Welcome to Skottustelpa's page of fun and games. Skottustelpa is amazing, beautiful and incredibly talented. Everyone loves Skottustelpa. Go, Skottustelpa, go!
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| Skottustelpa, The Continuing Saga Welcome to Skottustelpa's page of fun and games. Skottustelpa is amazing, beautiful and incredibly talented. Everyone loves Skottustelpa. Go, Skottustelpa, go! |
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Monday, October 31, 2005 I am lazy. Listening to Tappi Tikarass' albun Miranda. My favorite album forever. I have not listened to this music in a long while because my EP is in Iceland, in the care of my dear, dear nefiew. I think Bjork was about 14 when she sang vocals in this band. And when I was 14 and Bjork a LOT older ... hehehe ... and they had started making CD's, I found Miranda in Kolaportid. It was in the 90's and I was a late born Pippi Longstocking Punk.  Replace the braids with short spiky hair and you have me in aproximetly 14 and 15 yres old. So when the others were listening to Milli Vanilli and Bros, and Sabrina (singing Boys, boys, boys), I was listening to Tappi Tikarass.  The reason I can listen to this now is because I got the music from my good friends who share my enthousiasm for this album and many more. One of them learned how to swim in this pool:  You can have such beautiful experiences if you grow up in Iceland. I know I chose to breed in Denmark but I have to say, I now realize what a loss it is for my child to not grow up so close to this kind of nature. posted by Skotta | 2:53 PM | Friday, October 28, 2005 Some days it is nice to take a day off being pregnant. Some days it is really nice being pregnant. Today was one of those days. We know a nice lady, actually she is family, and she happens to be in a position to borrow a U/S scanner. So today, me, AB and his mother, went to see her and the four of us had a lovely time admireing the baby inside my belly. Rumors have it that I am carrying a boy. This scanning was not able to confirm ... so it is indeed going to be a surprise when the baby comes out. We could not find a trace of former evidence. We have a name for him if it is a boy. We have no name for her if it is a girl. We got plenty of pictures. We gave them all to AB's mom, but kept one to ourselves. She will probably look at the pictures every evening, if I know her right. This was such a big gift for me, being able to let her so close to her first grandchild. When she had AB there were no scannings so it was a first for her. She beamed. I took a photo of the three of them looking at the screen. The joy and amazement on their faces! The baby is really fine, good heartbeat and loads of action. It tossed and turned and kicked, and sucked on it's thumb. It had a good strong heartbeat, nice little toes and fingers. Very beautiful head and brain. Unbelievable how well developed such a little thing is already. It is still surreal that all this is happening inside of me without me noticing a bit. Soon enough ... Active little thing. Might as well have known. With my genes. posted by Skotta | 11:15 PM | Wednesday, October 26, 2005 I've had an average day. Half productive, half procrastinating. What I did was go down town to see what there is of maternety clothes at H&M. None to my taste, I'm afraid. My budget doesn't allow me to go out and buy something that will be too small next week. By the rate I am growing I will be wearing a tent for the last couple of months. My skills at the sewing machine are none. Fortunately, AB's mother has offered her assistance in the matter. I might go out tomorrow and see if I can't find some materials she can use for making skirts. H&M will get a shipment of maternaty tights in about a week or two. I will be there. With that, and the tops I already have but will seem a bit tight ... I should be okay for a while. Unless winter gets the better of me ... I'll wear double tights. I am growing so big now it's not even funny. My 15 week baby is just a tiny bit of it as I have a 30 week belly. I have only gained 3.5 lbs (1.6 kilos) and to me that is a miracle. I go to the gym once a week and think about it once a week and then to the pregnant ladies class once a week. I love it. It makes me feel so good about myself. I feel that I am doing something good for my body (strengthening back) and my baby (that will have a bigger placenta to feed from and become a bigger and stronger baby). The funny part about going to the gym when pregnant is that I don't get stronger and do heavier weights, or longer time on the step maschine ... I get heavier every day and more out of breath ... so I stay on level one all the time. No competing element whatsoever in there. Just a bigger belly. I don't gain more than the baby and the fibroids are weighing and that is a joy. You see, I had plenty of fat to burn before I got prego.  