Frk Johansens adventures in home improvement

Soup IV -The Revenge of the (Hot) Sauce

November 1, 2016November 1, 2016Frk JohansenLeave a comment

Welcome back to more of my series on cooking for people that can’t stand around forever and cook gourmet meals cause we’ll faint and not be able to eat anything while unconscious. The Saga of Soupengrim Bedrider continues on of course in what we all agree is a portal in to Hell (no really, you can take the train from Oslo Central Station):

hereinnorwaywegothell_9f8f4415d42badc7dfbb5c0a66738cdc — Hell is frozen over!

As promised in my tomato soup post last week I’m making a meatier soup today. I’ve used chicken in mine but you can use any kind of meat or fish you like in this one, just remember to swap out the chicken stock/fond if you use fish. You can also make it with no meat at all, just vegetables if you want it to be vegetarian. This is a bit of a quicky version of a thai inspired soup and I’ve probably left out some of the things that belongs in a real one. It takes about four minutes to cook and makes a pretty large portion and is plenty for two people. I’m also using frozen vegetables in this one – no need to defrost them first.

Coconut Lime Noodle Soup

1 tin of coconut milk (400 ml)
1 lime
2 table spoons of Chicken fond or a stock cube
Water (about half a coconut milk tin)
Coconut oil (or any other oil that tolerates heat well)
A handful of fresh coriander (you can absolutely use dried, but watch how much you use if you’re a bit sensitive to it)
1 Chicken breast cut into strips
1 portion Rice noodles
2 cups Frozen vegetable mix (wok mixes work well here)
2 cloves of Garlic
1 Chili (I use the ordinary milder red chili)
1 piece of Ginger (about half a thumb, more if you want it hotter)
A splash of Hot sauce (if you want it even hotter)
Two table spoons of Soy sauce
A couple of spring onions cut into slices

Ingredients

My Ol’ Grater

Start by boiling water in your kettle if you have one, if not on the stove. Pour the boiling water on your noodles (in a pot please, not directly on the kitchen counter) and set them aside to cook through. Finely chop the chili and garlic (use a garlic press if you want) and grate the ginger. If you want less heat, remove the seeds from the chili before chopping it. Add some oil to a tall sided frying pan or wok (you can use a big pot if your frying pan is too low sided) and quickly stir fry the frozen vegetables. Add the garlic, chili and ginger, and then the chicken strips and cook for a minute or two.

Pro tip: Look for old kitchen equipment you need in charity shops like my excellent grater that works better than many a modern one. I have also found high quality cast iron pans that needed minimal attention to be useful again.

Pour in the tin of coconut milk and rinse the tin with cold water and add the rinse water as well. Bring it to a boil. Add the soy sauce, chicken fond and hot sauce (if you want it). Remember to taste before adding too much stuff, it’s better to add stuff gradually than end up with inedible food. You might need some salt but wait until you have added the soy sauce and stock to decide. Add the chopped coriander (if you don’t like coriander you can leave it out) and let the soup simmer for a minute or so.

Your noodles should be finished by now, so drain and rinse in cold water. Add them to your soup and let them get heated through. Squeeze your lime into the soup just before before serving and add the spring onions for crunch. Eat!

This soup is great by itself and you probably don’t need anything on the side to go with it but you should do what you like best. I usually eat it from a soup cup with chopsticks and drink the rest but feel free to be a person with actual table manners and use a spoon 🙂

Soup 3 – Soup of the Red

October 28, 2016Frk Johansen1 Comment

The Soupening continues here in the hellish landscape of Oslo, Norway. How we manage to do anything here is beyond me. We are closing in fast on Halloween now so a bit of gore is to be expected – therefore todays theme is Blood Red Tomato Soup. Oh, mmmm tasty and an excellent substitute for fake blood if you are in need of that, just remember to let it cool down first. Or not if you are using it on someone else, mwaha hahahahaaa haa a. Ok then, let’s get to the:

