Question of the day.

   Do you have any unusual scars? What’s the story behind them? 

   My answer: 

   Actually, I do, except there’s no huge story really. The first thing is that, since about when I went to high school, I’ve started regularly developing odd wounds on my calves, particularly during winter, sometimes late autumn. It starts out as a very small, slightly itchy bump, then it grows a bit and gradually starts hurting, and then it opens up and can hurt quite a lot if my calf rubs against something or when I move it the wrong way or lean on the leg too much or something, so actually my biggest problemm with it has always been that I couldn’t horse ride while I had it, and it could linger for months sometimes. When it finally disappears, it leaves a round scar. I wouldn’t have a problem with the scarring at all as I don’t expose my legs a lot anyway due to self-harm scars, and I think the ones caused by these wounds aren’t easily noticeable, but every time I get this strange sore it occurs in a different spot on my calf, and it’s not always on the same leg, so if it persists for the rest of my life, I’m curious what my legs will look like in twenty years time. 😀 The first time it happened it was really scary, it hurt like shit and my Mum told me it’s probably some sort of abscess. It turned out not to be the case, but it has been difficult to establish what it actually is. The doctor who first saw me for this assumed that perhaps it’s a staph infection and I was put on a topical antibiotic plus some other cream, but that didn’t help a whole lot, so then I was put on yet another antibiotic, which also wasn’t as helpful as we’d expect. So then I’ve also heard that it could just be some kind of allergy, or perhaps  eczema, especially given that it tends to be seasonal. Anti-allergic creams don’t do anything for me though. At some point, someone even suggested to me that if it’s healing so slowly, perhaps it could be a sign of diabetes, which scared the shit out of me because I used to be on growth hormone as a kid and apparently it increases your risk of diabetes. I don’t know if it’s only while taking it or more long-term, but it felt like   a scary idea anyway. So I tested my sugars as well but everything was fine thankfully. So far though, while I do find some topical products more helpful than others, I haven’t found anything that would actually deal with the problem completely and it looks as if while you can alleviate it, it’ll only go awayy on its own. 

   Also, some two or three years ago, one day I woke up with a strangely throbbing and warm cheek and found out I had a long, wavy line on it, but I didn’t know where and how I could have gotten it. It didn’t hurt too bad, but apparently didn’t look good and was red. My Mum assumed that Misha must have scratched me. I have a lot of minor, unintentional scratches from Misha, but like I say they’re minor and never look inflamed like that or anything, they usually don’t even hurt or only for a short while, plus even if he did scratch me like that, I’m sure I’d remember it, it would surely hurt. As it was hard to come up with another explanation, and it was winter, we assumed that perhaps it’s another manifestation of my weird skin problem, except on the cheek rather than calf, even though there weren’t many similarities between the two other than their origins being rather mysterious. Once it healed, it left a scar, and my family are joking that it’s simply because each of my siblings has a scar on their cheek, so I couldn’t be left out, even if I didn’t actually injure my cheek. Olek was bitten on the cheek by our uncle’s crazy dog as a little child, and Sofi injured her cheek while falling when she was playing with Olek, so in their cases there are clear causes. 

   How about you? 🙂 

Floraleda Sacchi – “Luce” (Light).

   Hey people! 🙂 

   Let’s listen to FLoraleda Sacchi today! This time, I picked her interpretation of another Italian musician – Ludovico Einaudi’s – piece called Luce. I think it sounds beautiful on the harp. 

Question of the day.

   What’s a ridiculously fun word to say? 🙂 

   My answer: 

   Oh my flip! This is gonna be a long post, no matter how hard I try! 😀 There are so many fun words! And, which language are we talking about? Whenever I think about stuff like this, I always have extreme trouble thinking about just ONE word, even if one for each language that I have any  idea about. Because really, there are so many words that feel fun to say, and fun in all sorts of different ways. And English is particularly difficult because it has such insane amounts of words, which can not only sound fun but also be so weirdly specific in what they mean. Also, I suppose that when most people think of words that are either fun or beautiful, they think words that aren’t used that often, whereas for me, a fun word can be something that’s part of daily vocabulary, for example ever since I learned about the English word pillow, I really love it and I think it’s so cute. And I’ve already wrote of my love for the English word sleep. Both English and Swedish have such a weird quality to them that they have so many words that sound absolutely cute and that are in regular use and I really like it. In the past, I even used to do rankings of my favourite words for each language I knew – so then it was Polish, English and Swedish – because I wanted to keep them all in one place or something, so I’d do yearly rankings for that. But there are too many cool words, and also I finally realised that a ranking isn’t perhaps the best way for me to keep track of anything, because as my brain doesn’t really do numbers, it only made things more complicated when I had to think which word I like more and put them in such very specific order. 

