It's Only A Paper Rose

On a whim, I went to Los Angeles last week.

Well, it wasn't quite on a whim. I'd been daydreaming about a trip during much of the pandemic—I've made three good friends over the past year, and all of them happened to live in the city. And I hadn't visited California in nearly a decade, despite being quite fond of it (I don't know if it was living in Sacramento as a young kid or having family history in the area, but it's always felt weirdly like home to me, even though I have no desire to live there). So, when Alaska Airlines sent me an email a few days after my second vaccination shot offering ridiculously cheap fares from Chicago to LA, the serendipity seemed too strong to ignore. So I bought the fare, booked a convertible for the week (via Turo, because rental cars are insanely pricey right now), made plans with my friend Myra to stay with her, and a couple weeks later I was jetting across the country.

We road-tripped up to Tracy (of tumblr infamy) to see for ourselves if it was as creepy as the post promises. Verdict: actually, yes. Nothing overtly dangerous-feeling happened while we were there, but that distinct sensation of something being a little off was absolutely present, and occasionally spilled over into interactions with the townsfolk, many of whom seemed to nurse that sort of quiet desperation and hopelessness that I've seen a lot in rural areas. If I ever write a Supernatural case fic, I'm 100% setting it there; you couldn't have paid me enough to go wandering through the town after dark.

From Tracy, we drove to Santa Carla Cruz, which is actually where my parents met in college (as the bookshop clerk told me when I mentioned this: "Oh, so you're banana slug spawn!") We did wander around a bit downtown after dark, and found dinner at a sketchy-seeming but (it turned out) thoroughly delicious Greek takeout place. The vibe was interesting; a fair number of homeless folks, some people making deals, the bar crowd (fairly low-key as it was a Thursday night); there was a mild air of menace, including one particularly creepy moment where we were passing by a parking garage that had some kind of ruckus emanating from it, of the sort where it's hard to tell if it's laughter or screaming. Interestingly, when we came down the next day to check out the bookshop, the same mildly-sketchy downtown street had practically transformed into a pleasantly shady avenue of shops; there was still a fairly significant countercultural presence (street musicians, probably-unlicensed vendors, etc.) but it was much friendlier. More fodder for writing in the future, I suspect...

Other highlights included a lovely lunch with my friend Jay, and taking my friend Rebekah up Mulholland Drive at night; the views are every bit as amazing as advertised. I also got to see my friend April, who's now running two businesses (a realty and an AirBNB management company) and trying to find good employees to help her with them...I have zero intention of moving to LA (I quite like my life here in Chicago), but it's nice to know that if something goes pear-shaped, I have opportunities elsewhere. Really, I think that's half the fun of travel; getting to try on new identities for a while, see who I become in a different context, which parts of me stay the same and which alter. It gives me perspective on who I am now, and lets me choose whether I want to keep that identity or make changes to it.

One thing that made me laugh a little bit was Myra's combined confusion/awe at how people on the street would just...talk to me. And I'd talk back. I'd never really thought of it as being anything that strange; I've intentionally cultivated a certain approachability as I've gotten older, but she's not the first one to comment on it. (Once, not long after I started dyeing my hair bright colors, Brian and I were wandering through Bisbee during an art walk night and three different people commented on it in a stretch of five minutes or so—I remember him turning to me and asking "is it always like this?" and it took me a minute to realize what he meant.) Myra, by contrast, is physically much smaller and distinctly uncomfortable around strangers/in crowds, though she said she liked being with me because she got to absorb some of the positive feelings from casual interactions without having to actually interact at all.

In any case, now I'm home, and it feels comforting rather than confining. I'm going to roll up my sleeves and try writing again this afternoon; it's been tough lately, I suspect due to pandemic burnout. But after spending a week seeing new places, meeting new people, and being (a little bit of) a different person myself, I think it'll come a little easier.

Closing today (aaaaaaaaaa). Still not reading much, but I've been making my way through The Last Days of Judas Iscariot on loan from a friend, and man, I'm sad that I'm completely the wrong ethnicity to ever play Saint Monica. Giant Writing Project of Doom still going on. Also I've been making a new writer-friend who, while it's early yet to say, may well become one of my favorite people. (It's been a long time since I had anyone who enjoyed exchanging long-ass daily emails, probably because we're all in our 30s now and don't have the time, so the fact that we've been doing so a week now despite our hectic lives points to real chemistry, I think. I hope.) Tuesday night the anxiety insomnia finally hit, but while the morning was rough the day actually went pretty well and after twelve hours of sleep last night I'm feeling downright good. Writer friend has been gracious enough to loan me her personal anthem, which got me through yesterday and I think will be playing a similar role today. Even though (as I told her) I'm usually the keep-one-foot-on-the-ground type, there are some points in life that just require that leap of faith. "Stretched to the point of no turning back..."

