I.hate.Swedish.TV.Companies

My blood is boiling and this is why:

1. Hi, we're moving and I need to transfer our Internet/TV to a new address please.
2. Sorry, we don't deliver our service in your new area so we can't. Oh and you still have to pay for 3 months.
3. Hi new company, I need Internet/TV.
4. We can give you Internet but we have to a test to see if we can deliver TV. It will take 5 days.
5. Five days later, "yes, you can have TV too."
6. Yes, we said you could have TV but unfortunately you can't have TV now for 3 more months because we're changing our service.
7. Hello 3rd company, can you give me TV? Oh and I also need to make sure the TV you give me includes Stanley Cup play-off games.
8. Well that will mean you have to purchase our sports package (almost as much as our regular package a month) but you can cancel it after 1 month with no penalty.
9. I calll back to order the channels.
10. Sorry, I realize some lady told you could do that but we don't have that package. You have to call another company for that.
11. Oh and Please don't forget to pay the annual $100 to the government for the privilege of having a TV set in your house.

When two worlds smash together: The Aftermath

Sometimes I make some pretty darn good decisions, if I do say so myself. I took a chance, I threw my "image" to the wind and in case you haven't been following, here is what happened. I did it. I sent it to her and here is her response (buried at the bottom of the original post's comment section and given its own special post because, well, after all THAT, she deserves it). I think you'll all agree, she's a hoot in any language. Introducing the neighbour friend (gasp!) in the virtual flesh:

The neighbour friend said...
Hello stalker & friends of Jen!

This is Ms. Uppsala, the "tiny little ball of blonde fun" writing...!

First of all - Jen, you're great! It struck me that I haven't seen you since our last "suicidewalk" and now I know why... You've been avoiding me!!! You can now stop the praying - I'm staying!

I'm not running away screeming... The only one who is going to run around screeming in the nearest future is you Jen! I believe (after reading your blog) that the best way of punishing you (for even thinking that I would think less of you or that I would be upset) is to take the suicidewalks to a HIGHER level - starting tonight =)Bahahaha!

I love having you next door! When you get to know me even better you will learn that it takes more than a blog to scare me away...

After sending me the adress and the readinginstructions I was expecting the worse... I started to read and then I started to laugh, and laugh, and laugh! You're a great writer and I'm taking it as I compliment that you (sooooooooooo badly) want to be my friend!

If it had been the other way around, if I would have moved in next to you in Canada, I know that you would have given me the same chance...

So, keep on bringing your smiling face, your crazy talk and more cakes over to my place!

Love
"The peppy Swedish blonde"
PS. Bikini body, beach 2010 - we'll get there DS

Weigh-in Thursday: Week 10 of 10

So sorry fellow weigh-in Wednesdayers. I got so caught up with my crisis yesterday, not to mention some other criseses (made that word up), that I completely forgot!

Ok, so, 73.5...wooopeee! Nowhere near the beautiful 69 but down to pre-Christmas weight so yay for me! Walking or newly termed, Suicide Walking, has been intense but sporadic. This is ONLY due to the crap weather. Yup, snowing today. Cold, windy and (insert swear word) SNOWING. My walking buddy said the Weather Gods were telling us to take it easy tonight and I agreed. Truth be told, don't think my butt will ever UNspasm from the death march of two nights ago.

But still committed and I only ate like half of the fries in the little guy's Happy Meal at McD's tonight. Normally, that would have been IT. I woulda come home and raided the cupboards on a Carb Crusade. Not tonight though. Tonight, I drank like 3 cups of coffee and polished off a Granny Smith. "Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels", right Hyacynth?

Ok, off to bed, it's late here in Sverige. Nighty night! Ps. Remember we ARE starting all over again next week, 5 intense weeks to reach whatever our goals may be. Mine is bikini body.

A cry for help: When two worlds smash together

The word is "collide" but that word sooooo ain't strong enough for this cataclysmic event. Kinda like, I would like to use the F-word right now to really cement the severity of this situation but instead, I'll just say: I'm screwed.

F-WORD!!!!!

So remember my new neighbour friend? The one I blogged about? The peppy Swedish blonde that I was dying to snag as a friend? I think I might have used the word "prey". Oh God...