Wish I could tell you more but such is the life of this pregnant lady. I do nothing these days, not even the dishes. posted by Skotta | 8:04 PM | Denmark has a Nazi party. America has Lamb and Lynx. Just to remind us all why this is not OK, I will link you to a fine woman who passed away today, 92 yrs old. She is called The Woman Who Changed a Nation and The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement. Meet Rosa Parks. posted by Skotta | 5:28 AM | Monday, October 24, 2005 Allmost 50.000 people went marching downtown Reykjavik today. More people went marching in other towns in Iceland. I want to remind my readers that there are only 300.000 Icelanders in the world. That's damned good show up for a rally. Here is a link which shows a photo. I am still proud. One of the bloggers I read regularly, Maggabest (IS), wrote that today she felt normal, not like a penguin in a palm tree, because 45.000 people marched in the name of equal rights. Kind of like being gay in a Gay Pride march. Although I wasn't marching and do not flaunt my feminism as I should, I am none the less a child of the generation of Icelandic women that voted for the Womens Party. Just growing up in a country and age where there was an active womens party in parlement has had a huge impact on my identity as a woman. So I identify with Maggabest when she say's she feels normal, her being a woman who has experienced the unjustice in her workplace where she was paid the same as 10 yrs her senior with a "lesser job". It gives me great joy to see that finally, after 30 years and very little change, women are speaking up, not again - because we certanly have been trying to tell the world that we are still getting paid less, but louder and hopefully with an impact that will result in some changes. Anyways. Back to more trivial things. Like my glucose test. No diabetes. It tasted like very, very, sweet lemonade and I have had heartburn for the rest of the day, but hey, who cares. I don't have diabetes. I have to stop pissing sugar or they'll keep sending me to those tests. I guess some women are just sweeter than others. I sat there for two hours before they pricked my ear to take the blood test. I wanted to take a nap but was told by the labratorian that I was not allowed to sleep. She said I should sit still though and relax. Yeah. Has anyone ever seen me sit still for two hours? Unless in front of the internet, of course ... Wonderful, wonderful, AB sat there with me for all that time after getting up with me at ungodly hours. Needless to say, I suspect he is one of the men I wrote about in my last post, who would totally love to have a loooong pregnancy leave. You know, a real man. I have a feeling he'd carry this baby if he could. Probably not so exited about the idea of giving birth, although I haven't asked. We are both really into this pregnancy thing although we take a day off once in a while. Then we decide not to be pregnant and use our brains for other things. It is getting more and more difficult for me though. Here is an extract from a letter I wrote today to my girl in NY. This will probably help explain why it is getting more difficult for me: Just before I got prego I bought a pair of pants. A week ago I put the pants on and thought to myself "great, these will last me at least a month more, still space in them". Today I put them on and could just button them up, with AB wondering if one could squeeze the baby by wearing to tight clothes. Not implying that the pants were to tight, just noticing that they were soon going to be. I giggled that I thought I could wear those for another month but it seemed like it wasn't going to happen. Then I sat down on the sofa. The pants burst open on the seam over the belly. 
