onomatoblog

Name: Pasta Bella
Location: On 15th Avenue and 59th St. in Ballard, Seattle.
Serves: Italian.

Location: ##
Eh. When one thinks of Ballard, one (I) think(s) of Market Street and historic Ballard Avenue, not five blocks off that, on 15th (and area I associate with being on my way somewhere else.) Nevertheless, people seem to find it, so it can’t be too bad.

Look and Feel: ####
Small and insignificant from the outside, nice and cozy on the inside – this place has it all, with the exception of the red-and-white tablecloths, when it comes to Italian dining. It’s the look of the outside, and the fact that we saw straight into a work area through an open door as we were waiting to be seated, that prevented it from reaching a five.

Service: ###
Seating was fast, despite it being a Friday night. The initial ordering was fast, but then we had to wait for rather a long time before we had the chance to order our entrées. There was also a significant wait while we tried to see the dessert menu, but I believe our waiter had some sort of hearing impediment , so he’ll be forgiven for not noticing when we tried to get his attention. The service we did get was polite and attendant, and we felt welcome.

Food: ######
Score! Granted, I rarely take chances with restaurants (I don’t have the financial means or patience), but this was very, very good. Even with a stomach ache, I enjoyed my pesto tortellini immensely. Lucas had a seafood capellini which, he claims, was very good (I sort of doubt I’d like it.) Not to mention the creme caramel we had for dessert… Prices are a few bucks over chain restaurants, but not a lot, and the difference in feeling and quality more than makes up for it.

Which is, I guess, actually Wednesday’s quote, as it’s from Weekly:

“What kind of lame-ass Pacific Rim city is this, anyway?”

For those of you interested in what I write in Swedish:

this is the place for you: http://tatortstimotej.blogsome.com/

And that’s pretty much all for today, guys.

There is a piece of… I supposed common knowledge, collective consciousness, or whatever, about laundry rooms in Sweden. They cause disagreement and dislike among neighbors. Now, until today, I thought of this as something make up, like people getting lost at IKEA (oh, alright, my mom did that once. Bad example.) However, I have seen the light. Or, rather, I have seen the deep, impenetrable, darkness.

See, all rental-until-collections (whether it is single buildings or complexes) have laundry rooms. There are no laundromats in Sweden, and the laundry rooms are included in the rent, not coin-operated. A key to the laundry room is generally given at the same time as the apartment key, as it’s kept locked. In the laundry room is The Holy List. The List is where you sign up for laundry times, something you can generally do up to two days before. You sign up for a few hours a time (depending on the opening hours of the room, there can be anywhere between two and five shifts in one day) and may use the machines at that time. Kid wet the bed? Tomato soup all over the living room? TV exploded? You ain’t got no laundry time, you ain’t doing’ no laundry. You also can’t sign up for too many times (usually one a week is alright, more if you can justify it.) Having a laundry time is a valid reason to leave work early or getting there late. Now, during your hours, you need to do all your laundry and dry it, as well (despite the fact that the person after you can’t reasonable do their drying until at least thirty minutes into their time slot.) Normal decency, like emptying the lint filter and taking your stuff with you, always apply. Extra rules are optional for each location.

Why? Because we’re Swedes, we’re masochists, and we love bureaucracy.

Now, at the complex where I work, each time slot is half a day – six hours. It starts at seven a.m. and goes on until 1 p.m or starts at one and go until eight. We start work at eight, so we lose one hour if we have the morning shift. Also, care receiver is severely handicapped. She needs sheets changed at least twice a week, shirts every day, pants very very often, has an extra set of tops worn under the corset she needs to sit straight -tops changed daily, corsets when needed. And unlike the icky old people in the complex, she showers every day. There’s a lot of laundry, and there’s only two machines.

This complex has special rules. Like ‘mop the room when you’re done’. What the hell? I understand ‘clean if it’s dirty’ but if it’s not even dusty, there’s no. reason. to. mop. twice.or. three. times. a. day. Also, I was whined at by person-after-care-receiver’s-slot for picking up my last things five minutes BEFORE the slot was over.( “everything needs to be out and cleaned by one!”) and just generally whined at by a person why just hung around because the OTHER assistants don’t clean up after themselves. PERHAPS it has to do with us having one hour less, twice and much laundry, and more important things to do than time laundry times?

So yes. I am ready to kill now. Interestingly, at PLU there were no time slots and the laundry room was open 24/7. At Byrn Mar there were three machines, no time slots, no schedule, maybe fifty tenants, and everything worked out fine. Imagine that. In the Ballard apartment, we only share machines with one other apartment, so I am sure it will be fine.

I rather frequently hear people talk about the innocence of childhood. The “I want to be six again” poemesque thing is a well-known, nostalgic declaration of loss of innocence. People grieve that they have lost the ability to be happy over small thing, to have no real worries. The weight of income tax, getting groceries and affording a vacation is heavy on their shoulders. To declare that one wants to be a kid again, though, is ridiculous. Not only are a child’s problem as real and terrifying to them as income tax is to an adult, but that “innocence” if always topped with a fundamental powerlessness related to fundamentals of life.

