Question of the day.

What’s the strangest/scariest thing you’ve seen in the middle of the night?

My answer:

Not really seen it but heard it, and not just in the middle of the night but for a good few months, but it started in the middle of the night. We still lived in our previous house in the countryside where I had a room in the attic. One night in summer I woke up, I think it wasn’t that scary strange thing that woke me up initially, if I remember correctly I was feeling unwell physically or something like that. In any case, I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep. Suddenly I heard a weird, faint but clear noise. I still sort of remember what it sounded like but can’t even describe it in a good way, yet I remember that the first time I heard it it reminded me of something like the noise that a sheep or a goat would make, only a lot fainter and shorter and kinda raspy. There was no way there were any such animals in our area so I found this really bizarre and a little creepy because it quite clearly sounded like it came from somewhere in my room. Since it didn’t repeat for some time and I couldn’t come up with a good idea for what it could be, I decided I must have imagined it, but I couldn’t settle back to sleep. And then I heard it again. And again, after a while. And again. And a few more times. Sometimes hearing a sound to which I can’t attribute a source can really trigger my sensory anxiety, and I think it can be potentially scary for a lot of people even when they don’t have the sensory anxiety problem. In order to be able to fall back to sleep and not freak out completely I tried to think that there certainly must be some normal, prosaic reason for why I was hearing this, I just simply didn’t know what it was. I finally managed to fall asleep, but to my fear and frustration I could still hear it. I asked my Mum what could it be, perhaps there’s something in my room, but she had no idea. She came up there, but couldn’t hear anything, so she said I must’ve been imagining it at night like I thought. Only I could still hear it at regular intervals throughout the day. And the next day, and for the rest of the summer. Eventually I sort of got used to my invisible, creepy roommate, invading my little Bibiel haven, but it was really annoying, and when I was home alone, when it was really quiet or the night time, it would still creep me out, even just the idea that no one else hears it. So what does that mean? Am I going crazy? My Mum tried hearing out for it multiple times ’cause I kept complaining about it but the malicious thing never made the noise when she was in the room, or if it did, she wouldn’t hear it because we were talking or some other noises were masking it. When I mentioned it she laughed that I must be smoking something and that it’s not fair that I won’t share with the rest of the family. 😀 Dad often had a habit of taking a nap in my room, ’cause it was the quietest, which I utterly hated because he snores, as Sofi once said, like a million of dinosaurs. Still, I was hoping that one time when he comes, before he falls asleep, or after he wakes up, he’ll hear it. Thing is, my Dad falls asleep immediately, doesn’t even need five minutes.

The summer holidays had finished and the new school year had started, so I went to school and wasn’t home for the next at least two weeks. I hoped that by the time I come back, my roommate would get bored not having anyone in there to creep out and would magically disappear just as he appeared, or maybe Mum would find him. No such luck. I remember that when I came home I guess just for a weekend, I went upstairs to go to sleep, and when I was already falling asleep, I heard it again. And that was the case for the next few months, I don’t know how long. Finally, at some point Mum did hear it. She was relaxing in my room, and I was there too, and at some point we both heard it and she was all like: “Gosh, what was that?!” Then she kept looking around the room to locate the thing, which wasn’t easy, because it wasn’t very loud and only made the noise once in a while. Finally, she found it. Under a bean bag, there lay Sofi’s old toy phone, and right when she discovered it, it pleaded guilty by making that noise again. Its battery was dying, so that was why it sounded so weird. Sofi was no longer interested in it, so the phone went to trash, which I felt evil satisfaction about. 😀

And how about you? 🙂

My favourite place.