Simple (and quick or slow) Tomato Soup:

1 Onion (I used a red one but any onion works)
2 Celery stalks
1 Carrot
a bit of olive oil (about two table spoons)
2 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of tomato puree
Two tins of tomatoes (I like the cherry tomato ones but use what you have and like)
Water
Chicken fond (2 tablespoons, optional) or a stock cube (also optional)
A handful of chopped Oregano (fresh) or a palm full if dry
A handful of chopped Basil (fresh) same as above with dry
Salt
Pepper
a pinch of sugar
You can also add any kind of spicier stuff you like with your soup. Chili flakes or smoked paprika is tasty.

Chop the vegetables as fine as you can. Try to make them semi even, but dont worry too much. They cook a bit quicker if they are fine, but it really doesn’t matter as long as you don’t burn anything. The reason chefs make everything roughly the same size is that it cooks evenly, and the smaller it is the shorter it takes to cook it. If you have a food processor you can use it to chop up vegetables for you if using a knife is difficult. I use mine for any bulk project, like the massive amount of sauerkraut I made the other week that took me all of four minutes to do all together. Crush the garlic cloves and slice roughly (just smack them with something or use a garlic press).

Ingredients!

Chopped ingredients!

Pro tip: Unless you have very large or very small hands the palm of your hand holds just about a table spoon of any dry ingredient (like herbs). Very useful and time and dishes saving 🙂

Pour a bit of oil in the soup skillet, toss in the vegetables and let them simmer on a medium heat until they soften. This takes a couple of minutes and you have to stir occasionally so they don’t burn. Sit on something if you get tired or shaky. I have a little step ladder that is far to low but I use it anyway. Put in a tablespoon or two of tomato puree and let it simmer for a minute or two to get the rawness out- then pour in the tinned tomatoes and add the herbs. Add some water as well, I usually rinse out the tomato cans to get the leftover tomato juice so about half a tin each? A bit of salt and pepper- and a pinch of sugar. Bring to a boil and then turn the heat down low and let the soup simmer under a lid as long as you like.

Pro tip: Sugar, like black pepper is a flavour enhancer in smaller amounts. If your tomato dish needs something its usually a pinch or two of sugar. You don’t need much, don’t overdo it or you’ll end up with tomato jam.

Tomatoes tend to get sweeter and meatier the longer they cook, although the rawness and freshness of letting it cook around 10-20 minutes can also be good. I like them both. Do what your stomach tells you to. You can go sit down and let the soup cook itself so set a timer on your phone if you are liable to forget you have something on the stove.

giphy5 — I have no memory of this soup Gandalf, never mind where we are!

Now its time to put the soup in the food processor, blender or use a handheld mixer if you want it smooth, or just smash up the tomatoes a bit more with a fork or whatever (potato mashers work) and eat it lumpy. Remember to taste after smashing to see if you need more salt and pepper or something. It will probably need a bit more salt.

Todays soup took me just about five minutes to put together and that included taking pictures. I managed to make coffee in my french press while I sauteed the vegetables and cleaned up the little mess I made. So, very quick to make.

It’s also versatile. The soup is fairly thick and can easily be used as a tomato base when you are making any kind of tomato sauce for pasta dishes. You might have noticed there are three tins of tomatoes in the picture (and no tomato pure ’cause I forgot to take it out for picture day). That’s because I’m making a large lasagne next week and need tomato sauce for it.

I can’t eat Parmesan because it’s cow’s milk, but if you have leftover old Parmesan that has been sitting a while in your fridge getting hard around the edges put it in the leftover soup (in bits, hard edges and all) and let it melt. It takes a while to melt but becomes delicious pasta sauce and is great served with meatballs for instance. I use Manchego (sheeps milk) cheese as a substitute which tastes great but doesn’t get quite the right texture. Freeze in portions and you have instant pasta sauce whenever you want.

