A bit of whining
Grr. Just when the weather is getting so nice, I have a cold. It’s only been a few days and I’m sure I’ll get better soon, but at the moment, it’s really frustrating. No writing (still suffering from writer’s block), mum’s got her broken finger and her allergic itch and is convinced it’s never going to end, and my sister also has this cold, just when she has to be mentally alert to finish the work for her course. I guess I just feel stressed out about everything that needs to be done. Now. And I can only do the mere basics, because of this cold. Sorry about the whining.
This town…
Grr. Today my mom and I went shopping. The thing is, my mom has some trouble with her eyesight (for a number of reasons, among them a stubborn eye inflammation and an old injury from when she was in school – a snowball thrown right into her eye!). While we were passing the cash register and mom was trying to punch in her code for her credit card (and was having a bit of trouble with that) I noticed that the woman sitting behind the cash register was laughing and making faces at the woman standing behind us in line. Obviously, they found my mom’s trouble with the digital display funny. I glared angrily at them, but I don’t think they took any notice. They were older than me, and anyway, this type of trouble can happen to anyone, so it may be in their respective futures too. This town is driving me up the wall. I don’t know what I’ll do if we can’t get away from here very soon.
A bit of whining
I had to go back to the clinic to do a test again. Usually, when that happens, I don’t have to pay for the second visit, but this time I did. It wasn’t all that expensive so it wasn’t so bad, but I sort of felt cheated. Especially since I actually had (or might have) a problem. As far as problems go, this one doesn’t seem to be so serious, but it’s still making me nervous, because I also have another, bigger problem, that I don’t seem to be able to do anything about. Again, some people might not think this is much of a problem, but to me it is. A really big problem. But there’s nothing I can do about it now, other what than I’m already doing, so I’m just going to try and forget about that for the time being.
Another thing that’s bothering me is that my DVD rental club that I’ve been in for a couple of years is closing down. This is the club that has made it possible for me to watch all the movies and tv series everyone else seems to be able to get, but not my family. Most people will just move on to other similar services, but we checked it out and found that most of our series and movies won’t be available anywhere else. And we only have about three weeks to go until the old club closes down. That doesn’t give us a lot of time to finish our series. Still, we’ve signed up for a couple of free trials to watch what we can on other services and we’ll make the most of these three weeks or so that we have left in the first club. But it really bothers me. It’s so unfair. Just because my sister and I belong to a minority group when it comes to our choice of tv series and movies to watch, our days of watching our favorite tv series and movies are over. Even if things are slowly getting better again on Swedish national tv, there’s still so much we miss. Even when it comes to American and English tv series, we’ll miss out on a lot, and when it comes to stuff from other countries (i e Sweden, France etc) we’ll probably miss out on everything. Still, on the bright side, we’ll be able to watch the few tv series we will get to watch all at once. And we’ll get to see some Classic Dr Who! At least that’s something.
Sigh. Alright, end of whining for now. Sorry about that.
Time for a little whining again…
If you read this blog, it won’t take you long to realize that I love animals. Dogs (some dogs, I should say) are among my favorite animals. My very favorite breed is the lhasa apso. First I’d like to explain that here, in Sweden, it’s quite a rare breed, and is definitely not among the top twenty breeds. As I understand it, it’s quite the opposite in the US.
What I love the most about this breed is their personality and attitude. Don’t get me wrong, I also love the way they look, but that’s really a minor reason.
When I look at the breed sites or read books and printed articles about the breed, I find things like ‘if you don’t like the grooming, choose another breed’. Huh? I love this dog’s personality, like none other (ok, not quite true, I love a couple of other breeds too and basically like all kinds of dogs, like I like most types of animals, period). Should I just decide not to get it, because I’m not a huge fan of all that hairdressing? No way.
Because I love the lhasa apso’s personality, I’m willing to learn and put up with the extensive grooming required. Naturally I want my dog to be healthy and happy. I’ll never learn to love that aspect of sharing my life and home with an awesome, cool Tibetan dog, but I can live with it.
Actually, it’s the same about the amount of excercise some of the bigger or more active breeds need. I love walking, and walking fast, up to a point. Mainly, I love walking in the streets, in parks or in the agrarian landscape surrounding small towns. In other words, I don’t love hiking for days on end in the wilderness or climbing mountains, riding a bike etc.
I’ve also taken the consequences of that, by not choosing a big or very active breed (for instance, I also love, to name a few of my other favorites, the Eurasian dog, the dachshund, the golden retriever, poodles and naturally mixes between similar types of dogs, not to mention some gorgeous ‘working’ dogs that I could only dream about). These dogs deserve to live far more active lives than I can give them, so I don’t adopt them. Sigh. You can’t have everything. I suppose if I had a family member who lived for week long hikes in the woods or mountains or running for hours, we could share a dog. I’m sure no excercise-craving dog would spurn a shorter slightly less energetic walk in addition to their daily runs.
Smaller, less active dogs, like the lhasa apso enjoy about the same type of walking I do – well, up to a point. Mom’s Tibetan spaniel seems to think I’m a cruel bully and a jock, for expecting him to actually move about. His idea of a nice walk is standing still, sniffing lamp poles or ambling along at a leisurely pace, peeing here and there to send messages to other male dogs. But in general, I think my hour or so of walking around the town satisfies my dog and would satisfy other similar small dogs (most tibetan spaniels, the bichon breeds etc).
More Whining
Our neighbors are harassing us. It’s been going on for years. From the time my dad died. I guess they think they can pick on mom now that she’s a widow. They report us anonymously for all kinds of things. The funny thing is that when these complaints against us are investigated, it turns out we haven’t done anything wrong. And still all this goes on. We can’t do anything to defend ourselves.
That’s why I’ve decided on a course of action. Since they can do this to us, I’ll do the same to them. I’m going to report them, anonymously, for all kinds of things. If the investigations show that they aren’t guilty of what they’ve been accused of, it doesn’t matter, right? We can’t complain. That has to mean they can’t either. Right?
Just in case, so that things don’t get any worse for us, I’ll wait until we’ve moved out. We’re trying to get away from here. It’s not that easy, but as soon as we’ve managed it, I’m going to get my revenge on these neighbors. In a perfectly legal way. Exactly like they’ve been harassing us for all these years. I can hardly think of any people who deserve it more.
