Late nights, early mornings and sleepovers
Is just too much. Putting a six year old to bed 6 out of 7 nights and wake her up 7 out of 7 mornings is tiring. I don't know in what way. The mornings are easy and she is very cozy and cuddly to be with in the nights. Maybe it's the to sleepover I had in her room and I somehow didn't sleep that well. Anyways I'm exhausted and a all those time off I was supposed to have I worked. I will catch it up though. I will wait with having kids, but after soo much time with D I just love children and I'm sure I would do good parenting. If you plan having kids when you are ready and know what it is about it's just a pleasure. And tons of work...but you make it up - the better you are as a parent, the less work you usully get.
Want more
Sometimes you just want those moments to be longer, I HATE that I couldn't have more :-( or I wil but it will be the same touch. The chocolate made me just feel worse Jennifer :-( maybe that's a good sign though - I will never eat chocolate when I feel bad again! Healthy food is always better, whatever mood you are in. Food can't help for real.
Aggressive behavior
Today D was so f**kin' stressed up, crazy, wild, aggressive and everything ended up with just consequences for her, well she was fine the evening and she's normally the most immaculate girl, daughter, friend, host kid, friend, sister and student. Guess this world doesn't have anything which can be called perfect of all. Still, why does she still sometimes behave like a brat? Hurt? Throw things around her? At the same time I feel that what is the way to show anger if your neither screaming, using you body emotions or saying bad stuff? Aren't you allowed to be upset?
Love love
I love sushi and I love friends so how wonderful isn't it to have lots of both?
What would we do without cell phones?
Today I wanted to have a playdate for D. So I called R's mum D. No playdates weekdays plus that she had swimming. Next. Called another R's mum S. Chaotic afternoon, no car. No playdate. Ok. Next. The little boy J we met at the park. Yes J's nanny A picked up the phone and said yes. Well I walk to D's bus stop and when I was almost there L's mum calls and asks - are we having a playdate today? No next Monday. Do you want to have a playdate today? No, my house is full of people. Interruption. The second R's mum is there and says that she (S) brings D to her house. Well okey. No J in the park and I got some more time off. Started to walk back when the little boy E's mum calls me and asks if I'm at the bus stop. She was late. I wanted to help out and ran to the bus stop and told him and the busdriver that his mum was coming and that I could wait with him. Mum V comes and hugs me and offer me a ride. No thank you. I like walking. Love that family btw. The one with mum V. Gotta bond a little bit more with them.
Pilates, crazy bike ride, hair cut and...
... for the first time since I came here (9 months now) I felt restless and had some boring endless time. The days are longer now. Makes me want to use them more. Not "work" during the night. I want to be with Jennifer and Mikaela. I shouldn't complain and I guess I don't. I just wanted to be honest. I'm always positive the other times.
Okey, the truth - I didn't have a boring day All day. How could I, I make my days. So I went to a pilates class, met up Mikaela at the gym, she got a membership and then we somehow ride the bicycle together to my house. M was sitting on the sadel and I standed up, tramping the pedals. Dangerous? Well (A)
So at my house we had some lunch and then Mikaela showed me her master talents in cutting hair. No broken hair anymore. Feels great. You gotta do some more an other time ;-)
How are you back home, can't you write at least a few words so I now you're alive!
Ps. I will come up with pictures (sometimes ;-) )
Thai AGAIN
Come on all guys over here. Go to JOOM Bangkok café. I'm addicted to that place. The food, staff and prices are great. I'm a regular and not the only one. Tried the "Drunken noodles" today, was awesome! Everything there's great. Look forward for when Mikaela, Jennifer and I will go there for a three course dinner. The owner offered me that he could make it a little bit more fancy for us :-)
Tomorrow is Pilates with the girls and the week will be much work but also a sushi buffé AND Francisco is coming on Thursday. Got the night off and will see if I can have the morning off. Maybe I should cancel CATCH on Friday morning to or come in later, change the day or something so I get as much time as possible with him.
