A Roll in the Universe

Prologue : I am no longer on partial sick leave. I am considered well and am back to work 100%! I have new tasks but am the master of my day, even though my work calendar has never been as full as it is now! Now: I was tasked with teaching some part-time workers about what a beta tester does at work, the temporary position I was in for over 18 months while on partial sick leave. And having not ever done this before, I was easily driving myself crazy. Eventually, after trying to plan the lesson and more or less succeeding, I got to a point where I started to settle down. Where I realized that it was hard to know if I was doing this right because it had never been done before. There is no measure for success for this yet. It started with a couple of things: A visit to my doctor's where I realized that "Trust, not doubt" (in Norwegian: "Tillit, ikke tvil") was my new mantra or motto. That was followed by an instruction from an online course that read, ...

I’m thinking about the last five years, because the blog I started in 2014 went poof as I switched providers. (Always read the instructions thoroughly before switching website hosts, kids.) Then a bit of magic happened and I could save my texts and restore posts; the photos were already saved. As I went through and relinked photos, I saw that I’d been talking about stress and things bothering me on and off. It isn’t just a process to heal; it can also be a process getting sick. (These posts now have the tag “personal” for my own purposes, but they may serve you, too.) The communists of the Cold War era would make five year plans. Life coaches and career advisers often ask you where you see yourself in five years’ time. That’s a question I’ve never been able to answer. In 2014, I was on a healing path, having explored A Course in Miracles and finding ho’oponopono since 2009. A big rift in my family relations had been healed at this point. I was feeling pretty darned good in 20...

A little musing and sharing via eleven questions thought up by Lisa and found via Paula . 1) Socks? Love them or hate them? Handknitted socks a co-worker made for Secret Santa. And I won them! They keep my feet toasty in rubber boots. — I have cold feet. Socks, please, and they have to cover my ankles. I've chosen to get different patterns and stuff, inspired by a co-worker wearing a pair of bright orange ones. That's when I realized that colorful socks are important. IMPORTANT. Nobody ever sees mine since I wear bootlets at work. 2) Is there a God? — Paula starts off with "I wonder why peeps are so obsessed with this question." Since I have constantly asked myself this question, I don't find the obsession weird. The answer is yes, by the way. The real question is: What is God? 3) Is a pizza a pizza without cheese? I like Paula's answer (must have cheese!), but since pizza is one of those incredibly flexible dishes, it can also lack chee...

I have seen the plans for the light rail station coming to my bit of the 'burbs. I know that the footbridge I have crossed to and from work since 1986 will become history and I'll get a new bridge about 50 meters to the west. "My" footbridge as seen on the way home It may happen sooner rather than later. At some point, the slope this bridge connects me to, where the trees are, is going to be dug into and reshaped. A new path to a new bridge will appear, forever changing my walk to work. It may happen sooner than I realize. Barely two weeks ago, I noticed neon streaks on the pavement. I'd seen them before and knew the construction crew had left them. Today I saw why: Aha! A hole! They're still moving pipes and stuff around underground. But I see more paint streaks. I wonder how much longer I'll get to enjoy the sight of this tree: More digging to come!

Yesterday's grouchiness was a warning. My body and my moods are basically klaxons trying to get my attention. This morning I had no energy, no desire, no absent Grumpy. He was still with me. He had a message. I hate when I'm like this. I hate that my emotions so easily rise to the surface and I have neither the inclination nor the ability to force them back down, not even when the situation demands that I do. (Blowing up at work is a really bad idea.) I got a reminder today that dealing with mental exhaustion, with panic attacks and its attendant issues, takes time. I was feeling too good Tuesday. I know now that I was not on the way up, but out of balance. Yesterday that lack of balance made itself known. I thought I'd headed it off at the pass, armed with hugs, but nope. On a good day I can wrestle with my feelings, but on a good day I'm not even in this battle. So I'm trying to face a dragon and all I can muster is a "whatever". It takes energy to...