(aaaaaaaaaa)

See you all on the other side.

After two months' consistent practice followed by a month of only sporadic effort (hurrah for the holidays), I'm finally back on the piano-practice wagon. This is helped somewhat by the (hopeful) resumption of lessons - my pianist friend seems to have gotten his life back together, and Wednesday we worked together on some more basics. New cool thing I learned: written music has evolved and changed over the centuries! I had always assumed that (say) a staccato mark meant "play this note short" in any music; while that's broadly true, a staccato mark in Baroque music is played longer and with more emphasis than one in Romantic music, which is similarly played longer and softer than one in modern music. This was one of those revelations that I found simultaneously fascinating and patently obvious; written music is a language as much as words are, so of course different generations will adapt it to suit their needs and fashions. It also nicely contextualizes the work in its period in history (one of my favorite things!) - Baroque music, being all about the flourishes and complications (not unlike Baroque art and architecture), is played with much more emphasis on the ornaments and accents than modern music.

Yesterday I had lunch with Elyse, whom I love dearly and whom I see far too rarely (through no fault of hers or mine; we just both have ridiculously busy lives, and her December was even crazier than usual). We spent some time catching each other up on our work lives and personal lives and talked about the news and ate far too much Mexican food and generally had a lovely time. We even managed to catch a Sculpt class together last night; I was particularly entertained at how it caused a reversal of our usual demeanor. (She's usually quite bubbly and ebullient, whereas I think I come across as more reserved; this was a "challenge" class, though, where the teacher encouraged us to grab weights a category higher than we usually do. So by 2/3rds through, when our arms were dying, she had the biggest bitchface going on, whereas I was almost maniacally laughing and singing along with "Beat It" as we did our 3,974th set of tricep kickbacks in chair pose. I...am beginning to wonder if "bring it on, is this the best you can do?" is an entirely healthy stress response, heh.) If nothing else, it was a great bonding experience!

That said, between the busy few weeks and that class, boy are my arms sore today. I have a King Spa day planned with Martha tomorrow, and I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it...

What I've just finished reading

Future Sex, by Emily Witt. Those of you following along at home may have noticed that this book has generated an awful lot of drama for what feels like, in retrospect, a 200-odd-page blog entry. But such is the danger of high hopes. I'd almost given up on the book halfway through, but persevered through the end, which was bittersweet - Witt returns more to her analytic mode, and even shows some self-awareness about her privileged perspective. For instance:I also really enjoyed her (lamentably short) chapter on birth control and reproduction, and how our entire social framework for childrearing remains stuck in 1950s norms despite technology having thrust us into an entirely different world:  

Indeed, she brings the subject of that disconnect home, in this particularly insightful bit:I feel like there's a really great book in here about social order versus social anarchy; about the way people who dislike or don't fit in to the majority norms instead seek out subcultures with their own norms and rulesets, because most humans function best with boundaries and limits and social reinforcement; about the price those people pay in terms of estrangement from the greater culture, and the varying ways (closeting, sociopolitical advocacy, withdrawal) in which they minimize or deal with that estrangement; and about the ways technology is enabling these subgroups, and whether this means our sexual culture is broadening or merely splintering into individual shards. Unfortunately, and perhaps ironically, these remarkably clear-eyed observations are clouded by the author's own unexamined prejudices and assumptions, especially once she starts getting into her own experiences. Ultimately it feels like a missed opportunity, but I nonetheless hope that it might start a conversation on these important topics.

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, by Mackenzi Lee. Buckles were swashed, adventures were had, supernatural solutions determined to come at too high a cost. The ending is satisfying; without going into details, our three heroes ultimately reject their proscribed social roles, running off to do...they're not sure exactly, but certainly to live their own lives as they choose, Monty and Percy as lovers, and Felicity quite possibly as a medic on a pirate ship. ("But girls can't be pirates!" "Haven't you heard of Grace O'Malley?")