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Icelandic women are on strike today. I am madly homesick and I want to be with my fellow women at probably the biggest rally held in Iceland. Here is the thing. Icelandic women earn only 64% of what Icelandic men are earning today. Therefor they decided to stop working at 2:08 PM as that would be the time they had earned their wages if they got "man money". This is not the first time Icelandic women have striked. See this article that recalls the strike in 1975. It is a lovely article. I am really proud of women for standing up for equal rights. Until men are earning less than us we can't expect them to move an inch. There are a precious few males who find the matter urgent. Probably the same precious few males who truly appreciate their right to pregnancy leave. I am proud of the group of women who symbolically sealed some of the bigger work places last night. Those were women who couldn't help get dissappointed when they graduated from college to find that the work field paid their male classmates more per hour than they got. To name a few companies they sealed; All of the biggest political parties (including those in government), City Hall, Parlament, Ministry of Social Affairs, the biggest banks of Iceland, Supreme Court, Ministry of Finance, The National Bank of Iceland, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Business and Economics, Ministry of Environment and Ecology, our famous landmark Hallgrimskirkja, and Ministry of Foreign affairs. I am proud of coming from a country that has the oldest known democracy in the world and has voted the first female presidend.  What an amazing role model. What I am not so proud of is the amazing fact that men are still getting paid more than women! That is so back arsed, mideval, fucked up, and totally absurd. And I am appalled over the fact that there is a 36% difference. That is a hell of a lot. Now men, if there is any of you still reading me, try and calculate how much 36% of your wages is, and then minus that from your pay check. You'd never work for that little. Last but not least. I am totally proud of my sister who is a boss woman at the Fire Brigades in Iceland. She stopped working and all her female collegues, at 2:08 PM today and went downtown to march with her women. I don't know what other women in my family are doing today but I strongly suspect it is something similar. Very, very proud and I wish I was there with them. With pots and pans. Making enough noise to be heard. posted by Skotta | 3:53 PM | Thursday, October 20, 2005 Just a line before I do the dishes ... I wish I had a TV so I could blog about some TV shows like Bachelor or something. All the other bloggers I read have TV and write about those shows. Then all their readers can write comments on the posts with their opinions on the shows. All I can do on my page is think outloud. Which is shauned in certain finer blogging circles. A good blogger has popular taste, an opinion, and TV. I must work on it. posted by Skotta | 6:10 PM | Tuesday, October 18, 2005 On the other hand ... If I really am developing diabetes, should I then not eat the rest of my chocolate cake I have in the fridge before they tell me I can't? Oh, the mind of an addict. posted by Skotta | 4:44 PM | Listen. I know how some of you think I am way to open about my life here but hey, then go read some science pages or something. Cause here goes ... First time at the midwife's. All is good except some minor sugar thing. I will probably get a good jucy post out of the glucose experience. The big news are that we got to hear the heartbeat. I have to admit, I cried. And AB was there right next to me teary eyed. We were so moved, it was undescribable. Now I don't know why this experience was bigger for me than the three US scannings I have had. I didn't cry seeing the baby on a screen. But hearing first my heartbeat through the maschine, and then the baby's, hearing the difference, just made it so real for me that there was a baby in there. And not only a baby but a baby with a very strong heartbeat, very much alive and well. I love this experience and will probably love the memory of this for the rest of my life. posted by Skotta | 4:25 PM | Sunday, October 16, 2005 Just a short post ... I went to the Danish museum of modern art, Arken, today. Saw Chagall. And some modern art. It was cool. So was the beach where we sat afterwards. Very romantic and in love-ish. We ate hotdogs At Susan's (Hos Susan) on the way home. Totally reccommend the joint. Well it's a hot dog stand ... I do loads of other fun stuff these days ... like the dishes and laundry. AB took the drying part of the dishes tonight. I am SO regretting having had a smart answer when he wanted to give me a dishwasher as a moving in present last year. I answered the offer: "You only give women electric appliances if they are to be used in the bedroom". "So what do you give women?" asks the poor man. "Flowers and jewlery." I reply. I have gotten flowers. I haven't gotten jewlery but I have gotten knocked up. I still have to do the dishes. I should have my brain cells checked. posted by Skotta | 10:40 PM | Saturday, October 15, 2005 The crown heir is on the way ... Princess Mary is giving birth. Labor has started. I am so happy because it means I have my appointment with the midwife on Tuesday. It would have sucked to have to postpone because of a royal birth. Yeah, I know. It is totally cool to share a midwife with