   So, I think rather than sitting here for hours and thinking about my ABSOLUTE most favourite English word, I’ll just tell you about one that I learned about quite recently, and it’s jackanapes! Does anyone still even use it?! :O I mean spontaneously of course? I wonder if an average English native speaker even know what it means? I’m very curious, but if you don’t, I’ll tell you that from what I learned it’s a fancy word for someone who’s misbehaving, or being mischievous, or downright impertinent. I’m nnot sure though if it’s supposed to have more of an insult vibe or is used in a lighter, joking context. Being a Jackophile , I love how English has so many jac- words, and so many of them are slangy and quite funny or quirky. Like, apparently in Ireland people use “the jacks” to mean toilet! 😀 I love it! 

   I think I already wrote about it in some distant past on here that one of my very favourite Polish words is mózg (MOOZG, though actually when pronouncing it on its own like that the zg goes unvoiced so it’s practically MOOSK) which means brain. No other language I know has a word for brain that would be equally or more satisfying to say than this. I generally find the brain fascinating, I like the word mózg, so I end up using it a lot, just like I do in English, even when most people would rather use mind or soul or head or something like that. For example in Polish I usually wash my brain rather than hair, which some people find extremely funny. Back when I was in college/high school/whatchamacallit in your country, I once let my Math tutor in and she had something she wanted to tell my Mum straight away, but I told her that unfortunately, right now my Mum’s washing her brain (meaning hair of course) which at first really puzzled her, and then after a while she started laughing like she never heard a better joke. When I have a migraine or a normal headache I also say in Polish that my brain’s aching. The English brain sounds not very cool though, it has an odd texture and tastes like plastic. Swedish hjärna and Norwegian hjerne are cool and quite passable but nowhere near as cool as mózg, and the Welsh ymenydd is incredibly bland. 

   In Swedish, one of my many favourite words which I learned quite early on and fell in love with passionately is krimskrams, which means knick-knack. It’s so cute! I also really love the Polish equivalent which is bibelot. It almost sounds like Bibiel! 😀 I don’t care about the English word though, because while all these words clearly sound like what they mean – something that’s not very practically useful and just gathering dust, at least the Swedish and Polish words sound like these things hold some emotional value to the owner, while knick-knack doesn’t give such a vibe, at least not to me. – 

   In Welsh, I love pilipala, which is one of several Welsh words meaning butterfly, it’s extremely cute. And the Swedish equivalent, fjäril, is so stunning and has very distinct tangerine flavour to it! The English word is quite disgusting though. And I’m fairly neutral about the Polish equivalent – which is motyl – it sounds like motility or something like that. 😀 I don’t have any stronger feelings about the Norwegian sommerfugl when it comes to its sound, but it means summer bird so that’s quite nice. Also when it comes to Welsh, I love the word achafi for how expressive it is, it’s not a swearword or even close to that but it can be loaded with so much expression that it can almost feel like one at times. Honestly though, after so many years of Welsh learning, I’m not perfectly sure whether it’s actually a proper Welsh word, or more of a Wenglish invention, that is something that’s actually originated among Welsh people whose dominant language was English, because most often when I hear it it’s thrown into English. Anyways, it means yuck, and from what I’ve noticed it isn’t only used when something is yuck, but also when you disapprove or feel indignant of what someone’s doing or when something generally doesn’t go quite the way you’d like. 

   Also, now that we’re talking about fun-sounding words, after I’ve mentioned one of my first loves in the Swedish language, and after having read Ashley Leia’s post about the versatility of the word fuck not long ago, I am reminded of another of my early infatuations in the Swedish language, namely, the word knulla, or, more exactly, knullar, which is the present tense of this amazing-sounding verb, as that was the form in which I heard it for the first time, being about 10-11 years old and totally unaware of it. I had just started learning Swedish not long ago, and, just like I did before I started learning, I loved to watch Swedish movies just to hear the language. I am not and never was a movie person, and I hardly focused on the actual movie, it’s plot line and all that, I just listened to the language, relished it and tried to understand as much as I could. And one day my Dad told me there’d be a Swedish movie on the telly in the evening, and we watched it together. I have no idea what movie it was and don’t remember what was going on in it at all. I only remember that it was something quite old, historical I think, and there was a dude who was yelling at what I think was a young woman/girl, and he used this word, and it sparked my attention right away, ‘cause it sounded so lovely and the more I thought about it, the more I loved it. “Knullar…” I was so excited about this new word that for the rest of this movie, I couldn’t focus on anything else. Then I went upstairs to enjoy and savour this new found word in the privacy of my room. I wonder, if any Swede would have seen me then, sitting on my desk, happily swinging my legs and stimming/“sensorisming” away with my fingers while repeating the word “knullar” to myself, what would they have thought of me. 😀 Thousands of different ideas went through my brain as I thought what this lovely, cute-sounding word could mean. To the tactile synaesthetic bit of my brain, it looked like a very flimsy-looking, small flower with very gentle, small, kind of velvety leaves. But it sounded like kötbullar (meatballs) and tasted like grilled cheese to the gustatory synaesthetic bit of my brain, so I figured it could be some kind of dish. I knew it probably wasn’t that for real, but I really liked the idea. Bulle (plural bullar) is bun, kötbulle (plural kötbullar) is meatball, so knulle could be some kind of cheesy ball or something. You could have some food place called Knullar, Bullar & Kötbullar, I thought. LOL if only I knew…! 😂 And then I entertained myself with thinking about what exactly these knullar could be, what they’d be made of other than cheese and how they would taste.