I am glad I am an adult.. I live among mostly civilized individuals; if someone attacks me on the way from work, they are breaking the law and the police will, hopefully, recognize that. When I was in primary school, I was afraid of going home from school every day. An older girl, perhaps by four years, had decided it was a fun sport to catch me and pull my hair. All her friends, and mine, agreed. After all, I reacted. I cried and whimpered. And the teachers and my mother sighed and said I oughtn’t encourage her by reacting. Who would say something like that to an adult? “Well, I know your neighbor meets you in the stairwell and hit you every evening, but it’s basically your own fault, you oughtn’t be such an amusing person to make fun of.”

I’ll take income tax before that any day.

I get to cook and choose my own food. I never have to eat spare ribs or liver again, and if I don’t feel like pasta today, I will eat something else. I discovered a year or two ago that it wasn’t as exciting to eat certain meals as it used to be, and it took me a while to realize that it was because I didn’t have to suffer two weeks of food I didn’t like (yes, I am a picky eater) before getting my favorite. I make that choice now, and although I might have to compromise with a partner or friend, no one puts a plate before me with “eat this, or go to bed without dinner.”

I wear the clothes I like. Perhaps not to work, but no one makes me wear the itchy, blue jumper that I hate.

It’s worth cramps.

I pick my own bedtime. Granted, not always with the best result (getting up at six after a night at the computer? Not so great.) If I can’t sleep, I can stay up. If I want to nap, no one will ask if I am feeling sick. And related, I can stay indoors on nice days, or take a walk in the rain. I can midnight run to Crispy Creme. Well, I can’t. But if I had a license and a car, and if I was in the US, I could.

I can read. I don’t know what I did before I read, but I must have spent hours looking into empty space. Books are my friends, and I don’t rely on others to read them for me.

For the most part, people take me seriously even when they can’t help me. When they don’t, I generally have somewhere else to turn. Personally, I find that worth the price of not being able to see, that that chair is really a spaceship.

This is going to be a text about how Lucas is fantastic.

(For new readers, Lucas is my boyfriend of almost four years, fiancé of almost three, and come September 20th, hopefully my husband. It depends a little on whether immigrations have finished their paperwork by then.)

Now, he really is fantastic. I’ve often been told by friend (and acquaintances of both me and him) what a catch I’ve made, and I have. The guy is fantastic. If not for other reasons, for putting up with me and my somewhat confusing and chaotic existence and prickly personality.
I am what one would call high maintenance. I am very emotional, I pout when I don’t get 100% of people’s attentions, and while I don’t have diagnosable anxiety attacks, it’s pretty damn close. Of course, I am not exactly sure what it is to be ‘low maintenance’; I associate the expression with someone who leaves her boyfriend alone with a beer and Monday night football, gives him his weekly fuck and a few blow jobs, cooks his dinner, otherwise leaving him alone. That’s not the girlfriend I’d want to be, and nothing could make me, barring a lobotomy. But as a rather rabid feminist, I have set the requirements for a good partner rather high, and yet Lucas manages to fulfil them. He isn’t into porn (for, I think, the same reasons I am not) and he washes his own socks. Granted, he was about as spoilt as I was when he started college, bringing his dirty laundry home when he visited over Thanksgivings, but I think it was less due to laziness and more in order to save those magic quarter. During our almost four years, I have washed for him twice. Both times because I was doing laundry anyway. Both times he thanked me for it. I don’t imagine that it will stay that way once we live together, as it would be ridiculous to keep separate laundry piles, but it’s a good sign. Four years of doing his own laundry will hopefully save me from the forty years of slave labor I see my mother perform.
When he was in high school, during a trip to Seattle, most of the guys in his group went to a striptease club. Lucas and another guy decided that they weren’t interested (I can’t remember what they did instead, but I imagine it had to do with video games.) He told me about this in the beginning of our relationship, and I can’t explain how many points he won there. Fantastic.
Three years ago, I went on the birth control pill. However, I got off of it fairly soon, and it fucked my body up quite bad. Most of my mucus membranes were damaged, and I couldn’t sit properly for half a year. Sex was completely out of the question for almost a full year, and still has to be limited; in fact, the psychological consequences of the pain still leaves me with issues. I only just recently could start wearing tight pants. If this would have happened now, I would have been less surprised by Lucas’ resilience, but it was when had only been together for a year. He could have ditched me within a month; how many twenty year old guys stay with a girlfriend from whom they’re getting no sex (if they don’t have religio-ideological reasons)? Not many.
I spend hours and hours at the computer, reading and writing blogs, talking to people, and reloading my LiveJournal friends list. Checking email. Designing something. Reloading my livejournal friends list. Lucas puts up with it, even when it annoys him. After he has spent five more minutes than I’d like on a video game, I pout (I should mention that we most often manage to cooperate on this; he plays his video games while I am online, and they don’t often collide.)
I fangirl, and squee, and freak out over ridiculous, geeky thing. He thinks it’s cute. I’ve never heard him loudly proclaim that some chick is hot, or caught him giving anyone a once-over while we’ve been out.

