The Susanne

We did it! We got up early this morn­ing and rushed through the usual ritual of groom­ing and break­fast to get to the pet shop as soon as we could. And we bought Ramsay! Oh yeah, and she actu­ally turned out to be a boy. Also this Ramsay is actu­ally the ori­ginal Ramsay’s brother. Con­fused? Ima­gine how I felt, I didn’t even know they were boys until we were leav­ing the shop! Appar­ently the people in the pet shop had moved the boy bun­nies into the empty girl bunny cage to clean the boys’ cage. Yep. You’d think they’d let us know sooner! Not that I mind having a boy, except for the fact that I am now out­numbered two to one in this house­hold. I’ll just have to trust my com­mand­ing pres­ence to let me keep my role as Queen/Head of House…

Already, though, we’ve star­ted moving away from the name Ramsay. I star­ted call­ing him Tøffen (Though guy) simply so he’ll have some­thing to live up to and feel at ease more quickly. The Boy­friend calls him Kompis (Buddy), obvi­ously because he thinks he now has an ally in the house­hold. Yea right!

Then I thought I wanted to call him Gordon as it sounds cooler and it doesn’t remind me of Norway’s most idi­otic BB con­test­ant. The one with the infam­ous motto ‘If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.’

The Boy­friend wants to call him Hetman, I like the sim­ilar Heit­mann as it was my granddad’s name. But I like Gordon too. Let’s just hope he lives up to Gordon Ramsay’s crazi­ness and all will be well!

Here’s our little prin­cess! Ehm, I mean prince:

I’ll read­ily admit it: I’m a cat person. If my love life doesn’t work out I will be the old lady that shares her house with a hun­dred cats. And I might even pos­sibly end up refer­ring to them as my babies.

Right now, though, I live in a flat so I can’t have a cat. It’s so incred­ibly mean to keep a cat locked in a flat. A cat should have loads of room out­side to run around, climb trees and kill loads and loads of birds, rats and mice! At the same time, I’m long­ing for a kitten. I’ve had cats all my life, the last one was with us for 13 years and I still miss her even though she passed away four or five years ago. My par­ents have a new cat now, a boy, but he doesn’t acknow­ledge me as family: I’m just the vis­itor who if I’m lucky will get to pet him a little if I stay for sev­eral days.

Soooo… I want a bunnyrab­bit! I’ve been to the pet­shop and met a gor­geous little girl, she’s incred­ibly cute and looks just like a little dust bunny. When I was there she did this thing where she lifted up one front leg like a gryphon while she made a huge yawn - she looked like a roar­ing lion! (or gryphon…)

I’m just going over and over it all in my head: should I buy her or will it be a mis­take? One moment my heart over­rules my brain and I decide I will, the next my brain takes back con­trol and tells me of all the work, all the incon­veni­ence, and all my elec­trical cords which will be gnawed. Yet I still want her. I wish I had a photo of her to put up, she’s so incred­ibly beautiful.

Might just have to pop back down the pet­shop tomor­row and bring her home! Oh and her name? Ramsay. After Gordon, of course. It sounds equally cool in Eng­lish, South­ern Nor­we­gian, West­ern Nor­we­gian and East­ern Nor­we­gian. Yea, they are different.

I’m going to a friend’s house warm­ing party tonight and I had no idea what to get her. As far as I know, she has everything! So then I thought, maybe I should go over there and bake her a cake in her new kit­chen! But… then I real­ised I have no idea if she actu­ally has a cake dish. (Yes, I know I said she has everything. But yeah.) So I decided to bake the cake at home before I go. Much easier, mush less messy and I won’t seem like a com­plete freak for invad­ing her kit­chen on the night of her party!

Here’s the result, chocol­ate with hazel­nuts, wal­nuts and a rum cream filling:

About four years ago, whilst at work in a bar at Oslo Air­port, I was approached by a man who told me I would make a great house­wife. That was the first time anyone had told me that and frankly I was quite offen­ded by it: I was 19 years old and my bar job was only a way of fin­an­cing my shop­ping and drink­ing whilst trying to decide what degree to choose for uni which I was to start in August that year. I was the archetypal party girl: I would turn up to work with a ter­rible hangover or even still slightly drunk (shame!) and although I did a lot of clean­ing and was very effect­ive and good at my job, I didn’t see myself as someone who could be con­sidered in the way that man did. Since then, I have been told that same thing many times over, and I’m begin­ning to believe it. In fact, the only thing I can think of which doesn’t qual­ify me to some day become a great house­wife, is that I don’t want to.