   Every time I had my Swedish lesson, my tutor would give me time where I could ask him all sorts of Swedish questions, be it about language or culture or whatever, that was unrelated to the topic of the lesson itself. So during our first lesson after my knullar discovery, I happily asked him about this beautiful word, and was very surprised with his odd reaction. First he went totally quiet for what felt like ages, so I wondered if perhaps he doesn’t know what it is but doesn’t want to show his ignorance, but that didn’t make sense as it had happened before that he wouldn’t know something I asked him about and had no problem admitting that. So I wondered maybe I didn’t get that word right and the guy in the movie actually said something else. But it felt kind of awkward. Finally he asked me in what still felt a rather odd way, where I came across this word, so obviously I told him in a movie, and then he calmly explained to me what the word knullar, or rather knulla, as that’s the infinitive form of this word, means, namely that it means to fuck. Now that was quite a surprise! Now that I’ve known this for years it’s normal to me but then I remember being really shocked because it totally didn’t sound to me like what it meant. And while I still think it sounds quite endearing, after I learned that, it lost a lot of its initial appeal. As far as I’m aware and from what I’ve noticed, it’s only used in the sexual context, you wouldn’t use the word knulla to mean fuck as in “fuck you” or anything like that. At least I’ve only heard it used in this one context and I’m pretty sure it’s considered quite vulgar and heavy. But once I managed to get over the shock and accept the truth, I did have a good laugh at it. 

   And, speaking more interlinguistically, I think the word mishmash, which as far as I know exists in many different languages, is very fun to say. Speaking of mish- words I alsoo like the English mishap, and I seriously used to think it’s pronounced MEE-shap. But I like it still, even though it’s not. 

   What’s such word(s) for you? In any language(s)? 🙂 

Delyth & Angharad Jenkins – “Gan Bwyll Jo! / March Glas” (Take Care, Jo! / The Blue Stallion).

   Hey people! 🙂 

   For today, I want to share with you a two-piece set from the already well-known on this blog mother and daughter duo – Delyth (harp) and Angharad (fiddle) Jenkins – who are also known as D&A or DNA. While I know for sure that the second song in this set is a traditional tune and that it means The Blue Stallion in English, I’m not perfectly sure of the first one, either its origin or meaning in English. It looks like it could be their original though, and Google says that gan bwyll means take care, whereas my dictionary says it means be careful. I’m not sure which one is correct/more relevant here, so I just went with my instinct. 

Question of the day.

    How do you feel about putting pineapple on pizza? 

   My answer: 

   First of all, I’m not a huge fan of pizza. I’ll eat it, and I love a good homemade pizza, but if I’m ordering something, pizza would be very far from the first thing I’d consider ordering, especially that it was on my emetophobia no-no foods list for a long time and I’m still not perfectly comfortable eating it for that reason as well. I don’t dislike it, but I don’t really like it either and I’d have to be really hungry or something to eat it. I don’t mind pineapple on pizza though, it’s not a game changer for me. I understand why it may taste weird for some people and be an odd combination, but I just have no strong feelings about it, it’s okay with or without pineapple really. 

   How about you? 🙂 

Nadia Birkenstock – “A La Source”.

   Hi people! 🙂 

   For today, I want to share with you an original composition by German Celtic harpist Nadia Birkenstock, several of whose pieces I’ve already shared on here. Like I said, this is her original, and is not to be confused with similarly named La Source, composed by Alphonse Hasselmans, which I’ve also shared in the past, played by Silke Aichhorn. 

Question of the day.

   If you’re an introvert, what activity brings out the extrovert in you? If you’re an extrovert, what activity brings out the introvert in you? 

   My answer: 

   Well I guess there’s no activity that would make me feel properly extroverted, but apparently in some situations I do seem very much like an extrovert, and that’s in writing. One of my pen pals told me that from my writing she wouldn’t have believed that I’m an introvert. Also when I talk to people about stuff that I’m really interested or passionate about or have loads to say and get really excited when talking about it. People see me as very outgoing then and it’s not surprising for me that some think I must be really extroverted. But I just like sharing with people what I find really exciting, especially if I have no other way of letting it out. 😀 

   How about you? 🙂 

Gwyneth Glyn – “Cwlwm” (Knot).

   Today I’d like to share with you a song by Gwyneth Glyn, which is one of my favourite songs by Gwyneth Glyn. I think the only other song by her that I’ve shared on here so far is her duet with Gwilym Bowen Rhys called Galargan (Lament). Actually, at the beginning of my Welsh-language music exploration, I didn’t quite like Gwyneth Glyn. I can’t say why, I just didn’t. But now I like her music overall. I think she’s a very versatile and talented musician. The lyrics as well as the translation to this song are in the description of the video. 

Question of the day.

   What food do you consider disgusting? 