Well we're on one of our, as hubby terms them, "Suicide Walks", the other night and as usual, I'm clearly showing signs of distress and as usual she looks over with concern, "Are you ok Jenn?" And my usual response, "I'll live." She's a killer. Meaning she will either a) Kill me or b) Beat me into shape. Anyway, I'm reminiscing in my mind and idiotly (new word, you're welcome) blurt out: "Yeah, I've been writing about these torture session On. My. Blog." And the instant it came out I wanted to trap those flying words and stuff them back into my pie hole.

F-Word.

"Oh, you'll have to send it to me!"
"Uh...yeah."
"What do you write about?"
(I wrote a post about you, actually a few of them. Though they clearly don't paint you in an embarassing light, they'll make me look just a tad desperate, needy and maybe stalkery? >>new word alert) "You know, about Sweden and urhmmmm...stuff."
"Oh I should check to see if you wrote about me." She jokes.
But it's not funny. "Uhhh...yeah..(insert stilted laughter)."

Meh...I didn't take it seriously. She's probably just being her sweet self. She won't remember. Worst case scenario, I can hold her off. I'll think of something.

And then last night.
Suicide walk. Chatting.
"Hey, you didn't send me your blog yet!"
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!This.is.so.not.happening.right.now." Quick, think fast Jenn:
"No, I didn't..." I said this matter-of-factly and let the last word trail. C'mon Jenn! You could've done better than that. Nope, I let it fall flat.

Now I've really gone and done it. Now she thinks I don't want to send her my blog and now she's probably wondering why and probably, definitely thinking I wrote something nasty about her.

F-Word.

Here are my options, as I see them:
a) Send her the link and pray she doesn't scroll down to read THAT POST or THIS ONE!
b) Send her THAT POST with a funny little note, "Ok, you can read my blog but better read this first". Full disclosure right? Show her my warts and hope she doesn't lock her front door and pull her blinds when she sees me walking towards her house. Will she get my humour? Remember, there is a cultural barrier here, though not that high cuz she's worked with us Americanites.
c) Delete THAT POST and THIS POST and send her the link.
d) Keep ignoring her.
e)"Damn that blogspot. Can you believe they lost my blog? I'm suing!"

Let's put this collision course into perspective. It's like having an STD right? No, I DO NOT have an STD. But say you did. You've found your soulmate. It's love at first sight. But you just KNOW you have to tell her the ugly truth about what's going on "down there". Ok, bad parallel. But maybe not.

Ok, so here's the thing. You guys know me! We have our own little private club, you guys and me. I can tell you stuff. You can tell me stuff. But it's like the sign on the clubhouse, only instead of it reading, "No Boys Allowed" it says, "No Real People Allowed", or "No People I Write About Without Them Knowing About It Allowed"

F-Word.

And now there's a girl at the door and she wants in. And this is the kind of girl all the boys would want to let in (and girls too!) but she could discover the porn collection hidden under the old filthy mattress.

I am soooo screwed. Help me (uttered in the same voice I utter "I'll live." in, which I won't).

Sorry, but you are a Big Boy

I am currently listening to a whiny soundtrack spiraling its way down the stairs, "But I'm NOT a Big Boy!" It's on repeat as I sit at my dining room table/office typing away.

The little man doesn't seem to want to accept my reasoning as to why I won't sleep with him. See, I made a "mistake" a couple of weeks ago. The little man was so sick and stuffy and I, not feeling much better, decided to cuddle with him until he fell asleep. At the time, it wasn't a mistake. In fact, it was just what the dr. and the patient had ordered. Little man has been great at putting himself to sleep for at least a year now. And no, there were never any "let him cry himself to sleep" methods used. Nightly prayers, a kiss, a hug and a Goodnight. But these recent bedtime cuddles soon turned into habit and someone isn't so willing to give up Mommy Blankie because, he's a big boy now. So his solution, "But I'm NOT a Big Boy!" Ah, if only that were true...

I have evidence. Forget the expanding vocabulary, height and waistline for a moment. Let's take you back to this time last week when Daddy wasn't home for your ritual nightly bathtime together. In you went alone. It certainly wasn't a first as Daddy travels frequently. The next night as I signalled it was time for you to haul all 46 of your dinosaurs into the bathtub and splash puddles all over my bathroom floor, you kept repeating, "But I want to play by myself."

"No, playtime is over. It's time for a bath."
More forcefully now, "But I want to play by MYSELF."
Huh?
(She tries it in Swedish)
Still the same thing.
In comes Daddy while simultaneously pulling off his socks.
"But I want to play IN THE BATH by myself."

