The Susanne

No more having to go shop­ping every day because noth­ing will fit in my half of a tiny under counter fridge. ( -The freezer com­part­ment at the bottom there is the same size as the old fridge!)

No more crying over not being able to buy food on sale because I’ve no place to store it.

No more having to finish off a whole jar of jelly before buying a new one because there’s not room enough for two jars.

I’m ecstatic!

Also, am work­ing on super secret, super cool pro­ject. Can’t wait to unveil — although that might be in the very dis­tant future…

The Queen of Pro­cras­tin­a­tion has done it again! I arrived home from uni with grand plans for the even­ing: I was going to read up on Werge­land and Wel­haven, and try to find a couple of poems to write my com­par­at­ive per­spectival ana­lysis on. Well. I opened a few wiki­pe­dia art­icles. I made myself a cup of pep­per­mint tea. I took a shower, gave my hair a con­di­tion­ing mask. I sat back down at my com­puter — and I star­ted muck­ing about with my Word­Press theme. Oh joy. Of course I had to choose a theme with almost end­less (built-​in) options for cus­tom­isa­tion. And of course I had to sort out as much as I could of all the little tweaks that no longer work when you change theme. And whaddyaknow, it’s been hours! I’m hungry! And sick of this already. I wonder, if I change back will I have to redo all the tweak­ing I’d done to my old theme? One thing is cer­tain: I’m too chicken to change back tonight, because then I’d prob­ably lose all the changes I’ve made to this thing. Bah. WHY did I have to go and change everything? I was quite happy with my old theme! And I’d spent so many hours per­fect­ing it, get­ting everything to work just the way I wanted. Also: the Ex/ my trusty Tech Sup­port is AWOL tonight. I think it’s time for bed.

Ps, am listen­ing to audiobooks on cas­sette. How quaint. I love it!

Last Wed­nes­day night mum treated the sister and I to dinner and a night at  the theatre. In spite of some unfor­tu­nate cir­cum­stances it was an amaz­ing even­ing and pos­sibly the best theatre exper­i­ence I will have in my life! We saw The Broth­ers Kara­mazov at the National Theatre and it was pure magic! I would love to go into details about the per­form­ances and my over­all impres­sions but I can’t seem to find words. So here are some photos instead:

Before the theatre we had dinner at a little res­taur­ant called Ori­ental. It is appar­ently ‘related’ to my favour­ite res­taur­ant in Oslo, Dinner. I must admit I would have pre­ferred just going to Dinner. At the moment there is massive renov­a­tion going on in the street out­side, res­ult­ing in the whole place shak­ing like we were in the middle of an earth quake. Also, it was incred­ibly loud with people chat­ting above the noise of the build­ing outside.  We stayed it out, though, and the food really was deli­cious. The sister and I ordered the Crispy Duck for dinner and as we hadn’t a chance of fin­ish­ing even half of the huge meal I doggy bagged it (tacky? per­haps, but there was no way I was going to walk away from all that deli­cious­ness) and turned the lovely shred­ded duck meat into a hot lunch today: a deli­cious stir-​fry with red cap­sicum, sugar snaps and shal­lots. And hoisin sauce, of course. Heavenly!

I wake up, look out the window and take note that the weather has not changed: still snow­ing, still grey and still cold. How do I know it’s cold? Because there is more snow on the ground than last time I looked, i.e. last night. I groan, pull my duvet up to my chin and lie back down on my pil­lows. I don’t want to get up yet! I do get up though, a little grump­ily as it turns out I’ve over­slept by more than three hours and I’ve missed the Ph.D dis­pu­ta­tion I was going to attend this morn­ing. Might as well get star­ted on the rest of my day though. I con­sider head­ing to the gym but change my mind whilst in the shower, can’t be bothered. Will go next week. Monday. I think. This weather is def­in­itely get­ting to me, slow­ing me down, making me feel almost depressed. I long for spring. Late spring though, not the first wet weeks of melt­ing snow and rain and even more grey than now.

We have had some pretty gor­geous days though. Espe­cially last week. Clear blue skies, sun­light reflect­ing in the thick layer of bright white powdery snow, can you ima­gine any­thing more lovely? I snapped some photos on my way from work when I was home last week­end and look­ing at them makes even me feel better about this season of dark­ness. Head­ing back there today for yet another Sat­urday at the lib­rary. But I don’t mind so much — it’s quite nice actu­ally, lend­ing books to people for half a day and then spend­ing a week­end with my par­ents. In the gor­geous weather that I’m hoping is wait­ing for me just out­side the city limits.