Today, I decided to do a post based on a writing prompt that I got from the PaperBlanks app which is the following:

“One place I always feel happy is…”

I don’t know if happy as such (I’ve generally got a bit of a dilemma with the word happy), but there is definitely a place which cann often make me feel happier, because it is a place where I feel safe and where I know I can be myself and do whatever I feel like doing, and which my brain associates with happy things generally. This place is my room. It’s a place where I always recharge after peopling, where I go to when I want to be alone, where i do most things in fact that are important to me, from writing to learning to working to sleeping to daydreaming. I have a real connection with it and lots of good memories, even though I’ve only been living for four years in here.

I have no pics to accompany this post, but I thought I’d describe my room a little for you, so that you could have a bit of an idea.

Both me and my siblings live upstairs. When you go up here, the first door to the left is the bathroom, and then, next to it, there’s my room. One thing that I don’t like about it is that the walls here are rather thin so that I always hear people in the bathroom, which is particularly annoying when someone is showering as there is a whole lot of noise.

It has a green, flowery wallpaper and is quite girly in terms of the design I’d say. I have a double bed – which used to be Sofi’s because Sofi is taller than me and it was clear years ago that she was going to end up taller than me so Mum wanted to get her a bed that would serve her for years, but I don’t even remember now why it ended up in my room, anyway we switched beds with Sofi and I love double beds so I’m happy with that. – Sofi now doesn’t sleep on the sofa that she got from my room anyway, because she has like two rooms, one inside of the other, and recently she has arranged her bedroom in the smaller one, on the matress, it feels more atmospheric for her and she actually has a more comfy bedroom now. Anyway, I’ve got the double bed, which means I have the space for Misha’s bed on top of it as well, and all my many pillows and other things, and can toss and turn as much as I wish, which I tend to do a lot. Misha’s bed is in the far right corner of my bed – it is a basket –

Right next to Misha’s basket, there is my bedside cabinet. There is also my power strip that is fixed to it, which is more practical because this way the cables don’t get tangled too easily and I can use my devices more freely when I’m in bed which I do a lot. My bedside cabinet has three drawers, where I have some of my clothes and things like PJ’s, meds, cosmetics, important documents that I use regularly, Misha’s treats etc. etc. it’s real messy in there. On the cabinet, there is another, more fancy cabinet where some of my gem stones reside, as well as my gem stone figurines, and some other knick-knacks that I have and that just look representative in there because this cabinet has a glass so people can see what’s in there and often get very hyper about my stones if they see them for the first time. Others are in a sort of cassette that my grandad made for me for this purpose, or in boxes. On the sides of this cabinet there are little shelves and I often also put some things there, but what is there pretty much permanently are some saintly statues that I have, a little picture of Our Lady of Ostra Brama, a statue of st. Hyacinth, and of st. Michael Archangel, and I have my rosary on there as well, while on the other shelf there are cards that I got from people over the last couple of years. As for religious stuff there is also a picture of The Last Super on the wall above my bed that I got for my First Communion. Up on the gem stone cabinet hangs my Bluetooth speaker, which I now always use at night to play some music or radio from my iPhone, which is so much better than listening on the computer which I used to be doing for years and it was okay, but my current computer is quite loud, and it’s not particularly pleasant at night really to sleep in so much hum, it feels like in some sort of a laboratory or something. 😀 On the bedside cabinet I’ll typically also have my water bottle there, right now there are hyacinths that I got for my birthday and a mug and a pot of tea.

Right next to the bedside cabinet there is my desk with an office chair. On and under the desk there is the computer (I have a desktop one, Braille-Sense, and a salt lamp, just to make it look nice, I think salt lamps are really cool. There is also a hand-made box that I got from Sofi where I keep some things that I need to have in close proximity but don’t want them necessarily to cluter the desk space. There’s also my Bluetooth keyboard for the iPhone although I use the Braille-Sense to navigate the iPhone screen far more often, and my Bluetooth headphones are there as well. There are also drawers where I keep all sorts of work documentation of my Dad’s or other papers, tons of Braille paper sheets which I don’t really use because I don’t use a Brailler all that much anymore for anything but Braille paper is expensive so it would be a shame to throw it away especially that it does come in handy sometimes when I still do need to write something, or sometimes Sofi uses it for something when she needs a thicker paper, some stationery supplies and ready-made Christmas cards that I got from my Mum when I started sending out cards to people but before I came up with MIMRA, I usually use these when I send cards or something to people outside of MIMRA, loads of cables, pen drives, SD cards, and currently also a lot of candy that I got for my birthday.