That said, I'm personally a little torn on said ending. It's certainly appropriate enough for the story, and it's true to both the late-teenage perspective of the protagonists and the YA intended audience - it's a stage in life when most of us have little to tie us down and a great hunger for new experiences and the possibility of trying new identities. But the way it's handled feels...just a little bit facile, like the characters are playing dress-up rather than committing to a difficult life road. To a degree, this can be excused by their immaturity; they acknowledge that it's going to be a tough time but clearly don't understand exactly how tough it is to forge your own road, outside of the social ruleset you've been raised to follow. But the ending as written feels like it's supposed to be an unfettered triumph, rather than a "we've overcome this set of challenges, hurrah, but new ones are right on the horizon."

Maybe it's precisely that tonal dissonance that's not quite sitting right with me; as a fellow 19-year-old I would have been all "Yes! Screw the patriarchal social hierarchy! Go live on a tropical island with your beloved with no skills or visible means of financial support! Love is all you need!" whereas 34-year-old me, having had some small experience with the difficulties of moving to a new place with entirely different sets of rules (as well as having complicated moral feelings about piracy as a career in the 18th century), is somewhat more mixed on the prospect. But, difficult as it was, I eventually found my niche, and what I feel is a good balance between social approbation and forging my own path; perhaps they will too.


What I'm currently reading

So this is kind of awkward - technically I'm in the middle of a number of books, but I've done so little reading lately that I haven't made any progress in them this week. Clearly I need to fix this!


What I plan to read next

I have two primary candidates at the moment. One is James Enge's Blood of Ambrose, a birthday present from my delightful friend Claire (with the promise of the rest of the trilogy to come if I like it). Apparently it has an Ambrosia in it! However, my friend Olivia gifted me with Jennifer Finney Boylan's memoir She's Not There: A Life In Two Genders, which looks fascinating - and happens to be written by Olivia's aunt. I'm leaning towards that because she'll be officiating at Olivia's wedding later this month, and if I'm going to possibly have the opportunity to meet her I'd like to have read something of hers - I know very little about her other than that she's a writer. But I still have so many other books to finish! Sigh...

I'm grateful that I have no particular difficulty with fireworks; I wouldn't want to have people shooting them off every night, but once or twice a year doesn't really bother me, and I genuinely enjoy the more artistic displays. Towards that latter end, we decided to head down to the park to watch the Saddle and Cycle Club's (yes, we have an honest-to-god country club in our neighborhood, dating back to the 1920s when this area was a tony suburb of Chicago) annual fireworks display. They were gracious enough to invite the plebeians to watch from the beaches and parks nearby...you know, the ones that are public property. So generous!

After literal years of talking about it, Brian had finally nabbed a small grill to do a cookout. So yesterday morning, we bundled up the car with the grill and charcoal and bags of chips and utensils and blankets and a cooler bag with approximately 50 pounds of various meatstuffs and salads and ice packs, and drove all of five blocks to the lakefront park, intending to unload and have me drive back/walk down (parking at the park is difficult on any nice day, but absolutely insane on holidays)...only to discover that the police had blocked off the parking lot, likely to manage traffic flow. Well, at least we didn't go too far out of our way, heh. We pared down our supplies some and I dug an old wheeled luggage bag out of the closet to pack up the cooler and we managed to trundle everything down on foot; Jamila came down to meet us and helped us unpack everything. The weather was lovely - humid, but not unpleasantly hot, with a nice breeze to keep the smoke from the fireworks and cookouts moving. Most of the families around us were Hispanic; Brian commented later that it was nice to spend Independence Day surrounded by immigrants.

Brian's food was predictably excellent; Jamila got a great picture of him in front of our tiny grill. She also documented our excellent burgers and one of our gigantic beef ribs; and, at my spur-of-the-moment request, did her best Baby Groot impression). I spent most of the time sprawled on our blanket, reading and occasionally reapplying sunscreen; at one point our friend Erin stopped by and we chatted for a bit, although unfortunately her dog was feeling poorly so she wasn't able to stay for the fireworks.

Possibly my favorite part of the day, aside from the fireworks show, was dusk; the crowds were starting to go really wild with the fireworks, so everything was getting noisy and flashing, but amidst the chaos there were comparatively tiny fireflies coming out, blinking hopefully at the colorful displays. You keep those aspirations high, fireflies!

It's been a weird couple of months.

