The Rene Times

Because I am so in love with Annika Norlin. It’s so hard not to.

Not only is she from my hometown here in Sweden, Östersund, but she has succeeded in making the best pop album in Swedish history with Säkert!. If you are not willing to learn Swedish to fully understand her brilliance, then I am not sure we can be friends. I mean Hello Saferide is great, but I think her Swedish lyrics are much more poetic.

Allt Som Är Ditt, a song about rape with a very powerful video, still gives me chills when she screams “Dom jävlarna ska skjutas” (Those bastards will be shot).

And her lovely first single Vi Kommer Att Dö Samtidigt which is, I think, about how people that are best friends, and really in love will end up dying together, so it really doesn’t matter that you are in love with someone much older or younger. She draws a parallel with an old dog that dies and a couple days later the dogs companion died. So heartbreaking and lovely. The video is hilarious for you that don’t speak Swedish so check it out!

But even if you don’t have the energy to learn this vast, popular language that is Swedish you can still enjoy her lovely english songs.

Much love Annika! Puss på dig!

Not that Canadian preschools are bad, but you pay a lot of money in Canada for less than 7 hours / week for a pretty run down preschool that was completely void of an outside play area. No trees, no grass, nothing. They did wheel out a portable sandbox and some tricycles, but still. It was a depressing sight.

Once inside the place was alright. It looked pretty run down. The preschool was inside a church. But the teachers were nice and all the kids loved Dexter. Enid really enjoyed playing there as well. On his 2nd or 3rd day there he got to do his first “show & tell”, something that they do not do in Sweden. During “Show & Tell” kids get to bring something from home and show the class. Dexter sort of lacked the english skills but he was really happy to show off his Thomas train and Postman Pat books anyway.

I have made it no secret that I am deathly afraid of flying, but our trip over the Atlantic went far better than expected. We were tired but optimistic. Dexter and Enid were only really cranky the last half hour of the long flight over the ocean. It was in total 4 flights, 3 stopovers and 24 hours of travelling but we made it safe and sound. Here are some photos of that trip!

I’m gonna blog about Brad. Brad was my first “real” boyfriend, and he is also a familiar face from Anders<3Maria. We met in our highschool's drama club. I was an actress and he was a backstage tech guy. Our very intense relationship ended traumatically with a car accident one chilly October day in 1994. He fell asleep at the wheel driving home to BC from a funeral in Saskatchewan. There was all the usual drama and bullshit involved in that break-up.

"The Brad you knew is dead!"

"Fuck you Brad! What about ME!"

Well I find that funny now in restrospect. We were kids.

He's now a C5 quadriplegic that is also one of the greatest climbers in the world. We are also really good friends. He came to visit me in Sweden in September and here are some of the photos from that trip.

Here we are collecting our feet on one of Stockholm’s many islands.

Oh look! A ramp! Thank you city of Stockholm!

Fuck you city of Stockholm! We ended up going around the huge damn building (the entire island). The cobblestone gave Brad the worst damn spasms as well.

Fuck you cobblestone!

Guess what’s going on here?

Here we are just leaving the hellish island.

The next day we spent indoors at NK which is much more wheelchair friendly. We got our hair cut and did some shoppin’.

Brad and his sister on the hightech rollingstairs.

And that’s all I got on that whole trip. 4 of these pictures are swiped from Brad. It was really nice to see him again. I only wish Stockholm had been more accessible. Apparently it’s a far cry better than London, but still.

My son did this portrait of me! Isn’t he brilliant! He just turned 3! He wrote mummy but he doesn’t know the alphabet so it came out like “lol”. Funny funny!