For country or for crowd

Temperature: 0/32

Eating: mixed nuts 

Drinking: glögg

Watching: The Nightmare Before Christmas later tonight

Listening: to the kids collaborating on a poster for I don't know what yet

Reading: Mankell's latest, Minnet av en smutsig ängel, in Swedish. It's gonna take like three years, but hey, anything for the sake of expanding one's vocabulary. (Forget Nordic Noir, give his other novels a try!)

Writing: trying to plot (plot!) a story I've been dying to dig into for a while

Feeling: Can you serve two masters? If you've succeeded, tell me how.

Burn after reading

I have a confession to make. I hate the pre-X-mas fuss, the commercialism, Santas on every corner driving the kids nuts (yeah, they still believe and mum's the word, you buzzkills, this is, after all, the land of Santa, and no, he most definitely does not live on the North Pole, whoever gave you that idea?!). I mean, whose party is it anyway?

With no Thanksgiving, High Holy Days or Diwali to celebrate, and with the local Mad Men shoving a carnivalistic Halloween down the throats of nations used to more somber All Saints' Day celebrations on November first with all their might (the MM are winning, BTW, ain't consumerism grand?), there's only one holiday to look forward to on these ever darkening northern latitudes. You guessed it, sweetie darlings, and hence it comes early every year.

I have another confession to make. I hate loathe detest to admit this, but I'm already looking forward to it. Maybe I've had better years, lighter ones, and I could use a little bling right about now, some extra brightness. Even the artificial kind would do, and that's all we'll soon have anyway with daylight fading fast only to gradually return after the winter solstice right around... Well, you know, that holiday that comes earlier each year.

I want the snow we had last year. It was so atmospheric. Romantic, even. I want my kids going berserk waiting and planning and waiting and guessing. I want to see them happy and giddy with the holiday highs and to hell with where it stems from because for a few weeks it's heaven. I want light. I need it. Fluorescent, incandescent, LED, sun, moon, snow, bling... Give it to me. More. More! More!!

So I'll be a shameless enabler, the enforcer-in-chief, and if you hear me say I hate it, don't believe a word. Claim I'm loving it and I will disavow ever having said so. Are we clear? Crystal? Crystal... Crystals hanging from a chandelier as big as The Ritz. Yeah, that would do it. One, please.

Now I've done it

Joined Facebook in Dita's shoes, that is. I hope they'll be kind to the poor lass. Poor lass, my ass. Kick-ass lass. In the most tender, loving and caring way imaginable, of course. As long as there's no hating. No kidding. Okay?
 
Don't let the occasional growl and scowl act fool you, I'd get along with an ogre and could probably strike a conversation with a rock, so if you know a nice ogre or an articulate rock, tell them to friend me ASAP. 

You'll find me listed under the "Looking for: The kindness of strangers" folk. Oh, right, there's no such category. Whyever not? And why is whyever not an actual word? And what happened at the end of Inception? The totem fell over, didn't it? Didn't it? Arghh!!