I’ve been think­ing lately about the dir­ec­tions this blog has taken since I star­ted it. At first it was just random ram­blings about things I found inter­est­ing, then it turned into a food blog as I turned into a sort of house­wife, and since I became single it has begun chan­ging back into the ram­bling diary style blog. To tell the truth I don’t do much exper­i­mental cook­ing any more, it is simply not fun cook­ing only for myself — and then when I do there is always enough leftovers to last the week. And no, I don’t enjoy eating the same thing seven days in a row.  So I do simple things now: baked salmon steaks, pork chops when they’re on spe­cial, loads and loads of pasta with pesto when I’m feel­ing excep­tion­ally lazy, and then the occa­sional culin­ary exper­i­ment when I have the time and energy for it.

Not doing the food blog thing any more means I don’t really have much to write about — I don’t find my every­day life to be inter­est­ing enough to war­rant fre­quent posts (I mean, who would want to read that I went to a lec­ture about Peer Gynt and then went to the gym and then played around a little with the layout of the next issue of Filo­lo­gen before I went to bed?). Then there is the occa­sional thing hap­pen­ing which would make a great story but I simply can’t be bothered to write about it. Like the fact that the Trønder party last Sat­urday was so boring I left early, shared a taxi home with a random stranger and ended up coming out with him. Or that on Monday and Tues­day I was at a two-​day sem­inar at Hade­land, sur­roun­ded by gor­geous nature, a thick layer of white snow cov­er­ing everything from the ground to the build­ings to the trees and the cars with the sun shin­ing from a cloud­less sky and the light reflect­ing from the snow and the world was so amaz­ingly gor­geous that I’m kick­ing myself for not taking any photos! and that I had an amaz­ing time and got to know my class­mates (which was part of the object of the trip).

I go about my life in a sort of haze, the days fly past and I’m con­stantly behind on my read­ing, never mind that I’m sure I won’t need to read every little poem on that gigantic syl­labus — I dis­ap­point myself by not doing what is expec­ted of me and then the next day comes around and my bed­room is a shambles but I don’t have the time or the energy to clean it because it is so cluttered and I don’t have any­where to put all my things in this tiny little room that has to hold all my belong­ings except kit­chen things which of course go in the kit­chen, well what I find room for any­ways — the rest has to go in the 1 square meter cup­board in my room along with my sheets and towels and clean­ing sup­plies and hoover and clothes rack.

I take a Q-10 sup­ple­ment that is sup­posed to give me loads of energy but it hasn’t kicked in yet, and I long for a pizza but I know if I have some I’ll be bloated and have an upset stom­ach for days, I read novels and poetry and plays by can­on­ised Nordic authors and I watch mind­less tv-​series and movies and I listen to Chopin and Debussy, espe­cially waltzes (Chopin) and the less com­plic­ated or harsh pieces from Debussy. When I think no one is look­ing I dance around to the music and feel elated and alive.

I eat junk food when I have a hangover and after­wards I feel better, but worse at the same time, and I go shop­ping for clothes and end up dis­cov­er­ing that I hate what I bought the moment I’ve ripped the tags off. I put off doing my laun­dry for so long that when I finally get around to it there is so much of it that I have to use about five machines and run back and forth to the laun­dry room every thirty minutes for hours as the dif­fer­ent cycles finish at dif­fer­ent times and then some clothes have to go into the dryer and others have to be hung up in my room which means I have no floor space until they’re dry at which time I have to fold them and put them away. I pro­crat­in­ate a lot and as I do it I feel awful know­ing that I am going to be incred­ibly stressed as soon as I’m done dis­tract­ing myself and once that hap­pens I panic and next to noth­ing gets done until the very last minute and then I feel so awful I want to cry because I’ve let myself down.

I must go now, I must go down­town and get a few things and I will be listen­ing to my Chopin and Debussy playl­ist which is very short and looks like this:

– Suite ber­ga­masque 3 Clair de lune — Debussy
– Noc­turne Op.9 No.2 in E flat major — Chopin
– Grande Valse Bril­liante — Chopin
– Le Petit Nègre — Debussy
– Danse (Taran­telle styri­enne) — Debussy
– Le Plus Que Lente — Debussy
– Valse Romatique — Debussy
– Souvernir de Paganini — Chopin
– Golliwogg’s Cake-​Walk — Debussy