Serving suggestions:

Add some macaroni. Not too much though, if you still want it to be soup and not sauce. For us spoonies its probably best if you cook the pasta separately and chuck it in just before you eat so it doesn’t end up sticking to the bottom of the soup skillet when you can’t manage to stir it any more. Happened to me you ask?
You can put some cream in your soup, or serve with a dollop of sour cream.
Us Norwegians serve some soups like tomato and spinach with wedges of semi-hardboiled eggs. Try it, it’s tasty.
A little drizzle of good olive oil on top and some fresh bread.
Heat it up with the chili/hot sauce/mexican spices of your choice and serve with avocado and tortilla chips.
What you like in or with your soup, I’m not a dictator. Unfortunately. I think I’d be brilliant at it.

Next time I think I’m gonna do something with meat or fish in it, the soups up til now have all been possible to make fully vegetarian/vegan so it’s time to do something a bit more proteinous.

An anniversary of sorts

October 26, 2016October 26, 2016Frk Johansen6 Comments

NOR Høst — Høst – Bendik Riis, 1946 – ©Riis, Bendik/BONO – Owner/photo: Nasjonalmuseet

26. October – Not the fun kind of anniversary, the serious kind. It’s been a year since my brain haemorrhage. This year has been strange to say the least. It’s been marked by emotional ups and downs, and a turn for the worse in my M.E. It’s been a short year in many ways, time seems to shwosh by these days and I’m stuck here inside not getting to be a part of it much.

It’s also a month and a half more than eight years since i first got M.E. I have the same story as a lot of us, getting a viral infection and just not getting better again. Except I did for a while and then I overdid it massively, got new infections and crashed again to a much worse version than I ever had before. I’m on the severe side now, before the brain haemorrhage I was just tipping over moderate towards severe.

I know how M.E. works now, and I did a year ago so the absolute unexpectedness of something new happening was a massive shock to the system. I didn’t actually think it was all that bad although I realised I needed help and called my mom and then an ambulance. It took many months for me to realise that the reason they drove me in with the sirens on was not because of traffic like they told me, but because they thought I was having a stroke or bleeding out and needed me to get in fast enough to start treatment.

When it turned out it wasn’t a stroke I figured they would send me home the next day. Turns out they take unexpected events in the brain department pretty seriously in 40 year old women and they kept me in hospital for over a week. I came home the day before I turned 41.

I didn’t notice massive problems at first, and some of the ones I have now are difficult to separate from M.E. problems. No matter what, I was massively lucky in position and size of the bleed. My eyesight has deteriorated quite a bit, I had to get new glasses and I’m not certain it had stabilised when I got them. I think I should take another eye test soon. I have some problems with my fine motor skills. I don’t always manage to hit what I think I am and things like typing is sometimes difficult (I touch type and learned to do it without looking down). My memory is bad, but that’s a symptom of M.E. so I’m not sure that is a consequence of the bleed. I have some anxiety issues that developed from this, but I think mostly it’s natural to get scared from something so serious so I try not to beat myself up over it.

Now this sounds like I have a lot of complaints, but I’ll tell you something. I’m not unhappy. I wish I could do everything I want to of course and I have shitty days quite often, but there are positive things happening in my little life as well. I’ve taken the scary jump to talk to some new people every day and even made a few new friends I hope. I’m thankful for those people every single day, they make me feel like fighting and laughing and making jokes again.

I’ve started up a few hobbies again. I knit and draw and colour in. I’m trying to write a bit, I have some story ideas. It’s slow going, but I hope I’m getting somewhere. I’m reading again. I do this blogging thing which is also a bit scary since traffic is picking up. My soup series seems to be a hit, and I hope to do some more cooking stuff. I used to be a chef before my knees decided to give up on me and I’m trying to come up with more food that is quick, simple and tasty but also nutritious.