Contrary to my hopes, the anxiety roller coaster continues. Sometimes I'm fine, content with my place in the world and the sheer good luck I've had to have the life that I do. Sometimes I'm...not depressed, although in some ways it resembles depression. Scattered. Inward-turned. Uninterested in making social plans (although usually if someone invites me, I have a good time). Unable to talk to people as easily as I usually can. Sullen. Brooding.

Some weeks ago, a Facebook acquaintance pointed me at the connection between panic attacks and hypoglycemia. Short version, adrenaline is a sort of ugly hack (thewronghands's on-the-nose description) when your blood sugar is low; not only does the resulting rush warn you that something's not right with your body, but it also signals your liver to release its emergency-stored glucose, which brings your blood sugar levels back up temporarily. Kinda neat biologically, but not particularly pleasant to experience.

Since discovering this, I've been making a concerted effort to be extra careful with my food intake, keeping simple carbs to a minimum and eating lots of protein and whole grains. It's helped some; certainly my incidences of adrenaline-fueled acute anxiety attacks are down. But, strangely, there are times when I get the mental effects of such attacks (obsessive thoughts, feeling of impending doom, withdrawn and sullen affect) despite lacking the actual adrenal involvement. It's almost like my body's conditioned to respond that way to stress now, despite my knowing that it's not a good coping strategy. (Which would jibe with Brian's observation that at times it looks like I'm intentionally looking for things to be anxious about.) Frustrating.

I'm not sure what to do about this. My profound (and, I think, justified) aversion to our screwed-up physical and mental healthcare system has kept me from seeing a doctor about any of this so far, but if I can't figure out a way to get myself more stable, that may be the next step. Writing or talking about it helps, but that's tougher when I'm in the middle of an episode, since one of the most obvious symptoms is how I suddenly lose interest in either. Breathing and mindfulness exercises may help in the moment. Past that...well, we'll see. One thing I noticed about massage school and yoga both was how, while I was actively learning new things, anxiety attacks were rare. With that partially in mind, I signed up for CorePower's teacher training for this fall. (I still have the same reservations about their corporate culture and business model that I did before, but it wouldn't hurt to have an additional less-physically-intense income stream to supplement massage, and the knowledge crossover and reinforcement is a very real plus, and the community involvement and journaling it'll require both seem likely to be beneficial. And it's not like I have to stick with CorePower exclusively - I'm looking at working for them as a starting point rather than an end goal.)

As an aside, I was recently laughing in rueful recognition at thewronghands's description of physical fitness as a constantly moving target; as my life has gotten busier and my yoga attendance has dropped, I've gained back a good ten pounds compared to my peak fitness there. Uncomfortably, I'm beginning to realize mental health is much the same. I mean, I thought I had this whole anxiety thing sorted out, and it turns out, nope, that was just temporary. I guess I could be frustrated about that, but I'm going to try and think of it as an opportunity to expand my toolkit instead. Just as soon as I'm done reading this article about the election and how we're all doomed.

Hello again, Chicago! It's good to be back. I was saying to Brian recently that my semi-regular trips home to Anchorage, over the years, have been an excellent indicator of how much I like where I'm living. When we lived in Juneau, it was nice to get somewhere that felt (slightly) less isolated; when I was coming from Arizona, it was such a relief to get out of the heat and see green and open water again. Now, as much as I like visiting my mother, I'm genuinely sorry that it has to come at the expense of a week-plus of things to do in Chicago, hah. But! My mother is all moved in to her new place (if still in the throes of her decorating frenzy), and it's even more gorgeous than the pictures made it look. It's not somewhere I'd want to live permanently - far too isolated, with nothing within walking distance - but it'll be nice to visit her now and then for a change of pace. (Luckily, she feels much the same way about Chicago. Hurrah for complementary family preferences!)

Speaking of things to do in Chicago, last night I some friends and I went to the first of this summer's movies In Millennium Park. (We brought a picnic dinner, but despite arriving almost an hour early, the entire lawn was taken, so we ended up grabbing seats and just passing the fried chicken and salad and wine back and forth.) I actually enjoyed the movie far more than I expected to. Ferris Bueller's Day Off isn't a favorite of mine, exactly - I always found Ferris to be kind of a twerp, which isn't helped by his complete lack of character arc - but there's something undeniably special about getting to see all those gorgeous shots of Chicago while surrounded by that very same skyline and a cheering crowd. The best part, by far, was when damn near the entire pavilion got up and danced and sang to the "Twist & Shout" sequence. (I was lamenting on Facebook that I didn't get any pictures/video, but...that would have meant I'd have to stop dancing and singing. Nah.) Afterward, Lindsay got a picture of Brian and Jamila and me under the Pritzker's frankly amazing architecture, and later on in the evening I got a nice shot of part of the nighttime skyline as seen through the superstructure. This city is far from perfect, but I do love the very real sense of civic pride we have.

