A Roll in the Universe

Happy 2017! Time to look back in order to look ahead. Or not, considering how awful 2016 was. 2016 was rough. Thanks to social media, it felt like one beloved and/or influencial public figure after another left us in a continuous stream throughout the year. Even for those of us not experiencing death personally, there were other things that hit hard, like the US election and other events. I am still upset on behalf of the 1/3 of my immediate co-workers who were downsized out of their jobs this fall. I think we all need good news moving forward, so that's my wish for all of us: That 2017 heals the hurts of 2016 and gives us good news. Happy New Year That's Not 2016!

I hear Americans go on about a war on Christmas because someone says "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". Bizarrely, Norway seems to be showing up the Americans on how to actually wage a war on Christmas. There are some true and some fake stories about a war on Christmas here in Norway. From a serving tray painted by my grandma, Marion Beale Mundal So let's start with the Muslims: Muslims in Norway are not upset that we have marzipan pigs for Christmas (that was a humor site's joke). Nor that we sing songs with words like "Jesus" and "Yule" in them. One Muslim blogs [in Norwegian] about why she loves this time of year . I'm tickled by the idea of a gingerbread mosque. The Muslim I eat lunch with at work loves this time of year, too. All the lights! All the "pinnekjøtt" (steamed ribs of mutton, a traditional West Norway Christmas dinner)! However, the cancellation of the school Christmas mass in nearby Voss

This morning I doddle at home so I can catch the latest news at 7:30 AM. I learn that Pennsylvania has ensured Trump's win. To my own surprise, I burst into tears. I repair my make-up and go to work. There, I discover I am the office political commentator, being the only American here. "What happened? How could America vote for Trump???" they want to know. "We can't understand it. It's inexplicable," they say. And I reply, "No, it's explicable." Because it is. I am not surprised, just incredibly disappointed, because this what not the outcome I had hoped for. So I begin to answer my co-workers. I, one who rarely bothers with politics, surprise myself by having any answers at all. Thank goodness for all the memes and links on Facebook! One thing I found was map that colored the political US according to county, not state, and instantly the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and a few major cities not on the coasts were colored Democratic blue, w

When I was a child, I hated autumn. I saw no colors, only leaden skies, naked ground and continuous rain. And the ugliest thing ever was to see the green fern leaves turning brown. Ferns are often called snake grass ("ormegras") here in Norway, and are seen as similar to seaweed: A creepy plant that hides in shadow, and hides things in shadow (supposedly), and wraps around your legs as you try to move between them. I never had the loathing my Norwegian friends had, but I liked ferns only when they were lush and green. I hated how they looked when they started to turn into a brown-spotted mess in fall. As an adult I have come to see and appreciate this time of year in a completely different way, and now autumn is my favorite season. I see the colors changing, I feel the air get crisper and easier to breathe, I enjoy seeing the stars return with the darker evenings, and I know now that the gray, soggy part is just November. Recently, I made a new discovery about fall.

I got my absentee ballot today from the Los Angeles Country Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. Voting in the US is quite different than in Norway. And a lot more fun. I just voted on condom use for adult film performers. In Norway, you vote for the party you most agree with by picking their list of names. During campaigning, they will often propose what they intend to do or how they intend to vote on existing issues, and if you agree with (most of) that, you vote for them. You can fiddle with the voting slip and cross out names to bump favorites up the list, and even write in a name from another party, but generally you are voting for an entire party, not individuals. And there is never a direct vote on law changes. Those are always decided by the elected politicians. Direct voting in Norway usually is about organization: Merging municipalities, or joining the EU. At least for California, there is voting on state and local laws, especially ones that affect taxes or spending. So I ha

12 days of my home turned into a construction site, finding bits of concrete in my bed every night, and concrete dust everywhere (I still have to clean all that up). And a bold floor that is not typical for a Norwegian bathroom. But it is done! Tomorrow morning will be the first weekday morning where I will not greet a tradesman, and I have my spare key back. Finished bathroom—view from door Finished bathroom—view towards door The starting point was a bathroom that was probably as old as the building (ca. 1971). I have lived with it for 30 years, so it was about time!

