2010 Holiday Summary!

I thought it would be best to start this series of blog entries with a summary of the past holidays.





For various reasons, I have not felt great during these holidays. I usually fret the holidays beforehand, as there is a lot to take into account when planning for them, but once I'm up with my families things tend to work out fairly well ... This year however, I felt it was really hard - and I think there are quite a few reasons for that.
I wasn't feeling at all well when the holidays started and that makes things quite difficult. I am used to living alone and minding my own business, so it is a fairly big change to suddenly live around several other people, two of them being children and always having to think about everyone else, adapting yourself after other people's needs and wishes. I guess it sounds like I'm totally selfish and egocentric usually but I honestly don't think I am - it just takes a while getting used to living like that. Often I can cope with it, but I am a very private kind of person and when I don't feel bad, I find it very difficult to interact with others ... so I think that was part of why this Christmas didn't feel great.

Naturally it was very hard not having Zorro around this Christmas! As usual, from a practical point of view some things got easier. I could spend more time with my Mum, as I didn't have to ask my Dad and his family to take care of Zorro if I stayed overnight, for instance - and I didn't have to worry about him not getting as much attention as he usually did. During the trips I only had to think about myself ... but at the same time, I felt very alone without him. Zorro and I usually didn't get much time for us when we visited my Dad and his family, as my sisters usually crave a lot of attention, but the time we did have - usually at night when the others had gone to bed, was such a quality time, we totally enjoyed being together ... and this year I felt completely alone going to bed.

I think I can split the holidays in two, actually. From a practical point of view, they were actually very good! I didn't have to worry about Zorro (which I did quite a lot earlier), I did get to spend more time with my Mum, it was great seeing my sisters again, nobody was ill or hurt ...
But on an emotional level, it wasn't that great. First and foremost of course, missing Zorro. But I also felt it more difficult to be around everybody, probably because I wasn't feeling the best beforehand. I had a hard time being patient with the girls and it was sometimes difficult trying to adapt myself to their routines ... there were other factors too, but they are a bit too personal for a public blog.

One day my Dad and I took a trip to the summerhouse, mostly to check it out, see if rats had gone in and get rid of some of the snow on the roofs of the buildings. While it was quite hard work it was fantastic to get a day on my own with my Dad, and it was really beautiful out there, the sun was shining and quite a bit of snow ...




There will be more entries to come, so do come back! :)

Home Sweet Home!

Yes, I'm back home again after the holidays - and it feels really good to be back home! :)
Things hasn't worked out great all the time during the holidays, so I'm feeling quite tired right now. I have planned two days for myself tomorrow and on Thursday so hopefully I can get some rest and also try to figure out what has been happening as well as what lies ahead. I plan to make a number of blog entries during the next couple of days, so please keep an eye out for updates! :)

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and I wish you all the best for 2011!

Happy Holidays!

I'm leaving for Christmas holidays in about 45 minutes, but I just wanted to wish you all

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

I hope I will have the opportunity to update my blog at some point during the holidays, but I won't guarantee it, as I know I will have limited internet access.

I will be back again - hopefully with lots of lovely photos! :) - on January 3rd ... though I won't be home until about midnight, so I don't think you can count on an update before January 4 at the earliest.

Take care, and I hope you will have a lovely Christmas holiday!

An UpsideDown Day!

Today has been SO strange and massively confusing!

This morning was really slow, though I had hoped to get things done. I went to Uni around 10, although the buses weren't exactly running like schedule!
I went straight to Uni and managed to get some stuff printed, which was way overdue! *oops* I met a friend there, and I got a nice surprise! :) She took the Old Testament course last fall (spring 2010) where I was mentor, and all the students as well as me were invited to our teacher at the end of that semester. I took a few photographs, but apparently so had she, and she gave me one with me and the professor of OT and a few other students! Nice! :)

I spent about an hour outside the library going through the material for the seminar (and I ran into one of the attendants of the seminar, a guy who does research in NT, then - I haven't seen him for a while, so it was nice chatting to him!) - and then I met another friend ... we took New Testament Greek together last spring! :) I spent some time talking to her before the seminar.

We had one of few Old Testament seminars (mostly for post-graduate students and researchers - and New Testament is so much more common), on Leviticus and "leprosy" (sorry, not quite aloud to all it that after today's seminar!) .
I don't know why, but for some reason, it felt really good. I'm usually quite intimidated by these seminars, since they are above my level, but today it felt really good. I knew everyone attending, and I followed the discussions in a good way - and even though I didn't have anything to say myself, it felt really good.
I took a few photos, some are from this morning but I took a few after the seminar on the way to the railway station.