The 17th of May might be next weekend event. Some Swedish "burn ball" to honor Norways nationalday and then Jamie Meyers gig @ Malibu Inn. We'll see what happens, then Hawaii is coming up and I really need to start saving money or at least stop wasting :-P I want to have a great time there and have fun!
The upcoming star & Gay club
I got off Saturday night. I really wanted to. Ida called me and invited me to come for a little "pre-party" to celebrate that she's off to London on Wednesday. She has signed a contract and will make an album during the five coming weeks overseas :-) Soo happy for her. Must be very exciting to climb in her career. Anyways we came to her appartment where she hand out appetizers and non-alcoholic drinks.
Once again we all got new contacts - this city is all about networking and meeting people. Her friends and sisters were all soo sweet and the whole night was cozy and calm with some live performance. Look at Ida's myspace, she's talented AND she does something out of it. I know that the world is full of talented singers, actors yeah People but not all of them works to make a name for themselves. This girl works hard! So check:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=279341337 The night took later on place at a gay club in West Hollywood - don't ask me why. Such a great experience. We got there just about twenty minutes before the closed but it came out to be one of my best nights out. Why? Because the athmosphere was different, great, happy. The place was big, nice and full of gays - the kind of gays which are gay. Hehe, you know what I mean. Ida's sister and the two guys we went with were all so nice. So much fun to be in this town, I can't tell. All with their own talents they true to be famous by. Jennifer and Mikaela has both, in a very short period of time become very important for me and have a great value for me. Even more then my bicycle, eating out and closest living friend Emma has moved away and we don't have the time to get together and since Hanna went back to Sweden. Girls you're awesome! So much fun - we will have a great summer :-)
And Linn - I'm thrilled. When I come back from Hawaii it's less than two months til you will be here. That's nothing. We'll have so much fun together. Gotta plan a little bit soon!
A future trio?
Breakfast at Jamba juice, drank some mango/orange juice supposed to have less than 160 calories and good was it. Can't understand why they have to put Splenda in it - I mean I like the fruity taste so asked them to not put it in there :-) Mikaela had another kind, some more smoothie like.
Well, while we were waiting for Jennifer we went to Crossroads (my favorite second hand chain) and after a while we saw Jennifer driving into the parking lot next to the mini mall we were at. I guess Mikaela had such fun went I tripped and ran after Jennifer into the parking lot waving like crazy. Jennifer acted blonde and made the poor valet guy confused when he tried to figure out where she was going. She said I don't know everytime, she just wanted to park. Hehe, I interrupted and said that she didn't need to park. We chatted a little bit in Swedish and the guy mumbled are you speaking Swedish, then asked out loud "What language is that?" and we answered "Swedish" and he said "I guessed that". As always I'm interested in how he could figure that out and asked. He looked at me and sighed as I was stupid and said "Because you look Swedish" (he could have added DAH afterwards and you understand how he said it).
We jumped in to the car, headed Westfield and chatted as we've always been friends. The athmosphere was great and finally at Westfield we came to the conclusion that we all had excuses for not go shopping and that we were hungry. Jennifer had some Mexican food and we (Mikaela and I) shared a Japanese lunch. We didn't even eat all up. Then Jennifer came up with the suggestion that we should have some ice-cream. So we drove back to that mini mall and hade an impressive Coldstone. No kidding that we were stuffed after that. Very tasty. Time to say byebye. Jennifer went home, I went home and Mikaela went home. But we had some plans for the night :-D
Mexicali
Went up to "The Valley" Friday night to somehow get away from Hollywood. The traffic was really bad and one bus had broke down, however it took me two hours to get there from my house. I'm happy I at least got there. We started up with a dinner at Mexicali, a loud, big, kind of fancy but trendy restaurant. I took a Fajita salad and ate half of it..the rest I brought home as always - Nowadays. We had a little dessert we shared, was heavy :-S Afterwards we walked to Mikaela's "comfie" house where her host dad showed us the part of the tv-show "Super nanny" caught at their across-the-street neighboor. Pretty cool. We started to watch a movie but got tired right on and went to bed. I haven't slept that good for about a week. Enjoyable!