Speaking of civic pride, I've gotten on the sucker list for the Lyric Opera's educational outreach programs, and I've got to give their phone fundraisers credit - they know their stuff. They always ask if now's a good time to talk, they're unfailingly gracious, they ask you about your recent experience at whatever performance, talk about the goals and achievements of their programs, and start with an aspirational sell - "These are all the awesome thank-you gifts you get if you donate at this level" - but never come off as less than wholeheartedly grateful if you offer a (sometimes much) smaller donation. I think what's really impressed me, though, is their enthusiasm; they don't come off as hired telemarketers, but people who are genuinely passionate about music and opera and want to share it with the community. Helping give kids in underfunded schools in my community access to art and music education is a pretty easy sell for me already, but way to make people feel good about giving, Lyric. A++ would donate again.

And speaking of...hrmm. Not sure how I can segue into something about biking from opera fundraising. But! I've got my bike all kitted out for pedaling around Chicago. (Bet y'all can't guess what I named it, heh.) I'm still taking baby steps regarding where and how much traffic I'm comfortable dealing with, but as I was telling my mother, I actually feel far safer on the streets in Chicago than I would in someplace suburban like Anchorage. For one thing, the exponential traffic density and unpredictable patterns mean that people are paying much closer attention to the road, as well as by necessity limiting their speed. Plus people here are much more used to cyclists on the road. In Anchorage traffic moves too quickly; you have to ride either on the shoulder, the sidewalk, or a bike path, and cars don't look for you. I nearly got run over a few times crossing streets as a teenager; while driving my mother's car just a few days ago, I was a little saddened to see a woman on a bike slam on her brakes when she saw me about to cross her path to turn into a parking lot. (I would have let her go first!...but you just can't depend on that attitude in suburban environments.) By comparison, I took a fairly busy road to the store during rush hour yesterday, and actually made better time than most of the cars by dint of being able to cruise by in the gap between the parked cars and the flow of traffic. Though I did keep a very close eye out for car doors that might open in my path.

It's 6:30 AM on Christmas Eve, and rather than sleeping like a normal person (or a normal person without children), my brain is apparently wide awake. Not unpleasantly so, oddly; I think knowing that I have plenty of time to catch up on sleep is helpful in keeping the "must get back to sleep/can't sleep, going to be short on sleep/must get back to sleep" stress cycle at bay. But enough that coming out to the living room and making tea and sitting and admiring the Christmas tree felt like an attractive option.

I've been writing letters to, and gradually getting to know, a friend-of-a-friend who's going through a tough transitionary period in her life. We've been Facebook acquaintances for years but (as transitions often are) she's pretty lonely right now, with a lot of difficult issues and contradictory beliefs and unhelpful coping mechanisms to sort through. And at one point, she said something along the lines of this: "Tell me about your life. Because I read your posts and I wonder if you're really that happy."

This hit a bit of a nerve, and has resulted in quite a bit of rumination. Not because I'm unhappy, but because of the context. See, one of the issues I've struggled with most, both in person and on social media, is the desire to always appear happy and content, no matter my actual emotional state. It's both a way of defending myself and my life choices - if I'm happy, no one can question whether I've done the 'right' things in life, can they? - and, in a way, a form of revenge. All those people who've wished me ill over the course of my life can just eat it.

Obviously there are a lot of problems with this; for one thing, as I've discovered over the past decade or so, vulnerability is a powerful social tool, and studiously refusing to use it hamstrings your interpersonal interactions. But the more pertinent issue here, I think, is that it's just not possible for anyone to be happy all the time. We talk about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in this country as if the first two will naturally lead to the third, and perhaps they do: the key word being pursuit. Even "hap", the root word of "happy", literally means "luck" or "chance"; hence why we also see it in "happenstance", "haphazard", and "hapless". For all that our culture is poised to sell you happiness at a moment's notice, guaranteed, we completely ignore that most of our moments of happiness are more like a cat in a sunbeam. Even if we don't change, the sunbeam moves on; our mental balancing point reasserts itself. (The flipside, of course, is that people who go through horrible experiences also eventually get back to that balancing point. It just doesn't make sense, from a survival standpoint, for us to be constantly on one end of the scale or the other.)