And then the problems started...
YES we've had snow in southern Sweden and yes, it's created the usual chaos! *sigh!!!* A 15 minute train trip took over 2 hours today - SIGH!! I was eagerly awaiting two packages, that I felt simply HAD to arrive ... not to mention part of the two packages was quite important - it was a Christmas gift for my mother and a birthday present for my father ... none of the packages had arrived! *very annoyed*

I had hard to focus for quite a while - so this evening hasn't worked out great!! It's 10 p.m. I still have tons to do tonight and I'm guessing I have to get up about 4-4.30 a.m. tomorrow ... *great - not!!* Ah well ...
At least it feels "good" (if you know what I mean) that I don't have to drag Zorro through the journey tomorrow, especially since no trains seem to run on time these days ...

I will make a last entry before I leave, not sure if it will be a late entry tonight or an early one tomorrow though ....

A Bit Of This And That

I still feel sleep deprived which is starting to take it's toll on me. It's not that I can't sleep, the problem is that I can't fall asleep! It feels like I've tried everything, but so far, no luck! I guess I have to hope that my holiday trip will make things change.

Speaking of which ... I will leave on Wednesday morning to visit my families for the holidays, and I will be back late on January 3rd. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, but it will be tough since it will be my first trip there without Zorro in a long time. It will also be quite difficult to celebrate Christmas without him.

This pas Friday, finally, my Les Misérables in Concert 25th Anniversary DVD finally arrived - yay! :) I got an email on November 24, saying it had been shipped, so I was starting to get seriously worried - but at least it did arrive and of course I watched it almost immediately! :) I won't make a real review of it, after only having seen it once, but I don't think I can help myself from making a few comments!

I love the fact that the 25th anniversary concert is so much longer than the 10th anniversary concert (TAC), they have included almost the entire musical which was fantastic! That being said, I was absolutely horrified to realize they removed "Little People"!! *gasp* I'm in love with the Original London version so I was a bit let down when they changed it to another version - but removing it completely (almost), that's almost criminal, isn't it?
I have to say the stage in general was better than in TAC, more props and set pieces, which made for a better dynamic on stage. Unfortunately I felt that many of the performers didn't quite take advantage of that. They still use microphone stands - is it really that impossible to use head-mics?? - and that made a lot of the cast just "stand there" instead of trying to interact with one another.

It was great to see that they included the speeches at the end (Cameron McIntosh, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg) - I still will never understand why they removed the TAC speeches from the DVD when they are included in the video.
The finale with the 1985 cast was absolutely amazing! While I think only Michael Ball from that cast are among my favourites, it was fantastic to see them all on stage together - and the four Jean Valjeans (Colm Wilkinson, John Owen-Jones, Simon Bowman and Alfie Boe) was also wonderful (gotta say, that was a really nice version of "Bring Him Home"!)!

Oops, quite a few comments there ...:)
Unfortunately I won't get the chance to watch the DVD any more before I leave, but I will try to watch it and make a proper review when I get back here in January.

While I haven't been at Uni that much lately, I made an appearance there this past Friday. I didn't get that much done, but I managed to borrow a book from the library, and I also ran into an old friend there, that I haven't seen in quite a while. We ended up talking for about an hour, and that was really nice! Not much has been working out at Uni lately, so it came as a bit of a list. We also found out we'll be going to the same seminar tomorrow afternoon.

This weekend has been a bit tough, with regards to Zorro. It goes up and down, which is only natural, I guess... At times, things work, and I can go about my business without constantly thinking about him - but then at times, the grief just stabs me like a knife straight though the heart - and just trying to grasp the fact that I have to live the rest of my life without him, and that I will never ever see him or hear him or feel him ever again ... well, that's what makes me lie sleepless at nights ...

I'm right now in the middle of the last preparations for my trip but I will hopefully be able to update the blog at least once before I leave.
Take care!

4 Weeks ~ 1 Month

Yesterday it was 4 weeks.
Tomorrow it will have been 1 month.
Still finding it hard to believe.

I know there are a lot of people out there who doesn't quite understand this - and naturally everyone handles grief differently and not everyone looks at animals and pets the same way. I get the feeling that I "should be over this by now" ... and I'm not. I know that most people would never say "it's just a pet - it's not so bad" or words to that affect, but somehow that's the feeling I get anyway. And I can't help feeling the way I do. I spent almost every day for ten years and four months with Zorro, occasionally I would leave him for a weekend and a couple of trips to London but that was it ... Also taking into account that for the first say four-five years we had together, I did not feel well at all, I was on sick leave and was home basically 24/7.
We did develop a very deep relationship, and I know several people who spontaneously told me that after having seen us together - and I don't think I will get over his death any time soon.
I know I have to deal with the realities of life, and I think I have started. I felt a bit more in sync with life at the end of last week and naturally life does go on - but I still think I will be grieving for a long time yet.

