Saturday, February 21, 2009

all those photos

When me and W landed in Sweden after a good 15 hours of traveling and not much sleep my mom picked us up at the airport and told me that I have 6 boxes (big boxes) waiting for me in my old bedroom (which by the way is not kept the same way I left it, my mom called me about 2 months after I moved out and told me she converted my room into an office) for me to go through. Yeah yeah yeah I said, I'll do it later. I didn't do it later at all actually, I left it for the second last day I was in the country.

I opened the first box and discovered a whole lot of photos. There were photos of me and my friends in school and me and ex-boyfriends and all the crazy people I met while living in hostels in England and while traveling. There were framed photos that used to hang on my walls and be in my bookshelves, there were photo albums I made with my own comments on the photos scribbled in silver pen on the black background. There were photos of my dad as a baby that my farmor gave me a while back and some photos of my mom when she was young. I spent most part of that day looking at old photos and remembering when they were taken and remembering the people in them and realizing how many of those people in those photos that I no longer know, that I haven't seen in years, that I can't remember their names.

There was this one photo in particular that really opened a floodgate of memories and feelings. It's a picture of me all dressed up at a party with this guy N that I barely knew at the time but had a huge crush on in time we grew to have quite a complicated relationship but not when that photo was taken. It was all new and I was so young and it felt so important what I felt for him at that time. I remember really wanting a picture of him and me and practically bribing one of our mutual friends to take my camera and force us to get in the picture together so it wouldn't seem like my idea. I was so happy to have that picture and I treasured it, I used to take it with me everywhere.

I also found the photos from the first three months I spent with my husband, only he wasn't my husband then. You can see some of those photos here. There are photos from my leaving party as I was leaving London and him to go back to Sweden to study music management. There are photos of me and E and M and all the fun we had during our time in London, there are photos of the tiny studio apartment me and E shared and of the bars we worked in. M met her J around the same time I met my J and they are still going strong and their little girl N is W's future wife.

There are photos of us roaming London, lovely London. It reminds me of the summer I was unemployed and living off my husband. We lived in this lovely house in Camden, it had 4 bedrooms and we were always at least 8 people sharing it. It was on this cobbled stoned little road just off Camden Road and I spent my days walking around London. J worked in Notting Hill so some days I used to steal his CD Walkman and walk there. I still can't listen to Postal Service without it bringing me back to warm summer days, walking along Hyde Park to Notting Hill.

I also found my old school photos, there were classphotos from ninth grade and this awkward photo of me and my then best friend J and this boy from our class that I barely knew. We all look very uncomfortable.

I ended up not doing more than two boxes all together cause it just took too long going through all those photos. Next time I go I have 4 more boxes waiting for me, maybe there is another one full of photos and memories, I kind of hope so.

Monday, February 16, 2009

The trip in pictures

Looking cute!

Sleeping on the plane across the Atlantic.

Being pushed around by the future wife...

Hanging out with auntie E.


Playing with the future wife and the future mother-in-law and auntie E.

Finding treasures at "rum för barn" (a room for kids) at the culture house.

Snowball fight!

Too busy watching "Howl's moving castle" to say goodbye to godmother I. Notice the W sized armchair.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

the reason

I'm back! But I have yet to write about the trip. I'm sorry about that but I do have a good reason. Behold the cheek!


No I have not been beaten by J. I have simply been manhandled by my dentist. I returned home on Monday with a serious jet lag and a tooth ache so I made my way to the dentist Tuesday and had the troublemaker removed. It now hurts way more than it did before and my brain is porridge due to pain and medication and lack of food. I'll hopefully be back to some state of normalcy by the weekend so I promise I'll write about the trip then.

For now I'll just have to live with looking like me on the right side and looking like Rumer Willis on the left.