Anyway, I’m doing ok although I’m not well. I’m doing my best to entertain myself from the crushing boredom of being housebound and unable to be social in real life. I sometimes get scared it’s going to get worse, or that I’m getting another bleed and that isn’t much fun but somehow I manage to shake myself out of it every time. I try to stay positive – not always succeeding but as long as I do my best I think I can be proud of that. I’m pretty emotional this week, I didn’t think it would be this hard to reach the one year mark but I’m still here and still trucking on.

Making new habits – getting better at being effective at what I can do

October 23, 2016October 24, 2016Frk JohansenLeave a comment

I’ve talked bit about habits before and how I use them to preserve energy. A few years ago I found a tumblr called Unfuck Your Habitat (UFyH) and that started changing how I approached housework. I used to be really messy, and would clean and tidy up in a panicked frenzy when someone was coming to visit. Naturally that meant I hated every second of it.

It’s a lot of work changing habits like these, it has taken me about a couple of years to get to the point I’m at now where I have a home that is pretty much always – if not super clean – at least tidy. It feels good to have gotten this far being as sick as I am.

So what sort of routines have I created for myself? Well the rules of UFyH are pretty simple; put it away not down, laundry has three steps – wash, dry, put it away dammit, everything has to have a place to live. Most importantly the system emphasises working within your limits. I’ve not documented the paring down of my excess stuff since most of that happened in the middle of the renovation of my living room and kitchen, but trust me I got rid of a lot of stuff I never used.

The routines I have now is as follows: Keep the kitchen and bathroom spotless by doing a little bit every time I’m in there. I wipe down counters and sinks and put stuff away pretty much on automatic now and I think that I might use about 10 minutes or so a day keeping things clean. I had to get a new dishwasher for my new kitchen and bought a narrow (45 cm) one because a full size one wouldn’t fit in the new layout. Best decision ever! It’s more than enough space for one person, and has a very handy short program that I often use when the machine isn’t full. Not filling things up to the brim makes it easier to empty again strangely enough 😏

giphy3

About a decade ago I was an apprentice in a restaurant kitchen, and pretty much the first lesson I got was to keep your workstation clean. Don’t know why I stopped doing it ’cause it turns out it’s a lot easier to cook when I do it now. We separate out food leftovers in green bags Oslo (they turn it into bio fuel) so I keep the (smallish) bucket I use for it on the counter while I prepare food and have less steps to go to get rid of vegetable peel and eggshells etc. Packaging gets tossed in the sink first and sorted later. Most of it is plastic and gets recycled and some of that needs to be rinsed before going into its blue bag (blue and green bags gets separated out by a giant robot named Bagsy and goes to making new stuff. The leftover garbage gets burned and is used for heating homes, like mine). My bins are under the sink so its a short distance.

giphy9 — This goes in there, that in here and we’ve saved the world!

I’ve also gone back to preparing all the ingredients before I start cooking (mise en place) – it saves a lot of energy since you never have to hurry to finish chopping something up or finding something you need. And as always – there is no shame in using frozen and already prepared ingredients. If you have a food processer of some kind using it as often as you can does save your energy.

giphy7 — Cooking is easy, all you need is a horse a cow and a goat.

Laundry gets the same treatment. I thought I had to get a narrow top loaded machine for my tiny bathroom (a narrow frontloader will fit I found out later) and had no room for a tumble dryer. Hanging laundry can be really heavy work, but I tend to run smaller loads these days so I manage to get it done. When I can tho, I’m getting a combination washer/dryer so I can just skip the hanging up all together and go straight to putting it away dammit.

giphy8 — This is where this belongs, and this is where that belongs

My mom comes in to change my sheets and mop the floors for me and do other heavy stuff, but I manage to stay on top of most of my chores even if it gets a bit dusty in here sometimes. I have though about getting a robot vacuum cleaner but my google skills has failed me a bit on finding one that will work well in a small apartment with a lot of walls and furniture in the way. If anyone has any suggestions I’ll be grateful.