   My answer: 

   Semolina, hands down! I hate, hate, hate the texture, it has always reminded me of yucky vomit, even before my emetophobia has exacerbated properly. Also it’s so insanely bland. You can add what you want to it, and it’ll always taste the same, semolin-y way, aka not taste at all. I remember when Olek was little and we still lived in our first house so all of our family shared one, huge room, and Olek wouldn’t fall asleep without a bottle of semolina with milk, and then he needed another one very early in the morning to keep him asleep for a couple more hours or otherwise he’d threaten that he’s gonna be “died of hunger” (I don’t know how to best put it in English to capture it but he said it in a very funny way grammatically and we laugh at it to this day whenever he’s hungry 😀 ). Once he’d have his bottle, he’d suck at it and guzzle clearly very happily. Sometimes, or especially when he was older, and occasionally even now though he’s 23 and having his own business and all that, Mum would make him semolina with milk and berries for breakfast, just like people have cereal or noodles with milk. I rarely hear about people, or babies, for that matter, in Anglophone countries eating semolina but in case it’s not a common or normal thing where you are, it definitely is here. Sofi also guzzled her semolina as a baby, and I loved feeding her with her bottle, but I hated whenever any of the semolina would accidentally spill out, I just have such strong aversion to it now that even just feeling it, without tasting it, is gross. As a kid I often had a problem going to sleep at the time when my parents would normally expect me to, and I’d keep Olek awake and make him laugh and do all sorts of mischief with him or argue with him, and sometimes Mum would threaten me, more jokingly than for real, that she’ll make me a bottle of semolina too to keep me quiet. 😀 Then I went to school and it turned out that semolina was a fairly regular thing there. I still vividly remember the first time I got chicken soup with semolina for lunch at nursery, which was a total novelty for me, I’d never have thought you could make chicken soup with semolina. I really like chicken soup, but that stuff was just… ewww! It didn’t even really taste all that much like chicken soup, just pretty flavourless broth full of this vomit thing and bits of vegetables that were so small that you could just think they didn’t get enough time to get digested properly. 😀 And I just couldn’t eat it, and the sister who was on a shift in our nursery group then had a very hard time understanding it. Probably because there were no other children, at least as far as I’m aware, who’d have a problem with foods like that. If anything, some were the opposite and preferred liquid or semi-liquid or very soft foods to anything more chewy or crispy because their parents hadn’t previously introduced solid foods to them, fearing that they won’t be able to teach a blind child, especially if with coexisting disabilities, how to bite and they might choke. So she insisted that I have to eat it all, no matter how long it takes me. I did sit with that bowl of vomit for hours, but eventually she just gave up, seeing that it wasn’t very likely that I’d ever eat it whole, and probably figured out that it’s really beyond the scope of my possibilities and she finally let me move on to the main course instead. When I later told my Mum about our amazing lunch on the phone, she was surprised too, to hear about chicken soup with semolina, and although she has no problem with semolina herself, she said that this combination really must have been yuck, so I felt kind of validated. This sister never forced me to eat semolina again, but this soup was a recurrent item in our menu throughout the nursery, and then later when I moved on to the actual school, because it was the girls’ boarding school kitchen that also cooked for the nursery so our lunch food stayed the same. And of course we had to do with a lot of different staff, and none of them could understand that I just had a problem with semolina. While they of course preferred if we ate everything, most were flexible enough to understand that some people might not like such controversial things like some specific vegetables, or liver, or a type of sausage that’s like a Polish version of black pudding, which would also sometimes appear and which many people didn’t like. But semolina?! In some cases, you could just say that you feel awful after eating something, but you can’t do that with semolina, after all, it’s given to people who have tummy problems, are after a stomach surgery or a stomach bug or whatever. Speaking of tummy problems, I had a stomach bug at school a couple times and ended up in the infirmary, or as they literally called it “little hospital”. ANd the first day or two they’d always give me semolina for lunch, except it wasn’t even a broth, just a watery sort of soup, and all the nurses were very upset that I wouldn’t eat it at all and wondered why I was still so sick. Finally at some point I asked them if I could have something, anything, other than that, but they said unfortunately not at this point. Also, one of the staff in my boarding school group introduced to us a cake made of digestive biscuits layered with semolina. She liked it because according to her it was tasty, plus very easy and quick to make and low budget, so we could often make it for our birthdays. I couldn’t understand why would someone want to have semolina even in a cake. Semolina tastes even worse when it’s cold. I did have to make it a few times for my birthday though, which felt a little weird since I guess normally you’re supposed to make what you like on your birthday, but I’ve never was one to make a big deal of birthdays anyway, so I didn’t care overly and just made it for others and didn’t eat it myself. My Mum was also surprised when I told her about it and said it must be quite bland. So yeah, I really like all the other grains that I’ve tried, but semolina’s absolutely disgusting. 

   What’s such a thing for you? 🙂 

Song of the day (24th February) – Loreena McKennitt – “The Old Ways”.