To the left of the desk, there is a window. I have both curtains and external blinds, which can be quite helpful in the summer, because my window is west-facing and my room heats up super quickly even when it isn’t hot but just very sunny outside, and it also helps when it’s very windy. On the windowsill is Misha’s observation point, you can see a lot of interesting things from here. When he gets weary of the outside world, he can go to sleep in a little basket that is standing there.

A brand new addition to my room is a big armchair which is standing between the window and the cupboards, which my Mum got somewhere last week because she liked how it looked, but didn’t really know where to put it, and eventually decided it would fit my room best. Previously I used to have a very old armchair that used to belong to my grandma decades ago. It was mostly used by people like my Swedish or English or math tutor when they used to come here, or anyone who would be visiting. Because I no longer have tutors or anything like that, and don’t have much of a need for using the armchair myself, I’m perfectly happy sitting on my bed or on the desk chair, its purpose will probably be mostly decorative, as it apparently looks really well, and my Mum likes to sit in here when she comes to my room to vent about life, which she does regularly. 😀

Then I have cupboards where there are all the other of my gem stones, another energy strip which is fixed on the inside, which I use for charging devices that I either don’t need to charge very regularly or don’t use all the time. There is also my OCR scanner, different documents of mine, some only archival like from schools, some that are actually useful sometimes. Up on the cupboards are my books in standard print, the ones that were able to fit in my room. I don’t really have a good place for storing books in here, and there isn’t really a good place for a proper bookshelf apparently either, so most of my books are on Sofi’s bookshelves. The books that I have in standard print are mostly either Swedish children’s books that I got in Stockholm at Junibacken, or books about names, and some books with fairytales and myths from all around the world – – and my Polish-Swedish and Swedish-Polish dictionary, and some other Swedish and even Norwegian books that my Mum got in a second-hand clothing shop (yes, you read that right, that’s where my Swedish tutor found that you can find ridiculously cheap Scandinavian books and my Mum had a look and found loads of them that no one was interested in, only she never could figure out which were Swedish and which Norwegian so I’ve got a lot of both, and I’ve never read the Norwegian ones or even scanned them in full, even though I think if I set my mind to it, I could, it just sounds like a lot of hassle, and I’m not motivated enough).

To the left, there is a wardrobe where there are all my clothes, and on top of it are some cartboard boxes where Misha likes to go to sleep, particularly when he’s somehow overwhelmed and doesn’t want anyone to see him. There is also myy old Brailler up there.

What is a place that you feel happy, or just safe in, and that you like? 🙂

Question of the day.

Which of these describes the average state of your home/room/place of residence? (no judgment attached to these, not from me anyway).

a) very neat and clean, with minimal stuff

b) reasonably neat and clean, but with plenty of stuff c) clean but messy

d) just messy

e) other – pls expand.

My answer:

Definitely C right now, and most of the time. I like it this way though. I am not a perfectionist and I like to be messy if it doesn’t disturb my life in any way and if I am a creator of the mess ’cause otherwise it’s annoying obviously ’cause when someone else makes a mess it’s much harder to get inside their brain and figure out where they could put something I need right now, So, well, my room is just like me. 😀 It’s fairly clean though because living in the dirt doesn’t seem as appealing as living in the mess, lus my Mum is an OCD (colloquially speaking, but wouldn’t be surprised if seriously too) so everything has to be clean, otherwise she’s unsettled and life is pointless. When someone was coming to me though, like my maths tutor or my Swedish teacher, my room was always at least B, but it was my Mum’s work.

How about your space? 🙂