A brief summary of the weekdays
Highlights
Monday: I made a creamy mushroom bulgur everybody in this house loved! Pilates class cancelled. Did some other workout instead
Tuesday: Bodyworks á la LA Fitness. Good class, good instructor.
Wednesday: Went to my last Santa Monica College class with Chio and we had lunch at JOOM's. Kung Pao chicken is really good.
Thursday: Lunch at Bangkok Cafe (again) w. Mikaela, went to a vitamine store and whole foods (tried the Goji berries, richest in antioxidants), nightmare afternoon/evening/night. D burned her finger on the glue gun while doing trash project. My bad by letting her use it herself. Have never seen such a 6 hour drama of a little burned finger. But the night was hysterical crying, screaming and ice water. Well around ten o'clock she fell asleep smiling in my bed.
Fri"Day": Early wake-up, cozy morning with D. CATCH, phone call to mum (LOVE YOU, thanks for you're advices), D's bus was 45 minutes late, Doctors appointment for D's finger. We're so bonded, such fun to be just me and her at the doctor. It feels so special for both of us. After we came home she also made the whole drama easier by saying, it was not you're fault (I've said it was my mistake to let her use the glue gun and earlier she agreed with that and blamed me) it was mine. "I knew the glue was hot - but I just wanted to feel". So I took some advantage of that and said don't worry about it. Maybe it was both's fault.
Bye bye Hanna
Sunday morning and we headed Anaheim after a great brunch @ Soupplantation. It was hot, then I mean hot. We drove 70 miles/hour (about 130 km/h) and it felt like a hair dryer on maximum was blowing on us. Seriously we felt like we were going to die when we saw the fire. A car in front of us was in fire and they closed the freeway for a short period of time. We needed to put the sufflett on and just be patient. We survived and reached Hanna's cousin's house where we got some pizza, drinks, ice-cream and in-the-Swedish way cake together with a good company. Hanna and I stayed there the whole afternoon chatting with the people there (almost just Americans) and looking in the scrap book Hanna got. The best byebye gift ever. After some more ice-cream, and some good come and do this, stay here, work here offers (for me) it was time for me to take the train back to LA and say bye to Hanna :-( Last time to see her for months, kind of sad after our reunion here and all our great memories. So we gave each other a hug and the time had come. I stepped up on the train and "The OC time á la Hanna" was over. Everything felt different. Someone close had left, returned to the old life which gave me a hint of that my going home time is coming up, getting closer. It's still almost for months til I'll be home, but just three until my last day in this family, the life I've lived for such a long time.
Malibu & Melrose
So the day after we went to the Walpurgis event and the late bedtime we actually woke up around 7-8am. Don't ask me why - must be the incredible sun. Anyways we ate some healthy (standard) breakfast, Jennifer went to her bus and I got a ride with my hostdad B to Santa Monica. In S.M I waited and waited until Hanna and Anna finally came and picked me up. The subject for the very very hot day was a trip to Malibu - so there we go, we head Malibu, stop at a grocery store on our way (with the two very nice cabriolets, best choice in California) and then we reach Malibu. It was not easy to pick out a beach but after a while we just picked one, parked at the wood-like parking lot, far away from the beach and went down. I had forgotten my towel so I decided to lay down in the burning hot sand. It was ok though. However it wasn't the best beach we'd chosen and it was just too hot so we decided to leave after just an hour. Then it came - the big surprise. We had gone to a beach which main business was the dining so we had to pay 25 bucks (ea car, we were two) for that one hour long park in the woods, not even exploated. We thought that was insane but accepted the fact, decided to get a validation and went down to the beach again (a nightmare walk in the appr. 40 degree Celcius heat.) So to get a validation (so we could pay just $3) we needed to buy something for at least 20 bucks. Shoot. So we wanted some ice-cream, is that possible on a beach? Nope, not if you don't have a table (1 hours wait time), some food to-go? Super expensive. Drinks? Not 21 and driving. Anyways we bought some drinks anyways. I bought a good stuff Piña Colada and my friends some coke. So somehow we got the two parking tickets validaded and payed $26 instead of $50 and we got some drinks (mine was great :-P) and headed home (my house). We ended up the day with walking on La Brea (bought a jacket and a RL shirt from Buffalo Exchange) to Melrose. On Melrose we had a dinner at Lala (Argentinian restaurant) and afterwards we kept on walking on Melrose in all the great vintage and second hand stores. I also found my new favorite one, Cross roads, where purchased a with cute purse. We went home and Anna took her car back to Woodland hills and we (Hanna and I) started to watch a movie before we went to bed. A good day.
