The Susanne

Things are really look­ing up for me. Not only am I unchar­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally well pre­pared for this new semester which is about to start (having actu­ally read a few of the books on my read­ing lists over the summer), but I have a new job, plans for a great ‘new’ kit­chen and dining area and now — wait for it — The Boy­friend just landed the job of his (my) dreams! He is now get­ting paid loads of money to spend all day on the com­puter muck­ing about with php scripts. I think it is safe to say the future has never looked quite as bright to me as it does right now.

Also of course, I’m excited about my and Maria’s trip to London which is now only three days away. But somehow… I’m equally excited to get back here after­wards and just get on with my new, great every­day life. It is such an amaz­ing feel­ing, I don’t believe I’ve ever been quite as happy as this!

Het­mann moved back home today. He’s been stay­ing at my parents’ house all summer where he’s had the base­ment all to him­self, as well as a lovely, big ’summer house’ (cage) out­side. He’s been spoilt rotten with all fresh food - mum’s home grown lettuce, pars­ley, car­rots, straw­ber­ries, apples and his favour­ite: rasp­ber­ries. So when I brought him back to our one bed­room flat today I felt a little bad for the little guy. But it seems he’s settled in just great! Already he’s run­ning around look­ing like the king of the castle that he is. I’m glad he’s home.

Now is all this great for­tune a result of fate? Was I destined for this all along? Is it a matter of karmic retri­bu­tion for having suffered through the last two, awful years of my life? Is it simply dumb luck? Well, to be truth­ful, who the h*** cares ay? I’m ridicu­lously happy and I’m not ashamed to say: I think I deserve it!

My summer job star­ted yes­ter­day. I work at the local lib­rary and so far it is simply amaz­ing, the best job I’ve ever had. My co-​workers are great and very good at taking coffee breaks. I pretty much had the shakes all last night. Bril­liant! The spring semester is over and done with and I got some pretty remark­able exam res­ults, so I’m happy with that. Have ordered pretty much all of the autumn’s cur­riculum already and one of the books arrived yes­ter­day. The Bed­ford Com­pan­ion to Shakespeare.

Can’t wait to read it. Shakespeare is the course I’m look­ing for­ward to the most. I’ve already bought tick­ets to see The Merry Wives of Wind­sor at the Globe when Maria and I go on our adven­ture to London in August and I’m very excited! So in pre­par­a­tion I’m plan­ning to read this whole book, cover to cover. I’m think­ing it will offi­cially make me a Shakespeare-​nerd. But who cares, the book looks great and it’s on my cur­riculum for next semester. So I reckon I’ll accom­plish two things by read­ing it now: one, I’ll be much, much better pre­pared for the Shakespeare course than I’ve ever been for any­thing in my life, and two, I’ll be in a pos­i­tion to bore Maria with a never-​ending supply of Shakepearian tid­bits and geeky facts. Yey me.

Ran into an old friend today also, well she came to the lib­rary. We were close at school then lost con­tact the last year of high school — around the time I broke up with my boy­friend and she star­ted going out with him. No anim­os­ity, it was just that she was in the same group of friends as he whereas I was not. Espe­cially after I broke up with him, as his friends were obliged to hate me. Obvi­ously. It’s a matter of loy­alty. So this girl and I had coffee, well I had coffee, she doesn’t drink poison. But it was cool talk­ing again after all these years. Shar­ing uni anec­dotes and boy­friend stor­ies. Yeah she’s still with the same guy. One woman’s trash is another woman’s treas­ure, isn’t that what they say?

So yeah, the job is work­ing out great, I’m having loads of fun and even more coffee. Home life is… chal­len­ging. Going back to living with your par­ents after having lived on your own is incred­ibly hard. I sup­pose it must get harder with time because I don’t remem­ber it being this dif­fi­cult last year — but maybe that was just because I worked more and was always just exhausted and didn’t have the energy to notice my par­ents at all. I miss cook­ing a lot. I miss decid­ing what to make, i miss shop­ping for food, I miss making things I want and the way I want them. Now it’s more like this:

parent: ’Susanne, do you want to help with dinner?’

me: ‘Ok. I’d love to make some sauce.’

parent: ‘No, I don’t think we’re going to have sauce today. I’m going to make this, and that, and the other, and that’s it.’

me: ‘…’

I don’t blame them. But it’s hard dammit! The bunny, on the other hand, is still thriv­ing. He jumped onto my lap the other night, I couldn’t believe it. Appar­ently that’s a rare level of tame­ness in a bunny.

Last week­end was a pretty cul­tural one by my stand­ards. A blues fest­ival on Sat­urday and the opera on Sunday. The band we went to see is called The Black­birds and my mum’s friend’s rock­star son is in it. They’re really good! Both tech­nic­ally and cre­at­ively, I simply love some of their songs. Also the scene of the fest­ival was so beau­ti­ful, right on the water at Nesod­dtan­gen in the Oslo Fjord, the even­ing sun warm­ing the audi­ence and the sea breeze from the fjord bring­ing good cheer and stir­ring our appet­ites for music. Just lovely.

Our outing on Sunday was to see another of mum’s friends who is a ballet teacher at the Opera School of Ballet. There was a stu­dent show­case and she had choreographed the first part. The whole thing was beau­ti­ful but mum’s friend’s was the best by far. A little because we know her, more because it was the young­est stu­dents, but mostly because it was a beau­ti­ful per­form­ance, it had a clear story and beau­ti­ful music and the kids were really really good and looked like they all had fun. The second half was for the older stu­dents and there were some pretty ridicu­lous acts going on, espe­cially one very ‘modern’ one fea­tur­ing just one girl doing jerky, restricted movements to awful ‘music’ (if you can call it that). A couple of acts were great though, and all in all I thought it was bril­liant. The stu­dents were all so good, and the cho­reo­graphy was, for the most part, lovely. And I heard sev­eral remarks that it was the best thing to show in the new Opera house since it opened. Appar­ently a pretty dis­ap­point­ing ballet had been on last week — this how­ever, was as far from dis­ap­point­ing as it is pos­sible to get.

Well — the lib­rary closes in 15 minutes. This has taken me all day to write, in between work and coffee. I’m off, ta ta!