He doesn’t bring me flowers. He gives me teddy bats, DVDs and action figures. I’ve never ever received a generic present from Lucas. Well, he has given me flowers twice; two black silk roses in Valentine’s Day, and a bouquet of white lilies as a welcome-back present my third fall in the US. But never, ever, anything generic. When I was doing volunteering for a class, and got home around 1 p.m., tired and cranky, he had been to the mall to pick up a t-shirt I had been coveting for quite some time. He feeds me skittles. He calls me his lady Stardust. I tell you, he’s fantastic.

I haven’t updated the software this thing is running in… forever. Well, ever. Once I deleted the entire thing and put it back up, though. But that was long ago. I am not great with databases, and the whole back-up process confuses me.

On another topic, WHY is it so hard to write this project report? It’s on my absolute pet topic, how housewives have never really existed. And still I have to force myself to write.

Oh yeah. It’s sunny. As hell.

I bought a pretty, pretty shirt. It made me happy. I might be a girl. The thought is scary.

I suppose it is time to keep you updated again? I am delightfully bad at keeping this thing up, I ought to engage a little more in public debate. This time, I don’t even have the excuse of school work, it’s been very medium-leveled of late.

The good news: I am returning to my parents’ house the 20th of May. I will stay there over the summer, while (hopefully – I don’t know it for 100% yet) working at an eldercare just across the street. Towards the end of August I will fly back to Washington, and Lucas will have spent the summer looking for an apartment in Seattle. It’s all very yay, especially as Lucas’ parents are informed about the upcoming mawwiage and there’s no reason to be sneaky about it (my parents? mum didn’t have to be told, she sort of just looked at me and knew.) Thus, my current worries include the visa application process (temporary visa with the intention of bringing an alien fiancé/e to the United States for marriage) and getting the job.

FYI, the filling out of forms has had Lucas start calling me “Miss Alien Martian from the Moon.”

Aside from that, I have to ethnology projects left this semester, a project report and a paper (the paper will be turned in via email and I’ll go back down here and present it on June 7th.) I must say it’s been a good semester academics-wise; I’ve been able to bring the gender aspect into basically all of my project, and will in the final paper also. I might not be outta here with a Master’s, but I’ll know more, a lot more, than I did when I came.

(oh, and I should probably warn you: as soon as I get going with this project, there will with all probability be an entry that bitches about people’s lack of knowledge in relation to the housewife ideal and “working women”. Heh.)

I was going to say that I just came back from London, but then I realized that this would be rather a lie; I came back from London Tuesday night, and it’s Friday today. It has its reasons, though: my second to last day there I caught a cold, and I have been sick as a dog ever since. Unfortunately, I have a school project due on Tuesday, and have had to run on Advil for four days straight to be able to function. But alas, today I am better!

London was beautifully great, as always, although the best part was hanging out with Lucas. There are things that are just great; like tiny little cheap cinemas, Camden Market, Forbidden Planet. We also ate at a very good Indian restaurant, although I am suprised to say that Tacoma’s India Mahal has better food. Nowhere near the atmosphere, though.
I spent far too much money, mostly on food, became Londinium is le expensive, but I also bought a new purse and a pair of earrings made from circuits. Woot!

… and then I go sick, and today is the first day I can talk without significant pain, and in which I have no fever. It’s getting better. For some reason, I always doubt that.

An, lastly, I have given in to iTunes, and it ate all of my Beatles songs. WTF?

Time span since last update… eh.

Oscars: I didn’t see them. 1) I wasn’t too interested, at least not enough to stay up all night (time zones, baby) and 2) Couldn’t have anyway, the channel that has the rights this year was not one that my landlord has. However, everyone I have talked to said it was boring, in stark contrast to the movies that got prizes. I cannot say – I have only seen Brokeback Mountain and while it was fantastic, it’d be silly to compare it to things beyond my experience. Etc.

Well, and Wallace and Gromit. And while it was good, I can’t really imagine The Corpse Bridebeing less so.
Well, I saw the Narnia movie too. That doesn’t count…

To the point. I am not going to finish the Master’s Thesis (and thus won’t have a fil. mag. at the end of the year.) Why? Because the topic doesn’t fit the department, the adviser doesn’t fit the student, the student doesn’t fit the department, and Analytic doesn’t fit in my heart of brain. That, and Dewey is too hard to defend by a Master’s student in front of a bunch of PhDs. it just seemed easy when Erin did it because she was awesome. To my defense, I can say that since I have started taking classes outside of the Philosophy department, I have understood that many student feel the same thing – the general environment, the snobbery, the attitude that Continental isn’t real philosophy -it’s not just me. But I am off! I can spend this semester in Ethnology, taking my scheduled 20 credits, and not be in trouble with the money people!

And there was much rejoicing.

Fantasy Pharmacy will be given a face lift, an adrenalin shot, and a new guest book. Soon. After that, I will make a portfolio, Kevin. I promise. It’s only been a year and the half since you suggested it :)

See? No fish mentioned. I never lie.