giphy6 — Step aside peasants, I’m coming through here

I hope this didn’t come across as too splainy, I’ve re written this post a few times and still think it could be better. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask ( I might take a little time to answer tho, I haven’t slept that much lately and it feels like I might be able to now :))

Soup 2 – 2 Soup 2 Serious

October 13, 2016Frk JohansenLeave a comment

So on to the next soup in Soup Season – The Soupening. Soup season lasts until spring here in Norway, and that might be as late as May if there is a lot of snow (not happened for a long time, climate change is real people). I’ll probably not write down recipes for soup for the next six months tho.

giphy1

Cauliflower Soup

1 average sized cauliflower
Olive oil
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic (crushed)
1 large potato (or 2 small)
1/2 leek (use the white part) or 1 biggish spring onion
1 tin of Coconut milk (400 ml)
1 liter Chicken stock (or vegetable stock if you want)
Salt and pepper
A bit of lemon juice or some white wine vinegar
Spring onion and chili pepper for garnish and crunch

Chop the vegetables. This soup needs a blender so don’t worry about getting things even or anything. Put some oil in your skillet (you can use butter if you like) and sweat the vegetables till they soften a bit, but do not brown. Pour over stock and coconut milk. You can use ordinary cows milk here if you are not sensitive to it, but it works pretty darn well with coconut milk.

Vegetables!

Chopped vegetables!

Pro tip: chop up all the stuff you need before you start cooking. Do this even if you have steps to a recipe, it makes it easier and less stressful to add things when you need them.

Simmer the soup on a lowish setting until the vegetables are soft (about 20-30 minutes, you might want to set a timer so you don’t forget it). Blitz the soup in a blender or food processor or with hand held blender until smooth. Taste the soup and check if you need more salt and pepper or anything else (you might need some acidity in your soup if it is a bit tame).

As usual you should serve with the stuff you like. Croutons are great in a soup like this, you can serve with sandwiches or just some good bread for dipping. I made some gluten free oat bread today (from a ready made mix) and will have a couple of slices with “oboy I can’t believe it’s not butter” on it and also some sliced spring onions and raw chili pepper on top for a bit of crunch and heat.

I’m all for buying ready made sides so you don’t have to spend more time standing up than necessary if you are a spoonie. For everyone else, croutons for instance are really easy to make with some stale bread they just take some time. This ended up being quite a lot of soup, and I’ll freeze several portions for later and as always, soups like this are really useful for other things like casseroles as well.

My bullet journal is an imperfect mess. I love it anyway

October 11, 2016Frk Johansen2 Comments

You know, I’ve seen a few articles and blog posts about perfectly laid out bullet journals with beautiful calligraphy and artistically done pages. You know the ones. These articles make it seem like you have to do it perfectly to even have one, but in my opinion that misses the point of a bullet journal completely. The journal is supposed to be yours, not a competition on who writes and draws the prettiest. It’s also meant to be useful. It’s a practical tool for every day use. I use mine to keep track pretty much everything – meaning my earlier loose notes “systems” are gone forever, and I have everything I need in one portable place.

You might ask why a chronically ill housebound person needs a bullet journal in the first place. Well – I have memory problems and I use mine to make notes of what I’ve done or seen or read. I have lists of questions to ask my doctors. I write down what prescriptions I need refilling. I write down important phone conversations. I have a summary page for each month that I write down things that happened in the world, and to me personally.

And as everyone else I have administrative stuff to get through – I have to change my phone company, call insurance, write someone a birthday card. I have medical appointments, someone is visiting me, there are builders coming and the heating company is turning of all the hot water for a day to fix something gone wrong.

I have a habit tracker to see patterns so I can simplify my life better. I track the weather and have a box each day to track medical symptoms and pain. That part is a bit complicated at the moment, I’m trying to see if I can find triggers for certain things that keeps happening. I’ll simplify it again when I figure it out.

