Påvirket tilstand

Lessee here, had a glass of wine, sho I'm a wee bit fuzzy... had a fabulous evening on the town along with two lovely friends from grad school (you know who you are...). Just wanted to get a quick update in before I go to bed.

I had trouble picking up the stitches around the body of the Whisper Cardigan on Sunday. Which is to say that I was too cocky to bother to count how many stitches I had picked up. When I got about 2 inches into the 3-inch ribbing band I realized that I probably had too few. I counted and I was almost 100 stitches short! Aghast at my knitting hubris, I ripped it all out and hid it in a drawer while I lick my wounds.

To console myself I started knitting the plainest possible shawl, a garter stitch triangle in gray Rauma Alpakka Inca. For some ridiculous reason, I had to get a pattern as I was sure I wasn't going to be able to do it. The pattern is as follows:

• Cast on 2 stitches.
• Knit every row, increasing one stitch at the next to the last stitch of each row.
• Continue until it's big enough.
• Cast off.

For this I paid 40 crowns? (actually I initially bought the booklet for some of the other patterns) I know there are dozens (hundreds?) of simple shawl patterns available for free on the internet, including the very popular Karius and Baktus shawls, but somehow I needed it written out in a format that was familiar to me (like a Raumagarn pattern). It's irritating to be so dense, but screwing up the Whisper Cardigan so royally really has me questioning my knitting acumen.

I also couldn't resist the big 40% off sale on Garnstudio yarns. It seemed foolish not to stock up if they had anything decent, so I squeezed in a visit to Tjorven on Monday, since I had to go to campus anyway. I bought a motherlode of two yarns (14 skeins of each, since I didn't have a pattern in mind for either).

Merino Super Fine (DK weight) in "Brownmix":

I didn't realize that the Merino was actually superwash. It has a much better texture than the Karisma that I used back in January, though, so I think this will work better.

Silke-Tweed (sport weight) in "Gray Green":

Tuesday I had a day of ridiculous meetings with a professor from China who wants to establish closer contact and exchange with the University of Oslo. It was frustrating for all sorts of reasons, but mostly because yet again someone is proposing to study Nordic literature in English. The de-Norwegianification of Ibsen through the Ibsen Studies all-English MA program here in Oslo is bad enough already...

Today I spent much of the day with my Mom sightseeing (first tried to write site-seeing) in Oslo. We had lunch at the yummy Café Celsius, tried to go to the Museum for Contemporary Art (it was closed in preparation for the opening of a new exhibit tomorrow), went to the Architecture Museum to see the Snøhetta exhibition, went to the Opera House to climb around, walked most of Karl Johan, then stopped into Husfliden to check out the Spælsau yarns there.

I discovered much to my amazement that Rauma has always had a spælsau knitting yarn--it's only recently that I've become aware of the wonders of spælsau (a very hairy Norwegian breed of sheep), and I though one could only buy weaving yarn (single ply). I'm so excited! I want to use spælsau for everything now, as it apparently wears like iron, and really isn't all that much more expensive. Plus the colors they had were lovely. I didn't buy any but was sorely tempted. Had I not bought all that Garnstudio stuff I probably would have. Sorry all you soft yarn people out there. I like mine hard as nails!

After that I dropped my Mom off at the ferry and went up to campus to work for a couple of hours (on the Volvo Lastvagnar article--good progress there!) before meeting my old buddies for dinner. What a good day, and how nice to come home to a sleeping son and groggy husband (KE has a nasty cold).

Bonus tidbit: on the way from Café Tullin back toward the palace I walked by a medical supply store that looked like the kind of place that might sell glass specimen jars for my buttons!

Urolig

I woke up with a start from a terrible dream. In real life our neighbors across the street have had two loose dogs since we moved in. In the past couple of weeks they have also acquired what appears to be a pit bull. They are also allowing this dog to run totally loose. I dreamed--of course--that it mauled E. Horrible and terrifying. It made me feel like we can't leave this place soon enough.

But on the other hand, it feels so surreal that we will be leaving in a month! I have been having flashes of emotion--not sure whether to call them panic, anticipation, excitement, or what. I think that at least on some level I've wanted to move to Europe (and Norway in particular) for good since I was a teenager. It never appeared possible to stay for anything but limited stints, even after I married a Norwegian citizen, oddly enough. I always dismissed the thought as impossible. And now, suddenly with this postdoctoral position, it's happening! I am emigrating. I don't know why, in all the flurry of the job search and preparing for the move this fact has never struck me before. My identity will shift to that of an expatriate, rather than just a sojourner abroad.

I guess I've felt all along that my primary motivation for the move has been A) KE's desire to return home, and B) what I perceive of as a better society for E to grow up in. I know that I can do okay in Norway, since I've lived there for what amounts to a little over five years, spread out over many stays varying from eight weeks to two years. I guess I really haven't had time to think about this in terms of my own trajectory in life. My feeling this week has been an intense set of gratitude for the opportunity (along with the panic). I don't know if that means that I've really wanted this for myself all along (but somehow didn't/couldn't acknowledge it) or whether my pragmatic nature just worked out an attitude shift. If I'm really, really, really honest, I think when KE and I first started discussing moving to Norway, and even after I agreed to the move, I still sort of secretly harbored a hope that we would decide not to when the time came. It's funny to look back at that.

I guess I feel that my future here in this town, this house, this job, would be really pretty bleak. I have been happy here, but only in the company of my immediate family--husband, son, mother. The satisfaction and challenges I have received from my job have been fleeting and could be found in a different work setting. And I have been terribly, terribly lonely here in terms of developing friendships. I seem to go in cycles. If I look back at my moves and the social networks that I develop, it appears that every other major move produces good social networks:

1. left home for college -- humiliatingly awkward attempts, no lasting friendships from that time
2. moved to go to graduate school -- developed real, lasting friendships who are still my closest and most beloved friends
3. Fulbright to Norway and then a year of teaching -- again humiliatingly awkward
4. postdoc. in Finland -- sort of in between -- one good friend and some good professional contacts (a temporary thing, so it doesn't really count)
5. job in Arizona -- a wonderful network of friends (in a place I hated and a horrible job)
(5a. sabbatical in Norway -- this doesn't really count either since I met KE within the first week, and subsequently spent nearly all my time developing a relationship with him. I did strengthen some relationships with people I knew from before, though)
6. job in Oregon -- again humiliatingly awkward

Case in point on my inability to relate: The other night I saw the most ridiculous thing on Fox TV's new FBI drama "Fringe" (a show that attempts to be cool and freaky like "The X-Files" and fails miserably). The lead character went to Germany to interview a prisoner incarcerated in--get this--Wissenschaft Prison. Yeah right! It's almost as bad as the absurd episode of "The X-Files" that took place in Norway and featured a certain "Mr. Trondheim." Here's a screen shot to prove it:

So, I got all excited and thought, "Hey this is something my colleagues in German will find amusing, so I'll email it to all of them." Silence. Only one person even mentioned it out of the 10 colleagues I said hello to yesterday. Oh well, I still find it hilarious.