   Hey people! 🙂 

   I’d like to share with you another song from Loreena McKennitt, this time her original song rather than a rendition of a poem. It comes from her album The Visit, and was inspired by one of her journeys to Ireland, more exactly to county Clare. She was amazed at the wealth of the wealth of their local culture and traditions and fell in love with it, whilst realising that, due to constant progress, this state of things probably won’t be lasting long and all these rich traditions might extinct some day. I really love the atmosphere of this song. 

Question of the day.

   What is something that drastically improved your mental health? 

   My answer: 

   Well, I could focus on several different things, as there have been many things that I’ve found helpful for my mental health over the years, some to a significant extent. But the most important one I think, it’s not something but someone. It’s Misha. Misha has helped me so much. In a way, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to form such a very strong bond with anyone as I have with Misha. This has been a very interesting experience, and also a very healing one, to feel so very strongly about someone and at the same time not experience any sort of anxiety or insecurity around such relationship, unlike what has been the case with all kinds of my closer human relationships. Well, I am scared of Misha dying and I suppose that’s quite out of proportion, but that’s an unavoidable part and risk of all relationships really. Other than that, I feel very safe in my relationship with Misha, and I want him to feel the same. I also feel kind of less lonely with Misha. I’ve never really been one to complain about loneliness, I know how to cope with your typical loneliness and it’s not much of a problem for me. But the sort of loneliness that I experience and struggle with more strongly isn’t something that being around others can help with a lot, in fact often it feels even stronger when I’m around other people because it can sometimes be fuelled by stuff like feelings of inadequacy. It’s a strong, gnawing feeling that’s really difficult to get rid of in any way, something that comes from within rather than from being alone and feeling sad or frustrated or bored in this situation. And, well, Misha hasn’t magically freed me from this, but when I look back at the time when I didn’t have him, it’s really clear that having him has made some difference in this aspect. I find Misha’s presence especially comforting at night when I’m struggling with this. He doesn’t sleep with me every night, but he will usually come of his own accord if I really really need him. His presence is also very comforting for me in dealing with these lonely feelings when I can have him close by when there are a lot of people. Perhaps because Misha doesn’t like peopling very much either, so I know he feels similarly and this makes me feel less alone and like I have someone who gets me, and someone who is, like me, though for totally different reasons, perceived as different from the rest of the individuals socialising in a given situation, so that we are both outside. Misha is outside and different because he’s a cat, so he can’t speak human, understands things differently and all that jazz, for many people from extended family he’s even weird for a cat because he’s apparently very different from all the cats they know who purr nice and loud and aren’t scared of every slight movement or something being placed somewhere else than it usually is and come obediently when you call something like pussy or kitty kitty whereas you have to call Mish Mish for Misha because that’s what we’ve taught him, and even then he’ll come when he wants, though personally I suppose the latter is what most cats do. I am outside and different because I can’t do peopling like most people expect their fellow people to be able to do it, I am blind, which makes a huge difference for a lot of people in how they see you, plus it means I am outside of a large portion of their non-verbal communication and my perception of things is quite different, just as it is the case with Misha. I can’t always have Misha close to me while peopling, even when we’re peopling at our house, because Misha obviously doesn’t care about people’s rules and won’t necessarily want to be there with me, or if he does, it’s usually for a very short time, unless there’s yummy food and people provide him with the kind of attention that he likes. But he’ll often be close to me at the start of various family gatherings, so that I can often come into the room with Misha on my shoulder, hearing his purr. It’s funny, actually, because this is the only situation when he sits on my shoulder and many people find it impressive like my grandad thinks we must have some miraculous connection if I can go around carrying him on my shoulder like that. 😀 This way, people’s attention focuses on Misha, whereas I feel calmer having him close to me. Then after a while he’ll usually sneak out to the kitchen or go up on the radiator into his basket, and then when my brain battery is low and I go to my room, he’ll always follow me and we’ll recharge together, as he tends to find all the people noise and the unwanted kind of attention especially from children quite overwhelming and needs a lot of sleep.

   When I’m having a particularly hard time due to depression, Misha can sometimes be the only thing that will motivate me to get out of bed really. I don’t know how I did it before Misha! When I’m not overly depressed, I really enjoy waking up to Misha’s sweet “Hhrrru?” Which is how he greets people. I love talking to him first thing in the morning, giving him his food and cuddling him for a while if he’s up to it. It’s really the best start for the day you could imagine. Some people are surprised that I don’t mind and even want to sleep with him and then have to let him out of my room in the morning at such insane hours as 3 AM sometimes, hardly any later than 6 AM, my Mum says it’s like having a baby. Perhaps it is, but I really don’t mind getting up and letting him out, and unlike with a baby, I can go right back to bed if I want and sleep to my brain’s content or even longer, or I can let him out without actually waking up, just on autopilot. 