a coming queen. Now that this birth is over the midwife can concentrate on me. How big is my ego now? posted by Skotta | 1:13 AM | Friday, October 14, 2005 Cultur Night is a yearly fenomena where everything related to culture (and shopping) is open until midnight. All galleries and museums are open, as are all cultural institutes. It is a great time for advertisement if you want to advertise, lets say ... your country! On the North Atlantic Peer here in Copenhagen there is a big house called the Culture House. This building houses Greenlands embassy, the Faroe Island embassy, the Icelandic Embassy, and a beautiful restaurant with fresh food where the ingredience all comes from those incredably clean countries. Now, Greenland and Faroe Islands were on to the jig ... there are so many amazing new galleries around this place so they knew the area would be packed with people. They of course utilized the evening to keep the public entertained with art exhibits and music from those countries. I was there and it was beautiful and interesting. Iceland was closed. This just made me so sad for my country. Not only do they seem unaware of the opertunity to show off some of our great Icelandic talents but they also appear to be uninterested in coworking when the whole house is open ... It just felt so weird to see this beautiful old building lit up all over except for in the Icelandic embassy. That big glass door was closed and inside all was dark. Sad. Sad, sad. Town was lively and the night was beautiful. The weather is so amazing. It was brisk and clear. Starry. Lovely. posted by Skotta | 10:54 PM | Thursday, October 13, 2005 One of my most favorite people in the world has a birthday today. She doesn't think much of it but probably doesn't realize how many around her appreciate each and every one of the years she has lived. Life just did her a big favor and like life's favors sometimes do, it has caused quite some turmoil. I have no worries. Life loves this girl and takes good care of her. To her I say; dearest, turmoil is no more than just that. One looses focus a bit while regaining balance. Balance always comes back if you work for it. Love you lots.  Okay, I won't sing. posted by Skotta | 1:12 PM | Tuesday, October 11, 2005 When your neighbours play music with such heavy base that your washing maschine, dryer and a good portion of The Cardigans don't block it out, what do you do? AB's reaction when I told him of the citizenship laws ... "call your embassy, see if they don't know of a loop hole". There's my man for you, already having faith in the Icelandic mafia connections. We have plenty of time so I guess it's in the think tank now. I am home having a resting day. That means doing laundry, vacum cleaning, and some dishes when I run out of glasses to pour milk in. I did make a sign for our door. It is probably my 5th attempt and I am not happy with it. You know how it is when you have seen a cool sign on the door on your friends house and you get really inspired but you can't come up with anything as cool as theirs? And every time you come home and see your door next to the neighbours with his very normal sign pimped up with a Slavic name (unless you live in a house and/or have the sign situation covered), you think: "Damn, have to get that sign up ..." And while we are at signs, here is a link you might like (for fun and games). posted by Skotta | 4:59 PM | Monday, October 10, 2005 I see I need to clarify: If we choose to let the baby hold it's birthright, the Icelandic citizenship, it won't get a Danish one. Ergo, no such thing as a dual. Although one of the countries allows it, while the other one doesn't there is no such thing as a dual. See my problem? The Danes don't allow it. They will deny a Danish born baby it's citizenship if it goes for it's birthright in Iceland. The positive part is that the baby will automatically hold it's birthright, the Icelandic citizenship, until it is 18 yrs of age. If it so decides, it can go to Iceland and pick up it's passport at any time. I don't know how this hangs together, maybe the Danish government keeps an eye out for possible half-breed traitors. posted by Skotta | 4:32 PM | Sunday, October 09, 2005 And for the next exciting debate in the Icelandic/Danish household: Citizenship. I have been surfing the internet this evening to see if I could find out how the rules are on citizenship here in DK. As far as I can see, the rules are as follows: In Iceland, the rule is that if one parent or more are Icelandic, the baby is Icelandic, no matter where it is born in the world. Dual citizenship is totally cool, they incourage that if anything. In Denmark, the rule is that if the father or mother are Danish the baby is Danish. If the baby's parents are not married, and if only the father is Danish, the baby only gets Danish citizenship if born in the Kingdom. No such thing as dual citizenship. Hmmmm. Better get som help from milk and cookies with this one. Okay, my babies, wherever born in the world and whomever I decide to have them with, get an Icelandic citizenship. And a Danish one if they so wish it. AB's babies, only get one if he breeds with another Dane, or makes sure I am in Denmark while in labour. And no such thing as being Icelandic at the same time, nono. It's a hard choice. I have a feeling this one is going to hurt. After all, Denmark is governed by a nationalistic party known widely for it's members racistic remarks ... and they have an army. Iceland, on the other