This is basically a list, a gratitude list. Because in the midst of nearly feeling overwhelmed by everything going on in September , I have discovered something: People helping me. The tradesman doing the tiling, also closed off the door to my bedroom and left the bedroom side looking very nice The same tradesman also washed the lobby floor in my building for me, unasked, to get rid of the concrete dust A couple of good friends lent me a key to their house, and let me come and go when I didn't have a toilet at home The reflexologist I'm now seeing for my frozen shoulder, is giving me appointments outside her regular office hours, I've discovered I'm ahead on my self-study course in insurance so I don't have to worry about keeping up Another friend reminded me that I'm allowed to get all excited about my own creativity and seeing it come to life. I'd forgotten that grown-ups are allowed to jump up and down with joy. (See pic.) And somebody helped

My shoulder scan This post contains astrology. And bathrooms. And frozen shoulders. Not necessarily in that order. I have discovered I don't take my own advice, which makes me perfectly normal. I always tell people to get their pains and troublesome body parts checked out sooner, rather than later, but I delayed seeing a doctor about my shoulder for well over a year. It wasn't until I actually got a bump on my shoulder that I made an appointment. That was June, and I finally saw the doc in August. What followed then was 50% sick leave, and an MR scan (my first!). The specialist told me I was well beyond the cortisone shot stage but ideal for surgery to remove the scar tissue I now had. This is one of the pictures of my left shoulder. I have no idea what I'm looking at besides a human bone. I do not want surgery and the specialist did say I could use the other treatment for frozen shoulder: Time. So I am doing that. I take a tablespoon of turmeric in a glass of milk

A Normandy beach today Water show in Hamburg's "Blumen und Garten" park

"On the 6th of June 1944, on the beaches of Normandy, over 10,000 young soldiers paid for our freedom." From a bronze plaque showing the invasion It's 72 years since D-day , the landing of allied troops on the shores of Normandy, France, in a no-holds-barred attack on the occupying Germans. I visited the pock-marked, bomb-scarred area in 2010. Every village along the gorgeous coast had their own World War II museum, and each one had a unique twist which made every museum interesting. The French were not cowards; they willingly and knowingly allowed their towns, homes and farms to be bombed to oblivion to ruin supply lines for the German military. The landscape shows the scars of war Our group visited the American cemetery, and the German one. The Americans buried their own in proper, marked graves right after the war, while it took 10 years before the Germans could do the same. The American cemetery The German cemetery T

Something interesting has crystalized so far in 2016: A clear desire to change citizenship. I start by applying for Norwegian citizenship, and hope they'll let me keep my US one until I decide what to do about it. The background for this are FATCA and FBAR. FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) cracks down on expats who haven't been filing taxes, starting in 2010 (the IRS wasn't too particular about chasing Americans around the world before then). FBAR (Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts) is a requirement made of US citizens to report all their savings in foreign finance institutions to crack down on hidden assets (like in the Panama papers ). The US is the only nation, besides Eritrea, that taxes based on citizenship, not based on whether you actually had any income in or from the US. For someone who happened to be born on US soil to foreign parents and hasn't worked in the US ever, this must be at best baffling, at worst, a nightmare. It's b

I can now compare the opera "Madama Butterfly" to the movie "Pulp Fiction": Both were to take about 3 hours to get through, and in both cases I gave up after the first hour. I've told people I'm not into opera or musicals. I don't like my concerts interrrupted by story telling, and I don't like my stories interrupted by singing. However, my season ticket included "Madama Butterfly", which I've only heard about, so off I went to row 15, seat 34. It didn't take many minutes before I realized the drawback to singing a story. In Italian. To a Norwegian audience. Fortunately, high above the stage, was an an LED screen giving Norwegian translations of the libretto. Look at what's going on on the stage, or look up at the LED captions to find out what they're singing so you can understand what's going on on the stage. Tough choice. I tried to find a way to get into the story or the stage or the music, but wasn't getti

You can go find your copy of James Brown belting out "I feel good" if you want. My version is more low-key and without the groovy dance moves, but I do feel good. I like to thank ho'oponopono for that. So I'm going to talk about it again. I broke my own heart this past December. I visited my mother in Nevada and we had no fights, no snark, no desire to avoid each other. Decades of being dysfunctional were over. At one point, we sat at her dining room table, talking about my screwed up great-grandmother who managed to ruin three generations of daughters. Mom and I were now talking about how each of us had found a path that led us to healing and forgiveness, and that we now, finally, were the first mother-daughter pair that got along and had no issues. And it suddenly hit me that that is exactly what we had done: We reversed the habits of a dysfunctional family legacy. We grabbed each other's hand and said triumphantly, "We made it!" The love that had alw