The World in Tonevision

What a week.

dusty abstract - afternoon sun, originally uploaded by tonbel.

What a week, I have been moaning since wednesday or so. What a week, will it ever end? And now -finally- it is sunday and I will celebrate this fact and my fresh start at midnight by going to bed well before my normal bedtime.

Do you subscribe to the lump theory of life? If you're not familiar with it, here's a brief summary of the lump model: Life is like a carton of curdled milk (or like a glass ketchup bottle, if you find that a less disgusting mental image). You can try pouring carefully, and nothing will really come - maybe a drop or two, but nothing much, and so you pour a little tiny bit more decisively and suddenly everything comes at once, more than you wanted or know what to do with. This has been that week when the floodgates open.

If you have a low tolerance for moaning and self-pity, feel free to skip forward to the last paragraph where I'm bound to have gotten over myself enough to think of a couple of nice things that happened. The rest of you can stay tuned. So, as you'll know if you read my previous rant about glucose tolerance testing, it all started early monday morning. As we know already, I was hungry and I couldn't sleep because of same, and those two factors aren't exactly designed to put me in a great mood, either. Being up at four AM did not prevent me + partner from being a little on the late side and a lot on the stressed side when heading up to the hospital, which incidentally we didn't really know where was (although we did have a map, nerds that we are). So of course at half past seven we were more or less running to the underground while bickering about who should carry what (him being the gentleman and insisting on carrying everything, me being me and wanting to do my share), when suddenly, in the middle of it all, I tripped and fell forward. Right on top of the belly. Right on top of the baby. The three of us were petrified, needless to say. Both of us grown-ups were trying to keep it together and not think about it properly (unsuccessfully of course). The baby stayed completely still, very much unlike himself. Sporting a "the show must go on" attitude, we proceeded up to locate the hospital and lab just in time for my first bloodtest, the baby taking it easy all the while, me still with the shakes. A pint of extremely sugary sugar water later, the baby was back to his normal nudging, kicking self, and I was so relieved I could (and almost did) cry. Nevertheless, his father insisted that I get checked up, which I did, sending my total number of hours spent waiting around in hospitals on monday up to 6 (curiously, for the first time in probably a decade, I had gone somewhere without a book to read, so the hours were spent poring over an ISO standard. Good times). But the baby was absolutely fine. Not so my camera, which for reasons unknown I had also decided to bring along, and which unlike jr. wasn't protected by substantial amounts of flesh and amniotic fluid, but at least I have the sense of perspective to view the camera (for once) as an inanimate and hence replaceable object. So all's well that ends well - but the week doesn't really end on monday, does it.

Tuesday I woke up with the cold to take all other colds outside, beat them up and laugh at them, but I had my quality management course to go to that I really didn't want to miss. By two o'clock I was so snotty and out of it I found myself almost counting the minutes until I could leave to go home to bed again (120 of them), not the kind of thing I can recall doing since the age of ten or so. I promised myself that if I was feeling as poorly the next morning I would just stay home in bed.

Wednesday I felt about 4% better in the morning, so didn't feel the need to honor the promise to self. As the course was very interesting, I don't regret it, but having a cold and being pregnant at the same time is not something I would recommend to anyone.

Thursday morning it was time to go to doctor for my prenatal check-up, since I clearly hadn't spent nearly enough time in waiting rooms or thinking about my general state of health already this week. It was a lovely morning, I was feeling better than for ages, and the doctor had nothing but good stuff to say. Bloodpressure, weight, the amount the belly had grown: everything was excellent. Except that he didn't seem to like my swollen ankles all that much. Neither do I, of course, it's hardly great looking, but who looks at ankles anyway? So I was very surprised when he continued to advise me very strongly indeed and more than once to cut down my working hours by half so as not to be sitting so much. I wasn't very keen on the idea at all, in fact, but on the other hand even I see that the twelve hour days in the previous week hadn't exactly left me feeling great, so I was trying to reach a compromise where I would just try to stick to not exeeding my normal hours. Then he played the blood clot card he had been hiding up his sleeve, and suddenly working 50% of the time sounded much better. Now the question is how to get all the work done in half the time. This will be great practice at delegating, I presume.

Friday was my first real stab at working for only 4 hours or so, and had me pretty much running around like a headless chicken trying to do everything simultaneously. I'll get the hang of it yet. I suppose going home and sitting down in front of the computer to do some more work for the remaining 4 hours isn't exactly going to swing it either? The doctor also wants me to get up and walk around every 15 minutes. I never realized this pregnancy thing would be so much hard work. And compared to being a parent I'm sure this is still the easy part. Oh dear.

For the positive upbeat ending: friday after my guilt-inducingly short workday I had a nice relaxing afternoon watching a short play, changing electricity suppliers, eating very prettily arranged chinese food, getting quotes from movers and working just a little bit in a very relaxed manner with my feet up at home. And saturday was excellent: had coffee outside in the brilliant sun in Aker Brygge with friends, while people-watching. Mostly it's all really posh people and tourists there, always a fascinating view. Today I have just been collapsed with tiredness, but I'm sure that's just temporary. Tomorrow's another week and all's well that ends well. There you go.

settling in

After about six months of actually being more in the office than out travelling, the penny finally dropped: I actually have an office to go to, and it's where I work from. Of course, the having an office thing has been the case for more than three years now, so one might argue that I'm a little slow on the uptake. But until now I've sort of been thinking of my laptop rucksack as my office - and been right about it too. This week, I was travelling again for two days, and coming back to the office for perhaps the first time felt like coming "home". In celebration of this perhaps unremarkable fact I took what amounts to a miniscule step for mankind, but a medium step for me, of actually putting up a coat hanger behind the door. This is very in keeping with the advice of the time management book called "behind with the laundry and living off chocolate" (a title which has always felt like an all-too accurate description of my life) about doing the five-minute job. I reckon it will save me a minute of irritation every working day so it will add up to be a big thing over time. Also I feel very handy having done this.

*patting self on back*

What is next, I wonder, perhaps a notice board or some drawers? No, of course: it's time to put up christmas lights! And I even bought little suction cups earlier this week, genius that I am. It will be great!

The loneliness of the underground-passenger-counter

I spent my morning doing something a little different: from 5:13 -7:33 AM I was located at a near-empty tubestation, on a mission: to count every passenger walking into a tube carriage. The idea that some 150 other people from my company have been doing the exact same thing in all the tubestations in oslo for the last few days is fun. Standing around in a chilly tubestation in the middle of the night(ish): a little less exhilarating, but I came prepared with all the warm clothes I could muster (I've tried this before) and cake baked by a fantastic colleague. Plus an audio book on my iPod on brain function that turned out to be pompous, technical, self-righteous and mildly interesting in turns - but at least I used my brain which according to same book is crucial in order to avoid alzheimers and loss of brain function in general Gee, I must even have paid attention. Excellent!

Flow

I find it very peculiar how I've spent all day at work trying to get going on a number of different projects but never really breaking a hole in any of them and then suddenly, just about the time (eight hours or so in) when I was planning to go home and make some dinner I get sucked in for real. Now it's four hours later and I'm absolutely starving but have accomplished just about a full spring-cleaning of my computer and the bits of the server I share with my field management colleagues, and time and place has all but disappeared while I was moving and deleting, renaming and editing.

I notice it's dark out, and the last person leaving the focus group facilities said goodbye some time ago. The friggin grocery store is about to close! I'm lightheaded and I missed my pilates class. Gotta love flow.

Now if I could only accomplish the same with regard to cleaning my appartment or sorting out the sock drawer we would really be talking.