hand is run by capitalistic mafia pigs but they don't have an army. Only the American army. Which is trying to leave but the mafia seems to be able to persuade them to linger. In Denmark, being Icelandic is like being from the Dominican Republic and living in the US. Tolerated but not the finest breed. In Iceland, being a foreigner, from whatever country (exept maybe Denmark) is COOL. Both countries are beautifu and have fantastic oppertunities (although in Denmark those are most often reserved for Danes and other Arian nations), and social systems that are to die for. No two week pregnancy leaves in this part of the world, oh, no, 8 months on full pay!! And sometimes then some. All bets are on, who do you think is going to win this one? posted by Skotta | 11:20 PM | I haven't been blogging because I have been busy. And I have had nothing to say. I do nothing these days except being pregnant. Which is lovely. And while we are on my favorite topic ... I have to share what has freaked me out the most about the whole baby business. Stem cells. We have been offered, just like the rest of the people in Denmark who make babies these years, to have stem cells taken from the baby's umbilical cord. This is a private service offered by as many as 3 different firms in Denmark. The hospital has nothing to do with it. This would mean for us that the firm of our choice is contacted while I am giving birth (I assume) and someone would arrive and take some stuff from the umbilical cord.  Looks like fruit candy, doesn't it? Let's see why we might opt for having the umbilical cord messed with (in other words, having a stranger walk in while I still have my legs spread and my privates the size of a canyon): If the baby gets bone cancer the cells can be used to grow bone marrow. Same with lukemia, lymphoma and several inherited blood diseases. Maybe more. In the future, more diseases might be curable with the use of stem cells. We don't know. Today they can't really say. But they offer you to take a sample and freeze it in case they might find out other ways to use them. Another word for it is cloning. You basically take cells from your baby to be able to clone at a later date. More info on the Freaquently Asked Questions page at http://stemcells.nih.gov/index.asp We got this offer about the same time we got offered the scanning I did on Friday. That was a test offered to all pregnant women in DK to check for Downs Syndrom and some other disabilities. I was told that the odds for my age group was around 1:640 and if my test results showed 1:300 or less they would offer further tests. My numbers came out great, 1:8000. It's like playing the lottery. The weird thing is that with this test, like the stem cell business, it is kind of not really accurate. It is not bulletproof. You can end up in a risk group but have a healthy baby. Or you can get numbers like mine and get a severely disabled baby anyway. What it really does is keep women in terror and tension while waiting for the bloody result! I have a feeling that one day every hospital will take a stem cell sample from every life born child and freeze it as a routine proceidure. Until then it is nothing but an ethical question left for me to face. And it was really like; Congrats your pregnant, here, take this stack of brochures on breast feeding, becoming a parent, becoming a father, becoming a grandparent, diaper ads, and these two on some tests you might want to discuss, and the stem cell offers. Me and AB were still getting over the high of seeing two blue lines on the test and then suddenly sitting in our car discussing what we would do if we found out I was in a risk group. Should we abort? It seemed so absurd that we soon came to our senses and decided to leave all further questions lie, like: Are we bad parents if we don't save a sample of our baby for further cloning? This question still lies there, along with all the books on pregnancy and childbirth. The whole thing just made us jittery and scared. So now we just enjoy being pregnant and leave it at that. posted by Skotta | 9:46 PM | Monday, October 03, 2005 I had a dinner party last night. My guests were mostly film makers and we represented 4 nationalities. Discussions were lively. The only time the table went silent was when inhaling the food. Lovely to make food for peopole who shout out "What beautiful colors!" when the food is brought to the table. It was a feast for the senses. I was stimulated by the company and discussions so it was a very exciting evening for me. I realize how starved I have been ... oh, my love of intellect! Not really. But it was fun. Fun filling my brain with other things than baby names and fibroids. And doing the dishes. I love when my brain is put to work and I am reminded that I am smart and funny. I wonder why I am not doing anything with the experience and education I have accumulated over the years? Maybe because so far I have no idea what to do with it except entertain guests. There you have it. The perfect housewife. Anyways. Reminding myself that I was once a culturally and politically aware angry woman who travelled the world and lived all over the place has been good for me. It was a good evening for me. How could it not be when the evening's topics were developmental psychology, American politics and culture, Danish culture, Iceland and being pregnant? After all, these are my favorite topics. posted by Skotta | 5:58 PM | |
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