to feel bad that maybe i'd made him very sick, until all of a sudden he shouted out 'give me another one!'

we had girls from the crowd dancing up on the bar with us and a group of old gray-haired men with beards dancing on the tables with air-guitars. two cute young guys came up to us and offered us 20,000 crowns to dance the next song naked and although i instantly declined, pia was considering it... or at least a boob flash, since it would pay for her to get her licence back after losing it for drink driving and crashing into a flower shop...

hummelstugan

❅ today jerry and i had lunch at hummelstugan, perched at the top of the slopes, with the most amazing view of the whole valley. we caught the ski-lifts up the mountain without skis. since i'd borrowed a lift card from a colleague, jerry instructed me to dress myself inconspicuously as a skier, but with my clumsy amateur snow walking and camera dangling around my neck, i looked exactly like a tourist. luckily i didn't get caught out...

the outdoor deck at the restaurant was packed, with the beautiful sunny weather that's hit åre, but with that spectacular view, it was totally worth the wait for a table.

to get back down the mountain where there were no lifts, we had to run down the snowy slopes, sliding down in our boots or on our bums, trying to stay out of the skiers and snowboarders way, soaking wet but having so much fun!

happy easter!

✴ happy easter!!!

i just devoured an entire chocolate bunny in less than 5 minutes and feel very sickly but that's what easter is all about isn't it!?

easter was so much more fun as a kid! when we were very young and my parents were super health freaks, the 'easter bunny' was also a health freak and used to only give us eggs made of carob, a healthy alternative to chocolate, instead of the real thing. our friends used to try it and spit it out but we thought it was great, not knowing any better... the easter bunny eventually got over that phase and gave us cadbury's like everyone else..

mum and dad used to go to a lot of effort at easter time, planning an easter egg hunt, having planted different types of eggs and bunnies all around the garden for us to race to find on easter sunday morning.

i once went to our italian next door neighbour's house, having looked up in the dictionary how to say some sort of 'happy easter' greeting in italian and was rewarded with a big 'humpty dumpty' egg full of smarties. as a 10 year old, that was the absolute jackpot and my brothers were so jealous that they considered going over and saying something too.

my dad (who is the biggest chocolate lover in the world) used to sit on the couch easter sunday afternoon and eat his chocolate in a continuous hand-to-mouth action until he was sick and all his chocolates were gone and then he would steal mums and start on ours. we learnt to count and guard over our egg collection with our lives.
the best thing was to make my chocolate last until after both brothers had eaten all theirs and then use it to tease and bribe...

that trick works equally well on jerry who loves chocolate as much as i do. chocolate has caused serious arguments between us in the past, and is always used as a make-up present..
happy easter and happy chocolate feasting!

hello sunshine!!

✺ hello sunshine!
this is what spring is supposed to feel like!!! the sun is shining so warmly that this morning i could even take off my jacket as i walked down to the old church to take photos. back at home jerry pulled out the chesterfield armchair onto our balcony (which i have never been out onto in 4 months!) and i sat in the glorious sun reading my book. its amazing what a bit of sunlight can do for you! must be the vitamin D. i feel like my mood has been totally lifted; the world is my oyster, the sky is the limit, anything is possible, life is beautiful etc etc..... yippee!

back to real life

❆ it's been a big few days!

tuesday: jerry and i arranged a day off together so we could hang out with our friends from stockholm. after a fantastic thai dinner at bubblan, we went out partying in åre. the plan was to take it easy so we'd be fresh for the next morning's activity.....hmmm.... arriving home smashed at 3am, in a desperate last minute attempt to avoid a hangover, i scoffed down the entire thai doggy-bag contents along with a half litre of water.... (what a fantastic tight-arse invention the doggy-bag was!) ... unfortunately im so old now that even one light beer would probably give me a hangover.

wednesday: adventure sports day. wow! snow scootering is one of those things... you know there's a few things (or more than a few if you're lucky) that you do in your life that you remember forever because they're such breath-taking experiences. ATV driving through the desert in egypt was one for me and now i discovered snow scootering is the winter equivalent!
pumping it as fast as i dared over vast fields of white.... valleys of white.....up and over huge white hills, just pure white panoramas, then along a narrow winding track through a snowy pine forest that looked exactly like Narnia... i was so awes-struck and delighted that i had a huge cartoon smile on my gob the whole two hours and on several occasions caught myself laughing to myself in glee!

wednesday night: coyote ugly just keeps getting better! pia is a riot and i love working with her! each week we become more relaxed dancing on the bar and have more fun with it! the tips were super good, and found later all through our clothes and boots! a jealous girl in the crowd slapped us both on the legs as we were dancing and we had all the staff down below chasing after her to kick her out but she disappeared like the white rabbit.

thursday:
the guys all went back to stockholm (sad face) and it's back to real life. i cleaned the house (2 days later than regular cleaning day) and what a rat-hole! i think i removed 15 bags of rubbish!