   But most of all I think Misha has helped me with anxiety. Especially the more panicky/acute types of anxiety like my typical sensory anxiety aka sound/silence anxiety. It is such a relief having Misha at home in this respect. It doesn’t solve the problem completely, though I really doubt there’s anything that can always do it with 100% effectivity but Misha helps to varying extent every single time. I think this type of anxiety that I have must work similarly to fear of the dark that many young children experience, which I base on that I believe that silence and darkness are similar phenomena in a way, and that Sofi, who still deals with fear of the dark a lot even though she’s a teenager, seems to have a lot of similar experiences around it, though that could also be of course due to that we’re sisters and experience some things similarly. Anyways, while in general I’d say Sofi’s fear is thankfully milder than mine because she only experiences it at night, not in all kinds of dark conditions, and nothing else triggers it other than darkness at night, there’s one thing in which I really feel for Sofi regarding her anxiety. Misha doesn’t help her at all. In fact sometimes he even adds to her discomfort because he can be so quiet and creep her out if he’s in her room and she can’t see him. And I think that really sucks. For me, there are times when Misha can make a world of difference and allow me to fall asleep at all or alleviate my anxiety enough that I don’t need my PRN anxiety medication. I feel a lot safer when I’m at home with Misha vs just on my own. Even when he’s not directly in the same room as myself can sometimes make a glimmer of difference, knowing that he still is somewhere in the house. Sometimes when some creepy sound or a sleep paralysis episode triggers this type of anxiety for me bad enough, I have trouble with such seemingly unrelated things like being in the bathroom, whether as in in the loo, or showering. It’s really difficult to explain the connectioon and the whole sensory anxiety thing in general, but when I’m in this particular freak out mode it’s like everything seems murkily scary to me, it’s a really weird experience to describe with lots of different dimensions to it I’d say. But in such situations, having Misha with me in the bathroom, laying on the radiator while I’m showering, can help a little, or in the latter stages of the freakout phase quite a lot. We have a radio in the bathroom but it never helps half as much as Misha does when the world goes all creepy. Speaking of sleep paralysis, Misha can help that too, though of course for that to be possible, he has to be in the room with me. He has frequently gotten me out of a beginning sleep paralysis dream in the morning by frantically crying, hhrrru?’ing and scratching the door to let him out. I always thought it’s just a coincidence that he frequently happens to do that right when I’m floating away, but then I had a nap a few times during the day with Misha in my room. I don’t like taking naps because they dysregulate myy sleep cycle even further than it normally is and because they’re more likely to start or end with sleep paralysis, so I only nap if I really have to or if it just happens involuntarily while I lay on the bed for a while with Misha and we both drift off. Well, and I have happened to drift off to sleep paralysis in the middle of the day with Misha either next to me or at my feet, and every single of those times I woke up feeling Misha tickling my foot with his paw, as he sometimes does playfully. Now I don’t know whether Misha has some extreme superpower of sensing sleep paralysis in humans which even fellow humans are typically unable to figure out and think you’re just sleeping heavily, or perhaps he simply saw me wriggling my toes, as people sometimes do in their sleep, and which I do in sleep paralysis if I am able to because I discovered that it can slow down the initial floating/drifting and alleviate this sensation which I really hate, and if I wriggle them to a specific side it lets me float in a specific direction rather than being aimlessly thrown around dreamland until I reach the one and only right destination, and sometimes even the right toe move at the right moment lets me wake up. Misha, like most cats I presume, likes things that move, and he likes to make out with people’s legs whenever he’s only allowed, which is never but he never loses hope and perhaps he just thought my toe wriggling was an invitation and the tickling was some sort of foreplay. Regardless though, I’m glad that as it seems Misha is able to wake me up from this at the right moment before everything starts for good. It’s just quite shitty that he rarely is there when this is happening. 

   How about you? 🙂 

Delyth Evans – “Bugeilio’r Gwenith Gwyn” (Watching the White Wheat).

   And for today, I have a very sad, Welsh song about love, which is actually based on a true story. This version I am sharing with you is an instrumental harp rendition, from the very well-known on this blog Delyth Evans (currently Jenkins), but originally this song has lyrics. They tell the story of Ann Thomas and Will Hopcyn from Glamorganshire, who fell in love with each other, despite Ann belonged to a wealthy farming family, and Will was only a labourer. Ann’s mother really didn’t like it, so she decided that Ann would marry the sonn of a squire from the area. Will left the village of Llangynwyd where they lived. After months after Ann’s wedding, he had a dream that Ann’s husband died, but then when he came back to Ann it turned out that it was her who was dying, apparently due to a broken heart. She ended up dying in Will’s arms. Afterwards Will ended up marrying someone, but it was not a happy marriage. The song was collected by Maria Jane Williams. 

Song of the day (22nd February – “Travelle – “Nobody Else”.

   Hey people! 🙂 

   Time for yet another song from the Norwegian musician Travelle, aka Kristoffer Björntvedt, Taka rollguten etc. This time round, it’s his debut single, at least debut under this particular stage name. I read that it was quite a success in America, which I found surprising given that his later Travelle music doesn’t seem to enjoy a lot of attention outside Norway, which is quite a pity imo. While his later releases as Travelle were created largely single-handedly by him, this song was a collaborative effort of his and an Australian, London-based artist called Tonino Speciale, plus a vocalist though I don’t know who she is. Again, as with the song Diving which I shared a couple months ago, it shows that it’s not him who is (or at least not solely) behind the lyrics of this song, as he’s quite characteristical in this respect and I like it because I really like when someone can treat their lyrics with a bit of distance, yet at the same time very personally. But I still quite like these lyrics here because while they’re about a relationship, which is something most people write their songs about and something I can’t really overly relate to, it’s not very cliche, and I think the song is nice overall.