I use an unlined moleskine journal for now, but next time I’m getting a dot matrix one to make some things easier to do (like write straight) and my lines a little less wobbly. In the moleskine journals the pens I like to use also seem to bleed through the paper a bit too easily so any recommendations for better journals would be great.

Messier layout

Even messier layout

I colour and doodle on my pages. Other people do not. Some journals, like the basic starter journal on bulletjournal.com does not but it makes me happy to add colour. YMMV. I’m not the best artist but the doodles that take me a couple of minutes makes my journal colourful and fun to me. I use “ruined” pages for notes and make them useful anyway. I write down shopping lists and ideas on half used pages.

It took a few months to find the best layout for my day to day pages, and now I really like them. At the end of the year I’ll have a physical reminder of what happened, and with my memory problems that makes a big difference. I can go back and check when something happened, what was agreed to in a phone conversation and when I sent in some paperwork to whoever.

I make a doodle page for each month. I’m not brilliant at drawing stuff, I have to look at what other people do and copy them. I use a pencil and trace with a pen after, and still some things turns out pretty bad. I dont mind at all, I just put some colour on it and have a laugh. I also make doodles on the day pages. Maybe I saw a cat through the window, or read about ants.

Most importantly, this is a system that works for me precisely because it’s so adaptable. It might not work for you at all, or it might need a completely different layout than mine to be functional. You might need a full page for a day if you have lots of stuff to do, you might need less. Before I tried the system for myself I figured it was overhyped but as it turned out it was exactly what I needed.

Sorry about the pictures by the way. I’m not much of an photographer either as it turns out.

It’s finally soup season!

October 4, 2016Frk Johansen6 Comments

It’s October and fall and soup season! For us spoonies (heh) this is the best season for cooking in my opinion. There is a lot of soups and stews that are easy and quick to make. Soups are also easy on a digestive system that sometimes has trouble keeping up. You can make a biggish portion that you can freeze and have for later, and also use as sauce in other food like casseroles.

Some of my favourite simple soups: Cauliflower, tomato, broccoli, leek and potato.

Which leads to my first recipe in what I hope is a little series:

Mushroom soup:

600 g mushrooms (whatever you like, in the pictures there are brown button mushrooms and funnel chanterelles) sliced
1 red onion – chopped
2 cloves of garlic – sliced
A handful of thyme
1 litre chicken stock (or vegetable if you prefer)
5 dl cashew milk (I’m allergic to cows milk, but you can absolutely use ordinary milk or any other substitute you like)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Flat leaf parsley and spring onion to decorate and add some crunch

Slice the mushrooms,and finely chop the red onion. If this is difficult for you can absolutely use a food processor for chopping or just chop the onions a bit bigger. Pull the leafs of the thyme stalks and slice the garlic cloves. Pour some olive oil in a hot skillet and start cooking the chopped vegetables. This takes a couple of minutes, until the onions are softened. Add a pinch of salt and pepper (all of this takes about five minutes).

Ingredients!

Chopped ingredients!

Add the chicken stock and milk and bring up to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and go sit down and do something nice. If you are prone to forget you have something on the stove put an alarm on your phone for about half an hour to an hour.

Taste your soup. If it needs more salt and pepper add some, if not you can eat! I served mine with some flat leaf parsley and sliced spring onion for a bit of crunch. If you like thicker soup you can blitz about half of it in a blender or something, or you can add any thickening you like (cornflour, arrowroot*).

Serve with anything else you like, bread, croutons, sandwiches. Værsågod!

*Note that freezing the soup with thickening means it probably will separate after it’s reheated.