So, as usual, I am Mercurial and go up and down more than a rollercoaster. After a great day yesterday—which I realize now may have taken more out of me than I thought, with all that talking to the psychologist—I ended up grumpy today. Total raincloud-right-over-my-head grumpy. Grumpy At the end of the day, a co-worker caught up with me and I admitted I was frustrated, annoyed, and feeling grouchy. Whereupon she gave me a proper, squishy, ribcage-melding bear hug. In fact, such a good and helpful hug we both started to tear up. Now, that is some serious hugging! And yes, it did chase the proverbial raincloud away. PS: My favorite dwarf was Grumpy because I related best to him. Still do. PPS: WordPress is rolling out a new blog editor called Gutenberg and it's, uhm, well, at times raincloud-inducing. :-D

I remember strikes used to terrify me. I was so brain-washed by the American view of unions that I quit mine here in Norway once in a panic. I rejoined quickly and have a gold pin for 25 years' membership and first-hand knowledge of what it's like to be on a proper strike. As April rolls around, unions start negotiations. It's a bi-annual thing. My union (the union of financial and insurance employees) does its thing in even-numbered years. This year it's a tad more interesting than usual. We've broken off negotiations. There are three main points of contention that my union won't agree to. If we don't get anywhere, even with mandatory negotiations, there will be a strike. This whole process will take at least a month. So I lied when I said May is for strikes. It can just as well be June, or April, or September. Or whenever. But Norway revolves around May 1, and most unions release their new wage scales on that date, and the government sets the value for G ...

Yesterday’s post about a badly behaving co-worker, reminds me of another time a male co-worker behaved badly. In that second incident, a good man made a mistake. I did go to HR this time. I felt he needed to know that he had been terrifying. Norwegian men can get so tall. The guy in this incident towered over me (my 161 cm self reached only to his collar bone), as well as being in a position of authority. At a company picnic, with free booze, taking place after work at a rented boathouse in a secluded inlet, Tall Guy tried to get me alone. After a weird conversation where he asked me if I was lesbian (huh?), he convinced me to dance with him on the pier. I wasn't too bothered by him at this point, since we had cubicles across from each other, and got along at work. We were alone, then, far enough away from the lights from the boathouse to not be easily seen. Then he started talking about something he needed to tell me. I was expecting another awkward Q&A about personal stuf...

I always joke about how I don't make threats; I warn. That's because I don't believe in idle threats. I think if you threaten somebody, you should also mean to carry the threat out. So I may as well warn. It's a bit weird to write the above, because I'm a relatively harmless person. But let me give you my own little contribution to #metoo and the time when I had to issue a threat-warning. Folks think Norway does things so much better when it comes to sexual equality, but there have been and are jerks and abusers here, too. And a lively debate about it, complete with derailing and strawmen. The men I know are good men, men I can trust. I have not attracted the worst of them, and I consider myself extremely lucky. Then there's the co-worker who one day put his hand solidly on my rump as I was passing by his cubicle. I cannot remember how I reacted. I have a temper and I may well have given him a death-glare. Or just kept moving. Not that he cared. His had a bi...

So, I dropped off the face of the Earth—no, I didn't, just dropped off my blogging. The autumn got rough. Maybe a lot of bad weather during the summer was a part of it. Maybe it was astrological. I had a stressful fall. Maybe I gave myself a stressful fall. Seriously, I drive myself nuts sometimes. I had a trip to Oslo in October, to attend some lectures for a college course (studying insurance), and instead of enjoying traveling (because I do), I gave myself three nights of sleepnessness and "stage-fright" bowels and why did I do that to myself? I know how to travel alone. I know how to be in a hotel room. I know how to take public transportation. But I found myself totally fixated on that last, as if I would miss my train/bus/metro whatever even though the stop was around the corner from the hotel and the metro ran all the time. Sheesh. I did have nice weather, had some great meals out (a waiter at Bacchus by the cathedral conspiratorialy told me the day's specia...

I've never eaten at McDonald's as much I have in Norway. Ironically. You'd think I'd be a regular when I lived in California, but no. Meanwhile, in Norway, McDonald's has been vote Best Employer for 2016. If Burger King had moved into my local mall some 20 years ago, I'd be eating Whoppers. But it was a McDonald's, and Quarter Pounders. And I am now admitting my guilty pleasure: I do eat McDonald's stuff often—up to once a week. One reason is that the place itself fascinates me. There are five cash registers, but rarely are there lines in front of them. Because the registers move at different paces, and people don't remain at them to wait for their food, people don't line up in front of them. Instead, they hang back in a loose group and wait for an employee to call out "Next customer" (actually, they call "Available register"). Whoever was first (as defined by everyone else literally watching each others back) moves to that ...

Ah, the lovely lazy days of summer vacation. All rested and feeling creative again, so I started blogging. And then summer vacation ended and I went back to work. And suddenly, I don't want to write. It's been interesting being back at work. Before the summer we were backlogged and stressed out. During the slow, relaxing main vacation month of July, nobody was doing anything to generate much work for us, the phones weren't ringing and the emails weren't coming in, so even with a skeleton crew we got caught up. I came back to an empty inbox, time to declutter and reorganize, do what work did come in, and still have an empty inbox. (That latter is a new goal, both at work and at home: The actual inbox is empty. The resulting to-do list isn't, but now I'm on top of incoming stuff.) As people came back to work here and elsewhere, and the pace picked up, I discovered I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to keep everything caught up. And that rather fascinates me...