And then there's the question of whether we're talking about short- or long-term. When I woke up and opened my computer, I had about two-thirds of a blog post written, complaining about a bunch of miscellaneous stuff - petty things like waking up and being out of coffee, or forgetting my work clothes and having to block off the first half-hour of my schedule so I could get new ones; all the way up to more overarching things like being exhausted from a six-hour shift at the chiropractor's and my crazy schedule making it feel like I'd practically missed Christmas this year. But before I could finish it and click "post", Brian and I had dinner and watched some Star Trek, and the food and relaxation time helped recharge my cope - enough that I decided not to post my whining, since none of it was really all that important; I simply had been losing perspective thanks to exhaustion and low blood sugar.

Long-term, though, could take us all the way back to the beginnings of this blog, almost exactly twelve years ago, which was the first time someone asked me if I was happy with my life. I would say I'm much happier now than I was then, in large part due to figuring out a set of goals, and how to achieve them in a way that fits with my strengths and weaknesses. Clearly, that doesn't mean that I don't get frustrated or upset at times. But I think the better life circumstances, combined with learning and practicing better self-love and self-care, have helped to move my usual balance point up the happiness scale. And because I like myself much better, it's much easier to genuinely care for others, too.

So yes, ultimately, I think I am that happy. I know it's partly due to several spectacular runs of luck, and that it's an ongoing project (once again, the key word is pursuit); I also know that it's probable that I'll have less happy periods in the future, whether due to loss or environmental change or just the pain that comes as an inevitable part of living with and caring for other people. Which is partly why I try to spend less time complaining about petty things, and more time being grateful for what I have now, and the people I get to share it with. <3

I'm in Seattle, and appear to have lucked out with regards to the weather - it's been sunny and warm (for Seattle) and absolutely lovely with the fall colors just coming out. Monday I take the train up to Mt. Vernon to see Donna for the first time in far too long and meet my goddaughter, but for now I'm enjoying spending some time in one of my favorite cities. It still entertains me how the smells here translate to "home" for me in a way Chicago doesn't yet; much as I love my new city, that crisp-cool cedar-and-spruce smell just makes me feel at ease in a way few environments do.

thewronghands, whose social network I've long admired from afar, is graciously letting me stay in her swanky digs and meet a few of her local friends; especially graciously as she's kind of been swallowed by work lately. (Luckily I'm a little familiar with the "work is eating your world" crunch-time environment, heh.) But I've still gotten to meet canyonwren, whom I've long suspected is pretty awesome, after years of seeing her comment on LJ. Hi! *waves*

Adora Belle has adjusted far faster than we had dared hope, and is already sleeping in her kitty bed (as opposed to jammed under the far corner of the guest bed) and wanting to be let out to explore the rest of the house. Brian has been carefully introducing her to the other cats; as expected, she gets on fine with Dexter, and things look more or less okay with Tripp, but Leo's really not sure about all of this, and there's been some hissing and growling on his part. So, time to find some baby gates at a thrift shop and see about convincing him that she won't eat him. Sigh. I foresee our treat reserves becoming rather lower over the next couple weeks.

Work has continued to go well, although the clinic has had an extraordinarily slow October - possibly due to the Cubs hoopla and everyone saving their pennies for beer at Wrigley Field. Still, I've had a few rebookings - including one particularly enthusiastic client who told me she'd been telling all her friends to book with me - and I'm starting to get hits from the business cards I've been passing out. And as much fun as I've been having in Washington, I'm actually kind of missing work. Which was never a phrase I thought I would utter. Clearly I've been replaced by a pod person.

Sweden was, as expected, lovely. Petra really went out of her way to make us feel welcome. I admit, I was slightly concerned at the thought of the three of us squeezing into a small apartment for ten days, especially since she was sleeping on her couch in order to cede us her bed. Fortunately, her apartment was actually pretty good-sized, and (as I had reason to discover when I came down with the airport plague on the trip there) her couch was similarly generous in its proportions, as well as comfortable. So we all managed just fine.