Aftermath – a hangover of the M.E variety

September 30, 2016Frk JohansenLeave a comment

It’s been a few days since the brilliant #MillionsMissing protest. The aftereffects for me after something as adrenaline inducing as this is being “wired but tired”. Real rest becomes even more difficult, my brain and body works on high gear for days and days.

typing

It was a really good day though. I loved seeing our community coming together like that. I talked to a couple of people I’ve never spoken to before. I was seen by lots of people on twitter even from my couch. I saw the amazingly brave people who could be at the protests do amazing things. I got to tell my GP about our day of action so she is informed. I wrote something on facebook to my meatspace friends and put in a link to my blog for the first time. That was scary, I’ve separated the two on purpose for a while.

When the inevitable emotional crash came, I was watching the live stream from Oslo and the camera operator focused in on a pair of kids rubber boots. I was sobbing my head off and had to stop watching. At this point I was utterly exhausted, but I wanted to be part of more.

Responses has been trickling in for a few days. Some good, some bad, some a bit baffling. I think it’s a sign we’re winning the publicity battle, and I also think the desperation from some quarters shows we are on the right path. That the #MillionsMissing day 2 happened right after the PACE victory is a real boon to us. If you don’t know what I’m talking about please read Julie Rehmeyers piece on Stat.

I’m still running around in my red t-shirt although it needs a wash now. Very comfy and excellent to nap in – 10/10 would buy again

img_20160927_075045

#MillionsMissing – part 2

September 27, 2016Frk Johansen4 Comments

It’s the second #MillionsMissing day of Action – Take Two It’s Bigger and Better. I wish I could be present physically in front of the parliament building in Oslo today, but I’m not up to that and I have some other things happening today that I can’t move. Hopefully I can participate in the flesh next time, I should have a wheelchair by then.

Instead I’m wearing my red t-shirt at home, and at my GP’s office. There is a massive amount of things happening today – for me that is. They are changing my front door today (literally), so builders are running around everywhere making noise. I’m gonna do a little protest in front of them here at home.

30225-24-things-that-require-a-photo-id

If you are wondering what you can do to help please consider donating to Millions Missing Crowdrise campaign or The Open Medicine foundation. I would also like for you to sign the stopGet petitions if you can (One for brits, and one international). It’s to stop potentially harmful research treatment on children in the UK and is really important to me. It’s one thing to do this research on adults but since we already know it doesn’t work on us it’s diabolical to do the same thing to kids.

I expect I’ll be exhausted by the end of the day and anticipate a crash. I’m really proud of the M.E community and what has been achieved over the last few years. It feels like we have finally managed to gel into a coherent mass with common goals and I can’t thank the organisers of the different campaigns and organisations enough. I wish I could be more useful.

P.S. I can’t wait to have a new front door. The one I have seems to magnify any sound coming from the stairwell and is leaking air like you would not believe. A new fireproof door and new insulation around it should fix the worst of the sound problems. Not hearing the kids on the third floor running up and down the stairs screaming (not really, they are good kids but kids are heckin loud) would be great!

Just a little update

September 10, 2016Frk Johansen1 Comment

I haven’t been very active on my blog lately, my ME is currently kicking my cognitive metaphorical butt. I have about eight pieces of writing in the draft section but they all need pictures, fact checking and sourcing and so on, and I’m just not up for that at the moment.

fact-check-meme

What I have been doing lately though is reading a bit. I loved Chuck Wendig’s Invasive and recommend it to anyone (if insects isn’t too creepy for you). I hope they make a move of it, it was intense. I’ve been knitting socks while lying down and supporting my arms. I’ve been talking more to people on the internet, it’s scary but feels good. I’ve been overdoing it physically every time I feel a bit better because I’m so effing bored of resting and want to do something (not smart, I know).

I started watching Stranger Things. It takes a while because my memory is shit, and I have to go back every now and then and watch all over again. It’s also creepy in a way that gives me nightmares if I watch to late at night. I love it. I have a few movies to watch like Captain America: Civil War but I haven’t felt up to it lately (Cap’s my favourite Marvel hero).

captain-america-civil-war-memes-toilet-roll-placement — Cap is *right* Tony!