   Oh, and actually, speaking of Travelle, an interesting thing is that last month my Mum has also become a fan of his music! I totally didn’t see it coming! 😀 One night when my Dad had a particularly loud episode of sleep apnea she was sleeping on a matress in my room, and I had my blog playlist from this year playing on Spotify, and since last month I posted his song “Cuba” on here it was on that playlist as well, and it played at some point during the night and then in the morning my Mum was like: “You had suchh a super cool song playing here at night, I wish I knew what it was!” So I sent her that playlist so she could find what song it was that she liked so much, and to my surprise, it turned out to be Travelle’s “Cuba”. Actually perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised because my Mum likes a lot of electronic music which she listens to when she goes running, in fact she most likely listens more to this genre than I do because for me folk rules obviously, but somehow I woouldn’t have thought that this is the shade of electronic music that my Mum would also be into. Yet, she ended up liking all of Travelle’s music, so that’s really cool! 🙂 She was bummed though when I told her that it’s not likely that he’ll be doing more music as Travelle, as he hasn’t in quite a while and is now focusing on yet another, quite different shade of electronic music which I totally don’t feel and I’m absolutely sure neither would my Mum lol, but which clearly gets a lot more love from people inn general. 😀 

Loreena McKennitt – “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (The Beautiful Lady Without Pity).

   Hey people! 🙂 

   I’ve already shared with you several musical interpretations of various poems sung by Loreena McKennitt, and today I’d like to share with you another one, this time written by John Keats. It’s a ballad about a knight who meets a beautiful elfin lady and falls in love with her, really enjoying their time together, but then she abandons him, causing him great pain. The title for this peace was taken from another, earlier poem, written in French by Alain Chartier. 

Llio Rhydderch – “Gorweddwch Eich Hun – Sleep Your Slumber”.

   Hiya people! 🙂 

   Today I have a lovely Welsh triple harp piece for you from Llio Rhydderch. I think the English translation of the title isn’t meant to be literal, or perhaps it’s not even meant to be a translation of the title but simply a subtitle or something like that, because as far as I know gorwedd in Welsh means to lie, as in to lie down, whereas eich hun means yourself, in a formal way. So I would translate it as something like Lay [Yourself] Down or something similar. But Sleep Your SLumber sounds a lot better, and it gives you an idea about it anyway. 

Jack Vreeswijk – “Norsk Blues” (Norwegian Blues).

   Hi all you people! 🙂 

   Today, let’s listen to Jack Vreeswijk. Like many children of famous people, I suppose Jack is also most well-known for being the son of Cornelis Vreeswijk and for covering a lot of his music. However, Jack is definitely not only that, because he writes his ownn music as well. And this is one of his self-penned songs. I’ve been really liking it ever since my affair with the Norwegian language has started, even though of course the song is in Swedish, but it’s indirectly about Norway, as you’ll find out. 

   I was able to Translate it, but in this song he’s sailing on a ship and I don’t even really have a particularly extensive vocabulary of marine-related vocabulary in my native language, let alone Swedish or English, so I just didn’t get some things. In particular, there’s the verse where he goes into the cafeteria and gets himself something. I suppose most people would expect it to be some kind of food or drink, at least that was my thinking, except there’s the word “brigg” which apparently means something to do with ships in Swedish, I don’t even clearly know what and haven’t figured out what its equivalent in English is for sure. And then a couple lines below there’s also “rigg” which is apparently also something from the same field. 

   At some point he states literally that “my ticket is simple/easy” which doesn’t make sense to me, I’m assuming maybe it can also mean cheap or something like that? 

   There’s also a line that literally says: “What deep inside the forest…” My first thought seeing this phrase in that context was that perhaps it’s some sort of quirky Swedish expression equivalent to the English “what on Earth” or “what in the world” etc. Though I’ve never come across it anywhere else. It seems like Google doesn’t know of anyone using the phrase either, so I translated it just literally, even though it makes little sense to me, the most reasonable explanation of that I have is that he came up with the whole cruise idea in a forest. 😀 Maybe it’s just some poetic metaphor which my brain just can’t convert. 😀 

   Then he uses a phrase which in Swedish is “så kan det gå”. It would literally mean “So it can go” but, while I’m not perfectly sure of that, it seems to me that it’s more like a way of saying something along the lines of “That’s how it is”, “That’s life”. I could be wrong though. 

   I may be also wrong in other places without even realising it, that’s always possible. 

   If, like me, you’re ignorant and have never heard of Hurtigrutten before hearing this song, I’ll tell you that it’s the Norwegian coastal transporting service. 