friday: aaaaahhhh... day off. and i'm now officially going to get healthy. i began the day with a professional deep tissue massage down at the gym and found out my back is a mass of knots and screwed up muscles. after one hour of fantastic pain, i came home to a hearty breakfast taken with 5 different vitamin tablets. yes i'm really serious about this health thing. you watch, ill soon be a new woman!

friends come to visit

✽ as we arrived back in åre, cavalli was moving out, having finished his season contract. the good thing about that was that we scored his old bed, which is a real bed and much better than the two single mattresses on the floor that weve been sleeping in the whole season, and which i always wake up squeezed in the gap between.
also some good friends of ours from stockholm arrived for a few days visit. they all came out partying at nova (where i was working behind the bar) with jerry and for once, i was the sober one, watching in amusement their drunken shenanigans. karin had gone home smashed already, last seen with a big jaigermeister stain down the front of her shirt, måsen got wasted even though everyone was shouting him alcohol free drinks in secret. then on his way out he gave jerry a huge tongue kiss. sandra was jumping around on a buzz with her new kids ski clothes purchased at an absolute bargain. jerry flashed the crowd for no reason then buttoned up and tucked in his shirt and pretended to be a nerd. then he started annoying me so much behind the bar that i threatened to kick him out. jesper demanded immediate service even if there were heaps of other people waiting for drinks before him, and daffy got angry, thinking everyone expected free drinks at his bar and then bought a bottle of expensive champagne for them all anyway..
i was so bored when they all left!

surprise 50th birthday

❊ oh dear blog, i missed you!
jerry and i just got back from his mum's surprise 50th birthday cruise. jerry's sisters had planned a huge scheme for her; stole her mobile phone and her car while she was at work, pretended to call the police, lead her on a huge mission to the bus station, then lured her onto a bus that went to copenhagen. while she was stressing to death (and pissed off because no one had planned anything for her 50th) all jerry's brothers, sisters, in-laws, aunt and uncle piled onto the bus and broke out singing happy birthday. jerry and i had gone even further with the trick by dressing up in costumes (jerry an old man and me a muslim woman) and sitting a few seats back from her reading, newspapers. when she thought the surprise was over, jerry pulled down the newspaper and started screaming in accented swedish that they should all be quiet. yvonne looked at us both in confusion and asked 'who are you, i recognise you?!' ....she was so happy that we'd come as well, and the best thing was that she'd bought the whole scam and was genuinely surprised!

in copenhagen we all jumped on a cruise ship to oslo, that goes through all the norwegian fjords, and the partying began. after dinner, we started off drinking in the hallway outside the cabins and partied until we got complaints from the neighbours and then forced to leave by security guards. then we moved on to the kids play area and between rounds of shots, toasts and speeches, we took turns diving into the pool of plastic coloured balls. jerry's brother-in-law even stripped off to his underwear to jump in!

everybody got so drunk that we became a big trouble making gang, rampaging around the ship until finally we found the piano lounge. the pianist was sitting alone, playing to an empty bar. so we all piled in around the piano and began singing along rowdily to all the abba songs, making requests, dancing our arses off (i even pleaded to jump up and dance on the piano, but he said no).
we were having so much fun and causing such a racket that we drew in all the other guests walking past and im sure that piano man had the best work-night of his life! he let me sing 'hey big spender' and 'im a believer' to the whole crowd and i was drunk enough to get right into it. jerry's mum who never drinks, got totally smashed and even got hit on by a young guy in the piano lounge, until first jerry went up and threatened him with 'hey that's my mum' and then jerry's 's step dad, 'hey thats my woman'.

everyone had drunken D&M's, telling each other how much they loved each other etc and jerry's sister and brother tried to conspire with me to bring jerry back to live in his home town.
it was a fantastic night! ...unfortunately we paid for it the next day, hungover and sleep deprived to the shithouse, with three buses to catch (including an over-nighter) to get back to sweden and to good old åre....

problem box

bludgeing at work



































❆ the owners of beefalo put up a 'problem box' on the wall at work, for staff to anonymously voice their complaints and suggestions regarding the running of the restaurant. i was the first to slip in a problem note, my problem being that the instructions on the problem box should also be in english.
everybody began planning their piss-takes.
tjabu, one of the chefs, told me he was going to write all his problems in english so that the owners think they're written by me. he also told me he was going to make a complaint about there being a non-swedish speaking waitress so i told him i was going to complain about his daily sexual harassment and requests to squeeze my boobs etc.
jerry put in a complaint about each staff member: that jesper is cocky, that emil looks like a gay boy-band member, that tobbe has fucked up teeth, that angelica's boobs are too small, that cavalli is a red headed midget, that daffy is an onion and of course that jerry is sweet and charming and very good with guests.
they took down the problem box to review the comments and i don't think it'll go back up...
last night after work we all went out for drinks at wersens. although i vowed to not have any shots, to avoid getting shit-faced like last week, its just impossible to combat peer pressure... we had a really good night though, topped off by a visit to the kebab shop. why is it that kebabs (or falafel rolls in my case) are so internationally popular as the perfect drunken late night food..?!