What I didn't expect was precisely how similar Sweden's climate is to Alaska's. In retrospect, it's not exactly surprising - similar latitudes, similar climates, similar geological history with glaciers and whatnot from the Ice Age carving out the landscape - but it felt downright strange to be walking along a forested path, thinking about how pleasantly familiar everything looked/smelled, only to hear a bird call I didn't recognize or see an oak tree growing amongst the birches, and realize that I was halfway across the globe, after all. (There was also, I was amused to note, a similar variability in weather; from windy to pouring down rain to sunny, all within ten minutes.)

Given that we were in Europe, where the history comes from, we spent a goodly amount of time going out to old fortresses and houses. One of my favorites was Gunnebo House and Gardens, a country estate with a beautiful house commissioned by a merchant who had made it big during the start of the Industrial Revolution. (Luckily for us, we were the only people looking for a tour in our time slot, so the guide was happy to give us the tour in English.) The architect who designed it was something of a perfectionist, and it shows; the neoclassical lines and symmetry are just beautiful, if taken to occasional extremes (the guide pointed out numerous blind doors added purely for show, as well as hidden doors that looked like part of the wallpaper until you turned the key, which must have been entertaining for guests wandering around in the middle of the night). Unfortunately, the family fortune met a swift end due to both economic factors and the heir's unsuitability as a man of business; the house passed through several sets of hands over the decades, falling into greater and greater disrepair, until it was eventually purchased by the local government as a historic site; the restoration work so far has been piecemeal but high quality.

I found it especially interesting, after reading so many romances that take place during the late 18th and early 19th century; it was a good-sized house, but what really struck me was how small many of the rooms actually were. Even the large salon, where the hosts held dances, wasn't that much bigger than my living room. Admittedly, this wasn't exactly a manor house, just a country villa meant to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life; still, it was more than a little eye-opening.

Other highlights included taking the train to Stockholm to see the The Vasa, a 17th-century war galleon that was so poorly designed and overloaded with guns that it floundered and sank into freezing low-oxygen water on its maiden voyage...and, consequently, was extraordinarily well preserved for for three and a half centuries until the Swedes managed to fish it out and put it in a museum, when all its better-built contemporaries were destroyed. (Historical irony!) And we got to meet up with vatine and experience international karaoke; I was somewhat amused to discover that 80s music is just as popular a choice for karaoke in Sweden. My favorite non-American song that I heard was Björn Skifs' "Michelangelo"; it tickles me how incredibly 80s it manages to be, even though I didn't have the foggiest idea what it was about until Petra gave me a rough translation. (It's a dude singing about how gorgeous his girlfriend is and how Michelangelo should come paint her because "her smile will make the Mona Lisa ask to be taken down". So 80s.)

On a more personal note, I think I mentioned before that I had something of an irrational fear of international travel - where some people are afraid of spiders or heights, my fears all center around being lost in an unfamiliar place, being unable to understand those around me, and being unable to make myself understood. Obviously this was a pretty ideal trip with regards to those fears; almost everyone in Sweden speaks English, we had our friend to guide us and translate anything complicated, and between her presence and the existence of GPSs I wasn't in any danger of getting hopelessly lost. So I was able to make it through and enjoy myself without too much trouble. But...it was still stressful, not being able to read things. I could figure out some of it from pictures and symbols and the few words I do know, and after I'd been there for a few days (and had Petra translate a few things) it felt less like an incomprehensible jumble of syllables. But...man. Am I ever not used to being functionally illiterate. People tell me I seem so together; I don't think I'd realized how much of that was "I instinctively read everything around me, so I know stuff like where exits are and who's on the front page of the paper and what's being advertised". (And that's not even going into missing cultural context like "I know why that advertisement is problematic and who people think should be on the front page of the paper instead.") And...not having that together-ness is something of an emotional strain for me. I found myself retreating to the bathroom rather more often than I normally do, just so I could breathe deeply and touch up my lipstick and otherwise try to re-center myself and get my mental shields back in place.

Still, I only had one minor bout of homesickness midway through the trip, as compared to nearly every day the last time I traveled overseas (which was, admittedly, decades ago). So it's an improvement! I just wish I could be more comfortable going with the flow sometimes, I guess; I think I'd have a much better time if I could let go of that need to know as much as possible about any given situation. But since I apparently can't, at least I have Google and Duolingo and kind friends to fill in the gap.