    From Tromsø to Stavanger I have a Ticket
And this is all I have at this moment
I remember I heard someone say
Take your hat and stick
And so I came aboard on this ship somehow
Now I am walking here on the deck on seasick legs
And I am asking myself frantically how I came up with this idea
But the fact remains that Hurtigrutten is making headway
With me aboard and ask how I am feeling
And the storm she is roaring and the waves are hitting
And my brain feels as if it was made of macadam
My ticket is simple [cheap?] and now I only ask myself
What deep inside the forest could have caused
Me to leave you for good
I go to the cafeteria and get myself some (… [?])
And brood on what my future will be like
Stavanger in the middle of winter and a useless economy
Then sooner or later you end up on a (… [?])
You could have asked me to stay but that’s how it goes [?]
Now you’re sitting in Tromsø and are probably wondering
If I have left you for good

Question of the day.

   How’s your day been? 

   My answer: 

   Well, for me it’s only started not so long ago. I woke up an hour-ish ago (I still seem to be quite undersleeped but it’s not as spectacularly undersleeped anymore). I stayed in bed and read my book for a while. It’s just me and Misha at home because my parents went to a funeral of a man who lived in our village back when we lived in the country, he died last Sunday. Kids have a winter break now in our bit of the country, so Sofi has invited our cousin and today he’s going home so Sofi and him went together with my parents so they’ll drop him home afterwards as he lives in the same village. And Olek’s at work of course. So I fed Misha (not that no one had fed him earlier, I’m sure he’d already had like two breakfasts but there’s never enough and he cried as if he was being starved for a week) and had my own breakfast. Misha disappeared somewhere while I was still eating so I don’t know where he’s now, and after I write this post I’ll be doing emails as I have some people to write to for my Dad as part of my job and then I’ll catch up on my own private emails as I haven’t responded to a few of my penfriends for some time now due to being migraine-y and undersleeped. I think it’s going to be just an average, chilled day, as I have no particular huge plans or anything. 

   How about you? 🙂 

Child of Mind – “Sedated”.

   Hiya people! 🙂 

   Today I’m coming to you with another song by Declan Galbraith aka Child of Mind, from his concert in Shenzhen. I have to say I think this is one of his best Child of Mind songs, which also means that I think it’s one of his best songs in general in his career because I consider his Child of Mind music a lot better than his earlier albums. 

Question of the day.

   How do you people feel about yet another name-y question? 

   This time round, let’s say you’re having boy/girl twins. What are you naming them? 

   My answer: 

   I think today I’d name the boy Jacenty Filip, and the girl Helena Felicja. Jacenty and Helena are both vintage names, though Helena is a lot more popular and Jacenty feels like it has become totally forgotten in favour of Jacek and no one names their kids Jacenty these days, but if my intuition’s any good I feel that chances are it may change, because Jacek’s going down every year and I see more and more people saying how it’s quite dated, with its peak having been around 60’s, meanwhile more and more parents are interested in vintage names and not just those that were popular when their grandparents were born but also earlier. Jacenty would likely go by Jacek in casual situations anyway, as I guess that has been the case for all Jacentys. Helena is in top 20 for babies right now, which wouold normally bother me endlessly and likely discourage me from using such a name in the first name spot, but I love Helena way too much and for way too long to care, plus I don’t really know all that many little Helenas in real life, in fact there’s just one in our neighbourhood and Sofi says she doesn’t come across many Helenas among her peers either so I guess our particular area isn’t as in love with it as some other parts of the country must be. And their middle names both start with F, though each has a different feel to it. Filip is extremely common among babies, young children, and even teenagers. I used to be really fond of this name as a teenager (same with a lot more rare Filipina for a girl) but there are Filips everywhere – various schools I went to, Sofi’s class and school, all sorts of birth announcements that I see online, it feels like every young boy who isn’t a Jakub is a Filip 😀 and most importantly, my cousin’s kid is also a Filip. – And my Mum says it’s a name for a cat, not for a human. I don’t get her reasoning, and I always say that you shouldn’t care overly what your family thinks when choosing a baby name, but it just adds to all the reasons why I can no longer think about Filip as a first name for a kid, not even an imaginary one. 😀 But I think I could still use it in the middle name spot, especially next to the oh so unusual Jacenty. Felicja meanwhile, like I said in my quadruplet naming post, is a classic, yet underused, definitely vintage name, but not as obscurely vintage as Jacenty. It’s been really growing on me and can’t stop, but I’d feel hesitant about using it as a first name because I’m not a fan of the nickname Fela, which for most people I guess is the default nickname for Felicja, and Polish people just HAVE to nickname, even when your name is as simple as Anna. 

   HOw about your twins? 🙂 

Llio Rhydderch – “Beth Yw’r Haf I Mi (Llawenydd A Fu)” (What is Summer To Me (Bygone Joy).

   Hiya people! 🙂 

   Today I’d like to share with you a delightfully long piece with quite a sentimental feel to it, by the amazing Welsh triple harpist Llio Rhydderch whose music I’ve shared on here many times before. I believe it’s her original composition, though I’m not sure if I’ve translated its title correctly, more exactly whether “a fu” does actually mean bygone. I think it’s a really beautiful piece, as all Llio’s music.