Bureaukarma

I've been to Skatteverket almost every day this week. I think that's a record. I am quite proud of myself for navigating through the chaotic sea of bureaucracy with limited knowledge of its intricate web of Swedish law and legal jargon. I've notified the healthcare authorities that I'm now a legal leech to their services, and then ran into some slight trouble because I am registered as living with someone who technically isn't allowed to have tenants and neither of us were aware that our addresses would immediately be cross-checked... So I've been back to Skattverket to change my address. I now "officially" live with my boyfriend, which isn't even half a lie. It's a nice step towards what we really want, which is a place of our own. Furthermore, I have applied for an ID card (which was a journey all in itself when the tax-office's computer's shut down) so that I can open a permanent bank account because the current one I have is for people with this other tax-number that I had before. Meanwhile, the associate of the umbrella company that I work for (not a company that makes or sells rain-gear, but a company that deducts the taxes and manages my payroll for the family I work for) is a complete fool and stresses me to the bone. With every email I receive from her I pull a little bit of my hair out in exasperation. The newest idiocy of hers is that she fails to know my legal name (though I sign every single email with it and have used it countless times) and was wondering why my bank account wasn't working. My NAME! (Ah, well... I am sending her positive energy and hope that it goes directly to her brain.)

It's been a lot of running around to various offices and printing and scanning and posing for photos and signatures and stamps and not to forget my work and errands underneath it all. I've been sprinting through Stockholm from my job to catch all the offices in their opening hours, have crammed in three trips to the gym, an inquisitive jaunt through one of Stockholm's ghettos to check out a potential living situation and on top of it all, the snow decided to come back for a very wet and slushy visit. It's mostly melted away again, but it's brief visit was plainly annoying. The poor flowers that had been blooming all week might freeze! It would be a sheer tragedy if they died. Well, the retrograde of light killed the sage plant that I just put in my window. It was so happy the day before yesterday and now it looks just as miserable as I was when I was sick the other week. The full moon didn't really help either, and caused a lot of insomnia this week. I've been tossing and turning, and waking up almost every hour with the most bizarre dreams. It seems to be contagious, because the baby (who turned 1 yesterday) has also been sleeping terribly and has been wearing down on the parents, and myself. Teeth coming in, almost crawling, cranky, extremely fidgety, and in a habit of pinching and scratching mine and his mom's neck, so much that we both have bruises and scratches. Wednesday brought Miss-Sassypants' exercising her mean streak towards her little brother, multiple tantrums, two puddles of pee, a lot of uneaten food a smushed rice all over the floor, and all during the sermon of a 7-year old who wont stop talking...Whew! I'm exhausted.

It's Friday night—excuse me, it's actually still Friday evening— and I am so ready to go to bed. But on the bright side, walking back from Skatteverket today, I passed my favorite health food store and I went in just to lighten my spirits a bit. Lo and behold, I stumbled upon a super-sale of slightly-old vegetables (still really delicious in tonight's sorta-Thai stir-fry) and discovered that they started carrying a HUGE jar of one of my favorite brands of tahini for an insanely good price. Some people know where in town to find the best dark ale, the best sushi, or the warmest tights, but I have begun to draft a mental master-map of where to get the best and cheapest tahini in town. Good thing, because I go through a lot of tahini. It was an excellent find! I also found Nigella Sativa seeds, which I've been searching for for a long, long time. Those are the little black seeds on Naan bread. They're incredibly healthy, despite the lack of publicity around them and have such a unique taste. Oh, Oh, Oh and I found ginger-apple kombucha. It was almost as good as Synergy's 'Trilogy' flavor. Now that is something I miss from the US, good kombucha.

After a little grocery shopping I headed to the gym and ran out all of that bureaucratic stress and while sprinting, I cleared my shakras—I've been doing that on the metro whenever I have a longer stretch of a ride, and usually get some funny looks when I sit there with my eyes closed and palms open on the seat across from super 'Svensson' chicks—but clearing them while running was quite something else. I'm not sure if that's safe or not, but in my run I had this insane urge to purify myself and purge all this stuff I'd been loosening up. I really felt the energy being pulled out of my head and into the universe and what a release and relief it was! The mom of the family I work for used to be a yoga teacher and told me that that energy should always be "shared with others" and will then return a thousand-fold. I felt like I was not only sharing that energy with the people I had in mind, but with the whole gym. Everyone seemed to push a little harder, run a little faster and with more gusto. After stretching, a deep peace and calm ensued and again following an urge, I sat on a gym-mat out in a semi-hallway/ semi-stretching-room and meditated for some 15 minutes. Even with all the sounds of heavy grunts, weights pounding onto mats, the whirring of machines and the awful club music playing through the speakers, I legitimately meditated. The world fell silent in a yogi-endorphin haze and I when I opened my eyes I saw a lot of other eyes quickly shift onto something other than this sweaty adidas buddha which they'd been focussed on. I walked home in extreme calmness and here-ness. Then that yummy stir-fry, eaten cross-legged on my yoga mat (because the stools I'd been borrowing from a friend of a friend have been returned and I no longer have a good way to sit at my table— but ah, all the better because eating on the floor is great!) and some tea and I really think this week needs to come to an end. I'm so tired, but in a good way.