Oh?
"You don't want Daddy to go in the bathtub with you?" Asks my hurt husband.
"No, I want to play BY MYSELF."

And there you have it. You are growing up. An almost nightly tradition since early 2007 has vanished. Just like that. Suddenly hubby's moans about getting soapy for the second time the same day cease and are replaced with a few sighs, and I swear, a bit of a quivering voice.

You can't fool me kiddo. You ARE a big boy and there's nothing daddy or I can do about it.

Cue Boys 2 Men song: "It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterdayyyy...yeeee."

Bloggy Buddies

Blogging has been a great creative outlet for me, a good place to vent, a means to cement friendships and a great place to meet people, even if I'll never really meet said people in real life.

So many cool things have happened since I've shuttled into the blogosphere:
- I bitched about a pair of boots and within 24 hours the manufacturers of said boots offered me a new pair!
- I got stopped by the cops (ok, not here, but in real life), blogged about how I couldn't figure out what I did wrong because the coppers couldn't speak English (which is apparently what got me out of the ticket in the first place) and a few weeks later some random person explained it to me!
- A friend and bloggy friend dedicated a piece of art to me
- I saw how cruel people can be under the guise of anonymity (namely poor MckMama). Ok so that's not "cool" but still worthy of note.
- I get all kinds of good advice from fitness experts, words of encouragement from other expats and people opening up about their weight loss challenges.
- I've been really inspired by some great writers (there are too many of you to name).

I love finding new blogs through y'all, though I try to keep the list short or i just know I'll get swallowed up in the vortex. I try to comment on all the blogs I follow and I do have my favourites.

This one blog in particular is pretty awesome, both with its content and the author's mad writing skills. But here's the thing. For the many discussions I've joined on this blog and the many responses I've received from my comments, this person has never ONCE commented on my blog. Not once. And this person's blog isn't HUGE a la MckMama or Perez Hilton. This person has a strong following and averages about 20 comments per post. I'm kinda bummed about it really.

But that's just it isn't it? Though this person can surely relate to some of what I write about, this person might not like what I write, feels they don't need to reciprocate or just plain doesn't wanna. Who knows? It's another "cool" thing about bloggyland. You put it out there, for whatever reason, and you just never know what you'll get back. A post you wrote in 10 minutes for fun while BBQ'ing up some steaks could turn into 50 comments. A post you thought would go viral gets 1 comment from someone in China with a cure for loneliness, hot Asian chicks. An innocent post on global warming gets infiltrated by a dozen right-wingers telling you and everyone else it's a farce. Well you see where I'm going.

It's Saturday morning. Little Man is watching the new Dora videos he got from his Nana and I hear the water running upstairs, meaning hubby is up. Enjoy your weekend!

Ps. Yes, a lot of name dropping in this post. Thank me later when my 19 followers all head over to discover the awesomness of your blogs and the traffic crashes your servers.

Weigh-in Wednesday: Week 9 of 10 or 9 of 15?

Can't believe we're a week away and I'm at 74 (down .6 from my usual, despite a long weekend of wine consumption and a bowl of pasta). But I'm happy because the past 2 weeks have seen me enter the world of exercise thanks to the new neighbour friend.

She is relentless. A walk with her is 1 hour of torture. And if I didn't have her to spur me on? I'd be out for 30 minutes at half pace and wondering why my butt didn't feel tighter. So Thank God for Peppy her!

I am shaping up and it's forcing me to be all the more regimented with my eating habits so yay! Ok, except when we have company and I am forced to make the one thing I'm really good at making, pasta sauce, and am then forced to eat actual pasta with the sauce cuz I didn't make enough meatballs and I would look stupid eating just a bowl of tomato sauce.

We received a request from Den to prolong Weigh-In Wednesday. To be fair to the sanctity of this weekly blog carnival-type thingy and to be fair to those of us who want more time, I have decided in my infinite wisdom to be fair and extend Weigh-In Wednesday by an additional 5 weeks. See? Fair is 50/50. An additional 10 weeks would be unfair to the sanctity. But 5 weeks? 5 weeks is fair to sanctity and to us losers ("losers" referring to weight loss, not the kids that get relentlessly picked on in school, poor kids).

Oh and 5 weeks is perfectly timed for bikini season!

So, next week will be Week 10 of 10 and the following week we'll start at Week 1 of 5. OR, we could make this Week 9 of 15? Nah....

Let's ROCK IT Ladies.