Junior Gull has been spotted again, in good health and twice as big since last we saw the little one. An adolescent magpie was hanging out on the balcony outside my office window, and an adult gull was quite upset at the corvid's presence. A behavior the gull would have only if it had babies. Maybe Junior is fine after all? I assume so. A gull chick twice as big as Junior was when last seen (a week ago) was out on the mossy roof, oblivious to its parent's worry. So Junior's grown a mile or that's another gull chick. Whatever. There's a baby out there to watch! They do blend in with the gravel roofing

"Somebody needs to go check." "Janitor?" "He's on vacation. I'll do it." I learned that one of my co-workers gets into take-charge mode when it's about someone's life; in this case, a gull chick. I took a picture of Junior just the other day from my side of the building. This afternoon, one of the girls next to the window noticed an adult gull gave Junior a vicious peck. It looked like Junior may be hurt. The cause of drama at the office Curiosity and compassion got the better of the co-worker who saw the peck and the take-charge co-worker sitting next to her. They went out the emergency exit, onto the balcony surrounding our building. We happen to have the roof of the shopping center flush with our second floor balcony, a roof covered in gray gravel and perfect for nesting gulls. And right on the other side of our balcony, on the roof, next to a plank a roof worker had left, was where Junior was last seen. At one point, ei...

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...

As an American, I sometimes get asked what I think about some happening in the US that has made the news in Norway. What it is about Americans and guns? Or all the whining about increased gas prices? These questions are fairly general and therefore comfortable. Being questioned and criticized as if I was directly responsible for whatever unpopular man got into the White House, was and is not comfortable. Currently, we are in a project at work that involves an Indian company, and so I have spent two weeks listening to the lilt of Indian accents and English spoken with rolled R's and thick L's and have another week to go. At the same time, the news from India reports two sisters have been sentenced to be raped by a local, unofficial village council because of something their brother did; the sisters are from a rural town outside Delhi.* I have chosen not to bring this up. As friendly as we are with each other, I know from personal experience that what gets into the interna...

Prologue: On the way home from a midnight birdwatching session, I saw two tawny owls. First one by the side of road, and another atop a lamp post. Beautiful birds, calmly staring back at me. The myth is that old dogs can't learn new tricks. The truth is, we can, but we might need a bit more coaxing. And coffee. Last year, I was forced to switch jobs and with that, learn a whole new set of skills. I was wondering how my then 53-year-old brain would handle it. Turns out, it handled it just like a 23-year-old brain would: With patience, notes, and lots of coffee and candy. Because heavy-duty learning is exhausting ! I hadn't realized that. I just thought you're tired in college because of not enough sleep or something. Turns out you're tired because learning several new things every single day is like running a marathon every single day—but brains need more energy and more recovery time than bodies do. The brain marathon hasn't ended. There's always somet...

My Daily Tarot app gave me Four of Wands today. "[I]t's time to celebrate your accomplishments. You've had success in your journey. Take time to honor your hard work." Indeed it is. I have spent two weeks learning nothing but new things: All the various computer systems my company uses for back office sales support, and some of the tasks to be done with them. Today I verified "no claims" bonuses. Yes, I am finally working with insurance. After 31 years at the insurance company, I am finally learning what coverages are allowed with a leased car. I finally actually have to know that stuff. And I am having the time of my life learning it! My poor noggin was exhausted every single day for over week, being crammed with new information every single day. I'm still getting used to that. I also sit in front of a computer in a different way than with the graphic designing. Can't quite explain it. Maybe it's just all the thinking I have to do. At any...

Wordless Wednesday

Ever since I discovered the ho'oponopono practice of forgiveness and healing about 3 years ago , I have used it, pursued it, and experienced healings big and small. I have taught it to a few friends. To my delight, they have embraced it and discovered for themselves the instant peace that comes with cleaning (as using ho'oponopono is called; you are cleaning your subconscious of unhelpful beliefs). My friend Alice showed me this picture she took from her hotel window in London: Every morning, I started my day by looking out that window. ILY, ILY, ILY. It was a beautiful way to start the morning. Every day, I felt the embrace of the city and I'd like to think that the city felt my ILYs. We certainly had nothing but pleasant interactions with people (and in fact, a few times, we had people offer unsolicited help!). I responded to her with this: The ho'oponopono "trick" of repeating to yourself "I love you" when in a negative situation really...