I want to work. I want to use my brain. I need to get out of the house, meet people, have a social life of my own! But apart from that, I am get­ting quite adept at home-​making. If I may say so myself.

I abso­lutely love cook­ing. I love food. I love think­ing up recipes, start­ing with one ingredi­ent that I feel like that day or am curi­ous about and then adding things I think will taste good with it. And nine times out of ten, it turns out amaz­ing. I like that my recipes have that ori­gin­al­ity about them, that little piece of ‘me’ which makes them so spe­cial and sets them apart from other people’s food.

Also, I don’t really mind clean­ing. Mind you, I must be in the mood to clean or I’ll get angry and bang things around, throw­ing clothes about the room and being really loud and scary. And I’ll work myself into a rage whilst at it. This is another reason why I don’t want to become a house­wife: my kids would be in des­per­ate need of ther­apy whenever I had a bad day! -But when I’m in the mood! When I have the energy to clean, it can be cool! I’ll put on some ’80s music, turn up the volume and really have a great time. And I really am quite effect­ive. I’ll have the whole flat done in a half hour, no cheat­ing or cut­ting corners, and everything done. There’s no sweep­ing any­thing under the rug in my house!

And when it comes to laun­dry, yeah, I’ve had that down since an early age thanks to my mum. I will def­in­itely be passing on that tra­di­tion to my chil­dren: they will learn to do laun­dry as soon as they’re old enough to under­stand what the dif­fer­ent set­tings on the washer and dryer mean. (And the wash­ing instruc­tions on the clothes, of course, as we don’t want lambs wool going in the dryer…)

I love the ‘clean house’ feel­ing. I love to flop down on the sofa after clean­ing, with a cup of tea or coffee or maybe even (per­haps prefer­ably) a cold beer. And just relax. Ahhhh…

But basic­ally what I love the most is cook­ing. I have been trying out some new things lately, such as grilled halibut with a warm potato salad, and today, for the first time, I made scampi. I mar­in­ated them in chilli and garlic which is what my mum does so I know from exper­i­ence it’s deli­cious. I served them with asparagus and spa­ghetti with a home made car­bon­ara which turned out even better than I’d ima­gined! I love it when things work out well. The fla­vours went well together which was a relief as the car­bon­ara was really more of a backup plan in case The Boy­friend didn’t love the scampi (he isn’t really one for the sea­food). But it was great. And he loved it, by the way. At least he said so: I can never be 100% sure if he’s telling the truth but if he lies about it he’s really only shoot­ing him­self in the leg as he will be served the same thing again. Ha!

So yeah, another thing for The Susanne’s Super Secret Heir­loom Cook­book. Though I guess this one isn’t very secret any more. Oh darn.

Yesterday two amaz­ing things happened:

• I handed in the last essay of the semester
• …and imme­di­ately the awful, stub­born flu I’ve been strug­gling to shake finally let go!

So, need­less to say I have been in an unusu­ally great mood today. I went to my sem­inar feel­ing on top of the world! I paid closer atten­tion than I have in months and actu­ally learned a lot! Then I asked my pro­fessor about my essay and he said, straight away, ‘Don’t worry, trust me, you passed!’  YEAH!

So I felt the need to reward myself: and what better way than to head down­town for some spring shop­ping? I bought two new tops which I love and new sunglasses. Very classy. Very cool.

Also couldn’t help but notice the beau­ti­ful city I live in. How can it be that a city whose aes­thet­ics I usu­ally feel only embar­rass­ment for can sud­denly be so beau­ti­ful? It’s spring. I love spring. Def­in­itely my favour­ite season. I just marvel at how everything comes back to life after the long, dark, cold awful winter. And it’s so vibrant! The beau­ti­ful col­ours that are appear­ing every­where, the buds on flowers and trees, and the blue sky and the intense sun­light all warm my soul. Yes­ter­day, after I’d fin­ished my essay, The Boy­friend and I had a little picnic in the local park. The trees have no leaves yet, but they do have nest­ing birds..

It truly is a won­der­ful world.