Walpurgis event
...well maybe just a reason for having a party. Anyways dozens of Swedes gathered at the event place in Culver city and enjoyed an open bar sponsored by ABSOLUT & Heineken, some great "Italian like" appetizers by Food Perfected and musica á la Jamie Meyer. However, a nice event where I got to mix some drinks, good company and delicious food.
Somehow everything ended up in the catering company's kitchen for me and Mikaela. D made a cream bun (semla) to me (with chocolate mousse) and then I had some Bacardi topped with Cardamom. Mmm! Crazy but fun! Hopefully they can hire me as a bartender for some event during the summer. Probably I will do a refresher class to improve my bartending skills at the same time Mikaela goes to the school.
In the early morning hours we got a ride to Santa Monica where we waited for the bus next to a weed smoking homeless (we didn't even know if the bus operated at that time) but finally there came a bus and we went to Ralphs to buy some treats (where everyone started to talk with us again) and walked home. Even though it was late and I had to get up pretty early the next morning we started to watch "The holiday" :-) Soo nice!
Someone who likes reading German?
The environment of Hermosa
Pissed off
Felt like a f*ckin maid yesterday. I love my realtionship to my hostmum J anyways. It wasn't her or the dad's fault, nor D's. There are just a couple of girls which needs to grow up here and not be so selfish. I'm sure J will work this out :-) Maybe some punishment would be suitable.
Enjoy your day!
Astrid Lindgren movies
I was home with D all Monday then she was "sick" even though we were jogging, she was playing and so on we most sat in front of my computer. We watched movies, Swedish movies. Astrid Lindgren movies. Soo nice. "Pippi på de sju haven", "Madicken", "Lotta åker till landet", "Pippi firar jul" and "Pippi letar spunk". All in Swedish and D loves it. We also saw The Lion King but in English - best soundtrack ever. Such beautiful and soo sad.
"Roadtrip" down to OC
I know, I know - it's not really a roadtrip if you measure in the Californian way. But everytime I've been down there I've been taking the train. Anyways I went there with Jennifer and her supersaving car. That car must go on drugs or whatever because it doesn't use the gasoline it has. So for driving all weekend it cost us $33 compared to a train roundtrip ticket for $30 (ONE person). Such a great deal. Anyways we started with a crazy night in Irvine, then a crazy morning drive to Newport, then Soupplantation in Laguna Niguel, then Laguna beach, then Newport and finally a jacuzzi night in Hannas casa á la Ladera Ranch. We were a kind of tired after that so we went to bed early. The next day (Sunday) we went to San Clemente and walked on the very nice beach and pier, had a lunch at a Mexican, more fine, restaurant until we headed Spectrum - the absolute best mall I've been to. So impressed, understand that Irvine people hang out there. Later on we went back to Hanna's house and then headed Los Angeles again.
When I came in through the door I became faced of the whole Havurah' who was at our house for the Second Passover night Seder, sitting and having dinner, reading from the Torah (like the old part of the Bibel). A little bit of too much so I appreciated my sweetie D who run and helped me to carry all my stuff into my room. I mean then I could stay there until I felt calmed down :-) A very nice dinner with so much chocolate desserts that I'm on diet now :-)
Todai - Sushi & Seafood
I've mentioned it before, but it is the greatest sushi experience I own. Before you go there you're really looking forward to it, when you are there you really enjoy and afterwards you are satisfied feeling very happy. You don't really need to eat any other food that day...you can I kind of like make a brunch-dinner thing..
Soo good and so good for you!
Go there with someone you want to hang out with for a couple of hours and eat slowly :) I went there with Ida who originally showed me the place - so nice to meet her again!