Up And Down!

I know I basically have at least one picture of Zorro in every entry I make right now, but you are going to have to live with that for the moment. He is almost constantly in my mind, and this is one way for me to share something of him and all my memories ...

Basically, I tend to go on an emotional roller coaster right away. The first completely paralysing grief has passed, I think (though it was very strange in the beginning, so I don't know if I really experienced it then either), but I tend to at times get completely and 100% caught up in grief. This passed weekend and the beginning of this week was like that. I could do nothing at all, I mostly sat in my couch with candles and wrote in my diary non stop - and cried. It's been a lot of crying lately, that's for sure.
Now for the past few days, I have felt better. I am always sad inside and when I remember something very distinctly or come to think of something special I truly hurt, but otherwise I can cope.

The thing is I was on the verge of changing a lot of things in my life before Zorro passed away. I have had a few "revelation-moments" this fall and I really felt like I was about to do some real changes, I had figured out what had gone wrong and I pretty much knew what I had to work with to change it. But since Zorro passed away, all that has been put to a halt. At first, I felt there was no point in trying (and I still have, at times, a bit of that feeling left) - now that I didn't have Zorro, what was there to fight for, what was the point??
I now know, most of the time, that I do need to fight and I do need to work at certain things and I do need to change a lot of things. Hopefully I will be able to start putting my thoughts into action as well.
I have a meeting with my professor today (as I had to cancel Monday when I had my "breakdown"), and I am hoping that a discussion with him also will make it a little bit easier to start working on my life again ...

Collapse

I guess it is painfully obvious that I'm really not feeling well right now.
I've been having a bit of a cold the last few days, and it was a fair bit worse this morning. As I mentioned in my previous entry, I had a meeting with my professor today, so I stuffed myself with various medications and figured I'd survive the trip to Uni and the meeting.
I was wrong.
I basically had a collapse at the railway station, quite disturbing, and had to turn around and go home. I think that since I'm not in a great shape in general, I tend to be a bit more "fragile" when it comes to purely physical symptoms as well.

I still feel pretty shaky, so I guess I'll have to stay in for a couple of days now and hope it will get better. I know the best thing for it is to sleep, but that doesn't really work for me right now. I was surprised that I slept as well as I did after Zorro past away, but I actually did - I think it's caught up with me now, because I can't for the life of me fall asleep, no matter how hard I try! Last night, I wandered around the apartment, moving from the bed to the couch to the computer and back to the bed and the couch again until 3.30 this morning - and I was up and about again at 5 ...
Ah well - guess that's the way it is ...

Everyday Life - 3 Weeks.

I know that my everyday life has to go on now, and in a way I guess it does - but it is difficult ... Today it has been three weeks - and ironically enough I have a meeting with my professor at Uni during the exact hour which was Zorro's last, three weeks ago. I have a feeling I will have some trouble focusing during the meeting.

Like I said, my everyday life is moving on - I have no other choice as you can't stop time, no matter how much you would like to at times. My grief after Zorro tends to vary a lot which is only natural I guess. At times things move along fairly well, and at times I just break down completely. This weekend has for some reason been extremely difficult. I don't know why, but Zorro seems so close to me now, closer I think than he has felt to me since he past away. I tend to relive moments and memories and they are extremely clear and vivid, and it's excruciatingly painful to know I will never experience that in real life again.

As for what the future brings, I don't know. At this point, I cannot plan far ahead, I just don't have the energy or the focus and concentration to do that. I am working on my master's thesis as best I can - which also varies depending on how I feel. What is decided is that I will leave for my Christmas holiday on December 22nd (it's going to be difficult to ride in the Animal's Compartment on the train all the way, but I booked the tickets before Zorro fell ill), and I will probably go back here on January 4th - I will try to book those tickets today.

Finishing off with some photos I took a few days ago - and a few photos to show that it actually has been snowing here, even though there's not that much snow on the ground.

2 Weeks.

It's hard to believe it has been two weeks since Zorro past away.
I'm working at getting back to life, it feels like I've been living in a bubble more or less constantly since it happened. I have never experienced true grief before and certainly everyone deals with it in different ways. For some reason, I seem to make things quite difficult for myself, so I am struggling with a lot of things right now.

I don't really want to go into detail here, partly because it's very hard to put words on what it is I'm feeling and thinking and struggling with. But things have not been very easy the past two weeks, that's for sure. I know I have to "move on", at least in some sense - but that is part of what I'm struggling with.
I know I cannot stay in this bubble forever, and I'm hoping to be able to function in a better way - and also update the blog in a better way in the future.